The 2026 FIFA World Cup opened with the co-hosts, the USA and Canada, getting their campaigns under way, and the first impression was not only about football. Empty seats were visible in the early coverage, turning attention as much to stadium atmosphere as to results.
That matters now because the tournament is being staged across the USA and Canada, and the early buzz is being measured against how full the stands look. Jesse Marsch’s place in the event added another layer: he is the first manager from the United States to coach a foreign country in a FIFA World Cup, a notable marker for the competition’s opening days.
The wider live coverage also showed how quickly the tournament can swing between celebration and frustration. Mexico’s Raúl Jiménez got on the scoresheet, but South Africa’s Yaya Sithole was sent off in the second half, with Brazilian referee Wilton Sampaio showing two other red cards in the match. Mexican fans booed their own team for not piling on the agony, while South African TV pundits Quinton Fortune, Aaron Mokoena and Benni McCarthy were left in speechless catatonia. One anchorman summed up the mood bluntly: “What do we say, what went wrong in this game?”
That strain between expectation and reality is echoing beyond the pitch. Readers are also talking about whether ticket prices are too high, and Colin Davis offered a sharp reminder from another era: he said he was at Wembley in 1966 and recalled tickets being given away because the stadium was not full. “A memory of that day was the touts, Fat Stan et al, giving tickets away to the kids as the stadium wasn’t full,” he said, before adding that he now lives in New York City. Another reader, Ray Flanagan, dismissed the comparison and argued that the cost of going and weak sales would have mattered more than any theory about the atmosphere.
For now, the tournament’s first test is not just who wins next, but whether the World Cup can fill its biggest stages with the sense of occasion it needs. The matches will go on, and so will the counting: of goals, of red cards, and of empty seats.
