The 2018 World Cup was always going to be a little unhinged. This, after all, is a country in which groups of ultras get together before league games and partake in semi-organized brawls. After the Russians took the spotlight at Euro 2016 in France with some, well let's be polite and call them "antics," folks were right to be worried about fan safety during the World Cup.
Sepp Blatter, the asshat who once allowed corruption to run rampant as the longtime president of FIFA, spoke out about the 2026 World Cup on Thursday. The man who helped award the next two World Cups to nations with countless human rights violations gave the joint bid from the U.S., Mexico and Canada a boost by saying Morocco is the logical choice to host the tournament in eight years.
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.
There have been so many great World Cup jerseys in the tournament's 88-year history that it's hard to make a list. However, we chose some of the most stunning kits, for each taking into consideration its originality, beauty and representation of a country's culture and soccer tradition.
Read on and let us know: which is your favorite jersey and/or which ones did we miss?
USSR 1966
It's World Cup Kit season!
At an event in London today with The18 on hand, Nike released the 2018 England World Cup kits. Below are photos released from Nike and from the event in London.
What do you think of the Three Lions World Cup threads?
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.