When Roger Bennett and Michael Davies started Men in Blazers in 2010, in the run-up to the World Cup in South Africa, that their silly podcast (two British transplants to New York City translating English football to an American audience) would grow into the largest soccer-focused media network in the country was so resolutely unlikely that to call it a dream come true would be insulting to actual ambition. Much more likely was that a World Cup might return to the US in their lifetime—and this summer’s 2026 World Cup, co-hosted by the US, Mexico, and Canada, will serve as a culmination for the stoking of soccer enthusiasm in America that Men in Blazers has been responsible for over the last decade-and-a-half.

Bennett, who moved to the US in 1994, right as the country was on the verge of hosting its first World Cup, recalls for me that a poll taken three weeks before the tournament found that 71% of America didn’t know the World Cup was about to start and the other 29% didn’t care. This time around, interest is already at a fever pitch and demand for tickets is practically unmeetable. FIFA received applications for 500 million tickets in its last ticket lottery. Many run-of-the-mill tickets to run-of-the-mill group-stage matches have a face value of $500-$1,000. Early knockout-round matches are double that. And the worst seat at the final, at Met Life Stadium in mid-July, is flirting with five figures. Thanks to the tournament’s expansion to 48 teams, the 2026 World Cup will see twice as many matches in 2026 as in 1994 (104 vs. 52), meaning the opportunity to get in the door to see on-the-field action is there. But the five-week party off the field might be the more tantalizing draw. Where should people go? What should people do? Which players, teams, and fan bases should you temporarily pledge your allegiance to?

To help address our burning questions about the World Cup to come, we turned to Bennett, arguably the most effective and entertainingly acerbic cheerleader for the growth of the game in this country. In 2021, Bennett published the rollicking memoir (Re)Born in the USA about his journey from Liverpool to the life in America he dreamed of as a boy, a journey that resolved, nearly 30 years after arriving, in Bennett becoming an American citizen. His brand-new book, We Are the World (Cup), retells the story of his life through a personal history of the dozen World Cups in his living memory. The forest of Bennett’s memory is oriented around World Cups the way that other people’s are organized by their relationships and their work. In this way, there is no greater expert on not just the World Cup as a sporting event—but the World Cup as an opportunity for memory-making. The 2026 World Cup—which will take place June 11 to July 19—is officially 100 days out and here for the taking.

GQ: Let’s start with tickets. There have been some wild headlines about the get-in prices for matches. If someone is waking up today to the fact that the World Cup is just three months away and really wants to attend a match, how do they get tickets? And what fresh hell awaits them?

Bennett: That’s the question I get asked more than any other. It’s also the one question that I am ill-equipped to understand. I think if you’ve watched any Willy Wonka movie, I think you know the stakes. I mean, it’s amazing, man. It is amazing. 1994 was when I moved here. And I think America, there was a study released a couple of weeks before the tournament that 71% of Americans didn’t know the tournament was happening and the other 29% didn’t care. And now here we are. I would say whatever you did to get tickets to Oasis last summer, do it again.

Some of these tickets for lesser games are still touching $1,000 apiece. Help me understand why.

Look, it’s startling for many reasons. Football is a working class game at its roots. And the football I grew up with in England, in Liverpool, was a kind of football where you went to the game every week, you traveled with your team around, not just around the nation, but around Europe. And tickets cost almost nothing because it was a working-class game. Sports in America is something incredibly different. Sports is entertainment. Teams are entertainment platforms. There are franchises which can be moved around the owner’s whim without anyone really complaining here. Ultimately, that means that you do not blink when you see how much front-row tickets cost at Madison Square Garden. And what we’re seeing with this ticket reality is the culture of European and South American football and its working-class roots come up against American sporting culture and looking at it with sheer and utter horror. It’s a culture clash as much as anything.

If you are a person who, let’s just say, strikes out or otherwise can’t find their way into a game this summer, just due to the insane demand, if you want to see or rather be part of something that is still very specific to this event, where do you go, what do you do, and what team’s fan base do you adopt?

I mean, look, the joy of a World Cup, there’s many joys, man, is that some of the most indelible memories, some of the most cacophonous scenes happen off the field and are accessible to everybody. I remember Brazil 2014 waking up every morning and throwing open my curtains. I was in Rio on the beach, Copa Cabana—Brazilian so madly passionate about Barry Manilow that they named one of their beaches after his song [laughs]—and you’d look at it and at one end: 50,000 Argentinian fans who’d come over with no tickets, no hotel rooms, sleeping, waking up, starting to kick footballs around. At the other end: 100,000 Uruguayan fans, the same. And it was just an incredible, busy, joyous, and ebullient scene. So what we’re going to see in 2026 is that happen in the United States.

So if I was to say anything, where do you want to be? I would be in Kansas City when the Netherlands play and be part of their deeply welcoming fan base. The Dutch fans marching down Kansas City’s boulevards before the game en masse, 20,000, 30,000 of them wearing orange to a human being. And they do this dance with linked arms. They bounce to the right, they bounce to the left, thousands of them all together. And it’s mesmerizing and it is beautiful and it is wonderful. And Americans will marvel.

The Germans will take to the streets of Houston behind this saxophonist who’s become their mascot, who they put on their shoulders. He kind of plays a smooth Kenny G-like sound of 1980s hits, and they march behind him. And this will happen for team after team after team all across the country. So the tickets is one thing, but the culture of the World Cup is another entirely. And I do believe … I mean, the thing you are hinting at is what happened in around 2006 where American hipsters first got turned onto the World Cup, and there was a lot of talk about which Brazilian barbecue you go to in Brooklyn when the Seleção are playing, which Ghanaian stew joint you go to in Queens when the Black Stars were playing. But because it’s here, it’s not just about where you go. This will be accessible. This will be participatable. Everyone will be able to dance at the party around the stadium, and I think that’s what’s going to make it magnificent.

Can you describe how World Cups function for you in your life—and the memory of your life?

It’s both wonderful and embarrassing to admit this, but I do believe 73% of our most powerful memories are all located in World Cup tournaments. I mean, and I wrote this book as a personal history of the men’s World Cup. Ultimately, I’m not alone in this. What I’ve just said is not strange to much of the rest of the planet because I know that it’s the case. Part of it is the scarcity, that it is once every four years. That rhythm gives you a spine to your life so that when I meet someone and they say they met me in 1997, I will locate in my memory the nearest World Cup to that date, in that case, 1998. And then I’ll be like, “Oh, okay, that centers me. I know exactly where I was for that World Cup.” And so I can place them in that moment, in that time, in that era, in that feeling.