2026 FIFA World Cup Discussion

Good summary.

The Swiss commentator David Lemos closed the broadcast by accurately summarizing the problems of this World Cup; he was spot on.

:speaking_head:"There is no doubt that this was the most commercial World Cup in history and also one of the most politicized."

“We will not forget the prices that people without great purchasing power had to pay to live out their passion for football.”

“In some cases, they couldn’t even enter the country because of their nationality, whether they were fans, journalists, or even referees, like the Somali Omar Artan.”

“We also remember the unacceptable treatment given to the Iranian national team, which was unable to properly defend its chances during the tournament.”

“And then there’s the case of Folarin Balogun. We saw a president boast about calling the FIFA president to get a player’s suspension lifted.”

“Politics has infiltrated the heart of football, even though FIFA claims to want to keep it above all else. It’s clear that this only holds true to a certain extent.”

“It was a World Cup in which all matches were played in four halves, and whose final had a break of nearly 30 minutes.”

“The crisis has two names: money and power. Today, there is a crisis of trust between many of those involved in football and FIFA.”

“In the coming weeks, a lot of money will be distributed to various federations and many football agents, who will be politely invited to remain silent.”

“We hope that all of this will be taken into consideration and that it won’t happen again.”

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FIFA really not doing itself any favours here.

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Given the smoke here from the Oregon and Washington forest fires I must conclude the US is also short on rakes.

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https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/49411823/how-2026-world-cup-remembered-messi-haaland-cape-verde-trump

How will we historians/journalists tell other people how to remember this World Cup?

Obligatory Simpsons clip

“Fuggeduboutit”

I will remember it as the attempted Americanization of the World Cup: splitting the game into quarters to enable more advertising, introducing a banal Super Bowl-like halftime show in The Final to double the halftime intermission and meddling by the POTUS.

But the matches were still mostly fun to watch and the fans were great.

Morocco is willing to spend $billions to build a 115,000 person stadium to get the 2030 WC Final match.

This is pretty stupid: apparently FIFA wanted all the premium clubs at stadiums to look similar. The venues carted out all of their furniture, and FIFA brought in their own. It’s not like the premium clubs at these stadiums aren’t nice.

So now the stadiums have a bunch of barely used furniture to get rid of. The stadium here is donating it to a local furniture bank. Local story: https://www.11alive.com/video/news/local/mercedes-benz-stadium-donating-furniture-left-over-from-world-cup/85-acad5665-7d7e-47a2-8579-0c53ca38d6b9?

FIFA…Stupid…???

Color me shocked!

Not surprised that Kushner is involved.

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You know that Bloatus probably put the bug in Infantino’s ear at the WC on how much cash they both could make if they sold the tournament to his family. Disgusting.

I came to this thread to post about this and saw I was ninja’d.

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I wonder if UEFA will pull out and start a rival tournament. The World Bowl or The World Mug?

How much more money can they steal? Did they not do well enough this past tournament without any help?

Worse: how much can billionaires “invest” in order to get what they want from tRump for the next two years, or beyond.

And, what will these “investors” want as a return from actual FIFA-related activities? “Make it more like NFL with lots of stoppages and scheduled injury timeouts, so we can charge more for the TV rights”?

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Without European countries…there really is no tournament.

Infantino massively overreached with this one.

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