“After years of planning, the World Cup is now just 100 days away. This summer’s tournament in North America will almost certainly be the most-viewed sports event ever, watched by millions (or more likely billions) of fans across the world. But it also offers a huge opportunity to attract a whole new audience, particularly across the United States, where soccer has long been on the rise but still does not dominate the sporting landscape as it does in so many other countries. This will be a World Cup watched by diehards and those who have never engaged with the sport before. With that in mind, we have compiled this article as a guide to everything you could possibly want to know about the tournament, from the most basic questions for those who have never watched the sport to far more intricate details about how teams play, the politics of this tournament, the ticketing situation and much more. With 100 days until the tournament, our reporters have answered 100 questions. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
World Cup 2026, 100 days to go: 100 staff choose the players they’re most excited to watch
“There are 100 days until the World Cup, so we asked 100 members of staff at The Athletic to choose the player they are most excited to watch at the tournament. We didn’t want 51 Lionel Messis and 49 Cristiano Ronaldos, and they were encouraged to choose differently from their colleagues. Some did, but for others the pull of Messi and (checks notes) Endrick… was just too strong. Clear themes emerged, though, with plenty of references to Last Dances and rising stars, and players picked from countries making their first appearance at a men’s World Cup. There are players from Curacao, Cape Verde and Uzbekistan in our list, but sadly, despite three people with the name Jordan taking part in this exercise, not a single member of the heroic Jordan squad… …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
“I’ve been to the last nine men’s soccer World Cups, and the dominant mood is almost always international friendship. The same vibe usually prevails on the field, even after hard-fought matches. One of the tournament’s 
“Six days after FIFA president Gianni Infantino 
“Virgil van Dijk is just one game away from another incredible milestone. The evergreen centre-half will mark two and a half years of continued availability for Liverpool by the middle of March and, if he starts against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday night, he will have played 99 of the last 100 Premier League outings. The lone blemish came in the penultimate fixture of the 2024-25 title-winning season when head coach Arne Slot rotated his side to give fringe players a rare outing. Van Dijk was an unused substitute in the 3-2 defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion and would have relished the chance to keep his run of consecutive appearances going, yet that solitary omission does little to diminish the broader picture. …”
“When Brentford manager Keith Andrews said before his side’s 1-1 draw with Arsenal this month that he ‘likes creating chaos’, he certainly would not have meant this. A visit to Burnley, languishing in 19th, turned into one of the matches of the Premier League season. Brentford had it… before they didn’t. Burnley thought they had it… but Brentford hit back. And there was still time for more. Breathless as it sounds, that does not do justice to the chaos of Burnley 3-4 Brentford — nothing might unless you were among those at Turf Moor to witness it first-hand. …”
“Another weekend, another London derby defeat for Tottenham Hotspur. And though this was not against arch-rivals Arsenal, failing at Fulham is just as damaging. After last week’s 4-1 loss, fans will have wanted to see a reaction, and there were first-half protests and chants against the board. There will have been anger, too, that Harry Wilson’s early opener was allowed to stand after a similar incident in the north London derby last Sunday. There could be no complaints over the second Fulham goal, though, as Alex Iwobi fired home with brilliant technique from outside the area. …”
“If somebody had told you that, this season, a team would break a Premier League record by scoring seven successive non-penalty set-piece goals, who would you guess? Mikel Arteta’s set-piece machine at Arsenal? Brentford, who appointed a set-piece coach as their manager? Either way, Liverpool would probably not have been towards the top of your list. …”
“Arsenal have cleared another major hurdle in their bid for the Premier League title. Mikel Arteta’s side restored their five-point advantage at the top of the table with a hard-fought 2-1 win over Chelsea, which once again relied on their prowess at dead balls, with both of their goals coming from corners. Chelsea looked impressive for long spells and had a goal disallowed for offside in stoppage time, but were ultimately undone by Pedro Neto’s second-half red card — yet another moment of indiscipline that has cost them dearly this term as they pursue Champions League qualification. We analyse the main talking points. …”
Benjamin Sesko makes it 1-1 deep in stoppage time at West Ham.
“FIFA says it is focusing on ‘everybody participating’ in this summer’s World Cup in the wake of the American military attack on Iran. The U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on major Iranian cities, including the capital Tehran, on Saturday after weeks of mounting diplomatic tension. Iran has retaliated with its own missile attacks on Israel and U.S. air bases in the Gulf region, including in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain. 
“Football’s lawmakers attempts to combat timewasting will subject substitutions, throw-ins and goal-kicks to time limits from this summer. There are also changes to expand the scope of the sport’s video assistant referee (VAR) system, which will now be permitted to check and review red cards ‘arising from a clearly incorrect second yellow card’, cases of ‘mistaken identity’ when a yellow or red card are shown, and cases of a ‘clearly incorrectly awarded corner kick’. The International Football Association Board (IFAB) met for their annual general meeting near Cardiff on Saturday and ratified changes to the laws ahead of the World Cup beginning in June. …”
“The first half of Everton versus Manchester United was a low-on-entertainment slogfest. The Monday night kick-off was in keeping with many Premier League games this season, with teams finding it harder to create goalscoring chances in open play and focusing more on set-piece opportunities. Football can often be described as “a game of mistakes”, and this season has seen an increase in games where teams are so focused on avoiding them that they lose sight of how to proactively force one from the opposition. Thankfully, the second half brought something more entertaining. …”
“The shock value is notable. The Serie A champions not making it through the Champions League league phase. The current best in class and league leaders by 10 points 
“Atletico Madrid’s 7-4 aggregate Champions League play-off round victory over Club Brugge sees Diego Simeone’s new-look side roll on to face either Liverpool or Tottenham Hotspur in the last 16, and comes as veteran attacker Antoine Griezmann mulls a possible move to MLS. The build-up to Tuesday’s game 
“Tonight’s Champions League match between Real Madrid and Benfica sees Jose Mourinho return to the Bernabeu for the first time since his turbulent spell at the Spanish club from 2010 to 2013. He does so in dramatic circumstances. Last Tuesday’s knockout phase play-off first leg between the teams saw Mourinho sent off for protesting from the sidelines during a 1-0 defeat for his Portuguese side. After the game, he made headlines around the world with his comments about the alleged racist abuse of Madrid forward Vinicius Jr by Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni. …”
Queretaro (in red) will be forced to play their league match on a later date 
“The year that Inter last won the Champions League, their historic treble season of 2009-10, Bodo/Glimt finished sixth in the Norwegian second division. We could be here for quite a while, listing ways to measure the gulf in the respective sizes and international reputations of these two clubs, but that seems as good as any. One of the most historic and storied football clubs to ever exist — 20-time Serie A champions and three-time European champions — were beaten on Tuesday, and beaten easily, by ‘a team from a small town up north’, as their head coach, Kjetil Knutsen, put it after the game. …”
“FC St. Pauli is considered one of the most left-wing football clubs in the world, with a long-standing commitment to 
“Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season, The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football. This was the round where Arsenal answered a few critics with another 4-1 victory against Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool boosted their Champions League prospects with a smash-and-grab win at Nottingham Forest, moving them level on points with Chelsea, who stuttered at home to Burnley. We will ask whether talk over Arsenal’s supposed fragile mentality is valid, question just how much trouble Spurs are in and ponder what on earth has happened to Crystal Palace. …”
One of the biggest cheers of the night from Benfica fans was the introduction of their young Black striker Arthur Cabral
“Liverpool had one Alexis Mac Allister goal disallowed in the 90th minute and one Alexis Mac Allister goal allowed in the 97th minute, earning Arne Slot’s side a late victory against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. The first was ruled out for striking his elbow, and the second was given after a lengthy delay ruled that Ola Aina’s left boot had played Virgil van Dijk onside in the build-up to Mac Allister finding the back of the net with seconds left to play. The win papers over the cracks of a disappointing display from Liverpool against 
“One of the themes of Manchester City’s attack this season has been their ability to operate in a narrow or wide shape depending on the available players and the opponent’s setup. This flexibility was evident in City’s 2-1 victory away to Nottingham Forest in December, when the switch from a narrow 4-3-3 shape on the ball to a 3-1-3-3 in the second half stretched the opponent’s shape and created spaces between the lines. In either of those attacking shapes, the rotations and fluidity have helped City 
Estádio 11 de Novembro, Luanda, Angola.
La Liga has reacted to 26 instances of racist abuse towards Vinicius Junior
“Welcome to the latest edition of Inside Barcelona, our weekly series to follow throughout La Liga’s 2025-26 season. Every week, we will bring you key information and analysis on the biggest talking points, cutting through the noisy world of all things Barca with reporting you can trust. The information contained in this article reflects multiple conversations with various sources at the Spanish champions, all of whom wanted to speak anonymously to protect relationships. …”
“Xabi Alonso’s response to a question about his preferred playing style in his first press conference as Real Madrid head coach last May was instructive. … Alvaro Arbeloa’s response to the same question seven-and-a-half months later, after being promoted to the first-team job from coaching in the club’s academy in the wake of Alonso’s January 12 sacking, was much simpler. …”
“… Anatoliy Trubin has had a bit more time to process what happened in the 98th minute of Benfica’s final Champions League group game against Real Madrid. But it still doesn’t feel entirely real. To recap: because of injuries and a couple of VAR reviews in the first half, the game was still going six or seven minutes after every other fixture on the last, chaotic day of the group stage had finished. That meant Benfica knew what they had to do to make it into the playoffs for the knockout stages. Well, in theory they did. …”
“New Year, new managers. Chelsea kicked things off when they sacked Enzo Maresca on New Year’s Day, before Manchester United parted company with Ruben Amorim four days later. Now, after a pair of February firings this week, there have been four Premier League sackings already in 2026, the most ever seen across the first two months of a calendar year. Tottenham Hotspur reignited the sacking spree when they dismissed Thomas Frank on Wednesday, while Nottingham Forest relieved Sean Dyche of his duties less than 24 hours later, releasing a statement in the early hours of Thursday following their 0-0 draw at home to last-place-by-a-mile Wolverhampton Wanderers the previous evening. …”
Sandro Tonali of Newcastle complains to referee Chris Kavanagh during Saturday’s FA Cup game against Aston Villa
Fabian Hurzeler pictured during Brighton’s FA Cup tie at Anfield on Saturday
Tottenham Hotspur’s sporting director Johan Lange (left) and CEO Vinai Venkatesham, the men who will appoint a long-term successor to Thomas Frank
“After beating Barnsley in the FA Cup last month, Arne Slot admitted that his approach to analysing opponents might need a rethink. ‘We’ve played 30 games this season and I’d say 28 of my pre-match meetings, I could just throw in the bin,’ he said in a press conference, highlighting the extent to which he feels teams have altered their approach when lining up against Liverpool. For context — and this is important — Slot was not suggesting that opponents should roll over and play into Liverpool’s hands. Against Barnsley, for example, he acknowledged that he also would have adopted defensive tactics in their position. …”
“All FA Cup draws are equal, but some are more equal than others. It is an age-old maxim for managers to rebuff suggestions that they have been handed a favourable tie in football’s oldest competition. Jose Mourinho provided a classic of the genre when his Premier League employers Tottenham were given a third-round tie away to Middlesbrough of the second-tier Championship in the 2019-20 competition. …”
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the controversial government agency known as ICE, will play a ‘key part’ in the 2026 World Cup’s ‘overall security apparatus,’ its 
“Liverpool came through a bruising encounter away to Sunderland, with battles across the pitch and a serious-looking injury to Wataru Endo. Virgil van Dijk’s goal just after the hour was enough to seal three points at the Stadium of Light and inflict the hosts’ first home defeat of the season after a first half in which Liverpool missed several chances, before Endo had to be carried off a few minutes later to add to their right-back concerns. …”
“A couple of weeks ago, two football stories which seemed unrelated were, in reality, very much connected. The first story was 
“Sean Dyche was right when he observed that Evangelos Marinakis was unlikely to sack him on the back of one poor performance by his Nottingham Forest side at Leeds United. But there is a reason Forest’s match tonight (Wednesday) against fellow relegation candidates Wolverhampton Wanderers feels as though it will carry an additional weight for their head coach. It is not just one game that has left Dyche’s position in the spotlight less than four months into his tenure as Forest’s third head coach of this season, but the cumulative effect of several recent displays. …”
Dominik Szoboszlai departs down the tunnel after his late red card against Manchester City
Jorgen Strand Larsen, James Ward-Prowse and Tony Pulis
“Manchester United’s interim manager has long been on the premises, if not in the building. In recent years Michael Carrick was a regular visitor at the club’s Carrington training ground, sitting unassumingly in his car for hours, waiting for his son Jacey, now 15, to finish training with United’s junior sides. Those staff who are still around — and many are not — from when Carrick left United in December 2021 after his previous interim spell in charge would say hello, but the man himself usually kept a low profile. …”
“The many spirits pouring out of Central and South America will continue to fill New Yorkers’ cocktail glasses this fall. Following the lead of recently opened bars like Tijuana Picnic on the Lower East Side and Leyanda in Brooklyn, new places like the Daisy on the Upper East Side and Lorenzo’s in Bushwick, Brooklyn, will pour not only the familiar tequila and mezcal, but also sotol, cachaça, pisco and aguardiente. …”
“And just like that, Leicester City found themselves embroiled in a battle against relegation to the third tier. Confirmation filtered through on Thursday evening that the Championship club were subject to a six-point deduction, handed down by an independent commission, for breach of the English Football League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR). The sanction leaves a side who are currently without a manager, following the sacking of Marti Cifuentes last month, outside the second division’s bottom three on goal difference alone. …”
Scissors Kick 