The 2026 World Cup in Philadelphia is going to be amazing

You surely know by now that Philadelphia will be getting a nice slice of the 2026 World Cup, the premier international soccer tournament. Many details are to be worked out, but each U.S. World Cup site will host several matches — perhaps even five to seven.

This news was not exactly a huge surprise to me, because Philadelphia has been a big-league sports city for a long time. But it’s a big deal.

To get a rough idea of how big a deal this is, imagine five to seven Super Bowls played at Lincoln Financial Field, filled to capacity, over the course of one month. The benefit to Philadelphia is likely to be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.

And to top it all off, the 2026 World Cup will be coming to Philadelphia in June and July — right around the time of the 250th anniversary of the United States.

There are no guarantees that the U.S. World Cup team will play any of its matches in Philadelphia. But the long-shot idea that the U.S. might play England in a match in Philadelphia on July 4, 2026, is too delicious to ignore.

Philadelphia never needed much help to be regarded as an international destination, but the city and region will be seeing throngs of visitors from overseas four summers from now. The World Cup is already so big that it is almost mind-boggling — and the field will be expanded in 2026 to 48 countries from 32. Some national contingents are huge, and some of their fans won’t even go to the matches.

The U.S., which is much more into soccer (or football, as it is called elsewhere) than it used to be, will be hosting only its second World Cup. And the 2026 World Cup will be the first for Philadelphia, a city with a soccer heritage stretching back 150 years.

When the U.S. was plunged into a depression in 1893, a teetotaler named Esther Kelly sought relief for the residents of Kensington, the working-class Philadelphia neighborhood that was teeming with immigrants, many of them from England and Ireland, who worked in the textile mills.

Kensington was a tough place then, with 35 saloons in a five-block radius. Kelly, who had been teaching Sunday school in the neighborhood, thought a Bible study would help keep people out of trouble. The Bible study expanded into a community center called the Lighthouse.

And in 1897, the Lighthouse formed a recreational program that included soccer, a relatively new sport that the immigrants had brought with them. By 1940, the Lighthouse soccer program was the largest of its kind in the world.

Lighthouse teams had started to collect national youth championships — five between 1938 and 1967. Lighthouse players were part of several national teams, none more famous than Walter Bahr, who helped the U.S. upset England in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, 1-0.

Bahr, who coached at Neshaminy High, Temple, and Penn State, was one of several former Lighthouse players who led their teams to championships in boys’ and girls’ soccer. Bahr, who grew up in Kensington and died in 2018, had three sons who played pro soccer; two were also NFL kickers.

Perhaps soccer would have grown in Philadelphia without Lighthouse. But Esther Kelly, whose mission was to keep the local residents away from booze, provided the kick start, so to speak.

The best part: The Lighthouse Soccer Club is still around. “The mission is not that much different than it was in 1893,” Sam Lee, the club president, told me recently: Provide kids with a competitive activity that builds character and keeps them out of trouble.

Due in part to COVID-19, membership has dwindled to about 200 youth players, Lee said, but soccer continues at fields off Roosevelt Boulevard in Far Northeast Philadelphia. And it has loyal alumni, he added: Bahr spent his final years in the State College area, but when he’d hear that a Lighthouse Soccer Club team would be playing a tournament nearby, he’d make a point of dropping by the field and lending his support.

The U.S. national under-20 team includes two Lighthouse alumni, Lee told me: Quinn Sullivan and Brandan Craig. Sullivan, the son of two former players, and Craig, are also members of the Philadelphia Union, the city’s Major League Soccer team.

The field and schedule for the World Cup 2026 won’t be set for a while. But just imagine if we can see Sullivan or Craig representing our country in our city, in a 70,000-seat stadium 10 miles — but light-years away — from the original field at Front Street and Erie Avenue, where 19,000 Lighthouse members in 1924 got together to play soccer.

I will be watching the games here, because I have learned that there is far more to the sport than just kicking a ball into a goal.

Dave Caldwell grew up in Lancaster County, graduated from Temple University, and lives in Manayunk. He was a sports reporter for The Inquirer from 1986 to 1995.