Postcards from the World Cup: Seeing the U.S., Can...

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is the first to be co-hosted by three nations, with the tournament being staged across North America in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Each country is different from the other, with football culture also having unique characteristics across each border. So how have the U.S., Canada and Mexico embraced the tournament, and what is different about the World Cup in each nation? Mark Ogden has been to three cities in the three host countries to find out. June 12: U.S. 4-1 Paraguay LOS ANGELES -- There are two televisions in the Sushi Hanashi restaurant on Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica. One is showing Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs, while the other is airing the buildup to Scotland's World Cup Group C opener against Haiti. Game 5 is a big deal. The Knicks are on the verge of ending their 53-year wait to clinch the NBA title, and two guys at the bar, both in their mid-50s, are joined by a friend, who says something about Knicks legend Patrick Ewing before, mid-conversation, he asks, "You heard about those Scots fans and the soccer? Crazy, just crazy." Scotland are playing in Boston, 3,000 miles away on the East Coast, but their partying supporters have caught the attention of three guys in California who are meeting up to watch basketball. It was a similar story on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, the self-styled "coolest street in L.A.," where there were long queues for a Brazil-Morocco watch party, and one young woman, who stopped with her friends, said, "Wow, did you see that?" when Qatar scored a late equalizer in their game against Switzerland. - World Cup 2026 bracket: Every team's path to the final - Power Rankings: Who's No. 1 after World Cup group stage? - World Cup Daily: All the latest action, goals, updates around the tournament If a Qatar goal is stopping people in their tracks on Abbot Kinney, the World Cup is definitely cutting through in California, but it would be an overstatement to suggest that America's second-biggest city, a sprawl of 3.8 million people with miles of golden beaches and driverless cars, has developed World Cup fever by this first U.S. game. The overriding sense is that Los Angeles wants to get it, though. Twenty-four hours earlier, the USMNT had opened its tournament with a rampant 4-1 victory against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium. Christian Pulisic was outstanding for 45 minutes before limping off with a calf injury, while Folarin Balogun's two goals made him an early contender as one of the breakout stars of the 2026 World Cup. Tom Cruise, Hilary Duff, Vince Vaughn, Tobey Maguire and George Lucas were among an array of Hollywood A-listers in the VIP seats, but with the cheapest tickets reselling at kickoff for $580 -- for those in the obstructed-view category -- it was perhaps no surprise that the 70,942 crowd had a feel of West Coast affluence. A Category 1 ticket was going for $8,050, and by the time the action started, there were no more than a handful of empty seats throughout the stadium. You couldn't move without seeing Colgate smiles, designer outfits and fans carrying expensive bags of official merch. Edward is a waiter at a coffee bar in Santa Monica. He wanted to be there, but not at those prices. In his early 20s, he is typical of many young American football fans in that he wakes early most weekends to watch the Premier League and has deep knowledge of the sport. "I'm a Chelsea fan," Edward told ESPN. "Why did England not pick Cole Palmer? That's crazy. Why did they leave out Phil Foden, too?" Mexico is his first team, but attending any game at the World Cup would be a dream. "It's too expensive, but I'll be watching the games, for sure," he said. "There will be watch parties here, especially among the Mexican and Colombian communities, but it's a bit quiet around here. "It's good to see so many fans from all over the world, though. I've never seen so many Austrians!" Spectacular venue for USA v Paraguay in LA on Friday. Just hope fans can afford to buy the tickets...#worldcup pic.twitter.com/YrO6oPnqZD — Mark Ogden (@MarkOgden_) June 11, 2026 Joe is on my flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Los Angeles, and he spends the journey watching the first game of the tournament between Mexico and South Africa on his phone. He is a student, visiting family for the weekend, but similar to Edward, he doesn't have a ticket for the U.S. game. "Everyone on this flight is going to the game except me," he said. It's perhaps an exaggeration, but there is no shortage of passengers wearing U.S. shirts, particularly the classic USA '94 shirt of stars on a blue background. A father and son from North Carolina have made the trip, with the dad justifying the cost by saying, "We get to see the opening show, too." "What's going to happen with Iran?" my Uber driver, who is taking me back to LAX, asks. I think he was talking about their status as World Cup participants, but in L.A., you can never be sure. June 18: Mexico 1-0 South Korea GUADALAJARA, Mexico -- This is a proud football city. Club Deportivo Guadalajara (also known as Chivas) is one of Mexico's most successful clubs, and its policy of selecting players only of Mexican descent has enabled it to launch the stellar careers of Javier Hernandez and Carlos Vela. Its World Cup résumé is also strong. Brazil's famed 1970 World Cup-winning team played every game except the final in Guadalajara's Estadio Jalisco -- it was the venue of England goalkeeper Gordon Banks's iconic save from a goalbound Pele header -- and the team of Zico, Socrates and Careca also lit up the Jalisco during Mexico 1986. But the power of football in Guadalajara is being used in this World Cup to shed light on the seemingly endless tragedy of the city's "disappeared." More than 16,000 people have been listed as missing in the registry of the state of Jalisco, and throughout Guadalajara, there is the chilling sight of walls, street lights and landmarks covered in images of men, women and children who have disappeared. Those images would be striking enough, but with the World Cup returning to Guadalajara this summer, families have produced images of their loved ones in the form of football stickers -- family members wearing green Mexico shirts as though they were players in Javier Aguirre's national team -- in a desperate attempt to draw attention to their plight. "The photographs you saw are search posters displayed by the families of disappeared persons," Edith Olivares of Amnesty International Mexico told ESPN. "They are one of the many tools families use to carry out search efforts on their own. "Search collectives decided to use the visibility and public attention generated by the World Cup to remind society of the disappearance crisis affecting Mexico. By placing the faces of disappeared persons in a format that evokes football tournament stickers, families sought to connect a global sporting event with a national human rights crisis that is often ignored." Avenida Chapultepec, a vibrant tourist area in Guadalajara, is the most vivid example of the posters. Some of those whose faces adorn the posters have been missing for years, others only recently. Drug cartel violence in the city is the main cause of the disappearances, but some abductions are random. A 17-year-old high school student disappeared while selling a motorbike for his uncle. When his uncle searched for him, he disappeared, too. A 34-year-old father of two left home to buy tennis shoes and vanished, and his remains were found months later. "There are lots of completely inexplicable disappearances, and there's lots of evidence of people who have no criminal history or connections getting caught up in this," Steve Woodman, a Guadalajara-based security advisor, told ESPN. "One of the key factors for making Guadalajara such an outlier, even for Mexico, with the number of disappearances, is that the Jalisco Cartel needs recruits, so there's a lot of forced recruitment and a need to show forced control through the disappearances. "Many of the families of the disappeared weren't happy with the World Cup being hosted in Guadalajara. They see it as sportswashing, but ultimately, they decided to take advantage of the international attention. It isn't just so they can share their story, but really so there's international pressure on the Mexican government, and the United Nations escalates the mechanisms related to disappearances." Despite Guadalajara's troubles, there is also a sense of normality generated by the World Cup. When El Tri played South Korea in the city -- a 1-0 win that secured their progress to the round of 32 -- it was an undisputed party town of Mariachi bands, street performers and horn-tooting supporters in the streets in the early hours after the game. "People go crazy when the football is on," Abraham, a waiter in an Avenida Chapultepec coffee bar, told ESPN. "There are a lot of problems in Guadalajara, but it's a distraction from the problems, especially when the World Cup is here." June 24: Switzerland 2-1 Canada VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- There's no place like home, especially if home is Vancouver. Canada's success in qualifying for the World Cup knockout rounds for the first time was rooted in a 6-0 Group B victory over Qatar, but a 2-1 defeat against Switzerland at the same venue six days later ensured that Jesse Marsch's team surrendered home advantage in the tournament it is co-hosting with the United States and Mexico. Had they drawn against the Swiss, Canada would have had a home run in Vancouver in the round of 32 and round of 16, but the defeat sent them instead to a round-of-32 tie against South Africa in Los Angeles, and waving goodbye to what had become a red bowl at BC Stadium was an unquantifiable loss for Marsch. "I've been through World Cups and had big moments in my career, and when you get one big win, building on that is so important," Marsch said after the Switzerland defeat. "So, I'm disappointed we weren't able to get a win or draw to keep us here in Vancouver. "But I am grateful to the stadium for the energy [it has given us]. It's been awesome, and that's the disappointment because we just want to continue the energy we have had here in Canada." Marsch's comments were echoed by Canada midfielder Liam Millar, who admitted that he has been taken aback by the way Vancouver has thrown itself behind the national team. "I've never seen an atmosphere like this," Millar said. "I've never seen such passion in the stadiums for our games. It's just unfortunate we didn't get the draw or the win to keep us in this stadium." Vancouver is a geographical outpost of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the most northerly and western of the 16 host cities, and it almost missed out on the tournament after initially rejecting the terms proposed by FIFA (Boston and New York / New Jersey have ramped up travel costs to compensate for the financial burden of hosting FIFA's biggest competition) before returning to the process when Montreal dropped out in 2021, leaving Canada with just one venue -- Toronto. But if Vancouver was a reluctant host, it has enjoyed a complete transformation during this World Cup. The city has long been a football hotbed, and its MLS team, Vancouver Whitecaps, is one of the oldest and best-supported soccer teams in North America. The Whitecaps went into the World Cup shutdown as leaders of the MLS Western Conference. But the manner with which Vancouver has embraced the tournament and become an undisputed soccer party town has surprised even those who know the city better than most. "It's been amazing," Alanna Hagan of Destination Vancouver told ESPN. "Vancouver has always been a multicultural city because it attracts people with its outdoors lifestyle and general quality of life in the Pacific Northwest. "It's a city with a very young population, too, so there's a really positive atmosphere socially here. But despite knowing all of this before the World Cup, we have been amazed by how Vancouver has become such a melting pot. We have big British, Australian and Korean communities here, but we didn't know how big the Colombian and Ivorian footprints were until the tournament started, and everyone seemed to head into the city with the national shirts and colors. "Whether a game has been played at BC Stadium or elsewhere, people who remember Canada's run at the last World Cup in 2022 say it was nothing like this." Granville Street was certainly alive in the hours after the Switzerland game, but the dominant colors were the yellow, green and blue of Brazil, despite Carlo Ancelotti's team completing the Group C campaign with a 3-0 win against Scotland, 3,400 miles away in Miami. With just two venues (Vancouver and Toronto) at this World Cup, and a tournament history that amounted to six games and six defeats from two previous appearances in 1986 and 2022, the sense of Canada being a junior member of the three-nation North American hosting group was inescapable going into the competition. Mexico are always under intense pressure to shake off their underachievers tag at every World Cup in which they participate, while the U.S. is also weighed down with expectation, especially after the appointment of former Tottenham, Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain manager Mauricio Pochettino as coach in 2024. Canada? Marsch has turned them into a strong and competitive team in the Concacaf region, but the joy of this tournament in the True North is that they have exceeded expectations and sparked new interest in a country still dominated by ice hockey. "I've been in Canada for almost seven years now, and there's never really been a buzz about the football team," Kevin Kilbane, the former Everton and Sunderland midfielder now working as an analyst for Canadian broadcaster TSN, told ESPN. "But the World Cup has changed everything: People are coming up to me and talking about the games, and that is a completely new thing. "It has gone beyond people only knowing about Alphonso Davies and maybe Jonathan David. There are Canada jerseys everywhere, and it's so good to see. "The big challenge now is to make sure that Canadian football capitalizes on this and continues to attract the casual fan when the World Cup has gone away." But even with Canada having to pack their bags and head south of the border to play their games in the U.S., the party goes on in Vancouver. A watch party for England's Group L game against Panama in New York was staged on a giant screen at the top of Grouse Mountain, which is only accessible by hiking or gondola, with a backdrop of mountain peaks and lakes. Grouse Mountain has also been decked with a huge Canada flag -- the size of two football pitches -- for the World Cup to emphasize the manner in which Vancouver has embraced the tournament. "The flag was designed to be seen not just from the mountain, but from across the city, from the sky, and around the world," Adam Rootman of Grouse Mountain Resort said. "As Vancouver welcomes international visitors, we wanted to put our support behind the home squad in a way that is truly unforgettable."