Updated by: May 11, 2026
The Beautiful Game
I play soccer every week with a group of men from everywhere. French, Uruguayan, Spanish, Mexican. Different accents, different styles, different ideas about what the game should look like.
But the same love of it. That’s what they mean by the beautiful game. It crosses everything.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is coming to North America — the United States, Canada and Mexico hosting together for the first time. For American sports fans who have never quite understood why the rest of the world stops for a month every four years, this is the chance to find out.
The answer is simple. Nothing else brings the world together in quite the same way. Not the Olympics. Not anything.
FIFA’s corruption record is well documented and disappointing — the organisation that governs the world’s most beloved sport has repeatedly demonstrated that it governs primarily in its own interests. That tension doesn’t go away. But the game itself remains something else entirely.
I’m an Arsenal supporter. This May, Arsenal are in the Champions League final against PSG. The greatest club competition in the world, two of its finest clubs.
I once attended Arsenal at the Emirates. Guests of Vietnam Airlines, I went with Vincent and Mr Hung — two kind and generous Vietnamese-Australian men who introduced me to a world I wouldn’t otherwise have accessed. Our passes belonged to someone else’s season ticket — technically against the rules, entirely worth it. I walked into the Emirates under a borrowed name.
The atmosphere was extraordinary regardless.
That’s the thing about football. It doesn’t care about your name. It just asks you to show up.
Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder
