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Tens of thousands of soccer fans from overseas will be coming to North America over the next month to support their nation’s team in the World Cup. Hundreds of millions more will be riveted to the action in stadiums across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
If you’re unfamiliar with the obsession much of the globe has for the quadrennial event, officials with the National Guard’s State Partnership Program can explain, especially those stationed in the 24 SPP partner countries taking part in this year’s tournament.
Bilateral affairs officers, as they are called, help organize the mil-to-mil exchanges that occur several times a year. They not only get to know their host-nation’s military but also the local culture.
“As Danny Rojas from Ted Lasso says, ‘football is life’ here,” Maj. Eric Barton, the Maryland Guard’s BAO in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said last week, “football” being what most people outside the Unites States call soccer.
For generations, kids in BiH, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, have played the game whenever they can find a ball and open space. As adults, they live the game through their local clubs and the national team.
Barton got a lesson in just how emotionally invested the country is in its national team the evening of March 31. He said he and his young daughter were watching a movie on TV in his apartment in Sarajevo when “explosions started going off.”
“For a second, I thought, oh no, is something terrible happening?” he recalled.
“Then my phone started lighting up,” Barton said. “I heard from some colleagues. The explosions were fireworks. Bosnia had just beaten Italy to qualify for the World Cup, and there was a mass celebration in the city. People were singing and dancing and celebrating. Cars were going up and down the street with flags hanging out.”
“I was in the house in the comfort of my living room,” he added, “and you could feel the energy coming through.”
This will be Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first World Cup since 2014, and the team defeated a heavily favored four-time champion to secure its appearance.
“It’s the classic underdog story,” Barton said.
People in Norway are also very excited, said Maj. Janelle Johnson, the Minnesota Guard’s BAO in the country, which is going to its first World Cup since 1998.
Norway has only been in SPP since 2023, but the country’s Home Guard and the Minnesota Guard have had a reciprocal troop exchange now for 54 years. The program is “building upon that relationship,” she says.
Winters are long in northern Europe, making cold-weather sports very popular, Johnson said. Norway topped the medal count at the recent Winter Olympics in Italy, winning a record 18 gold medals. But now the nation is fixated on the World Cup.
She is escorting eight members of the Norwegian Parliament to Minnesota later this month to visit Guard facilities. They will be there June 22 when Norway is scheduled to play Senegal at 7 p.m. CDT.
Johnson said the group has one request for dinner that night: Make sure the restaurant has a TV so they can watch the game.
Maj. Luis Alverez’s phone also blew up after Paraguay, the Massachusetts Guard’s SPP partner, qualified for the World Cup for the first time since 2010.
He’s visited the South American nation multiple times as part of mil-to-mil engagements and has developed some friendships with members of the Paraguayan military. This week, he begins an assignment as the Massachusetts Guard’s BAO there.
“Soccer is way of life in Paraguay,” Alverez said. “Certainly, we appreciate it in the United States, but in Paraguay, they love it. It’s a conversation everywhere you go, and qualifying for this World Cup is monumental for them.”
He said the Massachusetts-Paraguay relationship is one of the closest in SPP. “They have a true appreciation for us, and we have an appreciation for them,” Alverez explained.
That appreciation extends up and down the chain of command.
Paraguay’s first game in the World Cup is Saturday against the United States in Los Angeles. President Santiago Peña plans to attend. He’ll be bringing a special guest: Maj. Gen. Gary Keefe, the adjutant general of Massachusetts.
—By John Goheen
