MILWAUKEE – All eyes were on Miami on Sunday night for the Copa America final between Argentina and Colombia. But instead of headlines about the action on the field, the ugly scenes outside the stadium dominated coverage.
Thousands of fans without tickets overwhelmed security to enter Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, leaving ticketed supporters blocked from attending a game they paid thousands of dollars to attend.
We caught up with Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), co-chair of the Congressional Soccer Caucus, at the RNC this week to hear his thoughts on what the fiasco means for the 2026 World Cup in the United States.
“It needs to be a wake up call,” LaHood said. “The World Cup will be here in 2026. It’ll be the largest sporting event in the history of the world. We have to make sure that what happened in Miami on Sunday night never happens again.”
LaHood was quick to point out that the Copa America was organized by CONMEBOL, the South American soccer governing body, and not FIFA, the global organization that runs the World Cup.
But LaHood nonetheless acknowledged that the pre-match mayhem damaged the reputation of U.S. sporting events.
“It’s a bit of an embarrassment for the United States or for the stadium in Miami to have that kind of thing happen,” LaHood said. “That is not a reflection, I think, on the way that we run large sporting events in this country.”
The Soccer Caucus is working with the White House to ensure logistics and security planning is a top priority ahead of 2026.
We’ll be covering much more of how the government is preparing for the World Cup in the coming months.
