World Cup visitors marvel at American excess: 'Even the Coke is big'

Ayoub Baghdad stepped off the plane in the United States for the first time to watch his Moroccan team compete in the 2026 World Cup. Within hours, he had already encountered something that stopped him cold—not a goal, not a stadium, but the sheer physical magnitude of an ordinary Coca-Cola. "Everything is big, even the Coke is big," he said, marveling at roads that stretched wider than he'd ever seen, trucks that towered over him, and buildings that seemed to defy the proportions he knew from home.

Baghdad is one of millions of international visitors flooding into the United States for a tournament that will see three-quarters of its matches played on American soil, with Mexico and Canada hosting the remainder. What began as a sporting pilgrimage has become something else entirely: a collision between global expectations and American excess that is playing out across social media in real time. Foreign fans are documenting their shock at the scale of everything—the supermarkets, the convenience stores, the restaurant portions—and the internet is watching.

A Scottish vlogger named Shaun visited a Buc-ee's, a sprawling hybrid of gas station, convenience store, restaurant, and supermarket that exists almost nowhere else on earth. "A place like this could ONLY exist in America and I LOVE it," he said, posing with the chain's beaver mascot for his followers. The store has cultivated a cult following in the American South, and international visitors are discovering it like archaeologists uncovering a lost civilization. For many, these temples of consumption feel less like ordinary retail and more like proof of a fundamentally different way of living.

Food has become the primary lens through which visitors are understanding American culture. Ire Balogun, traveling from Oxford, found himself genuinely surprised by the flavor profile of American cuisine, even at the fast-food level. "I find that the food generally is significantly better than in England," he said. "I'm surprised even with their fast food, there's just so much more flavour." A group of Portuguese graduate students from Madrid has been working through a methodical tour of American chains—Chipotle, Shake Shack, and local restaurants—treating each meal like a scene from the movies and television shows they'd watched back home. The free chips and salsa that materialize unbidden at Hispanic restaurants, the unlimited refills offered at nearly every establishment, the sheer tonnage of food arriving on a single plate—these details have become the substance of their American education.

Christian Boateng, a Ghanaian living in England, couldn't finish his meal. The portion was simply too large. He also noticed something else peculiar: prices displayed without sales tax included, a practice that baffled him. These small frictions—the gap between what the menu promises and what you actually pay, the food left on the plate—have become talking points, evidence of a culture organized around abundance in ways his own country simply is not.

Yet there's a quietness to the American World Cup experience that some visitors have found striking. Ire Balogun, who attended the 2018 tournament in Russia and the 2022 tournament in Qatar, noted that the energy feels muted by comparison. Football competes for attention here in ways it doesn't elsewhere. Baseball is in season. American football dominates the national consciousness. Two England fans, Jason Barnes and Harry Beckley from Portsmouth, accidentally found themselves swept up in a crowd of basketball fans in Times Square as the New York Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years. "It's the craziest celebration I have ever seen or even been a part of," Barnes said. The experience was so overwhelming that he's considering following basketball when he returns home.

International visitors are not confining themselves to the stadiums and major cities. They're venturing into the American South—Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas—hunting for barbecue and seafood boils, the foods they've heard about but never tasted, the experiences that exist only in this particular corner of the world. For Ayoub Baghdad, despite prices that exceed what he paid in Qatar, the journey feels worthwhile. "You can make your own budget to come watch maybe one game or two games and have the experience with you for your whole life because it is not gonna happen again," he said. The World Cup brought them here for football. But it's the sheer American-ness of everything else—the size, the flavor, the abundance, the strangeness—that they'll carry home.