The Athletic has live coverage of the latest 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup news.The boy honed his legend on dirt fields. Sandlots were all those little Americans had back then, patches of a dream, open spaces that looked like decoration between the factories. He was the dusty son of Italian immigrants before the game took him places, a kid from Harrison, N.J., who would one day crack jokes on a steamship bound for Montevideo.Soccer was his passion. Before he turned pro, he served in the Navy during World War I. Then he served the United States again, this time on playful terms. He was a jokester. He was among the best players of his generation. In the summer of 1930, he went to Uruguay for the inaugural World Cup with a fitting designation: the first captain of America.His name was Tom Florie. He led a team of textile mill workers and first-generation Americans and naturalized citizens, all of them sporting blue collars and following the direction of a Scottish-born coach. They made it to the semifinals of the nascent tournament, still the best World Cup showing in American soccer history.Ninety-six years later, what that very American assortment accomplished on a muddy field in Montevideo sits undisturbed. It is largely unexamined, another indictment that further clarifies the nation’s current dysmorphic state. On Friday, the men’s World Cup returns to the United States for the first time since 1994, arriving in a country that seeks to impress the world despite being in its most ferocious dispute in modern history about who belongs here.Welcome to America, the problematic host. It wouldn’t be a World Cup without one. Russia in 2018. Qatar in 2022. Now the U.S. is on a slide under humanity’s microscope, the oddest member of this continuum. The America that sees itself as a paragon now must stomach being seen as an antagonist. We are raised to feel differently, to feel exceptional, righteous. Free.As we welcome the world’s game, as we celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, this is the stage America built for itself. Now it’s time to perform.But the host cannot agree on what it represents. One America sees a grand, hospitable version of itself. Another America sees diverse crowds filling its stadiums and feels threatened by their flags and languages and hyphenated identities, by the very diversity that is supposed to make American soil fertile for this tournament. All the while, the rest of the world watches the country’s crisis with bewilderment and dread, aware of the dangers of America in its current disposition, still powerful but turning inward — turning hostile — distorting and weaponizing its mythology.It’s the nightmare infesting the dream that the 1930 team embodied. What a motley, glorious Team USA. They were the Italian-American captain, the immigrants playing in industrial leagues, the working-class amateurs from New England and St. Louis and Detroit, the Scottish coach. They were all on board, and for 18 days, on a ship called the SS Munargo. They traveled with Mexico. There were no disruptive debates about who belonged. They played. Florie told his best jokes. And those Americans set a standard that subsequent teams have yet to reach.The promise of America was stitched into their jerseys. That promise is almost a quarter of a millennium old now. As the World Cup begins, is it still a binding commitment?Is this still Tom Florie’s country?They’re making fun of us overseas. The jokes coat the fear. On Wednesday, the French sports daily L’Équipe published an alarming front page. It was a foreboding image of President Donald Trump, dangling a puppet of FIFA president Gianni Infantino in his right hand and holding the World Cup trophy in his left. The illustration also featured banned Somali referee Omar Artan lifting a yellow card and a U.S. law enforcement officer with the flag wrapped around his face and neck.“Welcome to the USA,” the headline read.It was sharp. It cut deep. This is the perception, and a significant faction of the country proudly proclaims it a reality. What a strange time to be alive. The French sports press is now a moral conscience.