The scheduling of the 2026 World Cup in the United States, with Mexico and Canada, centered around both sides of our 250th anniversary celebrations, will provide an unexpected boost to expanding freedoms across the globe. Four to five million soccer fans are experiencing American hospitality, relatively inexpensive food, and our free market economy.
When they return to their home countries, they will enthusiastically relate all the wonders of the American scene which they experienced while their home teams were welcomed into our major cities. Not since the Berlin Wall came down in December 1989 will American prestige have been higher globally than when these fans return home with stories of their U.S. adventures. Perhaps even the foreign media, who love to degrade the Unities States, will be forced to make positive reports on American hosting of the 2026 World Cup.
The United States has been unduly blessed to host two joyous events simultaneously as 48 World cup soccer teams compete across our nation. Nightly news reports highlight the enthusiastic fans filling major, often air-conditioned, football arenas, cheering their teams on the field. The defending champion team from Argentina played two games in Dallas. With its star Lionel Messi leading all FIFA tournament scorers in history, the fans created more excitement in the Dallas area in over thirty years with their striped white and pale blue jerseys.
The American team won its first two games against Paraguay (4-1) and Australia (2-1), sending the team to the knockout stage of 32 teams where U.S. won against Bosnia and Herzegovina (2-0) earlier this week. A big win in the same week as our nation’s 250th Anniversary!
Universal goodwill among the world’s nations seems impossible to achieve. That the U.S. is hosting such a successful World Cup, while we rejoice in our 250 years of freedom, should not be overlooked. Each World Cup brings more Americans deeper into this world-wide sport.
The all-American game of baseball has for years drawn players and fans into the game in Latin America, home to some of our best major league players. My wife, who was from Puerto Rico, told me stories of the San Juan Senators and the Caguas Witches during my first trip to the island as we passed the San Juan stadium, where she used to watch the Senators as a child. Her father also taught her to swing a bat and not ‘throw a baseball like a girl’!
Following our military occupation of Japan after World War II, American baseball was adopted by young Japanese, which built itself into a significant national sport. Now two of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) finest players are from Japan.
Basketball is the other original American-created sport. In recent years, American players, who could not make it in the National Basketball Association (NBA), were apprenticed into the growing European league teams. The European players looked and learned from the Americans until they began adding their upgrades to the American sport. Some of the NBA’s biggest stars today began their careers in Europe.
It took the Olympic Games and TV to introduce gymnastics and skating, first into the American consciousness and then to young female American sports heroes, as American girl gymnasts became world champions.
Sporting success is based on merit, hard work, and character, all individualist features that free the individual from class, race, or political orientation, giving them almost unlimited freedom. So, by simultaneously celebrating our 250 years of free people living in an open society with increasing interactive international sports activities like the World Cup, are we not watering the seeds for more universal freedom around the world? Even a nation as repressive as Iran sent a soccer team to the United States to compete in the World Cup.
While all Americans rejoice in living in ultra free America, may our influence on the World Cup attendees return home with a will to create a bit more freedom in their nations.
Good morning, America! Happy 250th Birthday! Go America’s Team USA! Rejoice and be glad!
TW3
July 4, 2026
John Whitmore Jenkins
www.jenkins-speaks.com
john@jenkins-speaks.com
