What type of impact will the 2026 World Cup have in the U.S.?
If youβve watched a USMNT game, you wouldβve heard stats researched by Paul Carr.
He tells @RileyJamesTV how the 1994 World Cup got him into the sport and how this World Cup can do the same towards many other Americans.
β94 is the first World Cup I watched. I was 14, and it was obviously in the U.S., so more attention was paid to it,β Carr said on GOLZ TV.
βAnd I was a big Olympics fan because I grew up competitive swimming, and so it kind of carried over into soccer.
βSo I watched, you know, as much as I could, especially U.S. games. I remember I was at a swim meet, and like running back and forth to either radio or a TV to get score updates on one of the U.S. games.
βI don't know if the opener or the third one, I can't remember now, but one of those games, just to see what was happening, and it wasn't like I suddenly dive full into soccer, and was all soccer all the time after that, but it just planted the seed.
βSo then you know, because back then MLS didn't exist for a couple more years, couldn't really watch much of anything European on TV here, but again, four years later, there's another World Cup here after that, there's a women's World Cup that was in the U.S. that was huge.
βI went to college, started following the game there, working with the soccer team, and all these things, so it really just planted the seed that slowly over time for me grew into a career.
βAnd that's kind of the underrated part of a World Cup. It is obviously it's going to inspire players and such to grow up and play the game.
βYou hear stories of Becky Sauerbrunn was at a World Cup in 99 and then she played for the national team.
βBut there's also people like me, there's media types, there's front office types, business types who just came to love the game.
βMaybe they coach, you know, not on a high level, but they coach in high school or college or rec teams, whatever it is, and that's what's going to get planted by this World Cup as much as anything.β
Now a senior director at TruMedia, Carr will be providing stats for FOX Sports at this World Cup as well.
It will be exciting to see how much soccer will grow here because of this World Cup.
@SpikeEskin Yo. Im just gonna put this out there. As a kid, from Berks county PA. Whos LOVES the niners. I see , the birds, getting Aiyuk. And thats scary.