The 2026 FIFA World Cup has arrived, and Mia Hamm is looking back to the last time the tournament felt this personal for American players. Speaking at The World Cup 2026 Kickoff Party Blue Carpet at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, she said representing the United States meant everything to her when she played in the 1999 Women's World Cup on home soil.
For Hamm, the pull was not abstract. She said wearing the colors and the badge carried the weight of a childhood dream, and that she never took the chance for granted. That memory is landing now because the United States is once again hosting a World Cup, with the men’s event having come to American soil in 1994 and the women’s tournament back in 1999, when the U.S. went on to capture its first world title over China.
Hamm also recalled one scene that still defines that summer for her: fans in U.S. jerseys tailgating and playing pickup in the parking lot two hours before the match. It was, she said, proof that the event felt different in a home country, where the sport and the people around it seemed to move together. Her comments carried a pride that is easy to hear in hindsight, but harder to find in the current moment, when wearing American colors can feel divisive to some athletes who worry about what that symbol means beyond the field.
That is part of why Hamm’s recollection resonates today. She was speaking not only about a tournament she lived, but about what it looked like when a World Cup became a national gathering in the United States. The next chapter belongs to the 2026 event itself, which now has the stage Hamm described, and to the fans who will decide whether that same kind of all-in homecoming can happen again.
