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{"id":24584,"date":"2026-06-20T16:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T16:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-soccer-loving-mayor-whos-ready-to-host-the-usa\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T16:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T16:17:14","slug":"the-soccer-loving-mayor-whos-ready-to-host-the-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/the-soccer-loving-mayor-whos-ready-to-host-the-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"The soccer-loving mayor who&#8217;s ready to host the USA"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>U.S. fans are making travel plans to the Bay Area after their team clinched first place in Group D following a victory over Australia and Turkey&#8217;s defeat to Paraguay.<\/p>\n<p>Ready to welcome them will be San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has personally attended five World Cups. He is also an investor in 49ers Enterprises, which <a href=\"https:\/\/sfstandard.com\/2024\/04\/04\/san-francisco-mayor-election-daniel-lurie-wealth\/\" target=\"_blank\">purchased the venerable Leeds United<\/a> soccer team in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>We spoke with Lurie yesterday via FaceTime from a city command center, where he drew a parallel to his English club\u2019s own turnaround this season: Newly promoted and expected to go straight back down, Leeds instead finished safely mid-table. Lurie is trying to engineer a similar revival in San Francisco, using major events like the World Cup and February\u2019s Super Bowl to project competence and attract visitors and families.<\/p>\n<p>Matches including the July 1 encounter between the U.S. and an as-yet undetermined opponent are played at Levi&#8217;s Stadium in Santa Clara, 40 miles from downtown San Francisco and much closer to San Jose. Lurie is nevetheless eager to claim the so-called &#8220;San Francisco Bay Area&#8221; venue as his city&#8217;s own.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019ll be incredible,\u201d Lurie, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/02\/23\/daniel-lurie-san-francisco-mayor-00205527\" target=\"_blank\">a moderat Democrat who presents himself as a technocrat<\/a>, told Blue Light News. \u201cIt\u2019ll be a thrilling moment for San Francisco, and for our region.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Read our <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/06\/19\/world-cup-2026\/lurie-seeing-red-white-and-blue-00969077\" target=\"_blank\"><i>full interview with Lurie<\/i><\/a><i> here. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. fans are making travel plans to the Bay Area after their team clinched first place in Group D following a victory over Australia and Turkey&#8217;s defeat to Paraguay. Ready to welcome them will be San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has personally attended five World Cups. He is also an investor in 49ers Enterprises, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}