Mia Hamm spent June 12 watching the U.S. men's national team beat Paraguay 4-1 in Los Angeles, and she said she will be back Thursday when the Americans play Turkey. Her presence turned a strong opening win into something bigger: a home World Cup run with one of the country’s most decorated players in the stands.
Hamm said the atmosphere felt familiar and new at the same time. She said it was amazing to see the energy around the tournament and the way fans were showing up in full color for the U.S. men, who are competing in the 2026 World Cup across the United States, Canada and Mexico. With 11 U.S. cities hosting matches over the next several weeks, the event is spreading fast, but Hamm’s arrival in Los Angeles gave it a face.
That mattered to her because she knows what it is like to play and watch on home soil. Hamm won World Cups in 1991 and 1999, and she said the 1999 win over China at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, was incredible because it came in her own country. She also recalled scoring in front of more than 90,000 Americans and said she grew up going to Men's World Cups and never expected to play in one that would be sold out.
Her own history gives extra weight to what she is seeing now. Hamm retired in 2004 at 32 after scoring 158 goals in 276 appearances for the U.S. Women's National Team, winning two FIFA Player of the Year awards, two Olympic gold medals and one silver medal. She is now watching a different U.S. side try to build momentum early, and she said that starts with protecting Christian Pulisic.
Pulisic missed the first two matches because of a left calf injury and returned to full training on Monday, but Hamm said the United States wants to be careful before the round of 32. She called him a competitor and said no one wants to be on the field more than he does, yet the team has bought itself room by winning its opener. That leaves Thursday’s match against Turkey as the next marker, and for Hamm, the bigger question is not whether the stage is large enough. It is whether the Americans can keep their best player healthy long enough to use it.
Hamm recently teamed up with Tylenol for a new PainTalk campaign aimed at opening more honest conversations about pain in women’s sports, a subject that fits the way she has always talked about performance as something lived, not polished. In Los Angeles, that voice carried beyond the women’s game and into the men’s tournament, where she was there for the first step and said she will be there for the next one too.
