Douglas Campion had traveled with his family from El Paso to Los Angeles to watch a World Cup game between Belgium and Iran. Early in the second half, to his great surprise, he found himself fervently cheering on a nation the United States is at war with.<\/p>\n
Mr. Campion was startled by his own reaction. \u201cThat\u2019s the power of football, and we loved it and we were so excited for Iran,\u201d Mr. Campion, 50, said in an interview a couple of weeks after the game.<\/p>\n
His experience is just one example of how the World Cup has played out in the United States, producing chance interactions and cultural exchanges that will be remembered long after Sunday\u2019s final in New Jersey.<\/p>\n
The buildup to the tournament was shadowed by anxiety<\/a> over what kind of welcome an increasingly inward-looking country, under the Trump administration, would offer the world.<\/p>\n It did not take long to find out, as thousands of supporters and teams fanned out to 11 cities across the country.<\/p>\n Massachusetts will not forget how Scottish soccer fans swept the Boston area off its feet<\/a>. Houston danced to the beat of a Dutch party bus that led thousands of supporters of the Netherlands on a march through downtown. Subway riders in New York stared in awe as Norwegians introduced them to the Viking row<\/a>, a chant-and-crouch routine that has become a motif of the tournament. Then there was Times Square, where fans of almost every team gathered to display their patriotism. On the eve of the final, the Argentina contingent had taken over.<\/p>\n Lawrence, Kan., remains draped in reminders of how the city had opened its hearts and its doors to Algeria\u2019s team \u2014 weeks after the team\u2019s elimination. The mayor has even suggested an annual reunion with the Algerian visitors.<\/p>\n A flag donated by an Algerian family from Washington still hangs in the window of Ladybird Diner. The family was so caught up in the fervor of Lawrence\u2019s welcome \u2014 the University of Kansas band even learned Algeria\u2019s national anthem \u2014 that they had to see it for themselves, said Meg Heriford, the cafe\u2019s owner. \u201cThey had no plans to come until they saw how Lawrence had responded to the Algerian team,\u201d Ms. Heriford said on the Sunday before the semifinals began.<\/p>\n All throughout Lawrence are signs of what has been. The main sports store, which had repeatedly sold out of Algerian merchandise, has only a few items left. Street lampposts still celebrate the unlikely love-in between a Midwestern town and a North African, Arabic-speaking country.<\/p>\n \u201cThat kind of warmth and enthusiasm and human connection attracts people from all over; people want more of that, we really crave that,\u201d Ms. Heriford said.<\/p>\n Scotland\u2019s embrace of Boston was so complete that the mayor took out a full-page newspaper ad to thank the country\u2019s soccer fans.<\/p>\n The tournament also allowed the world to see the United States in all its patchwork of identities, and Americans to embrace those identities fully. It was a chance for immigrant communities to support their adopted nation, but also the places that had taken them there.<\/p>\n Colombian Americans, Brazilian Americans and Ecuadorean Americans joined visitors from their ancestral homes to swell stadium crowds as the World Cup smashed attendance records. For fans with roots in smaller nations, the tournament meant even more: a rare unifying occasion.<\/p>\n \u201cWe never had the opportunity to get all together, and this just became magical for us,\u201d said Farouk Jarrah, who moved to the United States as a 17-year-old, four decades before his native Jordan qualified for a World Cup. Visa restrictions<\/a> meant that many fans from Jordan and other countries in the Middle East and Africa could not attend.<\/p>\n But the chance for Jordanian Americans to come together helped create what will be remembered as the diaspora World Cup. For some, like Ellio Gomes, it even brought new family connections to light.<\/p>\n Mr. Gomes, 42, was born to Cape Verdean parents and moved to the United States almost three decades ago. At a game between Cape Verde and Saudi Arabia in Houston in June, he happened to sit near a man, Aderito Andrade, who bore a striking resemblance to him.<\/p>\n \u201cWe start talking, and eventually we realize we are actually cousins,\u201d he recalled at a viewing party as he watched rank underdog Cape Verde<\/a> push Argentina to the brink before being eliminated.<\/p>\n For all the joy, bringing communities together created tense moments, too. Every game played by Iran, whose players were largely confined to Mexico because of the country\u2019s conflict with the United States, carried an undercurrent of anxiety and conflict.<\/p>\n Protests broke out at each Iran game, with groups opposing the Iranian government taking to the streets to make their feelings known. Inside the stadiums fans clashed among one another, and even over which Iranian flag to wave. The strength of feeling was such that some members of the diaspora even chose to root for Iran\u2019s opponents as a form of protest.<\/p>\n The tournament\u2019s footprint stretched well beyond the stadiums and the downtown fan zones.<\/p>\n The rodeo in Fort Worth was midway through its evening show one night when, just before the bull riding competition, the emcee for the evening at the Cowtown Coliseum took the microphone. \u201cNorway, are you here?\u201d he asked. A cheer went up, and Americans in the stalls joined a handful of Norwegians present and began imitating the Viking row.<\/p>\n Norway\u2019s hulking striker, Erling Haaland, left a darling of the American public, not only for his goal-scoring prowess, but for his full embrace of American culture. He returned home with a slice of Texas, displaying a taxidermied raccoon poking out of his hand luggage.<\/p>\n It was that kind of tournament: local residents embracing their visitors\u2019 culture, and visitors getting their fill of America<\/a>. Eating at Waffle House became a curious rite of passage, as did visiting big-box stores like Walmart, where fans marveled at the sheer size of the goods on offer.<\/p>\n Jorge Nunez, a soccer fan from Bolivia on his way to watch a World Cup game in Houston in July, filmed himself wandering the aisles of a Buc-ees, the cavernous Texan gas station chain that became a surprise magnet for World Cup tourists. \u201cThey told me it was the biggest gas station in all of the United States,\u201d he said, contemplating a few purchases. \u201cIt\u2019s super different than anything we have.\u201d<\/p>\n For some Americans, too, the World Cup offered a rare kind of cultural immersion.<\/p>\n Lanny Mong, 87, and his wife of 63 years, Sally, 85, have lived in Kansas all their lives and could not recall seeing anything like the scenes Argentina\u2019s fans brought to town on the day of a fan rally in a park. As thousands of fans clad in the team\u2019s powder blue and white streamed past, singing and twirling flags and jerseys overhead, the Mongs watched from their car. \u201cI\u2019m handicapped, and I can\u2019t go down to the rally without a walker, so we found a parking place just to sit and enjoy it,\u201d Mr. Mong said.<\/p>\n A little farther down the road, Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, dressed in a suit and with a drum strapped to himself<\/a>, was leading the Argentine visitors in a chant.<\/p>\n On Sunday, when the winner is crowned, the party will end. But the memories are likely to endure.<\/p>\n