Welcome to the Soccer Hotline, your guide to all things soccer both locally and internationally as football frenzy sweeps the nation and we host the largest sporting event in human history.
If this is your first time paying any attention to “The World’s Game”, you probably have some reasonable questions. Why are soccer fans so crazy? Why do games end in a tie? And perhaps most common – What the heck is offsides?
Never fear, Tulsa’s professional soccer club is here to serve as a hub for all your soccer-related questions, queries and trepidations. We hope to shed some light on the rules, structures and quirks to get you pumped for what should be a fun-filled football summer.
We have many ways for you to submit your questions with the best ones getting answered by our players, coaches and staff all summer long.
- Submit your questions here.
- Tag @fctulsa in a video on social media.
- Use the hashtag #soccerhotline.
Stay tuned to our website and social media to see if your questions get answered.
Now, without further ado, let’s dive in!
What’s the deal with this giant competition this summer?
Perhaps the primary reason you’re looking out for soccer at all right now is because you’ve seen everyone else start to talk about this big tournament going on. That would be the holy grail of athletic competition and the greatest quadrennial event that mankind has ever created! (Too much? I think not.) The magic in the air is all for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, being held on American soil for the first time since 1994.
It was that 1994 World Cup that served as the primary launching pad for the sport’s popularity today in this country. It gave us the birth of our top professional league (MLS), strengthened our youth systems and provided many kids with the visualization of what it takes to compete on the global stage. Here’s to hoping that this World Cup can inspire the next generation of dreamers to take the sport to even greater heights.
This tournament is set to be the largest ever with 108 total matches across 39 days, 16 host cities and three continents as the world’s best national teams against each other with the goal of crowning the best soccer nation on Planet Earth. From Vancouver to Miami to Monterrey, North America has been tasked with hosting soccer’s biggest spectacle.
Just how big a deal is it to host a World Cup match, you might ask? Here’s FC Dallas owner Dan Hunt who played a role in helping Dallas land nine matches, the most of any host city:
“This is like getting nine Super Bowls, and we’ll get them all in a 30 day period.”
The world’s game is set to bring unparalleled excitement for the sport to our backyard as the titans of the pitch collide. Whether it’s the chance to watch legends of the game like Lionel Messi (Argentina) or Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) feature in their final World Cups or nations like Cape Verde or Curaçao make their tournament debuts, the passion these people have for their countries will be on full display as they don their colors come kickoff.
The 23rd edition of the competition will be the first with 48 teams, up from 32 which had been the case since 1998. The nations will be split into 12 groups of four lettered A to L. Each team will play the other three teams in their group with points awarded similarly to league play for clubs – three points for a win, one point for a draw and none for a loss. Every nation is guaranteed at least three matches in the tournament with all, except for a few European exceptions, coming against sides from different continents that they would not ordinarily play.
The top two teams will automatically qualify for the Round of 32 which begins the knockout stage. The top eight third place teams will round out the field as the bracket is set. From there, everything turns to sudden death. We enter single elimination the rest of the way all leading up to the biggest stage in sports – the World Cup Final. To give an idea of how massive this match is, the 2022 World Cup Final between Argentina and France is estimated to have had a global viewing audience of 1.5 billion people. When people say an event feels so huge that the whole world stops for a bit, this is what they are talking about.
What makes this tournament special too is the exclusivity of its winners’ club. Across 22 previous editions, only eight nations have had the joy of lifting a World Cup trophy with Brazil having won the most (five). This competition is meant to highlight the elite of the elite with its legends living on forever, for better or worse. The highs of Diego Maradona’s “Goal of the Century” in 1986 or Messi finally lifting his first Cup in 2022 are matched in stature by Roberto Baggio’s missed penalty in 1994 or Brazil’s national embarrassment in 2014. An athlete’s success in this tournament transforms them into homeland heroes while their shortcomings evolve them into villains.
For some, this competition is truly a life of death affair that will affect their mental well-being for the next four years. In league play, you have the chance to get off the mat and fix things the following season. In this behemoth, you have to live with every muscle movement for the rest of your life.
Why soccer?
This might be the number one question people ask when they first think about this crazy game. After all, for someone who hasn’t been exposed to it, the stereotypes certainly stand out:
- “The game is boring. All they do is pass a ball back and forth.”
- “Nothing is happening. No one ever scores.”
- “My four-year-old niece plays this. It can’t be that hard!”
Those concerns certainly seem to paint an unappealing picture and can scare people away from giving the sport a chance. The counterpoint is simple though – if the stereotypes are true, why does soccer attract nearly 3.5 billion fans around the world?
Most of that reasoning is founded on the fact that soccer is a game of passion unmatched by hardly any other competition on the planet. In many places, you are born into generations of fandom for your local club and country and aren’t given much of a choice to switch sides. You grow up playing the game in the streets or wherever else you can find the space with hopes and dreams of suiting up in front of your friends and family on the big stage. In the biggest moments, years of hard work, sacrifice and emotion are poured out on a nightly basis. It really does take a village to produce the stars of this game.
The connection between the athletes and fans is intense. Local residents feel that the club is theirs and react to what happens as if it’s being done to them, good or bad. How your team performs is viewed almost as a direct reflection of how the town is doing. The closest American parallel is likely college sports where alumni of the school spend four years of their lives and give back financially down the line to support their beloved alma maters. Every outcome can feel like life or death when you feel like you have skin in the game. The heights of the sport have you on the edge of your seat like no other, making for a truly engaging viewing experience.
Where does Tulsa fit into all of this?
As previously mentioned, the 1994 World Cup massively increased the popularity of soccer nationwide with positive momentum creating the current framework we see in place today. Every club across the country, including FC Tulsa, anticipate that excitement to grow even more as the world’s best arrive in our backyard to duke it out on the biggest stages.
Oklahoma’s professional soccer team was partially spurred by another one of this country’s greatest triumphs in the sport, which was the 2014 World Cup where “I Believe” chants echoed all across the plains. Since our beginnings in 2015 as the Roughnecks, the club has grown and set its roots in the Tulsa community culminating, to this point, in a Western Conference Championship last season that created unreal scenes at ONEOK Field. The Scissortails’ trajectory remains on the rise as we continue to put our heads down and work hard to embody a winning culture both on and off the field.
With the World Cup now arriving, FC Tulsa hopes to be at the center of soccer discourse in the community with many events set to engage in the passion of the biggest sporting event in human history. From watch parties to USL matches to camps and clinics, we have something for every soccer fan, new or old, to get in on the action.
As we begin this summer soccer marathon that will place more eyeballs on the sport than ever before, FC Tulsa wants to position itself to be your go-to guide for all things soccer both locally and beyond. The anticipation is mounting, and just like you, we cannot wait to enjoy the beautiful game.
