The final whistle has blown on the largest World Cup in history. On the field, the tournament delivered everything fans could have hoped for: 48 nations, 104 matches and stars born overnight. If there is any question about the power of sports, look no further than Vozinha, the 40-year-old goalkeeper from Cabo Verde who began the tournament with 50,000 Instagram followers and ended it with more than 28 million. That is what the world’s biggest stage can do, and this summer that stage was ours.

Off the field, the United States successfully hosted one of the largest and most complex international events ever. That success deserves recognition, but so does a broader reality: As America moves through this unprecedented decade of global sporting events, we still lack a permanent federal strategy for managing them.

The 2027 Military World Games come to the Carolinas next summer. The Olympic and Paralympic Games follow in Los Angeles in 2028. Anyone who doubts what these events mean for American cities should ask Boston, where Scotland’s Tartan Army marched behind bagpipes and crowned the city’s statues with traffic cones. Ask Kansas City and Houston, where Dutch fan walks turned neighborhoods into a sea of orange. Ask Philadelphia, where Brazilian supporters dressed the Rocky statue in an Argentina jersey to jinx their rivals. Over the next eight years, competitions across nearly every major sport will bring tens of thousands of athletes and millions of fans, media and tourists to our shores. Taken together, they represent one of the greatest........

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