Commentary | Fans are the real winners as Jerry's stadium welcomes the FIFA World Cup spotlight
ARLINGTON, Texas Not my first trip to this press box or even my 101st, but it all looked and felt different with the eyes of the world on (checks notes) Dallas Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
The World Cup has arrived in our midst.
I guess we should say it has arrived again since games were played at the Cotton Bowl 32 years ago. But as much as everything in sports is bigger these days, the World Cup has grown exponentially - now a 48-team event (twice as many as ‘94). Japan and the Netherlands played what turned into a scintillating 2-2 draw after a slightly somnolent start, the first of nine games to be staged here at this (briefly) renamed palace with a World Cup semifinal as the signature event on July 14.
It’s not my intention to teach a basic sports class today, but the World Cup is the rest of the planet’s Super Bowl. In those terms, this stadium could hold a Super Bowl semifinal in any given year. That, of course, would be an NFC Championship Game. But the Cowboys have only played here 17 seasons.
Give Jerry’s kids some time.
By comparison, Texas Stadium opened on Oct. 24, 1971, and it took all of 10 weeks for that once-upon-a-time state-of-the-art facility to host a Super Bowl semifinal - the NFC title game against San Francisco that served as a springboard to 24-3 Super Bowl success against Miami. It was the first of five conference championship games played at Texas Stadium. Frankly, it’s the success of those teams in that extended run from the 1960s to the 1990s that built this place in 2009, and now the World Cup has made it one of North America’s major sites for the 2026 games.
But I didn’t come Sunday to disparage the modern Cowboys but to embrace the Dutch, creators of the Total Football concept in the 1970s. This is the first time in 20 years I haven’t picked the Netherlands to win the World Cup - the trophy that has eluded them despite three trips to the final game, not to mention a cruel semifinal loss to champion Argentina in 2022. I didn’t stop with the picks because I lost faith, just the platform (“Around the Horn”) for making those selections.
It’s the country that - more or less - taught the soccer world how to turn defenders into attackers and forwards back into defensemen and to emphasize the importance of possession along with elevating the art of scoring goals alongside the act of actually winning games.
Maybe the entire soccer structure has not embraced the Dutch style, but Ted Lasso’s team did in Season 3 when Coach Beard emphasized how the Ajax team in Amsterdam had rewritten the rules of the game with players forming an indivisible bond on and off the pitch. Regardless, the Brilliant Orange (as they were nicknamed long ago) put on some of that passing and scoring wizardry Sunday with defenseman Virgil van Dijk scoring the game’s first goal on a header off a long pass over the stifling Japanese defense. That came 51 minutes into a scoreless contest, and it served to ignite both teams’ attacks.
Eventually that produced a 2-2 tie that had Japan’s players running to embrace each other at game’s end and Dutch players staring at Jerry Jones’ new grass (it’s not here to stay), seemingly in defeat.
That’s the wonder of a 2-2 draw and the reason I embrace ties. The rest of the world is fine with them. I don’t know why we have to do cartwheels here to avoid them - picking winners with hockey shootouts or starting at the 2-yard line if a college game goes long enough or stationing runners on second base to create arbitrary scoring chances. Ties serve a purpose, defining a significant border between winning and losing, even if an underdog like Japan (not a heavy underdog, mind you) left here feeling somewhat victorious.
Both teams get a point and move on to the next games in Group F. There’s a great chance that both end up in the Round of 32, which comes after all 48 teams have played three games. But ties are important as are the number of goals scored. Sunday afternoon’s World Cup game was the fourth tie but the first that wasn’t 1-1.
The Netherlands will play Sweden in Houston and Tunisia in Kansas City, Mo., while Japan and its ardent band of drum-rattling fans will be back here June 25 to face Sweden. It’s possible that either or both could play here again in the Round of 32, but there are no guarantees.
These are the North American games with matches scattered across Mexico, Canada and the United States. Despite complaints about prices ($250 to park two blocks from the stadium seems a bit rich) and worries over traffic and infrastructure, the sellout crowd of 69,285 appeared to derive two hours of joy, punctuated by the scoring of four goals in a span of fewer than 40 minutes.
This opener figures to be one of the better games played at dear ol’ Dallas Stadium, but the pressure mounts after two weeks of group stage games. It all climaxes (at least the North Texas portion) with that World Cup semifinal on July 14, the closest that this place will get to a Super Bowl since a young Aaron Rodgers dazzled here 15 years ago.
Maybe we will get one Super Bowl semifinal here before the Cowboys decide it’s their turn to move into a former shopping mall. Doesn’t matter right now. Most of the planet cares more about the semifinal that will be held here in a month, anyway.
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This story was originally published June 14, 2026 at 7:10 PM.