Dr. Karsten Senkbeil
Teaches and researches at the University of Hildesheim, Germany, in the Department of Intercultural Communication. He has researched and published on sports cultures worldwide, and focuses on inter- and transcultural exchange processes between North America and Europe through sports and other forms of popular culture.
Email: senkbeil@uni-hildesheim.de
When FIFA announced that the 23rd World Cup (WC) would take place in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, Europeans collectively sighed with relief. After two tournaments in which FIFA and participating nations had accommodated undemocratic regimes in Russia and Qatar, European fans and journalists looked forward to ‘visiting friends’ while enjoying a tournament hosted by three stable democracies with decent human-rights records and commitments to liberal values—despite familiar clichés about gun violence (USA) and crime (Mexico). Donald Trump’s re-election, however, soon made clear that US foreign policy would increasingly clash with European interests, and US domestic policies were challenging some of the foundations of shared Western values. In this political climate, a trip to the USA, or watching one’s national team play there, appeared less unequivocally enjoyable to many Europeans. Some even called for a boycott of the WC as a gesture of protest against the Trump administration, albeit with little effect.
An analysis of media discourse, particularly in critical and quality journalism, reveals uncertainty about what kind of ‘friendship’ between Europeans and US Americans—on political, sporting, and everyday levels—still prevailed in mid-2026. Media perspectives shifted between different extremes over time. Three phases can be identified: before the tournament; during the tournament until the ‘Balogun case’; and after the Balogun case.
In the first phase, before any matches had taken place, anti-Trump sentiment merged with ‘classic’ anti-American tropes. The host country had recently “humiliated, reviled, deceived, threatened, betrayed, mocked, and subjected to tariffs” the rest of the world, prompting some commentators to call the tournament “Trump vs. the World – the rematch”. Others framed the USA as a dystopian landscape of rampant commercialization, with “obscene” ticket prices, producing a festival of “greed and megalomania”. The entry ban imposed on the Somali referee Omar Artan was interpreted as further evidence of state-sponsored xenophobia and nationalism. Even phenomena not attributable to Trump, politics, or capitalism, such as summer heat and North American wildlife, were folded into portrayals of a generally unwelcoming and dangerous country, for example when European media widely discussed the danger posed to the Swiss national team by poisonous rattlesnakes near its training grounds. A “very unofficial” Scottish WC song that went viral across Europe concluded semi-ironically: “The USA kinda sucks, but we’ve got to go there anyway…”. Die Zeit, a usually high-brow, left-liberal German publication, not commonly known for populist sentiments, called for spite and defiance through football on US soil: Europeans and South Americans should declare, “This is our game, our tournament, our trophy!” Thus, “every celebration [becomes] a subversive act, every goal a small revenge” against the US government.
Once the games began, sport largely displaced politics in public perception. In phase two, European media soon emphasized the games’ quality, full stadiums, and enthusiastic spectators. Reports described American soccer fans as welcoming and hospitable, highlighted the stadiums’ size and opulence, and praised lighthearted forms of multiculturalism in the host cities. Contrary to expectations, members of the Trump administration showed little interest in soccer and never attended matches. Fears that ICE or other militarized law-enforcement would intimidate or harm foreign fans likewise remained unfounded. Consequently, European journalists remembered, and reported, that ‘average Americans’ are friendly people who shared fundamental values and peacefully celebrated sports. During that phase, the USA was mostly framed as the ‘good old friend’ it had been since World War II: perhaps somewhat eccentric, but still recognizable for its optimistic, live-and-let-live liberalism—at least in sport and everyday life.
This phase was interrupted by the Balogun case and the US president’s blatant interference in FIFA’s established regulatory system. In phase three, reporting hence oscillated between recognition of good organization, enthusiastic, and welcoming American crowds, and condescending criticism of Americans’ alleged failure to understand established football conventions. Notably, Trump had admitted that he did not understand how red cards work, yet intervened nonetheless. Europeans were also shocked by the extension of the final game’s half-time break—contradicting the ‘eternal’ 15-minute rule—to accommodate several pop music acts. This was interpreted as evidence that Americans misunderstood football’s essence, subordinating it to shallow show business.
Media discourses depicting foreign cultures and ‘national character’ in sports and elsewhere are never monolithic; hegemonic narratives are often challenged, and occasionally substituted by alternative readings. The oscillations identified here in three phases are therefore unsurprising. Also, research has repeatedly shown that transcultural media discourse during major sporting events is intertwined with negotiations of cultural identity ‘at home’. Without constructing a cultural other, there is no cultural self, and the 2026 WC coincided with growing European doubts about the continent’s political, economic, and cultural future. The dusk of the old transatlantic alliance, in which the USA had long functioned as a strong, well-meaning father figure, catalyzed reactions also visible in WC reporting: anxiety that the USA might inflict serious harm on Europe; spite, condescension, and fantasies of revenge directed at the ‘ex-partner’; and pragmatic optimism grounded in the observation that citizens and sports fans in liberal democracies can ultimately find common ground and interact peacefully. Taken together, the mélange of European perceptions of the USA during the 2026 WC points to significant collective psychological dynamics in a period of transatlantic uncertainty, beyond the realm of sport.
