In April 2016, Men in Blazers—at the time my favorite football podcast (less so these days)—awarded its prestigious Golden Blazer for an exceptional contribution to soccer in the USA to the then U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch. A lawyer winning a soccer award. Yes: in recognition of the Department of Justice’s investigation, arrest, and prosecution of senior FIFA officials for decades of systemic racketeering, bribery, and corruption.

Arguably, America’s defining football moment wasn’t on the field but in the courtroom, where it helped bring that gang of crooks to account. The scandal led FIFA to adopt a more transparent and open process for selecting future World Cup hosts. So when, in 2018, the joint USA-Canada-Mexico bid won the right to host the 2026 World Cup, I was proud—like many Americans—that our country had played a part in restoring some integrity to the game and had then been entrusted to host its biggest tournament.

There was, however, a big BUT…..

Why would FIFA—even a new, pure FIFA—entrust something as special as the World Cup to a country which, let’s be honest, fundamentally does not care about the game?

I expressed my fear to Dave in Qatar, who admonished me that football is growing in the USA and that the hardcore of true fans, who have lived in the underground world of U.S. soccer for decades, deserve the chance to come into the light and spread the gospel to the wider population.

Despite my appreciation of Loretta and her friends, I remained unconvinced, and as June 11, 2026 approached, I grew increasingly anxious. Would America step forward, cradle the Cup in its loving arms, and deliver an event to cherish?

As the final, the pinnacle of the world’s game, approaches, let’s take stock.

The actual organization of the games was never in doubt. FIFA—and especially the USA—know how to put on a show. The stadiums, the volunteers, the logistics, and the timetable were exceptional and, for the most part, ran like clockwork. (Then again, they also did in Brazil, Russia, and Qatar. FIFA, for all its faults, knows how to stage a tournament.)

The host cities—well, at least Boston and Kansas City, the two I visited (and I have no reason to doubt the others)—were gracious and accommodating hosts. The people were welcoming and genuinely happy to have us in their city. Of course, the Tartan Army set the bar; who wouldn’t be happy to have us in their town?

As I’ve said in other posts, the contrast between the host cities and elsewhere was stark. While awareness has certainly grown with the excitement generated during the tournament, even five weeks in I still find myself explaining the basics of the game to locals who, sadly, have not yet had the privilege of being exposed directly to the Tartan Army.

I was very impressed by the policing. To be honest, that was one aspect I had particularly feared. I wasn’t sure how law enforcement would deal with large crowds of, at times, exuberant football fans, many from countries to which the USA has been less than friendly in recent years. But they did a great job, maintaining just the right amount of good-humored visibility.

The police sometimes get a bad rap in the USA, but I cut them a lot of slack—not least because of the great work they do with the Torch Run, raising millions of dollars each year for Special Olympics. Well done.

Perhaps controversially, I’m going to put the referees in the positive column.

I am in awe of those men and women who can take charge of a game with all those egos, all that testosterone, in front of thousands in the stadium and millions watching at home, and still maintain their composure. I, for one, would crumble under that pressure and likely lose it with one of those highly compensated, cosseted prima donnas.

In my fever dreams, security is hauling me away, kicking and screaming, as I try to plant one on Ronaldo.

To criticize referees simply because they make a marginal call against your team is just wrong. I had some good craic with a Moroccan fan behind me during that Scotland game, and we both laughed as our respective supporters around us screamed that the referee was biased against our teams. How can he be biased against two teams?

My problem is not really with the referee. It is with the decision-making process. The rules have become ridiculously complicated, aided—and annoyingly abetted—by the rampant use of technology.

Rules have evolved in an attempt to anticipate every conceivable minor infraction in the game, and technology has then been layered on top to “help” enforce them. We even have chips in the ball now to determine if the touch of a wisp of hair has changed the movement of the ball. Nonsense.

Technology was brought in to correct clear and obvious errors. That is what it should do—no more, no less.

If the on-field referee misses an obvious offside or a clear goal-line error, then take ten seconds to review and correct the decision. If goal-line technology had existed in 1966, England would never have won the World Cup as Hursts third goal clearly, and obviously never crossed the line. Or so we Scots maintain.

But to re-referee every decision that doesn’t go your way, either by the Video Assistant Referee or by the President of the United States, is plain wrong.

And here I must move to the negative column.

I boycotted USA-Belgium in the Round of 16—well, at least the first half. I eventually overcame my petulance and showed up for the second half out of respect for my American friends.

It’s no secret that I’ve struggled to root for Team USA in the same way I struggle to root for England (although, to be honest, in England’s case it’s not that much of a struggle).

With the USA, I find it difficult to fully get behind a country which, apart from a few diehards, I feel doesn’t really care about the game except when the World Cup comes around.

I had a big problem with the President’s intervention in, and FIFA’s subsequent reversal of, Balogun’s red card. It was a marginal call. When I was a boy it probably wouldn’t even have warranted a foul. But in the modern game, where player safety is paramount, I understand why it was given as a red.

Regardless, there are no circumstances under which a politician should intervene in a refereeing decision. I was appalled.

I’ll choose not to get into the argument about precedent because Ronaldo’s red card punishment was also rescinded. As my old mum would say: two wrongs don’t make a right.

That was the final straw in what became my biggest complaint about the World Cup in the USA: interference with the fundamental ethos of the game.

A game that is supposed to consist of two 45-minute halves, now stretched into four quarters, masquerading alternately as match breaks or hydration breaks but, in reality, providing more opportunities to sell advertising.

And then there is the 30-minute halftime show in the final to accommodate a Super Bowl-style spectacle that, frankly, nobody apart from television advertisers wants. That is embarrassing on two fronts: first, that it is happening at all; and second, that the best headliner they can find is Grandma Donna.

No self-respecting current-day superstar would want to be associated with that nonsense.

I only hope that the Argentine and Spanish fans sing—and boo—loud enough on Sunday to drown it out.

And then there are the prices.

Match tickets costing thousands of dollars. Eighty dollars for a train ride to the stadium. Two hundred-plus dollars for a parking pass. Twenty-five dollars for a beer inside the stadium.

We were shocked by a $15 beer in Qatar, but that was mostly explained by the 100% sales tax on alcohol, intended to encourage moderation. Here, it feels like something else entirely: corporate greed.

Why do they charge such high prices for beer, transport, and tickets? Because they can.

In the modern economy, there are enough people with enough money to fill 60,000-seat stadiums, and FIFA can set its dynamic pricing, point to sold-out games, and declare a job well done.

Bollocks!

Football is the people’s game. It is the game of the fans who stand on the terraces in England, on the fields in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and sit in the stands in Tokyo. It is not supposed to belong only to the privileged elite who can afford to throw away $10,000 on a football match.

I’m tilting at windmills. This is the modern world, where paying $1,000 to see Taylor Swift is apparently considered chump change.

I don’t know whether the prices were FIFA’s fault, corporate America’s fault, or—more likely—a case of one enabling the other. But I do hope some sanity returns for 2030, and that FIFA, as the steward of the beautiful game, allocates a substantial number of tickets to national federations at prices that ordinary fans can actually afford.

Ahhh… FIFA.

Loretta and the U.S. Department of Justice may have clipped your wings in 2015, but you still fly far too close to the sun. Those wings must be tipped with titanium because there is no sign of them melting and you plummeting back to earth.

The stench of corruption still clings to you, and to nobody more than your President, Gianni Infantino.

The host country selection process may be more transparent, but almost everything else still reeks—of greed, of monetising the game, of pursuing profit at all costs. Gianni, you’ll never convince the fans that your motive is anything other than that, or that you don’t personally benefit from it.

What little credibility you had evaporated with the presentation of the FIFA Peace Prize. Perhaps only in Count BinFace’s universe could that be seen as anything other than toadying up to President Trump in the hope of advancing your own agenda.

It is the modern world, and I’m not so naïve as to dismiss the profit motive altogether. But I am naïve enough to believe that football—and FIFA—should exist for something more: to protect the beautiful game and keep it precious for the fans.

Gianni, I hope your time is up because we, the real fans, deserve better.

There are rumblings of an uprising among the football confederations to establish a new order. But here we come full circle, because your power, Gianni, lies in FIFA’s transparent voting system, where each of the 211 member associations (interestingly, 18 more than the United Nations) has one public vote.

The majority of those votes lie with the smaller confederations, to which you funnel the money generated by your ever-expanding tournaments. That is where your power comes from.

As a ferocious opponent of the failed European Super League, I would find it deeply ironic if the solution turned out to be an international breakaway tournament—a Super World Cup—featuring the top twenty or so footballing nations, perhaps led by UEFA and CONMEBOL. FIFA could not survive without those countries.

Of course, what do I know?

The World Cup is big business. Vast sums of money are at stake, and powerful interests—FIFA, UEFA, host nations, broadcasters, sponsors, and advertisers—are all fighting for their share.

We, the mere fans, can only hope that sanity prevails.

So, stock taken, where do the scales tip? Were my fears about the Cup being hosted by a country that fundamentally doesn’t care about the game justified? Or did the USA step up to the plate when the time came?

To be honest, I find that hard to answer. Perhaps the dust needs to settle before judgement is passed.

What I can say is that I never had the same hesitation with previous World Cups because the tournament itself always felt sacred. The controversies came from outside the game: extreme poverty in Brazil; warmongering in Russia; human rights abuses in Qatar.

In 2026, the controversy has been at the very heart of the game we hold dear. From the FIFA Peace Prize, to football chopped into “four quarters”, to a thirty-minute halftime show at the final, to political interference in refereeing decisions, the establishment—I’m afraid to say, the American establishment—seems determined to change the game for one purpose, and one purpose only: profit.

Todd Boehly, the American businessman who leads Chelsea’s ownership group, probably said it most plainly when he remarked, “Ultimately I hope the Premier League takes a little bit of a lesson from American sports.”

That, I fear, is the end game. And more than a little bit of a lesson.

For all that, I still love the World Cup.

I loved it in Fortaleza and Manaus. In Sochi, St Petersburg and Moscow. In Doha and in… oh wait: there was only one city in Qatar and they squeezed the entire tournament into it before expanding the next one across an entire continent.

And I loved it in Boston and Kansas City.

Why?

Because when it comes down to it, the World Cup is still about two things.

This beautiful, beautiful game.

And the wonderful fans who follow it.

For me, they are embodied by the Tartan Army, but they simply mirror the passion of supporters all over the world. Dave and I met them in Brazil, in Russia, in Qatar, and now here in the USA.

Those encounters are the true essence of the World Cup.

Gianni and his cohorts can commercialize it, monetize it, even try to Americanize it.

But they can never take that away from us.