Soccer in America: From the Sidelines to the Mainstream

Welcome to Mexico Matters, the CSIS podcast about how events occurring in Mexico can impact and more importantly matter in the United States. I am Mariana Campeiro, non-resident senior associate of the Americas program at CSIS and the former CEO of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, come back to Mexico. For decades, the United States existed in a third of a sports bubble, fully content to call domestic winners as world champions while remaining relatively isolated from the planet's most popular pastime soccer. Today however, we are looking at a massive cultural and economic conversions as soccer moved from the absolute fringes of American culture straight into the mainstream. Joining me today to break this down is Andrés Martinez, a journalist and core director of the Great Games Lab at the Arizona State University and author of a fascinating new book, The Great Game, a tale of two footballs and America's quest to conquer global sports. Andrés, welcome to Mexico Matters, it's truly a pleasure to have you on the show. I'm excited to be here, thank you so much Mariana. No, I especially now with the eyes of the entire planet who are focused on North America as the 2026 World Cup unfolds in our three countries. And this can be not only a massive moment for regional soft power if we do it right, but we're also seeing how the global sports dynamics are shifting. And Andrés, I think you are a perfect example of how things are changing because you were born in Mexico and raised in Mexico. As a teenage kid, you were passionate about football by which I mean soccer. How did it feel like to you when you moved to the United States at a time when the Americans were mostly focused on the other football, baseball, basketball. Yeah, thanks. When I moved to, as you said, I grew up in Mexico, I was born in Mexico City. I grew up in Chihuahua where I moved to when I was a kid. My mom was a Gringa who had come down to Mexico, teach the American school from Dallas, Texas. So I was very fortunate and my father was Mexican. I was very fortunate to have been raised in a bilingual, bicultural household. I was very fortunate. My parents were very strict about making a speaking English at home. So I grew up feeling like I had two countries. And yet, as you point out, the experience of moving to my other country at the age of, I moved to the US when I was 15. But I'm still a Mexico fan when it comes to the original football. I didn't think I was going to have wrenching adaptation issues of going to a foreign country. It was my other country, right? But I did feel as if I had been dropped on a different planet or behind some iron curtain when it came to sport because I'm not that young. So we're talking about the 1980s. So this was early 1980s. And I thought the US was kind of the center of the universe, right? That's kind of one of the ways that Americans like to think of their country. And yet, we just did not participate in the shared global sports culture that kids in Mexico, Nigeria, Argentina, Germany, the country would have shared growing up. And so all of a sudden, I was in a country where I couldn't talk to anyone about the last woke up in the next woke up. It was the hard even watch a fun TV back then. We didn't have a domestic league. There was nobody to, you know, and so then more in my adulthood and sort of my recent work, I've kind of looked into this and realized this was not some accident that there was a very conscious decision and project in the late 19th century in the US to decouple ourselves as a country from what were perceived to be sort of British sporting ecosystem. So Americans were going to play their own games. And in this country of immigrants in the late 19th century, there was this idea that one of the ways you would express your American identity was by playing baseball and not cricket or the American variety of football, which becomes a very, at that point, elite project that the Ivy League schools that make sure that American youth is not playing rugby or, you know, what becomes soccer. But, you know, fast forward 150 years later and it's all now converging, coming together, we're in a very different place in the United States and our relationship with the rest of the sporting world. Then we were in the 1980s when there was, there was nothing. So that was a real shock to my system that reinforced to me how important sport is and how people connect to each other and to their geographies. Absolutely. In fact, under this back in 1994 when the United States hosted the first World Cup, I read that it was treated almost like a submissionary project to try to convert the skeptic of nation. How is that vibe different today? Yeah, the 94 men's World Cup was, it was a success, but it felt very much like you're right. Like, outsiders trying to bring this to the United States and they're already, you know, we're a country of immigrants. So you had your diaspora that were already invested in the sport and you also have always had this need by multinational companies who want to be global to connect the US economy to the global sport. And of course, FIFA, FIFA, you know, the governing body of the sport and the owners of the great business that is the World Cup, they've always wanted the largest economies in the world to be more into their sport. So we was used as sort of a catalyst to jumpstart more interests, but it was very different. You know, I remember some of the games back then were at Stanford University Stadium in Dallas. They did not play at the Dallas Cowboys stadium. Very different from today where every single one of the US venues are NFL stadiums. And you know, I'm now hearing in 2026 things I never would have expected to hear in the 80s when I first arrived, even in 94 like Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, saying in a press conference that it would mean more for the city of Dallas to host a World Cup final than a Super Bowl. Like I think 94 owners of a lot of these NFL teams probably wouldn't have answered phone calls from someone to FIFA. But now they understand the power of the other football and the, you know, the globalization of sport has only accelerated. And many of them now either are invested in the other football too or want to be. So in cities like Boston and San Francisco, in those cases, the NFL franchises are playing a very important role in making and even covering a lot of the financial guarantees that the local political jurisdictions were very hesitant about because they felt it was so important to host this. And more broadly, you know, we are much more of a footballing nation than we were in 94. I mean, you were we're in a very different place. We have a growing domestic league, the popularity of the sport is just in a very different place. Yeah. I was reading an article this weekend on the Wall Street Journal that in fact soccer is more popular than baseball. Yes. I mean, people love to, you know, measure these things and some of it depends on what you're measuring. But certainly, and when people talk about what is the most popular sport, you know, you have to distinguish between fandom and sort of audiences versus participation because like the NFL is still domestically in a league of its own as the most popular, not just sport, but content for media. People make the joke of Roger Gidell, the NFL commissioner, being the most powerful person in Hollywood. You know, but soccer and basketball are the most practice sports at the youth level, much more so than baseball and trying to measure like the audience and fandom around soccer is really interesting too because it reflects globalization. So the MLS are domestically has a modest following. It's very strong in certain communities and great game day match day experience, not terribly impressive TV ratings, but it's only the third or fourth most watched soccer league in the US. So more of us are tuning in to watch, you know, I'm a big arsenal fan in the English Premier League. Like you can now watch the English Premier League on NBC because soccer is so much more popular. That's an example where our domestic league benefits, but also suffers from like this amazing opening. More people are still watching League I make these games on US television than MLS. So you have to aggregate all that. But yes, I think by almost any metric you pick, you could make a case that soccer has surpassed baseball and there's still this open question of how much further can soccer get as the men's national team starts to close the gap with the women and becomes a power in the sport. Because like the final and Qatar on US television. had a larger audience, almost 26 million people than any of the World Series games that year or the NBA championship games. Again, you can't compare it with the NFL, but you know, that was France, Argentina. There wasn't a single American on the field. And yet, 26 million people in the US tuned in. And this, I have a copy of your latest book, The Great Game, in which you track actually how soccer moved from this subculture that we were talking about to the mainstream. And you attribute this explosion not only to one element, right? So it's, as you said, you know, sort of kids playing on the weekends, you know, the gaming culture, the incredible success of the woman's soccer team, which one or all put together to attribute as sort of what really changed the game. Yeah, I think there are three kind of forces or protagonists that explain why our relationship with the world's default, most popular sport is so different in 2026 than it was when I first came in the 80s or that it would have been in the night during the 94 World Cup. And I think you've mentioned some of them. One is the role of immigrants and changing demographics in many of our cities in helping to spread the game. Yes, I'm sure that in this World Cup, the, I mean, we as Mexicans or Brazilians or Colombians or anybody are going to see games in the United States that are filled with those diaspora. Right. Right. I think it was Bill Clinton once used to say that there are no way teams in the US. That's a good idea. We have a diaspora. We have a home. So yes. And I think we all kind of familiar with that dynamic. I think less appreciate it is the role that women played in making soccer part of mainstream American culture. Right. I mean, everybody understands that like the phenomenon of the women's game was amazing and in growing women's sports and all that. But I also think that the women's game took the foreign edge off the game. Like soccer was always when I came in the 80s soccer was like, it's a foreign thing. It's kind of like the metric system. We or socialism. We must be in a guard against it. Right. I mean, talk about unintended consequences. Title IX passes in the 70s, which incentivize and forest schools across the country at every level to create more sporting opportunities for girls and women. The result is as boom and women's soccer because it's like whether you were in elementary school or high school or a university like where I am at Arizona State University. Suddenly, you had to offer some countervailing programs for women to engage in sport at a high level to kind of offset the investments you were making in men's football and the Americans football. Right. And so you can't it's it would be hard. It'd be hard to find another time or place in history where a sport is picked up as rapidly as girls and women pick up soccer in the US in the 80s and 90s because of all that investment because sport is so integral to our education. So by the time you get to the 90s, college women's soccer in the US is the hot and most developed form of women's soccer world. And that team starts winning, you know, even before there's a professionally here because they're on professionally exels were either for women. They start winning the first women's world cups, the Olympics. It all culminates in that 99 women's world cup in the States. I went to some of those games. It was amazing. That was another just massive cultural phenomenon again, you know, 20 million people watching when Brandy Chastain, you know, celebrates her her goal against Brazil in the rose bowl. And that I feel like naturalized the sport American. We went from this is the foreign threat to people like Mark Penn, one of Bill Clinton's pollsters coming up with the term soccer mom. Yes. To to kind of try to or trade as a as a as a as a term that describes almost like the most mainstream upper middle class suburban white voter, you know, someone who spends their weekend taking like what is the most American activity? It's taking kids to play soccer in the minivan. And of course, once you take the girls play Rex, you take boys, right? And in this and it was fascinating is in the US. I mean, when I was in middle school in Chihuahua, Mexico in the late 70s, early 80s, girls did not play soccer. They played basketball and volleyball. These are just cultural notions. I mean, some of my American friends are like, why why is basketball more feminine than soccer? That's just the role that plays in the culture. And to this day, even in Europe, even in England, where we have a lot of cultural affinity with the US, there's still some cultural resistance. The idea of girls playing soccer, the way that you would have if girls played American football in the US. But there were no resistance here. But the funny thing, Andres, is that something extraordinary really happened right? Sort of by accident in a way, the US created sort of this blueprint for professional woman, soccer globally. Today, you see massive state-back investments in Europe, you know, the Real Madrid, Barcelona, the English League. They all want to have a woman's soccer league, right? How do you expect sort of soccer to evolve now in the US? Now that the European clubs are also treating it almost like a civic asset? Yeah, I mean, it is fascinating how women, the women's game helped fully integrate the global game into American culture. So it's immigrants women and then sort of like corporate globalization. But to your question, then the US kind of exports to the rest of the world, the blue women's game. And that's been wonderful. I mean, in Mexico, the captain of the women's national team, Alexia Algado is an ASU Arizona State University grad. She's one of our sun-doubles. And she was already playing for the national team when she was playing in ASU because again, the level of women's college soccer so high, she now plays for Tigres and Monterey. Wow. She's an exceptional young woman. So we see this all over the world. And I think because the blueprint was, hey, there's a lot of growth here. And this is commercially viable that suddenly, yeah, major clubs are saying, you know, if you're a dynamite, how much are you going to grow your business in terms of the men's game? You know, it's it's it's it's it's grown. But if you're starting at zero and you already have this affinity group of a fin, it's a very interesting different model than the way the the professional game is evolving, evolving in the US, where we have the NWSL, which is not connected to any preexisting men's league. And even the MLS and the NWSL are very separate. That's a very different model than what we see in countries like Mexico or Europe where it's pre-existing, you know, glue, america or rios emonterey or arsonal in england or rar madrid saying, oh my gosh, you know, we've got the man's the man's team. Yes. And if you root for, you know, Manchester City man, you're going to now root for man's. And so there's all of that investment too. And there are two different models and, you know, each one has its advantages and disadvantages. But it's been, you know, because we were able to convince so many other countries to treat the women's game more seriously. Guess what happens? One of the indicators of success is you become less dominant in the sport. And now we don't automatically feel like the US is going to win every women's world cup, right? And you know, we're seeing this with some other sports as the United States has gotten other countries interested in baseball. Guess what? Like the US didn't win the world baseball class. Like, or we got other countries interested in playing basketball. Well, guess what? The last seven or eight MVP's and the NBA have been international players. And think of England. I mean, I always, I love the the angst that English fans feel every world cup, you know, because they haven't been very successful. I mean, now they have a very strong team. So maybe, but they invent it the sport they gave the rest of the world. And they've only one one world cup, right? So, although they can both say that no, actually the the the the my own event at the sports. But let's now talk about money and the influx of American capital, because it is true that the fans are changing, but also the money or the economics, right? We're seeing massive influx of American capital poured into the global sport. They're now, you know, American T-shirts own teams in Europe. They even own a part of the Mexican league. Why do you think our American billionaires suddenly sort of obsessed with owning this asset class in a sport that was ignored for a center in the United States? Yeah. And I think this is again the sort of third for us are protagonists. This is more of the sort of high level global impact. of happening kind of at the corporate level. And we've long had American multinational corporations that have had to be invested in the global game, even before the first example. Perfect example. FIFA's first major sponsor, right? Like Coca-Cola could not only market itself through sports that only reached 30% of global GDP if they wanted to be in the rest of the world. Electronic arts is another great example. They make video games, they made Madden, it was a huge success, the NFL game, but good luck trying to sell an NFL game in Thailand, in Nigeria, and Korea. So you make FIFA the game. Now we're seeing kind of the next wave of this, or like Nike, right? And so you're getting closer and closer to sports firms. They had the whole Michael Jordan phenomenon, but they still need it to sign Brazil. But in the '90s and get into the most popular sport if you want to be the world's leading sports apparel company. So now you're inching your way closer and closer to the sport industry itself. And now that the latest phenomenon has been the operating of sports leagues, teams, franchises themselves going global, we used to think this was an inherently local business, right? The Liverpool Football Club represents Liverpool. It is by definition a local business, you know? But we used to think that about the beer business too, right? That you always have to have your local brewery. Look what happened to that industry. And similarly, now it turns out that Liverpool Football Club club is owned by the Fenway Sports Group, which also owns the Boston Red Sox, right? And this is rapidly accelerating. This is the first season where, it just concluded where majority of the English teams are owned by American interests. And I think this convergence is driven by the fact that people are realizing rightly or wrongly that operating a sports franchise has to do with expertise when it comes to commercializing media rights, other marketing, merchandising, data analytics. And we have quite a bit of expertise in that. Also just the imperative of globalization. Again, our leagues are trying to grow their audiences overseas and they're having some success at that. But boy, wouldn't it be great to also be in what's already the sport with the greatest global reach, especially at a time when the valuations attached to sport continue to go through the roof because the other thing that's changed between '94 and today is sport has become the most important valuable form of media. Live sporting events are the last form of media that can aggregate audiences in the tens of millions. And-- So many people are expected to watch the final? The final, those estimates are all over the map. And you see a lot of people saying, well, the audience of the World Cup is billions and billions, but it's people are adding it all. But I think in terms of the final, I've seen estimates that are like one and 1/2 billion people, which compares-- So we're going to be talking a lot of money. That's 10 times more people than watches a Super Bowl. It does so well. And even week to week, the English Premier League is a great case study because it is the most globalized sports league. And then those clubs also compete in the European Champions League. And so the English Premier League is fascinating because seeing around the same table of owners that are governing this league, you've got the owners of the Boston Red Sox. And in my case, of Arsenal, it's the LA Rams owners. And the San Francisco 49ers own leads. But then they are also sitting across from Piff, the Saudi wealth fund that owns Newcastle and the representative for Sheikh Mansour from Abu Dhabi that owns Manchester City. And they're all governing the world all-star league in a third country. They're very few English owners left of sitting around that table, which is a fascinating dynamic. And there is-- I mean, certainly it appears that soccer is conquering and has conquered America. But it's also true that America's football is doing pretty well in conquering the world, right? The NFL's international series is playing games in seven countries. I mean, when I was growing up in Mexico City, I don't remember anybody really talking about Americans football. And today, it's a enormous phenomenon. Do you believe that the NFL can actually export an intrinsically American game? Will it become global? Will it rival soccer? It's fascinating to watch, because I mentioned Rodgerick Adele before the NFL commissioner. I think this is what he spends most of his time focused on. Is how do I globalize my audience? How do I-- I think he wants to be like a Hollywood studio or Taylor Swift, right? I always remind my students-- [LAUGHS] --because the US is a very big place. And sometimes my students in Arizona can lose sight of that. And I say, how many-- what percentage of Taylor Swift's concerts on our last tour do you think were outside-- In a word. Yeah. --and turns out it was two thirds were outside the US. A big Hollywood blockbuster, like Avatar, will make about three quarters of its box office revenue outside the US. This is a truly global offering that represents roughly the US economy, purchasing powers, roughly 23% of global GDP. So if you're Coca-Cola or a big Hollywood studio, you should be making three quarters of your money. You are, let's do what? Now, the NFL's an amazing success story. And yet, the Super Bowl is still watched by more people inside the US than outside-- Then outside the US. Yeah. --and nobody has been better in sport anywhere at making as much money off of each fan as the NFL has. But if you're Roger Gidele, you want to have that multiplier where you're like, oh my gosh, if I could have-- More. --a billion people watching my-- I could have-- I could have-- Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And so you're seeing things that I never would have imagined, like the NFL going to Radmadeeds Stadium. That feels like the Vatican opening its doors to a Protestant service, right? And I think the challenge for the American football is an amazingly compelling TV offering. It televises very well. But I don't know. We're pushing up against the limits of how do you socialize and get people accustomed to watching a sport that-- it's very hard to acquire an interest in a sport when you're an adult. It's almost like a language, right? And so they're trying, and they're having quite a bit of success. But can they really get to where soccer is when you don't have that preexisting notion that kids played this game? And they went to high school games. And it's a little bit more like this is an interesting TV show that you're being asked to watch. And why would I watch it? And so that's kind of the challenge. An interesting piece of the puzzle, like for the great game, one of my chapters, I went to Brazil for the NFL's first game in South America a couple years ago. They've now had another one. And I was really-- one of the things that surprised me a bit was the extent to which the NFL was trying to promote flag football. But in Mexico, we call it dochito, which is co-ed. And it's five on five. And they were doing workshops for Brazilian kids. And that is, I think, a bit of a shortcut. Very hard to come into Brazil and tell people, especially a smaller town, hey, why don't you start playing the sport and by the way you brought-- And it's very expensive to play. That's the thing. And to tell them you have to buy all of this equipment. And you have to have 60 people on them. And oh, by the way, there might be some brain injuries along the way. That's a lot to ask. But five on five, and you just need to wear these flags that I can tear off and growl and play too. And so in Mexico, this touch football is becoming more and more popular. There's international competitions. It's going to be an Olympic sport. And-- That's interesting. I didn't know that. For the first time. So they're trying to think of how do we create some touch points and awareness and experience at the grassroots level with this sport at the same-- So that they can identify with the big picture. So that then you're going to have more of a reason to want to tune in to see the full-fledged NFL bridge. At the same time, though, a lot of the same interests in the NFL, like I said, they're hedging. They're trying to grow their sports. But they're also a lot of the same individuals who are investing in-- In soccer. Yeah. And then I love one chapter on your book. On some-- socialism is I think it's called one footballing country to me it's highly ironic right that the world standard bearer of capitalism the US actually protects its sports leagues with salary caps with shared revenue no threat of relegation and the opposite actually happens in the most socialist countries like Europe right sort of it's a cutthroat game I mean unregulated free market system no you know sort of of promotion and relegation why do you think the MLS has fought so hard to keep this sort of stage in that of the American model to a sport that actually operates completely different around the world yeah I'm glad you bring this up it's something that's always fascinating me is you know because I think how you organize your your your games your sports that you're passionate about tell you something about the society and the NFL again this hyper American activity that's driven by these ego maniacal you know billionaires at least in our sort of caricature imaginations is the most socialist organization you could imagine you know the last place team gets the first draft pick right they all get to spend the same amount of money and it explains why you can have a competitive team in a small city of Green Bay or a big town of Green Bay that can compete against the team in New York because they have the same amount of money it's really interesting to me I had no idea yeah yeah yeah and then and then you know imagine I mean if you went to Rao Madrid in Spain you may like blue America in Mexico City or Manchester United and said hey I have an idea why don't we let the last place team pick the most talented up and coming and why don't we share our TV revenue with them equal they would laugh you out of the room they have the opposite they're like last place buy so you later yeah you get relegated to a lower division it's it's brutal and in so many of the European football leagues the vast majority of fans have no hope or expectation that their team will ever win a trophy they're just trying five and it's the halves and the half-nots it's like it'd be like sitting down to play a game of monopoly and and I get the $200 but I give you five and let's see how you do right and and it's and it it's so it's just so when people think about how is all this of American investment maybe going to change things we do bring with us this sort of idea of a well maybe we should have more of a level playing field and you know the NFL has a cliche of an any given Sunday any given Sunday should you know a team could be another the MLS and our American soccer ecosystem raises a interesting conundrum because we were able to organize our sports on our own because nobody else played these games originally but now that we have a soccer an American soccer league that is connected to the to the world's game the question is are we going to organize it the way we've organized American sports or should it be organized the way the world has organized this particular sport and the MLS is to answer him fatically has been the American way right and you're asking why would owners want that and you know the way the MLS was organized it really is a system of franchises like you buy into the league and then your award at the franchise and as a business the last thing you would want is the possibility of relegation because that just that would depress your evaluation because what happens when you get relegated in England or Spain but it's the beauty of competition right most of your revenue disappears because you're your your income from so a good example of this of how this plays out is Bill Foley who's a gentleman who's had great success as the owner of the Las Vegas golden nights in the NHL and it has a lot of fun owning sports sports team I think he has the right attitude about it he wanted to buy into soccer and he looked he looked to acquire an expansion team in the MLS and he saw that the you know the the buy in price has gotten to like five or six hundred million dollars and then he was told but you could buy a team in the English Premier League for less and he's like this doesn't seem to make sense that's the most watch league in the world well the reason he was able to any acquired Bournemouth in England and and it's had some success with it but baked into the evaluate and I think it was something like 300 million baked into the valuation of Bournemouth is the expectation that it's not going to be in the Premier League for very long it's like the smallest club in the Premier League and with all of the up and down you know it is likely to be relegated at that's at some point you know so so that it's interesting how that plays out so you could imagine that if you own one of these businesses you don't want to expose yourself it's just an existential risk but it's it is paradoxical that it's in that European context where how you do on the field has actual real world implications for the health of your business whereas in the US the way we've organized especially NFL it's been more an obsession with parity and that every team should have a shot and it's very hard to maintain dynasties over time because of the salary cap because of the draft you could go away scheduling is done let me ask you about the specific teams okay the US team right now going into this World Cup in 2022 the US team only had found advanced to round 16 where it lost to the Netherlands now with the expansion of this World Cup to 48 teams there is another round right to the round 32 so still nevertheless the manager Maui Sio Pochettino is the lowering his expectation he's in fact talking about winning realistic galliandres how is the US team different from the past and what are the actual odds that it can survive to the in this expanded tournament you know I think this is the most talented US men's national team that we've ever had which you know isn't saying that much the US and Mexico have reached you know have a pretty great rivalry going in recent years yes because they're sort of comparable in terms of performance that was obviously not the case when the US was less connected to the to the sport so for Mexicans it's been a careful wish for like oh if only the US would care about the sport but then they do and now they can they could be competitive with us so we're kind of both like middle powers in the in the sport the US men's team I think there were World Cup where they had less talent but they kind of punched above their weight they played well as a team then yeah much agarras we say in Mexico now we have a very talented team that at least in the run up not clear that they're going to that they've been punching above their weight so it's hard to tell this World Cup generally feels pretty wide open I think people would not be shocked if the US gets knocked out in that new round of 32 after the group stage I think people would be pretty shocked if they don't get out of their group but I think if they get knocked out in the round of 32 people wouldn't be shocked or if they do quite well and I think they're going to exceed expectations but it would be a matter of the right things coming together at the right time the talent is there home field advantage in a World Cup as we've seen it again and again it's very significant yeah what about the Mexican team I mean and in Qatar for the first time since 1978 we failed right to advance to the past the group stage yeah so the federation the Mexican federation decided to bring back Habir Aguirre is the for his third stint as a manager and our team has you know all guards and you know very young kids 17 years old we also have players that are playing in Europe we we have players with dual nationalities how do you see the Mexican team performing I think both the US and Mexico are going to have good World Cup so I mean the funny thing about Mexico is we always just say we need that there's Quinto Partil the fifth game because we we would reliably get out of the group Qatar being an exception and then get knocked out in that when it was always the fourth game and so okay the big aspiration has been to play a fifth game but because this World Cup is expanded and there's a new round what we really what one is a six game right six game is what the fifth game used to be I think both the US and Mexico will will will do well and again I think home field advantage is a big part of it I I think I expect the US to do even better. So I'm still advantage and altitude because they're going to be playing in Mexico yeah yes they're going to be playing in Mexico but at a certain point they're going to yeah they're going to have to move yeah they're going to have to move to the States yeah so a lot of it is a serendipity of who you run into in that round of 32 round 16 and because luck plays some role in terms of and you can control some of it if you win your group you're supposed to have an easier game the next round but what if you know like Argentina lost its first game in in Qatar and sometimes some of these big powers don't necessarily end up at the top of their group and so something playing them in the round of 32 or 16 so people say like what defines success in terms of what stage you get to that's one way to do it but it also matters a lot like who knocked you out? If you get knocked out by Brazil, it's kind of what can you do about it? If it's, you know, whether it's the quarter finals or the round of 16, I was doing the brackets the other night and I came up with this crazy, I have the US as a semi-finalist, which is very bowling, very bowling. And I have Mexico as a quarter finalist, which is good, you know, again, the historic well, I for Mexico, but it's so wide open. I mean, I could easily reconvence that, you know, the US is gonna come out very early. I think Mexico is more consistent this team, this addition to the Mexican team. I feel more confident about knowing that Mexico will be in the last 16 or eight, like whereas the US feels like more of a wild card with more of a side potential, and but also more of a propensity to just like completely choke. So I think it could go either way. - So I assume because of your curiosity and sort of this conversation that you're gonna be rooting for Mexico whatever happens. - Yeah, I mean, my first allegiance is to the trick and Mexico and I, you know, for other reasons, I do want the US to do well, 'cause I think it helps to sport in the US generally and I'm very American in many ways, but when it comes to football, my first allegiance will always be to Mexico and the hope my nightmares that they have to play against each other like they did in 2002, I don't want that to happen again. - Yeah. Me neither. These things are actually to a fascinating human story of the US Mexican border and the soccer relationship, right? I mean, today we see both federations aggressively recruiting the exact same teenage talent in the Southern California or Texas. - What do you think is most likely to win in this scouting war and why? - Yeah, I mean, like I live in Arizona, we are part of this overlapping, you know, there's 85 million Americans live in states, you know, part of the US, the US, the US, the US, Mexico. It's almost like a third country of Texas and you're right. So many of the up and coming players could choose to play for one country or the other. And I think more recently, Mexico has done a better job. I think it convincing some of those players like Dendejas is one of them and Brian Gutiérrez. But it tends to be a little bit cyclical and it's kind of depend a lot on, you know, individual circumstances of families attitudes and also like their experience of where they happen to be playing. Actually, no, Sandex has actually played for the US and he plays for glue on America. But Mexico has done a good job of convincing a lot of these players to play for Mexico. It's kind of vary on a lot of factors. I do think there is a, like, systemically, the US soccer needs to do a better job of opening more pathways for Latinos to be incorporated into elite programs in the US. What often happens is you kind of have, at the elite youth level, you almost have parallel systems where in many cities, you'll have like Latino leagues that don't have necessarily, they're kind of ancillary or have their own ecosystems which could be quite developed. But our model in the US is very much paid to play where access to the elite academies tends to be. And so I don't think that our development of talent is taking full advantage of the diversity that we have in the sport across the US. And what often happens is that sometimes means that maybe some of these young Latino kids still might feel more affinity towards Mexican soccer because they weren't given the opportunity. The opportunity. That's that people with more means might have had in the US. I think that's something that the US soccer needs to do a better job at. There's unfortunately we're coming out to the end of our podcast. But let me ask you one last question. I mean, how do you see this North American world cup when the tournament wraps up and all these dust battles who stands to gain the most? Well, FIFA will definitely (laughs) - Definitely. - Give the most. - Don't worry, FIFA. - I think it's going to be a huge commercial success. I think it'll further accelerate this sort of coming closer together between the world's number one sport. - N-M-A-T. - And the world's kind of what has long been otherwise the world's top sort of pop culture superpower. It almost feels like inevitable that the two need to be closer together. And I think this will give us a big push. You know, there's so many things these days that pull us apart and even anxieties leading up to the world cup about some of the geopolitics surrounding it. I hope that when the games start, people can just once again be reminded of how. - Beautiful. - And yeah. - I think, and I'm pretty optimistic that we will see that. And that the rest of the world will maybe see that North America is a reality, right? Like the politics again there have become a little bit complicated. So maybe we aren't doing it enough on our part in the three countries to say, hey, we're one community hosting this as much as maybe people expect it that we would be when the world cup was first awarded to the three North American neighbors in 2017 or 18, whatever it was. But I think maybe from the outside, the visitors and people watching a TV, they'll be like, oh yeah, it does make sense that my team played in Monterey and now they're going on to play in Houston. Like, oh yeah, that is one community, right? So I'm gonna be really interested to keep an eye on that. - Definitely, definitely. And I'm optimistic like you that, you know, sort of North America will be a winner of this. And rest, thank you so very much for this fun, timely and interesting conversation. And congratulations on your book. - Thank you so much, my God. Thank you for having me on and this was a lot of fun. - If you enjoyed this podcast, check out our larger suite of CSIS podcasts from into Africa, the Asia chess board, China Power, AIDS 2020, the trade guys, smart women, smart power, and more. You can listen to them all on major streaming platforms like iTunes and Spotify. Visit csis.org/podcasts to see our full catalog.