The World Cup is up and running across North America and Texas has already hosted several early games.
In a lively rematch of a 2018 World Cup semi-final, Dallas witnessed England win a decisive victory against Croatia. In Houston, Germany scored seven goals over Curaçao, but not before the smaller country scored its first-ever World Cup goal.
There’s still a month left in the tournament, and the U.S. men are slated to play their second game tomorrow.
Jon Arnold, who’s covering the World Cup for USA Today, joined the Standard to get us up to speed. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: For folks who haven’t been glued to this tourney, what are the biggest storylines through the first week? You spotting any?
Jon Arnold: I think the biggest storyline right now is that the stars — the biggest names in world soccer — are already having success.
Harry Kane, the England forward, scored twice in front of that crowd in Dallas.
Lionel Messi, who I think many people will recognize even if they’re not soccer fans, he already started with a hat trick, three goals in one game. That’s the first time he’s ever done that at the World Cup. That was the night before that England game. He had never done that before. He moved into a tie for the most World Cup goals ever scored by a man.
Erling Haaland, who plays for a big team in England, he also scored for his country Norway.
The stars seem to be out in this tournament. That’s not always the case, especially early, so the fact that they’re already up and running kind of makes us think these guys who are the big names may really flex their muscle this time.
We’ve already seen some expected powers look pretty dominant. Have there been any surprise? Teams or players who’ve exceeded expectations?
One of the biggest surprises was Cape Verde, a small country off kind of the coast of Africa. Island nation hanging with Spain, everyone’s pre-tournament favorite. I say “everyone” because I thought they were gonna win the World Cup, but you start to wonder when you can’t get a goal past a country like Cape Verde.
Their goalkeeper, I believe, had 30,000 Instagram followers before the the game. He now has more than five million and maybe more, at the last count.
U.S. plays tomorrow. How would you assess their performance so far? And anything fans should be watching for in that next match?
Well, all soccer-watchers are looking at the calf of Christian Pulisic. It may be specific, but he’s the best attacking player that the U.S. has. Took a little bit of a knock in that first game, that performance against Paraguay — a four-nil victory.
It was fantastic. It was a great showing of the fact that the U.S. was able to get off to such a good start. I think it really has people feeling confident, and it should. A lot of teams have won by that kind of margin, so the fact of the U.S. did that against a team that’s known for its defense should kind of raise expectations.
Anything can happen in these next two games, that’s the beauty of it.
Texas is hosting more World Cup matches than any other state, I believe. What’s the atmosphere been like in Dallas and Houston? You think the cities are getting to show off before the rest of the world here?
It seems to me like they have. I’ve seen already here in Dallas the England fans, the Netherlands fans — they have a retro bus that they parade to the stadium and fans kind of jump and sing behind. I was in that crowd of people, the only one not wearing orange because of my journalistic neutrality.
I thought it was just a great atmosphere, a great vibe. I really think that people are enjoying the cities and the cities are doing a good job rolling out the red carpet. I’ve been to Mexico City, I’ve been to Kansas City, same thing, too. They’re doing a great job, but I definitely think that you can feel the World Cup already here in Texas.
With so many games, it seems like that vibe is just going to continue to get stronger as people figure out how to host and as the logistics get worked out. Everyone understands what the World Cup really means.
But so far, for Texas, I’m really optimistic that people go home with a good impression of the state and that Texans have memories that they’ll keep with them for the rest of their lives.
