More Sportsball! When The Whole World Came to Town

Earlier this year, I wrote about sports being one of the few places left where we eagerly gather with people we may disagree with to cheer on our favorite team. Our local PNW teams had inspired me to look at the connection between competition and community. In sports, we discover we have far more in common than any of us imagined.

But then the World Cup came to town, and I discovered it was time to broaden my beliefs. This summer’s World Cup proved to me that sports can be about more than gathering with our neighbors. It can be about gathering with the world.

I don’t know much about soccer. A score report of “nil-nil” still sounds odd to me, and I’ll never understand offsides. I didn’t know the field was called a pitch until I binged the first season of “Ted Lasso.”

But somewhere between the waves of fans landing at SeaTac and the sight of thousands of people wearing colors from countries I’d never visited, I realized we were paying attention to the wrong part of the game.

The soccer was great, but the people were better. For a few sunny weeks, Seattle became one of the friendliest intersections on Earth.

You could ride the light rail with fans from Australia and Egypt sharing a row. A family wearing Belgium jerseys would stop to ask a couple from Qatar where to find Pike Place Market. And on match days the city swelled with cheers from far-flung corners of our world buoyed by all fans, regardless of nation.

We’ve been told for years that cities like Seattle are places to fear. If you turn on certain cable news channels or scroll through social media posts, you’d think downtown was little more than boarded-up storefronts riddled with endless crime and people desperately trying to escape. Seattle has long been used as a political talking point, but this summer hundreds of thousands of visitors showed up anyway.

They hopped ferries simply because someone told them they should, and these soccer fans discovered that our majestic Mount Rainier isn’t photoshopped. They learned we really do consume alarming amounts of coffee and that many of us put cream cheese on hot dogs. People of all nationalities discovered what most of us already knew: the Pacific Northwest isn’t perfect, but it is vibrant, beautiful, and full of people who genuinely care about their community. Sometimes the best way to challenge a stereotype isn’t to argue about it; it’s to invite people over.

The World Cup matches themselves reminded us that patriotism doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Apparently you can love your country without hating someone else’s. Who knew?

That lesson became even more apparent every time the United States team took the field.

As millions of Americans cheered every touch by striker Folarin Balogun, the country was also waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on whether birthright citizenship would survive an executive order attempting to eliminate it. Balogun, born in Brooklyn to Nigerian parents before growing up in England, wears the U.S. jersey because America has long recognized that being born here means you belong here. Amid the excitement of the World Cup matches, the Court reaffirmed that birthright citizenship, defined in our Constitution’s 14th Amendment, stands.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the timing. Entire stadiums chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” for a player whose story embodied one of America’s oldest constitutional promises at the same time the highest court in the land decided whether or not his citizenship remained legal. Sometimes sports sneak into conversations far bigger than what is happening on the field.

Seattle also didn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. One of the tournament’s more fascinating moments came when two nations with well-documented records of restricting LGBTQIA+ rights met during Pride weekend. Rather than treating that as an uncomfortable contradiction, organizers decided to stand firm on the values of the Pacific Northwest. Rainbow flags still fluttered from storefronts near the stadium and Pride celebrations at the match carried on as planned.

It struck me that true hospitality doesn’t require abandoning your values. In fact, the best hosts invite people in, show them who they are, and trust that kindness can speak louder than any political argument. For a few hours, thousands of people with very different beliefs and identities shared the same stadium and the same game.

That’s not a bad picture of what the world could look like if we all just tried a little harder.

Every four years, humanity agrees that instead of continuing to argue, we’ll settle things the old-fashioned way. We’ll put 90 minutes on the clock and cheer as loud as we can for our team until time runs out.

The World Cup reminded us that every passport represents a family and every flag a story of national pride and joy. Every fan that came for the matches loves their team for reasons very similar to our own.

Soccer didn’t solve the world’s problems this summer; it was never going to. But for this extraordinary moment in time, sports helped millions of people see one another not as headlines or stereotypes but simply as fellow fans loving the same game.

Meredith Browand lives in Purdy.