Despite plenty of interest from across Europe, Marcus Rashford is most likely to get the chance to resurrect his Manchester United career next season, as the most appealing exit options for the England forward have failed to materialise.
Rashford has two years left on his £325,000-a-week United contract. With Champions League football to contend with next season, there will be plenty of opportunities to play, should he be reintegrated.
There is no ill-will from Rashford’s side towards the club over his treatment when part of the so-called “bomb squad”. He is still a fan of his boyhood club and retains a good relationship with several team-mates. Rashford also, crucially, has an ally in manager Michael Carrick.
Another claimed that he would be “very surprised” if Rashford was playing anywhere other than Old Trafford next season.
Rashford has an ally in manager and former teammate Michael Carrick – pictured together here in 2017 (Photo: Getty)
Another loan the only route
Had it not been for Rashford’s wages, he would have likely secured an Old Trafford exit already. Even coming close to matching his salary rules out most of even the biggest clubs. The conduct of senior United executives has not helped the situation, insiders said.
They have been vocal about their desire to get his salary off their wage bill – a big part of Ineos’ manifesto after taking a minority stake in the club.
As a result of their palpable desperation, no club is going to be willing to pay anything like the £26m option Barcelona had to make last season’s Rashford stay permanent.
Sources believe suitors will return with further loan offers to test whether United feel they can challenge on multiple fronts without the academy graduate or not.
Man Utd against Spurs move for Rashford
A host of Premier League clubs, including Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and Chelsea, have been keeping tabs on the 28-year-old, with Spurs plotting a £40m move last month.
However, The i Paper has been told there is a reluctance among senior United figures to sell to another English top-flight club, given it could lead to humiliation should Rashford start scoring elsewhere.
Galatasaray and Fenerbahce both tried to sign Rashford this summer, sources said, but he was not interested. A top Champions League team remains his priority, the identity of which is becoming clearer.
There are plenty at Old Trafford who feel there is too much water under the bridge for Rashford’s return to be a success. There is little doubt for many, however, that the talent is still there. There was evidence of that ability, fleetingly, at the World Cup.
Tottenham were prepared to make a big play for Rashford this summer, and were even willing to pay a fee, rather than a loan. While shifting the England forward was preferred, the potential PR disaster if goals flowed elsewhere made such an option much less appealing.
If Rashford were to leave, United would need another wide forward, one that does not appear forthcoming. Another midfielder is priority, and with little generated from player sales, there is not the money to splurge on other big-money arrivals.
As it stands, Rashford will join up with his United teammates at their six-day training camp in Dublin, scheduled around their friendly clash with Leeds on 12 August.
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NEW YORK — Far from the eyes of the World Cup’s major cities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested thousands of people since the tournament began.
The uneasy “truce” which was promised by Trump officials for the duration of the tournament did not hold. Before a ball was kicked, migrant communities feared raids would take place in and around the stadiums and the streets where they came out to support their teams. Instead, beyond the World Cup’s reach, it is estimated that more than 10,000 people have been taken into custody. One man has been fatally shot.
Three days after Houston, Texas hosted its final game between Morocco and Canada, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican who had lived in the US for 35 years, was killed by agents while he was driving his van, in a raid of which he was not the intended target. Agents say that he attempted to ram their vehicle; bystanders and his family dispute this account and say he was close to obtaining legal status in the US.
He is at least the eighth person to be shot dead by ICE agents in Trump’s second term; across the border, President Claudia Sheinbaum estimates that 17 Mexicans have now died during raids or while being held in the custody of immigration authorities in that time.
Here in New York, the state’s major cities host World Cup festivals while games have taken place across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Three-hundred miles upstate, in the shadow of the Adirondack Mountains, migrants at Lake Placid spoke of a climate of fear after raids targeted seasonal workers on temporary visas.
Along Broadway, I visited the ominous 34-storey courthouse, now the centre of a battle between activists and ICE agents, who have been accused of monitoring the door and arresting people showing up to court to have their immigration cases heard.
The vast majority of those detained have been Latinos. Tribal leaders also say Native American communities have been targeted. In Los Angeles, anti-ICE campaigners told The i Paper that ICE agents had been seen in the vicinity of the SoFi Stadium, where the USA played its opener, but that they had not made any arrests. There have been more calls to immigration helplines in the city across June than in previous months.
“There has been a marked surge in detentions during the World Cup,” US academic and former footballer Jules Boykoff tells The i Paper.
Protestors march against ICE in Houston, Texas (Photo: Getty)
“It wasn’t happening around the vicinity of World Cup stadiums with foreign tourists who were here for the game, but it was happening far away from these venues where the international tourists and journalists are not based.
“This actually was the fear of a lot of people who follow immigration in the United States, that Trump would proceed in a quieter way. By that, I mean quieter than the sort of brutal shootings of US citizens in the streets of Minneapolis, and do it much more quietly, behind the scenes, far from the international journalists and cameras. And that appears to be what they’re doing.
“They’ve been going to rural areas at the same time that there’s been an uptick in unaccompanied minors being sent away.”
Over 4 July weekend, as the nation marked 250 years of American independence, the Department of Homeland Security said it had “celebrated Freedom 250 by arresting criminal illegal aliens from American communities”.
Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said ICE agents had spent the weekend “arresting the worst of the worst, including multiple murders, paedophiles, rapists, kidnappers, drunk drivers, drug traffickers and other dangerous public safety threats,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis.
“Thanks to President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, we have an additional 12,000 ICE officers who will continue delivering on the American people’s mandate to make our nation safe again.”
Data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) suggests around 70 per cent of detainees across the US –42,722 of the 60,000 in custody – have no criminal convictions or pending charges. At its peak during the World Cup, the ICE operation has been detaining up to 2,000 people a day. Raids on workplaces have increased, as have detentions via traffic stops. Texas, Louisiana and California are the states with the most detainees.
In the final days of the tournament, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done. CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades. The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted.
“Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands. The Radical Left Dumocrats [sic] would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those Crime Stat Records coming!”
In May, as tournament preparations were being finalised, there was another spike in detentions. Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans were the most affected. Even on the day the World Cup began, a major raid took place on a construction site in Bemidji, Minnesota.
Now the legal status of around 1.3 million more migrants has been called into question after the Supreme Court ruled that the President could overrule the Temporary Protected Status programme, which offers protections for migrants for countries affected by war or natural disaster.
The promise that there would be no “civil immigration enforcement” at matches has been kept; beyond the reach of the World Cup, ICE are more powerful than ever.
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The most famous image of Kevin Keegan is of a man shaking with emotion, gripping a microphone, headphones clamped down over his ears, shouting how he would “love it, absolutely love it if we beat them”.
He seems a man on the brink, who knows that he will not beat Manchester United and that his vivid, passionate affair with Newcastle would not end well. Keegan, the young naïve optimist, brought down by the curmudgeonly wiles of Alex Ferguson. Keegan is like the young card sharp, Steve McQueen, who in The Cincinnati Kid stakes everything on his belief that the old poker hand, Edward G Robinson, does not have the jack of diamonds. He is wrong.
The 1995/96 Premier League season had the feel of a film. Newcastle, young, buccaneering, full of goals and glamour, tore through the old order – although defensively they were remarkably tight. On 23 December, they were 12 points clear at the top. Tyneside was going through something of an economic boom. The Quayside had gone from being a place of derelict wharves to a place of clubs and bars with names like The Quilted Camel.
If you turned to the screens of some of the new sports bars, you had a good chance of seeing Kevin Keegan’s face. He was forever giving press conferences, armed with the soundbites that fuelled the dreams of a club that had not won the title since 1927. If he were a politician, he would have been Tony Blair, who claimed to be a Newcastle supporter and invited Keegan to the Labour Party Conference, where they were photographed heading footballs.
However, by the time Blair took office in May 1997, Keegan had quit as manager of Newcastle United, and the giddy dreams had gone. Ferguson’s jack of diamonds came in the form of five 1-0 wins. In four of them Eric Cantona scored the only goal. The fifth was against Leeds on 17 April. Leeds, who had seen their keeper dismissed after 16 minutes, almost held out and Ferguson wondered aloud whether these players could raise their game against Newcastle. They had, he said, “betrayed their manager” by only turning it on at Old Trafford.
Significantly, Ferguson had consulted the Leeds manager, Howard Wilkinson, about what he planned to say. This was something Keegan said he would never have done, not least because he did not have many close relationships in football, which he rarely watched. His friends tended to be outside the game.
When playing for Liverpool, he lived not in the traditional haunts of Southport or Formby but in rural north Wales, where he and his wife Jean raised their family and their horses. After retiring as a player in 1984, he spent eight years in Marbella, honing his golf handicap and being a father to his two daughters. Then in 1992, he was called by the Newcastle chairman, Sir John Hall, whose club faced relegation to the Third Division, “There are only two men who can save Newcastle United,” said Hall. “And we are speaking on the phone.” A little over four years later, they were almost champions of England.
Manchester United won that title on the last day of the season and the sweep of that contest, followed by the drama of Euro 96 was partially responsible for the upsurge in attendances that cemented the Premier League as the wealthiest in the world.
However, this failure gnawed away. On 8 January, he walked out, never having signed the ten-year contract he had been offered. Ferguson, driving to Glasgow and hearing the news on Radio Five being delivered like the assassination of a president, thought the coverage bewildering.
As a player, Keegan had timed his exits wonderfully. After winning championships and FA Cups at Liverpool, he left after lifting the European Cup in Rome. There was another European Cup final with Hamburg, lost to Nottingham Forest, but there was also the Bundesliga title and two European Footballer of the Year Awards.
After captaining England in the 1982 World Cup where a back injury limited his participation to a few fitful minutes against Spain, he joined Newcastle who were then in the Second Division. His father was from the North East; his grandfather, Frank, had led 26 Durham miners to safety on a February day when 168 were killed in the West Stanley pit disaster. There was a romantic attachment, and Keegan was forever a romantic. There was also plenty of money, a contract underwritten by Scottish and Newcastle Breweries.
Two years later, after they had celebrated promotion with a testimonial against Liverpool, a helicopter came to pluck him from the pitch and take him into the skies. In terms of silverware, which may be one measure of sport, Keegan’s greatest feats had come on the shores of two great estuaries, the Mersey and the Elbe, but it was by the Tyne that he achieved immortality
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I’m calling it now: this has been an odd World Cup for defenders and midfielders. While the superstar attackers have all turned up – to the extent that Harry Kane misses out on this team – central defenders and central midfielders have either quietly gone about their business or suffered lapses.
Still, head above the parapet time. Here is my best XI of the tournament. Shout at me on social media if you want, but please do be aware that there is usually a queue.
Goalkeeper – Orlando Gill (Paraguay)
The first problem position. Cape Verde’s Vozinha got all the plaudits but their defending was absolutely a communal effort. Diogo Costa was almost faultless but then a) Portugal have a decent defence and b) Portugal were rank bad all tournament.
This became a choice between two goalkeepers: Mostafa Shobeir of Egypt and Orlando Gil of Paraguay. Gill gets the nod on the basis that he made the most saves of any goalkeeper in the tournament and I watched him be brilliant live.
Right-back – Pedro Porro (Spain)
Tottenham’s Pedro Porro was quality for Spain (Photo: Reuters)
Until Spain beat France in the semi-final, Achraf Hakimi was nailed on for a place in this team. But a) Porro played brilliantly against France and scored, and b) there are other reasons why I am more than happy to leave Hakimi out.
Between Marc Cucurella and Porro, Spain have two full-backs who have arguably produced their best performances over the last two years in this tournament. Their attacking invention has allowed the wingers to drift close to Mikel Oyarzabal and make Spain increasingly hard to defend against.
Left-back – Nuno Mendes (Portugal)
No left-back created more chances. No left-back completed more dribbles. No regular left-back made more passes per game. No left-back played more accurate through balls.
This tournament was a waste of time for Portugal because Roberto Martinez considered it more important to give Cristiano Ronaldo a retirement lap than to commit everything to winning the tournament. Nuno Mendes lost out more than anyone.
Central defender – Pau Cubarsi (Spain)
You could make a decent case for picking Aymeric Laporte here, but Cubarsi impressed me so much during the tournament given his age and relative inexperience (he had only 12 international caps before the group stage started).
Cubarsi was also the right choice to win the Young Player of the Tournament award. The completeness of his game at 19 is astonishing and Spain have two teenage pillars to build around.
Central defender – Dayot Upamecano (France)
There were doubts about Upamecano before this World Cup; the suspicion was that he occasionally loses concentration and makes poor mistakes. But we saw almost none of that in the US.
In fact, I think Upamecano was the best French defender who also had the good fortune to miss the appalling first half against England in Miami. At 27, he merits being the natural partner to William Saliba for Zinedine Zidane.
Central midfielder – Rodri (Spain)
Rodri – Spain’s midfield general (Photo: Getty)
One of the stories of the entire tournament. Rodri has spent most of the last two years either recovering from a serious injury, recovering his match fitness after so long out or struggling to recapture the peaks he reached before the injury. Then he walked into a major tournament and immediately put every other midfielder in the shade.
Spain did not win the World Cup just because of Rodri, but they would not have won the World Cup without him either. His performance against France in the semi-final was one of the most dominant in recent World Cup memory.
His work off the ball, including an unerring ability to be in the right place at the right time, was a game changer for England. I made him the second best in the team after Bellingham and the second best central midfielder behind Rodri.
Attacking midfielder – Jude Bellingham (England)
The greatest individual major tournament by any England player, by my reckoning. That Bellingham ended it with a wonderful individual goal to confirm his place as the highest goalscorer in a single major tournament for England was entirely fitting.
Lionel Messi shone – but not in the final (Photo: Reuters)
He’s 39; that is the phrase to repeat to yourself until the enormity of what Messi achieved in this World Cup sinks in. In 2023 he chose to leave European football, ostensibly to extend his Argentina career and give him a shot at another World Cup.
You can insert caveats around the expansion of the tournament reducing the quality of opponents slightly and point out that Mbappe has been part of three excellent France teams, but who cares? He has scored 22 World Cup goals in 22 matches to become the highest scorer in the competition’s history and scored 10 here.
Kane can consider himself unfortunate not to be here, obviously. But then Haaland led his team to their best ever World Cup performance and did so in the manner of an insouciant meat robot, goofy smile as he thwacks you out of the competition.
Haaland has broken America in this tournament. On every sports show, it was him who the more casual followers of soccer gravitated towards. And the performance against Brazil, when he produced the best individual display of any centre forward this summer, gets him the nod.
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METLIFE STADIUM — By the time the ball hit the net we were all Spanish. The goal felt like an override by the gods fed up with Argentina’s anti-ballers and a referee that struck off what appeared to be a legitimate Spanish goal in normal time and restricted the red cards to one, the inevitable Enzo Fernandez.
After a diet of the “best World Cup ever” according to Fifa and its acolytes, Argentina’s version of warball stripped the contest of pattern and rhythm so much that Justin Bieber’s mournful balladeering seemed almost entertaining.
Moreover, Bieber’s cultish indulgence landed like a weighty counterpoint to Madonna’s slapstick journey to pitchside in a car steered by the Brazilian football royalty of Ronaldinho and Ronaldo.
Madonna with Brazil icons Ronaldinho and Ronaldo during the half-time show (Photo: Reuters)
A pair of footballers laughing their heads off at the wheel was probably not in the playbook agreed to by the ancient pop diva. It cheered up everyone else, however.
Either side of those contributions K-pop band BTS and Shakira “headlined” in a blizzard of sequins and silk. So disorienting was the experience it made us forget about the football.
Probably the least said about the first half the better. Spain knocked it about, Argentina knocked Spain about and the referee allowed it to happen.
The nobility in Argentina rests with its people and their capacity for absorbing profound suffering associated with historic failures of government and political abuse. They deserve better than a team that dresses up base impulse and vulgarity as character.
As the match laboured through the second period competing emotions swirled about English observers in the audience. Sorrow, regret, mystery that England thought so little of themselves to surrender to an Argentina team with such a limited, joyless view of the game.
Spain kept at it without ever touching the sublimity of their best stuff. The second half was spent almost entirely in Argentina’s half.
Trump just refusing to leave when they’re lifting the trophy.
— Out of Context Football Manager (@nocontextfm1) July 19, 2026
Who could have imagined that the artistry ordinarily associated with this global emblem would suffer this distortion? Argentina’s lack of ambition killed Messi as much as the spectacle. He just wasn’t in the game. And as a result neither were we. Argentina’s first attempt at goal did not come until extra time.
You had to wonder what the president of the United States made of it all if this whole soccer thing is predicated on goals. When he made his way on to present the trophy, he was booed – hardly the ending he can have imagined.
Maybe there should be scope for presidential decree in circumstances like this to persuade Fifa president Gianni Infantino, who sat alongside him behind a bullet proof screen, to award the trophy to England on a count back, most goals scored.
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METLIFE STADIUM — Out of left field, a new dynasty is born. Spain changed football half a generation ago: take the ball, pass the ball, win the lot. They were kings of Europe and then kings of the world. Play the tape again.
In between, the supposition was that Spain’s style simply stopped working and with the death of tiki-taka went their chances of domination. At the greatest tournament of all they failed to even compete in a quarter-final for 16 years. All the while, it turned out, a new winning system was being created in an underground football lair.
Then the poster boys were the metronomes and artists: Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets. Now it is the coaching system that rules all. Luis de la Fuente spent eight years managing three different Spain teams at youth group level, all while the senior team won nothing. The public panicked. The media panicked. The Spanish football federation asked for trust.
It was horrible to watch, but not because of Spain. They met an opponent that was so determined to kill the game that they became the ultimate parody of what they purport to represent. Argentina had more red cards than shots in the 98 minutes of normal time.
Ferran Torres was the hero but it could have been half a dozen others, such was the range and breadth of the wasted chances to score or even shoot. In one end of the MetLife Stadium, they rejoiced because they are champions but also because it seemed inevitable that the dark arts would win out.
European aesthetics against South America athletics. Artists against street brawlers (plus the ultimate mastercraftsman). Bulls against matadors, if we want to really dig into the cultural stereotypes. Control vs chaos, to quickly nip back to football. This was heralded as a fitting final outside of the England bubble.
Clashes of styles don’t always produce wildly entertaining contests. Sometimes they create a logjam. You can’t tell whether the open hand is enveloping the clenched fist or the fist is punching hard into the hand, but it doesn’t really matter when the end result is the same. The World Cup final is the peak of the sport. But not necessarily entertainment.
With the score level, that represented victory for Argentina. Theirs is a strategy of proactive spoiling. They were never going to be creative nor expansive. They simply look to hold out, hope that Lionel Messi will create energy out of nothing and are usually rewarded. The onus was on the opponent; it usually is.
What fascinated me most about Sunday’s final was how both teams went further into their extremes. Spain brought on Pedri and Ferran Torres, two more from Barcelona, to try and reinforce positional dominance. Off came a striker to make it roughly 13 central midfielders on the pitch.
And Argentina? They carried on sh*thousing and kicking opponents and then acting flabbergasted when the referee awarded a free-kick against them. In each case, one player in blue and white would pick up the ball and drop it only when asked for a third time, like a miscreant puppy. Enzo Fernandez finally paid the price and rightly so.
It is wearing and it has won Argentina no friends at this World Cup. To clarify: they don’t care and nor should they. Winning is the whole of the truth. Was it fun? No. Did their behaviour occasionally make you want to scream? Oh yes. Was it effective? In its own way. Until it wasn’t.
This will be heralded as a win for good sport, given Argentina’s behaviour over the last fortnight. You will find no arguments to the contrary here. But when the dust settles, it is an extraordinary triumph for the system over individuals and a nation that has conquered all twice in the space of two decades.
Spain are European champions (men and women). They are world champions (men and women). They deserve every ole.
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Certain fears around this World Cup have been largely avoided. There were no notable security issues to the public. The stadiums were largely full after a slower start. The football has not been low intensity and the weather didn’t interrupt much.
But don’t think that this made the World Cup free of controversy. From Iran to Folarin Balogun and suspended referees to gaudy glitz, here are nine things that have ground my gears over the last six weeks…
Omar Artan’s absence
Artan is an elite referee who was selected by Fifa for this tournament. He held a valid US visa and a diplomatic passport organised through the Somalian embassy in Nairobi. And he was blocked from entering the US when he arrived for the officials’ pre-tournament camp in Miami.
US border and customs subsequently accused Artan of having links to a terrorist organisation, something that he strenuously denied. Uefa then appointed him as the referee in the Super Cup final, which you have to say is magnificent PR.
First, Trump told the Iran team that he could not guarantee their safety and therefore they should not come. Then Iran were forced to move their training camp from the USA to Mexico and fly in and out for each match. Then members of the coaching staff were delayed from being allowed across the border.
In addition, members of the Uzbekistan squad and staff faced severe and targeted treatment by border officials when they arrived in New York City.
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.
Major football tournaments have opening and closing ceremonies that are always rubbish but can be ignored because they do not interrupt the flow of the football. Until this World Cup, when Fifa announced mid-tournament that not only would there be an additional half-time show (like the Super Bowl) during the final but that it would cause half-time to be doubled in length.
So we are changing the fabric of the match, going against Ifab laws and causing the players to shift their own preparations in the biggest match in world football because Fifa want to make some more money? Yeah fair enough, that sounds exactly like something we should have predicted.
Super Bowl-style rings
The glitzy sporting Americana doesn’t stop there. In the build-up to the final, it was announced that the winners of the World Cup would receive 30 Super Bowl-style rings as a prize. As well as, y’know, the actual World Cup trophy and medals that were enough until 2026.
The good news for anyone who has saved up their pocket money is that there will also be 1,996 of these rings for sale to people who want them, just to make sure that even the novelty value of a player having a ring is entirely eroded. The bad news? They will cost a reported $150,000 (£111,000) each.
Ticket pricing
After some early setbacks for Fifa, whatever their social media accounts claimed at the time, matches were generally played out to full stadiums. Fifa will inevitably reason that supply and demand trumps any other principle when they are spreading every single penny back to world football. Or whatever.
But the ticket pricing for this tournament remains a disgrace and that will never change. You can choose to look after supporters, to make it possible for those outside the wealthy to attend games, whether that be locals in the host countries or those travelling from abroad.
The Balogun ban
Probably the controversy that will live longest in the memory, purely because of how it subverted our expected norms around major tournaments.
We thought that a red card meant a ban with no appeal – wrong. We thought that political interference was banned – wrong. We thought that Fifa would not take calls from leaders over football matters – wrong. We thought that more than one person on the committee would decide this stuff – wrong.
The USA lost 4-1 to Belgium with Folarin Balogun in the team. I hope it was worth it to sell your soul up the river.
Hydration breaks
Having a break in Miami or any other outdoor stadium where the conditions demanded it caused no anger at all. But the extension of that procedure to games with no extreme heat and even those in climate-controlled stadiums? Nonsense.
The breaks allow managers to speak to their players (Photo: Getty)
And we all know why it happened. In the US and other countries around the world, broadcasters inserted an advert break that effectively turned a two-half football match into four quarters. Which was a low moment for the Americanisation of football.
Tournament expansion
Another moment in which we all had to prepare to feign surprise. After a difficult fortnight for Gianni Infantino during which we heard that he had lost internal support over the Balogun affair, Fifa’s president needed a PR shot in the arm. Cue his admission that Fifa would look at extending to 64 teams for 2030.
It’s not that a 64-team tournament would be worse than 48; it wouldn’t. It’s that the first expansion was clearly a placeholder, that expansion would magically create a need for more hosts and thus make more money and that Africa and South America, where Infantino has his core support, would most benefit.
Trump making his play for more
Speaking on Friday afternoon before Sunday’s final, Trump spoke in a press conference in which he “joked” that Fifa should give the USA the World Cup back very soon, but this time without bothering to include Canada and Mexico. As ever with these jokes, Trump absolutely means it.
With 2030 and 2034 already confirmed (and I don’t think even Trump can talk Infantino out of that), put your money on USA hosting in 2038. Either with New Zealand if Fifa pay heed to Oceania’s turn in the queue, or without if they ride roughshod over that principle. It’s so transparent that it hurts.
By Sunday evening, Cristian Romero could be a two-time world champion. Argentina, for whom he has been a key figure for over half a decade now, are out to become only the third team in history to retain the World Cup successfully.
But there isn’t a single player in La Albiceleste’s international ranks with such a paradoxical reputation at club level. Romero has never let Argentina down, best demonstrated by the four trophies he’s won with them in the last five years.
What is perceived as a reckless style in the Premier League is encouraged when he dons the famous blue-and-white stripes of his home country. His dastardly shithousing reached new heights in Wednesday’s semi-final win over England, goading familiar faces and being part of the squad that held up an offensive banner referencing the Falkland Islands (or ‘Malvinas’, in verbatim).
The great Lionel Messi often heralds Romero as the best defender in the world, though that’s almost certainly because he’s blissfully ignorant to what goes on at Tottenham Hotspur.
Romero has reached the World Cup final with Argentina (Photo: Getty)
Last summer, Romero was appointed Spurs club captain, succeeding the legendary Son Heung-min. It was a choice that made sense in the moment, with the centre-back stepping up to claim Player of the Match for his performance in the Europa League final against Manchester United while he was also part of Ange Postecoglou’s leadership group before the Australian was sacked.
It is not a decision that has aged particularly well. The appointment of Thomas Frank as head coach, coupled with the arrival of Vinai Venkatesham as CEO, was meant to signal a cultural reset. Romero taking on the captain’s armband went directly against that ethos.
Club sources claim that Spurs’ most recent superstars – Son, Harry Kane and Hugo Lloris – set the standards at Hotspur Way. They were self-aware, very receptive to the idea they were leaders as much as players and carried themselves accordingly. Everyone fell in line, and maybe more importantly, nobody wanted to let them down.
Romero, to this point, has shown no such qualities as captain. His punctuality has been a persistent issue, no more so than when it emerged he was late to training one day after Spurs were battered 4-1 by north London rivals Arsenal last November.
Instead of leading in the dressing room and on the pitch, most of Romero’s talking has come on social media, uploading a number of Instagram posts calling out the club’s board for their injury crises and lack of transfer market movement over the last couple of years.
Plenty of disgruntled Tottenham supporters backed Romero when he last took aim at the club hierarchy in January, but the sentiment has radically swung in the opposite direction since.
It was often speculated Romero cared more about playing for Argentina than Spurs. He has always dismissed this notion out of hand, but actions speak louder than words. When he fled England to train with boyhood side Belgrano on the week Tottenham’s Premier League relegation could have been confirmed, choosing to focus on rebuilding fitness for the World Cup after injury, he was effectively cyber-bullied by fans into returning to London.
It is now a fairly open secret that Tottenham simply want out of the Romero business. They would rather take the chance he pieces everything together elsewhere than be the fall guys for his shenanigans for another year. Should he indeed leave this summer, he will go down as one of Spurs’ worst-ever captains.
And despite everything, Romero stands on the brink of greatness. He is a god among Argentinians, yet viewed in the country where he plays his club football as a villain so cartoonish it now borders on parody. There have rarely been more Jekyll & Hyde players than Romero in history. That, in itself, is a fitting legacy.
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France 4-6 England (Mbappe 48′, 66′, Barcola 54′, Dembele 90+6 | Rice 3′, Konsa 18′, Saka 37′, 45+1, 87′ pen, Bellingham 90+8)
A game of two halves rarely had greater application. A liberated England so far ahead Dan Burn and the defensive firefighters were packed off to Miami Beach for some welcome R&R. By the second half drinks break there was a fleet of Ubers bringing them back. By then a four-goal lead had shrunk to one and we were back to Atlanta processing collapse..
So much for a match of no consequence. In the first half England made a nonesense of DNA theory. You could argue that France had perhaps checked out in a mad first half, but they still had Kylian Mbappe, Michael Olise, Desire Doue and Rayan Cherki on the pitch.
Thomas Tuchel said that everyday is a learning day in this game, especially in defeat. Maybe the secret is not to overcomplicate nor overthink. Rather convince yourself the game means nothing and play stress-free football.
Just 134 seconds in, the net was collecting its first cargo, a curled effort from Declan Rice. What on earth was he doing so far up the pitch? Executing or ignoring the instructions of Tuchel.
Rice was aided by a poor pass from Doue but the point is he was advanced enough to leather it. England and the match needed that. And so did Tuchel, booed by the England fans when his name was broadcast on the PA.
Tuchel ripped up the template here with seven changes from the Argentine retreat, none of which included Kobbie Mainoo, who was declared injured. That tension will have to work itself out later when minuteless Mainoo eventually addresses his treatment by Tuchel at this tournament.
Tuchel wanted us to believe this squad just wasn’t up to it (Photo: Reuters)
England appeared notably relaxed and with Rice operating without Elliot Anderson in a deep double-pivot were more offensively organised. Morgan Rogers and Eberechi Eze combined higher up the pitch to feed the wide men Bukayo Saka and Marcus Rashford. Ivan Toney dropped into the spaces to link the play Harry Kayne-esque.
For those who would have the English footballer inferior, it must have been perplexing to watch the white shirts outmanoeuvre the feted French to take a two-goal lead by the first drinks break and double it before half-time.
Maybe what this showed is that talk of DNA bears little scrutiny. Football is species specific played by sapiens. How players express potential within the limitations of legs and feet is governed by the same factors; speed, balance, strength, build and temperament. None can fly nor run at 100 mph. The exceptional make a difference, the rest do their jobs according to tactical and strategic choices.
England were miles better than the opposition in the opening 45 minutes, playing according to Premier League first principles; dynamic, attacking, aggressive, competent, confident.
France came back with a raft of substitutions which utterly tipped the balance. Mbappe began to find space and Olise had Ousame Dembele and Bradley Barcola to feed on the wings.
England were run ragged by the reconstituted French and might easily have seen their advantage disappear. The late introduction of Jude Bellingham and Anderson proved sufficient to restore order and a late penalty from Saka three minutes from time for his hat-trick looked to have given England space to breathe.
Then Djed Spence succumbed to injury reducing England to 10 men. Dembele took advantage with a fourth for France in added time.
Enter Bellingham to end the tournament with a quite brilliant solo effort. It felt fitting that Bellingham should have the last word for England, demonstrating what might be should Tuchel grasp the nettle and finally set England free.
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NEW YORK — Back by popular demand, headlining in New York/New Jersey, the man who stole the world. Gianni Infantino’s big weekend began with a speech at the United Nations HQ on Friday followed by a reception in his honour hosted by President Donald Trump in an eponymous golden tower just a mile away.
The World Cup has delivered Infantino the dream vista, the defending World Champions Argentina against the European champions Spain in New York, the biggest game in world football in the world’s most dynamic metropolis. Lionel Messi versus Lamine Yamal.
It could have been bettered only by the involvement of Cristiano Ronaldo but that would have left Infantino open to accusations of manipulation, which is against football’s code of honour as well as Fifa statutes. And let’s face it, none could accuse him of that.
Well, okay, that’s a stretch. Infantino makes Niccolo Machiavelli’s scheming creation, the Prince, blush, no genuflection too great, no bow too low, no cap too big to doff.
Though Fifa is the most powerful body in sport, Infantino has surpassed the great Sepp Blatter in his alignment of sports richest economy with global politics. There is no world leader whose boots Infantino will not lick, no CEO to whom he will not ingratiate himself if it gets him through the door.
He hit the jackpot with the United States where Trump is both king and CEO, giving Infantino carte Blanche to exploit football’s fanatical base and sell it back to them as privilege.
This requires some sacrifice, of course, namely the willingness to burn through the ethical and regulatory rule book to satisfy one’s own ends. Thus did Infantino sanction the most expensive pricing structure in ticketing history, force upon the host cities sky high travel and accommodation costs just to break even, sanction travel bans on fans, participants and referees, impose add breaks in each half and pass them off as health benefits even in temperature controlled stadia where rehydration was never an issue.
Infantino hit the jackpot with this World Cup (Photo: Getty)
The most egregious adulteration resulted in the reinstatement of USA striker Folarin Balogun versus Belgium following a straight red for dangerous play against Bosnia-Herzegovina. One call from Trump to Infantino was all it took for Fifa’s opaque disciplinary committee to torch regulatory protocols and deliver an altered state without explanation.
There is no right of appeal. The United States accepted the outcome despite disputing the validity of the card. Infantino slithered beneath a rock called independence to legitimise the secretive actions taken by Fifa lawmakers, claiming with a remarkably straight face it would not be right for him to influence outcomes.
None of the above put a crease in his well-cut navy suit and crisp white shirt when he addressed the United Nations in a celebratory speech that framed the tournament in an alternative reality known only to the FIFA comms office and the White House press department.
Omar Artan, the Somali referee, banned from taking part over supposed vetting issues, would have been reaching for his English dictionary to reconcile his understanding of the word “community” with Infantino’s. The fiction of bringing people together, a central motif of Infantino’s Disneyesque rhetoric, would have fallen hard on the ears of all those denied entry, be they fans, officials or players.
Infantino moved on to Trump Tower to fawn over the most powerful man in the world as a medieval courtier might, his unctuous servility leaving an oily residue on the carpet. “The American dream Mr President came to reality. We united the world,” Infantino gushed.
Trump wouldn’t know a penalty box from a jewellery box. He has yet to attend a match, though he will be centre-stage at the presentation ceremony. The World Cup is PR fantasia for him, a useful tool convened by a useful idiot which has the useful benefit of deflecting from a pointless war with Iran and his absurd obsession with voting conspiracies, both of which are a massive drag on voter confidence in mid-terms year.
Funnily enough the Balogun incident didn’t get a mention in Trump’s eulogy to Infantino. The tournament’s dark underbelly flows unseen like a sewer, unremarked by the powers that be but detected nonetheless by the rank and file, who cannot be but touched by the smell.
Such has been the degree of mistrust of refereeing throughout the tournament particularly in relation to Argentina’s progress, one commentator identified referee Ismail Elfath as a greater threat to England’s progress than Messi in the semi-final.
He was right. The numbers bore out the sentiment, Argentina registering the most infractions of any team in the opening ten minutes of the semi-final and 12 in all during the first half, for the collection of just one yellow card.
Incredibly Giuliano Simeone, whose wild MMA simulations accounted for five free-kicks, went unpunished whilst Elliott Anderson, almost decapitated by Enzo Fernandez inside three minutes, was booked for impeding Messi. At least he was somewhere near the ball.
Egypt were scathing of their treatment in the round of 16 alleging outright favouritism towards Messi, all of which Fifa’s head of referees Pierluigi Collina dismissed as losers’ lament.
As a result an overwhelming sense of misappropriation of football’s ancient conventions has clung to Infantino. The unwanted World Cup final half-time ceremony that threatens to double the interlude from 15 minutes to half an hour, is one final insult to suffer.
Since there is no means to unseat him given the dependence of the majority of global federations on Fifa cash handouts, the court of Infantino grows ever stronger, promising a 64-team event at soon as the next World Cup in 2030. At least Trump will have left the scene by then.
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As soon as you enter Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, you feel like you are in a Jackson Pollock fever dream. The home of the Dallas Cowboys appears to have landed in Arlington from outer space. The inspiration behind it? Not the Maracanã nor Wembley, but the Pyramids of Giza.
Houston boasts a behemoth of a sporting structure to be proud of. Seattle’s World Cup venue oozes charm. Inside Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, your jaw rarely leaves the floor. It’s the sensation designers of Manchester United’s new ground are desperate to replicate.
The New York-New Jersey Stadium – just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it – needs a rebranding, from MetLife to MehLife. Given its competition in the US, it is not fit to host the greatest sporting spectacle of all on 19 July.
The location
First of all, it is not even in New York. Not even the same state. You can see the city skyline from the stadium, but that is where the affiliation ends.
There just isn’t anything else near the MetLife. East Rutherford is not somewhere you automatically think of as a sporting utopia.
Americans have the ultimate penchant for the gargantuan, which is why so many of its arenas are out of town. Few others are quite so marooned as the MetLife.
Money, money, money
There are cheaper ways to get there than the New Jersey Transit from Penn Station, but the fastest route – for the journey that is equidistant to the Kings Cross to Wembley Jubilee Line trip – hits supporters’ pockets hard, in a World Cup that has already broken the bank.
The MetLife Stadium is in the completely wrong place (Photo: Getty)
It was revealed before the tournament started that the local transport body was planning to charge a whopping $150 (£114) return for the journey. Organisers later climbed down and said they would reduce prices after such a severe backlash. But how close would they get to the regular $12.90 (£9.80) for the trip?
The final figure, which someone thought was acceptable, is $98 (£74). Imagine if Transport for London put tube fares up to £74 for a single journey for the FA Cup final? Outrageous.
Charmless facilities
In Dallas or Atlanta, when temperatures get too much, the roof is closed and air conditioning gets pumped in to ensure the best possible contest. In East Rutherford, there isn’t even anywhere to shelter from the rain. In the press box as England toiled against Panama, the only solution offered was a plastic sheet to go over your head.
Thomas Tuchel criticised the pitch at the MetLife Stadium earlier in the tournament (Photo: Getty)
If it had the magic of an old Olympic stadium, like the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, which was built in 1922, then the MetLife architects could be forgiven. But the MetLife is only 16 years old. Why doesn’t it have any of the modern facets every other arena comes with? Especially in the US.
Should the weather for the final be wet, it will certainly dampen moods. Everyone had no choice but to sit through an at-times tepid England victory in rather uncomfortable ponchos. The atmosphere suffered as a result.
A pitch fit for the World Series, not World Cup
“It is a very fast pitch, very short and almost feels a bit like astroturf and a bit uneven, different layers to the grass,” Thomas Tuchel said after England’s win, clearly as taken aback as we were at the poor pitch quality for such an important venue.
It looked like it had been relayed that morning for that game. The weather has remained unsettled since, only adding to concerns that the playing surface will have deteriorated further.
We are not talking mud patches of the 1970s here. But this is the US, where everything is bigger and better. The playing surface, like with everything else associated with the MetLife, isn’t even on par with every other host city.
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When Donald Trump revealed he had lobbied Fifa president Gianni Infantino to suspend an automatic one-match ban on Folarin Balogun, breaking precedents to let the US team’s star striker play in a vital game, fans around the globe were united in disgust.
Among them was Miguel Maduro, a former chair of Fifa’s own governance committee. He felt “outraged” by the organisation’s “scandalous” decision, apparently made to please Trump, who Infantino cravenly awarded a Fifa peace prize to last year.
But Maduro was not surprised by what unfolded, because the former Portuguese government minister knows from bitter personal experience how far Infantino will go to gain political favour.
The law professor joined Fifa in 2016, hoping to clean up the association after multiple corruption scandals, only to be sacked just eight months later over decisions that he says threatened the vested interests of Infantino and his supporters.
Maduro is glad the Balogun controversy “took place before the eyes of the entire world”, exposing how Fifa really works behind the scenes. Speaking to The i Paper from Lisbon, he argues it’s just one example of the “serious systemic governance problems that plague Fifa”.
Following the uproar, Trump claimed he did not tell Infantino what to do about Balogun’s ban, insisting he merely asked for it to be reviewed because he “didn’t think it was a foul” – despite also saying he “didn’t know” what a red card was. Infantino insisted he told Trump that only Fifa’s “independent judicial bodies” could lift the ban, not himself.
Yet it has since been revealed the decision was taken by just a single person: Fifa’s disciplinary chairman Mohammad al-Kamali, who didn’t consult any of his 17 fellow committee members, unlike in 100 previous cases.
After European football’s governing body Uefa called the Balogun process and decision “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable”, Infantino’s critics have been hoping it may lead to his downfall in elections next year.
Maduro thinks this is sadly unlikely due to his own experience of Fifa from the inside.
Infantino briefing Donald Trump on how red cards are used while visiting the White House in 2018. The Fifa boss awarded the President a ‘peace prize’ last year (Photo: Al Drago/Getty)
Sacked for standing up to Infantino
Having played the game at amateur level and being a season ticket holder at famous Lisbon club Sporting, Maduro has always been passionate about football.
He was eager to help reform Fifa after Sepp Blatter’s humiliating resignation as president in 2016, and having been elected to lead its governance committee, thought he would have an ally in Blatter’s successor. After all, Infantino had taken over promising to “restore and rebuild a new era”.
Infantino was “very eager to be liked and to seduce people”, Maduro says, but “once we took a couple of decisions that he very strongly disliked, he stopped even talking to me at all”.
Maduro and his committee were supposed to make decisions independently, to ensure Fifa was following codes and meeting standards, but he says several attempts to influence him led him to consider resigning. Then, a year before the 2018 World Cup in Russia, a major flashpoint arose.
Russia’s deputy prime minister at the time, Vitaly Mutko, wanted to stand for re-election to Fifa’s main decision-making council. Maduro and his team blocked this because it would breach political neutrality rules, potentially making the organisation vulnerable to direct influence from the Kremlin.
Maduro says Infantino was worried this decision would upset “the political cartel that depends on him”, imperilling his presidency if he failed to overturn it.
He recalls: “Someone speaking on behalf of the president was trying to convince me to change our decision. I said: ‘We’re not going to change. I understand this may be politically complicated for the president and Fifa, but we’ve been appointed to apply the rules equally to everyone. I’m well aware that in a few weeks, you can replace me and my colleagues, but you will face a reputational risk with that.’ This person replied to me: ‘You are right, but it’s one week of bad press, and then it goes away.'”
Sure enough, he was told two months later his position was not being renewed – effectively firing him – and other senior ethics officials were also let go. Maduro says the message Infantino sent out was clear: “If these people don’t do what I want, I replace them.” Although the president doesn’t directly control appointments, he makes it known “who he wants there, who he doesn’t want there”, says the law professor.
His sacking caused such fury that Maduro was called to testify before a UK parliamentary hearing. He told MPs that Fifa behaved “like a state beyond a state“, operating “without the rule of law”. Its culture was “extremely resistant to accountability, independent scrutiny, transparency and the prevention of conflicts of interest”, he said. Fifa rejected these claims at the time, saying it “always respected” committee decisions.
Folarin Balogun, right, was given an automatic one-match ban for a red card after this tackle but Fifa later suspended it for a year (Photo: Michael Steele/Getty)
Consolidating power
Over the last decade, Maduro says it has been “deeply frustrating” to see Infantino consolidate control. “He decides who gets those revenues, how those revenues are distributed between the football associations and between different people in the ecosystem of football, including the presidents of the football associations that vote to elect and re-elect the president,” he says.
It also means Fifa’s supposedly independent committees “ultimately do what the president wants”, acting as Infantino’s “instruments”.
He points out how Infantino avoids media scrutiny by rarely granting interviews – and when he appeared at a press conference in June, it was his first in three years.
Maduro also expects Fifa will bend its rules and allow Infantino to stand a fourth time in 2031, on the basis that his first term – when he replaced Blatter – did not last a full four years.
Fifa did not respond when approached for a response, but a spokesperson said last month: “Fifa underwent deep rooted governance and management reforms over the last decade with a clear focus on transparency and on its mandate to develop football all around the world.” Arguing it has been “transformed”, they said the organisation is now a “role model”.
Infantino has claimed that “every dollar” made from World Cup ticket sales, which have been dogged by allegations of price manipulation forcing fans to pay huge sums, “goes back to the development of football” and is invested in children’s “hopes and dreams”. Responding to the Balogun controversy, he maintained that Fifa committees “operate autonomously” and their independence is “essential to the credibility and integrity of football”.
Why it’s so hard to challenge Fifa
French fans protested against Infantino during their match with Morocco this month (Photo: Chris Brunskill/Getty)
The Balogun scandal has refocused attention on Fifa and allegations about corruption.
Maduro highlights how Fifa acted in a similar way to ensure Cristiano Ronaldo was not suspended for Portugal’s first two games at the World Cup this summer, despite being banned for violent conduct against the Republic of Ireland.
It also tweaked the qualification criteria for last summer’s Club World Cup so that global superstar Messi would appear with his club, Inter Miami.
What angers Maduro most, however, is that Fifa “manipulated the rules” for Saudi Arabia to host the World Cup in 2034. He explains that encouraging Spain and Portugal to co-host the 2030 tournament together with Morocco, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay meant the following edition could not be hosted again in Europe, Africa or South America, because of rules on alternating host continents – making it “almost certain” the Saudi bid would have no rivals.
Maduro supports the Reboot Fifa campaign launched by sports ethics group FairSquare, which is lodging a “class action” complaint against Infantino after the World Cup. But he worries Fifa is virtually immune to public and political uproar, unless global sponsors “take their money away”.
“I’m deeply skeptical of any likelihood of any reform,” he laments. “There are people in the world of football who know there’s something deeply wrong in how Fifa is governed, but they cannot speak publicly about it. If they do, they are sidelined.” He admires Norway’s football president Lise Klaveness for criticising Infantino but says: “She is a lonely voice. She has to be very careful.”
If the scandals continue, he thinks they will encourage fans to believe conspiracy theories that matches are fixed by biased referees. The biggest tragedy, he says, would be if “people start to distrust the actual outcomes of matches”.
