The World Cup returns to the United States this week for the first time since 1994 at a time when soccer is booming on multiple fronts, from the increasing popularity of youth leagues and professional clubs to rising interest in this summer’s global spectacle.
Watching every step of the way will be fervent fan Barb Gaynor, president of Hamilton SAY Soccer, a recreational program for children of Hamilton and Butler County.
“I think that having the World Cup here … does help us increase the number of children playing,” Gaynor said. “People who don’t know soccer see the excitement and they see hundreds and thousands of people on the field and they think, ‘Oh, I might want to try that.'”
The 2026 World Cup starts at 3 p.m. Thursday, June 11, when Mexico plays South Africa in Mexico City. The five-week event will include 48 teams — 16 more than previous tournaments.
The tournament, which includes 104 matches across 16 cities in three North American nations — the United States, Canada and Mexico — marks the first time three countries have co-hosted.
The vast majority of host venues will be in U.S. cities. The first game in the USA matches the host America against Paraguay at 9 p.m. Friday, June 12, in Los Angeles. Canada, which will also host games, plays Bosnia-Herzegovina at 3 p.m. Friday in Toronto.
Also hosting World Cup matches will be Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle.
The competition wraps up with the championship game on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Gaynor said she’s watched soccer’s appeal become multigenerational in her 39 years with Hamilton SAY Soccer, which now includes 850 participants.
“Kids who have played (with) us in our program are coming back to now coach and their children are playing, which is very exciting,” she said.
Although many may root for a team based on their family’s ethnic heritage, Gaynor said she and her family “always root for the United States” as well as an overall good game no matter who is on the field.
“(Cristiano) Ronaldo’s going to play. (Lionel) Messi’s going to play. You’re talking about the best players in the world,” she said. “You’re getting the best of the best, and you’ll see games that just blow you away.”
The 1994 World Cup did exactly that for U.S. viewers and led to a soccer boom that continues to reverberate nationwide. Major League Soccer started play two years later and celebrated its 30th season in 2025. Fans who had to convince local sports bars to find European soccer games on television in 1994 can now easily find those games on TV (or their phone) at home.
In 1994, Wayne Novick attended World Cup games held in the United States for the first time and at the time predicted the games would help increase interest.
The World Cup will showcase a sport played at the highest level that has greatly increased in popularity here in the past three decades.
Novick took his daughter Michelle to first-round games in Detroit in 1994, where the United States played Switzerland. He was then the head coach of the West Carrollton High School girls team, a program he coached to 145 victories in 16 seasons. He told local media at that time that he hoped the World Cup would be a watershed moment for soccer in this country.
“Soccer has always been recognized as a youth sport here,” Novick told Dayton Daily News at the time. “Now Americans will have an opportunity to see what the sport is like at its highest level. The imagery on TV will be impressive. It’ll be a great showcase.”
The World Cup is no longer an unfamiliar event for Americans, many of who have embraced soccer in recent decades. This is what this news outlet wrote about the game 32 years ago in a story introducing the World Cup to readers.
“Americans sure like to play the game,” the story read. “More preteens play soccer than any other sport besides basketball. The question is why such a popular sport for kids doesn’t have much more spectator appeal than a sundial.
“Maybe it’s like woodworking or napping, one of those things that is more fun to do than to watch. The rest of the Western world doesn’t see it that way, though. Compared to the way other countries cover their World Cup teams, Americans don’t hype the Super Bowl much more than a city council meeting.”
Now American soccer fans — even those who tune in only once every four years — are familiar with the group stages and the knockout rounds of the World Cup. They know what the trophy looks like, even if the United States has never come close to hoisting it.
With the tournament returning to North America, Novick can look back at 1994 with fond memories.
“As a soccer fan, it is really great to see all of the enthusiasm that has grown around the sport,” Novick said, “and you trace it back to 1994.”
The games will soon generate the majority of the headlines. In the weeks leading up to the World Cup, there has been much focus on the price of tickets and price gouging in New York and New Jersey for fans using public transportation to get to the games.
Dennis Currier, the head men’s soccer coach at the University of Dayton, expects that kind of controversy at every World Cup.
“Everything that comes with it, with all the different positives and negatives,” Currier said, “people are going to read about it, and they’re going to see soccer in front of them and I think it’s nothing but great. It’ll be an exciting summer.”
A whole lot of fun
Like Novick, Shane Latham traveled to the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit for Team USA’s first game in 1994. He was then eight years removed from his first season as the head boys soccer coach at Catholic Central High School in Springfield and seven years away from winning the first of two state championships.
Latham took four trips to Detroit that summer for World Cup games and saw the beginning of the second rise of soccer in America. There was an earlier boom in the mid-1970s when the North American Soccer League was founded, but that league folded in 1985. Three years later, the United States won a bid to host the 1994 World Cup.
While Latham can’t say for certain whether his own program benefited from the increasing popularity of soccer, he knows the sport in general took off in the following years.
“I think the World Cup obviously helped a lot,” he said, “and the U.S. performed well in that ’94 World Cup with a signature win over Colombia.”
The United States tied Switzerland 1-1, beat Colombia 2-1 and lost 1-0 to Romania. That was good enough to advance to the Round of 16, where it lost 1-0 to eventual champion Brazil on Independence Day.
Novick also attended the first World Cup game in 1994. The defending champion Germany beat Bolivia 1-0 in Chicago.
“The opening match was just unbelievable,” he said. “I’ve been a soccer player and fan forever, but I had never been to the World Cup. One of the things I always remember is I was walking with my friend on the streets of Chicago, heading to Soldier Field, we looked ahead and saw a group of German fans making noise, singing, and carrying on. We approached the corner, and coming from the right angle was a group of Bolivian fans. We were stuck in the middle. I turned to my friend and said, ‘I think we’re in a little mess of trouble here.’ As they kept approaching, they kept singing and we were shortly thereafter engulfed in a bunch of singing in two different languages. That was a whole lot of fun, and that represents the World Cup.”
A rare opportunity
The closest games to Ohio will take place in Atlanta, Toronto and Philadelphia. Even with ticket prices ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on the popularity of the teams, local fans are finding ways to make it work.
Bryan Weigel, who lives in Liberty Twp. and works in Fairfield and Hamilton, has tickets to see the United States play Australia in Seattle on June 19. He’ll go with his wife Lucy.
The tickets cost $500 each.
Weigel is a member of the U.S. Soccer Insiders. That, he said, gave him an advantage over other fans when he applied to purchase tickets.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to go see your home country on your home soil,” Weigel said. “I had been planning for this for quite a while — several years at least — and I’m just lucky enough to get the tickets for this game at a relatively affordable price. I was over the moon when I saw that I got tickets for USA-Australia. I literally yelped for joy in my office.”
Andrew Staroska, of Cincinnati, said he purchased tickets to two games: Japan vs. Netherlands on June 14 in Arlington, Texas, and Japan vs. Sweden on June 25 in Arlington.
They cost $255 each.
“I think I entered just about every window of the Visa presale lottery, and I had every family member entered as well, just to have a chance at it,” he said.
An FC Cincinnati season-ticket holder, Staroska has attended a number of international friendlies, but he has never been to a World Cup game.
“I think the first game, Japan vs. Netherlands, will be electric,” he said. “It’s probably one of the top three or top five marquee matchups in the group stages. With two soccer-loving nations, it’s going to make for a great atmosphere. Overall, the World Cup, once the group stages end, really will turn into quite the fun spectacle. I think there’s obviously some group-stage matchups that are less exciting for folks.”
For fans not going to games, gathering with other fans to watch on TV is the next best thing.
King Corona Latin Kitchen & Cantina at 9421 Civic Centre Blvd. in West Chester Twp. plans to hold a watch party starting at 3 p.m. Thursday, June 11, for Mexico vs. South Africa complete with deejays and discounts.
The U.S. Men’s soccer fan club, the American Outlaws, is slated to gather at The Pitch at 1430 Central Parkway and at Grainworks Brewing Company, 7790 Service Center Drive, West Chester Twp. at 9 p.m. Friday, June 12, (vs. Paraguay), 3 p.m. June 19 (vs. Australia) and 10 p.m. June 25 (vs. Turkey).
Liberty Collective at 6735 Lakota Lane in Liberty Twp. will offer fans a chance to watch every big match on its 25-foot LED screen all competition long, including U.S. watch parties at 9 p.m. June 12 (vs. Paraguay), 2 p.m. July 19 (vs. Australia), at 10 p.m. June 25 (vs. Turkey).
Gaynor said she will host watch parties at her Butler County home, especially when USA matches occur, but World Cup matches of all kinds will grace the screen throughout the competition.
“We’re a soccer family, so … we don’t really care who’s playing, we watch all of it,” she said. “We’ve had parties in our home where everybody brought different kinds of food for different countries … but again, we run in a circle with people who love the game.”
Gaynor said she encourages those who don’t typically watch soccer matches to give the sport a chance by viewing the World Cup.
“The game moves so fast,” she said. “It’s so good, it’s physical, it’s just exciting. You’re going to see the best players in the world.”
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