Scots drinking Boston dry, the Japanese tearing up Texas barbecue, Germans discovering ranch - the World Cup being held in North America was exactly the PR facelift the US needed this summer. Seeing the cultural exchange between Americans and visiting soccer fans was equal parts encouraging and astonishing, as it managed to do the unthinkable - allow even the most disillusioned of Americans to feel a sense of pride for their country. 

The sense of community the World Cup inspires in people is nothing new. But against a US backdrop, there was a sense of wariness regarding the tension between the US government and its immigrant communities, many of whose home countries were featured in the tournament. America’s ability to host, or even its ability to care for a sport it usually pays no mind to, marred attitudes towards the World Cup. 

Yet videos began to emerge of Europeans enjoying all things American - ranch dressing, amongst one of them - and then began being interspliced with clips from the games, many featuring Vozinha, the 40-year old Cabo Verde goalkeeper, who defied the story set upon him and his team. 

Online communities dubbed it: 2026 world cup hopecore. Hopecore being an internet aesthetic borne out of TikTok (with 2.7m videos alone under its hashtag), where videos are stitched together to offer glimpses of hope, optimism, and the willingness to try again. Within the context of the World Cup, what usually are clips of Bob Ross cheering you on, were replaced with clips of crowded bars in Boston, filled with drunken, elated Scottish fans, and their equally ecstatic American counterparts.

The World Cup hopecore wasn’t as much about the sport as it was about people being starved for optimism. As a strategist, I love discovering the undercurrent, the why, the things that people hope for, but don’t often say aloud.

The games only took place for a little over a month, yet Americans latched onto that brief moment of hopefulness and held on. Why? Because in a year inundated with thinkpieces of our never-ending nihilism, it feels good to be hopeful.