This summer, the FIFA World Cup came to the United States, Canada, and Mexico. For a few weeks, soccer or fútbol was everywhere, and at the center of debates about who gets to represent a nation, who gets to win, and who gets to profit from the world’s most popular sport. Soccer clearly has a lot to do with nationalism, but what does it have to do with dictatorships, cartels, masculinity, race, migration, and capitalism? Turns out, a lot. This course explores why. From Pelé and Maradona to Messi and Andrés Escobar, fútbol has been celebrated as a source of national pride and shame, exploited by states and corporations, and transformed by players and fans. This course explores histories and cultures of the Americas through men’s soccer, with case studies from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, and beyond. We will examine iconic matches and players alongside films, literature, journalism, and scholarly work, asking how soccer constructs ideas of nation, identity, masculinity, race, class, and belonging. Between the politics of Pelé’s Brazil, the contrasting masculinities of Maradona and Messi, and the narco-soccer world of the two Escobars in Colombia, we ask: what happens when a game becomes a symbol of a nation, a source of political power, or a global business? Ultimately, the course uses men’s futbol to examine the region and the connections, conflicts, and identities that cross borders and shape how the Americas and soccer are imagined around the world.