The FIFA World Cup has begun, and today the United States plays its first match. This summer, Kansas City will welcome the world as one of the tournament's host cities, and my brother and I have tickets to attend one of the games. Earlier this year, we made a point of stopping by the World Cup countdown clock during a trip to Kansas City. It was a small pilgrimage of sorts, a chance to stand before a future experience that felt both distant and inevitable.
If you had told me ten years ago that I would be excited about the World Cup, I probably would have laughed.
Soccer was not my first athletic love. I played as a child on teams coached by my father, but my interests quickly moved elsewhere. Baseball captured my imagination first. Then came track and field. Later, I found my way into weightlifting and football. Soccer became one of those memories filed away with childhood, something I assumed belonged to an earlier version of myself.
Yet life has a way of returning us to things we thought we had left behind.
Much of my renewed interest in soccer comes from traveling with my brother. Some of my favorite memories from the last several years have come from the miles we have shared together. Road trips have a way of creating their own traditions, and somewhere along the way soccer became one of ours.
At first, it was simply something he enjoyed. Then it became something we experienced together.
We watched Phoenix Rising in Arizona. We attended matches for the KC Current. More recently, we found ourselves at Sporting Kansas City games. What began as an occasional diversion gradually became something I actively looked forward to. Today, I find myself checking scores, following standings, and watching matches on Apple TV. The KC Current have become my favorite club to follow, though I have developed a growing appreciation for Sporting KC as well.
What surprises me most is not that I enjoy soccer. It is how much I enjoy being a beginner again.
Soccer remains, in many ways, a mystery to me. I understand the rules, but I often struggle to see the deeper strategy unfolding on the field. Added time still feels strange. The clock reaches ninety minutes and somehow the game continues. I cannot always anticipate substitutions or tactical adjustments. Unlike baseball, where decades of watching have taught me how to read a game, or football, where formations often reveal intent before the play begins, soccer still feels like a language I am only beginning to learn.
Oddly enough, that uncertainty has become part of its appeal.
As adults, we spend much of our lives becoming experts in our own interests. We know the history, traditions, statistics, and unwritten rules. We become comfortable within the boundaries of what we already understand. Soccer returns me to a posture of curiosity. It reminds me what it feels like to encounter something without mastery.
There is a particular joy in not knowing everything.
The older I become, the more I realize that openness is not simply a personality trait. It is a discipline. It is the willingness to approach something unfamiliar without immediately dismissing it. It is the recognition that our identities are not finished products but ongoing conversations.
Travel has taught me this lesson repeatedly.
Some of my favorite experiences have emerged from things I never intended to love. A museum I almost skipped. A neighborhood discovered by accident. A meal I reluctantly ordered. A conversation with a stranger. A soccer match that initially seemed like little more than a way to fill an evening.
Life becomes richer when we remain open to surprise.
What I admire most about soccer is its simplicity.
At its heart, the game is simply people and a ball.
The field can be almost anywhere. A vacant lot. A city street. A schoolyard. A beach. A patch of grass behind an apartment building. Goals can be made from sticks, stones, backpacks, or imagination. The game asks very little of those who wish to play it.
Perhaps that is why it belongs to the world.
Many sports require specialized equipment, facilities, or significant expense. Baseball demands bats, gloves, and a diamond. Football requires helmets, pads, and large rosters. Hockey requires expensive gear and access to ice. Soccer strips away nearly all of those barriers. A ball and a few willing participants are enough.
There is something profoundly democratic about that simplicity.
The game belongs equally to children in wealthy suburbs and children in crowded cities. It can be played in places of abundance and places of scarcity. It crosses borders with remarkable ease because its essential requirements are so modest. In a world increasingly divided by economics, politics, language, and culture, soccer remains one of the few truly universal activities.
As the World Cup unfolds in Kansas City, I find myself thinking about that universality.
Soon, people from every corner of the globe will gather in the Midwest. They will arrive speaking different languages and carrying different histories. They will wear different colors, sing different songs, and cheer for different nations. Yet for ninety minutes they will all understand the same thing.
A ball.
A goal.
A field.
A crowd.
Kansas City itself feels like a fitting host. Over the last decade, the city has quietly become one of the centers of American soccer culture. Sporting KC helped establish a passionate fan base. The KC Current have become one of the premier clubs in women's soccer and play in the first stadium built specifically for a professional women's team. The World Cup's arrival feels less like an accident and more like the culmination of a long relationship between a city and a sport.
In some ways, my own journey mirrors that story.
Soccer moved from the margins of my attention toward the center, not through a grand conversion but through a series of small encounters. A game here. A trip there. A shared experience with my brother. What once felt unfamiliar gradually became meaningful.
Looking at Ángel Zárraga's Futbolistas en el llano, I am struck by what the painting chooses to capture. There is no trophy. No celebration. No final score. One player stretches upward toward the ball. Another collides with him. A third lies on the ground after a challenge. No one possesses the ball. No one has won.
The painting captures pursuit rather than achievement.
It captures the reaching itself.
The longer I look at it, the more it feels like a metaphor for the best parts of life. Many of the experiences that have brought me the greatest joy were not things I deliberately sought. They emerged because I remained open long enough for them to find me. New friendships. New places. New interests. New ways of understanding the world.
Soccer has become one of those gifts.
Had I remained committed to the idea that I already knew what sports I liked, I might never have discovered the joy of watching the KC Current on a summer evening, attending matches with my brother, or anticipating the arrival of the world's game in a city I know and love.
The older I become, the less interested I am in certainty and the more interested I am in curiosity.
Like the players in Zárraga's painting, we rarely know exactly where the ball will land.
The important thing is that we remain willing to reach for it.