World Cup

For readers in the United States, we live in a time where no one can agree on anything. NBA players can’t agree that the earth isn’t flat, conspiracy theorists can’t agree that Parkland students aren’t actors and politicians sure as hell can’t agree on anything. Well, maybe that last one isn’t quite accurate. On Wednesday, 44 senators came together for a bipartisan agreement, and somehow it involved soccer. The 2026 World Cup, to be specific. 

As the World Cup gets closer and closer, it’s never too early to prepare for the spectacle on television. The World Cup TV schedule has been released for the United States and we’ve listed what channels each match will appear on when the tournament begins on June 14. 

The English-language World Cup TV schedule was made by Fox, which will be showing matches on its over-the-air FOX network as well as FS1. Fox has opted to not use FS2 for any matches, though that’s subject to change for simultaneous matches at the end of group play. 

Paolo Guerrero has had an interesting five months or so. He went from scoring the goal that essentially put Peru into its first World Cup in 36 years in October to FIFA banning him for a year for testing positive for cocaine in December.

We’re about 16 months away from the start of the 2019 Women's World Cup in France and FIFA released the official match schedule for the event on Thursday. The opening match will be played at the Parc de Princes in Paris, home of Paris Saint-Germain. Both semifinals and the final will be played at the Stade de Lyon. While both those venues are great, it’s hard to shake the feeling France is selling itself short with its stadium selection.

According to FIFA, 8.4 million requests have been made for seats at the 2018 FIFA World Cup after two sales phases. The second phase saw a total of 4,905,169 tickets requested, with the majority of those applications coming from Russia. While the top five for requests is rounded out by Germany, Argentina, Mexico and Brazil, the percentage of Icelandic people requesting tickets is absurd.

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled workday to bring you an alarming development from Russian agriculture ministry crop farming department head Pyotr Chekmarev, who, at an agriculture event in Moscow, said the World Cup could be overrun by locusts this summer.

You’d think it would be obvious by now, but apparently not. FIFA still has to tell its member federations that accepting bribes in exchange for votes on 2026 World Cup hosting rights is wrong. 

The U.S. women keep accomplishing what the U.S. men cannot. On Friday in Ato Bodon Stadium, the exact same location of the USMNT’s capitulation to Trinidad and Tobago to miss out on the 2018 World Cup three months ago, the U-20 USWNT booked its trip to the 2018 U-20 Women’s World Cup with a win over Haiti.