How 9/11 Never Went Away

Apart from the prospect of AI ending humanity in the next ten years, the big news this week was the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. I saw a lot of reports and remembrances of people who died in the attacks, or of those who survived them, or even just experienced them, and I also saw a few comments about how we're still living with the effects of that day.

I think that last point is fairly obvious, but I feel like few sources commented on how you can draw a straight line from the attacks to the situation we're in now. I also feel like I didn't see enough posts (though there were a few) excoriating George W Bush for his response to the attacks, because that's what's influenced our current situation so obviously.

The first point is that, by invading Iraq more than a year after the attacks, after having sent his proxies to lie to the UN and to the American people about Saddam Hussein's ability to build weapons of mass destruction, Bush gave rise to the conditions that led to the formation of the Islamic State (ISIS or Da'esh) and their acts of terror throughout the Middle East and Africa. ISIS became a bogeyman for Westerners, especially those on the right who espoused Islamophobia. This gave ammunition to right-wingers who wanted to end immigration from the Middle East, just as Bush's wars in the region created a wave of refugees and migration as people tried to escape the violence tearing their homelands apart.

I think it's pretty clear that we wouldn't have had Donald Trump as US president if he hadn't gotten so much traction for claiming he'd seen Muslim families in Jersey City celebrating the attacks - he may have come to prominence by questioning Barack Obama's US birth, but his increasingly outlandish 9/11 stories were his first foray into running his mouth off and being rewarded for it.

Bush's war on terror also gave cover to a bunch of other countries as they demonized their own Muslim communities. Israel's response was fairly quick, and we're living directly with the consequences of that, as the US wages a war of choice on Iran - and one that makes the case for the invasion of Iraq look legitimate - essentially because Israel had started trading missiles with Iran.

There's also India and China. China used it as cover to oppress their Turkic Uighur minority in the west of the country, while India's BJP ramped up its anti-Muslim rhetoric and has ridden high on that ever since. China's actions briefly galvanized Western opposition, while India's enabled the populist prime minister Narendra Modi to emerge as a global figure as he leads the world's most populous country.

Those are all the global effects, for which the death toll has reached the hundreds of thousands, if not millions by now. On the personal level, the national security apparatus that the US put in place after the attacks has had its own long-ranging effects. The biggest one, which has also largely faded into the background but was a big deal when it happened, was Edward Snowden's 2013 revelation of NSA spying on the population through pretty much every large tech company around at that time.

There was also all the immigration enforcement, which expanded into curbing illegal immigration and all of CBP's and ICE's excesses since then. And it has to be said, as bad as Trump's policies have been, Democratic presidents have also signed off on them: the NSA spying scandal was during Obama's administration, and people defending Trump's family separation policy noted that immigration authorities had done the same under Obama, too.

Jason Burke, who wrote The 9/11 Wars, has talked about the failure of Osama bin Laden's wider vision for the Middle East and for "bleeding" America dry. I think the Onion's joke headline "FBI Uncovers al Qaeda Plot to Just Sit Back and Enjoy Collapse of United States" captures what's happened since much better - even things that weren't explicitly caused by the terror attacks have led to our loss of standing in the world, and to our loss of cohesion as a society. I'm talking about the political polarization and the widening economic inequality.

My question is, when is all of this going to end? At some point the principals who've dominated US politics and foreign policy for the last 25 years will shuffle off the stage - most of them have, but they've also given rise to others, and the nightmare continues.

My other question is whether there'll ever be accountability for the lies that led to squandered American and Iraqi lives, among others. George W Bush has been spared going down in history as the worst president by Trump, but no amount of sharing candy with Michelle Obama can obscure the fact that his actions led to so much suffering, over so long.

Unfortunately, I think I know the answer to that second question: too many people on both sides of the aisle were complicit, even just at the point of voting to authorize the Iraq invasion. So I won't hold my breath - but I live in hope.

RIP Dolly Parton and Tim Curry

The deaths of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry were the big news pieces this week, at least in the circles I swim in. The close proximity of them passing, and their shared age, gave me flashbacks to the great celebrity die-off of 2016, which kicked off with David Bowie and just went through the rest of that horrible year.

It's a little late to consider it such a big wave, and while both deaths are sad, there isn't the feeling of careers being cut short - after all, Bowie had just released Blackstar, and Alan Rickman and Prince could have continued acting and singing, respectively, for years if they hadn't died that year, whereas Tim Curry had retired from acting and Dolly Parton had released her last studio album in 2023 (though with release and touring cycles, that didn't mean she was done with recording).

Still, I was struck by the outpouring of grief, particularly for Dolly - I've seen multiple outlets and commentators suggest she was the last person all Americans could agree on. That said, she'd already become the patron saint of the internet, much like Betty White before her, being acclaimed as a woman in a traditionally male field who not only became instantly recognizable but never seemed to have a bad word to say about anyone. And you know, I don't habitually look for Trump's thoughts on celebrity deaths, but even he couldn't seem to think of anything shitty to say about her.

Whereas, for me, the passing of Tim Curry means one less of those British actors, like Alan Rickman, who had that grounding in classic theater and who'd worked with some of the greatest of the previous generation. Curry might never have been a household name, but he was in so many movies and shows over the years, and he looked so distinctive, that of course everyone knew him. And not only that, but his Pennywise still put Bill Skarsgård's to shame.

Both passings are a reminder that time goes on, and the familiar faces or voices you grew up with eventually fall silent. At least Dolly leaves behind a legacy of love, and Tim Curry leaves behind a legacy of deeply scarring generations of children, whether as the Lord of Darkness or Pennywise, and of making older versions of those kids roar with laughter for his role in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Both worthwhile legacies!

Press Responsibility in the Age of Disinformation and Pile-Ons

Spent this weekend thinking about the press this weekend, given the news that the embattled former Cambridge professor Jason Arday had been found dead at home, just a few days after resigning from his position. And my thoughts on the press and its responsibilities were intensified as I watched some coverage and debate about the White House's executive order about MMR vaccines for children.

In the first case, I have to admit that I wasn't paying much attention until Arday resigned from Cambridge. But when I woke up yesterday to read that he'd died, it felt sadly inevitable, given that his story had dominated the Guardian's webpage for a while. Obviously it became a lightning rod for bad-faith culture warriors, and accusations of plagiarism are not to be taken lightly... but also, he was a vulnerable person, and I can't imagine that there weren't other things happening in the world that might have been more important than whether a professor actually ran all those marathons?

Cambridge feels like it should bear more of the blame, but the Guardian and other UK media outlets that covered this story should probably consider whether they'd do it the same way again.

And then we come to the vaccines thing. I wasn't paying full attention, because it was on a TV at the gym, but I saw enough - it was CNN's show The Arena, and it had some Democrats and Republicans debating stuff, among which was the recent executive order to space out vaccinations for kids.

My problem with this was how much coverage the show gave the order, including showing footage of Donald Trump lying about how doctors have been putting "needles the size of soda bottles" into kids. I agree that stuff like this needs to be covered, and perhaps even debated (though I dispute that debate shows are "news", or that they do anything but provide exposure for the same round of pundits). But running Trump's comments like that felt irresponsible - the claim is simply not true, for one thing, and the debate format means that the focus isn't on informing and correcting, but on scoring rhetorical points.

Talking about it with my dad, he brought up some primetime address that the "president" made earlier this year, where he waffled on about some grievance or other. The upshot was that a couple of the major networks didn't carry the speech, simply because they wouldn't have been able to verify or check his claims - which feels like a responsible move, unlike CNN's coverage yesterday.

What CNN did feels too much like the quote-tweet feature on Twitter, before That Other Guy took it over: too many otherwise progressive voices would QT shitty comments from right-wingers, thinking they were dunking on the original poster, when in fact they'd just be amplifying their reach.

Does CNN running that footage of Trump saying that patent BS mean more people are going to avoid vaccinating their kids? The problem is that there are so many uninformed people out there that probably swallow that line uncritically, without checking it - and with Trump, it's not about the things he says, so much as the fact that he can muddy the waters and piss people off with his claims.

And let's be real here: uninformed people with no sense of discernment is why we got Trump a second time (as well as the first). Don't give me any guff about voter anger: we knew what we were getting in 2024.

So yeah, I wish news organizations would be more careful about how they cover stories like these, especially since both are tied into the culture wars in different ways. In one case a vulnerable person died because of what amounted to a media witch hunt, and in the other, mendacious comments were given a platform and consideration that they don't deserve. Outlets need to consider what they're saying when they choose how to cover a specific story.

Devil Wears Prada 2

Of all the movies I've watched recently, the one I'm moved to write about here, today, is The Devil Wears Prada 2. I don't think I ever expected to be interested in it, since I've passed through the past two decades without having to think about its prequel hardly at all, but as is often the way with these things, a lot of things came together for this to happen.

Obviously, the first factor was the chatter around it when it came out. I listen to the Scriptnotes podcast, and they're great friends with Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote both movies, so I got to hear her talk about it. A friend in my writing group also talked about it, which put it in my head, as well.

I then didn't think about either of the Devil Wears Prada movies for months, until the Odyssey came out, and suddenly Anne Hathaway was buzzy again. The final straw was seeing that Devil Wears Prada 2 was on Disney Plus, so I started by watching the first film last week and then watching the sequel last night.

And yeah, I can see what the buzz was about. It helps that both movies track my career in a number of ways - the first one came out in 2006, when I'd just finished journalism school and was trying to make my way in the world of London publishing. The second comes as I'm still reeling from cutbacks in media and research, though I've long since left capital-J JOURNALISM and have been doing industry research. But I won't deny that the first five minutes of Prada 2, where Anne Hathaway's character Andy Sachs loses her job to media cuts just moments before winning an award for her journalism, were triggering AF.

Beyond the glitzy settings and catwalks and star turns from the likes of Stanley Tucci, the second film - even more than the first - is a paean to taking pride in your work. In a way it's softer and more gentle than the first one, where the climax features Miranda Priestley essentially stabbing her faithful assistant Nigel in the back to outmaneuver her rival - while that movie ends on an uplifting note, with Andy leaving Runway Magazine but still getting a recommendation from Miranda, it doesn't really portray Miranda as sympathetic or an ally to Andy.

The second one absolutely puts them in the same boat, as they try to stave off job cuts that would destroy the magazine. It ends with Andy and Miranda on the same team, and Andy befriending Emily, who's basically the main antagonist in this movie - which may come from Aline Brosh McKenna not wanting to have all the female characters at odds with one another.

That's not a criticism, by the way, it makes for a good dynamic that humanizes both Miranda and Emily, especially given that these central relationships play out against the backdrop of rich tech and finance bros gutting things that are enjoyable in the name of maximizing profits.

And that's part of what makes Prada 2 so timely - so many news outlets have been ruined by money people and the obsessive quest to "drive engagement". Succession tackles the topic too, but the Prada movies do it with a lot more humor and fun - and the settings are so lush that it really made me miss living in London and working in the self-evidently less glamorous business of trade journalism.

The other thing that surprised me about these movies was that they aren't romcoms, despite what I'd naively assumed. Not that I'm against romcoms, I've seen a lot of good ones, but romance isn't a central part of the first Prada film (apart from Andy's relationship disintegrating as she gives more of herself to the job). It's more central to the second movie, but once again relegated to a subplot rather than being the central relationship - that's Andy and Miranda, and Andy's boyfriend is amiable enough, without drawing too much oxygen himself.

As a final thought, it also struck me how I could do worse than modeling my look off Stanley Tucci. He's a great character across both movies, and a style icon for follicularly challenged gentlemen like myself - at the very least I should get some glasses like his. That's possibly the only consumerist message I take from these movies, which despite the fashion world they take place in, work more as workplace dramas. They seem frothy and fun, like Emily in Paris, but they've got a lot more to say about work and what you give to the job - and they're both easy watches, not too long or dense. Check them out.

Goodbye to Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men

I know I'm horribly behind the curve, but I only learned the other week that Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men would be coming to an end. I remember seeing an episode appear in the feed that said they had a big announcement, and then I noticed that they were doing the Grant Morrison run of New X-Men but not Joe Casey's (and then Chuck Austen's) Uncanny, but I thought nothing of it - after all, I've only gotten up to 2021's episodes, so I had a long way to go.

So imagine my surprise when I saw them announce on Bluesky that their final episodes had just been recorded. I went back and checked, and yes indeed, they were wrapping up - they did their final episodes of continuity, and then their proper final episode, and that was done.

In their announcement and on their blog they talked about how the relationship of fans to the comics changed around then, as well as the whole concept of the X-Men, when Morrison finished up their run in 2004, and it's true - after reading Here Comes Tomorrow, I kind of thought Marvel could have finished the series right there.

On the other hand - and without begrudging Jay or Miles a well-deserved rest after 12 years of weekly episodes and interviews with some great creators - you could argue that the post-Morrison X-line is what really needs X-plaining. When I got to that point, I realized that there were a ton of books I knew nothing about, like New X-Men: Academy X and the New Mutants reboot, as well as whatever was happening in X-Force, the new X-Factor and solo books like Wolverine's. Hell, around that time is when they even introduced the character who'd later become the new Wolverine, Laura Kinney.

I also think that the Casey run deserved some extra scrutiny. I read the first couple of issues when it came out in 2001, but quickly lost interest, despite the art by Ian Churchill and then by Sean Phillips. When I got to that period in early 2025, reading alongside Morrison's New X-Men, I felt that the most interesting stuff was happening in Morrison's book, but there were definitely interesting ideas on Casey's side. And I always thought Austen had created the oddly reviled character, Stacey X, but no - it was Casey, and he made her more interesting than I'd expected her to be.

The other run I'd have loved to see Jay and Miles X-Plain was Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men... though possibly they weren't looking forward to giving Whedon more airtime (or Warren Ellis, who took over the book next). Still, Astonishing benefited from not being strictly in continuity, at least as far as crossovers, and so the creative teams on that book could do more interesting things than a lot of the rest of the X-books.

That said, you can look at Jay and Miles as a Chris Claremont-centric podcast, and in that light, finishing with New X-Men feels like the right moment. There was a lot of drift in the 90s, after Claremont left Uncanny X-Men, and so much of that decade was lost in trying to ape his style of storytelling. It took Morrison's singular voice to send the X-Men into a new direction, which held until about 2019 when Jonathan Hickman changed the status quo a second time. Post-Morrison, the book is governed less by the way Claremont told stories and more by how the wider comics industry had evolved, thanks to the more mature storytelling of Vertigo and Wildstorm, among others.

For my part, Jay and Miles became a go-to podcast, particularly for when I do cardio at the gym, very early in 2024, after I'd rediscovered the books and started Uncanny from the very first issue. I picked up X-Men: First Class (the comic) on their recommendation, and Season One as well, and I gained an appreciation for 1980s New Mutants because of their coverage - I already had a lot of early X-Factor, but grew to appreciate it more thanks to Jay and Miles. I even picked up Walter Simonson's Thor because of Miles, and it became one of the highlights of my comics-reading of 2026.

I'd also say that Jay and Miles affected my own writing a lot. When I embarked on my X-Men-inspired romantasy novel, their discussions of the Mutant Metaphor informed large parts of how I portrayed my characters and the world they live in - my hope is that, whenever it's finished (as in, ready to query; I finished the first draft back in May), the final product is something they'd approve of.

So I'm writing this blog to pour one out for my favorite podcast. I'm lucky that I'm far enough behind that I'll still be listening to them for a while to come, and I'm lucky that I got to tell them on Bluesky how much their show meant to me. I'm also in the market for more X-Men and comics-related podcasts, so I hope to find something as entertaining and wide-ranging in its interests.

And maybe I'll get to say hello to them in person one day, at a con or something. Here's hoping - but in the meantime, I hope when I get to that final episode they sign it off as Claremont always did, with "Fin".

World Cup 2026: Furia Roja

And there we have it: another World Cup in the bag, another name etched on the trophy, and another star on Spain's shirt. Every World Cup is a good one, even when the play is crap and the hosts are dodgy, so I'll leave other minds to reflect on whether this was a good tournament or not.

I suppose the only thing that I'll say in that direction is that the US remains a great venue for the World Cup. The size and diversity of the population are big enough that you can almost always fill a stadium, and  they're up for a party. I didn't get to any of the public parties down in San Jose, but when I did watch matches at pubs, there was always interest and full houses.

As for the game itself, it was a bit of a grim spectacle, watching Argentina resorting to playing dirty in an attempt to stop Spain from swamping them. I suppose they can't all be like 2022, when Argentina went up 2-0 in the first half, France equalized by the 81st minute, and then the game ended at 3-3 after extra time and Argentina won on penalties. But it's a pretty damning statistic that Argentina managed just two shots in the 120 minutes of game time, and no shots on target. That may indicate that Spain's superior midfield strangled Argentina's ability to link up play and bring Messi in, but Argentina also picked up 25 fouls (to Spain's 21) and 7 yellow cards, one of which led to a red card, compared with none for Spain.

It doesn't feel like a great final display for Messi, does it?

The other statistic is that this final cements 2026 as a particular over-performance by Western European teams, especially the EU5 (of whom only four were present). Western European teams picked up 2.13 points per game against teams from the rest of the world, the highest since 2006 (2.59); EU5 teams won 2.33 points per game, versus 2.67 in 2006.

Western European teams had it all their own way against almost every other region: they played 6 games against teams from CONCACAF and won all six, and won all three of their matches against Eastern European teams (they also have a perfect record against Oceania, but since they met just once, when Belgium played New Zealand, I'm not counting that). Their record against teams from Asia was more mixed, with 5 wins and 4 draws, but even there they didn't lose a single match. A Western European team did lose a match against a team from Africa (Scotland v Morocco), but won 10 of the other 16 matches against African opposition (I'm counting games won on penalties as draws, otherwise Morocco would have also notched a victory against the Netherlands).

Ironically, CONMEBOL was the confederation against which the teams from Western Europe had the worst record. Of 12 matches played, the South Americans won 5 and the Western Europeans won 4, with 3 draws. But when it counted the most, Spain came through and beat Argentina, which notched the most wins against Western European teams throughout the competition.

I've spoken before about the power of networks, and the fact that the core countries of England, Germany, Italy and Spain benefit from having the best leagues (and France from having players who play in those leagues). This result, and the good performance by these core countries, just shows how crucial that networking is to success in the World Cup.

The other notable thing from this result is that this is the first time a UEFA team has won a World Cup in North America. The previous editions were won by Brazil and Argentina in Mexico (1970 and 1986) and by Brazil in 1994 (USA), and always against European teams (Italy, West Germany and Italy). I always held that up as proof of the difficulty of traveling - until 2014 no UEFA team had won in the Americas, and both World Cups held in Asia were won by CONMEBOL teams (Brazil in 2002, Argentina in 2022). The only outlier was Spain's win in South Africa in 2010, but you could argue that that tournament represented less jet lag for Europe. That said, now that UEFA teams have won in South America and North America, this jinx against traveling can probably be consigned to history.

As a final thought, I want to come back to the point I made above about the US (and Mexico and Canada) being a great venue to host the World Cup. I don't have many memories of the 1994 tournament, apart from the disappointment of the final, but I kept thinking about the 1998 edition, which was the first I watched in its entirety. Like this one, I started out watching it on Telemundo, since I didn't have access to ESPN in my dorm that year. MLS was still relatively new, having only started a couple of years before thanks to the boost soccer got in the US from the 1994 tournament.

What a difference 28 years makes. MLS isn't considered a great league by any means, but it seems to have benefited from becoming a destination for European players who wanted to play without being seen to take a huge payout from China or Saudi Arabia. The arrival of David Beckham in 2007 helped raise the league's profile, and the game's, among US sports fans, and the arrival of Messi in 2023 (at a team co-owned by Beckham) raised it even further.

Here's an example: during Argentina's first match this tournament, against Algeria, I heard the Chinese family downstairs from me cheering Messi's hat trick, and it struck me that in 1998, no one in America would have recognized the game's most high-profile player or cared that he was playing. Yet that night we had Kansas City hosting the world champions and a bunch of fans there specifically to see Messi play, and more people tuning in to see him on TV.

I guess it makes me happy to think that 1994, which was derided as a cash grab at the time, did have far-reaching effects that still resonate. Without that tournament, MLS would probably never have been formed, certainly not with so much backing as it received, which would have given the US men's team access to fewer players and fewer academy facilities to develop them and send them to learn their trade abroad. You can trace the decent performance of the USMNT this year directly to their success and the excitement around USA 1994.

It also has to be said that the Women's World Cup contributed a lot to raising the profile of the game here. When it was held here in 1999, it became another opportunity for normal sports viewers to see the world gathered in the US to play together, and the fact that the USWNT won must also have helped - US fans could say that the men weren't up to the standards of the best, but the women were the best. That excitement was replicated in 2019, when the games were all over TV here in the US, despite the tournament being played in France. It helped that, once again, the US fielded a great team that looked like they were playing for each other.

So the success of this World Cup is due to 1994 and 1999, as well as 2002 when the men got to the quarterfinals and 2019 when the women won and turned it into a platform for advocating against Trump. It leaves me wondering how this year's edition will affect the game, both here in the US and abroad - next month normal US sports fans will go back to ignoring whatever's happening outside our borders, but they may carry the images and fun of this tournament with them for a long time, leading to more interest in future tournaments and more demand for games here.

It'd even be fun to see the US men win a World Cup - just once, though. I'd like to see another Italy win someday soon, or even just a qualification. But that's a dream that'll have to wait four years.

World Cup 2026: On to the Quarterfinals

Today's the first day without football since the World Cup started, so I took the opportunity to catch my breath and work on some of the stats for the tournament so far. The main thing is how rampant European teams were in the round of 16: the only UEFA team to exit at this stage was Portugal, which was knocked out by another UEFA team (Spain). All of the other European teams knocked out their opponents and progressed to the quarterfinals, which means the count stands at 8 UEFA teams, one CONMEBOL team (Argentina) and one African team (Morocco).

On the stats side, that means that UEFA teams so far lead the tournament with 1.81 points per game, having overtaken CONMEBOL with 1.74. The irony is that European teams have fared the worst against South American teams at this tournament, having lost three matches against them. In comparison, the only other confederation to have notched a win against a Western European team has been Africa, when Morocco beat Scotland in the group stage, but otherwise Western European teams have racked up 9 wins against African teams.

Teams from Western Europe have, so far, picked up 2.14 points per game against teams from the rest of the world, including Eastern Europe, which is the highest points-per-game since 2006, when Germany hosted and the entire continent had home field advantage. The average points-per-game across the tournaments from 2002 to 2022 is 1.88, so teams from Western Europe are doing historically well.

Part of that is how limited the other teams have been. Not to be mean, but the three hosts, all CONCACAF teams, got found out in this round just gone. Canada wasn't knocked out by a European team, but they were taken apart fairly convincingly by Morocco, who are just a win against France away from reaching their second semifinal in a row. Mexico gave the best go of it, but home field advantage, altitude and storm-related delays couldn't paper over the fact that England's individual players are just better.

And then there's the USMNT's performance against Belgium, which has been discussed at length by everybody, so I'll spare you for the moment. But regardless of off-field shenanigans and whether or not certain politicians' actions fired up Belgium while unsettling the US, that game was simply another case of a team of better individual players winning against spirited but limited opposition.

That point about good individual players bears repeating, because we're seeing it reflected in the race for the golden boot. I don't think I've ever seen the most heralded players showing up the way they have this year, but Lionel Messi is on 8, Kylian Mbappé and Erling Braut Haaland are on 7 each and Harry Kane is on 6 - and all four players could add to those totals. Messi and Mbappé both roared past Miroslav Klose's record, and now they're both a couple of good games away from matching or passing Just Fontaine's record for scoring 13 goals at a single World Cup.

By the way, as a digression, I was sorry to see Klose's record get eclipsed like that. There was something endearing about the idea that the top scorer in men's World Cups was a relatively unknown German (of Polish ancestry) who was never a household name like Messi or Pelé. On the other hand, now I'm curious to see if Harry Kane will manage to pass Klose, and whether Haaland will manage to add to his tally in the next World Cup in 2030.

But coming back to my point about the best players showing up for this tournament: those four leading the goal rankings right now were all expected to perform, and so far all of them has. You might argue that Cristiano Ronaldo has disappointed, but I'd argue that he over performed, given how limited his play has become; same with Neymar Jr. for Brazil.

There have been disappointments from big teams, of course. Without mentioning Italy's failure to qualify, Uruguay should have gotten more from their group, and Germany should have beaten both Ecuador and Paraguay. Brazil also seemed like they might come good, but then couldn't cope with Haaland or with the rest of Norway's movement. But other than Germany losing to Paraguay on penalties, there haven't been any shocks - the big teams mostly showed up and the unheralded teams have tended to over perform (in the case of Cape Verde) or at least give a decent account of themselves.

That might be because of the venue. The US, where most of the games are played, is diverse enough that you can fill a stadium with fans from pretty much any country in the world, just from that country's diaspora - the Iran games played in LA were apparently pretty lively, for example. Even if only 0.01% of the US population hails from somewhere like Ghana, that still means about 35,000 fans to liven up games and watch parties.

With that kind of support, you expect all teams will do well. The question will be whether this 48-team format will hold up in the next few cycles. 2030's going to be weird, with games in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Spain, Portugal and Morocco, while 2034 will be weird in the other extreme, as it'll feature Saudi Arabia as the sole host. While 2030 will have opportunities for lots of fans to travel, it likely won't have that diversity that the current tournament has brought.

That point about diversity brings me back to the US's exit, for a brief political coda to this blog post. Donald Trump can't have it both ways: he can't claim credit for an admittedly successful tournament while also demanding that the US be only white and English-speaking. Whereas 2006 was a nice showcase for Germany's inclusiveness and openness, 2026 feels like a success in spite of the US's government and general attitude toward the rest of the world. Trump's interference, and Gianni Infantino's acquiescence, have spoiled that a bit, but my hope is that the remaining fans who have traveled to the tournament will still have a good time and be able to take home stories of how welcoming the US was, regardless of who's in the White House.

The US is doing its damnedest to cut itself off from its friends, and when crisis hits, as inevitably it must when we've got a shitty government like this, the hope will be that enough goodwill remains from the rest of the world to get through it. A fun World Cup should help toward rebuilding bridges that this administration has insisted on burning.