Grass or no grass, Atlanta is a great football town | National Sports

ATLANTA — The 1994 World Cup was not held in Atlanta. Nine American cities — New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Orlando, Detroit — had games. We don’t. It wasn’t a big loss.

This World Cup broke attendance records, but the event itself does not bring back good memories. The final ended when Roberto Baggio, the Divine Ponytail, sent his penalty kick into the stands of the Rose Bowl. It was the only title game to end scoreless. The highlights of 1994, such as they were, only suggest a discrepancy: although the World Cup had come to us, we didn’t really know what to make of it.

In 2026, we will know what to think about it.

The 2024 Copa America, not the World Cup but the hemisphere’s biggest quadrennial event, opened Thursday at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Attendance was 70,564. Reigning world champions Argentina beat Canada 2-0. Lionel Messi didn’t score a single goal, although he could have scored several. In true top-flight fashion, Argentina blamed the newly installed pitch for its shaky performance.

In football terms, this wasn’t the first time the stadium had such a rodeo. Atlanta United plays in MBS in front of the biggest crowds in MLS since 2017. (United plays on artificial turf. Perhaps that’s why it hasn’t won a home game since March. It has, however, beaten Messi’s Inter Miami 3-1 away.)

The U.S. national team will face Panama here on June 27. That will be it for Atlanta and the 2024 Copa. The 2026 World Cup will see eight matches, including a semi-final, hosted here.

In 2026, the United States will be ready in a way it was not in 1994. MLS did not yet exist then. (Its first season was in 1996.) Football was not a staple in any American media outlet. Even a decade later, Euro 2004 – the rough equivalent of a Copa America – was only available on pay-per-view. We compare this to the basic Friday cable schedule:

— Noon EDT: Poland-Austria, FS1.

— 3 p.m.: France-Netherlands, Fox.

— 8 p.m.: Peru-Chile, FS1.

— Also available, but not basic: Ukraine-Slovakia on Fubo, 9 a.m.

As a spectator country, we were not scheduled for the 1994 World Cup because we had little knowledge of what world football entailed. We didn’t have access to the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga or Serie A. By the end of the 20th century, we had started to get a taste of the UEFA Champions League, although the final of 1999 — Manchester United 2, Bayern Munich 1 — airs at 3 p.m. Eastern on a Wednesday.

(I can recite the climax. “AND SOLSJKAER WON IT!!!!”)

The makeup of the United States has changed since 1994, and so has American sports. MLS has not appealed to those who grew up watching baseball/basketball/American football, but to a younger, broader audience ready for something different. If Mike Trout, the best baseball player of this century, knocked on your door, you might not recognize him. If Messi did, your neighborhood would come together in 30 seconds flat.

Personal notes: I watched part of the 1994 World Cup, but I didn’t understand it well. A few years later I read a Vanity Fair article about how London had gone crazy over the Chelsea football team. Being a bit of an Anglophile – okay, more than a bit – I started watching (sometimes recording) the one Premier League match broadcast by ESPN per week. I learned a lot about Blackburn Rovers.

This, I saw from afar, was different from national teams playing away from home in stadiums built for American football. It was intense. Soon I had a favorite team (Man United) and player (Beckham). It hasn’t always been easy to follow – before the advent of Wi-Fi, I learned that United had won the 1997 Premier League title by reading the scores in USA Today two days after the fact – but I had caught the bug.

I bought a shortwave radio to listen to the match of the week on the BBC World Service. (I hung the antenna out of the car window on the way to football games.) I knew who Robbie Earle and Robbie Mustoe were long before they became NBC’s Two Robbies. I started with England, but my interest broadened more and more. I follow baseball/basketball/American football because it’s my job. I watch football because I love it.

And while I don’t fit the MLS demographic (I’m not young anymore and I was never into it), I know I’m not alone. In 1994, soccer in the United States wasn’t even a niche sport. Thirty years later, it’s become a mainstream sport. Atlanta United draws more people than the Braves. We’re the home of American soccer. Messi came to town and stopped traffic. (Traffic stops here a lot, but not for one person.)

We’ve had a lot in Atlanta – Super Bowls, Final Fours and even an Olympiad – but the football summer of ’26 might be our biggest deal yet. Hopefully the grass is greener by then.