The USA World Cup had not quite landed in Ian Dennis’s first week in the United States. The Radio 5 Live senior football reporter said New York felt wrapped up in Knicks fever, while Florida venues gave him a low-key read on the tournament.
Ian Dennis in New York
Dennis landed in New York on the same day as game three of the NBA finals, and his first impression was blunt: "it was New York Knicks fever, not World Cup fever." He said there was so much going on in the city that the tournament sometimes felt like "just another of the many tourists visiting the great city."
That was the sharpest sign that the World Cup had not yet taken hold in one of the United States’ biggest stages. For a competition partly held in the country, the crowd temperature in New York mattered because it showed how little room the tournament had in the local sporting conversation.
Florida and Mexico City
Before the World Cup, Dennis spent a week and a half in Florida with England at two non-tournament venues, and he said "there was no feel for the World Cup at that stage." His early view was cautious rather than dismissive, but he still said he was "cautiously optimistic" about how much enthusiasm would follow.
He drew a hard contrast with Mexico City, where he said the atmosphere was unlike anything he had ever experienced. He added that many covering the opening match felt it would have been incredible if the entire tournament had been held solely in Mexico. That comparison left the United States looking like a place where the event was present, but not yet fully absorbed.
Alex Howell on host cities
Alex Howell said some host cities were not fully connected to the tournament, which matched the early impressions from New York and Florida. The build-up had already been shadowed by security concerns and political matters, so the lack of immediate noise in some places fed the same worry: whether football fever would actually follow the tournament across the United States.
The next test is direct. The United States will face Bosnia-Herzegovina for a place in the last 16, and that match will show whether the early muted feel gives way to something louder as the knockout path opens.
