“By now, you’ve probably seen images of the 2026 World Cup — the slide shows and reels and supercuts of great moments. (This is how a culture metabolizes a mega-spectacle after it’s over, like forest microbes turning a dead deer back into dirt.) There’s Lionel Messi breaking the all-time goal-scoring record. Erling Haaland leading Norway fans in the Viking row. Messi being tossed into the air by his teammates like a tiny doll. A tsunami of joyful humans flooding the streets of Mexico City. Cape Verde’s goalkeeper Vozinha heroically saving shots by Messi — until inevitably, messianically, Messi scored on him. But I have my own private highlight reel — and it is very different. That’s because this summer, for the first time in my life, I went to see the World Cup in person. Soccer is a perfect sport for screens. It is flat, green, beautiful, geometric, legible. It feels healthy, like eating fresh lettuce with your eyes. It works equally well on a laptop screen or an airplane screen, a screen the size of a building or a tiny screen you hold in your palm. You can watch it closely or just leave it on in the background, like an aquarium. This year, however, I went beyond the screens. …”
NY Times
My (Crazy, Heartbreaking, Glorious) World Cup Adventure
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“Like everywhere, the world’s smallest island nation has been gripped by football fever for the past six weeks. But once Spain lifted the World Cup trophy on Sunday, almost every trace of football on Nauru stopped. Football is almost non-existent on this Pacific island. Nauru has never fielded a team in an official international match and it has just one – hard sand – pitch. … But things may be slowly changing as a group of volunteers – led by British former academy player Charlie Pomroy – seek to introduce the game to what was once the world’s richest nation per capita but is now heavily reliant on foreign aid and has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. … A social media post from the Nauru Soccer Federation congratulating the new world champions and setting out a dream that ‘one day we hope to be in Spain’s position’ may have been fanciful, but the groundwork is real in what it says is the last country not to have had a senior international side. …”
Scissors Kick 