“All right, before we say anything else here, let’s shoo the elephant out of the room: zero effect on Messi’s legacy. Losing a World Cup final no one expected you to reach at the age of 39 is not a diminishes-your-greatness type of scenario, especially not when you hauled your team there in a wheelbarrow, and especially not when the rest of your team is so thoroughly outplayed that you barely get your toe on the ball until stoppage time’s dying breath. Lionel Messi’s greatness, if it was ever in doubt, was confirmed for once and always four years ago in Qatar; this go-round, probably his last World Cup ever, was all bonus points. This ruling is final and cannot be reviewed by VAR. Good? OK, let’s talk about the match. It was kinda dull! I would love to gin up a sense of drama to make you read to the end of this piece (please do, my family is starving). …”
The Ringer

The 2026 World Cup Is an Experiment Like No Other (June 10)
“One way to understand the modern World Cup is to think of it as an experiment in capitalism. How much will customers put up with if the product is good? Every four years, FIFA rolls out a new iteration of the biggest sporting event on the planet. Every four years, the organization gets more transparently corrupt, keener to lease itself out to sportswashing authoritarians—Putin, the Qatari royal family, and Donald Trump in the past eight years alone—and more callous to the human rights abuses that seem to follow wherever it goes. (Strangely, you might think, for an entity so devoted to the cause of human rights.) Every four years, FIFA’s leaders wait to see whether their behavior will stop a meaningful number of fans from paying ever-escalating prices to enjoy the World Cup experience. Each time, FIFA’s customers demonstrate that they’re willing to overlook almost anything for a month of good soccer. Each time, FIFA notes the outcome in its laboratory notebook and sets the bar a little lower for the next four years. And so the experiment continues. …”
The Ringer