World Cup Fever in Los Angeles: A Unique Experience

Los Angeles stretches out in every direction, a city that never seems to end, and somewhere inside it a World Cup is happening. Or at least, that’s what I keep telling people back home when they ask the inevitable question: “Is there World Cup fever in the States?”

The honest answer: yes, but you have to know where to look.

A very different tournament

It’s been 20 years since I was last in the host country for a major tournament that didn’t involve England. Germany 2006 was a road trip with Ian, Matt and Oli, an endless loop of autobahns, steins and chance encounters. We danced with Trinidad and Tobago fans, we blagged our way into fan parks, we were hungover enough to be grateful we missed Brazil v Australia in the blazing sun.

This time it’s different. There are schedules, running orders, deadlines. The romance of the open road has been replaced by studio lights and producer messages. The World Cup is still there, of course, but now it’s framed by call times and commercial breaks.

Back home, people want colour. “What’s it like out there?” they ask, as if I’m reporting from the frontline of football history. It takes me back to a local TV crew in Cambridge in 1990, wandering the city centre on the eve of an FA Cup quarter-final against Crystal Palace. They expected raw emotion and civic pride. What they got was a series of politely baffled middle-class residents who didn’t realise Cambridge even had a football team.

The same thing happens with the Ashes in Melbourne. “What’s the atmosphere like, Max?” they’ll ask. The reality? Me on my hands and knees at home, two under-fives turning rice into confetti, utterly oblivious to Bazball’s flaws.

To the partners of journalists, players and officials who are at home doing the real work with the kids while we flit around North America talking about pressing triggers and xG – you are owed more than thanks. If my 18‑month‑old, Willie Rushden, ever reads this: I’m sorry this World Cup coincided with hand, foot and mouth. The timing could not have been worse.

A vast country, a tiny radius

Everyone tells you the US is big. It still doesn’t prepare you. Los Angeles feels like it goes on for ever, an endless sprawl of freeways and strip malls and neighbourhoods that bleed into one another.

In a rare burst of optimism, I tried to LimeGlide – a bike with no pedals, essentially a scooter in denial – from West Hollywood to Santa Monica. For a while it was perfect: sun on my face, breeze in my hair, the city sliding by. Then the app dumped me in a non‑cycling zone on a dual carriageway. One second I’m coasting; the next I’m dragging an inert lump of metal through a hedgerow, miles from anything resembling a pavement.

That’s the geography. The schedule shrinks it even further. With an hour between games, our world contracts to a small triangle: a Trader Joe’s, a cafe across the road and a hotel pool populated almost exclusively by influencers with impossible abs. They sit by the water discussing their next TikTok series or whether they’re on the list for the opening night of Nylon nightclub.

Yet football does seep through the cracks. The games are on in the bars of West Hollywood. US shirts dot the crowd. A Bosnian wanders past and someone calls out, “Good luck later.” It’s not Germany 2006, but it’s not nothing.

Basketball first, then the breakthrough

If anything, the opening days here felt more like an NBA convention than a World Cup. You absorb it by osmosis. Without meaning to, you become a Knicks or Spurs fan. I chose Spurs, naturally, and watched them blow what felt like the biggest lead in NBA Finals history. Of course they did.

The most stirring thing I’ve seen so far wasn’t on a football pitch. It was Zohran Mamdani, Guardian Football Weekly listener and, slightly less importantly, mayor of New York, speaking at the Knicks parade. He reeled off names of basketball players I’d never heard of and somehow made every syllable sound like a manifesto. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the football caught up.

The US win over Paraguay changed the temperature. You could feel it most among the people who have carried the torch for the sport here for years – the reporters, producers and long‑suffering fans who have watched football fight for relevance in a country dominated by other games. Their relief was almost physical. This wasn’t just three points; it was validation.

In England, a World Cup triumph or a last‑32 exit doesn’t alter whether the sport is popular. Football is baked into the culture. In the US and Australia, everything feels more fragile. A run to the quarter‑finals or beyond can move the needle, unlock investment, shift perception. It’s a lot of weight to load on to players who already have enough to think about, but it’s the reality.

Melbourne, Irankunda and a different kind of pride

From Los Angeles my mind kept drifting 8,000 miles away to my adopted home, Melbourne, and those extraordinary scenes in Federation Square. Flares, limbs, people stacked on top of each other in a sea of green and gold. It was the closest I’ve come to crying at this tournament.

At the centre of it all: Nestory Irankunda. A refugee. One touch, one finish, one eruption of noise. In an age of rising populism and nationalism, a young man whose family fled conflict now scoring for Australia – a country built on immigration, just like the US – carries a power that goes beyond sport.

Then there was Connor Metcalfe in the mixed zone, watching his goal back and reacting in the most Australian way possible: “Far out that was far out, that was ick!” or something along those lines. Pure, unfiltered joy.

I don’t entirely understand why I feel such affection for the Socceroos when the sight of Australia’s cricketers still makes my blood pressure spike. But there it is. Football scrambles the wiring.

England at arm’s length

Distance from England has been healthy. You avoid the pub bores and the phone‑in callers obsessed with whether Thomas Tuchel belts out the national anthem with sufficient gusto. I doubt King Charles is losing sleep over it. Why should anyone else?

What matters is on the pitch. England are good. More than that, they’re fun. Harry Kane finally has pace buzzing around him. Noni Madueke is smiling his way through games. Elliot Anderson keeps popping up in the right spaces. Djed Spence has somehow turned into the Road Runner. There is hope, but not the usual, suffocating, terror‑laced kind. Not yet, anyway.

Life with Barry and the Fox feed

Most of my days here are a blend of two constants: living with my friend and co‑host Barry Glendenning, and watching Fox Sports. The main dramatic tension is whether Zlatan Ibrahimovic will strangle Alexi Lalas on live television before Barry decides to kill me.

To be fair, the US coverage has been largely solid. There’s plenty of “soccer 101” content, but the BBC and ITV do the same. An England World Cup game pulls in people who don’t watch Crystal Palace v Brentford on a Monday night. Not everyone knows their inverted full‑backs from their false nines. That’s fine.

What’s less fine is seeing Christian Pulisic’s Wells Fargo advert every time there’s a hydration break. There are only so many times you can watch a man open a bank account before you start to question your own life choices.

Back at the apartment, domestic harmony is a more fragile construct. It’s fair to say Barry and I are not auditioning to be the next Odd Couple reboot. I don’t think I’ve annoyed him at all, apart from the following: eating an apple too loudly, failing to tighten the lid on a bottle of Coke Zero, offering unsolicited chilli‑chopping advice, asking if he needed the big saucepan, decanting yoghurt into a bowl, doing what he considers “too much” laundry and daring to criticise his unapologetic flatulence. Both ends.

We’re still talking. Just.

Somehow people find this compelling. The petty grievances, the travel, the half‑formed thoughts about formations – it all ends up on Instagram, the podcast, YouTube, or wherever people now choose to consume content.

Is it pilot season? Could two middle‑aged men arguing over cookware really crack America? Barry has already helped the star of Selling Sunset with her key fob – not a euphemism, sadly – so who knows where this goes next.

For now, the World Cup rolls on, the games keep coming, and Los Angeles stretches out beyond the Trader Joe’s, the cafe and the hotel pool. Big things might be coming. Until they do, there’s another match to watch.