The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicked off on June 11, and something beautiful is happening that no amount of academic hand-wringing could have predicted — international soccer fans are falling head over heels in love with America. Not the America you see on CNN. The real one. The one with Waffle House at 1 a.m. and gas stations the size of aircraft hangars.
But wait, I thought we didn't have "culture." Isn't that what every smug European and every Ivy League professor has been telling us for decades? Funny how that works.
A German tourist who goes by FreddyLA7 on X has been documenting a six-week road trip through the American South and has racked up over 500,000 followers doing it. His crime? Showing the world that America is awesome. He hit a Waffle House at 1 a.m. and declared it "great food, great prices" with a perfect 10 out of 10 rating. He walked into a Buc-ee's in Texas and lost his mind: "DUDE LMAO THIS IS A GAS STATION." He discovered country singer Ella Langley and called her "the best discovery of our road trip." When he crossed the Louisiana state line, locals had hung a homemade welcome sign on the official highway marker.
That's not a tourist having a nice vacation. That's a man having a religious experience.
The numbers tell the story too. Oxford Economics projects 1.24 million international visitors will come to the United States for this tournament. Eleven host cities — Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Kansas City, and New York — are spread across the country, and nearly half of them are in the South. That means millions of foreigners are being exposed to sweet tea, biscuits and gravy, and the radical concept of free refills.
A Japanese tourist posting as @japan_nobunaga on X had his entire worldview rearranged by a plate of biscuits and gravy. "When the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen," he wrote. After tasting it, he issued a formal apology: "I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress." He called it "magnificent" and "a soft fold of comfort." A Norwegian kid's video of his first In-N-Out burger pulled nearly 900,000 views. A British poster on X under the handle @SkylarSkye3 admitted, "I can't lie… the food in America is ridiculous...how GOOD everything tastes."
Scottish fans — God bless Scotland's Tartan Army — showed up in Boston by school bus, played bagpipes at their Airbnb at 6:30 in the morning, and the neighbors loved it. One Scottish tourist named Shaun Alexander told NPR, "It's just remarkable the types of warmth that you kind of find and come across in the States." Scotland beat Haiti 1-0 in their opener and their fans have been partying through New England ever since.
Japanese sports journalist Tatsuya Takeuchi, covering the tournament from Nashville, summed it up simply: "I'm grateful for every single reaction."
Here's what's really happening. For years, the "America has no culture" crowd has dominated the conversation. They've told us we're just a strip mall with a military. Meanwhile, the rest of the world shows up and treats a Walmart like "literally a museum," as one European fan told Sky News. They're filming themselves eating Texas barbecue like they've discovered fire. Alabama firefighters are handing out merchandise to foreign visitors. Restaurant owners are driving fans to stadiums. A deli owner in the Northeast gave free lunch to a group of British tourists just because.
As one X user named @realmikolson put it perfectly: "A wise man once said, 'If you want to hate America, watch the news.'" He called the hospitality visitors are experiencing the "direct result of people living by American values."
That's the line that matters. American values. Not government programs. Not DEI initiatives. Not whatever the State Department thinks "soft power" means. Just regular Americans being generous, loud, and absurdly well-fed — and the entire world eating it up, literally.
The World Cup runs through July 19. By the time it's over, half of Europe is going to be demanding Waffle House franchises and wondering why their gas stations don't sell beef jerky in 47 flavors. Welcome to America, folks. We've had culture this whole time. You just had to get off Twitter and come see it for yourself.
As reported by Blaze News, Fox News, and NPR.
