Scotland's tartan army shows what a 48-team World Cup can still be

The footage does not need a translator. Kilts in city heat, bagpipes competing with car horns, an ocean of saltires draped across American shopfronts. On 23 June 2026, the Guardian published former Germany captain Philipp Lahm's column describing how Scottish supporters, in town for a friendly international against the United States, had effectively annexed a US downtown for the duration of their stay. The piece, headlined "Scottish fans' friendly USA invasion exemplifies the joy of the World Cup," is partly a love letter and partly an argument: that a 48-team men's World Cup, which kicks off in North America this summer, still has a cultural case to answer even as its sporting one grows harder to defend.

The structural point is straightforward. FIFA's expansion from 32 to 48 teams, locked in years before the 2026 tournament, was sold as a development of the game: more nations, more broadcasts, more revenues. The sporting case has frayed. Lahm, who won the World Cup with Germany in 2014, frames the cultural case in starker terms. The point of a World Cup, he suggests, is not just elite competition but the encounter — supporter against supporter, host city against host city, kilts in Houston. A 48-team field dilutes the former; the Scottish turnout in the United States is evidence that it may yet enrich the latter.

The fixture that wasn't really a friendly

Friendly internationals rarely command column inches. This one did, according to Lahm's account, because of the travelling support. He writes that he could watch videos of the Scots online for hours, and that the visual of kilted supporters marching through American streets crystallised something the modern tournament has been at risk of losing. The match result is secondary in the column; the atmosphere is the story. Lahm treats the Scottish invasion as a proof of concept for what an expanded World Cup is supposed to enable — a tournament large enough, and geographically dispersed enough, to bring fan cultures into direct contact with places that would never have hosted a qualifier.

There is a commercial subtext. The United States is hosting the bulk of the 2026 tournament, with matches in Canada and Mexico. The host federation, US Soccer, has spent the better part of a decade arguing that American appetite for the men's national team has matured. The Scottish turnout, and the willingness of American cities to absorb it, is a small but useful data point in that argument. So too is the willingness of US television to broadcast a low-stakes friendly as an event.

The case against expansion, in plain terms

Lahm is careful to keep his critique structural rather than nostalgic. The traditional case against 32-or-more-team World Cups is the dead rubber: late-stage group matches that decide nothing, with both teams already qualified or already eliminated. The 2026 format, with its 12 groups of four, makes that problem worse on paper. A 48-team field produces exactly the kind of fixtures that persuade casual viewers to switch off. Lahm's column does not deny this. It argues, instead, that the cultural payoff — the supporters, the cities, the globalised fandom — is large enough to compensate, at least for the host nation that bears the largest share of the cost.

The harder question, which the column gestures at but does not settle, is whether that cultural payoff is portable. Scotland in Houston works because the diaspora is large, the cultural identification is strong, and the cost of transatlantic travel, while significant, is bearable for a generation of supporters accustomed to following their team to European championships. The same cannot be assumed for every qualifier that benefits from expansion. The structural risk is that expansion produces more participation and less spectacle — a tournament that is more inclusive and less watchable.

A tournament as a test of host-country appetite

For the United States, the 2026 World Cup is also a soft test of whether the country can absorb an event of this size without the disorganisation that has dogged previous US-hosted tournaments. The 1994 World Cup, held in a 24-team format, was widely judged a logistical success. The 2026 version, with 48 teams and matches spread across three countries, is a different proposition. Lahm's column implicitly suggests that the supporter culture is already there, in the diaspora communities and the club followings that have grown up since 1994. Whether the infrastructure is there is a separate question that the column does not address.

The governance angle is harder to ignore. FIFA's expansion was decided in 2017, before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, under a leadership that has since changed. The current FIFA administration, headed by Gianni Infantino, has framed expansion as both a sporting and a developmental policy. Critics, including some federations in Europe, have argued that the developmental case is thin: that the additional qualification spots have gone to confederations that already over-represent at the World Cup, and that the sporting cost falls on the more competitive confederations. Lahm does not enter this debate directly. His column is about the fans in the street, not the corridors of FIFA's Zurich headquarters.

Stakes and uncertainty

The stakes, narrowly, are about the United States' standing as a host. The 2026 World Cup will be judged on three things: whether the matches are competitive, whether the host cities cope, and whether the atmosphere resembles a World Cup or a series of friendlies. The Scottish turnout, on the evidence of Lahm's account, suggests the third condition may already be in hand. The first two remain open. The column leaves the reader with the sense that expansion is a bet whose outcome is not yet known — and that the bet is being wagered, in significant part, on the backs of supporters willing to fly across an ocean in a kilt.

What remains uncertain is whether the same pattern holds for the smaller qualifiers who benefit from expansion. A 48-team World Cup invites more nations in; it does not guarantee them an audience. The cultural exchange that Lahm celebrates depends on both sides showing up. The Scottish fans in Houston did. Whether every new entrant can command the same attention, and whether host cities outside the diaspora hubs can absorb it, is the part of the experiment the next month of tournament football will answer.

This article is built on a single guest column; the broader questions it raises about host readiness, broadcast economics, and FIFA governance are treated as open rather than settled.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_FIFA_World_Cup
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Lahm
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_FIFA_World_Cup_expansion