Anthony Zurcher

Quite a proud moment for, I think, all three countries in the beginning.

I think they saw this as an opportunity to put together a unified front and put their best foot forward.

Yeah, it's been a difficult time for U.S.-Mexico-Canada relations, even in Donald Trump's first term with what he was doing on the U.S.-Mexico border and the crackdown and the call to build a wall.

But particularly now in this second term, which started in January of last year, because Donald Trump focused on tariffs and trade and the two countries or two of the first countries he targeted with tariffs were Mexico and Canada.

two of the United States' biggest trading partners.

That alone would have been disruptive, and that alone would have cast a shadow over this tournament.

But you throw in Donald Trump calling for Canada to be America's 51st state, referring to then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Governor Trudeau, and the

The back and forth between these two countries where Canada took all of America's liquor products off their shelves.

The United States reprised with their own additional tariffs.

And it has made for some unfriendly relationships.

And you actually see it with some of the Canadian attitudes towards other countries.

Mark Carney, the current prime minister, giving speeches abroad that directed his country to move in a different direction than the United States and start exploring Canada.

other relationships outside of what had been the close US-Canada relations.

Relations with Mexico are still tense because of border concerns, immigration concerns, and crackdowns of undocumented migrants who have come into the United States through Mexico.

So all of that puts the relations not on a unified kind of footing that I think they had hoped that this World Cup would produce.

Yeah, I'm here in the United States and I remember the Hand of God goal in 1986.

That was one of my first World Cup memories.

It made headlines here in the US even before soccer really took off in the United States.

It's something that people rank and file people paid attention to.

That wasn't the best start to it, obviously, but it was the first chance for America to see a World Cup up close.