Carlos shares his memories of the 1994 World Cup, hosted by the United States:
I don’t think I even knew the World Cup existed before it came to the United States in 1994. I was born in New York City and raised in a Dominican immigrant community, where the adults around me mostly followed baseball and boxing. When I graduated from Boston College in 1993, I returned to the city and moved into a small studio apartment on a quiet block in the Inwood section of Manhattan, where I lived with my mother.
I got a job that September, teaching at the same Catholic high school I had once attended, and I hated the experience.
By the time the World Cup arrived that summer, I had quit and was preparing to start graduate school in the fall. I didn’t realize it then, but that was an interstitial moment, no longer doing one thing but not yet doing the next. That kind of pause, like the weeks after a graduation, is rare in adulthood.
Growing up poor in Washington Heights, I had watched black-and-white TVs while my better-off friends had cable and big color sets. One small benefit of my teaching job was that it allowed me, for the first time in my life, to afford both cable and a large color television. I began watching the World Cup in mid June out of numbed curiosity, still worn out from my difficult year in the classroom. But the crowded stadiums and the pageantry of the tournament slowly revived me.
The kaleidoscopic colors of the lush green pitches, the vibrant national uniforms, especially the U.S. team’s star-spangled blue tops and baggy red shorts, along with Alexi Lalas’ wild flaming hair and matching goatee, jolted me awake. I found myself caring about soccer for the first time and genuinely invested in the fate of the U.S. men’s team.
To my surprise, my usually reserved mother watched with me, cheering every near-goal with a child’s excitement. We rooted together for the U.S. against Brazil in the Round of 16, even though we both knew the odds were against them.
On why the memory has stayed with him:
I think this memory has stayed with me because the 1994 World Cup took place during a major transitional moment in my life. If going to college in Boston hadn’t already uprooted me from the Dominican community in upper Manhattan, then my failure to feel at home after returning to New York sealed my sense of exile, even before I started an English Ph.D. program out in Long Island. That World Cup became something I could share with my mother and with Dominican friends who, like me, found themselves drawn to soccer for the first time.
And hopes for the 2026 World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States:
My hope for the 2026 World Cup is, first and foremost, that it will be considered a success when over. The current situation at home in the US, and the state of international politics more generally, doesn’t inspire much confidence in the idea of large, diverse groups coming together to share in the joy of positive collective experiences. On a more personal level, I hope to watch the matches with my wife and kids. I’ll be rooting for the U.S. men’s team, though I don’t hold out much hope for their chances the way they’ve been playing a year before the tournament begins. I will also pull for the English national team, since that’s where my wife is from.
