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It isn’t the most auspicious moment to be marking one year out from the next World Cup.
US Marines have been deployed to restore order in one of the host cities, Los Angeles, and USA men’s team manager Mauricio Pochettino has been engaged in verbal combat of his own with star player Christian Pulisic. Chelsea’s opening Club World Cup game played out in a deserted stadium on Monday night. From the outside looking in, it’s tempting to ask: ‘Is the US actually ready to help stage the 2026 tournament?’
Roger Bennett, the podcaster and broadcaster who through his hugely popular Men in Blazers shows has become the voice of Premier League football for millions in the US, offers the experience of June 17, 1994, by way of answering this question. He’d just arrived in Chicago from his native Liverpool, to be told by many Americans that the imminent US World Cup held no interest for them. He arrived at Chicago’s Soldier Field stadium for the opening game, Germany v Bolivia, to find the place swamped with fans.
‘Before that World Cup, there were studies saying that no one cared and no one would go but it was delirious,’ he says. ‘America loves a circus. We love a party.’ That 1994 tournament still holds the record for the highest total attendance, at 3.57 million, and the highest average attendance at 68,626.
Building a US men’s national team which might flourish is the difficult bit. Before beating Trinidad and Tobago in the Concacaf Gold Cup on Sunday, Pochettino’s side had lost four straight games and Pulisic needled Pochettino by declaring himself too tired to play the tournament. Even Bennett, an eternal optimist who loves this generation of Pulisic, at AC Milan, Weston McKennie at Juventus, Crystal Palace’s Chris Richards and Bournemouth’s Tyler Adams – one of Men in Blazers’ podcasters, wonders whether Pochettino will be able to bring them all together.
‘There’s something about America where on the men’s side we feel such pressure,’ he says. ‘Where we know that you know that we desperately want this and it’s the one place where the rest of the world can laugh at how much we’ve not succeeded.
Chelsea’s opening Club World Cup fixture played out in a deserted stadium on Monday night
Marines have been deployed to restore order in one of the World Cup host cities, Los Angeles
Mauricio Pochettino has been engaged in verbal combat of his own with star Christian Pulisic
‘So, to some degree we’ve always over complicated it. In the modern period, we tried to make them play dazzling football. We’ve tried to swagger rather than play effective football. We don’t have to be Barcelona 2009/10 to win! We just have to bloody win games!’
History tells us that the current geopolitical concerns will temporarily melt away when the opening game - Thursday, 11 June 2026 at the iconic Estadio Azteca Mexico City – comes around, Bennett says. Even though the travel bans on 12 countries, which Donald Trump is considering extending to 48, could render many nations’ fans persona non grata. The people of Iran, already qualified, are banned. Cuba, Haiti, Sudan and Sierra Leone, all subject to travel bans, are in contention to qualify. On Trump's possible extended banned list, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Egpyt, Ghana, Nigeria and Liberia all still harbour hopes of reaching the finals.
‘Right now, the world is in chaos, the geopolitics are utterly dispiriting and I only hope that the mechanism that’s always kicked in when that first ball is kicked happens again,’ Bennett says. ‘And that we do, however fleetingly, feel united. That’s testament to the power of football.’
His abundant positivity reflects the tone of the Men in Blazers shows in which he approaches interviewees from a position of reverence and fascination, and a stellar list of Premier League managers and players and celebrity guests have been keen to appear. ‘We are watching human decision-making in moments of transcendent glory and howling mistakes,’ Bennett says of these people’s professional challenges. ‘Managers leading in the most strategic and highly evolved and complex ways. We will never take that for granted.’
Broadcast on the NBC Sports network, which has the US rights to the Premier League, the main show has featured Pep Guardiola describing his friendship with Boston Celtics’ basketball coach Joe Mazzulla and Mo Salah discussing the importance of chess in his life with Swedish grandmaster
Magnus Carlsen, a guest on the same show as him. Cole Palmer admitting he borrows his mate’s Spotify account and Mikel Arteta discussing the value of his chocolate labrador to the Arsenal team ethic.
‘You want the player to lean in,’ Bennett says. Carlsen, incidentally, revealed that Trent Alexander-Arnold last eight moves longer in a chess match against him than Bill Gates had. These are no ordinary conversations.
It’s propelled Men in Blazers – which takes its name from the classic trope of American sports broadcasting teams wearing matching blazers when on air - from a single podcast-turned-television show in 2010, to a media network with strands for the Premier League/Champions League, the women’s game, and Hispanic fans. It will broadcast 2,000 shows this year and as a media company is now bigger than the MLS.
Mamelodi Sundowns v Ulsan HD was played in an almost empty stadium in Orlando, Florida
Christian Pulisic needled Pochettino by declaring himself too tired to play the Gold Cup
The 1994 World Cup still holds the record for the highest total attendance, at 3.57 million
Iran have already qualified for the World Cup next year but Iranians face travel bans to the USA
The growth reflects the way the US has fallen for the Premier League and European football since 1994. Bennett likes to tell a story of how, soon after he’d arrived from his native Merseyside, his beloved Everton had reached the 1995 FA Cup semi-final against Tottenham, yet nowhere on his ‘365 cable channels’ could he find a broadcast of it. He called his father, who held a transistor radio broadcasting the commentary of Liverpool station Radio City to the phone. ‘We’ve come so far, so fast,’ Bennett says. NBC, which just paid $2.7 billion for a new six-year rights deal, says the Premier League reached more than 30 million viewers last year, up from around 13 million in 2012.
The Club World Cup, with its half-deserted stadiums, is no reflection on the US appetite for football, Bennett insists. ‘I would not say it is a campaign that’s been put together in the most thoughtful fashion,’ he observes. ‘The American audience has become so much more discerning and knowledgeable about which football to spend their dollars on. While this feels like a tournament which is being workshopped, the World Cup is being put together meticulously.’
Men in Blazers recently raised $15 million to support its plans for next summer, with the joint venture co-founded by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney to buy Wrexham and the fund headed by Crystal Palace co-owner David Blitzer among the investors.
It will host live pre-game shows during the tournament in eight of the 11 US host cities, including Atlanta, LA, Houston and Philadelphia. ‘Those places are going to incredible lengths to seize the moment,’ Bennett says. ‘Philadelphia will be celebrating its 250th anniversary as the birthplace of the nation next year. Houston is the least known and will become the most beloved.’ The US, it must be said, is not the only host country: 13 matches will be played in both Canada and Mexico.
The 60,000 dollar question is whether Pochettino’s side will be a competitive irrelevance and merely incidental to a tournament which is poised to create $13bn of revenue, according to New York Times analysis. ‘It pains me to hear those words,’ Bennett says of that question. ‘There is a scenario where the US hosts a World Cup on home turf and score one of the biggest one goals on home turf by just never being ready.
‘On paper, Poch is what America needs. A man who talks about ‘grinta’ (‘grit’) fight, struggle, a willingness to do whatever it takes to win. At Spurs, it took him a moment with that team he inherited. Getting ridding of the players who weren’t willing to give, looking at who were his people - Eric Dier, Ryan Mason and Harry Kane, who back then had been on loan at Norwich and Millwall – and making them his players.
‘We’re at a crossroads for Poch and this team. We’re a year out and the World Cup feels like it’s tomorrow for them. Time is very short. So, the real question is can he find his people, sift through and find a core where he can build that culture of fight and struggle?’ His uncertainty belongs to an eternal fascination with football which has built Bennett such a following.
