“In a new series from The Athletic, ‘The Language of Soccer’, we spoke to supporters of all 48 participating nations in the men’s 2026 FIFA World Cup. Our aim is to capture each country’s unique fan and football culture, told through their voices. We asked these fans to come up with a single phrase that best encapsulates the experience of being a supporter of their national team. We then put the suggested phrases to a vote, using supporters’ groups and networks to gauge the opinions of as many fans as possible. The winning phrase is the one you will see below and around which each country’s story is framed. This exploration of these nations’ rich and diverse football culture and traditions touches music, food, history, language, psychology and much more. We will be publishing all 48 articles before the World Cup begins, starting with one group per day and we will update this page as they come out. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
“2026 World Cup is less than a week away, and it’s gigantic. Three countries, 12 groups, 48 teams, 1,248 players. But enlargement brings complexity. There is so much to learn ahead of the big kick-off next Thursday and a rapidly decreasing window in which to do so. Welcome, then, to The Athletic’s 2026 World Cup Tactical Group Guides, which will walk you through the key battles on the pitch, tell you about the players to look out for, and offer up some fun facts to impress your friends with ahead of the tournament.
GROUP G: De Bruyne, Salah, Taremi and Wood face off in battle of the veterans
GROUP H: Spanish control, Uruguay’s relentlessness, and two dark horses?
GROUP I: How will France, Senegal, Norway and Iraq contest the group of death?
GROUP J: Austria’s intensity, Algeria’s transitions, and is Messi still Argentina’s key man?
GROUP K: Pacy Colombia, fluid DR Congo and can Ronaldo lead Portugal to glory?
GROUP L: Croatia’s veterans, Ghana’s gamble, and can Tuchel make England unpredictable?
“How it works. The progress of the World Cup from match to match is determined from the beginning: there are no further draws to decide who plays whom in subsequent rounds. To maximise the spectacle, the competition is structured, broadly, to ensure that the “bigger” teams don’t face each other (and knock each other out) too early in the competition, and to ensure that all 48 teams have an incentive to field their strongest side for every fixture. The top two teams from each group automatically qualify to the next round. Because the winner of a group will face a second- or third-placed team from another group, the hope is that France, for instance, will not rest on their laurels once they have enough points to qualify for the knockouts but will try to win their last game to get what in principle are easier opponents in the next round, the last 32. …”
While demonstrating against the 2014 World Cup, protesters clash with police outside of Maracanã Stadium following the removal of indigenous Brazilians camped in Rio de Janeiro’s Museu do Índio.
“Every World Cup needs them, those ‘dark horse”’nations who perform well in qualifying, enjoy some success in their respective continental tournaments and then threaten to upset the heavyweights. The term itself comes from 1830s horse-racing gambling — for an unknown horse for whom it was hard to assign betting odds. In the two centuries since, it’s been slightly corrupted as a footballing term. We have surprise packages, who emerge during the tournament, and that’s what dark horse should mean based on its etymology. …”
“King Charles III is pondering a tactical dilemma. His best player, Harry Kane, hasn’t turned up to the tournament because he didn’t deem it important enough to make the two-week voyage. … Sound familiar? Well, the names have been changed but all these things once happened in the biggest tournament that football has to offer. Welcome to the wild and wonderful story of the 1930 World Cup. There were only 13 teams in the first World Cup, or as the United States team manager called it at the time, the World’s Championship of Soccer Football….”
France’s players aboard the ship taking them to the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay.
“The night before England manager 
“The World Cup promises to be the most-watched event in the history of sport. As a consequence, it will also be one of the most lucrative events on which bookmakers have ever offered odds. With huge betting markets already established in East Asia and Europe, and 
“Incondicionales – Unconditional. Few countries have a knottier relationship with the World Cup than Mexico. The tournament will visit for an unprecedented third time this summer. Entire chapters of football history have been written on the turf of the Estadio Azteca, one of the sport’s holy sites. The Mexican national team, known to fans as El Tri, have missed only five World Cups. They have been ever-present since 1990, reliably contributing to the colour and fanfare of the greatest show on earth. That’s the good stuff. The consensus view, however, is that it is outweighed by the bad. …”
“The International Football Association Board (IFAB) has announced a raft of landmark rule changes that will come into force ahead of this summer’s World Cup, with the overarching objectives being to tackle discrimination, cut time-wasting, increase match tempo and improve fan and player experience. ‘We are trying to clean the game as much as possible,’ Pierluigi Collina, chairman of the FIFA referees committee, told reporters. Among the changes will be: A red card for covering the mouth in a confrontational situation; A red card for leaving the field of play in protest at a match official’s decision; VAR to overturn incorrectly awarded corners; Changes to on-field treatment rules. Collina is leading the implementation, while the World Cup’s 170 officials will take part in a final preparatory seminar in Miami on Tuesday. …”
“Arne Slot has been sacked as Liverpool head coach. The decision has been taken by owner Fenway Sports Group after Liverpool finished fifth in the Premier League with just 60 points, their lowest total for a decade. Andoni Iraola is now considered the 
SoFi Stadium workers protested against ICE last month, a key issue in their bargaining sessions with stadium operators.
“Thousands of tickets remain unsold for the United States’ high-priced World Cup opener, with data captured by The Athletic and other sources suggesting that the game is not on pace to sell out at current prices and purchasing rates. As of Thursday evening, two weeks before the 2026 World Cup begins, there were more than 3,500 tickets available on FIFA’s primary portal for the June 12 match between the U.S. and Paraguay. There were also over 6,500 tickets listed on FIFA’s resale platform, meaning there are over 10,000 tickets available for the match, which was initially billed as one of the tournament’s most attractive games. …”
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Garrincha in full flight against Wales at the 1958 World Cup
Mexico City’s Estadio Olimpico Universitario, which hosted World Cup matches in 1970 and 1986, feels less like an object placed on a site and more like a landmark that belongs to it.
“It would be easy to look at Saturday’s Champions League final between 
“This has not been a happy year for Italian football. The men’s national team failed to qualify for a third consecutive World Cup, while 
“… The 10 players we will feature are the highest-ranked World Cup winners of our 100. Today, it is an Italian great who ranked 19th in our century and has a champions’ medal from the 1982 tournament despite never actually making it onto the pitch during it. Franco Baresi stood in the Amazon Theatre in Manaus. The salmon-pink opera house with a dome the colour of Brazil’s flag was built in 1896, when that city in the middle of the jungle became one of the richest on the planet during the rubber boom. …”
“A non-profit organization which supports people with serious spinal injuries was forced to cancel a raffle for two World Cup tickets after receiving cease-and-desist letters from a law firm representing soccer’s global governing body FIFA. In early May, Vancouver-based Spinal Cord Injury BC organized a promotion which invited people to enter a draw to secure two tickets to New Zealand against Egypt at BC Place on June 21, with proceeds intended to benefit various programs. The non-profit says on its website its key work is to ‘help people with spinal cord injuries and related disabilities to adjust, adapt and thrive’. …”
Liverpool v Crystal Palace – Anfield, Liverpool, Britain – April 25, 2026
“The 2025-26 Premier League season is done and dusted — so what better time than right now to predict who will win it next time? Arsenal were crowned champions, overcoming Manchester City and improving on three consecutive seasons finishing as runners-up, and Mikel Arteta’s team look like they’ll enter 2026-27 with momentum and stability in their favour. City are coming to terms with the new era following the departure of the iconic Pep Guardiola, and they hope to replace him with Enzo Maresca, while Manchester United will continue under the stewardship of Michael Carrick, who succeeded Ruben Amorim at Old Trafford and oversaw their turnaround in the second half of the season. …”
“If last season was a euphoric high for Liverpool, this one has been a crushing low. Few could have predicted the 2024-25 Premier League champions title defence being so limp. Head coach Arne Slot has achieved the bare minimum objective of qualifying for the Champions League but it comes with relief rather than belief and there is huge uncertainty around him and his underperforming squad heading into the summer. Liverpool actually won their first seven games of the season in all competitions but things quickly went downhill and everybody is ready to forget a horrible campaign. Should we make this the last time we speak about it? …”
Crystal Palace: love a long throw
“The 2025-26 Premier League season was a strange one — the bottom-half clubs were good, the top-half clubs were inconsistent, and there was a major focus on intensity and set pieces at the expense of interplay and creativity. Three hundred and eighty games is a lot to digest. But what if the whole Premier League season could be boiled down into 10 matches, with each side featuring once? Well, it would look something like this. …”
“For the first time in history, the FIFA World Cup will be hosted by three countries: the United States, Canada and Mexico. The 2026 tournament will also be the largest World Cup ever held, expanding from 32 to 48 national teams across 16 cities in North America. The tournament runs from June 11 to July 19, featuring 12 groups and a total of 104 matches across the three host nations – making it the most geographically expansive World Cup ever staged, with the furthest two venues, BC Place in Vancouver and Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, sitting some 4,400km (2,700 miles) apart. …”
“When Neymar was 18, he made his debut for Brazil as part of the rejuvenation of the national squad after the 
“The Green Brigade of Glasgow Celtic Football Club were founded in 2006 as an explicitly anti-sectarian, anti-racist and anti-fascist group of ultras, who would celebrate Irish Republicanism, oppose the commercialisation of football, and act as an alternative to apolitical fans groups who were perceived as being too close to the management of the club. Football has long provided a space for dissident politics to be expressed, and the link between football and radical politics is well established (Kuhn, 2011). In Scotland, football is an important forum where issues of ethnic, religious and political identity are played out, with Celtic being an important conduit for expressions of Irish immigrant identities, particularly support for Irish Republicanism, anti-imperialist struggles, and broadly left-wing politics. As ultras, the Green Brigade support their team in a passionate, colourful, loud and coordinated way, making use of banners, pyrotechnics, songs and chants, and other expressions of die-hard support. The term ‘ultra’, for many, has become synonymous with right-wing football groups, particularly in Italy, where fascist ultras groups are extremely prevalent. While it is true that right-wing, fascist ultra groups are extremely prominent throughout Europe, ultra is a subcultural scene which has been adopted by both right and left-wing football fans and activists. …”
Celtic’s Ultras division, The Green Brigade,
“FIFA’s 2026 World Cup is already surrounded by controversy before kickoff. From sky-high ticket prices and visa concerns to security fears, extreme heat, and fan backlash, critics say the tournament is becoming harder and more expensive for supporters around the world. With the biggest World Cup in history set across the USA, Canada, and Mexico, pressure on FIFA is growing fast.”
“It’s fair to say that Thomas Tuchel has ruffled a few feathers with his England squad for this summer’s World Cup. There was no room for 
“Zac Kenworthy, the vice-president of production at Fox Sports, has confirmed that his network intends to use half-time interviews during the World Cup and added it remains in ‘conversations’ with FIFA as to how they will use the 
“Andy Mitten recently re-completed ‘the 92’ — that is seeing a game at all the current football grounds in England’s top four tiers. Before the final weekend of the season, Andy, who has visited more than 600 stadiums at all levels, tells us his best and worst aspects of each of the Premier League venues. Andy, if you didn’t know, is a Manchester United supporter. … Liverpool – Anfield Like: The way Liverpool have redeveloped and expanded Anfield, bit by bit, pushing the capacity from 44,000 to 61,000. It was needed. Liverpool stalled in the 1990s as their main rivals United aggressively expanded Old Trafford, but they’ve made a smart job of it since with four distinct stands, it doesn’t look like any other stadium. The atmosphere before a big game and You’ll Never Walk Alone impresses, though it always sounds better — to me — with a ‘MANCHESTER!’ retort. Also, the Hillsborough memorial gets the space it deserves, the gates (and gable end murals on nearby housing) for former heroes, the proximity to Stanley Park. Dislike: A new Anfield Road stand means the worst view in football from the last two rows of the away end has gone. It’s much more spacious on the away concourse beneath the stand too, so I’m left not liking the lack of public transport options and that’s about it. Oh, and the fact that Liverpool play in such an impressive home. …”
“New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has secured a rare concession from FIFA after negotiating 1,000 tickets to matches at the upcoming World Cup finals priced at $50, which will be distributed by ballot to local residents. The 1,000 tickets will be split across games played at MetLife Stadium in neighboring New Jersey, including five group-stage fixtures, a round of 32 tie and a round of 16 game, but not the final on July 19. It is the only citywide access program of this kind that has so far been announced for the tournament, which will be hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico this June and July. …”
“Mohamed Salah’s extraordinary Liverpool career is drawing to an end. Since arriving at the club in the summer of 2017, the Egyptian has amassed 257 goals in 441 games — a record only bettered by two players in the club’s history. His time at Liverpool has not been without controversy — 
“It all started behind a pine tree. The setting was Middlesbrough’s Rockliffe Park training ground, two days before the club were due to meet Southampton in the Championship play-off semi-finals. Will Salt, a first-team performance analyst intern working for Southampton, had travelled north to gather intelligence on the club’s opponents as they trained a few metres away beyond a metal fence. He stationed himself behind the tree and got out his mobile phone to record Middlesbrough’s players, hoping he would go unnoticed. …”
“Whilst the FIFA World Cup remains the most coveted prize for the best players across the globe, there’s no greater achievement for fans than completing the painstaking 
“World Cups are frequently remembered for magnificent goals, heroic performances and famous wins, but shock results play a huge role in our collective memory of the tournaments too. Here, then, is our attempt to quantify the five biggest upsets of all-time. USA 1-0 England, 1950 It’s difficult to fully explain the vast difference in expectations for England and the United States going into World Cup 1950. For England, this was their first World Cup appearance having boycotted the first three editions, but they remained convinced that English football was the strongest in the world. Their team included legendary players like Billy Wright, Tom Finney and Stan Mortensen, all amongst the greatest in their position in the world, as well as defender Alf Ramsey, who would manage England to World Cup success 16 years later. Soccer in the United States was yet to take off, and they sent a hastily assembled side managed by William Jeffrey, a Scot whose day job was coaching the Penn State University side. The players were amateurs — some regular first-teamers couldn’t travel because of the demands of their day jobs. …”
“This was supposed to be a week of celebration for Mohamed Salah and Liverpool. The announcement in March that this would be the Egyptian’s final season on Merseyside teed up this Sunday’s game against Brentford at Anfield to be a golden goodbye to one of the club’s — and the Premier League’s — greatest ever players. Instead, 
“This is not how it was supposed to be. This is not how the most gripping Scottish title race in two generations was meant to end, with Celtic fans on the pitch confronting Hearts’ beaten and dejected players and with sufficient chaos around the two dugouts for referee Don Robertson to effectively stop the match without blowing a final whistle. Hearts manager Derek McInnes had predicted ‘bedlam’, but not like this. McInnes’s captain, Lawrence Shankland, was one of the visiting players seen being goaded by triumphalist Celtic supporters. It happened during a spontaneous pitch invasion to mark Celtic’s third goal, which effectively curtailed a season that had hitherto brought the rare prospect of romance, a first Hearts title since 1960. …”
From local grounds to vast modern arenas, stadiums remain places where communities gather, argue and celebrate together, including the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, where the United States hosted the 1994 World Cup final. Brazil’s victory over Italy marked the first time the World Cup was decided on penalty kicks.
“Stooped figures huddle into their overcoats as they make their way toward a football stadium. Under an overcast sky, they come in the hundreds, converging from every direction. The stands are beginning to fill with spectators, yet there is barely a glimpse of the football pitch itself. In the distance lie the faint outlines of an industrial landscape—mills, factories and towering smokestacks. This is the scene depicted in ‘Going to the Match,’ probably the best-known work by British artist L. S. Lowry. It captures the pre-match atmosphere of northern England in the mid-20th century. … Football is arguably the most popular sport on the planet, arousing strong and conflicting emotions. For artists, the game offers fertile ground, concentrating into 90 minutes a wide spectrum of human experience. That universality is what makes football such a powerful subject for visual culture ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the first to be hosted across three countries: the United States, Canada and Mexico. …”
“Football may be the world’s biggest game, but it is also thousands of smaller ones—played in dusty courtyards and abandoned lots, remembered in faded photographs, argued over in cafes and sung about in many languages. As the 2026 World Cup approaches, these four books explore how the sport travels across cultures, shaping art, identity and memory far beyond the stadium. Together they remind us that football is not simply entertainment but a carrier of the human experience. … 2. Picturing the Beautiful Game: A History of Soccer in Visual Culture and Art. This richly illustrated anthology explores how football has been seen, drawn and interpreted across visual culture—from early newspaper illustrations to contemporary art and digital media. Daniel Haxall organizes the chapters around themes such as memory, politics, gender and commercialism to examine how artists and photographers have responded to the sport across different eras and societies. In this book, readers begin to see that how football is pictured often reveals as much about society as it does about how the game itself was played, and how it continues to be remembered. …”
“Failure to wrench the title from the Glasgow giants is no cause for remorse given that Celtic and Rangers have been shaken from their lethargy. Another final-day showdown, another final-day heartbreak. The pain has been spread over 61 years, but that won’t make it any easier to bear for Hearts who, having been top for 250 days of the 
“Robert Lewandowski has confirmed he will leave Barcelona this season and is set to play his last game at the Camp Nou on Sunday. Lewandowski, 37, delivered an emotional speech during a training session this week to his team-mates and the backroom staff, highlighting that it has been a pleasure for him to be a part of the club and this Barca squad. He confirmed the news in a social media post on Saturday in which he said ‘the mission is complete’. The Poland striker’s next destination is unclear at this stage, but he is set to play his final home game for Barca against Real Betis on Sunday. On Saturday, head coach Hansi Flick confirmed he would start that match. …”
“It’s set to be hot in North America this summer. The 
“… After looking at 
Mexico and South Africa playing the opening match of the 2010 World Cup.
Congolese fans in Kigali, Rwanda during the 2016 African Nations Cup (CHAN) final between DR Congo and Mali.
“‘Minimum interference, maximum benefit’ was the promise when VAR was first introduced. Those were the words used by David Elleray, the technical director of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), in a presentation to journalists at Wembley Stadium in March 2017 to justify the profound change the game was about to undergo. … The logic was clear enough. Examples such as Diego Maradona’s handball against England or Thierry Henry’s against the Republic of Ireland were held up as proof. Under this new system, those headline mistakes could be surgically removed from the game, keeping everything else intact. The laser precision of technology was all that was required. …”
“The once-outlandish idea went from private meetings to the highest levels of government, from Chicago to Washington, D.C., from France to Tehran. It began as a speculative proposal for a soccer match — Iran vs. the United States. It became a logistical behemoth, drawing scrutiny from the U.S. State Department and Islamic hardliners alike. After weeks of worry, though, on Jan. 5, 2000, for the first (and, so far, only) time, the Iranian national soccer team boarded a plane bound for the United States. A few weeks from now, it will do so again. The Iranians will come for the 2026 World Cup despite 
“A month out from the World Cup, Brazil’s head coach Carlo Ancelotti appears, as always, utterly at ease. Now 66, Ancelotti has seen it all, and worked for them all: Silvio Berlusconi at Milan, Roman Abramovich at Chelsea, the Emir of Qatar at Paris Saint-Germain, 
“FIFA has drafted plans to use the MetLife Stadium field during the half-time show of the World Cup final, making it very likely that the interval for the tournament’s showpiece event on July 19 will run significantly beyond soccer’s 
“All too often a football match doesn’t live up to the hype. As Southampton’s players danced on the pitch and their fans sang about a return to Wembley and a chance to gain promotion to the Premier League, opponents Middlesbrough were crestfallen and wondering how it had ended like this 
“The Butterfly Effect — which is, loosely, when minor changes to the initial conditions of a complex system can result in radically different outcomes — was most prominently researched in relation to weather models in the 1960s. But it can, perhaps, also be applied to football teams — and Victor Lindelof. Did you notice that the Swedish centre-back is a midfielder now, which is working out quite well? And while this is an interesting development in its own right (and much more on this later), it also tells us something about what it means for the systems used in the game. Let’s take Aston Villa, whose central midfielders play an important role in their build-up. Operating at the tip of the deep triangles that Unai Emery sets up on either side of the goalkeeper, their task is to help regulate the progression of the ball from Villa’s own third into their opponent’s half. …”
“If there was ever a dream scenario for Barcelona to win La Liga, it had to be with victory over Real Madrid. That Sunday’s game came at the end of such a tumultuous week for their Clasico rivals — including the 
Scissors Kick 