DFW scores with Messi (?) in World Cup, but beware — the British are coming
[ COLUMN UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE MATCHUPS IN GROUP PLAY FOR THE 2026 WORLD CUP, WHICH WERE ANNOUNCED BY FIFA ON SAT., DEC. 6 ]
The draw for FIFA’s 2026 World Cup was announced on Friday, and for the sake of North Texas, it went as well as could be expected, save for one frightening possibility.
Get Paul Revere on the phone, the British are coming. One if by land ...
Since FIFA can’t do anything without both charging for it, and turning what could be an email into a three-hour meeting, we did not know until Saturday if England will play at AT&T Stadium in the group stage of the World Cup.
On June 17, England will play Croatia at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
Other matches to be played at AT&T Stadium include Japan vs. Netherlands; Japan vs. the winner of UKR/SWE/POL/ALB.
Also of note at AT&T Stadium: There is a good chance that Messi will play for Argentina in his final World Cup; Argentina will play Austria on June 22, and Jordan on June 27, both in Arlington.
The game to circle is June 17.
The Brits are wonderful people, and those accents can cover a wide array of boorish behaviors. British football fans, and the British press corps, however, are not the same as British people. They’re different. Don’t ask how.
The British football fan, and its press, are not exactly celebrated for their restraint. The same be said for many nations whose citizens, and its media, will come to DFW beginning in June of next year.
Friday’s global “event” was a two-hour TV show that unveiled the groups for the ‘26 World Cup; Billy Bob’s Texas held a watch party, and the way it unfolded was a win for DFW. Aside from the Summer Olympics, the 2026 World Cup will be the biggest sporting event in history.
It cannot be stated strongly enough that of the cities selected to host 2026 World Cup matches, DFW is the clear winner with nine games to be held at AT&T Stadium. Sorry, FIFA, you don’t get your way here. The city of Arlington, Texas, paid for that venue to be built in their yard, and the name won’t be changed to Dallas Stadium because you don’t have a cash partnership with AT&T.
There is, however, a trade.
Get ready for more Super Bowl-like criticism
We here in North Texas will be exposed to a level of criticism that will make the disaster that was the Super Bowl in February 2011 look like a glass of spilled, not beer or red wine, but water.
For those unfamiliar with large international sporting events, like the World Cup, combine the moronic passion of a major college football game with the subtlety of a drunk panther with the judgment of a mother on her daughter’s wedding day.
“The passion that we are going to see from visiting fans is going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” Andy Swift, a member of the FIFA 2026 World Cup Dallas board of directors said Friday at Billy Bob’s after the FIFA announcement.
“Those that have the opportunity to go to the games, the energy that they feel inside that stadium for a World Cup match, it’s going to be different than any other sporting event they’ve attended.
“North Texas, we are very used to holding these big events. The World Cup is a little bit more special in that it’s bigger and more eyes are on it because it’s so international. If there is a region that can pull this off perfectly, it’s North Texas.”
Much like a big college football game, a World Cup match does not always bring out model behavior. More like police blotter behavior.
And this will all be covered by a press corps that somehow makes the American media look good.
Will DFW World Cup guests stand the heat, traffic?
One detail no one can adequately inform its citizens about hosting a major international sporting event is the potential wave of complaints, and bad press, that come when you open your home to foreign visitors.
For those who are unfamiliar with the foreign press, the best way to prepare for their collective arrival is ear plugs, duct tape, copious amounts of alcohol and/or a one-way plane ticket in the opposite direction of their appearance.
The World Cup starts in June and ends in July; typically those are not the milder months of the year in North Texas.
Combine our hellish heat in the summer, rush hour traffic times that now include 12 a.m. to noon and noon to 12 a.m. seven days a week, with no real public transportation system that many other first world nations are accustomed, and we are apt to turn into a pinata for foreign visitors.
You can only tell a person to go to Hurricane Harbor about seven times before they’re on to it.
“Super Bowls, World Series, Final Fours, all of these big events bring these kinds of journalists that write about things that could have gone better,” Smith said. “I think we should be very proud of what we have to offer here, and at the end of the day, the World Cup is going to look at this venue [AT&T Stadium] as one of the most successful venues in all of the World Cup.”
Here is to hoping he’s right, and we pull this off “perfectly.”
Anything less, and the Brits will let us know it.
This story was originally published December 5, 2025 at 5:33 PM.
