From bottomless refills and sprawling Costco warehouses to America’s enduring devotion to ranch dressing, international soccer fans have spent the past few weeks gleefully chronicling the strange, charming and unmistakably American details they encountered.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup drew 48 teams to more than a dozen cities in Canada, Mexico and the United States, prompting supporters to share their often-surprised impressions of American life across social media.
Americans, in turn, embraced the colour and spirit brought by overseas visitors, whether it was Norway’s Viking row sweeping through Times Square or Scottish supporters gallivanting around Boston.
Billy De Cain of the Sam Adams Boston Taproom, which exhausted its supply of the brand’s flagship Boston lager in June amid celebrations by Scotland fans, said the tournament had strengthened America’s image abroad. He also saw how many foreign visitors left pleasantly surprised by their experience.
USA player Folarin Balogun was shown a red card during the USA v Bosnia and Herzegovina match
As the World Cup reaches its conclusion, the Trump administration is eager to seize on the astonishment some supporters voiced after discovering what everyday life in the US was actually like.
“What’s shocking is that they were shocked to love America,” US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a recent rally in Washington DC, where he helped launch the America 250 celebrations.
Mr Duffy argued that people overseas had been misled by their own “liberal” media into viewing the US as a “dark” and “dirty” country, only to find a markedly different reality when they arrived.
Frank Guridy, a Columbia University professor of history who specialises in sports history and African American studies, told RTÉ News that he shared the broad sentiment expressed by Mr Duffy, though for very different reasons.
“I think everything that the administration says is self-serving, propagandistic. If anything, people who have negative feelings about the United States are not about some image of the United States as a dangerous country, but really about the United States as war-waging,” Prof Guridy said.
“I think that’s a mis-framing on their part,” he added.
Before the tournament began, much of the attention centred on steep ticket prices and the potential impact of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Those concerns unfolded against a daily news agenda dominated by developments in the US-Israeli war with Iran.
Members of Iran’s backroom team were denied or delayed entry to the US, while officials prevented a leading soccer referee from Somalia from entering the country for the tournament.
Some fans told media organisations that US travel bans and visa rules made them feel shut out of the World Cup. Others alleged that their ESTA travel authorisations were unexpectedly changed to “pending” at the last minute.
Donald Trump is expected to join Gianni Infantini to present the trophy at today’s match
Yet the churn of headlines can hide the texture of local American life and the communities people value, according to Thomas Oates, professor of journalism and American studies at the University of Iowa.
He said the US is a vast and deeply varied country, and that the picture presented beyond its borders rarely captures the nation in its entirety.
“I think that there are some really troubling aspects of contemporary American culture, but there’s also parts of that culture that are pretty inspiring, and they sit alongside each other,” Prof Oates said.
“What this administration would like to do is tell one story and not the other. But I think that part of what people find fascinating about the United States is that it is both,” he said.
As the US marks the 2026 World Cup final, US President Donald Trump is expected to present the trophy jointly with FIFA President Gianni Infantino today, despite criticism of his intervention to overturn a red-card suspension imposed on a US player.
“Unfortunately… the red card controversy reinforced certain things that many people despise with the United States, which is its unabashed imperial policies and the Trump administration’s government’s really uninterest in any sort of real diplomacy,” said Prof Guridy.
Beyond the football, however, one point stood out: many Americans warmly welcomed the more affectionate image of their country being reflected back at them by visiting supporters.
At the Great American Fair, a Texan woman I met seemed relieved to see the US viewed through a kinder lens, away from the louder and often harsher narratives surrounding the country.
“One of my favourite things on social media right now is all the international community coming in for the FIFA Cup and how much they are falling in love with places that probably are where I’m from, which is more middle America – our Buc-ee’s [motorway stores] and our free chips and salsa refills,” she said.
“When I’m watching those things online, their excitement about America, [it] makes me excited about America,” she told me.
For Americans, the World Cup offered a rare opportunity to look at their own country through the eyes of countless first-time visitors — a renewed perspective at a moment when politics and division have so often shaped conversations at home and abroad.
