It is a dream, a distant dream, but the prospect of the United States staging the World Cup final on July 4, 2026 - the 250th anniversary of American independence - edged closer to a reality on Friday when Fifa announced that the host nation for 2026 would be announced in 2017.
Almost immediately the jockeying began and Jeffrey Webb, the Concacaf president, made the case for his region to host the event, 32 years after the US staged it in 1994.
"Thirty-two years is a long time," Webb, told The Associated Press. "I believe it is Concacaf's time."
“It [football] is booming in North America, in the US. Definitely we’ve had expressions publicly from Mexico, from Canada and of course from the US,” he told BBC Sport.
“When you look at the infrastructure that’s in the US, in North America, I believe there’s no infrastructure like this in the world, in any parts of the world. I believe the US could host the World Cup next year.”
USA cheerleader: Concacaf president Jeffrey Webb Photo: AP
Just a day after it was announced that Qatar would stage the 2022 World Cup on its independence day - Dec 18 - the prospect of the US doing the same four years later quickly moved from talking point to realistic possibility.
Naturally, after Qatar won the right to host the event in 2022, predicting where the World Cup would go went out of the window, yet the United States are overwhelming favourites to stage the event in 2026.
With Russia hosting the event in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, European and Asian countries (including Australia) are barred by new Fifa rules from staging the World Cup in 2026 so the only realistic alternatives to the US are other Concacaf nations - Canada and Mexico - and a country from Africa.
South America is an option but it is believed that Uruguay want to jointly host the 2030 World Cup with Argentina - on the 100th anniversary of their staging of the inaugural World Cup in 1930.
So that leaves the United States, who bid for the 2022 World Cup, and were seen as a viable alternative to Qatar had they been stripped of the event.
That was then: The 1994 World Cup final at the Pasadena Rose Bowl Photo: Getty
On the prospect of the US bidding for 2026 World Cup, US Soccer president Sunil Gulati said last May: "The answer is maybe. Maybe we'll bid. Whether we get it or not is obviously contingent ... We're not going to bid unless the rules are changed.
— Sunil Gulati (@sunilgulati) March 20, 2015
Well change has been made after the Qatar scandal and Fifa's 209 member federations - not the maligned Executive Committee - will choose the hosts at their 2017 congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
And last September, Fifa president Sepp Blatter, favourite to win a fifth term in charge, said in a video interview broadcast at the Soccerex Convention in Manchester, England: "If you look at the rotation of the World Cup then it should go back to Africa or go to the Americas.
"And as we have been in South America, I think North America has a better chance than South America - if I'm looking on the, let's say, the logic of the turnaround of the World Cup.
"Perhaps there's a big commercial opportunity arising now in the United States because of the tremendous television audiences that are booming and that the World Cup has also encouraged in its domestic game as well.
"We did well with football when it first went to the United States but the opportunities are bigger now."
So the only realistic impediment to the US hosting the World Cup final on July 4, 2026 - in where else but Philadelphia - is that it is on a Saturday, not the traditional Sunday. But surely an exception can be made on this one?
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