I’m writing this from a sunny rooftop in downtown Philadelphia, a city much lovelier than anyone ever told me, so I may be biased, but so far this has been an unexpectedly good World Cup. It’s partly the profusion of goals, unmatched since the 1950s, and partly the profusion of minnow countries, each with their own Cinderella story, some of them doing surprisingly well. But the tournament’s biggest asset may be, against every expectation, the US. We’d all talked beforehand about the chief host’s flaws: the American-style ticket prices, the ICE immigration police and the official government policy of hating the world. We didn’t talk about the qualities that make the US in some ways the ideal host of a World Cup.
我此刻正在费城市中心一处阳光明媚的屋顶上写下这些文字——这座城市比任何人曾告诉我的都要可爱得多，所以我的判断也许有些偏颇——但到目前为止，这届世界杯竟然出乎意料地精彩。原因一方面是进球如潮，自上世纪50年代以来少有；另一方面是“小国”球队层出不穷，各自上演灰姑娘故事，其中不少表现令人惊讶。但这届赛事最大的优势，也许竟然是——完全出乎意料地——美国。赛前我们讨论的都是这位主要东道主的种种缺点：美式票价之高、美国移民及海关执法局(ICE)的存在，以及那个把“仇视世界”当成官方政策的联邦政府。我们几乎没谈到的是，那些在某种意义上让美国成为世界杯理想东道主的优点。