What the World Cup gave me and what it may take away from others

The first time I watched the World Cup in Canada wasn’t in a stadium or a living room.

It was in a crowded pub in Saskatchewan. Shoulder to shoulder with Chileans, all of us yelling at the same screen.

My parents came to Canada from Chile and Argentina (yes, you heard that right). Like a lot of immigrant families, we didn’t arrive with much. I was born here; 4 months after my mom crossed the border and technically a bit late for the paperwork.

I had endless energy as a kid. My family called me mono — Spanish for monkey. And like a lot of kids, I fell in love with sports.

The World Cup mattered in our house. Not just as a game, but as a moment where being an immigrant felt a little less lonely. For ninety minutes, cheering for a team made you feel like you belonged.

So when Vancouver announced it would host World Cup matches, my first reaction was excitement.

This is a city built by people from everywhere. If any place should understand the power of a global game, it’s Vancouver.

Then the numbers came out.

The province estimates the cost of hosting seven matches at $532 to $624 million. Anyone who has watched how FIFA operates knows that number is usually the starting point, not the ceiling. Security expands. Infrastructure timelines compress. Municipal staff get pulled into delivery mode.

And suddenly the feeling isn’t pride. It’s recognition. Because the same governments telling us there isn’t money for basic services somehow find hundreds of millions for a global spectacle.

When my family arrived in Canada, we didn’t speak English and we didn’t have money. What we had was a social safety net.

Social housing put a roof over our heads. Community centres helped us find our footing.Transit, childcare, and public health care made it possible for our family to build a life.

Those systems are now under strain.

Affordable Housing waitlists stretch for years. Community centres age faster than we repair them. Transit struggles to maintain service. Childcare remains out of reach for many families.

We’re told these are hard choices. That there just isn’t enough money.

But when a mega-event arrives, the money appears.

That’s the contradiction.

We can mobilize hundreds of millions for prestige and television shots of the skyline, while everyday services are constrained by political choices dressed up as fiscal discipline. In Vancouver we’ve even seen things like arbitrary property-tax caps — “zero means zero” — while infrastructure backlogs quietly grow.

The irony is that this runs against the spirit of the game itself.

Fútbol has always been beautiful because it’s simple. A ball. A patch of grass. People willing to play together.

It doesn’t require luxury suites or security perimeters. It requires community.

So yes — I’ll watch the matches. I’ll feel that old excitement when the anthems play and the flags come out. I’ll think about my dad, that pub, and the strange way the game once made our immigrant family feel like we belonged.

But I’ll also be asking a harder question than who advances to the next round.

What kind of city do we want to be when the cameras leave?

If the World Cup is going to leave a real legacy, it won’t be measured in tourism numbers or broadcast shots of the skyline.

It will be measured by something much simpler — whether we chose spectacle, or whether we finally decided that the people who make this city deserve the same investment as the events that pass through it.