WHEN I woke up in New York the other day, it was a proper snow globe outside.
The white stuff was falling heavily and the city looked magical.
Christmas time means the NFL and NBA Stateside but you might be surprised to learn the heat is on ahead of the World Cup.
And ‘soccer’ will be hot, hot, hot next summer as expectation grows that the USA might go deeper than ever before in the tournament.
There are scores of billboards up already in NYC. Fox and YouTube are going to be showing it and their trailers are on everywhere.
They have this nice little teaser running with Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappe, Jude Bellingham and Lamine Yamal together with Christian Pulisic, from the US team, at the end. It must be on eight or nine times a day!
Messi is a massive part of the overall buzz and Inter Miami winning the MLS Cup at the start of this month has only pushed it up another notch.
It can’t be overstated just how much Messi is shifting the dial on how football is perceived — and how seriously it is taken.
If next season goes as well as they hope, Messi will have pushed MLS forward by five-to-ten years.
And all that momentum would be carried into the World Cup.
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If you speak to people who were here before the United States hosted the tournament in 1994, they will tell you how much has changed.
One of my colleagues at broadcaster CBS is Tony Meola, who was a USA goalkeeper back then. He told me: “We really needed ’94.
“It was the first time people took us seriously and we thought a couple of us might be able to get a real job out of it. But this is completely different. This is about legacy building.”
I would compare it to what the Lionesses have done for women’s football in England, winning back-to-back Euros.
My daughter and so many other girls started playing because they wanted to be Chloe Kelly or one of her team-mates.
Football has a similar opportunity to reach a new level in the US through the World Cup.
In terms of infrastructure, things are good — except in Miami.
Whatever they say, the train system is not going to be ready so it will be a ball-ache getting to the new Miami Freedom Park stadium.
The price of tickets is also a problem.
The US is not a cheap place to watch sporting events in general.
But there is a growing frustration that, at a time when times are tight for many people, the cost is so high.
Again, I think back to the women’s 2022 Euros in England and how affordable it was.
The atmosphere could suffer at some games next summer.
You could find matches involving Cape Verde or Curacao have a better atmosphere than some of those featuring the bigger nations. My issue with organisers of events like this is why would you not want to get as many passionate fans in as possible?
Sure, you can make a killing in the short-term but if you broaden the fanbase, you will make more money in the long-term.
But in the end, the main thing which will decide whether the World Cup is a success — in the States at least — is how well Mauricio Pochettino’s USA team do.
As Tony told me, the main caveat about building the legacy is managing expectation because: “We’re American and we think we should win everything and we think we’re the best.”
The draw has not helped with keeping a lid on things, it is fair to say.
One of the teams in the USA’s group is yet to be decided as they will come through the play-offs.
They know they have Australia and Paraguay — a team they beat 2-1 in a friendly last month.
So all of a sudden they’re talking about getting to a semi-final. It’s like, ‘Steady on, guys!’
If they reached the quarters, you and I would say it was a good run and Poch had done well.
But the attitude would be, ‘We’ve done that before in 2002. We should be doing what Morocco did in Qatar and that’s the last four’.
So there’s an awful lot of pressure on this US team to perform.
For the best version of the World Cup, we will need the South Americans to do well, Pochettino’s lads to do well and three or four big hitters to go deep.
Then it will be an unbelievable experience.
I PLAYED against Antoine Semenyo when he was at Bristol City.
I’ll be the first to say I didn’t see him reaching the level he has.
He was quick and powerful but very inconsistent in his end product.
Now everyone seems to want the 25-year-old. If he has a choice of clubs, Liverpool would be a perfect fit.
Mo Salah will be moving on, this year or next, and Semenyo would be amazing for the big hole on the right.
But the alleged racial incident at Anfield on the first night of the Premier League season could have tainted that idea for him.
Semenyo will certainly have options if he leaves Bournemouth next month.
Although I see Tottenham have ruled themselves out of a move for him.
Which was nice of them, given you couldn’t see him going there.
