Seeing All the Colors of the World Cup in Knoxville 

Editor’s note: After at least five rounds of this with my husband Tommy, I know the drill: once every four years, life gets scheduled around the World Cup. Being out and about watching matches this edition, we’ve especially enjoyed seeing international communities gather to cheer on their national teams, a reminder that Knoxville is home or host to more diversity than we sometimes realize. I asked Tommy to wax on it a little. -Leslie

When a hulking, heaving colossus of an event like the FIFA World Cup 2026 arrives, it’s propelled by financial forces as vast and convoluted as can be comprehended, and the themes and storylines that emerge get spun and respun by practically anyone and everyone invested in gaining narrative traction in the information mudslide to which our current media landscape has succumbed. It can get downright dizzying. 

This is surely more than just a sporting event, right? Isn’t it also sports-washing on an outsize scale? Could it all just be bloviating pageantry, as much color and sound and fury as could possibly signify nothing? 

What if we don’t give a hang about the game being played? How are we supposed to feel about this?

As it turns out, sometimes feelings just stroll right past the cerebral ombudsman’s office and show up unannounced. 

I was at Kern’s Food Hall Saturday night (One Knoxville SC is hosting watch parties there for all the matches) to meet Leslie and our soccer-mad little one (that’s on me, by the way) when the feels lit up bigtime and caught me off-guard. 

I had hustled in from work to catch the second half of the England vs. Panama match. On this evening, much like the Friday night of the first U.S. match, there was no on-site parking left available, and having scurried down a hill from where I had left my car, I noticed I was tracking dark red East Tennessee clay across the outside seating area when I found her with a drink in each hand, one of which was a water for our sweat-soaked kiddo who was playing more soccer than he was watching. After catching up and procuring my own beverage, we settled in to watch England stars Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane both score, sending an already-eliminated Panama home truly empty-handed. 

I began to notice a fair amount of yellow in the crowd and mentioned it casually. “It’s nice to see a Colombian contingent showing out.” Colombia were taking on Portugal next, in one of the marquee matchups of the group stage fixtures. It called to mind another public viewing we’d attended one afternoon earlier in the tournament, a much less crowded showing that featured the Egyptian national team. Red and white jerseys worn by several generations of families were scattered about and clumped together, proudly displaying their wearer’s allegiances. The cheers and gasps heard echoing across the artificial grass in the outdoor viewing area whenever Mo Sallah or Omar Marmoush did something cool left nothing to doubt. We were among, and at least adjacent to, a gathering of fans of the Egyptian national team. “Right on,” I thought. “This is pretty cool.”

But as the England fans filtered out on Saturday, and we began the arduous process of extracting our 7 year old from an unruly outbreak of pick-up soccer, the big screen coverage switched over to the pregame rigamarole that was introducing the Colombia/Portugal game, and two things were clear: one, the crowd wasn’t thinning, and two, there were more than just a few folks in bright Colombian yellow all around us. 

To be fair, there were Portugal fans there as well, just not as many.

When the Colombian national anthem was played over the PA system in Miami and the enthusiastic voices rose around me and my family just off Chapman Highway, I got a lump in my throat. They were singing fearlessly and joyfully, and the scope of what was happening, what had been happening all over the US for weeks, flickered briefly into focus.  

A quick note on national anthems. Someone should (maybe they already have) write a book about the absurdly resilient cultural colonialism that has generated all the similar sounding songs that the modern countries of our world have chosen to imbue with the dreams and professed ideals of their wildly varying homelands.

But that’s part of the point; at the moment, the emotion was unfettered.

I’ve seen hundreds of jerseys around lately, so many national colors sported unapologetically. At a big box store I happened to need to visit on Monday, I saw a family in soccer-related USA gear just down the aisle from a lone shopper in a Spain kit.

And we’ve all seen or heard the stories from Boston about their super fun, extremely thirsty, Scottish guests. Or the kindly midwestern college townfolk of Lawrence, Kansas going over-the-top-hospitable to welcome the Algerian contingent who set up camp there for their group stage run of games.

But even here in Knoxville, far from the banners and lights of the World Cup’s official arenas and participants, we’re getting a glimpse of what it can be like when different people from different places interact proudly, passionately, and peacefully. When sharing where you’re from or where your ethnic roots run deep poses no threat.

The impacts of sport, like art, like music, can be boundary-less. It can build bridges and forge friendships. It can illuminate possibilities we thought were unattainable fantasy. I think I’ll let it keep giving me that.