Foreword to 2026

MARCH 2025

Trump’s Svengali-like hold on Davos this past January said enough about the rickety postwar alliance and neoliberal consensus, naked transactionalism among business elites and tired gospel of corporate benevolence. Yet it was the president’s testy exchange with Brian Moynihan, eliciting a non sequitur from the Bank of America chief about FIFA World Cup 2026, that put color to the notion of the fast-approaching tournament as a touchstone for the American condition. Indeed, there’s something deeply poetic about an event of this magnitude, at this moment in history, under these circumstances. What should be a breezy soft-power exercise for a confident, 250-year-old superpower in lockstep with its partners looks more and more like an allegory for insecurity and self-sabotage. Then again, what else should one expect from a hyper-commercial spectacle whose very predecessor, steeped in corruption and graft, saw Elon Musk, Eric Adams and other gargoyles of our spiritual crisis rubbing shoulders with autocrats in gleaming stadiums built by coerced labor?

Which is to say, the moment was foretold—four years ago and then some. For anyone paying attention, the writing has been on the wall all along.

This is not partisan sentiment. November and our last election cycle said more about a citizenry and marketplace taking their gifts for granted than a political establishment either mid-psychosis or agonizingly enfeebled. This civic syndrome persists no matter who occupies the White House. World Cup 2026, for its part, is the volume turned up on the quiet parts finally being said out loud. In a sense, one can be thankful that a Harris win, by simply kicking the can down the road, didn’t deny us this reality check and opportunity for reflection. (It may have also robbed us of Trumpian tournament gems like the one Jeff Maurer predicts or the crypto-sponsored Fox Sports cutaways to the Tate brothers in Hard Rock Stadium’s presidential suite.)

Nor is it fatalism. Despite their impressive demographic gains since 1994, the United States is more than just hucksters, plutocrats, influencers and their useful dupes. The runway to next summer is a chance to go beyond the well-worn “power of sport” narrative to spotlight the individuals, organizations and coalitions—across business, policymaking, media, the arts and advocacy—driving systems reinvention and a brass-tacks, middle-of-the-road blueprint, absent ideology. By no coincidence, it’s an intuition for stewardship and innovation that tends to flourish and endure at the local level (World Cup, after all, is a cities story).

Meanwhile, we can celebrate the tournament and game for their true transcendence. For a sport that, at its purest and best, harmonizes individual virtuosity with collective excellence and aspiration in the spirit of good-faith competition, World Cup 2026, in a country that has made soccer its own, should be nothing less than a homecoming.

At any rate, it’s what we’ve got. We’re nigh 10 years into this thing—too committed to the bit to abandon ship now. Other, brighter ideas, email us at studio@santiago-media.com.