FIFA World Cup 2026 - USA/Canada/Mexico

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They might well crash and burn,though the way Trump et al are behaving the WC might be a shadow of what it should be,too!

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He’ll probably get invited to the White House along with the Tate brothers.

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In 1936 an alternative peoples Olympics was about to be held in Barcelona to rival the Berlin Olympics when the Spanish Civil War broke out many countries actually sent their athletes to Spain

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https://x.com/LarryMadowo/status/2064604918447493268

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All of the referees are based in Miami. The difficulty is probably not a Canadian visa, but all the other logistics of being the one referee not centrally based. Plus the fact that this poor fellow would miss out on a huge part of the experience for WC referee.

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I expect the African teams to do ok due to these reasons too. I think you can rule out any European side bar Spain.

Micah’s not talking about Man City but again it’s quite obvious.

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There might be a few ways that teams try to deal with the heat and humidity.

Some might be more used to it. E.g. South American teams and humidity? African teams and heat?

Some teams are better on the ball, so they will play a methodical possession game, saving energy and injecting pace at the right moments. E.g. Spain

Some teams might try that, and they are not bad on the ball but not the best, so they might try another strategy. Conserve energy and try to make the most of set pieces e.g. England

Some teams might be able to do all of the above, but they also have such depth that they can freshen it up with elite subs every game e.g. France

So long as they don’t fall out with each other - and staying cooped up together for weeks on end has a way of surfacing any issues - I’m going for France to win the World Cup, as they can do the lot and have the deepest pool of match winning talent.

Who created Al-Qaeda? By that token the entire US presidential staff of the past 6 presidents should be kicked out of the US

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The Portuguese have a better squad and are equally adept at playing in the heat. Portugal’s midfield is superior. France is attack-heavy.

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I just had a look at the FIFA website. There is no peep about that story, despite of it being all over the headlines of the important news outlets.Crazy stuff. I’d have expected FIFA to at least try to make a stand for the poor sod, or at the very least, offer him their public commiserations. They chose him after all.

Instead of this, nothing at all.

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Now you’ve said that (and hereby jinxed all the southern sides), I fully expect Germany to lift the trophy in a few weeks. :wink:

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So much for respect the ref…a match official walkout would be a fairly dramatic step

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Portugal has a cool breeze on the coastal area plus the north can be quite cool.

This is my expert opinion having been to Lisboa and Oporto

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Three bellends in that photo.

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Wasnt that bothered but looking forward to it a little now to see how the smaller countries do.

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Apparently someone was discussing with the great thinker Matt Le Tisser about why there was less excitement about this than usual (I actually don’t think there is, you’ve just grown up a bit) and all the reasons avoided the actual reasons and went for size of it, number of games and so on.

All things that wouldn’t necessarily notice before the thing actually started.

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Guarantee the best game of the tournament going to be some random game between minnows that no one watches.

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