The United States is failing in its responsibility as a World Cup host country, Iranian officials argued in a government statement shared exclusively with POLITICO that declared Mexico the tournament's off-field winner.

“The 2026 FIFA World Cup is played not only in stadiums but also in the streets, airports and public squares,” said Mohammad Reza Gilani, cultural affairs adviser at the Embassy of Iran in Mexico. “And in this parallel competition, Mexico seems to have taken the lead.”

Gilani praised what he described as Mexico’s welcoming atmosphere for visiting fans, contrasting it with immigration-related difficulties in the U.S., including visa complications and entry concerns affecting some delegations including his own.

His comments come at a precarious moment for relations between the U.S. and Iran, which barely a week ago were the only host nation and competitor, respectively, to enter the World Cup while at war. Since Iran’s opening match, President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the U.S.-Israeli war against Tehran.

Off the field, tensions remain. Iran had to relocate its training camp from Tucson to Tijuana, and the soccer federation said Thursday it plans to lodge a complaint with FIFA after a request to travel to Los Angeles two days before Sunday’s match against Belgium was denied. Several members of the Iranian delegation have also denied visas from the State Department.

The Trump administration has defended its handling of the delegation’s travel arrangements. White House World Cup Task Force Executive Director Andrew Giuliani told POLITICO that 31 Iranian players and their coaches were approved for visas and said allowing the team to enter the U.S. one day before the match represented “a good will gesture” by U.S. authorities.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iran has found Mexico a far more welcoming host, and has sought to expand its presence beyond soccer by operating a booth at a global expo in Mexico City. For Iranian officials, the contrast between the tournament’s co-hosts has become part of the story.

“Infrastructure matters. Stadiums matter. Security also matters,” said Gilani, a cultural affairs adviser at Iran's embassy. “But history shows that great hosts are remembered for something deeper: Being able to make the world feel welcome.”

“The 2026 World Cup is just getting underway,” he added, “but one thing already seems clear. Beyond the results on the pitch, Mexico is winning one of the tournament’s most important matches: the match of hospitality.”

OTTAWA — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s rousing Davos speech, where he called on middle powers to not become losers to the world’s “hegemons,” delivered a message that positioned Canada as an influential convening power.

Now, with billions watching — including during this afternoon's match between Germany and Côte d'Ivoire in Toronto — the World Cup is giving Canada an unprecedented opportunity to thirst-trap a global audience to take America’s neighbor a little more seriously.

“The international brand of Canada is important for our economy, for our place in the world, diplomatically, but also commercially,” Canada’s Secretary of State for Sport and Olympic gold medalist Adam van Koeverden told POLITICO.

“We just want to emphasize that Canada is open for business,” he said. “We’re taking advantage of the reality that all eyes will be on Canada for the next couple of weeks throughout the FIFA tournament … and we want to continue to reinforce relationships, make new friends [and] meet new corporate partners.”

Canada needs foreign investors to get the Carney government’s dreams of building oil pipelines, new rail and port expansions to unlock new wealth for a country that continues to be the target of tariffs and casual annexation threats from its closest ally. And a bellicose U.S. President Donald Trump has only helped Carney in his trips around the world to lure more foreign investment, selling Canada as a reliable destination to an unreliable United States.

A goal for senior Canadian government officials is to use the World Cup to bait deep-pocketed viewers to attend the inaugural Canada Investment Summit that Carney is organizing in September. The idea is to attract “the world’s largest investors” to raise C$1 trillion over the next five years to charge the economy — Carney’s message of adapting to the global “rupture” by wresting economic control of the future put into practice.

That could mean more cash to expand sport infrastructure, such as stadiums, to host more global sporting events. The Toronto Stadium is notably the World Cup’s smallest among the 16 host cities with a 43,000-seat capacity. But organizers don’t want people to fixate on that.

Sharon Bollenbach, executive director of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Toronto Secretariat, told Forecast the city is leaning in hard on its “world in a city” theme — a nod to a city widely recognized as the most multicultural in the world.

“We speak 250 languages in our city,” she said. “Our cultural diversity is very extensive and vibrant … in all of our neighborhoods, in food, in the culture.” Asked what’s different about Toronto compared to Los Angeles, another city that could claim the same characteristics, Bollenbach suggested it’s the general optimism in the air that sets the Canadian city apart. “I think we just live that every day in such a positive and energetic way that that’s something we really want to showcase,” she said.

There’s hope the waterfront images of Toronto’s CN Tower and Vancouver’s North Shore mountains in the backdrop of World Cup stadium shots will generate an eventual tourism boom that hasn’t yet happened for the tournament itself.

Sara Anghel, president and CEO of the Greater Toronto Hotel Association, said one factor in lower-than-expected demand is that half the game tickets sold in Toronto are “local-ish” from the city area and province. The trend isn’t unique to Toronto after FIFA canceled blocks of thousands of hotel rooms in host cities this spring in response to fizzled out expectations.

“June is already a really, really busy month for Toronto, and so when we’re bringing this World Cup that’s never happened in our city ever, we’ve displaced all of the meetings and conferences that would usually come into the city,” Anghel said.

“They’re staying away because of the FIFA games.”

Climate activists are planning protests Sunday against FIFA’s sponsorship deal with Saudi state-owned oil and gas giant Aramco at World Cup sites and fan zones across the country.

Organizer Zan Dubin told POLITICO the protests are aimed at pressuring FIFA to drop Aramco while calling attention to the way oil company advertising becomes part of fans’ World Cup memories, a practice she called “sportswashing,” even as greenhouse gas emissions from oil use drive global temperatures higher.

The main action is set to take place outside Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium ahead of the Belgium-Iran match there. The protest represents an extension of a crosstown campaign known as Dodger Fans Against Fossil Fuels, a Los Angeles-based campaign that has gathered nearly 30,000 signatures urging Dodgers owner Mark Walter to drop oil company Phillips 66.

FIFA announced Aramco as a major worldwide partner in 2024, giving the company sponsorship rights across several tournaments, including the 2026 Men’s World Cup and the 2027 Women’s World Cup. The deal drew pushback from climate and human rights groups, and more than 100 professional women's soccer players later urged FIFA to drop it. Aramco’s logo appears prominently in stadiums and on global match broadcasts.

The Los Angeles protest is being organized by a local chapter of the Sierra Club and Third Act SoCal and is expected to include Extinction Rebellion Lamenters, street-theater demonstrators dressed in sackcloth. Dubin said she was also in touch with protesters planning to show up at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami before a match there, as well as at fan sites in New Jersey, Seattle and Dallas.

U.S. fans are making travel plans to the Bay Area after their team clinched first place in Group D following a victory over Australia and Turkey's defeat to Paraguay.

Ready to welcome them will be San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has personally attended five World Cups. He is also an investor in 49ers Enterprises, which purchased the venerable Leeds United soccer team in 2023.

We spoke with Lurie yesterday via FaceTime from a city command center, where he drew a parallel to his English club’s own turnaround this season: Newly promoted and expected to go straight back down, Leeds instead finished safely mid-table. Lurie is trying to engineer a similar revival in San Francisco, using major events like the World Cup and February’s Super Bowl to project competence and attract visitors and families.

Matches including the July 1 encounter between the U.S. and an as-yet undetermined opponent are played at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, 40 miles from downtown San Francisco and much closer to San Jose. Lurie is nevetheless eager to claim the so-called "San Francisco Bay Area" venue as his city's own.

“It’ll be incredible,” Lurie, a moderate Democrat who presents himself as a technocrat, told POLITICO. “It’ll be a thrilling moment for San Francisco, and for our region.”

Read our full interview with Lurie here.

Australia, Japan and Germany: all countries whose national football teams wear colors that do not appear on their national flags. Australia’s team plays in green and gold, a nod to the country’s natural landscape and the golden wattle, Australia’s national floral emblem.

Germany’s traditional white kit traces its origins to Prussia, whose flag featured black and white. Japan, meanwhile, wears blue for perhaps the most intriguing reason of all: superstition. According to a popular story, the color became associated with good fortune after a string of sporting successes in the 1930s (although the claim has never been conclusively proven).

But, it's hard to think of a group of football supporters more recognizable than the Dutch. Known as the Oranje Legioen (Orange Legion), Dutch sports fans have an unparalleled ability to turn every bar, stadium and city square into a sea of orange.

This year's World Cup is no exception. Thousands of Dutch fans have traveled across the Atlantic to support their national team in person, undoubtedly with suitcases full of orange clothing. Today, they’re in Houston.

The Dutch flag, however, consists of three horizontal stripes: red, white and blue. So what's with the orange?

The answer dates back centuries and is also the reason why several places in the United States, one of the hosts of this year's World Cup, have "Orange" in their names.

Orange is the national color of the Netherlands because of its ties to the Dutch royal family. It all began with William of Orange, also known as William the Silent, who became the symbol of Dutch independence during the Eighty Years' War against Spanish rule. The conflict began in 1568 and ended, you guessed it, 80 years later in 1648.

As William of Orange became synonymous with Dutch independence, the color in his title became associated with the Dutch nation itself. More than four centuries later, it remains a powerful national symbol.

But what does this have to do with the U.S.? Long before the current-day takeover of the Oranje Legioen, of American cities hosting world cup matches, the House of Orange, the royal dynasty founded by William of Orange, had already left its mark on North America.

During the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, the Dutch Republic established the colony of New Netherland, which stretched across parts of present-day New York, New Jersey and Delaware.

Even after the English seized the colony in 1664 and New Amsterdam became New York City, traces of the House of Orange survived in place names such as Orange County, New York. The county was specifically named after William III, Prince of Orange, a descendant of William the Silent who later became King William III of England.

So in a sense, it is a full-circle moment: Dutch football fans dressed in orange have returned to a part of the world where the House of Orange left a lasting legacy centuries ago.

The Netherlands has had a week in Texas, between matches in Dallas and Houston, and one of the leading members of its government delegation has been using the time to conduct old-school diplomacy.

In Houston, Mirjam Sterk — who has an expansive portfolio of a minister for long-term care, youth and sport — has visited dementia researchers at Texas Medical Center, among other stops, spoke to the CEO of an LGBTQ+ community center and played wheelchair basketball at a community center for kids with disabilities.

Sterk, who hails from the center-right Christian Democratic Appeal in the Dutch coalition, said she's counting on the famous fan walk that Dutch fans are expected to conduct en route to their match today against Sweden to build bridges in an unstable world. Speaking to POLITICO by phone, Sterk said she’s found plenty of like-minded people at Houston’s fan festival, among other destinations.

“It's a great example of how sports in this world, which is, of course, polarized with all this tension … between countries, can unite,” Sterk said. “It's also a sort of language we speak with each other that helps, I think, also in dealing with all these other challenges.”

Daniel Lurie is already imagining the scene at Levi’s Stadium on July 1.

The San Francisco Democrat — who, according to at least one recent poll, is the most popular mayor in America — was circulating around his city ahead of Levi’s Stadium hosting Turkey vs. Paraguay tonight, when he began to wrap his head around his good fortune.

The venue is scheduled to host the Round of 32 match featuring the Group D winner on July 1, and that’s very likely to be the U.S. team.

“It'll be incredible,” Lurie, a no-nonsense technocrat, told POLITICO. “It'll be a thrilling moment for San Francisco, and for our region.”

He beamed in to a FaceTime interview from Southern Station, having already been at two watch parties that capture the new San Francisco he’s trying to build: the East Cut neighborhood, and then Fieldwork Brewing at China Basin.

And Lurie knows ball: Not only has he attended five World Cups, he is also an investor in 49ers Enterprises, which purchased Leeds in 2023.

He drew a parallel to his English club’s own turnaround this season: newly promoted and expected to go straight back down, Leeds instead finished safely mid-table. Lurie is trying to engineer a similar revival in San Francisco, using major events like the World Cup and February’s Super Bowl to project competence and attract visitors and families.

In San Francisco, such a turnaround means restoring a sense of competence to city government — and managing large events like the Super Bowl and the World Cup are key to that effort.

“We are managing for results here in San Francisco, and what's critical about those results is keeping people safe, making sure that people want to be here in San Francisco, that they have a great time, and that they want to come back,” Lurie said.

His turnaround effort will be vastly aided by Open AI’s expected IPO, which will expand his tax base but also pose challenges.

“We got Anthropic. We got Open AI. We have a company that's four years old in Cursor that just got acquired by Elon Musk's company for $60 billion and hardly anyone's talking about that,” Lurie said. “I think we want these companies here. We want them paying their taxes here, and we want them being engaged in the community. We want them involved in civic life, we want their employees involved and engaged in their neighborhoods, but we also want an economy, and we want an economy that works for everyone — that lifts up the entire community, and isn't just for the select few.”

Lurie said he is laser-focused on affordability.

“We are every day focused on building more housing, building more affordable housing, making child care more affordable,” Lurie said. “We are the first city in the country to provide access and opportunity to free early childhood education, [age] zero to five, for any family of four making $210,000 a year or less.”

The aim? Draw more families within the city’s confines.

“We're gonna hopefully keep more working families here in our city, and we want them to believe that they can build a life here long term, so people don't get priced out — so we have a lot of work to do.”

Lurie largely avoids the national spotlight — the rare exception coming when he netted a jumper on “The Pat McAfee Show” early this year — and feverish culture war issues in favor of a get-shit-done approach to governing.

“Our number one industry is tourism,” Lurie said. “And when people visit our city or when they take their kids to school each day, they don't care if their mayor is a Democrat or a Republican.”

As of Friday evening, as he prepared to watch Turkey vs. Paraguay, Lurie couldn't fully allow himself to contemplate what it would mean for Levi’s Stadium to play host to a U.S. squad that’s rocking and rolling over opponents.

“We cannot jinx it,” Lurie said. “But it's looking very much like we will host USA in the first knockout round. My hope: I’ll be there to root on USA.”

Brazil has won a record five World Cups, but the most important match it has ever played may have been an exhibition match against Haiti that was meaningless in sporting terms but has had a long influence on each country’s politics.

On Aug. 18, 2004, Brazil’s players drove through the streets of Port-au-Prince in armored personnel carriers, World Cup champions greeted like liberators. Two months earlier, Brazil’s military had arrived to lead a multinational peacekeeping force established by the United Nations following a bloody coup d’état.

“We’ve only seen such joy in the eyes, the exuberance of the eyes, when we paraded in Brazil after winning the World Cup,” coach Carlos Alberto Parreira said afterwards. “I will never forget this moment.”

The team was accompanied to the U.N.-hosted friendly match that followed — “They play, peace wins,” went the slogan — by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, then in his first term as Brazil’s president. More than two decades later, Lula is back in office, now cemented as the most accomplished leader the world’s left has seen in the 21st century. His approach to foreign policy, say observers, was shaped partially on the soccer pitch that day in Port-au-Prince.

“It showed he was trying something different as a diplomatic tool,” said Mauricio Savarese, an Associated press political reporter in São Paulo who has researched the legacy of the 2004 game. “That match at the time was a symbol of Brazil’s soft power. You really showed how Brazil could win hearts and minds with a policy that was not exactly bowing to the United States or to the China or to Russia, but independent.”

The match, designed to build goodwill between a shell-shocked population and its benevolent occupiers, began after players from the two national teams unfurled a pre-match banner that read “Social Justice is the True Name of Peace.” The peacekeeping mission represented an early commitment to “continental solidarity,” as Lula defined it in a speech the following year to up-and-coming diplomats where he cited the Haiti mission as an example of “non-indifference.”

Lula was feeling his way toward a foreign policy centered around South-South Cooperation and the BRICS alliance of emerging markets. Lula has used that role as de-facto leader of the democratic developing world to, with mixed results, position Brazil as a leader on climate change — it hosted last year’s COP30 in the Amazon city of Belém — and a mediator when thorny international conflicts arise. It has a position of official neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine war, so as to serve a potential role as mediator, as it did when partnering with Turkey in 2010 to broker a nuclear-fuel swap with Iran.

That same year, an earthquake hit Haiti, killing over 100,000 people while injuring and displacing millions more. It also destroyed the headquarters of the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti, even as Brazil led a post-disaster humanitarian relief effort. The experience further deepened ties between the two countries, as Brazil introduced a humanitarian-visa program for the first time to welcome Haitians fleeing the devastation; it has since been extended to Syrian war refugees, as well. One historically Italian neighborhood in São Paulo is now known as Little Haiti.

The broader peacekeeping mission began to resemble a military quagmire in humanitarian garb: Brazilian troops were blamed for human-rights violations and a cholera epidemic, while doing little to improve the overall security situation. For Lula and his protegée Dilma Rousseff, the Haiti project became a political liability, in both Haiti and Brazil.

As the two nations prepare to face off against one another in Philadelphia on Friday, Lula is not expected to be in attendance. Instead his travel schedule this week was built around the G7 summit in France, in which Brazil participated as one of five “partner countries” — a reflection of its increased global standing over the past few decades. If Lula shows up at one of Brazil’s matches later in the World Cup, it will likely be with a domestic audience in mind rather than a foreign one: he is in the midst of a reelection campaign for his fourth term, against a son of his longtime antagonist Jair Bolsonaro.

“I doubt that anyone is going to vote for him just because he’s recognized abroad as a key leader,” said Savarese, Brazilian political journalist who wrote the book “Dilma’s Downfall.” “But of course that helps with some moderates, which are a very thin part of Brazil’s electorate, and they’re going to be decisive in October’s election, that is also one of the things that tips the balance in his favor, as is being seen as this pragmatic leader who can also be respected even when he’s speaking about issues that clearly don’t affect as much in Brazil’s daily life.”

That day in Haiti, not yet a global figure, Lula confronted one limit on his power. He reportedly asked his team not to score too many goals, in the interests of goodwill. The players did not oblige, winning 6-0, including an astonishing solo effort from Ronaldinho.

POLITICO has been crunching the numbers to see how all 48 of this year’s World Cup participants rank in several other off-field categories, which we'll share more of over the weekend.

In today's item, we look at whether GDP per capita has any connection to soccer performance. As you can see, the chart does show some positive correlation — note, for example, wealthy tournament contenders such as France, the Netherlands and Germany all in the upper right corner.

But it's not a perfect indicator. By this metric, Qatar is the wealthiest country in the tournament — and it lost 6-0 to Canada on Thursday ...

CANBERRA — It was disappointment from start to finish around the U.S. vs. Australia match in the Bush Capital, won comfortably by the American side.

Neither of Canberra’s Socceroos made the starting lineup and the local government failed to provide an outdoor watch site for the match, despite a heavy social media campaign from locals. With federal politicians out of town and back in their districts this week, the campaign lacked star power and fell on deaf ears.

That left thousands to fill inner city pubs and the University of Canberra, which were allowed special trading hours for the match, from 4.30 a.m.

Australia’s politicians — vocal in their support in the lead-up to the match — went silent quickly, after Australia’s own goal 11 minutes minutes into the game.

If the Aussies’ lackluster performance left the crowd subdued, they found energy to boo Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a notably unpopular figure in Australia, which embraced harsh Covid lockdowns and vaccines — when he appeared on the match broadcast.

While Boston and Dallas have been taken over by marauding Scotland and England fans, Washington, D.C., this week welcomed a (slightly) more sedate British crowd at Duke’s Grocery, a trendy restaurant and bar in Washington’s West End neighborhood.

Call it the U.K.’s diplomatic mullet: Business in the front; party in the back.

More than a hundred England fans crowded some 10 television sets inside the bar on Wednesday, invited by the U.K. embassy to mark their team’s first game of the World Cup against Croatia.

Flags for every participant hung down from the ceiling. An old British telephone box sat in the corner, chock full of cups and salt shakers. There was also a cardboard cutout of Prince William and Kate at their wedding tucked underneath a Pride flag just by the front door.

Despite a critical election in Makerfield on Thursday, which is set to propel Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham toward a leadership challenge to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, sport was top of mind at the party.

“That’s the best bit about it,” said Frances Sterling, head of strategic communications and public diplomacy at the British Embassy in Washington. “This afternoon, there’s been no politics.”

The event pulled in Premier League fans from many of England’s largest clubs, encompassing World Bank staffers and embassy employees, English and Americans. They drank, celebrated heartily when England scored and chanted “wanker” in unison when calls went against them on the field.

A sign just off the projection set at the center of the bar read, “Great sport brings people together.”

“You know, you get in a stand, and you watch a football game, and everybody’s a friend,” Sterling said. “Everybody is there for one thing, and you go do the highs and lows of that team, and you feel like you live it, and, for everyone in the U.K. it’s that sense of national pride that this is their game, but it’s played all over the world.”

Duke’s will have hosted three games in tandem with the U.K. embassy throughout round robin play — two for England and just one for Scotland.

Sterling said that’s because the Scottish fans have decamped to Boston, where they’re drinking the city dry.

“The U.K. consulate there is absolutely overrun,” she said. “And so we were like, you know what? Scotland is doing great in Boston, so we’ll do one, but we know they’re all there.”

You don't have to rely on The Discourse to know whether soccer is finally being embraced by America. Political ad spending targeted to catch World Cup viewers tells you all you need to know.

Look no further than today's Susan Collins-aligned Pine Tree Results PAC launching the next phase of a seven-figure general election ad campaign targeting Democrat Graham Platner in Maine, the latest that flickered to life statewide during the U.S. Men’s National Team World Cup match against Australia.

“The first U.S. World Cup game was the most watched soccer broadcast in American history,” a GOP operative working on the Maine senate race, and granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO. “Maine markets are performing better than national average and the critical Portland DMA has a significant soccer fan base.”

Or consider that James Talarico’s first ad buy of the general election Senate campaign is an $800,000 Spanish-language TV campaign spot set to air during each U.S. and Mexico group stage match.

In Denver, in Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, there’s Republican Gabe Evans in a Spanish language ad, debating whether it’s soccer or football with his mother.

In politics, campaigns and super PACs are reluctant to spend money where there aren’t eyeballs, so each of these set pieces are a datapoint bearing out the truth that international soccer can draw them.

FIFA rang in Juneteenth, the country’s newest federal holiday, with a video that played in Seattle ahead of the U.S. team’s pivotal showdown with Australia.

It stars Seattle Supersonics legend and NBA Hall of Famer Gary Payton and features iconic Seattle locations.

“Some remember, some reflect, while many others celebrate,” Payton says in the video, which highlights landmarks including the Northwest African American Museum and Pike Place Market. “This day means freedom, black liberation, joy, jubilation and celebration. And today, we are definitely celebrating.”

Leonardo Santiago, head of media relations for FIFA26 Inc., said the organization plans to commemorate the holiday marking the end of slavery at each World Cup match taking place on Friday. Separate videos personalized to Foxborough, Massachusetts, which hosts Scotland and Morocco, and Philadelphia, where Brazil and Haiti will face off, and Santa Clara, California, are also dropping to mark the holiday.

“FIFA worked with each Host City to ensure the video is personalized for each stadium, featuring imagery specific to that city while recognizing the nationwide holiday and its importance,” Santiago said. “As the video plays, the stadium will also have complementary graphics on the ribbon boards as well.”

FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts — Boston is bouncing and the Massachusetts governor wants to thank thousands of kilted Scottish soccer fans who have taken over the city between Scotland’s first match against Haiti last weekend and its second, against Morocco, today.

The tournament’s shock love affair is sparking delight in Gov. Maura Healey’s office as the supporters plow cash into the local economy, star in feel-good viral videos and drink copious quantities of Sam Adams Boston Lager.

Earlier this week, the governor — who’s seeking what stands to be an easy reelection this year — spoke with POLITICO about which of Massachusetts’ World Cup wins can be made permanent, including extended hours for bars and service along mass-transit networks.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Were you expecting this?

Oh, yeah, what do they say? No Scotland, no party? [Author’s note: This is, indeed, what they say.] I would say the Tartan Army’s reputation precedes them in the best of ways. So we knew that they would bring a ton of energy and joy and the noise. The bagpipes, the partying in our restaurants and bars, it’s just been great, and to think — it’s very warm here, of course — half of them are doing it in kilts. It’s really amazing to see.

What has stood out to you?

In just a matter of days, the Tartan Army has become part of the Massachusetts family. We have seen them become regulars at our local restaurants and our pubs. We’ve seen them take over Fenway Park. 5,000 fans marching with bagpipes into the games. We loved the viral videos of them trying hot dogs ... inside Fenway. The videos of them taking over the cruise ships in Boston Harbor. We even had a Boston police officer kicking a soccer ball with them at the fanfest. So it’s just been really wonderful for us in Massachusetts, and we’re thrilled to have them here.

Do you have plans to capitalize on this beyond the World Cup?

Given that Scotland-Haiti was our first match, we were really thrilled. Massachusetts has a huge Haitian population. And then, of course, a lot of people in Massachusetts have ties with Scotland because many, many families here have ancestors who came from Scotland. And I have to say, I think Scotland just set the tone from the day the fans got into town. There was concern leading up to the World Cup, you know, how’s this all gonna work? And the media was covering a lot about security and transportation, and all these things about what could go wrong. And as soon as the Scottish fans arrived, they just laid the whole vibe for the World Cup. It’s gonna be about joy, energy, fun and bringing people together from all around the world. And I really credit them with establishing the vibe for our World Cup experience right at the outset.

Have the ticket prices charged by FIFA had an impact on that?

Well, one thing that I was really determined to do was to make sure that we were able to secure tickets for young people here in Massachusetts, which we did: 1,100 tickets that we distributed through Boys and Girls Clubs, so the kids who otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to see the game, were able to see the game — and for free. We’ve tried as a state to help out where we can, making $10 million available to communities around Massachusetts to host watch parties, because we know not everybody can afford to go to the game.

And as the governor of a blue state, how were your interactions with the Trump administration on planning for the tournament?

Well, when it comes to public safety that is something that it’s so imperative that local, state and federal authorities work together on. We did around transportation funding, security funding, that’s the way it should be. There should be that kind of work and coordination.

At the local level, would you support either a pilot program or a permanent extension of later last call and public drinking districts after the end of July? And would you encourage the legislature to start working on a bill about this?

We wanted to do that to create a welcoming environment, and I know that extension is helping our restaurants and bars and helping local businesses, and helping fans enjoy this experience. I’m certainly open to making some things more permanent, and I think this gives us a great opportunity to pilot it right now and see how it goes.

Do you see it as a runway for allowing happy hour discounts, which have been banned in Massachusetts for decades, to become legal again?  Because you’ve previously expressed problems with the concept.

I expressed support for happy hour the other day. We’ll see, we’ll have more conversations with the legislature.

And in terms of the transport would you consider keeping extended service hours on the MBTA?

I’ve always been for extended service hours. For us, it’s just a matter of budgeting and the labor costs associated with that. Also, you need a little bit of downtime so that trains can get repaired and maintained. We extended hours well before the World Cup on weekends, and it’s certainly something that I’d like to see us do across the system. But again, it’s just a matter of what we can do in terms of budget. But so far, transportation has been working really well. Trains have been made available, and selling out, and people have really enjoyed that experience; it’s been super easy, you know, getting to and from the match.

I think some Scotland fans would maybe dispute that it was easy getting back from the [Haiti] match, but I guess it’s all relative when the stadium is far away from the city.

I know. You can only run so many trains at once. But, hey, they won, so ...

I understand it’s a challenge to keep young people in state. Are these measures you approved for a summer of intense tourism part of a longer-term solution?

I think that they’re really important to making sure that people know that we’ve got a great culture here and a great vibe for young people. That’s why I’m building homes ... so we can look at housing costs. Massachusetts is a place where people come to study from all around the world, and it’s a place that’s filled with young people, filled with opportunity. We’ve got an innovative economy, and doing so much in life sciences and robotics and AI, and cutting-edge industries. And it’s a very safe state and safe city. We’ve got the best schools in the country, best health care in the country. We got a lot going for us. And we’ve got great sports teams, too. So it’s a great vibe for young people, and we’re working always to try to make sure the message is out there around the globe. This is a great place to come and study, and start a business or raise a family.

Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.

The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.

Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.

Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.

The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough disaster.

The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.

The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.

Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)

Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.

Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”

Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.

Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.

Read Jack’s POLITICO Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and POLITICO’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.

Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?

If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.

VANCOUVER — Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber joined Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday to watch Canada’s thrashing of Qatar. Garber probably did not want Carney to enjoy the stadium experience too much.

BC Place is Major League Soccer’s most troublesome facility. The arena is old, was not designed with soccer in mind, and is owned by a government agency — the BC Pavilion Corporation, which also controls the Vancouver Convention Center — that forces the Vancouver Whitecaps to fight for dates on the calendar against concerts and other events.

“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” Garber told reporters Friday in Seattle.

The Whitecaps are now up for sale, and Garber is actively pushing British Columbia’s political establishment — including Premier David Eby and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim — to find a solution can keep the team from decamping to Las Vegas. While the government has been willing to renegotiate its financial relationship with the team, a proposed new stadium would take “four-plus years” in construction, which Garber said was untenable.

“It unimaginable how long we’re going to be out of the stadium,” he told reporters Friday in Seattle. “They are very relevant club that doesn’t have a good business model, and you can’t be sustainable.”

Garber recounted he met with Eby while in Vancouver, and sat with Carney and Victor Montagliani — the head of regional soccer confederation CONCACAF and a close ally of the prime minister — during the match itself. Garber said he has placed a league official in Vancouver full-time to manage the negotiations with local officials over the Whitecaps’s future.

“We want to be the ones that control our destiny, like every sports team does,” said Garber. “It’s easier for business people to make decisions, a little harder for politicians.”