Your Guide To Enjoying This Yankee-Free World Cup
GQ|July 2018

The least red-white-and-blue (if you don’t count Russia!) major sporting event in our time will be the most chaotic, entertaining, and day-drinking-est World Cup the... world has ever known. An exhaustive pocket guide

Roger Bennett
Your Guide To Enjoying This Yankee-Free World Cup

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but brace yourself, America: The United States— the country that put a man on the moon and a Starbucks on every corner—did not qualify for this summer’s World Cup, which will be played in Russia from mid- June to mid-July.

This dark truth may fill you with an overwhelming sense of astonishment, especially when you consider Iran, Panama, and Iceland (population 335,000) are among the teams that did make the cut. That astonishment will only swell when you learn that such traditional powers as Italy, Netherlands, and Chile also crashed out in slapstick style, yet no one has had the entrepreneurial nous to set up a World Cup NIT.

What America’s absence does mean is there will be no Landon Donovan–inspired moment of last-minute collective ecstasy; no new heroes forged, as when Tim Howard went all Terry Sawchuk on the entire nation of Belgium; no searing moment of epic failure, akin to striker Chris Wondolowski whi∞ng in the dying embers of a game with a wide-open goal, and a small fortune in future Wheaties-box endorsements, at his mercy.

This story is from the July 2018 edition of GQ.

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This story is from the July 2018 edition of GQ.

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