The Beautiful Game and the Things That Still Unite Us

I don't know whether it was my mother's idea or my father's, but I can still remember the first time my foot touched a soccer ball.

The field sat behind Weyerhaeuser Elementary beneath a gray Pacific Northwest sky. The grass was muddy. The air smelled like rain. The drizzle was light enough that nobody bothered to leave.

Within minutes, I took a soccer ball directly to the face.

Not a gentle tap, either. Some girl with what I can only assume were unresolved anger-management issues launched that thing with the force of a medieval siege weapon.

Most people would probably have considered that a warning.

Instead, I fell in love.

What followed was a fifteen-year obsession.

Select soccer. Varsity all four years. State Champions my junior year. College soccer. Endless practices. Endless miles. Endless bruises. I once had a high school coach tell me I was the best player he had ever coached—male or female.

My senior year, I played through an ankle injury that never fully healed. We failed to make the final playoff run, and while soccer is always a team sport, watching others attempt to fill my position was a uniquely painful experience. Let's just say humility and patience were not among my strongest virtues at seventeen.

But age has a funny way of clarifying things.

What I miss now isn't the trophies.

It's the feeling.

The feeling that something larger than yourself is happening.

The feeling that, for ninety minutes, nothing else matters.

The feeling that strangers become teammates, teammates become family, and a simple ball becomes the center of an entire universe.

Soccer—or football, for most of the world—is often called "the beautiful game." That phrase isn't accidental.

Unlike many modern institutions, soccer belongs to everyone.

You don't need expensive equipment.

You don't need elite facilities.

You don't need privilege.

You need a ball. Sometimes not even that. A rolled-up shirt, a crushed can, or a bundle of rags has been enough for children throughout history.

Perhaps that's why the game became humanity's game.

The roots of soccer stretch back centuries, emerging from various ball games played across Europe before modern rules were formalized in England during the nineteenth century. The sport spread alongside industrialization, migration, trade, and empire until it became one of the few truly global cultural languages on Earth.

Today, a child in Brazil, Nigeria, England, Japan, Argentina, or rural Oregon understands the game instinctively.

Few things can claim that.

And that is precisely why the World Cup matters.

Every four years, humanity performs a rare miracle.

We gather.

Not because we agree politically.

Not because we share a religion.

Not because we belong to the same tribe.

We gather because twenty-two people are chasing a ball across a field.

From a purely rational perspective, it sounds absurd.

From a human perspective, it is profound.

Civilizations have always understood the importance of shared spectacles.

The Romans filled the Colosseum.

The Greeks gathered for the Olympics.

Medieval towns celebrated festivals and tournaments.

Humans need collective experiences. We need stories larger than ourselves. We need moments that remind us we are part of something beyond our individual concerns.

Modern governments, corporations, and political movements understand this truth better than most people realize.

Shared experiences create identity.

Identity creates belonging.

Belonging creates cohesion.

But unlike many manufactured forms of tribalism, soccer possesses something uniquely beautiful: its tribes meet on the same field under the same rules.

The World Cup is perhaps the closest thing our fragmented world has to a global campfire.

And this year's tournament feels especially significant.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the largest in history, featuring forty-eight nations competing across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It is the first men's World Cup hosted by three countries and one of the most ambitious sporting events ever attempted.

For North America, it represents more than a sporting event.

It represents a cultural moment.

Soccer's popularity in the United States has surged dramatically over the last several decades, and many believe this World Cup could become a defining milestone in the sport's growth across the continent.

Yet statistics only tell part of the story.

The deeper truth is emotional.

Prepping for the opening matches this week, I couldn't help but feel nostalgic.

I thought about Bend It Like Beckham.

I thought about She's the Man.

I thought about The Game of Their Lives.

I thought about Green Street Hooligans.

I thought about Netflix's The English Game.

Each tells a different story, but all orbit the same truth:

Soccer is never just soccer.

It is identity.

It is aspiration.

It is class.

It is community.

It is belonging.

It is hope.

Most importantly, it is one of the few places where ordinary people still allow themselves to dream collectively.

Perhaps that's why the World Cup affects me differently than the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, or almost any other sporting event.

The World Cup feels human.

Not American.

Not European.

Not African.

Not Asian.

Human.

For a brief moment, billions of people watch the same matches, celebrate the same goals, suffer the same heartbreaks, and experience the same emotional rollercoaster.

In a world increasingly incentivized to divide itself into ideological camps, that feels almost revolutionary.

We spend so much time being told what separates us.

Politics.

Race.

Religion.

Economics.

Nationality.

Algorithms profit from emphasizing difference.

The World Cup reminds us of something older.

Something deeper.

Something true.

That beneath our flags, accents, passports, and political arguments, we are all simply human beings searching for meaning, excellence, connection, and joy.

Maybe that's why a muddy field in the Pacific Northwest still lives vividly in my memory decades later.

Maybe that's why getting blasted in the face with a soccer ball somehow became one of the best things that ever happened to me.

And maybe that's why, as the world gathers once again around the beautiful game, I'm filled with something increasingly rare these days:

Gratitude.

Gratitude for competition.

Gratitude for community.

Gratitude for shared stories.

Gratitude for the reminder that despite everything trying to pull us apart, there are still things capable of bringing us together.

For ninety minutes at a time, anyway.