Rainstorms, ribs and Republicans: Two weeks inside America’s supersized World Cup

The day before England’s game against Croatia, I went to the JFK museum in Dallas, and it turned out I was not the only one. It is on the sixth floor of the old Texas School Book Depository and if you haven’t been, it’s excellent, cleverly laid out so that the story builds towards the fatal shots and suddenly you realise you are standing a few feet away from where Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger. Or where the CIA says he did [winks].

But I would be reading about JFK’s controversial appeasement of the communists when, out of the corner of my eye, I’d be distracted by a QPR shirt. I’d view the poignant photographs of Jacqueline Kennedy in the aftermath of her husband’s assassination and notice an early 2000s England kit with “Heskey” on the back. A man walked past draped in a St George’s Cross bearing the crest of Luton Town, which is off-putting when you’re trying to absorb one of the most significant moments in American history.

This is one of the unique joys of the World Cup, of course, when football fans from all over the world mingle in public spaces, crossing paths on their way in and out of a city. Fifa’s eye-watering ticket prices have not killed all the vibes. Croatia fans were chanting in the museum queue. Germans have been getting drunk in Toronto. Argentinians are partying in Kansas City.

USA took on Paraguay in LA in their opening game of the World Cup (Getty Images)

My trip began in Los Angeles, where I found a very different side of this World Cup. Apart from the surprisingly chipper border force officer at LAX airport, who explained to me why Ousmane Dembele complemented Kylian Mbappe’s movement, I generally met two types of people: those who knew next to nothing about the tournament and those who knew even less. The World Cup can roll into a place and take it by storm, but in a city of LA’s scope it feels more like a gentle breeze against a skyscraper.

I went to the smart suburb of Culver City and found a life-giving breakfast burrito at a cafe called Culver & Main. The manager was a chiselled man with lush hair who asked fast questions, and he told me he was excited about the World Cup, although it later transpired that he didn’t know the US were playing their first match 10 minutes down the road the following evening.

A taxi driver wearing a Mexico shirt seemed like a safe bet for a conversation about football but didn’t speak English, and was baffled to discover they don’t speak Spanish in London. One waiter had no knowledge of the tournament’s existence. Even the stadium security guard I spoke to didn’t seem entirely sure what event she was covering.

Certain places are better than others for this act of international communion. Boston’s compact size and walkable centre make for a perfect host city, and Scotland fans have been playing bagpipes on the streets and serenading the Fenway Park baseball stadium with “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond” and “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie”.

Scotland fans play the bagpipes in Boston (Getty)

My second stop was Houston, Texas, and it felt much the opposite, a place fractured by enormous freeways, parking lots and flat-roof architecture. The city seems to be designed for house-sized cars and people live out their lives in them. I swear there are no pedestrians in Houston, just drivers looking for their vehicle.

Without a car to get around, you meet all sorts of part-time taxi drivers. Like the 6ft 7in basketball coach whose main job was teaching pre-1800s history at a school in Boston. I tried to engage in some Rest-Is-History-style repartee and quickly found I was in over my head.

Or the staunch Republican who picked me up from Houston airport. He was the son of a pastor, loved Donald Trump, had a unique take on slavery and said the immortal words “I’m not prejudiced but…”. I found myself nodding along to some things I didn’t agree with just in case he had a gun, and the ride ended with him recommending three hot cryptocurrencies for 2027.

A sign at the Musuem of Fine Arts in Houston (Lawrence Ostlere/The Independent)

Texans are incredibly friendly. The sniff of a British accent and you’re embroiled in a 15-minute conversation with a smiley woman who will share the most obscure details of her life, like how her husband’s law firm covered the rent for their flat in Kensington 20 years ago. What did I even ask? A little like France, where there are both informal and formal terms of address, in Texas you either get called “sir” or “baby”, depending on the server.

The games themselves have been head-spinning spectacles in vast spaceships that make most British stadiums feel shallow and aged. USA’s opening win over Paraguay took place in SoFi Stadium, which is so close to LAX it had to be dug into the ground rather than built into the sky. The result is a strange sensation of the pitch unfolding deep beneath you like some lost city.

Germany’s win over Curacao took place in the NRG Stadium, an uglier thing but no less imposing. It is very Houston, a city that doesn’t buy into aesthetics or pretence. Big is good. Metal is strong. Inside there are photos on the walls celebrating the very occasional NFL glories of the Houston Texans interspersed with pictures of other stars to have graced the venue: mainly country musicians, monster trucks and cattle.

I saw England beat Croatia in the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium. The venue can be seen from far and wide and looks a bit like an American football resting on the banks of the river. The steep stands made for another impressive view and a dose of vertigo.

A view inside the imposing NRG Stadium in Houston (Getty Images)Inside the AT&T Stadium in Dallas where England played Croatia (Getty Images)

There are some moments on these trips when you question your life choices. In Dallas, a steward sent me on a 20-minute march around the perimeter of the stadium in unbearable heat, skin crisping like bacon under a grill, sweat emerging from pores I didn’t know existed, only to be told by officious security that the media entrance was in fact back where I came from.

Or when I left my Airbnb for Houston’s stadium in bright sunshine only to watch out of the taxi window as biblical rain descended from newly formed mega-clouds, each droplet like a bottle of Evian clapping the roof. Only an idiot wouldn’t check the forecast. I ran to the stadium’s outer perimeter, by now half-drenched and still a long way from the venue itself, where a security guard slipped a packet into my hand like it was prison contraband. It was a poncho, and I nearly hugged him.

Security here is treated like a military exercise. One particularly serious man told me I couldn’t enter the stadium because my bag wasn’t transparent. I explained I was in the media and he entered a new level of sincerity, tapping his headset and shouting: “We will solve this, sir. I have a direct line to command.”

The rain in Houston reached biblical levels (Getty)

But of course it is the world’s greatest sporting event in an endlessly fascinating country, and it is an enormous privilege to be here, even more so given the ticket prices. Downtown Dallas was great fun, where Senegalese and French fans watched their teams play on a giant screen while a host of other nationalities milled in and out of a food mall. Former England defender Stuart Pearce was among them, trying to eat lunch but getting bothered for selfies by every English fan he passed.

The occasional breaks from watching or writing about football have offered a chance to explore. In Houston I ate ribs and melt-in-the-mouth brisket at a shack aptly named Henderson & Kane, played pool with journalists and locals in a dive bar and visited the Museum of Fine Arts. It turns out the city is much more than just a concrete floodplain.

Ribs, brisket and much more in Houston, Texas (Lawrence Ostlere/The Independent)A dive bar near downtown Houston (Lawrence Ostlere/The Independent)

But interest in football seemed confined mainly to stadiums and fan festivals. This marriage between America and the World Cup is odd, one that flourishes and takes hold in some parts of the country and barely exists in others. Soccer is growing in pockets but it remains a peripheral, old-world pastime compared to the grip of NFL and NBA.

Yet in other ways perhaps the US is the perfect host, a place full of the kind of cultural intrigue that was so clearly missing in Qatar. No other country on earth has such a broad collection of immigrants and ancestors of immigrants, so that every city is like a little global community with a diaspora of fans already waiting for their team to arrive. Dutch Americans turned Houston Stadium orange this weekend.

The World Cup is an international festival of sport, of hope, of pain, of summer escapism, and it has a unique way of reaching people. I met the world’s most enthusiastic taxi driver in downtown Dallas who knew nothing much about football. But she loved the different collections of people she’d ferried around that day and was giddy at the idea of seeing drunk England fans desecrating Dallas bars later that night. She talked about flying to Boston to drink with Scots and I think she was only half-joking. “I swear,” she laughed, “if anything can bring about world peace, it’s the World Cup.”