John Strong brings what he calls his traveling apothecary to every game. His Fox broadcast partner, Stu Holden, calls it his “commentator starter pack.” Strong needs it, especially during World Cups, of which he’s now called five.Inside Fox’s lead soccer play-by-play commentator’s Ziploc bag of remedies are Ricola cough drops, Throat Coat tea, and singer’s throat spray, among other palliatives.The tea and cough drops serve as daily maintenance. A thermos of tea is never far away during matches, even when temperatures climb past 90 degrees. Before each half, he sprays a bronchial syrup he discovered at Whole Foods while battling illness during a previous Copa América. Coffee, no matter how exhausted he feels, is off limits. It’s bad for the throat.Even still, his weariness will show on his face over time.“John looked at me after maybe game five of the World Cup in Russia, and had a ghost-ish look to his face,” Holden told The Athletic. “He was pale, he was sleep-deprived, he was hungry.”During the tournament, Strong will be leaning on that collection of remedies to get his voice moving. When The Athletic spoke to him, just before the tournament began, he was in preparation for his matches that included Spain vs. Cape Verde, his third assignment in what became five matches across the tournament’s opening seven days.Four days earlier, he was calling the U.S. men’s national team’s opener against Paraguay in Los Angeles. The next day, Brazil vs. Morocco in New York. After Spain, he was headed to Kansas City for Argentina vs. Algeria.This is the reality of what was once a dream.Strong will be the voice of the World Cup for many, alongside former United States international Stu Holden. (Fox)It is Strong’s fifth World Cup behind the microphone, his third men’s tournament with two women’s World Cups. The schedule is relentless. It drains the voice, taxes the body, and tests his mental fortitude.He wouldn’t have it any other way. Strong serves as a shepherd for die-hards and casual, once-every-four-year viewers alike, guiding them through a sport he loves.“You are now the bridge between the people who can’t be at the game and their favorite team,” Strong said. “You’re that emotional wavelength. These stories that people don’t necessarily know because they don’t follow them all the time. You’re being a tour guide of sorts into this incredible world.“That stuff is really, really, really fun for me.”Strong’s indoctrination into soccer began as a teenager in Portland, when he convinced his parents to upgrade their cable package for Fox Sports World. He followed the United States’ 2001 World Cup qualifying campaign and its run to the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, sacrificing sleep for 11:30 p.m., 2 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. Pacific kickoffs.His father traveled frequently for work, giving Strong an allurement with the wider world. Soccer became the gateway to it.“There’s this big, giant world out there that I’m still fascinated by,” Strong said. “Soccer provided this way to be able to experience it and learn about it in a little bit of a different way.”Play-by-play offered a marriage between his love of the world’s game and storytelling. By the fall of 2003, as a freshman at Oregon, he knew his path. He called other sports, sure, but he said soccer was always the goal.He wanted to become the voices he had listened to a year earlier, the ones who first lured him into the global game.“I love being able to tell people a story or expose them to something, or be a conduit to them, to something that they didn’t know that they were interested in five minutes ago,” Strong said.“That’s the fun thing about a World Cup. People who don’t normally watch the sport are tuning in, and you’re getting them emotionally connected to something. You’re getting them hooked on something they didn’t even know they were going to be interested in. I love that.”Cape Verde earned a famous point against Spain with Strong on the call for Fox. (Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)For Strong, that remains the draw. Every few years, he gets to guide an audience back to a sport that many only visit sparingly.Strong has said the World Cup’s disproportionate attention is “not unique to soccer,” but the numbers challenge his modesty. Nielsen reported that Super Bowl LIX peaked at 137.7 million viewers in 2025. The NBA reported that Game 7 of the 2025 Finals peaked at 19.58 million viewers, its most-watched Finals game since 2019.According to a FIFA audience report, 1.5 billion people watched the 2022 World Cup final across all broadcast platforms, a match that Strong called as the lead English-language commentator in the U.S.The tournament’s grandeur draws even the most uninitiated viewers, people ordinarily consumed by football, basketball, baseball, or anything else. Every four years, this tournament surpasses those boundaries.“The World Cup remains one of the few things that’s actually quite scarce,” Strong admits. “It’s like a rare, precious jewel in certain ways.”Nowhere is that more evident than in a World Cup final.Strong called Kylian Mbappé’s ascendance in Russia in 2018. Four years later, he narrated Lionel Messi’s long-awaited coronation in Qatar.“We kind of forget what the power of a World Cup is,” Strong said. “Then you get to that final, and you know that there’s a group of players that will become immortal at the end of this, and there’s a group of players that will be horrified by this for their entire lives.“It’s difficult to do that justice.”Strong called Messi and Argentina’s triumph in Qatar. (Dan Mullan / Getty Images)Doing it justice starts with preparation. Over the years, Strong has built an email archive stuffed with articles, notes, and tidbits he might someday need on a player or team.But the real work begins about 10 days out.In a five-day stretch, Strong will call matches involving 10 different nations. Many do not finalize their rosters until roughly two weeks before the World Cup begins.“It turns into just a giant mad dash,” Strong said. “That was how I prepared for exams in college, which was that I would cram overnight.”Unlike his on-air partner Holden, Strong does his prep “on analog.” He’ll have physical cards with every player on both teams. The goal is simple: if a starter or substitute makes a decisive play, or the broadcast lingers on them for 20 seconds, he has a story ready.For the tournament’s opening week alone, that means learning roughly 260 players. Then come the next five matches, and the next, followed by the knockout rounds. There are coaches to study, trends to identify, and decades of history to keep within reach.Yet, Strong estimates 90 percent of his preparation never reaches the broadcast. The game decides what matters, and he has to follow its lead. He still rarely feels fully prepared.“He’s always going to say ‘I’m behind,’” Holden said. “It’s going to be an hour before that first game, U.S. vs. Paraguay, and he’s buried in his notes, searching on the internet, and maybe he finds something, or maybe it’s just his way that he needs to get into his game zone.”It’s a part of his thorough pursuit of being prepared for any outcome. As he prepared for Spain vs. Cape Verde, conventional wisdom suggested where his attention should have been focused. Spain, the reigning European champion, is led by Lamine Yamal, arguably the best player in the world. Most expected Spain to dominate the match and, by extension, much of the broadcast.Spain was ranked No.2 in the FIFA world ranking, and Cape Verde was No. 67, making its World Cup debut.But what if?“The biggest mistake I could make is not being prepared for the possibility that Cape Verde could win that game,” he said. “What if? What if Cape Verde takes the lead? What if? What if they get out in front? What if Spain are struggling?”Lamine Yamal and Spain were held by Cape Verde on Monday. (Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images)By the 75th minute in Atlanta, Cape Verde was still holding Spain scoreless.Strong was telling viewers that 28-year-old substitute left back João Paulo had played his club soccer in Moldova and Romania.And that now he was tasked with trying to stop Yamal.By the 94th minute, with one minute of stoppage time remaining, Cape Verde was charging forward on the counterattack, still locked in a 0-0 draw despite being outshot 20 times. Even with his eye towards the most improbable but technically conceivable outcomes, the World Cup still produces moments beyond belief.“No way they actually score in this one, right?” he said on the broadcast to a Cape Verde counter just minutes before.Forward Ryan Mendes then unleashed a long-range effort that sailed over the bar, and moments later, the whistle blew on a remarkable draw that felt like a victory for the tiny African island in its World Cup debut.Earlier in the match, Strong had already told viewers that the 36-year-old Mendes was Cape Verde’s veteran captain and played his club soccer in Turkey.When texted afterward and reminded of his premonitions of a surprise in this match, minutes after the game, Strong replied emphatically.“EXACTLY,” he wrote back in all caps.Hypervigilance vindicated.He balances that tireless prep with his main prerogative, making this World Cup special when calling U.S. games on home soil. He saw how life in Russia and Qatar halted for the World Cup. How Australia ground to a stop for the Women’s World Cup.How that same force will collide with an American attention economy already stretched thin is beyond his comprehension.“The idea of experiencing it here and being in the middle in the eye of that hurricane is sort of exciting and terrifying at the same time,” Strong said. “I have an appreciation of it because I’ve lived it, but even then, my trying to conceptualize it or explain it is a fool’s errand.”He had prepared to introduce the U.S. players and their stories to a home audience, which he did during the Americans’ 4-1 victory over Paraguay to open its tournament on Friday. He prepared to explain the global game’s biggest stars. He has prepared to spotlight the players in the margins. And he has prepared for the possibility that those players steal the moment.For 10 days before kickoff, his mind churned through every conceivable scenario, and plenty he couldn’t foresee. He studied, organized, memorized, and shared. Then he boards another flight, crossing thousands of miles with little rest, ready to tell whatever story unfolds next.“Every single player on the field has lived an entire life’s journey just to get to this moment,” Strong said. “I want to be able to celebrate that, but you just can’t. It’s too much.”But that’s alright. He’ll try anyway. Through sore throats and sleepless nights, with eyes strained in pursuit of the one detail that might captivate someone discovering the game for the first time. Strong will help his new audience understand why billions around the world care so deeply about this sport he loves.He’ll just need to unwrap another cough drop first.