The first time I showed up to the field, I had a water bottle and a tiny ball. I was wearing a tiny drawstring bag on my back, tiny cleats, and tiny shin guards. My hair was pulled up in a ponytail my mom did for me 15 minutes earlier. We were running late — as our family always was.
I was the eldest of three girls and the first in my family — but definitely not the last — to lace up and try grasshopper soccer. It was the thing to do in a small, rural farm town in Pennsylvania. My teammates and I would scramble up the rolling hills to reach the top of the park where our field waited. That field watched us grow into bigger children, but never fully grown. We’d always still be kids at heart, running amok on those green grasses.
Those were the best days.
My love for the game only deepened as I became a teenager and then a young woman. I played through high school, club soccer, academies, and camps. It was grueling and it was everything. It was where I formed my lifelong friendships. Where I learned to respect adults, teammates, and competitors. It was where I learned some of life’s most valuable lessons.
The field saw us laugh, cry, gallop, embrace, puke, scream, and smile. It raised us. It molded us. Soccer is what made me the woman I am today — and that sentiment rings true for millions of men and women across the United States and around the globe.
Which is why it fills me with something close to pure joy that the Mecca of soccer has found me again. The World Cup is here. Today, the games begin on our home turf. And I cannot help but feel immensely proud.
The greatest sporting event in the world has come to the greatest country in the world.
Nobody is appreciating it better right now than a young German man on X who goes by Freddy. He’s a Ronaldo aficionado, which already makes him controversial in his home country — being that Ronaldo hails from Portugal and has played for many of Germany’s rival teams — and he’s spending six weeks traveling through the U.S. and our 51st state, Canada, in honor of the World Cup.
Freddy and his crew began their American pilgrimage in Atlanta, and his enthusiasm for this nation — and for the daily joys we’ve long taken for granted — has been exactly what the moment called for. He says Atlanta “feels like you’re in a forest the whole time.” He tracked down the filming locations of the television series Stranger Things. He made a stop at what he called the “motherland” — Taco Bell. He visited Walmart for the first time and treated it like a cathedral. He gave Waffle House a 10 out of 10. He drove through the mountains of Georgia, marveling that the houses were “insane” and that the views from Brasstown Bald reminded him of a rainforest. He stumbled into a German village that made him feel right at home. He wound through the Smokies listening to Ella Langley on repeat. In Alabama, a hotel receptionist offered to drive his group to their destination just to spare them the rain, and Freddy posted that he loved Americans. At Auburn, a bald eagle soared over their heads as the stadium erupted — and Freddy wrote: “This is the most ‘the European mind cannot comprehend this’ moment of my life. One of my friends said, ‘Punch me five times tomorrow and I’ll still think this isn’t real.'”
Welcome, friend. We love that you love it.
But the moment that may have broken his brain entirely? Buc-ee’s. He simply could not process that it was a gas station.
Today they’re making their way to New Orleans. Sunday, Freddy lands in Houston to cheer on Germany. The world has loved watching his journey: seeing a foreigner discover, with genuine and unperformed delight, that America is awesome. He’s happy, so we’re happy.
It’s been a good week to be an American. Especially a Republican one.
The congressional baseball game Wednesday night was won by the GOP for the sixth consecutive time, with Senator Eric Schmitt taking MVP honors after a third-inning dive that robbed extra bases and left him with a bloody nose. That’s grit. That’s American. The country is locked in on basketball, choosing sides between New York and Texas — I’m selfishly pulling for the latter, if only to spite Mamdani. The Queens-born president ate a New York slice, New York-style, at a New York Knicks game. Monday, our military executed a remarkable rescue mission after a U.S. helicopter was shot down by Iranians, a display of American capability and resolve that our enemies will soon regret. A bipartisan brawl — a genuine, celebratory bro-down — is reportedly set for the White House lawn to mark the president’s 80th birthday. Teddy Roosevelt would approve.
And in less than a month, America turns 250 years old, and the world is here to watch us celebrate.
Two and a half centuries. This experiment, this audacious bet on human freedom and self-governance, is still running. That is something to boast about.
The Left will bemoan our joy and America’s success. They always do. They’ll call it manufactured. They’ll find the darkness in the fireworks. Let them. The rest of us can see clearly: illegal immigration is curtailed. DEI isn’t running our government anymore. Younger Americans are walking into churches. We are literally converting electricity into intelligence and launching privately built rockets into space. Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon and our enemies are weaker. The middle class keeps getting richer. The federal government is leaner. Individual liberty is not a punchline. The pursuit of happiness is still legal.
And best of all, we have the World Cup.
We have soccer — a sport played by over a quarter of American kids, in farm towns and cities and suburbs, on fields that raise us and mold us and watch us become who we are. A sport that means freedom and innocence and dreams for so many of us. A sport that, against all odds, can pull the entire world together in a moment when we seem very far apart.
The games are about to begin. The sun is out. The birds are chirping. Our guests are glad to be here.
What a time to be alive.
I can’t wait for kickoff.
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