U.S. star Christian Pulisic fractured his right leg during the Americans’ World Cup loss to Belgium and will be sidelined for several weeks, a person familiar with the injury said Thursday.
The person spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the diagnosis, first reported by the Athletic, had not yet been announced by the U.S. Soccer Federation.
Pulisic has a bone bruise and a microfracture of his tibia and fibula, the person said. He is expected to be able to resume training before AC Milan’s Serie A opener at Torino on Aug. 23, the person added.
Christian Pulisic (second from right) on the bench after leaving the U.S.-Belgium game.Abbie Parr
Pulisic hit a leg of Belgium captain Youri Tielemans while attempting a shot in the 52nd minute of Monday’s 4-1 round of 16 loss in Seattle. He remained in the game but was hobbling, and Sebastian Berhalter replaced him in the 59th minute.
The Hershey native failed to score in the World Cup, missed one of the Americans’ five matches because of a calf injury, and left two other games early. He has 33 goals in 90 international appearances.
Pulisic, who turns 28 in September, is entering his fourth season with Milan.
SEATTLE — The hype around this World Cup didn’t just start when the last one ended four years ago. It took off as soon as the U.S. was picked as host, on the eve of the 2018 edition for which they failed to qualify.
By the time this summer arrived, there was enough evidence to believe these players could make the history they dreamed of, wanting to do things no U.S. men’s team had done before on soccer’s biggest stage.
So a bar was set for them. The program had just one knockout game win in its history. Winning two would mean a quarterfinal berth. It also presumably would mean toppling a giant somewhere along the way.
Once the draw was made last fall, the name of that giant was Belgium, the nation that sent the U.S. home in 2014. That made an easy measuring stick for this generation. If they were that much better, they’d do what their predecessors hadn’t.
The scene just after the national anthems in Seattle, when the packed crowd of U.S. fans hoped for a historic win.Nick Didlick
For this game turned out to not be just about Balogun on the American side. The whole squad blew it on the biggest stage, and they knew it.
“This moment hurts more, stings more, than probably any other moment in my life,” Wayne-born goalkeeper Matt Freese said after a horror game, especially on Belgium’s third goal that blew the game open, when he was stripped of the ball after straying out of his 18-yard box.
“Yes, it stings,” midfielder Tyler Adams said. “This was a moment to have the opportunity to advance and really try and do something special, and we fell short.”
Asked why the team was so flat, he answered: “It’s a great question. I wish I had the answer right now. I don’t know.”
Christian Pulisic tried to lift the mood, but he took some tough questions after leaving a game injured for the second time in this tournament. Along with that, the team’s most important attacker didn’t play the entirety of any game, though at least in the Bosnia win he played 88 minutes.
Christian Pulisic played 224 minutes across four games in this World Cup.Lindsey Wasson
“I didn’t quite have the moments I was hoping to, to try to help us to really push and get over this next step of beating a really good team,” he said. “So I’m disappointed with myself, of course, but I’m going to try to stay positive. I did a lot of good things, and the team did as well.”
Gio Reyna also was underwhelming. After earning enough of Pochettino’s affection to make the World Cup team, he played just 131 minutes over the five games, took two shots, created one chance, and scored a goal that was beautiful, but in a game that already was won.
“If we lose to Bosnia, it’s obviously a big disappointment, and then if we win today, it’s probably a very big achievement for the group,” he said. “So it felt like we kind of just almost did what was expected. … It’s hard to say, I guess, what’s needed to make the next steps to really push through.”
One thing would be the biggest stars delivering in the biggest moments. That has happened for Kylian Mbappé’s France, Lionel Messi’s Argentina, Jude Bellingham’s England, and Erling Haaland’s Norway.
But it did not happen for the United States.
Gio Reyna (left) walks off the field after the loss to Belgium.Ted S. Warren
Will it be worth splashing cash on another big name? Or, since he wasn’t clearly better in the biggest moments than his American predecessors, should there be a serious conversation about whether it’s necessary?
Mauricio Pochettino’s gesture of thanks to U.S. fans after the final whistle.Ted S. Warren
Former Los Angeles FC manager (and longtime stalwart U.S. player) Steve Cherundolo also is on the list. New Jersey native Pellegrino Matarazzo, who has made his coaching name at European clubs, is too, though he might want more time overseas before coming home. Former Union coach Jim Curtin would be on the list if he hadn’t just been hired by Austin FC.
But will the donors lean on U.S. Soccer to go for another famous name?
One of those donors, Scott Goodwin, has quite a few friends in the soccer world — and some at the White House, too: The New York Times reported that he called them to complain about Balogun’s red card.
B.J. Callaghan talking with the media when Nashville SC visited the Union earlier this year.Jonathan Tannenwald / Staff
Two years ago, Goodwin called his soccer friends to complain about the U.S. team’s flop at the Copa América. They included two former U.S. players who remain well-known in soccer circles, MLS executive Alecko Eskandarian and broadcaster-turned-investor Kyle Martino.
Goodwin was so angry at the U.S. team’s performance that he said, as he recalled to the New York Post last month: “This is a chance to get an amazing coach.”
Then, as The Athletic put it just before the World Cup started, “To Goodwin, there were three names that fit the bill: Klopp, Pochettino and Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola.”
None of them were American. None had ever coached in the United States. Was there an implicit view there that no American could be good enough for the job?
Good questions for U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson and chief operating officer Dan Helfrich: Do they think the difference between a big-name foreigner and a qualified American is worth another $6 million bet? And how much sway will the donors hold this time?
U.S. Soccer declined to make leadership available to the media on Tuesday. A spokesperson told The Inquirer that there might be an availability in the coming days.
And what about a second term for Pochettino, who’s now out of contract? The players grew attached to him, but that happens with almost any manager. He has talked with U.S. Soccer about another term, but there also have been plenty of hints that he’d like to go back to Europe.
“I think now, because we were talking with the federation, it’s about to rest a little bit, to think, to have conversation, and then see what the decision is from the federation and from us,” Pochettino said Monday night. “I think we’ve built a very good relationship, but now is not a moment to talk about that. … For sure, in the next weeks, we can start to talk — if the federation wants to talk.”
Late Tuesday morning, U.S. Soccer issued a statement about its side of those talks.
“We had positive conversations with Mauricio before the World Cup about the future,” the federation said. “We agreed we would continue those conversations following a chance to rest and reflect post-World Cup.”
It hinted at the future, but only barely.
“We have a great deal of respect and gratitude for Mauricio, his staff and everyone part of the program,” it said. “We have shared excitement about our potential and also shared clarity about the amount of work at all levels still required to achieve our ambition.”
Mauricio Pochettino (center) addressing players and staff after the loss.Nick Didlick
If the Phillies end up taking a pitcher with the No. 36 pick in the upcoming draft, the MLB network will have the perfect analyst on hand to break it down.
Cole Hamels, the 2008 World Series MVP and current NBC Sports Philadelphia broadcaster, is joining MLB Network’s live coverage of the 2026 MLB draft, which kicks off Saturday afternoon at 1 p.m. at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
Longtime MLB Network coordinating producer Chris Roenbeck, who is working his fourth draft, said they’re always looking to add a “special wrinkle” to their coverage. With this year’s draft taking place in Philadelphia, the stars aligned to add Hamels to their broadcast.
“When we started brainstorming months ago, we quickly thought of Cole, given his decorated career with the Phillies and being a first-round pick,” Roenbeck said. “We’ll go to him early and often for pitching insights, relying on his unique perspective, which will only enhance our broadcast.”
Hamels is the only new addition to MLB’s Network’s draft coverage, which will be hosted by Greg Amsinger and feature analysis by Mark DeRosa, Harold Reynolds, and former Colorado Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd.
“We’re beyond excited to have Cole part of our draft team,” Amsinger said, noting Hamels’ “draft experience and pitching expertise will take our show to the next level.”
“Certainly, we would love to have him every weekend,” Alexandra Matcham, the vice president of content for NBC Sports Philadelphia, told The Inquirer in March.
Hamels won’t be the only Philly addition. The opening of MLB Network’s draft coverage will be voiced by Black Thought (aka Tariq Trotter), lead MC of the Philly hip hop group The Roots.
NBC will broadcast the first 10 picks of the MLB draft
The 2026 MLB draft will take place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Center City.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Hamels and company will be on hand to discuss the Phillies’ No. 32 pick, but MLB Network won’t air the first 10 picks of the draft
Why? Because NBC will be broadcasting the first hour and a half of this year’s MLB draft as part of their three-year TV rights deal with MLB, taking over for ESPN.
As a result, the MLB draft will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday on NBC before coverage shifts to MLB Network at 2:30 p.m., picking things up with the No. 11 pick.
NBC will carry MLB Network’s production, so you won’t see Mike Tirico and crew this weekend.
The entire draft will stream on Peacock, which will simulcast MLB Network’s coverage after NBC cuts away to cover the American Century Championship, often described as the Super Bowl of celebrity golf tournaments.
The draft streaming on Peacock is good news for YouTube TV subscribers, where MLB Network has remained dark for three years due to a contract dispute. The network is also available to stream as part of MLB+, beginning at $5.99 per month.
The MLB Network has broadcast the draft since 2009. ESPN was the first network to broadcast the draft, which aired the first round live on ESPN2 in 2007.
Quick hits
Malik Tillman reacts after the U.S. was eliminated from the World Cup by Belgium Monday. Manu Fernandez
“This doesn’t have to be the last soccer you watch for the next four years.” That was John Strong, Fox’s lead World Cup announcer, pleading with American fans after the U.S. was eliminated from the World Cup by Belgium Monday.
Credit to Delran native and two-time World Cup champ Carli Lloyd, who wasn’t afraid to criticize U.S. star Christian Pulisic after the United States’ disappointing loss.
On a brighter note for American football fans, the NFL preseason is less than a month away. The annual Pro Football Hall of Fame game, featuring the Arizona Cardinals and Carolina Panthers, kicks off Aug. 6. The Eagles’ first preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens is one week later on Aug. 15.
What amazes me about the fact that America turns 250 on Saturday is that I’ve been alive now for 27% of U.S. history. When I was 17 and watched the Bicentennial parade of tall ships down the Hudson River from my dad’s conveniently located Manhattan skyscraper office on July 4, 1976, I thought I was celebrating ancient history. I was wrong. In a big, diverse world, the United States remains a young adult among nations. Like most young adults, we have a lot of issues.
Trump thinks anything besides stealing the election is ‘a big yawn’
Voting booths are set up at a polling place in Newtown in 2024.Matt Rourke
Donald Trump gets a lot of flak, and deservedly so, for telling so many lies. On Monday, he held an Oval Office press availability, and much of what he said — false claims that other nations don’t have birthright citizenship or mail-in voting — was flat-out untrue.
But nothing is scarier than when the 47th president speaks the truth about what’s really on his mind. Because the only thing that’s in Trump’s brain right now is stealing the November midterm election by changing the rules in his favor … or worse. If Trump’s vocal cords were not so weak and diminished, he’d have been screaming the quiet part out loud.
“Here’s what I would like to say,” Trump said of the still-unsigned housing bill, which passed in the House by a 396-13 vote. “It’s a yawn. Some people say it’s wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
In quainter times, Trump’s disrespect for the housing bill — a grab bag of measures all geared toward encouraging contractors to build more units, which would lower both purchase prices and rents — might be the political gaffe of the year. Currently, only 29% of Americans think it’s a good time to buy a house, and nearly two-thirds are more likely to vote for a Congress member who helped lower prices. Republicans who voted for the bill are desperate for a win.
Trump doesn’t care. He’s forgotten his “forgotten Americans” who think the rent is too damn high, not to mention the GOP members of Congress who’ve followed him off the cliff. But that’s not even close to the most alarming thing about Trump’s Oval Office moment of truth.
The president says the only thing he cares about — even with his conflict in Iran becoming another “forever war,” and with the economy down the toilet for everyone who’s not a tech trillionaire — is a bill that critics say would be a disaster for free and fair U.S. elections. One report found that some 12 million people who fairly and successfully voted in the 2020 presidential election don’t have the documentation — such as a birth certificate or passport — that the bill requires.
We don’t know how such a massive drop in turnout would change the election results, or whether a weakened Trump can pressure theGOP to find a way to pass a bill with zero Democratic support. But we do know this: The president’s maneuvers are not even the worst thing Trump has done this month on the steal-this-election front. Not by a long shot.
The Trump regime has been signaling for months that it sees the U.S. intelligence community — spy agencies like the CIA — not as a tool for finding out what comes next in the Persian Gulf, or if or when China is invading Taiwan, or when Vladimir Putin’s Russian empire will fall. No, Trump wants secret agents who can creatively invent theories of foreign-born election fraud that would demand a strongman response.
We saw this coming back in January, when the regime dispatched Trump 47’s first director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to Fulton County, Ga., to oversee an FBI raid of voting materials from the 2020 election that Trump, with no evidence, continues to dispute. That link made it clear the regime is looking to create links to foreign actors.
When Gabbard left the administration this spring, Trump named a temporary replacement who can serve through the November election: Bill Pulte, who also continues to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Pulte lacks a key prerequisite for his new job — any experience in intelligence whatsoever — but has the only quality that matters to Trump: undying loyalty. Pulte’s main focus in the housing job has been combing through the mortgage records of the president’s political enemies, looking for undotted i’s and uncrossed t’s that could be used to manufacture criminal charges from nothing.
In just a few days at intelligence, Pulte has not disappointed his boss. He showed up Monday and immediately began firing current staffers, with a rumored list of hundreds. The steep reduction in eyeballs on the world’s trouble spots is disturbing, but what’s even more alarming is the one person Pulte has hired.
The newsletter SpyTalk described Pulte’s new chief of staff, Christina Norton, as “a party-loving MAGA activist with no background in national security issues but who last year boasted of running ‘the largest election integrity operation the Republican Party has ever seen’ …”
The pairing of Pulte and Norton is an alarm bell that the national intelligence team under Trump will have one job: investigating fantastical “foreign election plots” that will be cited to justify radical measures like sending troops to polling places, seizing voting machines, or worse.
SpyTalk noted that Norton, in her active Instagram feed, “talks about supervising more than 200,000 Republican poll watchers ‘standing guard’ at polling booths and vote-counting stations across the country” during her 2024 stint at the Republican National Committee.
Yet, intelligence is just one of many tools in the federal government that the obsessive Trump is working to activate ahead of a November election that polls suggest will be a “blue wave” for Democrats hoping to retake Capitol Hill. Trump has issued several executive orders seeking to assert federal control over voting, which has been a state and local function throughout 250 years of American history.
That effort suffered a bit of a setback Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can continue to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked before Election Day but arrive after the polls have closed. But that will not stop the Trump regime from politicizing the U.S. Postal Service ahead of November.
Last week, Postmaster General David Steiner told Congress that USPS plans not to deliver mail-in ballots in states that don’t turn their voter rolls over to the Trump regime, a demand many governors have resisted so far. “President Trump does not believe that elections he loses are valid,” Democratic Michigan Sen. Elisa Slotkin said after the hearing. “It’s all part of his authoritarian playbook.”
This all feels very familiar. In the lame-duck days after Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, the 45th president — instead of packing up to return to Mar-a-Lago — got busy putting in a new team at the Pentagon, ordering the U.S. Department of Justice to probe alleged voter fraud, challenging vote count certifications in court, and urging state lawmakers to seat rival slates of electors. Most pundits laughed this off, but I wrote a column — “So, is President Trump staging a coup, or what?” — that ran on Nov. 10, 2020, nearly two months before the actual attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021.
Now Trump is not only staging another coup, but he is yelling about it, in your face. There is nothing he won’t try over the next five months to prevent a Democratic Congress from investigating how he and his family have made billions of dollars off the American presidency.
When Trump says anything that’s not election meddling is a “big yawn,” this should be our wake-up call. The time for a full-court press — lawsuits, public hearings, and investigative journalism — can’t wait until after the election. The new putsch has already begun.
Yo, do this!
If you didn’t think I raced to download the new audiobook of Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s tale of growing up in the radical Weather Underground in the 1970s and ’80s — Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground — then you must be new around these parts. Dohrn had already used his unique access to his parents — Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, revolutionary royalty — and their friends to tell a history of that era’s far left in 2022’s award-winning podcast, Mother Country Radicals. His new book aims to go deeper into the psychology of what it was like to be raised as a toddler on the run from the FBI, or whether bombings and bank robberies can change the world. That’s a question — also explored in this viral essay — with new resonance in the Trump era.
A few weeks ago, I suggested that folks see the new movie The Sheep Detectives. The film is already streaming on Amazon Prime (which produced it), and Sunday’s rare night off for the World Cup offered the excuse to finally watch. I can now highly recommend it. The movie — with an adapted script by the acclaimed showrunner of HBO’s Chernobyl, Craig Mazin — manages to merge police procedural cliches with moving thoughts about prejudice, existentialism, and what it means to belong to a flock. Even a flock of talking sheep.
Ask me anything
Question: Is Markwayne [Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary and former Oklahoma senator] the least qualified cabinet level official in American history? — Richard McGovern (@richardmcgovern.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: Good question from Richard, a fellow long-suffering Philadelphia Union fan. Not because I know the answer, when there are rivals for the title like Donald Trump’s war-losing “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, to name just one. But Mullin is now behind a move so outlandish that it showed me I haven’t lost my capacity for shock after all. This weekend, Trump nominated a previously unknown former Oklahoma state trooper named Lance Schroyer to run U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a powerful agency with 22,000 agents and a budget of around $30 billion a year. It turns out that just recently, Schroyer was heading a security detail for Mullin in Washington, D.C., and has become a close enough friend that he is an occasional dinner guest. Yes, he hired his bodyguard to run the equivalent of a large corporation. Stay tuned for all of this to unravel.
What you’re saying about …
I guess we’re not as close as we thought, as very few of you were eager to share your July Fourth plans with me or discuss what America’s 250th birthday means at such a dark moment. The ones who did reply are looking forward to spending time with family and friends, but all that patriotic jazz, not so much. “Probably, we will have our usual picnic and take the grandkids to see the local fireworks, but I have no intention to watch any special programming or parades, etc.” Marianne Zollers wrote. “It will just make me sad. Such a different feeling compared with the Bicentennial which was such a joyous and happy occasion for my entire family.”
📮 This week’s question: One of the big stories of 2026 that’s finally getting a lot of attention is the success of more progressive Democrats, including democratic socialists, in key primary races against party moderates. Is this a good thing, lifting up candidates who’ll fight against Trump and for the working class? Or do you worry Republicans will capitalize against their opponents with more left-wing views? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “2026 progressive Democrats” in the subject line.
Backstory on crossing the World Cup off my bucket list
The Ivory Coast team celebrates their win in the middle of the field against Curaçao with a score of 2-0 for the FIFA World Cup at the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Thursday.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
I can’t say exactly when, but at some point during my first-ever in-person World Cup match between Côte d’Ivoire and Curaçao, watching from the thin air of the top deck of the temporarily renamed Philadelphia Stadium, it struck me: My decades-long dream of being there for the world’s greatest sporting event was not like what I’d imagined.
And yet, in some weird, quasi-religious acid test kind of way, it was even better.
I’ve been to countless sporting events going back to 1968, but never one where the vibe was basically: So happy to be here. I’ve certainly never been to a game where the PA announcer uttered something before the match about giving a big hand to both teams — and the sold-out crowd obliged. Fans would have burned down Section 220, Row 27, where I was sitting, if this had happened during an Eagles-Cowboys game. During a tense match with a place in the Round of 32 on the line, the gathering repeatedly did the wave and threw their vocal cords more behind the halftime singalong of the Bruce Channel 1961 oldie “Hey! Baby” than either of the two decisive goals by Côte d’Ivoire’s Les Éléphants.
Up in nosebleed country, many of the fans repped soccer jerseys, but they were for club teams like Liverpool or Christian Pulisic’s USA No. 10, joined by me in my Philadelphia Union T-shirt. We were Philly’s soccer aficionados, desperate to be a part of maybe the only time in our lives the World Cup would take place in the City of Brotherly Love. A match pitting the smallest nation to ever qualify for the FIFA tourney (Curaçao, population 158,000) and an African underdog was pretty much the only way to crash the party without a bank loan. (Full disclosure: I paid about $280 apiece for two seats on StubHub — much like buying a stock, it could have been more or less, depending on how one timed it.)
No, this wasn’t much like the Eagles games played here, where excitement merges with pins and needles of anxiety. On a picture-perfect late afternoon in June, bookended by the Philadelphia skyline and a lazy Delaware River, it felt more like a rock concert. It wouldn’t have seemed out of place if folks had started batting a beachball around at this soccer Woodstock. There was a mind-meld of the faithful, who saw FIFA and its commercialization as the devil, with the loudest boos for the TV-ad-laden “hydration breaks,” but with — I swear to God — a loud roar for the announcement of the attendance: 68,324. In a city where a 1976 Bicentennial match of some of the world’s best players took place in a mostly empty stadium, soccer is indisputably here to stay.
Fans walked out of Philadelphia Stadium beaming less over the final score and more about the instant karma of the afternoon. After years of tavern taunts and ridicule from sports-talk radio, localsoccer die-hards lived long enough to see America’s founding city become the world’s co-capital of the sport that, for its true believers, passes all understanding. It was all too beautiful. If I can somehow make it to Spain or Portugal or Morocco in 2030 (because, hey, I need a new bucket list now), I will be sure to wear some flowers in my hair. Soccer time will be a love-in there.
What I wrote on this date in 2019
I’ve been writing about the topic of journalism reform since the mid-2000s, or around the time it became clear to me and a lot of other folks that newsrooms needed to change or die. My fear, circa 2006 or so, was that we’d start seeing entire communities without newspapers or the accountability journalism that flows from that — which is exactly what happened in Youngstown, Ohio, when its paper closed seven years ago. I wrote: “The loss of the Youngstown Vindicator every morning doesn’t mean that the region’s 200,000 people will no longer be getting information. It just increases the likelihood they’ll be getting bad information — intentionally manipulated, and sometimes out-and-out fakery.”
Only one column this week, as I took a well-deserved day off to attend the World Cup. In that piece, I looked at the sorry state of justice in America on the eve of its 250th birthday, with an emphasis on the outrageous sentences — ranging from 30 to 100 years — handed down to left-wing anti-ICE protesters convicted of rioting in North Texas. The U.S. Department of Justice that pushed these virtual life sentences is also pardoning the right-wing rioters of Jan. 6, 2021, as well as billionaire fraudsters who donate money to MAGA players and causes. They’ve made a mockery of liberty and justice for all.
Let’s be honest: People — not to mention sheep (see above) — can’t get enough of a murder mystery, especially a real-life true crime. It’s been a while since a crime saga has riveted Philadelphia readers as much asthe stench of possible foul play that is growing at a home on West Chew Avenue in the city’s Olney section that police have branded a crime scene as they search for clues in the disappearance of two local women. Since the case broke open last week, nearly a dozen Inquirer reporters have produced riveting articles about the discovery of drugs, chemicals, and “a significant amount of blood” at the Horsch family residence, profiles of the two missing women — Amy McHale and Blair Tonzelli — and interviews with neighbors who talked about living next door to “a house from a scary movie.” The backstory here is that — whatever you may have heard about AI — it still takes a lot of human shoe-leather to get to the bottom of a story like this. Subscribing to The Inquirer is a twofer: You get to hurdle the paywall to read compelling journalism and feel good about being a supporter.
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
Over the last several weeks, Philadelphia has become a hub of World Cup activity. Folks are packing bars, some of which are open until 4 a.m., for watch parties, hosting rallies on the Art Museum steps, and making their way to South Philly for a match at Philadelphia Stadium or to Lemon Hill for FIFA Fan Fest.
Most of that excitement has revolved around the nations and players descending on the city for games. But now, as the U.S. men’s national soccer team was to play its final group stage game on Thursday, against Turkey outside Los Angeles, the Hershey Co. has brought another World Cup experience to the city, one that focuses on USMNT star and Hershey, Pa., native Christian Pulisic.
A family waits in line to participate in the final soccer station at the Hershey’s Soccerland pop-up event at Dilworth Park on Thursday.Aidan T. Gallo / Staff Photographer
On Thursday, the candy company based in Hershey unveiled its Soccerland at Dilworth Park next to City Hall, a celebration of all things Pulisic.
“Hershey Soccerland represents our efforts to really support Christian Pulisic as he’s on the biggest world stage for the World Cup,” said Hershey senior brand manager Katrina Vatter. “He’s a Hershey native. So we want him to know that no matter the fact that he’s playing on the world’s biggest stage, we are here to have his back.”
With the smell of chocolate in the air, the pop-up event features a three-hole golf circuit played by kicking a ball, giving fans a chance to score limited-edition Hershey’s Pulisic’s bars that feature custom wrappers with his printed signature, as well as a “Pulisic’s Playground” T-shirt.
There’s also a paint-by-numbers station, allowing fans to contribute to a mural of ChocolateTown’s hero.
“No matter where soccer has taken me, my story started in Hershey,” Pulisic said in a press release. “Growing up there shaped who I am, and knowing that support is always behind me gives me a sense of comfort and confidence wherever I play. Being able to celebrate that connection with Hershey’s means a lot to me.”
An Ivory Coast fan kicks a soccer ball on the second station of the pop-up event at Dilworth Park, outside City Hall on Thursday.Aidan T. Gallo / Staff Photographer
“Philly is right in the neck of the woods from Hershey, about an hour away,” Vatter said. “So we thought it was a great way to rally the state of Pennsylvania to continue to support Hershey’s and really show everybody what Christian’s hometown is all about.”
Soccerland is open until 6 p.m. on Thursday and continues Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
This should be a moment for sports fans to be insanely happy. The finals are underway in both the NHL and NBA, and the matchups and the games so far have never been more compelling. Soccer’s World Cup — always the greatest show on earth — starts Thursday (see below). Yet, something seems off. If you wanted to attend Monday night’s Knicks-Spurs Game 3 at Madison Square Garden, it would have cost about $4,500 — not courtside, but in the last row. Equally insane and opaque ticket pricing has ruined the World Cup for many fans. Sports are supposed to be an escape from life’s problems, not a PowerPoint demonstration of them.
Orange-clad Ivorians bring soccer joy to a World Cup tune-up in Chester
Fans of the Côte d’Ivoire national soccer team erupt in cheers during their team’s 2-0 friendly match win over the Philadelphia Union II squad at Subaru Park in Chester on June 8, ahead of the 2026 World Cup.Will Bunch
The cosmic vibes were not great Monday night. On the car radio, the news brought a new cycle of bombs dropping across the Middle East, and yet another onscreen meltdown from an American president who is stumbling toward his 80th birthday in confused anger. Reports from the eve of the much-anticipated return of soccer’s World Cup to North America were less about the game and more about U.S. immigration outrages, including a Somali referee turned away at the airport.
Then at about 6:59 p.m., I walked through a long tunnel in suburban Chester and into an undulating orange sea of pure joy.
On the green soccer pitch of Subaru Park, the national team from Côte d’Ivoire lined up in rapt attention as “L’Abidjanaise,” the national anthem of the West African nation, blared from a loudspeaker. But in the stands, fans wearing their native country’s iconic orange jerseys could not sit still, laughing and waving their cell phones, confirming with videos that their heroes were actually here, on U.S. soil.
For a you-can’t-beat-it ticket price of zero dollars, in a year of maximum sports greed, members of an African diaspora scattered along the Eastern Seaboard had driven up or down I-95 for hours to watch Côte d’Ivoire — also known by the anglicized Ivory Coast — easily win its World Cup tune-up match against the young American prospects of the Philadelphia Union II, 2-0.
Fatim Toure, 27, in her Côte d’Ivoire jersey, and her 26-year-old sister, Ferima, wearing her headwrap like many female fans at the stadium, had driven down from North Jersey to see the match, and were now beaming as they watched the kickoff from the tunnel as the sun set on a crisp, perfect June evening.
Fatim said the sisters “were filled with nationalism and pride, so we’re excited to see how it goes.”
The cheerfulness of the Côte d’Ivoire faithful who turned the 18,500-seat stadium bright orange — drowning out scattered dots of Philadelphians in the Union blue of the regular home squad — was infectious. It was truly what the world needs now.
Soccer fans like me have been waiting since 1994 with patience, then anticipation, and finally something bordering on dread for the World Cup — Planet Earth’s ultimate sporting event — to finally return to U.S. grass. With the opener in Mexico City (75% of the matches are in the United States, with the rest in Canada and Mexico) slated for Thursday, news about the World Cup and soccer’s corrupt, authoritarian-loving governing body, FIFA, has been dominated by grim headlines.
Indeed, the political rise of Trump — the stuff of cartoon satire not long after the first World Cup matches were played here 32 years ago — and his hostile border regime have sparked the greatest angst, and on the eve of the kickoff, these fears are coming true.
Top soccer referee Omar Artan from the African nation of Somalia was turned away at Miami International Airport on Saturday, denied the pinnacle of his profession by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents for reasons still unknown. The star striker for the Swiss national squad was also initially denied entry (since reversed), while a star player from Iraq was interrogated for hours.
Players from Iran — the nation Trump decided to bomb back in late February and is still engaged in a murky war — are going ahead with matches in Los Angeles and Seattle, but U.S. officials are forcing them to immediately return to their base camp over the Mexican border in Tijuana and not stay here overnight.
Côte d’Ivoire, an ethnic melting pot of 32 million people on Africa’s Atlantic coast where French is the official language, hasn’t been immune to the xenophobic U.S. turn on immigration. The nation is one of several under a restrictive travel ban by the Trump regime, and efforts to allow visas for some soccer fans have been plagued by confusion, including a $15,000 bond that was announced, then canceled.
While Monday’s free friendly match was a gleeful coming-out party for a diaspora that’s rooted in East Coast urban neighborhoods such as Southwest Philadelphia, most acknowledged that fans back in their native Côte d’Ivoire, where soccer is the national obsession, could never afford the cost of coming here — or the risk.
“The ICE situation has killed the entire momentum of the World Cup,” a Liberian-born woman from Southwest Philly, who said she came out to support her African neighbors, told me. “America could have used this to boost the economy and generate income, but because of the whole ICE situation, a lot of people are afraid to come.”
No World Cup squad will be more deeply tied to Philadelphia than Côte d’Ivoire, which plays two of its three matches at the temporarily unbranded Lincoln Financial Field, starting against Ecuador on Sunday night. The team is training in Chester at the Union’s facilities and staying in Delaware. But with the cheapest tickets on StubHub for that Ecuador showdown starting at $836, few whom I spoke with will be attending the matches that actually count for Côte d’Ivoire’s long-shot dream of becoming the first African nation to win the World Cup.
“I wish, but I couldn’t get any tickets, unfortunately — it was too expensive,” Audrey Yao, a 32-year-old Ivorian American researcher from the University of North Carolina who was visiting Philly from Chapel Hill, told me. “So the opportunity to see the team today — that’s why I’m here.“
For many Ivorians, Monday’s free friendly was essentially their World Cup, and they partied accordingly — swaying and gyrating to piped-in African Zouglou music between breaks, and celebrating wildly as keeper Alban Lafont stopped a penalty kick for Les Éléphants against rising young Union star Cavan Sullivan.
As a die-hard — emphasis on the word die — Union supporter for their 16-year tortured history, I’ve seen some great matches in Chester, but I’ve never had so much fun.
Monday night wasn’t just how the World Cup should have, could have been. It was very much the way America is supposed to be — with people who were proud and happy to be here, with one foot still planted in their bright-orange African heritage as they lived and breathed that Philadelphia freedom, with no masked goon squads there to hassle them.
By the setting-sunlit banks of the Delaware River, there was no U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, no need to raid the ATM, no bad news from outside the stadium walls. Just 90 minutes of the Beautiful Game.
Yo, do this!
Don’t expect a lot of high-class book or film reviews this month, as my waking nonwork hours are devoted to watching the World Cup. Three games to circle this week are Thursday afternoon’s opening match in Mexico City between Mexico and South Africa (3 p.m., Fox); the first U.S. match against Paraguay in Los Angeles Friday night (9 p.m., Fox); and Philadelphia’s first contest between Côte d’Ivoire and Ecuador Sunday night at 7 p.m. on FS1, or in person at “Philadelphia Stadium” if you can spare the cash.
What if the biggest story of our time isn’t Trump’s outbursts, or even the World Cup — but the growing inability of our young people to sit down and read a book from cover to cover? The latest installment in this genre comes from university professor Tyler Jagt in a searing essay for the Chronicle of Higher Education: “My Students Can’t Read.” Is the culprit the smartphone and now AI, or the lost COVID-19 years, or the teach-to-the-test dictates of the Common Core curriculum? There’s a strong case for “All of the Above.”
Ask me anything
Question: You recently wrote about data centers. Have there been any groups who have successfully gotten data center plans aborted? What do you think are the most effective ways for communities to fight back? — @silvermoonfafo.bsky.social via Bluesky
Answer: There are already signs that the backlash against these massive, noisy, energy-and-water-sucking data centers powering the artificial intelligence revolution is becoming one of the most successful grassroots movements in American history. I wrote this spring about how everyday folks in rural Montour County, Pa., successfully blocked an Amazon-backed site that started with a lot of support from elected officials. How’d they do it? I wish there was some big secret, but basically it was: showing up. They organized petitions and got big crowds to speak at county commission and zoning board meetings, and the politicians had little choice but to listen. They have money, but we have people. Never forget that.
What you’re saying about …
Well, you won’t know it from today’s soccer-heavy newsletter, but not all readers share my deep passion for the Beautiful Game. Most questions that aren’t some variation on how much do you hate Donald Trump, or John Fetterman, or the media get low responses, but my World Cup question about a favorite team besides the U.S. set a record for reader nonparticipation. Andrew Ross is rooting for Portugal because he moved there from Philly three years ago (and we are all jealous). Weekly correspondent Mary Ann Petro isn’t rooting for anyone and hopes the Yanks “go down in flames.” I’m rooting for the U.S. and Côte d’Ivoire, but you knew this.
📮 This week’s question: Few things are more outrageous these days than Donald Trump’s expensive desecration of Washington, starting with that $1 billion-or-whatever proposed ballroom at the White House. So what happens to the ballroom when the good guys retake power? Tear the whole thing down, or blow it up on national television? Or repurpose it as a community health center or midnight basketball court, or something else? Please email me your answer, and please put “Ballroom future” in the subject line.
Backstory on how an LA mayor’s race could blow up America
Everything about the doomed bid of a B-list reality-TV star, Spencer Pratt, to become a Republican mayor in the ultra-liberal enclave of Los Angeles has been utterly predictable. That includes his campaign that was big on the kind of social media stunts that an entertainment-oriented LA media loved, and short on substantive ideas for a city with big problems that are both chronic (its incurable homelessness) and acute (violent immigration raids, the 2025 wildfires). It also includes the fact that Pratt wasn’t likely to get more than the roughly 27% his highest-profile fan, Donald Trump, received in 2024 from America’s second-largest city.
And now the least surprising thing of all: The right-wing conspiracy theories that Pratt’s apparent defeat by two Democratic women of color — incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and progressive upstart Nithya Raman — is their long-sought proof of massive voter fraud, after Pratt had started the lengthy vote counting in second place.
It’s not just the usual loudmouths on X. Trump is taking the lead role, again, in spreading election lies, telling Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press in their now-notorious Wisconsin interview that the California voting was rife with fraud, and, when asked for any proof, blurted angrily: “No, they’re crooked … Just like you’re crooked.” When House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about these lies on Capitol Hill, he only amplified them, stating that “everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong.” No proof, just “instincts.” Trump’s handpicked and apparently incompetent top prosecutor for Southern California is now threatening an investigation.
Here’s the thing. California’s elections are among the most democratic and inclusive in America. There is extensive opportunity for the convenience of mail-in voting, and voters are allowed to send these ballots right up until Election Day. Local officials then have up to 30 days to meticulously count all the votes. That means a) it takes longer to declare a winner in California than anywhere else, and b) it unexpectedly turns out there are significant differences between who votes by mail instead of in-person, and the shape of the race can change dramatically from election night to the end of the lengthy counting. To today’s GOP, any fair and measured vote-counting must be a conspiracy.
Why does it matter? Pratt loses and — according to some reports — moves out of LA. End of story, right? Not exactly. We don’t know yet what ridiculous claims California’s train wreck federal prosecutor will make about supposed election fraud, but it’s almost guaranteed that the Trump regime is looking to make California the bogus argument for extreme measures to influence the general election in November.
Sending in troops? Seizing election machines? Invalidating results? It will all be on the table for Team MAGA in November, and the fact that the former bad boy from MTV’s The Hills couldn’t get elected mayor of one of the nation’s most diverse and liberal cities will be cited as a reason. Spencer Pratt has landed a starring role in the worst reality show ever.
What I wrote on this date in 2023
Even though it was only three short years ago, memories of this week in early June back in 2023 are a little foggy — because the skies here in Philadelphia and around the Eastern Seaboard were filled with suffocating, thick smoky haze from wildfires up in Canada. Before digging up my column, I’d forgotten that a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park was canceled because of the horrendous air quality. I wrote: “In a perfect world, [President Joe] Biden would have donned an N-95 mask Wednesday and spoken in front of the orange blur of the Statue of Liberty to declare unconditional war on fossil fuels.”
I’ve never had so many column ideas swirling around in my head as this chaotic start to the summer of 2026. Last week’s Sunday column looked at the openly fascist coming-out party for the former U.S. chief immigration raider Greg Bovino, who attended a European white supremacist conference. I said it matters a lot that he is now screaming the not-that-quiet part about U.S. xenophobia out loud. I shifted gears over the weekend and wrote about the growing panic of U.S. elites over grassroots opposition to data centers, which has sparked bizarre accusations of Chinese influence, as well as spying on activists by some police agencies. The 1 Percent can’t admit it’s really the noise pollution and higher electric bills.
Wrapping up this week’s theme in a bow, I have to say I’ve been blown away both by the quality and the quantity of The Inquirer’s coverage of the World Cup, which has truly matched, if not surpassed, some of the national outlets. Lead writer Jonathan Tannenwald, with a well-deserved reputation as one of the nation’s top soccer journalists, has been following the U.S. team in its Georgia training and at its warmup matches, profiling key American players like its star Christian Pulisic, and filing other human interest stories like a Penn soccer standout who’ll be taking the pitch for Haiti. Other Inquirer writers have contributed with in-depth features about everything from the role the late Tug McGraw’s widow played in bringing soccer to Philadelphia, to the storied history of the cinder (ouch!) pitch in Fishtown that brought Philly “attytood” to the sport’s slow rise here. That’s not to mention the comprehensive guide we published earlier this year. You won’t be able to read all this without a subscription, so now is the time to finally sign up. And let the games begin.
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