In just a few months, the biggest sporting event on the planet will take place in Mexico, Canada, and the United States.
While the world prepares for the spectacle of the 2026 World Cup, the event itself has evolved over the last few decades in several ways.
Simon Kuper has had a front-row seat to this evolution. He’s a columnist with the Financial Times and has been writing about the games for decades now.
Kuper has attended every World Cup since 1990, which is the subject of his new book
“World Cup Fever: A Footballing Journey in Nine Tournaments.” Listen to the interview in the audio player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: You’ve been to every World Cup in the past three decades. How did this start, and how did you convince your bosses that watching soccer is work?
Simon Kuper: Well, it started when I wasn’t even working. I was a student. And 1990, a friend of mine comes up to me in the bar and he says, ‘if you had tickets to the World Cup, would you go?’ And I didn’t really understand the question, because of course I would go, but there was no way I could get tickets.
And he said, ‘I can get all the tickets we need.’ He knew somebody whose dad worked at Mars, Mars was a sponsor. But Americans didn’t want to go to the World Cup, then Asians didn’t wanna go, people were afraid of English hooligans, there were loads of free tickets.
So we got lots of Mars tickets, and three of us drove over there to Italy and saw the tournament. And then ever since I’ve been covering it for the Financial Times, my newspaper.
How did I convince them? It’s the biggest media event in the world, so they need journalists.
Well, and yeah, those days of easy tickets seem to be gone. So early in the book, you talk about how much of an empire FIFA has become since you started attending the World Cup. Tell us about that.
The World Cup has ballooned in sort of size and interest. And FIFA, which is the world soccer organization, the one thing they own that is of value is they own the television rights to the World Cup, essentially.
And so FIFA sells the TV rights, they keep all that money, they get money from sponsors — you know, sponsors are a lot more interested now than back in 1990. And the host country just gets to put on the show and the host country has to plan all the costs of security of stadiums, although in the U.S. you already had the stadiums.
So FIFA is the kind of big beneficiary of the World Cup and they spend a lot of time scheming about which country to have it in.
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Well, FIFA does not have a reputation for being transparent or above board. Give us some details about that.
So FIFA is essentially a bunch of men, almost all men, and a cash box in Zurich, Switzerland most of the time. And yeah, they barely tell us how much money they make or what that money goes to.
And the many billions that come in for each World Cup are often given out to presidents of national soccer federations in countries all over the world. What the presidents of the federation does with that money, nobody’s really going to check.
So, yeah, it’s a very obscure organization which happens to have its hands on what is probably the biggest media property in the world for the month that it’s on.
2026 edition of “Soccernomics”
Well, you also co-authored the book “Soccernomics,” where you explain how the sport works from an economic standpoint. And that book came out in 2009, and one of the predictions you made was that the U.S. could emerge as a powerhouse in soccer.
That hasn’t really happened yet. Why? And could that still happen just down the road?
So yeah, we were totally wrong about the U.S. becoming dominant.
I mean, our reasoning was, look, you’re the country where most people play soccer. Last I checked, there were 25 million Americans who play soccer and you’d think that a big rich country, once it gets interested in soccer, will kind of learn how to play and beat smaller countries like Spain or France, which are world’s best, but it hasn’t happened.
And what I’ve come to conclude is the Western Europeans have kind of figured out the secret of how to play soccer — the knowledge of how the play is so deep. And the U.S. is just too far away from the parts of the world where the best soccer is played for people to start learning it from the age of six, which is really what you need to do.
So when you look at [American] football, Texas, Florida, and California are where a lot of the top-tier players come from. I’m wondering if you expect something similar as soccer continues to grow right here in the U.S.
Yeah, I mean, it’s the paradox that there hasn’t really been a great American soccer player on the men’s side. I mean on the women’s side, of course, the U.S. is usually dominant, but with the men, Christian Pulisic is probably the best American soccer player of recent times, and he wouldn’t really be in a World 11.
So it’s very, very strange that there are times when small European countries like Portugal or Croatia or Belgium are much better than the United States. It’s just numbers don’t seem to be enough. There’s something kind of very basic about how did you play this game? Americans are just too far away from the best knowledge.
Texas, Florida and California also have very large immigrant populations or first-generation soccer players. Do you see that helping build these teams?
I mean, the biggest immigrant populations in the U.S. and in American soccer are from Mexico. Mexico is also not a very good soccer country. I think Mexico and the U.S. have a similar problem, that they’re kind of too isolated from the best soccer knowledge. And nowadays they spend most of their time playing against each other and against other North and Central American countries who also are not very good.
So you’re not going to learn the best soccer in the world if you’re playing against, you know, Canada or Salvador or Honduras. Really, it’s in Europe and, to some degree, Argentina, Brazil, but more in Europe, where the world’s best soccer is perfected every week.
It’s like in basketball — to get really good, you need to be in the NBA. But you also need from the age of six to be learning exactly how basketball works. The U.S. And Mexico just have not gained that knowledge.
Well, at the end of the first chapter, you make the argument that quote, “World Cups don’t change the world, but they do illuminate it.” Explain what you mean.
I think you can see a lot of the issues of the world by looking at soccer. That’s what I try to do in the book.
So for example, there’s a day in 2010 when we’re all watching who’s going to get the World Cups of 2018 and 2022. The U.S. is expected to get 2022. England and other Western countries are hoping for 2018, but no, FIFA gives those tournaments to Russia and Qatar.
And it’s this huge shock and it illuminates the world because it’s a moment when a lot of us suddenly realize, “Hey, The Western countries are not really the dominant powers in the world.” The power in the world is shifting eastwards, often to these autocracies: Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, which is also getting a World Cup. And so you see that shift in power and money.
And also in soccer, a lot of, often, a country’s kind of dramas are played out. You know, I live in France. And one of the issues in France is many French people want France to be a white nation, but the national team is mostly non-whites and that gives rise to all sorts of tensions and racism and frustrations. So the country’s kind of internal battles are played out in soccer.
Well, do you have a favorite World Cup memory from all of the matches you’ve watched?
Look, I support Holland. So, you know, my favorite World Cup memories are seeing Holland win great games. I think every fan will tell you that.
The thing is, as a journalist at World Cups, I spend too much time watching teams that I don’t really care who win. It’s when you care that it matters most.
But actually, I say in the book, my best times really are away from the stadium at the World Cup. World Cups take you to places you will never go to again, like the World Cup has taken me to the Amazon, or to the battlefield of Stalingrad in Russia, talking to a Russian policeman using a language apps on a plane.
You just have the weirdest experience in the weirdest places.
Before we let you go, who do you think is going to win the 2026 World Cup?
Look, my forecasts are always wrong. Like in American sport, you have playoffs, which are a kind of randomizing element. Often the best team doesn’t win.
World Cup is knockout. So there’s a huge random element in soccer— one goal can win you the game.
Look, the best team is Spain, probably followed by France, England, Argentina. Who will win? I have no idea. I’m gonna say Spain, which means they won’t.
