Lessons from the World Cup

By: Beatrice E. Rangel - 16/06/2026

If anything has characterized this first round of World Cup competitions, it has been the challenge posed by emerging teams to the traditional football powers. This phenomenon reveals the presence of global processes that are transforming all dimensions of human activity.

The streak began in Los Angeles with the United States' victory over Paraguay, one of the strongest teams in South America and a regular participant in the World Cups since 1930. The relatively young US team, whose regular participation in the World Cups only began to solidify from 1994 onwards, scored four goals against a Paraguay that only managed to score one.

This was followed by Morocco's surprising draw against Brazil, a five-time World Cup winner, who were unable to impose their traditional superiority. Among the European teams, only Germany maintained its reputation for efficiency, defeating Curaçao by a resounding 7-1 scoreline. The Netherlands failed to overcome Japan; Ecuador fell to Ivory Coast; and Sweden succumbed to Tunisia. Meanwhile, Belgium, Spain, and Uruguay all drew with Egypt, Cape Verde, and Saudi Arabia, respectively.

These partial results are indicators of deeper processes that humanity has successfully promoted during the last few decades and that, despite current criticism and resistance, can hardly be reversed.

The first of these is globalization: a process through which the global economy, driven by innovation, trade, and the flow of knowledge, has enabled formerly peripheral countries to develop competitive capabilities that allow them to challenge traditional players. Thanks to this phenomenon, entire regions have been able to integrate into global value chains, raise their educational levels, and strengthen their sports, technological, and economic institutions.

The second process is immigration. Also the subject of questioning and demonization in many countries, human mobility has been one of the great sources of economic dynamism and cultural renewal. The United States, for example, has managed to maintain a competitive advantage over other advanced economies thanks, in large part, to migratory flows that have filled essential positions at the base of the productive pyramid, allowing highly skilled sectors to concentrate their efforts on innovation and technological development.

But the contributions of globalization and immigration are not limited to the economic sphere. Their cultural impact has been equally profound. One need only look at the evolution of kinetic art. Its origins can be traced back to the French Impressionists, who sought to capture the movement of nature on their canvases. However, it reached its peak in the 20th century with figures like Alexander Calder and found extraordinary exponents in Latin America, including Jesús Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Julio Le Parc, Gyula Kosice, and Joaquín Torres-García. Creativity, like athletic talent, flourishes when ideas and people circulate freely.

All these processes are clearly reflected in the composition of the forty-eight teams participating in the 2026 World Cup. The US team is led by Argentine Mauricio Pochettino, an example of how sporting knowledge transcends borders. Argentina is, in fact, the country that has exported the most coaches to this World Cup, with six managers leading different national teams. They are followed by France, with five, and Spain, with four. In total, twenty-six of the forty-eight participating teams are managed by foreign coaches.

The very physical appearance of many players also reflects the new realities of global cultural mixing. A prime example is Japanese goalkeeper Zion Suzuki, whose multicultural heritage symbolizes the growing diversity of a society historically characterized by its homogeneity and its wariness of immigration.

In short, the 2026 World Cup offers a unique window into the transformations of our time. What we see in the stadiums reflects much broader changes that are redefining the world's economies, cultures, and societies. Globalization, immigration, and the flow of knowledge continue to reshape the world, creating new opportunities and disrupting hierarchies that for decades seemed immutable. As in football, the old powers can no longer take their dominance for granted, and new contenders have arrived to compete on equal footing.

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