SANDWICH, MASSACHUSETTS – If there was some doubt as to whether England were favourites in Mexico City, they cannot ignore or avoid that tag in Miami. The draw has opened up for England in a way that would make even Gareth Southgate blush: DR Congo, Mexico and Norway for a place in a World Cup semi-final. None of those are currently ranked in the top 18 in the world.
Yet if Mexico was a test of England’s steel and ability to cope in adversity and atmospheric pressure, Norway is a step up in quality. Like England, there is a sense of incremental improvement as they move through the knockout rounds. We analyse six reasons for Norway to be confident of causing a second upset on the spin.
Haaland is quite good
I’m not promising to tell you anything ground-breaking here, but the two best centre-forwards in world football will meet in Miami. This is Haaland’s debut major tournament and he has led the line in outrageously efficient fashion. We know he doesn’t need lots of touches – he won’t against England either.
Haaland’s international goalscoring record is even better than his club numbers. You know how we talk of 20-goal per season strikers? Well Haaland has now done that in 2025-26, but for his country. He has got as many international goals in his career as Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic and he is 25. To repeat: quite good.
Set-piece threat
Although England were magnificent when deliberately dropping towards their own goal against Mexico, they have actually defended their penalty area pretty poorly during this tournament, both from open play and set pieces. And we saw how Ezri Konsa got into a mess for Mexico’s first goal.
On the Road USA
Join Daniel Storey on his 7,200-mile odyssey across the US to tell the stories of a World Cup like no other.
Norway are the best team in the world to exploit any set-piece frailty. The list of likely starters who are 6ft 4in or taller: Kristoffer Ajer, Torbjorn Heggem, Sander Berge, Alexander Sorloth, Haaland. That’s half the team and it presents a headache for how to counteract the problem. Look for Jordan Pickford coming out to take charge.
Nusa cutting inside
Antonio Nusa still has a shot at winning the Young Player of the Tournament award. He has already made one significant career move to RB Leipzig from Club Brugge – there will be interest this summer and beyond.
The issue is the special move: Nusa drops deep to pick up the ball, drives forward and then quickly cuts inside before shooting. If England have a natural central defender at right-back, they are absolutely going to have to guard against Nusa running free towards the penalty box.
England’s midfield legs
There is a week between the two fixtures, but England put a lot into their last-16 tie and as such there are doubts about the midfield energy. Rice is still carrying a fitness concern and accumulated fatigue, Jordan Henderson is out of the tournament and Thomas Tuchel clearly isn’t convinced by Kobbie Mainoo.
Brazil lost to Norway because Carlo Ancelotti got his central midfield shape wrong and left Casemiro with too much work to do. The best way to beat this team is to stymie the service from the two central midfielders into Martin Odegaard and Nusa. England are going to have to press them into playing backwards or making mistakes.
Odegaard and the change of tempo
Martin Odegaard is a huge threat to England’s midfield (Photo: Getty)
I would argue that Odegaard is the first true playmaker that England have faced in this tournament. Luka Modric is the closest but this was a tournament too far. Ghana tried to counter, Panama used wingers and Mexico had Julian Quinones and crosses into Raul Jimenez as their two most potent weapons.
How will England counteract that? Rice clearly knows Odegaard well and could follow him around, but then that slightly negates Rice’s high-energy style. What England must avoid is Odegaard having time between the lines to play through balls. He’s only created four chances in this World Cup so far. It only takes one pass to Haaland.
Attacking right-backs
England have been troubled down their left flank in this World Cup. Ghana should have earned a penalty from a ball down the right channel. The goal against DR Congo came from a ball from the right and Yoane Wissa should have made it 2-0 from an Aaron Wan-Bissaka cross.
Julian Ryerson was one of the best attacking right-backs in Europe last season, his 15 Bundesliga assists second only to Michael Olise. Put it this way: if England were spooked by Wan-Bissaka’s forward runs, Ryerson is going to be a problem.
NEW YORK — The award for the most chaotically eccentric post-match interview of the World Cup has to go to Hossam Hassan.
“I will say what’s on my mind regardless of the consequence, because I don’t care,” said the Egypt head coach.
“This is clearly a rigged match. If they want Argentina to win so bad, why call everyone else to come and participate?”
Hassan had just watched a two-goal lead evaporate before his eyes, Egypt knocked out by the world champions after a VAR debacle involving two goals – one which was allowed to stand, and one which was not. A foul on Argentina’s Lisandro Martinez was given, preventing a goal. When it was an infringement on Mo Salah at the other end, it was play on.
Tin hats around the world, and particularly from IP addresses in Madeira, Portugal, transmitted the signal. Across the globe, keyboards hammered home the conspiracy theory that the World Cup has been predetermined so that Lionel Messi can win it again. Before a ball was kicked there were grumblings about Argentina’s side of the draw, avoiding Spain, France and Portugal.
The two VAR incidents which decided Egypt’s defeat (Photo: BBC Sport)
It should go without saying that there is little point giving credence to the idea that the World Cup is being deliberately gifted to one nation. For one, the hypothesis conveniently ignores Brazil and England, two of the initial favourites, in their half of the pot. If you have ever been involved in an office group project, you will accept how difficult it is to organise two or three people to do anything, let alone dozens of officials to purposely rig an entire competition under the noses of the watching world.
But this is the problem when Fifa dirty their hands like this. The soot contaminates everything it touches. In the days after Donald Trump’s intervention to repeal the suspension of USA striker Folarin Balogun, everything feels fair game. When sporting decisions are dictated by phone calls from the head of state, the boundaries of credibility are shattered. Whichever way you squint at it, the bigger picture looks crooked.
If we are operating in a climate of hyper-sensitivity to cronyism and corruption, Gianni Infantino has made it that way.
The result is that one of the greatest ever World Cup comebacks – and quite possibly the game of the tournament – has been tarnished. Messi did the unthinkable again, wrestling his country back from the brink. His brilliance shines like a light through the fog of farce circulating around the knockout stages; it makes him as much a victim as anyone else.
Apart from anything else, the notion that Argentina are alone in benefitting from officiating incompetence is self-evidently ridiculous. England were fortunate not to concede a penalty against Ghana. In their win over Paraguay almost every conceivable decision went against the French. Jonathan Tah’s goal for Germany in the round of 32 was needlessly ruled out. We are not really meant to say it anymore, but Balogun’s red card itself was harsh.
There will always be those who see what they want to see. Their plots are usually dismissed as outlandish, but only for as long as the ordinary rules of the competition appear unshakeable. Once public confidence is lost in the integrity of the game, it is not easy to recover.
That is why there has to be a clean slate in 2027. Gianni Infantino has one year left in office until the next Fifa presidential vote, when he will seek re-election. Before Balogun, that was questionable. Now it is unconscionable.
from Football - The i Paper https://ift.tt/ft9Qyec
NEW YORK – In the mesh cages of Guantanamo Bay, with the sun bearing down and detainees shacked by the ankles, hundreds of Muslim men and boys would use an expression to one another: “I resist, therefore I live.”
As the eyes of millions remain on the United States during this World Cup, 400 miles to the southeast lies the naval base at the centre of countless allegations of human rights abuses. For its opponents, it is an unresolved symbol of injustice; or in Arabic, Zulm, which translates literally into putting something outside of its rightful place.
I spoke with former detainees who spent years inside Guantanamo. They told the stories of their capture, torture and illegal detention, and of the extraordinary moments of human spirit on the makeshift football pitches of the camps by the Cuban coast.
In the peak of the “War on Terror” after the 9/11 attacks, 779 men were held there; more than 98 per cent have never been convicted. Fifteen of them remain there today. Over the past four weeks, the US has sought to use the World Cup to bolster its international reputation; amidst the noise, the last voices of “Gitmo” have gone unheard.
‘I never dreamed I would end up here’
Mansoor Adayfi was born into a traditional tribal community in the Yemeni mountains. Some of his earliest memories are of going to fetch water from a well and a life without electricity. He moved to the city for a new life, studying computer science, when he was selected for an academic project to travel to Afghanistan. At the time, Afghan war lords were being rewarded with bounties for young men handed over to the Americans. He was 18-years-old.
“I was taken by the American marines – they told me I’m al-Qaeda,” Adayfi tells The i Paper. In the CIA interrogation blocks before he was transported to Guantanamo, he says he “almost died”.
“You can’t sleep, hung upside down. Under torture you will admit to anything – but the big problem was giving them details [because I didn’t know any]. That means they intensify the torture – persecution, sexual assault, electrocution, waterboarding, drowning, you name it.”
Around the same time, Moazzam Begg was at his home in Pakistan when he was taken away by CIA and local agents. Begg, born in Birmingham, England, would be held for three years between 2002-2005 without charge.
The entrance to the US naval base (Photo: Getty)
“I never thought in my wildest dreams that would be somewhere that I would end up,” he says. “But I had a sense, because I’d spoken with some of my friends in the UK and they told me that MI5 had approached them and asked about where I could be.” It was 1998 when an MI5 agent first paid a visit to his house.
Begg was accused of al-Qaeda membership and of funding the organisation’s training camps, which he denied, insisting he had only provided support to Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya in the 1990s. He has denied any involvement in terrorist activity.
Begg was taken to Guantanamo on a 36-hour journey via Turkey, with his head in a hood, his hands tied behind his back and his legs shacked “with guns pointing at me”. On four or five occasions, a British voice would ask him questions. Beside the CIA, he realised it was the same British agent from all those years ago.
Life inside Guantanamo
In cells of around eight feet by six, Begg, Adayfi and the other detainees slept on metal bunk beds. Cockroaches crawled along the walls. Fluorescent lights would sometimes beam for 24 hours a day. A metal toilet and basin made up the room. Some would use the floor to pray five times a day – except that was likely to single them out to the guards. There were moments of escape, with a football – but that was not day-to-day life.
One particular guard in Camp Delta had a handkerchief of a US flag, which he would use to cover his face. The detainees believed he would perform the gesture when he knew he was committing what the US considered “enhanced interrogation techniques” – widely recognised by human rights organisations as torture. Official government policy has since banned these practices and denies using torture, despite ongoing allegations of their continued use.
Prisoners could be kept for days at a time in a coffin-sized box, or slammed against a concrete wall. According to eye-witness accounts from multiple former detainees and former staff members, as well as human rights groups including Amnesty and the Centre for the Victims of Torture, they were deprived of sleep for days at a time, hung naked by a chain from the roof.
“The guards, they could do whatever to you. Even if they killed you it doesn’t matter,” says Adayfi. By the time he arrived at Guantanamo, he already had “a lot of broken stuff in my head, broken skull, broken ribs, lost some of my memory and my vision” from the interrogation sessions. He was no longer Mansoor Adayfi – he had become Prisoner 441.
There was sexual violence, extreme flogging and beatings. Detainees would be pinned down, with headphones and duct tape pinned to their ears, and forced to listen to deafening music. The Quran was torn in front of them. Many were shackled to tables, sprayed with freezing gas, while in the next room guards would threaten detainees with a power drill.
Mansoor Adayfi following his release (Photo: Supplied)
“The way the US got around it,” explains Begg, “is that they got US attorneys to argue that unless it’s organ failure, severe physical impairment or death, it’s not torture. That allowed them to do things like waterboarding, a medieval torture technique used in the Spanish Inquisition.
“They can, as they did to me, subject you to the sound of a woman’s screams that you’re led to believe is your wife and children being tortured in the next room. If anybody had done that to an American citizen, they would be calling for crimes against humanity.”
Guantanamo became a “battle lab” for techniques which would soon be exported to Abu Grahib, the notorious Iraqi prison which faced its own torture scandal in 2004. Around two dozen of the men held in Guantanamo arrived as children – Adayfi maintains he saw a baby in captivity.
It was not possible to know whether it was day or night, with no windows, calendars or access to the outside world. English speakers, who understood what the guards were saying and could pass on messages to other detainees, risked ending up in solitary confinement.
Begg himself spent time in solitary, he believes, because of what he had seen shortly after his capture. At Bagram, in Afghanistan, two men, Mullah Habibullah and Dilawar, were beaten to death by US soldiers – military coroners ruled them to be homicides.
“I was actually a witness to the murder,” says Begg. “And I had made it very clear to the authorities that no matter what I do, I’ll make sure that everyone knows you carried out murder of unarmed, innocent prisoners.”
‘Footballs would burst on the barbed wire’
Resistance in Guantanamo took many forms. Prisoners, including Adayfi, began a series of hunger strikes to “fight back”. The Government would not consider them hunger strikes – “they called it non-religious fasting”. Adayfi says he was then force-fed.
Guards would use the concept of “compliant” and “non-compliant” prisoners to restrict benefits like playing football. A $1m football pitch, supposedly a means of broadcasting humane treatment of the prisoners, prompted controversy across the US. “Why do they need to play soccer?” demanded Donald Trump in his 2015 Presidential campaign.
The reality, the detainees say, was very different.
“They would take 30 to 40 detainees, give them white uniforms and a soccer ball,” says Adayfi. “They would bring a media delegation [to say], ‘look how we treat them’. In the cages, they create a system of levels – if you are level one, you get to go to the small cage and there is a soccer ball. There will be two people to play against each other, they would maybe get a water bottle and people play.
“They say ‘we give them a ball in a cage in Guantanamo’. What’s humanity supposed to do in a cage that’s like two metres and two metres, even smaller?
In Camp Six, a pitch was opened in 2011, with goalposts erected at each end.
Detainees playing football in 2012 (Photo: Getty)
“The lawyers used to bring in the balls, but once the ball hit the barbed wire, they’d burst. When they say we have books, we have TVs, [they try to make it sound like] we have some kind of easy life. Those military guys, they believe you should suffer.”
The pitch was largely dust and gravel, the goals the walls of a shipping container. One guard told Adayfi: “It’s my job to keep you alive, but I’m not happy to see you as a human being.”
When the World Cup began in South Africa in 2010, for the first time Adayfi watched the games on TV inside Guantanamo.
“Your brain starts constructing a new you, a new life, a new memories, a new relationship, a new emotion,” he adds. “The more you stay, the more you are distanced from your previous life. So, in the detention people try to survive. People wanted to watch the World Cup to see what’s going on in the world. People could see the flags.”
Before Begg was released in 2005, there was only a “recreation yard”, where detainees were given 15 minutes to walk. “If you’re lucky, you’d get a ball to kick around – and after 15 minutes you’re back in,” he recalls.
“When I came in for the first year, it was literally 15 minutes twice a week.” Once a new commander took charge of Guantanamo, exercise increased to one hour a day.
“There were different camps where there was communal living, people could play football, watch television, play chess, but I experienced none of that.”
Forever Prisoners
Today, of the 15 men being held in Guantanamo, some have been cleared for release. Others are considered unfit to stand trial, or the evidence against them has been obtained through torture.
Abu Zubaydah is a 55-year-old Palestinian detained in Camp Seven for 24 years without charge. He has been kept “incommunicado” with the outside world. In 2018, a Parliamentary Report found UK intelligence agencies had sent questions to be put to him knowing they would be used during torture. He was compensated by the British government but as a “forever prisoner”, he is one of a category with no prospect of release.
The “forever prisoners”, Begg explains, are those “they say, too innocent to charge, too dangerous to release. That’s a new category of law the Americans have created”.
A detainee being taken to his cell by US military (Photo: Getty)
Barack Obama first promised to close Guantanamo in 2008. The Trump administration has instead proposed expanding it to “load it up with bad dudes”, including a new camp for migrants. Because of the base’s location, it sits outside the jurisdiction of ordinary US law and the Geneva Convention’s Article Three, prohibiting torture.
In 2014, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that torture methods used at Guantanamo were brutal, ineffective and more widespread than had previously been disclosed. The report was contested by CIA officials.
Before their deployment, guards were often taken to Ground Zero in New York, the site of the 9/11 attacks. In the midst of the 4 July Independence Day celebrations, I visited the site to find numerous military personnel dotted around the waterfall-pools commemorating the victims. They were taken there in the early years of the “War on Terror” to better understand their work.
‘Boycott the World Cup for humanity’
Nobody has ever been found guilty of the alleged human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay. One detainee, Zahir Hamdoun, summed up his detention so: “I have become a body without a soul… I rather belong to another world, a world that is buried in a grave called Guantanamo.”
Now, as the US takes centre-stage at this World Cup, Adayfi urges fans around the globe to boycott the tournament. It is “the least we can do to stand for our humanity, to bring a voice to the victims.
“Guantanamo is one of the biggest crimes of the 21st century. Unfortunately people don’t look at it because it was done by the United States. This is a big hypocrisy.”
Inside the cages was Guantanamo’s own global community, with 15 nationalities, more than 20 languages spoken. Yet those who left were never given any rehabilitation or integration programmes.
“People think when you leave detention, you’re free,” says Adayfi. “No, you’re not free.
“You have to go through rigorous surveillance. People live with the PTSD, mental, psychological, physical problems, people released in a wheelchair with broken backs. The torture can never stop.
“Now you face the reality. You cannot get a job or a bank account, you can’t get married, you can’t travel… because the US said you are a bad person, you’re a terrorist.”
Camp X-Ray inside Guantanamo (Photo: Getty)
Some detainees never made it out of the camp. On 10 June 2006, three died by hanging, officially designated as suicides. Human rights groups continue to query the verdicts. Adayfi says that when the bodies of the three men, Mani al-Utaybi (30), Yasser al-Zahrani (21), Ali Abdullah Ahmed (37), were sent to Yemen and Saudi Arabia, “they found there were signs of torture, broken teeth” in the autopsies.
Others were sent to Assad’s regime in Syria. “The prisons there make Guantanamo look like a holiday camp,” Begg says. “I’ve visited them, spoken to multiple prisoners, trying to locate some of them which we believe are buried in mass graves. These are the kinds of people that the US and Britain were working alongside, knowing they would do things the Americans wouldn’t consider.”
There is a Survivors’ Fund for those trying to rebuild their lives after release from Guantanamo – but they will never be given an explanation of why they were captured or held. “There is no legal process that actually exonerates you,” says Begg.
“It’s not uncommon for me to come across guys who can’t travel, can’t get a job, can’t live a normal functional life because they were once held in Guantanamo without charges.
“They did it because they could. And there was no way to stop them.”
After 25 years, the soft power of the US remains undimmed. The World Cup has attracted 1.2 million visitors to the country. The football itself has been spectacular, divisive, and intensely political. In that climate, Guantanamo’s opponents are still fighting for its remaining detainees to be remembered.
“Twenty-five years of illegal detention,” says Adayfi. He will “never forgive” what happened to him in Guantanamo.
“There is no justification. And there is no justice.”
KENNESAW, GEORGIA – The very start of this World Cup trip, and the grand idea to find out whether and how hosting the World Cup resonated in smalltown USA, did not go well. I landed in Seattle, a large World Cup host city, and sidled up to the desk to pick up my hire car, waiting in line with a group of Belgium supporters who were touring before their first group game in the city.
Not only did the kind gent at the desk not know that a World Cup was coming, he had no idea which sport it involved when prompted by a colleague (there was bunting in the terminal building, but not at car hire). Nothing like really cutting through your search for a World Cup buzz.
This always promised to be a World Cup of host cities. I am attending matches in nine of the US’s 11 – I left Seattle too soon and the Miami semi-final was just too far south for the car. In each of the six cities I have visited so far, I’ve found an unshakeable major tournament identity that has surpassed my expectations.
All the usual hallmarks are there: electronic road signs warning of soccer traffic, the bars with bunting and promises of watch parties and drinks deals. The walking, talking Epcot-ification of downtowns with umpteen different nations represented by home or away shirts. This is normal. This is how it always is.
And the vast hordes of travelling supporters have been aided by something I’ve not experienced before: locals choosing a team for each match and offering their dedicated support, if only for one day. That doesn’t feel twee – it’s uplifting.
Some of the views on his epic odyssey have been absolutely stunning (Photo: Daniel Storey)
The difference with the US, and the element of the tournament and its politics that fascinated me just as much, is the vast expanse in between those cities. In Qatar in 2022, the two stadiums furthest apart were separated by a 48-minute drive, give or take traffic. This is basically the opposite. I wanted to find the World Cup ghost towns.
They are everywhere and I have seen only a fraction and a snapshot. In Grants Pass, Oregon, I went to a quiz in a bar where one of the questions asked for the identity of the US’s first opponent and almost nobody guessed Paraguay. In Ottawa, Kansas, a lovely lady named Sam – almost all of my conversation comes at the motel buffet breakfast – said her nephew was “probably” into soccer but had no concept of the tournament itself.
In Guthrie, Oklahoma, I spoke with Liam and Jennifer – a young couple who had six young children and a puppy with them. As a childless man who got a migraine just by thinking about the noise in that minivan, it was some surprise when they seemed to think I was the unusual one for travelling the US to watch soccer. Maybe they had a point.
In Pleasant View, Tennessee, the only real show in town was selling fireworks for a special 4 July celebration marking the USA’s 250th birthday.
A Canada game was on the television in a barbecue restaurant, but I was very much the only interested customer. When I asked the barman if he’d had much interest, he laughed (and I won’t attempt the drawl): “We have it on, but we have to have something on.”
This information will draw rolled eyes in some quarters – typical Americans not caring about football and thus unworthy of hosting the World Cup. Predictable insularity to the point of national solipsism. And yes, there is plenty of that about.
You are never more than 10 miles on a freeway from seeing an American flag large enough to cover an office building fluttering on a 100ft pole. That’s just how they roll, I’m afraid.
Have reached Columbus, Texas. Great smalltown Americana. And a Scotland away shirt. pic.twitter.com/U9UGVvMx8E
It’s also an absolutely forgivable scenario to not care – or not even know – about a tournament that has little to no impact upon your life. Lots of Americans rarely leave their state, life in smalltown USA can indeed feel parochial and a little claustrophobic and football tournaments don’t come to your backyard. The US has 11 host stadiums in an area the size of continental Europe and seven of them are close to the east or west coast.
My favourite fact is this (and I learned it in the state itself): Kentucky doesn’t just not have a World Cup stadium, but only one of the seven states it borders has a World Cup stadium too. That state is Missouri, which shares a 60-mile border with Kentucky. And here’s the kicker: that 60 miles does not include a road crossing. I met a guy named Paul in a diner in Bowling Green, not too far from that wild border, who wasn’t bothered about the World Cup. I’d have had a job convincing of its relevance to him.
Even state secularity is overplayed. I spent a day and night in El Paso, Texas and went to a winghouse inside converted train carriages. It is true that there were a group of Panamanians watching their match against Ghana (and within the immigrant experience is where the World Cup interest really shines), but I also sat at the bar next to a couple who inquired what I was doing in the US.
When I asked them if they had considered going to a game at either of the Texas stadiums (Houston and Dallas), the guy gently pointed out that the closest of the two was a round trip of 1,270 miles. Which is further than driving from Munich to Istanbul.
There have been towns where I’ve struggled to even find the World Cup matches on, but then these are often interstate stop-offs where fast food joints and motels are the usual fare and most local places shut early.
Anthonino's in The Hill, St. Louis. Where they have a mural on the outside to the USA beating England in the 1950 World Cup pic.twitter.com/z0eFt7qKze
The main staple – in Williams, Waco, Columbus, Warrensburg and Gainesville, small towns dotted across the south – are bars that have sport on TV because they always do. Often this is white noise to most of the clientele, but the matches are shown because they fight only with baseball and horse racing. In the evening you might get the sound turned up louder, but very rarely does the World Cup win that audio tussle.
And yes, to answer the obvious accusation, most Americans do prefer other sports. This is a sport-obsessed country, it’s just that they have so much choice and so much of that choice is brought closer to their own world.
Let me explain, using the El Paso example again. The nearest MLS club to El Paso is Austin FC, whose crowds are 20,000 and made up largely of locals. Austin to El Paso and back is an 18-hour drive. You simply aren’t going to interact with the sport in the same way as Europeans do.
What El Paso does have is UTEP and their college football team, whose Sun Bowl stadium has a capacity of 52,000. This is an unfair fight and pretending otherwise is foolhardy. This same scenario plays out across smalltown USA. You see more outward support – shirts, signage, car stickers – for high school football teams than anything to do with soccer.
The one exception to this rule, particularly in the south but it survives elsewhere too, is the Mexico shirt. I have seen perhaps 20-30 men’s national team – or USMNT as it likes to brand itself –shirts in the wild. I have seen 2,000-3,000 Mexico shirts. The white away kit is the accessory of this World Cup and the Mexican population in the US.
As I make these mini-judgements on an entire country, I continue to remind myself how much of this is projection. For all the criticism of the US’s interest in men’s soccer (and it’s both clearly growing, clearly led by the immigrant population and clearly led by interest in European leagues), is that unusual? If you had driven into the town of Pudozh in Karelia, Russia in June 2018 and chatted up locals with talk of Harry Maguire and the England lovetrain corner routine, would anyone have cared? I think not.
There’s another theory, and it came from Brian, one of my many new acquaintances. We began chatting at breakfast in Chesterfield, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, and I asked him why the fervent support for the US national team appeared to come mainly from larger cities. His explanation was illuminating. Americans are a pretty patriotic bunch as a rule, but sport tends to localise loyalty.
Soccer, and its World Cup, is the exception. American football has no established World Cup – the NFL is enough. Baseball has the World Classic and basketball the Fiba World Cup and Olympics, but neither are the pinnacle of the sport – MLB and NBA are all you need. According to Brian, smalltown Americans just aren’t used to caring about global sporting events because they simply don’t need them.
He doesn’t mean that as criticism. In the major cities, support was fervent. Elsewhere, I found pockets of intense excitement, but typically when meeting those who call the US home now but have footballing ties to hereditary nations.
The support grew as the US national team continued to impress – success is always the easiest driver of legacy. The marketing machine is rolling: Pulisic, Robinson, Adams and McKennie are on every other advert that doesn’t have David Beckham in it. It will also take time and in great swathes of the country it may never happen – it’s OK to admit that.
On the Road USA
Join Daniel Storey on his 7,200-mile odyssey across the US to tell the stories of a World Cup like no other.
There is a line in Alan Sillitoe’s story “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” about the silence of an early morning: “Everything’s dead, but good, because it’s dead before coming alive, not dead after coming alive.”
That’s how I feel about those countless small towns I’ve visited where I’ve heard brief references to the World Cup: a group game that catches a half-interested eye, stickers for sale in a provincial store, a kid in a Netherlands shirt in the middle of halfway to nowhere that makes you double take.
These are not World Cup ghost towns because something died, but because it didn’t come alive yet. One day it might. Football usually finds a way.
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“You know we’re in Salford, right?” joked Micah Richards as Joe Hart was eulogising about the “unbelievable energy” of the Azteca Stadium before England’s epic win over co-hosts Mexico.
Richards got a round of laughter in the studio, but the loveable pundit touched on one of the lively debates around this World Cup. Should the BBC be broadcasting from a futuristic studio thousands of miles away from the action? Does it affect the coverage? Do the viewers care? Or is it just one of those weird media obsessions?
Comparison is the thief of joy, as the famous saying goes, but here comparison is stealing the admiration that the BBC might have received for their state-of-the-art studio. The technology is impressive and it will be used by BBC Sport for years to come. The problem is, ITV’s backdrop has blown them out of the water.
Apart from the strange decision to give Emma Hayes a chalkboard in what looked like a kitchen, ITV have had a brilliant World Cup so far. When your wide shot is framed by the Statue of Liberty on one side and the Brooklyn Bridge on the other, it’s hard not to see that as the pinnacle of TV bases. I’m sure they would have loved to add a huge name like Zlatan Ibrahimovic to their pundit panel but not even their coffers can cover the rumoured £1.9m that Fox are paying the superstar former striker for his six weeks’ work.
It is almost impossible for the BBC to win in this situation. The derogatory articles and comments about the “cut-price coverage” or “lame game” were coming from the same pens which have written countless pieces about the number of BBC staff who have attended major sporting events in the past. I covered five World Cups for the BBC and four Olympic Games. I loved every minute of it but you always knew what was coming when you touched down.
‘The BBC turned down a ticket to the biggest party of the year,’ says Walker (Photo: BBC)
It doesn’t help that there is an assumption that foreign trips constitute a jolly. I’m not saying there aren’t amazing moments, but we used to work our backsides off and it wasn’t always as glamorous as you might imagine.
In my experience, the BBC was always incredibly careful about how it spent the licence fee. When we flew out for the World Cup in Brazil in 2014, we were all staying at a two-star hotel about half a mile away from our five-star ITV friends. Pictures of pundits in their rooftop swimming pool did not go down very well. It was always that way.
Budgets are tight and the BBC will have to live with the choice to turn down a ticket to the biggest party of the year. By not being there for the bulk of the tournament, you do lose authenticity. You lose the chance to reflect on what it’s like to walk those streets and you miss some of the magic of having a front row seat for the greatest show on earth.
It should be noted the BBC has sent reporters and commentators out to North America this summer but much of their work is taking place off-camera.
In a world of AI and fakery, authenticity has never been more important. It might seem trivial but ITV are doing well because you can see Mark Pougatch’s hair being blown around. Maybe the BBC need to invest in a wind machine.
And this isn’t about being anti-technology. Football Focus was the first BBC show to come from an entirely augmented studio. Apart from the desk and chairs, everything else was in the mind palace. It took your brain a few minutes to get used to the sea of green and you lost your perception of depth. It was hard to focus on Football Focus!
When I presented the Tokyo Olympics alongside Sam Quek, in an even bigger virtual studio, it looked out of this world. The viewer saw us in a multi-layered Japanese townhouse with a beautiful garden, koi carp swimming under the floorboards and a giant TV screen on the mezzanine.
In truth, Sam and I were sat at a tiny desk in a green box the size of a squash court. The difference is the Tokyo 2020 decision was made through necessity during the pandemic. The one for this summer’s World Cup was an editorial decision because of financial restraints and impending cuts hanging over our national broadcaster.
With all that said, I am really enjoying the coverage of this World Cup. The BBC analysis and commentary has been great and Hart has been a standout star while I am enjoying the blend of pundits on ITV.
The real test will come when we get to the final and the same game is on both channels. The BBC has long won that battle but what impact will the Salford switch have when the nation reaches for its remotes?
In the past, it’s been as much as 5-to-1 in favour of the BBC. If it’s anywhere near 50-50 then there will be some serious post-tournament conversations about decisions and the decision-makers.
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NEW YORK – Two things can be true of Cristiano Ronaldo. He will end his career without winning a World Cup and yet somehow, he is the perfect poster boy for an ever more surreal Fifa brand.
Portugal will remember this as their summer of squandered opportunity, Ronaldo’s obstructive presence the triumph of the celebrity cult over the finer mechanics of the game.
At 41, he should never have played as many minutes at this World Cup as he did; not least because he was supposed to be banned for two of them, before Fifa inexplicably intervened to stop him being suspended. Could you imagine?
None of the attributes which once made Ronaldo soar above the rest – with one exception – are present any longer. Spain left him in space that once would have been criminal. In the air, Aymeric Laporte and Pau Cubarsi made light work of him. At the break, he had had 12 touches, the fewest of anyone on the pitch.
That much was obvious to Bruno Fernandes, who became reluctant to cross to him at all, though not to his manager, Roberto Martinez. Such wilful blindness ultimately cost him his job – he resigned hours after the final whistle.
Martinez has spent the last few years travelling around the world frittering away the gilded epochs of golden generations. First, the great Belgium of Kevin De Bruyne, Vincent Kompany, Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois. With Portugal he was entrusted the world’s best midfield of Bruno, Vitinha, Joao Neves. Elsewhere Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, Joao Cancelo. In Nuno Mendes, the world’s best left-back.
Had the round of 16 gone to penalties, Vitinha, one of their better spot-kick takers, was already off, leaving his teammate 15 years his senior to plod around for the full 90.
This is the end of Ronaldo’s World Cup dream (Photo: Getty)
Martinez, himself born in Balaguer, Spain, has made a great show of singing the Portuguese national anthem. An act of greater patriotism would have been to give his adopted nation the best possible chance of winning the World Cup – not indulging what he must have known was an oversized ego hindering his team’s chances.
And it is clear that he did know, seeing as Portugal were never willing to fully commit to the bit. They did not operate around Ronaldo, turning him into a Haaland-type focal point through which everything else must flow. They would not leave him in the box and rather had their record goalscorer dithering 30 yards from goal.
For the last month Portugal have effectively been reduced to playing with 10 men, barring the moments Ronaldo found a more comfortable stride against Uzbekistan, and with the penalty against Croatia.
Martinez is not alone in this. In the deranged church of CR7, the manager is fighting an unwinnable war. Erik ten Hag will testify. At this World Cup, Carlo Ancelotti bowed to the same external pressure, opting for Neymar at the expense of Joao Pedro and Richarlison, needlessly handing him their final kick.
This is, at least, not a vintage Brazil side. The tragedy of the Ronaldo sect is that Portugal had their best opportunity to do something special since the days of Luis Figo and Rui Costa. All of it was thrown away in the name of pandering to an inflated sense of self-worth.
Ronaldo might have bowed out after Russia 2018. He certainly could have gone once Lionel Messi had beaten him to the punch in Qatar. That is how long the decline dates back – he did not manage a successful dribble in five matches at that tournament, nor in the five this summer. A player who once possessed his calibre must have felt deep down that the game was up and could not bring himself to concede it.
It did not have to end with such indignity. The staggering physical prowess of appearing on the world stage at his age has been lost in the noise that follows him in victory and defeat.
The heart has been ripped out of a World Cup dream but it is no longer even worthy of sympathy. The romantic appeal lay in his colleagues, who have been denied a moment that might never come around again.
After plenty of ceremonial, performative tears at the final whistle, Ronaldo’s will be the grandest goodbye. His teammates might find that hard to forgive.
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NEW HAVEN — There was some hope that the USA would get through their last-16 tie against Belgium in Seattle, perhaps even with Folarin Balogun playing a starring role. If this was the only way to shame Fifa into a full explanation, not just for the decision they made but how they got there and whether it establishes new precedent, why not? The USA’s exit allows this rotten case to be quickly brushed under the rug before the quarter-finals.
Maybe, but this was the appropriate end. You pulled all those levers. You left a sour taste. You slipped a viper into the tent of football’s governance and started a civil war between Fifa and Uefa, the two houses of the sport. And you did it all so that you could lose 4-1 to a barely functional Belgium team. Also-rans don’t usually come with asterisks.
There will be bitter disappointment at the manner of the exit, not least the calamitous third goal that clinched defeat. Goalkeeper Matt Freese may feel that he was fouled, but really it was just two athletes that got tangled up. That’s how it works now, right.
Was it all worth it? Over the course of this tournament, Mauricio Pochettino and the USMNT had made friends amongst travelling supporters and earned admirers for the courage and intensity of their play.
They had also gained new fans amongst their own soccer-sceptic population, thus evaporating a degree of the insularity and exceptionalism that can blow through US sport. They were, to be blunt and a little surprised, a pure good news story.
On the Road USA
Join Daniel Storey on his 7,200-mile odyssey across the US to tell the stories of a World Cup like no other.
That has changed over the last three days. Firstly, unless the USA actually reached the World Cup final, this controversy promised to be the overriding legacy of their tournament. Sorry, but we will forget Balogun twisting and turning against Paraguay. We won’t forget President Trump talking of his intervention and Senator Cruz thanking him for changing Fifa’s mind.
That may sound unfair. It certainly tars many innocent parties with the same brush, not least Balogun himself. But then that is the unfortunate nature of geopolitical collateral damage. And when your sitting President boasts of maximising the extent of his relationship with football’s governing body to aid the USA’s cause, reality is reality even if it’s bleak.
International managers and national associations play a good game of avoiding political issues. You can see their point: if governments are prepared to deal with grisly nation states then asking a bloke who has some coaching qualifications to take the stand is a bit much. It’s the guardians of the game who should be better.
Even that moral escape route is blocked here. For all that Trump played his role, we can be sure from Balogun’s place in the starting XI that US Soccer and Pochettino were at least willing conspirators. For all the hollering and deliberate moral selectivism of some in the US soccer community over the last 48 hours, everybody reasonable knows that Balogun should not have been playing. That includes Pochettino.
In 2019, after winning the Women’s World Cup, the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) declined an invitation to visit President Trump’s White House because they did not want their success to be co-opted by a regime that had worked against their fight for equal pay and LGBTQ+ rights. That meant something.
In 2026, the USMNT relied upon the same President to personally intervene in their own cause and were then immediately knocked out of their host tournament. That means something too. A legacy has been soured. Memories will last for the wrong reasons. A reputation has been torched.
