How the superstars are aligning for the United States as a World Cup host

The World Cup is the sporting product that simply cannot fail. It blends iconic names and new discoveries with the unique peril of a tournament played only once every four years.

The group stage of this expanded 48-team tournament had threatened to lack a little jeopardy, because eight nations across 12 groups have the safety net of a third-place finish. This will make high-profile early eliminations very unlikely.

With that in mind, the World Cup’s initial appeal to a more casual U.S. market needed to rest, at least partially, in some of soccer’s leading characters coming to the fore.

In any tournament, we expect several famous names to have a moment. Sometimes more than one.

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Yet this World Cup is different. This has been a procession of headline acts taking centre stage. One after another, the biggest names have transformed into the comic-book heroes of every child’s imagination, playing as if they are the remote-controlled versions of themselves on a PlayStation. And they are doing it on repeat.

There is Lionel Messi, about to turn 39, doing that soothing finesse finish perfected by millions of gamers, but so unmistakably Messi in real life.

There is Kylian Mbappe, unleashing a full-power strike, first with his right foot against Senegal, then his left foot against Iraq.

Then comes Erling Haaland, a high-speed human bulldozer, striking the fear of God into any defender or goalkeeper who dares stand in his way.

Messi might have had back-to-back hat-tricks if only he had not malfunctioned from the penalty spot against Austria. He has Mbappe and Haaland in his wing mirrors; the Argentine’s five goals are one ahead of those relative upstarts.

U.S. fans have paid big money to see big players. After dynamic pricing, welcome to dynamic scoring; the bigger the demand to see a player, the greater the supply of top-tier performances. On Tuesday lunchtime, Cristiano Ronaldo landed in the competition, dazzling with two first half goals and a performative assist for Nuno Mendes’ free-kick.

That exception aside, football’s figurines have strode into North America like a series of Power Rangers, entering the fray, one after the other, each unleashing their unique gifts.

England’s Harry Kane and Brazil’s Vinicius Junior have two goals apiece. Spain’s teenage sensation Lamine Yamal arrived injured but has now opened his account. Mohamed Salah, at his first World Cup with Egypt since 2018, scored his first in the win over New Zealand.

The Golden Boot is a race in itself, and the expanded tournament makes vulnerable a 68-year-old record, belonging to France’s Just Fontaine, of 13 goals scored in a single tournament.

The schedule of the group games has helped. No sooner had Mbappe exploded into life last Tuesday afternoon against Senegal than Messi had replied with a hat-trick against Algeria later in the evening.

Messi began the face-off yesterday by scoring twice at lunchtime in Dallas, but Mbappe and Haaland appeared to see that as a personal affront, matching him as the sun set in Philadelphia and New Jersey.

This star power is just one of several ingredients fusing to make the World Cup, by many measures, a blistering early success. The U.S. always loves a mega-event — particularly one with merch — and then factor in how America loves a winning team… and so far, the USMNT cannot stop winning. And when the winning starts, the enthusiasm can leap at record speed. Just ask the New York Knicks, or the U.S. Olympic hockey team.

That same feel-good factor is radiating in Mexico and Canada, with the three host nations unbeaten after two games each, combining for extremely strong vibes across matches and fan festivals.

This is the bewildering doublethink of attending or covering a World Cup. We can be bemused or outraged by whatever nonsense or exploitation our FIFA overlords oversee in the preamble: the questionable Peace Prize, the wretched ticket prices, the rinsing of taxpayer money to subsidize FIFA’s costs, the outlawed referee from Somalia, and FIFA’s perma-readiness to discard any values it may claim to have in accordance with the whims of any host government.

Hard as Gianni Infantino may try — he’s even split the game into quarters! — the tournament remains indestructible in both its concept and execution. If you plonk the best players in the world into one country — or one continent — and add the fervour of patriotism and the jeopardy of elimination games, it is an intoxicating cocktail.

A World Cup conjures these feelings and counter-feelings; it brainwashes, it whitewashes, it transports you to places where you really do start to wonder whether Infantino, FIFA’s sorcerer-in-chief, may have a point when he holds a soccer ball at a $10,000-per-head business conference and describes FIFA as the “official happiness provider for humanity.”

As cynical as we may wish to be about the demerits of the preparations (and there really were plenty), you would need a heart of stone not to take joy from the vignettes of cohesion and community. When so much of the online algorithm force-feeds division, the World Cup has presented a new, uplifting form of viral content; unifying, cross-cultural, a reminder, should it be required, that most people actually like one another.

Look at those videos of Japenese fans tasting barbecue in Texas; or the soccer love affair between Mexico and South Korea; or the Dutch march through the streets of Houston, or the Viking row taking stadiums and transit services by storm; or the Tartan Army drinking Massachusetts dry and getting a thank-you letter in the Boston Globe; or Lumen Field wrapping itself in the flag and breaking into a rendition of Take Me Home, Country Roads.

The charm of this World Cup is not only in the superstar names. We are uncovering comic-book heroes of a different kind: the 40-year-old Cape Verdean keeper, Vozinha, whose social media following spiked from 50,000 to 15million after a clean sheet against Spain, or the Curacao goalkeeper Eloy Room, who tied the record for the highest number of saves (15) made in a World Cup game.

Together, it is a potent blend: we have the apex-predator forwards chewing up their prey, delighting audiences with their brutality. Then we get a flurry of unlikely underdog nations scrapping against the odds; giving geography lessons to children (and maybe some adults), while helping us all to pronounce the word archipelago.

All that, and we are only 13 days into a 39-day tournament. Hold on tight — the real drama is still to come.