Kasya Jensen, a 29-year-old in Boston, doesn’t date people in her city. “It’s such a small social circle,” she says. So when she heard that there would be international soccer fans coming to Boston for the World Cup – the first time the US has hosted the tournament since before she was born – she saw it as a romantic opportunity. While everyone’s favourite soccer stars were training, Jensen was doing her own kind of preparation. “Before people were even travelling to Boston, I changed my dating app settings to Scotland, because I knew there were going to be a lot of Scotland fans coming to my city,” Jensen says. When Scotsmen would message her, she’d reply: “Oh, I just left Scotland a week ago, but are you coming to the World Cup?”

Jensen’s tactics secured her a date with a Scottish man who came to town. For the first one, they decided to meet at a fan event before making plans for a proper date. The connection, says Jensen, was immediate – until he drunkenly texted her 20 times later in the evening. Still, she has high hopes of meeting a soccer fan this summer, as do the rest of her single friends. “Now that the internationals are in town, we’re not doing dating apps anymore,” she says. “Me and the girls are going out, we’re going to the fan festivals, and we’re looking cute.”

With the US being a co-host of this year’s games, Americans across the country have been posting about it as a chance to expand their dating pool. There are already videos surfacing of people finding love at one of the matches. “The World Cup is about to be the biggest dating event in history,” Michael Sonariwo posted on TikTok last month, comparing it to the Hunger Games for singles. Others are posting guides on where to find your future international husband, or thanking the World Cup for being a reminder of “how much fine shyt there are in the world”. People are even rooting for specific teams, depending on where their World Cup flings come from. “Scotland, do your part and win Wednesday so he can come back here,” one person wrote. Sadly, for soccer fans and hopeful romantics alike, Scotland was eliminated. 

As this new sense of romantic possibility makes clear, many Americans are eager to shake up how they date. In the middle of what’s been described as a “dating recession”, the prospect of meeting someone new, without an app, is appealing to people like Karen Gutierrez, a 31-year-old in Dallas. “I usually stick to the dating apps (not very successful) but with the World Cup, I make it a plan to go out and watch the matches with my friends,” she says. “Wearing a jersey is the easiest conversation starter ever, and it doesn’t always have to be romantic, but just starting up conversations is so fun.” 

Beyond just the dating scene, the World Cup also seems to have inspired many Americans to explore and enjoy their city, to fall back in love with their favourite parts of American culture during one of its most politically turbulent and divided moments. And perhaps that’s the deeper craving: to feel excited about dating, yes, but also the future in general. Last month, Gutierrez says she started going to bars she’d never been to before (or hadn’t been to in a long time). While she hasn’t found love (yet), she has come close – Gutierrez and her friends took some Norwegian men to try Tex-Mex and Texas Barbecue all in one day. 

“The biggest thing I’ve learned from dating during the World Cup is to just put yourself out there. Anything that comes after, whether it’s love, a new friendship, or just a good story, is a bonus”

Jasmine Hyde, a 25-year-old who also lives in Dallas, is enjoying all the new “characters” who have been added to city’s dating scene. “It almost feels like a dating amusement park; there are more opportunities to meet someone different,” she says. But, despite the talk of all the potential World Cup babies that might be born in nine months, she says it’s been hard to find international soccer fans who are serious about dating, even if it becomes long-distance. 

“Most of the men I’ve met are only here for a short period of time and are mostly looking to hook up, so it has been harder to turn those connections into actual dates,” she says. “So is it working in terms of finding my soulmate? Not quite. But it is working in terms of helping me come out of my shell, meet new people, live in the moment, and genuinely have a good time.” Her only date so far has been, surprisingly, with a local at a watch party.

When the dating climate feels as difficult as it does today, there’s a tendency to romanticise potential partners from across the world. But something I’ve learned from living and dating in three countries so far in my life is that everyone’s romantic baggage travels with them (including your own). It’s probably not the fact that there are now even more people available to date during the World Cup that’s changed how dating feels across America right now, given that an abundance of choice is part of the problem in the first place – it’s that many people are once again open to embracing moments that can’t be curated by an algorithm. 

With the World Cup final coming up on July 19, those using the games as a dating opportunity only have a couple of weeks left to find their international fling (or husband). The renewed excitement around speaking to strangers and being open to spontaneous romance, however, will hopefully linger for much longer. “The biggest thing I’ve learned from dating during the World Cup is to just put yourself out there,” says Gutierrez. “Anything that comes after, whether it’s love, a new friendship, or just a good story, is a bonus.”