{"text":[[{"start":5,"text":"I’m writing this from a sunny rooftop in downtown Philadelphia, a city much lovelier than anyone ever told me, so I may be biased, but so far this has been an unexpectedly good World Cup. It’s partly the profusion of goals, unmatched since the 1950s, and partly the profusion of minnow countries, each with their own Cinderella story, some of them doing surprisingly well. But the tournament’s biggest asset may be, against every expectation, the US. We’d all talked beforehand about the chief host’s flaws: the American-style ticket prices, the ICE immigration police and the official government policy of hating the world. We didn’t talk about the qualities that make the US in some ways the ideal host of a World Cup."}],[{"start":49.9,"text":"First, contrary to snobbish foreign perception, the US has plenty of soccer lovers — more than previous hosts like Qatar, Russia, Japan, France in 1998 or indeed the US in 1994. A good chunk of the country has embraced the foreign game with its alien culture. US fans went on a European-style march to their opener against Paraguay in Los Angeles — the most watched soccer game in the country’s history, with 27.5mn TV viewers. The American team is pretty good, too."}],[{"start":79.45,"text":"But the country’s chief asset as host is precisely the issue that has been tearing it apart this past decade: immigration. Almost every team in the World Cup has a diaspora here. The first game I went to was Brazil-Haiti in Philadelphia. There had been lots of anger, rightly, about the US denying visas to Haitian fans. Yet there were thousands of Haitians in the stadium, singing their songs during their team’s 3-0 defeat, and in the car park afterwards, while Brazilians queueing for the subway sashayed to the tunes. The World Cup is a carnival of nations, and people actually want the opposing team’s fans to show up."}],[{"start":116.6,"text":"Public transit is not one of America’s assets. The long-suffering Philly transit workers asked people to wait, and people did, and the transit workers thanked them. Finally, we all crammed into a dangerously overcrowded train. A little girl in a Brazil shirt was weeping in terror, and Brazilians, Haitians and Americans (not mutually exclusive categories) somehow found her a seat and calmed her down."}],[{"start":142.79999999999998,"text":"The next day, I watched Ivory Coast-Germany on a big screen in the city’s free fanzone in Fairmount Park. People in shirts of many nations lay on the grass, mostly supporting Ivory Coast, because that’s the underdog ethic of the World Cup, but really just enjoying the vibe. When the game stopped for advertising breaks, known in Fifa-speak as “hydration breaks”, the whole lawn toasted together."}],[{"start":169.89999999999998,"text":"Then there’s been the joy of Americans meeting foreigners and realising they like them. It’s oddly reminiscent of the Russian World Cup in 2018. In cities like Nizhny Novgorod or Samara, which had hardly seen a foreigner before, it was as if UFOs had landed and disgorged unexpectedly friendly aliens. There had been few moments in history when ordinary Russians encountered the world, and at the World Cup people danced on the street together. In Russia, as in the US, this didn’t accord with the presidential worldview."}],[{"start":204.2,"text":"The unexpected near-absence of Donald Trump from this tournament so far has helped keep things jolly. I’ve loved the scenes of American cops dancing with Cape Verdeans, leading Egyptian fans in a chant, and getting applauded by Scots for their ball-juggling virtuosity. The Scots are the uncontested fan champions of the tournament so far, with the Boston Globe running a full-page thank you that said, “We’ll never forget the joy you brought to our city.” "}],[{"start":229.6,"text":"One Scottish fan posted her own “wee video to the people of Boston” on Instagram, essentially saying that she’d expected ICE but encountered nice. “The America that we are experiencing right now,” she reflected, “is the America we were promised growing up.” She had had “my faith restored in the United States of America, honestly”. So say all of us who spent our childhoods kicking a ball against a garage door on a street named after President Kennedy. She also noted: “The impression I’m getting is: you guys needed us as well. You’ve needed some fun.” It’s true: the World Cup is a joyful celebration of everyone’s national culture, built around a contest that almost everyone understands doesn’t really matter, so it’s the opposite of the American culture wars."}],[{"start":276.3,"text":"World Cups don’t change the world. Normal service will resume the morning after the final. But the tournament allows people to inhabit an alternative reality for a month, and it models a better world than the one we live in."}],[{"start":289.2,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":302.79999999999995,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1782543679_1428.mp3"}