The World Cup

The World Cup reached its conclusion today.  In spite of it all (more in a minute), the games were mostly fun and competitive, and the fans were great (tartan army? viking row?  yes, please).  I know futbol (or soccer if you like) isn't for everyone, but I find the strategy of it all enticing.  And the players are very athletic - did you know the average player runs close to 8 miles in a 90 minute game?  

Spain had a great tournament, and came out on top.  For what it's worth, Argentina “felt like” they got advantages, mostly through officiating. But their opponents absolutely made tactical mistakes, like going defensive late in games, so these advantages may not be all that relevant. 

Anyway, the stadia hosting the games are in a bit of a rush to put back the corporate names, and return to whatever playing field that had previously been in place, because turf allows for the stadium owners to be more flexible about how the stadium is used, and arguably it cost them less to maintain than grass.

Of course, I can't just leave it there and have to comment on some things I saw during the few weeks:

• Oh the money grab! Beyond ticketing, you may have noticed the games were at times that best suited the western hemisphere.  Fans in Europe had late nights and early mornings to watch their teams. And ads on US television were plentiful, especially during the water breaks (even though this wasn’t permissible, based on the contract)
• There was quite the oddity surrounding a red card handed out to US Soccer player Folarin Balogun, meaning he would miss the next game.  Enter T-rump inserting himself, and FIFA bending its own rules to accommodate him, and reinstating Balogun without explanation.  Two fun moments from that sequence of events:
• Balogun is a birthright citizen with an interesting backstory.  Earlier in the same day that he caused FIFA to reinstate him, T-rump was railing about how birthright citizenship was bad.  And yet, we found ourselves here.  
• Belgium trolled T-rump after the game with a dance to "YMCA" https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/victorious-belgian-footballers-troll-trump-185150991.html
  
• FIFA talks big about environmental issues and yet, Infantino (the president) was jetting around on a private plane, creating emissions to be ashamed of.  
  https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/cgev5wy0zg3o
• Officiating - as always in soccer - was a bit strange. To be fair, that's one of the things that makes the game a little delightful because there is some weird random element that plays in.  But I do have to say that VAR (replay) was used haphazardly. An example: in the Argentina - Egypt game, there appeared to be a foul favoring Egypt, but it wasn't called and Argentina scored as a result.  Players and coaches for Egypt were incensed that they wouldn’t even look at replay, and it resulted in a kind of amusing series of yellow cards on pretty much everyone.
• There was a story involving French star Kylian Mbappe, after the Paraguay game.  A senator from Paraguay decided to make overtly racist comments about Mbappe.  He responded by calling her disrespectful.  And she doubled down and said he needed to apologize to her because he was *attacking her*
• And finally, there are a couple of other stories about Argentina:
• It was hard to miss that Argentina doesn’t have a single black player on the team; this fits in with Argentina’s history related to white supremacy, which I encourage you to read more about.
• There is an ongoing story and investigation into the Argentina soccer organization possibly engaged in money laundering https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/fbi-investigates-argentina-football-association-alleged-money-laundering-in-u-s-2026/