Michael Pirrie, an international communications strategist, examines how the FIFA World Cup has evolved into one of the world’s most influential diplomatic platforms, strengthening international partnerships, advancing soft power and creating opportunities that extend far beyond football.
The World Cup does not simply arrive on the international calendar. The mega event forms over time and gathers gradually on the horizon. From the streets of Buenos Aires and the cafés of Paris to the sports bars and clubs of London and favellas of Brazil, the Cup remains one of the few occasions capable of capturing the attention of the planet at the same moment.
Anticipation builds as billions prepare for the tournament. Nations begin to imagine what might be possible, while football supporters everywhere dare to believe this could finally be their time.
“Football and the World Cup, in itself, is there to make a country and our fans dream and believe and excite them. This is what it’s for…” the England team manager, Thomas Tuchel, said recently.
The surrounding pre-tournament hype was different this time in the countdown to lift off as football’s galaxy of superstars journeyed to North America and the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, said World Cup 2026 would be out of this world, promising the biggest and most successful event in modern sporting history.
While USNMT manager Mauricio Pochettino, also urged his charges “to touch the moon”, there were concerns the tournament might sink under the weight of expectation and crash land in surroundings that might struggle to sustain the demands of elite international football competition.
This led to fears FIFA’s grand vision risked turning into a sporting supernova that could evolve into a spectacle of such immense scale, heat and expectation that it could either illuminate the world or explode under its own force.
The tournament that began beneath a cloud of scepticism over its expanded format, high ticket costs, political tensions, travel demands and the sheer complexity of staging football’s greatest event across three host nations has developed into one of the most compelling and memorable World Cups of modern times.
Much of the pre-Cup anxiety was quickly overwhelmed by the football itself. Goals, upsets, comebacks, penalty shootouts and the courageous performances of emerging nations created unrelenting drama.
The expansion to 48 teams, widely criticised beforehand, brought more countries, cultures and supporters into the tournament and brought the World Cup a genuinely broader global interest and atmosphere.
While it is hard to fully appreciate human ingenuity in the complex design of a space shuttle or a heart transplant, different forms of human endeavour and motivation were perhaps more visible during the Cup.
A nation’s World Cup performance can reflect far more than its football. National teams become symbols of their country’s talent, disciple and international image, prompting meticulous preparations for every foreseeable challenge, from climate and travel to injuries, training conditions, recovery and refereeing
POLITICS CAST A SHADOW BUT FOOTBALL LIT UP THE WORLD
The pressure to perform is usually greatest on host nations and the controversy surrounding President Trump’s intervention following the suspension of a key USMNT player demonstrated how quickly politics can intrude on even the world’s biggest sporting event.
While the presidential intervention, involving a phone call to the FIFA president, ultimately didn’t work and the more highly fancied Belgium team prevailed over USMNT, it created an appearance of political influence that, for many, briefly overshadowed the football itself.
While President Trump believed suggestions of inappropriate interference were ‘Fake News’, the ensuing controversy has been the biggest story in a tournament overflowing with dramatic storylines, subplots and conspiracy theories that have gripped the world
More than ever, the FIFA 2026 World Cup showed how the world’s greatest sporting event, along with the Olympic Games, operates simultaneously on several different levels.
While it is a football tournament, it is also a global cultural gathering, a geopolitical stage, commercial marketplace, and a celebration of national identity
Trump and his administration had linked co-hosting of the World Cup to America’s celebrations for its milestone 250th anniversary of Independence, which occurred during the tournament, further increasing pressure for success
While a presidential intervention was perhaps inevitable at some stage of the globally prestigious event, especially in the divisive ‘Make America Great Again’ Trump era, the juggernaut football tournament united the nation which excitedly embraced the USMNT throughout its presence at the tournament.
Trump’s intervention, ironically, was unnecessary as the USMNT had already surpassed most expectations, charging into the knockout stages and generating record levels of interest and engagement across the United States, especially among younger generations in a nation still largely unfamiliar with the soccer culture.
THE CUP THAT HAD EVERYTHING
If the quality of a major multi nation sporting event can be determined by the conditions and opportunities it provides for teams and players at all levels to perform their best, this Cup has been an enormous triumph of planning and organisation – the equivalent of staging 104 Super Bowls.
Despite the Trump controversy – and others including referring decisions, empty seats at some early games, unimaginable ticket prices and visa and travel restrictions – this Cup has helped to demonstrate soccer’s enduring appeal and what makes football the most popular sporting experience on the planet
With an expanded competition filled with unexpected success, dramatic reversals and knowledge that one mistake could fulfill or shatter a nation’s dreams, this Cup has been riveting.
The overall feeling surrounding this World Cup has been one of exhilaration, revelation and surprise.
The football itself was the tournament’s greatest advertisement. Rather than reducing quality, the expanded 48 team format broadened the competition’s appeal by bringing in more nations, cultures and styles of play onto the world stage while still producing dramatic, high-quality group and knockout matches.
There were memorable upsets, penalty shoot-outs, outstanding individual performances and compelling underdog stories, reinforcing football’s unique capacity for uncertainty and emotional drama.
AGAINST THE ODDS
Several smaller nations supplied this World Cup with compelling David-and-Goliath stories with fairytale performances
Cape Verde, in particular, a first-time qualifier with a population of barely half a million, holding back the strength of European champions Spain to a remarkable 0–0 draw, and progressed undefeated from its group ahead of Uruguay, and then pushed current Cup champions Argentina before losing 3–2 in extra time. For a country with fewer people than many major cities, simply reaching the knockout rounds represented a footballing achievement of historic proportions.
Curaçao, the smallest nation ever to qualify for a World Cup by population and area, earned its first tournament point by holding Ecuador scoreless. Goalkeeper Eloy Room reportedly made 15 saves as a Caribbean island of around 150,000 people resisted a South American nation of approximately 18 million. It was a goalless draw that felt like a famous victory.
Democratic Republic of Congo also exceeded expectations by advancing from a difficult group containing Portugal and Colombia. Although eventually eliminated by England, its progression demonstrated that teams arriving with little international attention could compete against countries possessing vastly greater football resources, wealth and tournament experience.
Norway, while small but not a tiny country, produced a fairytale run by defeating five-time champions Brazil, reaching the quarterfinals, its deepest run in World Cup history, before its journey ended in extra time to England.
These teams embodied and reinforced sport’s enduring spirit of hope.
THE CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS, LESSONSS & LEGACIES
The politics, controversies, and non-stop football drama have often obscured key lessons and legacies from this super sporting event.
Despite the highly political atmosphere that has surrounded the event, FIFA 2026 has been outstanding and successful because it delivered where it matters most – on the field, in the stands, on television and across digital platforms, the Cup has been a resounding hit
The Cup’s nerve shredding outcomes and heart pounding excitement were made possible by the quality of the venues, playing conditions and supports for the teams, enabling them to play at their best.
The success of this Cup was built on the premise that if you bring the world’s best footballers together in one tournament and provide appropriate venues and services for players and fans great football and excitement will follow.
Players delivered stunning performances that thrilled fans and created an electrifying, party environment inside the stadiums that radiated out across the host cities, nations, and regions and excited international viewing audiences.
The Cup provided teams with outstanding venues, very good playing surfaces, training facilities, transport, accommodation, technology, and event services and players produced unforgettable football moments.
The same vision underpinned planning for the benchmark Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games and was successfully adapted by the IOC for the landmark London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics and most recently the Paris 2024 Games.
The Fifa Cup teams were given conditions that enabled them to perform at their absolute best. World-class stadiums, excellent pitches, sophisticated logistics and efficient transport networks while experienced event staff and stadium management removed many of the obstacles that can diminish elite performance.
This allowed the football itself to dominate centre stage and the result was a tournament of breathtaking intensity.
There were late momentum changes and late winning goals, stoppage-time equalisers, penalty shoot-outs and extraordinary individual moments that produced a procession of compelling contests that kept supporters and audiences living the tournament around the world.
The quality of the football ignited an electrifying atmosphere inside the stadiums that spilled into fan zones, public squares, city streets and centres and across the host nations.
The energy extended far beyond the venues and stretched out across North America and into living rooms, sports bars, public spaces and gatherings and watch parties around the world.
The tournament demonstrated again that while great sporting theatre can never be guaranteed, creating the right conditions for the world’s greatest athletes to excel offers the best possible chance that unforgettable moments will follow.
LA28 Olympic organisers have been watching on closely.
A TRINITY OF NATIONS
A distinctive feature of the 2026 FIFA World Cup was that it did not unfold in new and unfamiliar venues created solely for the tournament, but across cities that already occupied a place in the world’s imagination.
Long before a ball was kicked, millions of people felt they knew places such as Seattle, Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey, Boston, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, Vancouver and Mexico City through decades of films, television, novels, music and popular culture.
BEYOND FOOTBALL BEYOND BELIEF
The World Cup therefore became more than a football tournament—it became a journey through landscapes that audiences had already visited in their imaginations if not in person.
Seattle, for example, evoked the romance of Sleepless in Seattle and the music of the grunge era. Los Angeles carried echoes of L.A. Confidential, Hollywood, the beach party culture of Santa Monica, Disneyland and Silicon Valley while Philadelphia recalled Rocky and the enduring story of the underdog.
Canada and Mexico added equally powerful dimensions. Vancouver was already known worldwide through its spectacular natural settings and vibrant indigenous communities, creative arts and popular culture.
Toronto projected one of the world’s great multicultural and sporting cities, while Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey brought deep football history and passion to Cup matches, and rich cultural traditions that have long fascinated international visitors and audiences.
Together, the three host nations created a tournament that felt both global and familiar, allowing supporters to experience iconic places they had known for years.
The cohost cities and nations also brought high quality operational and organisation experience in staging major international events.
Los Angeles had transformed the Olympic movement with the commercially successful 1984 Olympic Games and Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympics, while Vancouver delivered one of the most memorable Winter Olympic Games in 2010.
These cities had helped to draft the modern blueprint for delivering major sporting events: Super Bowls, NBA finals, Stanley Cups, World Series, Olympic Games, Formula One, World Championships and other events.
The result was an unusually powerful combination: global recognition of host cities and cultural landmarks combined with decades of accumulated expertise in delivering major events.
This provided the foundations for a compelling Cup environment in which football could flourish, giving the 2026 World Cup an electrifying atmosphere and global impact
This perhaps also provided the basis for Infantino’s bold declaration that the Cup would be the best sporting event in history.
It is difficult to imagine another World Cup being able to assemble such a rare combination of factors that benefits players, teams, officials and fans as much.
This was only possible through comprehensive financial and logistical support from the central governments of the US, Canada and Mexico
Host nation federal support is essential for successful mega multi nation events, and while Trump’s red card intervention was widely condemned, the White House played a key role in helping to coordinate and integrate resources, policies and plans for essential Cup services in the lead cohost nation
Players benefited enormously from the world-class stadiums, training facilities, transport systems, technology and accommodation, while supporters found themselves immersed in cities that they already felt connected to.
A WORLD VIEW THROUGH THE GLOBAL GAME
The tournament was simultaneously a football festival and cultural pilgrimage supported by modern venues and urban infrastructure resulting in a showcase of sporting excellence.
It is difficult to imagine another World Cup being able to assemble such a unique combination of factors again.
The Cup reflected much about the condition of the global game, global society and conditions on the planet as America became the first nation to co-host the Cup while at war with a regime represented by a team at the Cup.
This tournament reflected how much sport, football and the wider world has changed since the last Cup in Qatar.
While the first Middle East World Cup was the most expensive and deadliest sporting event in recent times with a record number of immigrant workers dying while building expensive new venues to entertain the world, this time it was the players from immigrant families who often dominated Cup nations
The Cup has become a global mirror, reflecting political, technological, economic and cultural shifts impacting football as well as the lives of players, fans, residents and societies of participating nations and beyond
THE SUPERSTARS ARRIVE
The high-quality of the organisation and conditions at the tournament was also reflected by the unprecedented, combined presence of the world’s finest footballers of a generation who not only attended the Cup but confirmed their widely held legendary regard with cavalcades of goals.
The Cup witnessed the genius of Messi, Mbappe, Kane, Salah, and Haaland whose individual brilliance often made football look like a solo rather than team sport.
Ronaldo protested that he was back but slumped from superstar to substitute in front of the world and should pay more attention to icons from other sports like Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal on how to retire with grace and dignity.
The three-host nation Cup model across United States, Canada and Mexico also reflected a world in which major challenges increasingly require cooperation across borders.
While nationalism and politics often polarise and divide, the Cup demonstrated that large-scale international collaboration still remains possible.
Three countries with different cultures, languages and political priorities jointly staged an event requiring unprecedented cooperation that overcame geopolitical and cultural challenges enabling the delivery and coordination of vital transport, security, immigration, broadcasting and logistics services and products.
Technology has changed sport and the tournament just as profoundly. Artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, immersive broadcasting, enhanced officiating technologies, dynamic ticket pricing and social media have made the Cup competition more interactive – and more expensive to consume and access – than ever before.
THE EVOLVING SPORTS ECONOMY & EXPERIENCE
The tournament mirrored changing demographics, with younger generations consuming and experiencing the Cup differently, following individual players as much as national teams, and engaged more than ever through short-form video, online communities and multiple streaming platforms.
The expanded format highlighted how the global economy has become increasingly shaped around experience events on-line and in the real world.
Economically, the tournament reflected the growing importance of sport as a global industry. Football has become increasingly and more deeply intertwined with tourism, infrastructure construction, digital technology, sponsorship, data, betting, entertainment and international investment.
The expanded format in particular reflected how the global economy has become increasingly shaped around experience and events on-line and in the real world.
While FIFA kept the majority of the tournament’s revenue, including lucrative profits from tickets, sponsorships, and broadcasting rights, the World Cup delivered a significant but temporary economic and tourism boost to host cities.
The host regions spent millions on security, transport, and stadium upgrades and the Cup matches gave cities and their tourism sectors unprecedented exposure to a massive global audience that advertising alone could not buy or generate.
Globally, total viewership across the 104 matches of the tournament is projected to surpass 5 billion viewers, with early data modelling indicating a massive cumulative audience of 11.53 billion views across the first 96 matches alone. Driven by the expanded 48-team format and prime-time scheduling in the Americas, broadcast networks are shattering previous records.
The Cup was expected to generate historic profits of up to $13 billion in FIFA’s current revenue cycle, while reports indicate the event could generate up to $4 billion in global economic output
Since the Qatar 2022 Cup, many societies have experienced inflation, political polarisation, conflict, climate disasters and economic uncertainty.
The tournament four years on showed moments of shared optimism and hope to a volatile and uncertain world watching on, reflected in record viewership.
Taken together, the 2026 FIFA World Cup was a portrait of the contemporary world. Compared with Qatar 2022, it reflected a planet that is larger, more interconnected, more technologically advanced, more politically divided, and more unpredictable.
Yet amid those changes, the Cup also demonstrated a capacity to unite the world around a shared passion.
Despite the controversies, for a month, billions of people across the world have focussed not on what divides them but on the simple, universal drama involving twenty-two players, one ball, two nets and the enduring possibility that sport can reveal something more hopeful about the human condition.
AWAKENING THE FOOTBALL GIANTS
The optics of success for this Cup have already sparked conversations about expanding the finals further to a staggering 64 teams for the next edition, with Infantino indicating the possibility is under discussion.
“If you don’t give smaller countries a chance to participate, they’ll lack the incentive to keep improving,’ the Fifa president said recently.
While this would bring in extra nations, teams, rounds and revenue to Fifa, some member associations were anxious this could weaken the Cup’s competition aura of exclusivity and were more concerned about a bigger football problem involving the world’s largest nations.
The success of this new look 2026 Cup tournament, the biggest football event ever staged, has obscured the awkward fact that the two biggest nations in the world – China and India – were absent.
It has overwhelmed the fact that football is failing comprehensively and chronically in Asia, the world’s biggest continent.
The top four ranked nations, France, Spain, Argentina and England all progressed to the semifinals for the first time at this Cup
Nine nations from Africa advanced past the group stage compared to only two from Asia.
While Asian nations find it easier to win Olympic medals, Cup success remains elusive and football is in crisis on the continent.
A new vision, strategy and leadership is urgently needed to make football fair in Asia and unlock the social, community, economic and sporting potential and benefits from football across the world’s most populous region.
There was also growing concern that the absence of the world’s biggest nations from the Cup undermines football’s reputation as the ‘World Game’ and that the legacies from this Cup do not further entrench the long-established status quo
A WORLD CUP THE WORLD WILL NEVER FORGET
England’s semi final collapse to Argentina deprived the tournament of possibly its greatest storyline to bring the Cup back home to the birthplace of modern football. after six long decades of disappointment, emotional hurt and national trauma.
England’s epic quarter final victory over Mexico gave the nation permission to dream again, and the assist pass from Rogers for Gordon to deftly tap in the first second semi final goal was centimetre perfect, and suddenly it seemed a euphoric England was packing its bags ready to time travel back to 1966 but the return flight in the Dr Who Time Machine was suddenly grounded.
England’s tournament progress in the footsteps of legends like the late Sir Bobby Charlton and modern day champions like Sir David Beckham, who watched on, was just one of the many powerful narratives of romanticism, hope and inspiration that we derived from this tournament, including the performances of all three host nations, Canada, United States and Mexico
The progress of all three cohosts to the knockouts was also essential to the overwhelming success of this Cup, generating packed stadiums, vibrant fan festivals and cities that were transformed into colourful multicultural football carnivals and fan zones challenging long-held beliefs that football could not truly capture North America’s imagination.
For many international visitors and global viewing audiences the Cup also revealed a very different America from the one portrayed through recent political division and portrayed instead a nation united, at least temporarily, by a global sporting festival, again highlighting the football phenomenon.
While the Spain-Argentina final has further reinforced the status quo, this Cup has simultaneously highlighted the extraordinary ability of football to convince the world that, until the very last whistle, anything remains possible.