World Cup 2026 - USA/Canada/Mexico

Brilliant. Will make for interesting KO if Spain don’t win their group 

Well played Cape Verde, played like Trojans.

Huge wake up call but they have a point from it. Always difficult to break down a stubborn defence and maybe these minnow teams can sometimes hold their own so you have to admire Spain for keeping a clean sheet, cos Cape Verde are no mugs normally

FIFA have a lot to answer for with the current shambles. OK Trump can ban Iranians, Somalis, etc but as I understand it, the withdrawl of ticket allocations for Iranian fans was down to FIFA not Trump.
This endemic graft needs to be stamped out.

We need countries like UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, France and others to resign from FIFA and circumvent the inbuilt corruption. Olive branches to smaller Scandi and other countries down the road, and create a legitimate football heirarchy.

I am not saying that bakshesh isn't present in our western societies, just that it is less blatant.

North Lower Neil said:

Even Lee Dixon enjoyed that.

that's a shame, well I guess you cant have everything.. 

fenaddick said:

sam3110 said:

AddicksAddict said:

Supposed comment by boss of UEFA:
”We have a huge number of matches that are completely uninteresting.”
Now, we may think that, although the supporters of those countries most definitely won’t and it’s a dreadful comment by someone in his position. 

It's a perfectly reasonable comment actually, I wish more people in positions of power in football spoke up about how shit it is. 

We already had minnows qualifying for the world cup with 32 teams, 48 is ludicrous and just a cash grab, and judging by how empty the stadiums have been so far, not a great one at that

His comments miss out context and so does your defence of him.

Curacao and Haiti, for example, are only really in because there were 3 CONCACAF automatic qualifiers due to the hosts. Cape Verde outperformed Cameroon to qualify, Uzbekistan went unbeaten in the second phase of (the incredibly complex) Asian qualifiers. The vast majority of these minnows aren't awful teams. 

The games aren't empty because of the teams playing, it's because tickets are hundreds of dollars, in stadiums out of town and in a place where flights and hotels will cost thousands. 

I don't like the 48 teams because it's a rubbish format and 32 teams was perfect. It doesn't automatically mean all the other sixteen teams who qualified are bad though

Capacity of the US stadiums doesn't help either. They're all 65k+, where as at world cups in other countries you will nearly always have a few that are 40-45k.

In both Qatar and Russia there were only 2 stadiums bigger than 50k.

Oh God, Danny Murphy's on co-comms for Belgium Egypt. May have to mute, and put the radio on.

Pleased for Cape Verde..been on holiday there a couple of times and loved the place and people so got a soft spot for the team. 

Would have been great if they nicked a 1-0 win!

Dirty goal have that 

ValleyGary said:

Really enjoying this World Cup so far. Decent football, plenty of goals, loud crowds at nice stadiums. Kick off times have been a struggle but not much can be done about that.

Yeah, know the kick off times can't be helped but still crap from our point of view.

EastTerrace said:

At last, a US Stadium that doesn’t have a 20ft wall before the first row of seats. Although one end looks well weird.

Think it looks quite cool!

Different to another modern bowl.