How World Cup 2026 proved football has remarkable ability to cure all ills | OneFootball

So, was this a good World Cup?

The trophy safely on display at the Spanish FA headquarters, England’s wounds no longer so raw, and the annual football calendar now into its miniscule vacuum, you’re left to reflect on the past six weeks and ponder whether the 2026 edition in the United States, Canada and Mexico was a resounding success or an unmitigated flop.

This one really could have gone either way. The expansion from 32 teams to 48 had the potential for greater drama but also the risk of suffocating, of making the World Cup the one thing it should never be: tedious. Would North America buy into soccer in a way we hadn’t seen at USA 1994? Would Trump’s World Cup feel like Trump’s World Cup? Would FIFA be well-behaved?

We are in a global era when every stakeholder wants their own slice of the pie. FIFA has protected the World Cup’s aura by keeping it a four-yearly event but weakened its exclusivity in other ways. More teams, an extra knockout round, three host countries spanning an entire continent. Three separate opening ceremonies was overkill. So was that half-time show.

Yet this World Cup would also be the curtain call for Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, return to Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca — the closest thing to a World Cup Mecca, where both Pele and Diego Maradona lifted the trophy — and, above all, was the World Cup after all. Too big to fail, right?

We were not lacking for moments that tested that thesis.

Replacing goal difference as the first tiebreaker for teams level on group-stage points was a woeful mistake. Using head-to-head reduced jeopardy and final-group-game drama entirely needlessly. Truly, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Ticket prices were a scandal. Many were listed on resale sites for north of £10,000, and the average person who attended the final in New Jersey paid $11,327 each. Throughout, FIFA hid behind its dynamic-pricing model and market demand when asked to defend disgustingly high prices. One ticket for the final was listed on resale pre-tournament at $11.5m, enough to put all satirists out of a job.

Ticketing was a major issue at the World Cup

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FIFA president Gianni Infantino joked if someone bought a ticket for $2million he would personally bring them a Coke. Tone-deaf.

Fans could even pay to have their name called out by the stadium announcer during half-time for a cool $79, FIFA maintaining it was merely dignifying the main host nation by tapping into its rampant free-market consumerism. How handy that excuse kept proving. Bottom line, the bottom line.

That the world football governing body exceeded its revenue target for the tournament should come as a surprise to no one.

Hot weather was a very real problem that came into friction with player welfare, even if the solution — the infamous hydration breaks, two in every match regardless of weather — was serious overcompensating, seen by all the world for what it was, and a farce in its own right.

And what of the president’s role? Well, those who felt safe in suspecting Infantino and FIFA could not stoop lower than lavishing Donald Trump with his medal and certificate and hideous trophy as inaugural winner of FIFA’s Peace Prize in December appear to have underestimated their propensity to manifest shamelessly craven and servile new lows.

Trump’s podium photo-opp with winners Spain was only ended by Infantino’s half-hearted attempts to cajole him away, as though 12 months earlier the same scene had not played out at MetLife Stadium as Chelsea lifted the Club World Cup.

The integrity of the competition faced a challenge more severe than anyone could have expected when a FIFA Disciplinary Committee one-man panel ruled to suspend the automatic one-match ban USA star Folarin Balogun was facing after a red card. Trump boasted about his White House phone call “recommending” FIFA take a second look.

Head of the White House World Cup task force, Andrew Giuliani, said the US wanted things to be fair on the pitch “especially when you consider all the federal dollars we laid out for this”, as though football is adjudicated by GDP not referee.

Balogun did play against Belgium in the last 16, shades of the two-match ban Ronaldo faced at the beginning of the tournament being inexplicably erased. After criticism from UEFA, the Belgian FA and — here’s the punchline — the disgraced former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, he of a newfound moral compass, how difficult it was becoming to entirely rule out certain conspiracy theories.

Many fans who had been to their country’s every game for years were denied entry due to a rigid visa crackdown, and that meant pint-sized numbers of supporters from some of the more remote nations whose involvement was supposed to be part of the whole magic. What happened to Somali referee Omar Artan was truly awful. Iraq’s scorer against Norway was very nearly not allowed into the US, and Iran being there at all was a success for FIFA over America.

After 47 teams fell, the fact the winners Spain were also deserving champions was a triumph.

So much of the football was too. Four teams made their debuts; all four scored. Curacao, the smallest nation ever to reach a World Cup, arrived hoping to prove a point and then earned one. Nine of ten African nations reached the knockouts, and Cape Verde’s run was particularly astonishing — the best story of the tournament, with their 40-year-old free-agent goalkeeper Vozinha amassing tens of millions of social media followers almost overnight while Sidny Lopes Cabral scored the tournament’s best goal to give Argentina an almighty scare.

There were memorable runs for DR Congo and for Brazil’s conquerors Norway, both at their first World Cup in decades, and some instant classics in terms of memorable games, including Argentina’s 3-2 wins over Cape Verde and Egypt, and England victories over Mexico (3-2 in Mexico City) and France (6-4, bronze final).

Other debutants included ex-Premier League managers Thomas Tuchel, Carlo Ancelotti and Mauricio Pochettino, who seemed to fall in love with the romance of international football. Erling Haaland, Michael Olise and eventual champion Lamine Yamal all shone at their first World Cup.

More than anything, this summer benefited hugely from that: the world’s biggest stars arriving on the grandest stage of all. Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Ousmane Dembele, Rodri: all delivered. Lionel Messi, 39, was left in tears after the final yet had tallied eight goals and four assists. The greatest player ever exceeded all expectations.

Many host cities smashed it. Never in doubt in Mexico, but Atlanta and Kansas City went all in, and right across North America the World Cup was unmissable — ubiquitous on TV screens, a constant discussion point, a rare and glamorous event treated with reverence in the one land where you’d gone in sceptical.

The colours: a constant joy. Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Haiti shirts were worn proudly right to the end, long after elimination.

Through all the controversies, obstacles and points of detraction, good football showed its remarkable ability to cure all ills. From a purely footballing standpoint, it was arguably the greatest World Cup in history, this being the weightiest factor of all in assessing the success or not of — by almost any metric — the largest single event ever staged in human history.

So, was this a good World Cup? By hook and quite probably crook, it was.