I need to be honest with you before we go any further.
I am not a soccer guy.
Fifty years of Saturdays and Sundays trained me in football, not futbol. I couldn’t tell you the offside rule if my life depended on it, and I’ve never once organized my calendar around a match. So, when I tell you the last 40 days changed how I think about this sport and how proud I am of my own country, that’s not coming from a lifelong fan. It’s coming from a man who watched the world show up on our doorstep and watched us answer the door well.
Here’s what I mean.
THE WHOLE WORLD WAS WATCHING
The Spain-Argentina final wasn’t just a game. It was, by some estimates, watched by over a billion people worldwide. In Spain, the match averaged 15.7 million viewers, an 87.1% share of all viewers watching television that night. In the U.K., 13.9 million tuned in for a 64% share. Those aren’t rounding errors. That’s a nation stopping what it’s doing, together, to watch something unfold on American soil.
And it wasn’t just the final. The U.S. men’s soccer team on its own run pulled more than 50 million American viewers for their match against Belgium, the largest broadcast audience for a soccer game in this country’s history, according to CBS Sports. Whatever you think about soccer, you cannot argue with an audience that size. Something moved in this country over the last month, and it moved a lot of people who, like me, had never given the sport much thought before.
I don’t think that’s an accident. I think it’s an opportunity, and I don’t want us to waste it.
WHAT VISITORS ACTUALLY FOUND HERE
Here’s the part that matters most to me. For 40 days, millions of visitors from around the world walked through our cities, stadiums, small towns, and gas stations. And what did they find?
They found a Christian nation. They found people who were kind to strangers. They found national landmarks that took their breath away. And, I’ll admit this made me smile, they found genuine delight in things we take completely for granted. Fast food. Walmart. Buc-ee’s. The ordinary architecture of American life became, for a month, a source of wonder for people who’d never experienced it.
That matters. For years, the rest of the world has heard a story about America that emphasizes division, decline, and dysfunction. For 40 days, a different story unfolded, not through a press release, but through lived experience. Visitors didn’t read about American hospitality. They received it. They didn’t hear a talking point about our landmarks. They stood under them.
Scripture tells us that a city set on a hill cannot be hidden (Matthew 5:14). For six weeks, we didn’t hide it. We let it shine, and the world noticed.
THE NUMBERS COMING IN ARE GENUINELY GOOD
Here’s what I love about this next part, we don’t have to guess. We don’t have to lean on hopeful projections. The real numbers are coming in, and they back up what we all felt as this thing unfolded.
Bank of America, an official World Cup sponsor with direct access to real consumer card-spending data, reported the strongest national card-spending growth in over four years during the tournament window. Across the 16 host cities, overall card-based purchases rose 6.3% year-over-year, and spending by non-local visitors jumped 16.7%. That’s real money, moving through real restaurants, hotels, and small businesses, spent by people who came from somewhere else to be part of this. On top of that, FIFA itself is on pace to close out this tournament cycle with roughly $13 billion in revenue, the richest four-year stretch in the organization’s history, driven in large part by American stadiums, American broadcasts, and American fans.
That’s the story I want us to sit with. Skeptics will always find a reason to poke holes in a big projection, and that’s fine, a healthy dose of scrutiny keeps everybody honest. But when the independent, real-time numbers come in this strong, it confirms something simple: the world showed up, they spent money here, and this country delivered an experience worth paying for. We don’t need a rosy press release to tell us that. The receipts already do.
THIS WASN’T A FLASH IN THE PAN — IT WAS A STARTING GUN
What encourages me most isn’t a single tournament. It’s what U.S. Soccer is doing with the momentum.
CEO J.T. Batson has been direct about it: the federation views this summer not as a finish line but as a springboard, one they intend to use again with the 2028 Olympics and the 2031 Women’s World Cup. Batson described a groundswell of interest following the U.S. men’s soccer team that was, in his words, not imaginary. Business leaders have reportedly been reaching out to the federation directly, asking what they can do to help grow the game at every level in this country.
That’s the posture I want to see more American institutions take. Not “We had our moment, let’s move on,” but “We had our moment, now let’s build.” A legacy isn’t built in 40 days. It’s created in what a nation chooses to do in the 40 years after.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR GOD, FAMILY, AND COUNTRY
You might be wondering why a men’s ministry built around restoring God, Family, and Country is writing about a soccer tournament. Here’s why.
This World Cup put a mirror in front of the world, and what it reflected back was a nation that, despite every headline telling us otherwise, still has good bones. Good people. Real hospitality. A Christian foundation that visitors could feel, even if they couldn’t name it. We didn’t manufacture that for the cameras. It was already here. The tournament just gave the rest of the world a reason to notice.
That’s exactly the message at the heart of American Family Renaissance. We are not a broken, hopeless nation waiting on politicians to save us. We are a nation with the raw materials for restoration already in place—faith, family, and character—and what we do with those raw materials is a choice each of us makes daily. The World Cup didn’t create American greatness. It revealed it. And revealed things have a way of being either stewarded or squandered.
There’s also a simpler, more personal lesson underneath all of this. For six weeks, a big part of this country went outside. Men, wives, and kids filled stadiums, packed into fan zones, and gathered around televisions together instead of scattering into separate rooms with separate screens. I’ve said for years that getting outside to move your body, enjoy what God made, and build real relationships does more for a man’s soul than another hour on his phone ever will. This tournament was a large-scale reminder of that truth. Community happens in person. Fathers, this is worth paying attention to, your kids remember the games you watched together far longer than they remember the games you scrolled past.
THE CHALLENGE
So, here’s what I’d ask of you.
Don’t let this moment pass as just a sports story. Let it be a reminder of what’s true about this country when we choose to live up to it—hospitable, faithful, and capable of putting on the biggest stage in the world without losing who we are. And let it be a reminder, closer to home, that the same principle applies to your own family. The world doesn’t need you to give a speech about your values. It needs to experience them—in your kindness, your hospitality, your presence.
We were given a billion sets of eyes for six weeks. The question now is what we build with the attention we were handed—as a nation and as men leading our own households.
Because in the end, God, Family, and Country was never a slogan. For 40 days, the world got to see what it looks like lived out. Let’s not take it for granted. Let’s build on it.
Sources referenced in this article:
- Suzanne Rowan Kelleher, “World Cup Didn’t Boost International Visitors In June — Here’s Why It Matters,” Forbes, July 14, 2026: forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2026/07/14/fifa-world-cup-winner-not-us-economy
- Pardeep Cattry, “U.S. Soccer maps out long-term vision after USMNT’s roller coaster World Cup run,” CBS Sports, July 17, 2026: cbssports.com/soccer/news/u-s-soccer-vision-for-future-after-usmnts-rollercoaster-world-cup-run-2026
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About the Author: Mike Van Pelt (“MVP”) is the founder of American Family Renaissance and CEO of True Man Life Coaching. He is a men’s mentor, speaker, author, and podcast host dedicated to helping men reclaim their God-given identity so they can lead strong families and help restore the moral and spiritual foundation of the American family.