\n<\/p>\n
Over in Los Angeles – where hosts USA will play two of their three group games – it has been a similar story with regards to promotion of the World Cup.<\/p>\n
There are banners on the streets coming out of Los Angeles Airport promoting ‘LA26’ and the tournament, while electronic billboards rotate the various members of the USA squad and a large mural in downtown LA features Argentina legend Lionel Messi. Some convenience stores also sell World Cup-related merchandise.<\/p>\n
However, for non-football fans it would be quite easy to be oblivious to the fact that the tournament is about to get under way.<\/p>\n
One taxi driver transporting BBC World Service colleagues expressed their surprise that such an event was set to begin, saying “There’s a World Cup happening? Who’s playing?”<\/p>\n
But for organisers the expectation is the excitement will grow as the tournament goes on.<\/p>\n
“I think we have had a slow build that is leading to a frothy frenzy,” says Larry Freedman, co-chairman of the Los Angeles World Cup Host Committee. <\/p>\n
“It has been such a long time coming and with so many other sports and activities in LA people have been thinking about what they will do tomorrow, not two or three years out.<\/p>\n
“But now we are on the eve of it kicking off people are getting very, very excited. We have a very diverse community here and people from all over the world who will have teams participating in this tournament.”<\/p>\n
For the fans, there is certainly more excitement among them for being in the city where their country will play their games, even if they aren’t necessarily die-hard football supporters.<\/p>\n
In Santa Monica, Isaiah and Husna – both from Sacramento County – were looking forward to experiencing the tournament.<\/p>\n
“I’m pretty excited,” Isaiah told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never actually watched the World Cup but I will watch it this year.<\/p>\n
“I think it will be exciting because it is here in LA now and LA is where it is at. It will be something different.”<\/p>\n
Husna added: “Many people don’t know what the World Cup is here, but now it is in LA and this is a big popular place they will know about it and watch it.”<\/p>\n
Both, however, admitted they were unaware of who the USA faced in their opening game.<\/p>\n
The younger generation of Americans BBC Sport spoke to – ones who did not experience the tournament when it was last held in the USA back in 1994 – certainly seemed to be excited for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
One such fan, Mahon, said: “We have watch parties set up so we are very excited for it.<\/p>\n
“We do have a few friends who are not really into soccer but we are trying to get into them that we are Team USA – country pride.<\/p>\n
“I think it has surpassed baseball in popularity here, but I don’t think it will get as big as American football or basketball.<\/p>\n
“People will get into it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over in Los Angeles – where hosts USA will play two of their three group games – it has been…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}