DOHA, Qatar — Luka Lizardo couldn’t wait. It was Tuesday afternoon, only a few hours before the United States would play Iran for a spot in the World Cup’s knockout stage, and he had fallen squarely into are-we-there-yet mode. So he did what he always does. He dribbled a soccer ball, spinning and twirling and whirling, like a puppeteer who needed only feet.
When Luka grew bored of the usual routine, he made a prediction to his father, Axel. The U.S. would win, 1–0, the 8-year-old said, and Christian Pulisic would score the lone goal. His dad laughed. Luka wondered why.
And then, with little else to do as time dragged before kickoff, Luka decided to make a sign. First, he considered writing something to Pulisic. Then he reconsidered. Why? “Because I wanted to,” he says on Wednesday, sitting at a kitchen table in a hotel high above downtown. He kept an eye on the nearest television and the other on an unopened duffle bag nearby.
The white sign was folded and tucked into the bag, with every symbol, letter and number scribbled in marker, alternating between red and blue. It read:
#8 McKennie
PLEASE GIVE
ME YOUR SHIRT
Luka saw neither the prediction nor the sign as child’s play. This wasn’t a fantasy to him. This was what he wanted. Weston McKennie was one of his favorite players. Luka liked how McKennie dyed colorful streaks in his hair. He liked how the midfielder zoomed around the field. He knew him from Juventus, from an all-access documentary series he watched with his family and, of course, as a key member of the USMNT. He figured they would be teammates—and not “one day,” but in 10 years, when he turns 18 and McKennie will be 34. In the meantime, he planned to dye red, white and blue streaks in his hair, like McKennie in Qatar.
When he completed the sign, with the help of his father’s friend and a fellow U.S. supporter, what did he think was realistic? “I wanted him to give me his shirt,” Luka says.
O.K., then. It was time to go. Axel and Luka couldn’t get the right directions and missed the supporters’ rally for American fans. But as they traversed the streets near Al Thumama Stadium, Luka beamed. Wasn’t he the luckiest 8-year-old alive?
His father had surprised him with this World Cup trip: 10 days in the Middle East, a side-jaunt to Egypt to see the pyramids, tickets to all three U.S. matches in Group B and a bevy of other games to attend, in order to study, up close, the best players in the world. This is exactly the group that Luka plans to join. They flew to London from their home in Tampa, then connected to Qatar. Luka met American soccer obsessives from all over. He saw fans fighting in the ticket lines at Argentina-Mexico, and that scared him. With an apparent grasp of sporting rivalries, he told his father, “I wish they weren’t in the same group.”
As the Lizardos walk into the stadium, though, Luka holds no doubts.
“I knew we were going to win,” he says, eyeing the TV and the duffle bag.
