Behind The World Cup

In 2006, McCombs School of Business alumnus Will Acheampong's father pulled him out of school to watch a soccer match on TV.

The game was the United States versus Ghana at the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in Germany, and Acheampong says watching that game with his Ghanaian father is a core memory. It ended with the U.S. losing to Ghana on a penalty given up by a defender named Oguchi Onyewu.

Now, 20 years later, Acheampong, BBA '21, works at U.S. Soccer Federation headquarters in Atlanta. That same defender from his most poignant soccer memory - Onyewu - is a colleague. They Slack each other. They fist bump in the hallway.

"It's pretty crazy, like, full circle," Acheampong said.

Since 2024, Acheampong has served as a strategist on the U.S. Soccer Federation's strategy team. It's a role he describes as similar to corporate strategy work, except the goal is to grow the sport of soccer in America. On any given day, he might be working with the executive director of the Soccer Forward Foundation, sitting alongside the chief product officer discussing digital soccer strategy, or working with the ticketing team on logistics.

"We are the conduits between our executive team and the vision and strategy of the organization, responsible for actually implementing that across the business," he said.

This summer, that work is happening at the highest possible volume, with the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the U.S. for the first time since 1994. Though the organization has been preparing for this monumental event for almost a decade, Acheampong says the federation doesn't see this summer as the end of something, but as the beginning of something bigger.

"People often talk about how expensive and inaccessible soccer is," he said. "Our goal for this World Cup, especially through the Soccer Forward Foundation, is to figure out how we can make soccer more accessible and use the excitement from this moment to make soccer one of the more popular sports in the country."

The federation is leveraging its Pathways Strategy, an outreach initiative to make soccer easier to join, navigate, and stay connected to by lowering costs, expanding access, and improving experiences across all levels of the game.

Acheampong's advice to current students who are interested in a sports career is simple: Don't start in sports first.

"The best advice I can give, especially in the sports landscape today, is start your career doing something where you can develop the skills necessary to be an effective part of the ecosystem," he said. "The sports ecosystem has become incredibly complex. The more that you can have a strong foundation in finance, management, consulting, etcetera - skills like that will help you pivot into the space you want to be in."

After years of preparation, Acheampong got his full-circle moment. On June 27, he gave his father a new memory to hold onto - the two of them, in the stands in Philadelphia, as Ghana faced Croatia.

"From our seats just above the bench, I watched my dad experience Ghana live for the first time," he said. "Soccer has always been our language, and sitting together in those seats, I realized how far we'd come from watching our favorite team from home."