Growing up in New York City, Zohran Mamdani followed professional soccer with a fervor and diligence that bordered on derangement. Now, Mr. Mamdani is showing what happens when a soccer fanatic is elected mayor of a World Cup host city.
He has hosted former members of his favorite team, Arsenal, at Gracie Mansion, attended one of the tournament’s biggest matches and bounced from watch party to watch party celebrating the sport he loves.
For Mr. Mamdani, who has spent his life moving between different languages and cultures, soccer is not just a pastime. The sport sits firmly within the democratic socialist ideals that animate his mayoralty and is representative of his political identity: one where notions of nationality are fluid, conforming neither to borders nor labels.
Take his pick to win the tournament: Morocco. The vast majority of its roster consists of players who were not born in the country and whose allegiance is a matter of choice rather than birthright.
“Sports and soccer are often described in the language of distraction — that these are fleeting moments for people to be able to forget their worries,” Mr. Mamdani said in an interview this week. “Soccer, for me, it’s at the heart of how I see the world.”
But as much as the World Cup has showcased the beauty of the sport, it has also come with unsavory aspects: the corruption that has run rampant in FIFA, soccer’s governing body; exorbitant ticket prices; and the geopolitical realities ever-present at a tournament of this magnitude.
It is a paradox that soccer fans know well, and one that Mr. Mamdani has had to publicly grapple with as both a fan and an elected official.
After harshly criticizing FIFA, the sport’s governing body, during his campaign last year, Mr. Mamdani has been more measured as mayor — using far less strident or personal terms compared with recent barbed criticism from such elected leaders as Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey or Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.
When FIFA forced Haiti to alter its team’s jerseys to remove a historical image from the country’s battle for independence, Assemblywoman Michaelle C. Solages, a Democrat of Haitian descent, sent FIFA’s leader, Gianni Infantino, a letter urging him to reverse the decision, and called for a boycott of the tournament’s official merchandise.
“I’m there for the love of the game. I watch it, I’m not going to miss it,” Ms. Solages said. “But it does taint the spirit of it.”
Fans have watched with discomfort as Mr. Infantino, who became head of FIFA after a wave of corruption indictments led to a regime change, glibly defended the exorbitant costs of tickets and acceded to travel-ban demands of the Trump administration. After a prominent Somali referee was denied a visa to the United States, Mr. Infantino said the news was “unfortunate” but added that “we don’t control everything.”
As a mayoral candidate last year, Mr. Mamdani was more open in his criticism of FIFA. He began a “Game Over Greed” campaign to ban dynamic pricing, install a ceiling on resale prices and have 15 percent of tickets reserved for locals. None of these demands have been realized.
Still, his office has gone to great lengths to create affordable experiences for fans across the city, with watch parties in parks and discounted meals at close to 1,000 bars and restaurants. They have made five parks — one in each borough — open all night for people to play pickup soccer whenever they please.
In many ways, Mr. Mamdani’s approach to FIFA and Mr. Infantino is similar to the way he has engaged with President Trump — keeping him at arm’s length, but close enough to extend a handshake when it suits New York’s interests.
Mr. Mamdani courted Mr. Infantino, meeting with him in March and pushing for an allotment of cheaper tickets. With FIFA’s help, Mr. Mamdani was able to announce in May that 1,000 tickets would be made available through a lottery to city residents for $50 each. He also successfully pushed the organizing committee to make FIFA’s five official watch parties in the city free.
“I’ve thought about any conversation I’ve had with President Infantino or with FIFA at large as being one where I could advance the hopes and the needs of working New Yorkers,” Mr. Mamdani said in the interview.
Since the World Cup began, the mayor has viewed the tournament as a chance to promote the values and spirit that inspired his insurgent campaign last year. Before a game day in the New York/New Jersey region, Mr. Mamdani delivers a direct-to-camera briefing that is part traffic and weather report and part history and sociology lesson.
In one video, which went viral in Brazil, Mr. Mamdani opined on Socrates, a Brazilian legend whose club, Corinthians, served as an antidote to that nation’s brutal military dictatorship in the 1980s. In another, he lamented the wealth that has swamped the sport and spoke with reverence about men like Brian Clough, the Derby County manager in England, whose team stood on the picket lines during a miners’ strike in 1972.
“I think that Mamdani approaches running government in the same way that he approaches his love of the sport, which is to say he believes deeply in people and communities and is trying to do the right thing with what tools are available,” said Franklin Leonard, a film producer and soccer enthusiast, who has written about the sport and half-jokingly mused that Mr. Mamdani should run FIFA once he is done running New York City.
“FIFA is not football. Football is for the people,” he added. “FIFA is the type of organization that is inevitable when you have to organize something to which people are so devoutly committed. Like most institutions, I wish that it served the people more.”
On a recent sweltering evening late in June, the mayor joined a pickup game in a park in Astoria, Queens, under the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. Mr. Mamdani stopped playing for his rec-league team — the Talking Headers — when he began preparing to run for mayor.
“What formation are we playing,” Mr. Mamdani asked, wearing the specialty New York City jersey that the city had released to commemorate the World Cup and that sold out almost immediately.
His teammates and opponents wore jerseys from across the world, including Palestine and Arsenal. One woman was sporting a jersey for the Democratic Socialists of America.
The moment underscored Mr. Mamdani’s hopes for the tournament. Sure, attending the games at MetLife Stadium is fun, he said, but the ticket prices are out of reach for most people. The real opportunity was for visitors and New Yorkers alike to discover the city and experience moments of communal joy.
Mr. Mamdani described the euphoria at a Greenpoint bar after the final whistle blew in the United States’ 2-0 victory over Bosnia on Wednesday.
“As I’m leaving the watch party, I’m just singing ‘Country Road’ with some random guys next to me,” he said in an interview, referring to the John Denver song that has become an anthem for America’s side.
“One of the most beautiful moments in sports, is when it conveys a familiarity to strangers that you had never met before,” he added.
Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.
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