We're midway through the 2026 World Cup and it has already been quite the spectacle. With 48 teams, it is the largest tournament in competition history and the highest-scoring one on record. But the most fascinating story hasn't been the one unfolding on the pitch.

Social media is awash with wide-eyed visitors who came to the United States expecting to find the America that they've been warned about – dirty, divided and mean – but discovering another one entirely.

A French traveler from Corsica walking around a Costco startled at the gargantuan scale of the superstore, joking that he must have wandered into a new World Cup stadium. 'How can they even run out of stock? It's just too much,' he says.

An Australian fan surveying the sprawling American suburbs enthuses: 'No wonder Americans get stick for thinking the USA is the whole world. Because each city is like a whole country.'

Then there's the England fan who put the collective surprise at the 'real' America most bluntly. 'The America everyone warned me about was rude, dangerous and broken,' he began. 'But the one I actually turned up to [had the] friendliest people in the world, strangers inviting me into their homes…We owe America an apology.'

The World Cup has succeeded in showcasing the glory of America in ways that headlines rarely manage.

Since arriving to the US a decade ago, I have come to adore my adopted country less as a spectator and more as someone who has built a life here.

I was born and raised in London by an Israeli mother, British father and Iranian grandparents. I moved to the US with my British wife for graduate school and never left.

My wife and I have finally gotten used to strangers in supermarkets asking, with mystifying sincerity, whether we'd ever met the Queen or, more recently, the King.

One Iranian immigrant who I recently spoke with and who watched Iran play New Zealand at the World Cup in Los Angeles, told me that he left Tehran two years ago and is now rebuilding his life in the US.

Watching his homeland compete on the world stage stirred conflicting emotions about Iran and the United States.

'I'm deeply sad because I still have so much hope for Iran,' he said. 'For months, I believed something good might happen for the Iranian people. If the regime changes, everything will be different—and I hope the US will do more to help make that possible.'

'In Iran, you're afraid all the time, you can lose your home, your job, even your life,' he added. 'Living in America is really hard, but at least I feel safe and I don't have to worry about going to jail for no reason.'

That is the America easy to lose sight of from inside the country and impossible to miss from outside of it.

My first job out of graduate school was at a transportation and supply chain provider based in Connecticut. It was here that I began to understand how this vast nation runs on heroes who rarely get recognized for what they do.

Heroes like trucker Ina Daly, who has been driving for almost 40 years and is like some of the tens of thousands of truckers and warehouse operators who move freight coast to coast so that shelves remain full.

As a spokesperson for the Israeli delegation at the United Nations, I came to appreciate how much weight foreign nations give to Washington's decisions – even though they don't tend to admit it.

For all the noise about America's decline, the world still looks to America first.

Now as a journalist, I encounter incredible American success stories, like that of Alan Lazowski, the son of Holocaust survivors who came to the US with almost nothing.

Alan co-founded LAZ Parking in 1981 and turned it into one of the largest parking companies in North America with more than 21,000 employees and annual revenues exceeding $3 billion.

The opportunity of American is astounding. Yet, the media has built an entire industry of pundits and commentators dedicated to tearing America down. This cynicism is eagerly amplified by public figures such as Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and podcast host Tucker Carlson.

The irony is that the freedom to stand on a platform and vilify your own government without fear of a knock at the door is itself a luxury, enshrined by the very institutions they deride.

I think about that every time I write about Iran or speak with members of the Iranian diaspora community in America, many of whom came looking for exactly the freedom that too many Americans take for granted.

None of this requires believing that America is perfect, because it plainly isn't. Its politics remains highly divisive and Congress is too often crippled with gridlock.

Still, walk through New York City this summer and you can see a city absorbing visitors and World Cup fans from every corner of the globe and somehow making room for them all.

Despite the unsightly garbage pileups on the streets, the absence of ordinary bins for said trash and the regular sighting of rats, you see exactly why so many of us keep choosing this country, keep defending it, keep falling for it despite, or maybe because of, its contradictions.

In America you really can be anyone and start again.

Jonathan Harounoff, Israel's former international spokesperson at the United Nations, is a New York-based writer, the CEO of Noff Media and the award-winning author of 'Unveiled: Inside Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt.'