The World Cup Was a Distinctly American Contradiction

I’ve spent the past month thinking a lot about Morgan Freeman. 

I thought about him while watching Scotsmen dance with Haitians in Boston; while watching Kansans adopt Algerians in Lawrence; while seeing Erling Haaland, the apparent progeny of a ballet dancer and a Norse god, become an honorary Texan. Freeman was on my mind when the Japanese discovered the Lone Star State’s barbecue and the Brits discovered Buc-ee’s and Freddy—the viral German perma-tourist—discovered, well, the United States of America. I thought of Freeman while watching Folarin Balogun, an American birthright citizen, emerge as perhaps the best U.S.-born men’s striker in history. While watching Weston McKennie, a Texan who grew up on a U.S. Air Force base in Germany, dance his way across a field in California, while nearly 70,000 Americans belted out the lyrics to “Country Roads.”