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.

America at 250

It occurred to me today that the big party for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US has been a bit of a no-show. I didn't mark it with friends or family, or even see friends or family in person today - the only people I interacted with were a couple of employees at the Menlo Park Safeway, plus texting a couple of people here and there.

That's a reflection on how little of a deal it seems to be here in the Bay Area, but also how little notice my media bubble seems to have paid to the big event. I've been seeing some news stories about how chaotic and useless the "official" celebrations have been, but I haven't seen anything about celebrations here in Palo Alto or other areas nearby.

It could be that I'm cut off from stuff. My brain has been taken up primarily by the World Cup, which leaves room for little else other than memes and working on my spreadsheet (in case you're wondering, Western European teams are over performing at this stage in the competition, compared to their average points per game going back to 2002). I also don't see a lot of news locally - my subscription to the SF Chronicle ran out and the Palo Alto Daily is a bit of a rightwing rag these days, though neither seems to have much on the 250th anyway.

But I do go out into the world, and I don't see a lot of signs of anything out of the ordinary. I was in downtown Palo Alto yesterday morning, and it certainly didn't look like a place that was gearing up to celebrate our country's 250th anniversary. More to the point, my friends didn't make a big deal out of it, and my family's not even in the country, other than my dad, so there was no one around for me to celebrate it with.

There's also the argument to be made that there isn't much to celebrate. I'm 16 months unemployed, because of this administration, ICE is still out there terrorizing communities of color, and Trump's enabled a cabal of grifters and thugs who are daily chipping away at people's rights. Plus, the east coast is in the grip of a heatwave that's canceling all the parades and events - a little sadly ironic, given that it's worsened by climate change, a fact that this administration refuses to acknowledge.

But I have been reading other people's reflections about this anniversary, usually in the context of their memories of the celebrations in 1976. It feels like the country made an effort then, from special quarters to individual communities celebrating. It was a rough time then, too, with the OPEC oil shocks and the repercussions of the Watergate scandal, and our president was Gerald Ford, an incumbent I've rarely heard described as anything other than a seat warmer for the next guy.

It could be that my media bubble isn't into celebrating 250 years of America, because that smacks too much of the other team's thing, but that would be a shame. Sure, there's a lot wrong with America and not much hope of it improving in the near future, but our left and progressive arms are still part of the American body politic, which means we play within the rules and norms of the US. We aim to improve things for working people, women and minorities because we want the promise of America to extend to everybody - and so we should be celebrating the fact that, out of a beginning that absolutely didn't live up to our founding ideals of equality for all, we've made big strides since the founding.

And it has to be said, if waving the flag is the right's thing, then what imagery do we have on the left? I don't want to cede the flag or the Constitution to those bozos. I'm leftwing and progressive because I want to see a better America - and if I didn't care about a better America, I'd never have moved back 12 years ago.

So, yeah, it's a shame we're letting the 250th anniversary pass with a whimper, at least around here where I live. The fact that we took an imperfect document and have slowly extended the promised liberty to a greater share of the population than we did in 1776 should be a thing for progressives to celebrate.

World Cup 2026: The First Big Shocks of the Tournament

I was going to continue with another post on the underlying stats by region for this World Cup, but events got out from under me a little on Sunday, when I tried to fill out my spreadsheet, and then things... started happening yesterday.

So I'm going to start with Germany's exit against Paraguay, which should feel seismic - or would if Germany hadn't done worse in the last two tournaments. The BBC and Guardian seem to have made a big deal of Germany losing on penalties for the first time, which admittedly is interesting, but I'm more intrigued by what's going on around the team and the football association back home, the DFB.

The sense I got as the tournament started was that no one expected much out of this team. The qualifiers were disjointed, with repeated changes in tactics and lineups leading to some bad performances. More to the point, as the Guardian's pre-tournament guide said, the team lacked the individual quality of previous Germany teams - there were no outstanding defenders or keepers as of old (pun kind of intended, more on this anon), no midfield playmaker, just a good attack... albeit one that isn't coming off a good season.

As for that keeper... a lot of ink has been spilled about Cristiano Ronaldo insisting on still being in the Portugal starting XI, but Manuel Neuer has also seemed to be past his sell-by date, if not quite as bad as CR7. One of the controversies before the World Cup started was that head coach Julian Nagelsmann had recalled Neuer, at the age of 40, over the more recently established Oliver Baumann. I subsequently learned that Baumann didn't have a good season either, but the fact remains that recalling Neuer has to have been disruptive for the rest of the team.

All this makes me think of is Raphael Honigstein's 2015 book, Das Reboot, which talked about how the DFB retooled its approach to academy training and recruitment to kick on from the doldrums of the 90s and win the 2014 World Cup. Unfortunately, whatever they did hasn't stuck, because Germany's performances in the World Cup have been dismal ever since, and in the European Championships they haven't been notably better, either - it boggles the mind that the work of several decades, in a rich country with a strong football culture, should fall apart so quickly. If I'm being brutally honest, that's the book I'd like to see - how Germany got from 2014 to now despite all its manifest advantages.

By comparison, the Netherlands losing on penalties to Morocco feels a lot less seismic. A friend relayed that the Athletic or some other outlet had tipped the Dutch to win, and I greeted this with skepticism: in the past you could never rule out the Germans, but you can always, always rule out the Dutch. More than that, apparently the Dutch are abysmal at penalties, so when last night's match ended 1-1 after 120 minutes, I knew what was coming.

Though I should toot my own horn a bit and point out that I had Morocco beating the Netherlands in my Bracketology on the Guardian website. Given how well Morocco did in 2022, and in this year's group stage, I figured they had a chance... more of one than Paraguay, but then, that's why they play the games.

Stat Block

Turning to the stats for a moment, the overall trend from the group stage has continued, with CONMEBOL teams earning 1.85 points per game at the top of the ranking, and Asian teams winning just 0.64 points per game at the bottom. UEFA remains in second place, with 1.72 after yesterday's matches, though if Western Europe were its own confederation, it would have 1.94.

Meanwhile, the Big 5 European teams present (England, France, Germany and Spain) have won 2.42 points per game. To put that in perspective, Arsenal won the Premier League in the season just gone with 2.23 points per game, and we have to go back to the 2021-22 season, when Manchester City won with 93 points, to get a higher points-per-game tally (2.45).

All this is to say, I still think the winner of the tournament will be a team that's won it before, which leaves England, France and Spain on the European side, and Argentina and Brazil on the South American side. Of the European teams, France looks the strongest, while Argentina looks stronger than Brazil to me - so my Bracketology selection has a repeat of the 2022 final in which Argentina beat France.

Though with Argentina facing tournament underdog darlings Cabo Verde on Friday, who knows what'll happen?

World Cup 2026: Western Europe Dominates the Stats

Now that all the teams have played once, it's time for a little stats roundup, Francis-style. Last time around, I built on an idea floated in Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, that showed that national teams from Western Europe dominated the Men's World Cup (I added that qualifier because I'm sure they do well in the Women's World Cup too, but I haven't crunched those numbers yet).

In short, Soccernomics noted that Western Europe was so strong that no Western European team lost against a team from the rest of the world (including Eastern Europe) in the 2006 World Cup. I then counted up the results from the subsequent tournaments (and from 2002, for completeness), and found that the signal is still there, if less pronounced. In short, teams from Western Europe won, on average, 66.7% of their matches against teams from the rest of the world, with draws counting as half a win (which follows Soccernomics' methodology).

2006 was the highest, with an 89.7% record against ROW (rest of world), or 2.59 points per game. 2002, held in South Korea and Japan, was the lowest with 59.1% against ROW and 1.64 points per game. 2022 was the next lowest, with 59.4% wins against ROW and 1.66 points per game.

So how does 2026 stack up so far, with each team having played once?

As of now, Western Europe's record against ROW is 79.2%, or 2.17 points per game, making it the second-highest average since 2006. Although there have been a couple of surprises, like Spain's draw with Cape Verde and the Netherlands' draw with Japan, no team from Western Europe has yet lost a match. This is likely to change as the tournament goes on, especially since Austria has yet to face Argentina and Scotland has yet to face Brazil - and based on Argentina's performance against Algeria the other night, we can expect them to encounter more Western European teams as the tournament goes on.

There are two other ways to slice this data. I decided to do a league-style table for each confederation participating in this tournament, which for once is all six, and this is how the points per match shake out:

1. UEFA: 1.69
2. CONMEBOL: 1.33
3. Asia: 1.22
4. CONCACAF: 1.17
5. Africa: 1.11
6. OFC: 1.00

UEFA's number includes four teams from Eastern Europe, but if you separate the two regions in UEFA, the picture is stark:

1. Western Europe: 2.17
2. Eastern Europe: 0.25

This mismatch is due to Czechia, Turkey and Croatia all losing their opening games, while Bosnia-Herzegovina drew against Canada, whereas no Western European team has lost a match yet.

The other way to look at this data is to split out the so-called EU5: England, France, Germany, Spain and, er, Italy, who aren't here. But even with just four teams in the tournament, the EU5's points-per-game record is even better:

1. EU5: 2.50

As Kuper and Szymanski argue in Soccernomics, Western Europe's chief advantage is in being at the center of the world's football networks. The world's best players and best coaches converge there, particularly in those nation's club tournaments, exchanging knowledge every time someone moves from one team or league to another. One example is Pep Guardiola, who's just left his position as Manchester City manager: he brought the style of football he learned at Barcelona first to Bayern Munich and then to City, and by the end of his tenure in England, pundits noted that even teams down in the lower divisions were setting up with goalkeepers controlling distribution from the back of the pitch.

The system is self-sustaining, because the most money and the most visibility is in Western Europe, and particularly the EU5 leagues. Unfortunately, it doesn't export well, because - apart from leagues that distort the economics, like MLS, the Saudi Pro-League and, previously, the Chinese league - the best paychecks are still in Western Europe.

That said, there are now more cases of players returning to South America after a stint in Europe, such as Neymar - though he doesn't feel as culturally omnipresent as he was in his time in Europe, when he'd cameo in movies like XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. Action-movie cameos aside, Neymar likely went home to Brazil to get game time in a different environment than Paris or Barcelona, and it's paid off in that he was selected for the national team this tournament.

Though it feels more important for the longer-term development of the game outside Europe that Brazil selected an Italian, Carlo Ancelotti, as its coach for the tournament. Ancelotti isn't necessarily a theoretician the way Guardiola or Austria's coach Ralf Rangnick are, but his decades of experience winning the Champions League should provide a different perspective in how to set up to win a tournament. The question will be how well Brazil does under him, and whether the experience he brings will take root longer term.

There's more to be said about coaches with European experience filtering out into the rest of the world, but Round 2 of the group stage, featuring Czechia vs South Africa, has just started, so I'll leave those thoughts for another post. But I'll be interested to see how these numbers, particularly Eastern Europe's, change over the next two rounds, and over the tournament as a whole.

World Cup 2026: Every Time I Think I'm Out

I may have talked about it on this blog, but my enthusiasm for this year's World Cup felt a shade more muted than it has in previous years. Some of it was the political backdrop, in which the tournament seems like it'll be used for propaganda purposes by the Trump administration; some of it was the corruption of FIFA; and some was the lack of cheap tickets, coupled with my reduced buying power and the lack of fun matches near me at Levi's Stadium. It also didn't help that Italy has once again failed to qualify.

I didn't think I'd skip it, God forbid, but I sort of figured I'd be a lot more relaxed about it than previous years: maybe I'd focus on the most important games, or the most intriguing. I'd be there for the final, for sure, but there might be some groups I'd completely forego in the interest of sanity and maintaining a reasonable schedule.

Fast forward to Sunday, June 14th, my fourth straight day of watching as many matches as possible. As I type this, I'm sitting in front of the TV and splitting my attention between this blog and Sweden v Tunisia. In case you don't understand what this says about my sickness, it's a match-up between possibly the most boring European team (other than Switzerland) and the most boring African team. 

Yesterday I had a game in the background or in the foreground from noon (when I was at a friend's house for a barbecue) until past 11pm, when the day's fourth game ended. My day today started, not with the gym as it normally does, but at the local German pub to watch Germany's 7-1 demolition of the unfortunate Curaçao. I had a dark moment this morning when I realized that there would be 3-4 matches every day until early July, which means I'm going to be in front of the TV for a giant amount of that time.

Goodbye, productivity. Hello, spreadsheets about Western Europe's record against the rest of the world at the World Cup (expect a full blog post on that topic at the end of the tournament). My podcast-listening will consist exclusively of World Cup daily rundowns for the foreseeable future... and I still haven't finished yesterday's episodes of Totally Football and Football Weekly.

Now, before you think I'm totally World Cup-addled, I should note that I missed two matches in their entirety today: Netherlands v Japan, which apparently was a cracker, and Côte d'Ivoire v Ecuador, which didn't promise to be a cracker. Though I should say, the only reason I didn't watch them is that I was spending time first with my stepdad and then with my writing group. Which is to say, if I have better things to do, preferably with other humans, I will do those things instead of parking myself in front of the TV.

But also, yeah, if I don't have plans, I'm totally gonna watch Uzbekistan v Colombia on Wednesday night... when else am I going to get to see how the tactical nous of Italy legend Fabio Cannavaro deals with the free-flowing football of James Rodriguez and Yerry Mina?

On a more serious note, this World Cup is just as absorbing a spectacle as it usually is. On the pitch, some of the matches have been as entertaining as you might hope, with the USA's game against Paraguay being a good example. And if Germany hammering Curaçao 7-1 felt a little cruel, that brief moment when the minnows had equalized against the four-time world champions was a validation of the promise of the World Cup: maybe not that any team can beat any other team, but that any team can spring a surprise.

Off the pitch, the US is quietly getting excited about the World Cup, with a bunch of promotions from the likes of DoorDash and McDonald's livening things up. There's a good number of soccer-related ads at half-time (and on Fox, during the hydration breaks that bisect each half), and while many feature David Beckham, a pretty good amount also feature USMNT star Christian Pulisic. And of course, social media is awash with stories of Europeans coming to the US and encountering the outsize plates of American casual dining restaurants, as well as the outsized capacity of Americans, at their best, to welcome strangers to their country. 

That last part is the most important. We're in a particularly ugly period in American politics, as evidenced by the fact that the US launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, another participant in this tournament, and has denied entry to several of the Iranian team's staff. There was widespread worry that the matches would form the opportunity for ICE to deport a bunch of people, and we've been treated to the unedifying spectacle for about 18 months of US officials saying that of course everyone is welcome to attend... as long as they go home immediately afterwards.

FIFA likes to trumpet how football unites the world, to the point that it's become a meaningless cliche. And I'm not naive enough to suggest that taking a German dude to eat brisket tacos will save NATO or bring about world peace. But given how negative a view the rest of the world has developed of us, it's good for Europeans to come here and see that individual people are still welcoming and up for a laugh, even in places that overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2024.

As I finish up this blog, another miracle has occurred, which is that Sweden has just spanked Tunisia 5-1. As noted, I have no horse in this race, but it's pleasing to see that a team I considered stodgy and unimaginative found it in themselves to break down a team that revels in negative football. This might be another outlier into which I shouldn't read too much significance, but coming on the heels of Germany 7-1 Curaçao and Netherlands 2-2 Japan, it's good to see free-scoring football, at least for the moment.

Every World Cup summer is a good one, and if the games are anything to go by, this year won't be an exception. The fact that the party is here on our doorstep and it's inviting in not just the world, but also the rest of America, hopefully will make it even better.

Champions League 2026: So, So Close

As I do every year, I watched the Champions League final this morning, and watched Paris St-Germain beat Arsenal on penalties to win its second Champions League in as many years. Like last year, it was a little depressing to see PSG beat a team I have some appreciation for - the only consolation is that at least this year Arsenal gave the French champions more of a game than Inter did last year.

Much was made of the fact that this marked the first successful title defense by a team since Real Madrid won three on the hop in 2016-18, but that's not that impressive, if you remember that Milan, Nottingham Forest, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Ajax, Inter, Benfica and Real Madrid (again) have all done it too, going back from the 1950s to the 1980s. Every team that won the European Cup in the 1970s (apart from Feyenoord) did it multiple times in a row.

What's more interesting to me is that this win marks only the third time a French team has won Europe's biggest club tournament, and that PSG is only the second French team to win the tournament. Whenever I talk about the Champions League on this blog, I always refer to the Top 4 leagues (England, Spain, Germany and Italy) and France, which reflects the dominance of those leagues and their much higher UEFA ranking coefficients than that of France.

That is to say, France is the fifth-ranked league in Europe, but even with PSG's dominance of the Champions League of the past two seasons, its score is almost as far from fourth-place Germany as it is from sixth-place Portugal. Another way to look at the gulf between France and the Top 4 leagues is that France has never qualified for one of the two European Performance Spots that give a league a fifth participant in the Champions League - those have gone to England and Spain (twice each) and Italy and Germany (once each).

Well, here I need to admit something. When I started writing this blog post, I was going to argue that maybe it's time to start counting France as among the Top 5 leagues, and that Italy should start looking over its shoulder lest it drop out of the Top 4. Instead I find myself decrying the closed shop that means serial underperformer Italy, which hasn't had a Champions League winner since 2010, remains in second place, ahead of Spain, which feels like it's dominated in recent years.

Of course, it also confirms my belief that the only reason the French league is overperforming at the moment is because PSG keeps doing so well in the tournament. But it's the only French team that seems to challenge for anything, thanks to its massive financial clout, so there's no reason to give the fifth-place French team an extra Champions League spot.

But what of poor Arsenal? This is their second tilt at the Champions League final, after they lost to Barcelona in 2006. Incidentally, that was the last final I missed entirely, for the reason that I was graduating from grad school - my Arsenal-supporting friend, with whom I watched today's match, was there to see me walk and still holds missing the game against me.

The Gunners will feel hard done by, given that they scored first and held the lead for about an hour. And while they admirably held off PSG's attack, which has to be the best in Europe overall, they also weren't able to break through the PSG defense to score again. And then came the penalties, which exposed Arsenal's nerves, with two players missing their kicks.

It could have been a dream season for Arsenal: winning the league for the first time since 2004, seeing their North London rivals Spurs almost get relegated (and how hilarious would that have been), and getting to the final of the Champions League. What has to be even more agonizing is how close Arsenal came to winning this time - if a couple of shots had been taken better, if a few refereeing calls had gone their way (the ref was shocking btw)... if, if, if.

All these narratives, around coefficients and individual teams' seasons and whatever else, are part of what makes me love the Champions League so much. I may be a little sad that an English team I like lost to a cynical petrostate sportswashing project, but the occasion still delivers overall. It may not be the Super Bowl in terms of pageantry and cultural heft (the Champions League final isn't a place where companies debut their new ad campaigns), but it's my favorite yearly sporting event, but a wide margin.

So, dusting ourselves off from the 2025-26 season, we can look forward to the World Cup and the 2026-27 season after that. We go again, as the saying has it.