When the story first started circulating on the Internet that in the final of the upcoming World Cup in football to be organized a "halftime show", one tweet summed up the mood of the world football public in anticipation of the biggest event in 2026.
"I knew we shouldn't have revealed football to them," that tweet read.
This year, the sports lights will be directed towards the United States, Canada and Mexico, where the 23rd World Cup will be played. Before that, FIFA President Gianni Infantino and the President of America Donald tramp they act like they are hosting a private party. And football fanatics like least when the most important (secondary) things in their lives are made a show by the powerful.
Fair atmosphere
It was the summer of 2018 when, at the Fifa Congress in Moscow (yes, in Moscow, it was another time), it was decided that three North American neighbors would host the best teams on the planet, and hardly anyone could have guessed the fair atmosphere in which preparations for that tournament would come to an end.
The USA had already hosted the World Cup thirty years earlier, but the cultural rebirth from "soccer" did not significantly affect the experience of the World Cup.
But circumstances have changed in the meantime.
Unlike the 1994 World Cup, before which the USA had just created a domestic league in order to gain the right to host, MLS is growing in popularity today.
Viewership in 2025 is up 29 percent year-over-year, and now stands at about 3,7 million per week during the regular season, which, hands down, is still incomparably lower than the NBA or NFL. The arrival of Lionel Messi after winning the "Goddess" in 2022 showed that MLS has huge potential not only in the US, but also beyond.
Gianni Infantino is aware of this, and over the last decade or so, he has gone from Suzana Mančić to the Champions League draw to the most powerful man in football. Few people in the world can boast that they played football with Putin and toasted with Trump during their lifetime. And when you are in such a position, appetites only grow.
Luckily for him, even Trump is never fed up with media attention and the flattery of important people, so everything was going to ensure that next year - if nothing else, at least during the World Cup - we will get the "Americanization" of the most popular sport in the world.
There is time for football.
The recently held draw ceremony in Washington showed how important "entertainment" will be in the whole story. The program lasted almost two and a half hours.
Hollywood stars Matthew McConaughey, Selma Hayek, Danny Ramirez, as well as legends of classic North American sports such as Tom Brady, Shaquille O'Neal, Wayne Gretzky and Aaron Judge walked in the broadcast on December 5. The night was danced and sung with performances by Andrea Bocelli, Robbie Williams, Nicole Scherzinger, Lauryn Hill and the Village People.
The organizers devoted time to serious topics, specifically, the unfortunate wars that have been fought in several parts of the world in recent years.
Viewers, however, got the impression that the moment was more dedicated to Donald Trump, laureate of the newly established FIFA Peace Prize, than to the people who are actually suffering, and that Infantino just used the opportunity to once again flatter the American president with a dramatic speech.
Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney remained in the background, as is the case with their countries in this triple host, considering that Mexico and Canada together will host only a quarter of the total number of games.
And then it was the group's turn, only after almost an hour and a half of the show.
Quarters, Halftime show and other exhibitions
The fans, however, are most concerned about how the championship itself will look like. The World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico will be the first in which 48 teams will participate instead of 32. The number of matches was increased from 64 to 104, and the number of competition days from 32 to 39.
It seemed at the beginning that it would be a "win-win" situation for everyone - the championship would be more inclusive, the footballers would have more days to recover during the competition, and the FIA would have the opportunity to get rid of sponsorships, TV rights and tickets, which was the main reason for changing the format.
Only the fans remained dissatisfied, not only because they are by nature conservative towards innovations, but also because of the justified fear that the competition will be diluted.
Innovations have not bypassed the format of individual matches either. FIFA made the decision to introduce two more three-minute breaks halfway through both halves "for the safety of the players". Thus, the match is practically divided into quarters, as in basketball and their football.
These breaks are nothing new in football, but so far they have been applied only if it is estimated that football players are playing in extreme weather conditions. Now, Fifa announces, they will be mandatory at all World Cup matches.
The finale in New Jersey will even have a big "halftime show" modeled after the Super Bowl. It is not yet known who will hold the concert between the two halves, but it is known that the selection will be made by Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.
Tickets only for selected people
We are used to watching the crème de la crème of American society at various sports events across the pond from the sidelines and in the boxes. It is enough to remember Mike Tyson's first match after being released from prison and the list of people who attended.
Americans, of course, are not the only ones, but the fact that in TV broadcasts and even on the spot they especially insist on celebrities' faces being part of the event, shows how different the culture of watching sports there is from the rest of the world. It is important to make a spectacle, and whoever wants to be part of the spectacle must pay well.
FIFA, led by Infantina, tried to graft World Cup soccer on American fan habits, which turned out to be disastrous for people who traditionally travel to major competitions with their national teams.
Tickets for World Cup matches in North America are three to five times more expensive than in Qatar. By comparison, the most expensive ticket for the championship final four years ago was $1.600, while this summer it will be a minimum of $6.300.
In addition, ticket prices will be based on the so-called "variable" key characteristic of the American market for sports and music events, which means that the price will change depending on demand. It is estimated that the more attractive tickets, which pass through the hands of resellers along the way, can fetch more than a hundred thousand dollars.
The fans were furious. The European network of football fans "Football Supporters Europe" assessed this move as a "monumental betrayal of the tradition of the World Cup".
The World Football Federation tried to turn a blind eye to them by introducing a special price category "Supporter Entry Tier" in which the starting prices are 60 dollars, but according to the media, there will be too few tickets at this price.
Who will come out on top?
If we were to shift our gaze from the football field to the bigger picture, we would find many more wrong things - from the suspension of Congo and Pakistan due to political influences in the alliance, while at the same time Infantino "honors" the most powerful politician in the world, to the way the Trump administration treats refugees from Mexico, with whom it should share the organization of the World Cup.
After all, this is nothing new for the organizers of the World Championships, which are forever following some controversies (volumes of books can be written about Qatar alone).
However, it has never happened until now that an undisputed ruler of FIFA scratched the identity of the World Cup and football so much by trying to take advantage of a politician, even if it was the president of America. Although, the question is who will get the upper hand in that relationship when everything is over.
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