KUOW73%
What Seattle soccer newbies should know heading into the World Cup 23%
By Libby Denkmann0% Gabrielle Healy0% Sami West0%
6/9/2026, 11:05:21 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Representativeness Heuristic, and Appeal to Authority, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 17.7% saturation with 231 hits. Analysis detected 2,007 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,307 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 36.3% and a BS Rank of 23% (16,902 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 77.20% of the article peer group.
The men’s FIFA World Cup kicks off Thursday (pun intended), and Seattle is hosting six of those matches.
It marks the first World Cup to be hosted in the United States since 1994.
(Mexico and Canada are also hosting some games.)
Who’s playing, who’s expected to do well, and could the U.S. team make it deep into the tournament this year?
To answer some of those questions, KUOW’s "Soundside" spoke with Leander Schaerlaeckens, a longtime soccer writer and author of the 2026 book “The Long Game: U.S.
Men’s Soccer and Its Savage Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts.”
What should Seattleites know about the city’s matches?
Starting Monday, Lumen Field will host six total matches, including four group-stage games, followed by two knockout-round games:
June 15: Belgium vs.
Egypt
June 19: U.S. vs.
Australia
June 24: Bosnia and Herzegovina vs.
Qatar
June 26: Egypt vs.
IR Iran
July 1: TBD knockout round
July 6: TBD knockout round
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As for which games Seattleites should consider snagging last-minute tickets for — or, at the very least, make sure to watch from home — Schaerlaeckens had a hard time narrowing that down.
“This might be because I’m a soccer sicko, but I can find something interesting in all of them,” he said.
Schaerlaeckens noted this is only the second World Cup appearance for the Bosnia and Herzegovina team — and that one might also be worth tuning into because they have an American-born player within their ranks.
(That’s Esmir Bajraktarević, who’s from Appleton, Wisconsin.)
The Bosnia and Herzegovina team is also interesting, Schaerlaeckens said, because they “clawed their way through the European playoffs for last place.”
They beat Wales in a penalty kick shootout, and then bested Italy the same way.
That marked the third year in a row that Italy was knocked out of the World Cup — and that’s a big deal, Schaerlaeckens noted, because Italy is one of only three countries to have won the Cup three times.
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The Bosnia and Herzegovina team will face Qatar, which “controversially” got into the World Cup, Schaerlaeckens said, after they got to play both knockout games in the playoffs on home soil rather than neutral territory.
“A lot of people had questions about [that],” Schaerlaeckens said, noting FIFA has a “very close relationship” with Qatar.
But, on the other hand, the team also hasn’t been able to play much this year because of ongoing wars in Iran and Palestine, Schaerlaeckens said.
“They’re going to come into this tournament largely untested,” he said.
Iran is also a team to watch for similar reasons, Schaerlaeckens said.
“We’re going to witness a World Cup where the host nation is bombing one of the participants, which is mind-blowing in and of itself,” he said.
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There’s also a longer history of internal strife on Iran’s team beyond the war.
Schaerlaeckens pointed to star striker Sardar Azmoun as an example.
Azmoun was dropped from the Iranian team because he was critical of the country’s regime on social media.
“Soccer is wildly popular in Iran, and a lot of players at a minimum are sympathizers with sort of the resistance movements and the various uprisings that they've had over the years,” Schaerlaeckens said.
“So they’re caught in a really hard place where they’re trying to figure out, on the one hand, they want to represent their country.
On the other hand, they want to send some sort of signal that they support the women’s protests or that they support these various popular uprisings.”
Then, of course, there’s the U.S. team.
They’ll face Australia, which Schaerlaeckens described as an “interesting,” “sort of plucky” team.
Australia lost to the U.S. in a friendly game in Denver in October.
So, should US fans be optimistic?
Schaerlaeckens’ answer to that question is… maybe.
As a host country, the U.S. qualified automatically — which may put them at a disadvantage due to the lack of competing their way into the World Cup, according to Schaerlaeckens.
“The way international soccer is structured, a lot of the competitive games that you get as a national team are World Cup qualifiers,” he explained.
“Those are intense, and those are challenging, and those are really important [for] forging your team, developing your identity, figuring out your playing style and your tactics, and all the rest.”
That said, Schaerlaeckens still has some hope for the U.S. team.
He said the team’s in a “manageable group,” playing Paraguay, Australia, and Turkey.
He also noted that the U.S. has made it to round 16 in previous World Cups, which is a “solid performance.”
“To be top 16 in a sport that 211 countries take seriously is certainly not nothing,” Schaerlaeckens said.
But going all the way is a tough task, Schaerlaeckens said, pointing out the U.S. has only won one knockout-stage game in the 11 World Cups it’s participated in.
“The U.S. is as talented as it’s ever been; it’s as pedigreed as it’s ever been,” he said.
“Is it quite as spirited, organized, and dogged as in the past?
I’m not so sure.”
What makes this World Cup unique?
Hotter, bigger, and longer.
Those were the three words Schaerlaeckens used to describe this year’s World Cup.
Heat likely won’t be a huge problem for Seattle's six matches.
But elsewhere in the U.S., it’ll certainly be a concern, especially for a high-cardio sport like soccer.
Schaerlaeckens noted that the 2022 FIFA World Cup was almost moved out of Qatar because it was going to be too hot to play good soccer — and he doesn’t think the weather in places like Houston or Miami will be much different.
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Then there’s the size and length of the tournament.
The last time the World Cup was played in the U.S., Schaerlaeckens said 24 teams participated in 52 total games over the course of a month.
During the previous World Cup in 2022, there were 32 teams and 64 matches spread across 29 days.
This year though, 48 teams will play 104 scheduled games over 39 days.
“This is going to be a slog, and this is going to be a battle of attrition,” Schaerlaeckens said.
“And with the extra teams, that also means that once you’ve made it through the group stage, you have to win five straight knockout games to win the World Cup.
That’s a bit like the NCAA tournament, right?
You’re not always going to have the best teams win out.”
While that may be true, Schaerlaeckens also says he'd still go with France if he were a betting man.
“They could put three teams on the field capable of winning the World Cup, and they’ve been to the last two World Cup finals, so they’re hugely experienced, in addition to being really, really good,” he said.
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On the other hand, though, Schaerlaeckens warned: Expect the unexpected.
Although France and Spain are expected to go far — at least according to rankings heading into the tournament — anything can happen, Schaerlaeckens said.
“Historically, what we’ve seen is that European World Cups tend to be won by European teams.
South American World Cups, South American teams tend to do better,” he explained.
“When they’re in one of the other continents that exist in the world, they become a lot more unpredictable, and they become a little bit chaotic.”
To listen to Schaerlaeckens’ full conversation with “Soundside,” tap the link above.
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