MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
If you're a die-hard soccer fan or even if you've just fallen in love with the beautiful game, then you might be feeling a bit of a letdown right now - an emptiness, dare we say? - because the World Cup is over. But despite fears over all the ways it could go wrong, the tournament seems to have been a success. Roger Bennett is here to recap. He is the CEO and founder of the soccer podcast "Men In Blazers." Good morning, Rog.
ROGER BENNETT: Oh, Michel Martin, you're an American legend.
MARTIN: (Laughter) OK. OK. So we heard warnings that the Trump administration's immigration policies might keep fans away, that high ticket prices might lead to half-empty stadiums. That didn't happen. What did happen?
BENNETT: Yeah, it's amazing. The second Lionel Messi takes the field, the rational's replaced by the emotional. Cognitive dissonance kicks in. And we've all just emerged from a global 39-day odyssey that was, I think, peerless by anything that's made by Christopher Nolan, ended with the best team, Spain, utterly victorious and the best player in the world, Lionel Messi, sobbing in tears with the world watching. And it all happened here - Canada, Mexico and the United States. It was really a fever dream of human revelation.
MARTIN: So, you know, there were some controversies - the Somali referee who was turned back at the airport, the treatment of Iran's team, President Trump's red-card intervention with FIFA. Did that take some of the shine off for you?
BENNETT: Yeah. I mean, football is life and death and rebirth - all of the things. And we can't lose sight of those. That existed alongside so much human joy and collective memory-making. The football was phenomenal on the field. The biggest players in the world all delivered - Lionel Messi. America now knows the name Kylian Mbappe and has fallen in love with the kind of Viking Shaquille O'Neal, Norway's...
MARTIN: (Laughter).
BENNETT: ...Erling Haaland. But it was really off the field that I think the most important things happened. The teams Cape Verde - small teams - Congo, Curacao - charmed - you know, with their diasporas charmed America. The Scottish invasion of Boston, Rock Chalk Algeria in Kansas, where they fell in love out of nowhere with a - with the North African team, the world discovering Buc-ee's. Really, Waffle House diplomacy, the world finding America and falling in love in the way we needed to be loved, I think, Michel, will be one of the lasting legacies of this tournament.
MARTIN: What about you? What are your best memories?
BENNETT: I went across the United States in an enormous orange Home Depot bus. We did college game days across the United States. And to make cross-generational memories with millions of Americans, it was, like, the honor of my life that someone who wants this game to grow in America and saw it growing deeply before my eyes.
I think marching to the match in Seattle with Marshawn Lynch and 15,000 Americans before the game who dreamt that everything was possible - it wasn't, but it felt like it was in the moment. The Americans coming from Alaska, Hawaii, across the East Coast - thousands of them. The power of the memory-making that we experienced in that moment I think will be with me forever. The song "Country Roads" that the Americans sang was so beautiful. Now it sounds sadder than Johnny Cash's "Hurt," but that's football - life, death, rebirth.
MARTIN: How long are you going to sleep? And how long is it going to take you to get ready for the Women's World Cup?
BENNETT: Yeah. Then - the - and you've nailed it. Women's World Cup - 339 days away. And you know what, Michel? The United States are very, very good at that one.
MARTIN: All right.
BENNETT: I can't wait.
MARTIN: That is Roger Bennett, CEO and founder of the Men In Blazers Media Network.
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