Donald Trump may be the “America First” president, but his youngest son is a rather worldly sports fan. Barron, 12, has been spotted wearing a full Arsenal kit, making him a boy of impeccable taste, if somewhat dashed hopes. It’s been a rough couple of years for the London-based soccer club in England’s Premier League, a team that prides itself on artistically pleasing, if not always efficient, play.

Barron is not alone. His is the first generation of American fans to be truly connected to the international game, not just as players but increasingly as followers. This fall of the sports iron curtain, drawing American kids (and their parents) into a globalized sports culture, is a powerful attitudinal antidote to the backlash against globalization in our politics. At a time when so many cultural and political forces are urging us to shrink our worldview, sports are expanding it.

For Americans, the nation’s sports isolationism, much like our defiant refusal to go metric, has historically served to strengthen American exceptionalism. Kids everywhere learn geography through sports. (It took one particularly confusing Cold War World Cup game, in 1974 , for me to grasp the difference between the Democratic and the Federal German republics.) But when their entire sports universe is defined by domestic events, fans see far fewer dots on the map and discount what lies beyond. How sadly isolationist to call the championship of a domestic league a “World Series.”