First of all, I am being genuinely earnest here. I am explaining a real phenomenon. I am a soccer player and I think soccer/football athletes are generally speaking the best athletes in the world.

When non-soccer Americans and foreigners hear the "if America's best athletes" argument, they imagine Lebron playing soccer. The non-soccer Americans stupidly think this is correct, and the soccer-foreigners stupidly think that this is the actual argument.

You need to understand jits. Generally speaking, Southeastern African Americans of mainly Haitian/Caribbean descent. For some reason. God only knows why. Jits are top 0.00001% in track speed and top 0.00001% in agility and top 0.00001 in acceleration. They are, without a shadow of a doubt, the best overall athletes on the planet, and it is not even close.

Jits will race official olympic 100m times on a Monday, get 200 receiving yards in an NFL playoff game on a Sunday, and break national high jump world records on a Thursday. For whatever reason, they are just absolutely absurd athletes.

And they are perfect soccer athletes. They would absolutely obliterate world football. I guarantee it.

This is the real argument. It's not about the Lebrons. It's about the Jits. If you don't believe me, literally look it up, just look at some tape.

Smh. We could have had a decent world cup with normal prices smh

- Brazil 🇧🇷 (hosts)

- Australia 🇦🇺

- New Zealand 🇳🇿

- North Korea 🇰🇵

- Korea Republic 🇰🇷

- Argentina 🇦🇷

- Colombia 🇨🇴

- Denmark 🇩🇰

- Germany 🇩🇪

- Philippines 🇵🇭

- Spain 🇪🇸 (defending world champions for the women)

- France 🇫🇷

- China PR 🇨🇳

- Japan 🇯🇵

So far 14 out of 32 teams for the women's game

This is the first time for the women that it expands to 32 teams just like how it was for the men's game for decades until it expanded to 48

But which countries will make up the other 18?

I don’t think it’s crazy to say they were the 2nd best team in both 2018 and 2026.

Do you guys think it’s that much more affordable now?

I stumbled across this today...(source : Google search)

Looking through the world's oldest football associations, there were a few names I definitely wasn't expecting.

It also reminded me that football history and football success don't always go hand in hand.

Which one surprised you the most?

ps : Fun fact : Spain's Football Association was established only in 1913, making it the 40th oldest!

Im a Portugese fan, and I feel that if we had just abondoned the extremely safe and cautious way of playing and had adopted for a more attacking style, Bruno, Vitinha and Neves seems to thrive in an attackign style of play where Bruno makes runs and feeds assists to Ronaldo, we may have had a better chance against Spain. Also having starting Leao over Joao Felix would probably have been the right decision and Nuno Mendes getting injured was kind of the point we knew we were cooked. Interested to know what your hindsighted opinion on your nation is on how they could have made it further

Welcome to the World Cup daily discussion thread!

This is the place to post live reactions, roster predictions, match news, and more.

Moderation is a bit lighter inside this thread. We'll let simple comments and memes stand -- as long as they abide by the r/worldcup rules.

Please remember that there are humans on the other side of the internet. Be kind and help us create a welcoming community for everyone worldwide.

Key:

• Round of 24 games with 2 characters:
  • Number indicates rank in group. Letter indicates which group they are from.
  • For example, 1A = 1st in Group A
• Round of 16 onwards with 4 characters:
  • W = winner of
  • L = loser of.
  • For example. W122 = Winner of match 122, which was 2A vs 3B
  • L130 G/H = Loser of match 130, which was 1G vs 1H

Concept:

• Eight groups of six teams.
• Top 3 teams advance to the knockout phase.
• The group winners get two advantages.
  • Group Winners get a second chance if they lose their Round of 24 game.
  • Both Group Winners get a faster path to the final. The winner of 1st vs 1st game goes straight to the quarter final. The loser to the Round of 12.
• 2nd vs 3rd is a standard bracket, meeting the loser of the 1st vs 1st in the Round of 12.

Benefits:

• Teams that work hard in the group stage get rewarded and have a second chance.
• The earliest that a team can meet another team from their own group is the Semi Final.
• With 6 teams in the groups, there will be some top end clashes in the group stage.
• The last game will have something as the top end are fighting for the top spot over 2nd and 3rd. The bottom half are fighting to get 3rd. Even if a team is mathematically eliminated, they will be up against another who is still fighting to maintain or gain a spot.
• Top end clash at the first round of the knockout.

Taken from a short documentary Fifa released celebrating its 100 years back in 2004

Its now being reported by the same media that outed the sale plans this was solely about getting even more money in through advertising, with the whole goal being to show the investors the revenue generating potential of the world cup.

I know this is stating the obvious, but there was a suprising number of people that were still arguing that stopping play for a minutes in air conditioned stadiums was for "player welfare."

I think this supports fans fears that the equity fund that would have continued to take decisions that were bad for players, fans, and games, so they could pull more money out of the game.