FIFA already has plans to expand the World Cup to 64 teams in 2030. This fait accompli dilution is justified by FIFA as an opportunity for more nations to participate in this great event. But the 2027 women’s World Cup will have only 32 teams. So why isn’t an expanded participation format good for the women’s game?
Qualifiers exist, which allow every nation (except Russia) a chance to make the World Cup. Note that there aren’t mandatory hydration breaks during qualifiers, because no one is watching relatively speaking. This speaks to FIFA’s true motive here, which isn’t player protection.
A 64-team World Cup format would only make sense if it were knockout elimination games from the start– like the NCAA basketball tournaments. A 64-team field with group play only mucks things up more, creating too many uninteresting matches. This tournament took too long to actually get going in 2026, because of the 48-team field. This inevitable move to a 64-team format was decided before this World Cup, and it’s why Fox analysts (& their corporate partners) defended the 48-team expansion so steadfastly. Criticism was curtailed as Fox broadcast policy.
Trump stated to the media yesterday, “This has been a tournament like no other, filled with fierce competition, unforgettable moments. Probably the most unforgettable is when they gave that gentleman — is it a red card? And I was forced to call Gianni and just make a recommendation. I said ‘Gianni, I’d like to make a recommendation. Let the guy in the game!’ No, I didn’t say that. I said, ‘I’d like to wage a complaint.’ I had no idea what was going to happen. But, you know, so much better the way it worked out because there’s no controversy. They won the game and our team had all of its players. [Infantino] made another great decision if you think about it. You’ll never get credit for that.”
For the record, the US lost to Belgium 4-1, in a disasterpiece performance, and there was plenty of controversy over Folarin Balogun’s one-game red card suspension being lifted. Such is the depth of Trump’s delusional ramblings. Neither FIFA nor the USSF has yet explained the discipline of assistant team manager Sam Zapatka & USSF CIA security guy Frank Pannell. ESPN published one brief article on this, which explained nothing, and has apparently moved on.
In 2034, the World Cup is to be held in Saudi Arabia. This means the US is in line to host again in 2038, due to FIFA host-bid rules. Only Oceania/Australia & North America are eligible to host the World Cup in 2038. NFL owners are already lining up their stadiums as 2038 host sites.
It is questionable whether a World Cup will actually be held in 2030, 2034 or 2038. Humanity is now at the outset of another world war, with fronts in Venezuela, Gaza-Lebanon, Iran, and Russia-Ukraine. World War 2 cancelled the World Cup in 1942 & 1946, as defeating the Nazis became a global priority over international sports. We are reaching such a historical inflection point again.
Football brings the people of the world together in joy for the World Cup, but it is not a given right. The World Cup was originally an idea for peace that has been distorted & corrupted by nationalism & international capital to a point where the game on the field matters less than the money & politics driving it. By the time it’s over, fans feel exhausted, not only from the games, but from the politics.
In short, there’s far too much Tom Rinaldi at the World Cup. People who are clueless on the game and who don’t belong in the broadcast booth are given a platform by Fox for their bland mediocrity & bad minds. It’s sad when the semi-finals & finals broadcasts have to be watched with the mute button active to make any sense of what’s happening on the pitch.
As much as I love Rebecca Lowe, Thierry Henry & Zlatan Ibramivich, I’m always forced to be at the ready to mute Alexi Lalas and his diarrhea of the mouth. Fox simply will not allow a serious football broadcast at the World Cup. They always insist on their stooges being present to muck things up. This is because Fox is about the NFL first.
The first American rules football game was Princeton v Rutgers in 1869. It was called football because the ball was carried on foot. Of course, international football had already been around for centuries, but no matter, American rules football was a fringe game at the start.
The forward pass wasn’t codified into the American rules until 1906, the year the NCAA was established. Michigan v Notre Dame established the NCAA. The NFL didn’t establish until 1920, as college football was more popular in the US through the 1950’s. Long before the NFL Super Bowl-era established mass popularity of the game in America, the World Cup was already a global phenomenon.
American rules football isn’t played with the foot, except for punters & kickers. The modern game is pass dominant, so everything about American rules football is a misnomer today. Yet, NFL fans all insist their name is correct, and that FIFA and the rest of the world have it wrong– and that it’s called soccer.
Soccer v football is much more than an argument over semantics. It goes to the heart of the meaning of words. It represents the idea that wrong-headed thinking can be imposed on a nation as correct by a wealthy & powerful ruling class. It smacks of arrogance & ignorance.
The US men can’t win at the World Cup playing soccer. The world is playing football, and as long as a misnamed American sport takes priority over historical truth and the true meaning of words, the US will continue to crash out of future World Cups. More than anything, that has been my final takeaway from the 2026 World Cup.
Hypothetical situation: I have just invented a new sport and I’m naming it basketball. It’s not the basketball everyone knows– NBA, WNBA, etc– it’s a game played with an oblong ball and woven baskets with completely different rules. I insist the world must refer to it as basketball, otherwise I’ll get upset.
Sat 18 Jul 2026 08:00 PM CDT
US pregame show technical difficulties on Fox led to Thierry Henry & Zlatan Ibramivich being swapped-out before the third-place England v France match. My guess would be a power outage due to violent thunderstorms passing through Brooklyn led to them going off-the-air in New York. Doesn’t Fox have weather professionals who can predict this stuff and be ready if/when the power goes out, while keeping the host & analysts protected from the rain? That, and doing an outdoor broadcast in choking wildfire smoke could also upset the talent. Since it wasn’t game day in NY, an indoor broadcast studio would have been more appropriate with these outdoor conditions, and apparently Fox couldn’t figure that out.
It appears Fox failed on all that. It was a third-place game, which no one wants to be part of. It just happened to become the greatest third-place game in World Cup history, which is like saying it was the greatest NIT final ever played. and I hope Thierry Henry & Zlatan Ibramivich enjoyed their day off after walking out on what was very likely Fox studio incompetence. I’m just speculating because people are wondering, while Fox is deflecting on this.
Darren Fletcher-Owen Hargreaves did a more-than-adequate job carrying the one-hour Fox pregame. The best thing of all was no Alexi Lalas. At halftime Rebecca Lowe was back on-the-air in New York with her B-squad analysts. Rebecca Lowe is too professional to walk out on a broadcast, even though I sense she’s frustrated with Fox. Thierry & Zlatan have had enough.
* All day Fox advertised the Dodgers-Yankees in the Bronx as their Saturday night MLB broadcast. That promotion ran through the World Cup post-game show. After which, Fox viewers were sent to the Giants-Mariners because the Dodgers-Yankees are rained out & postponed.
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The rights for the US broadcast of the 2030 World Cup are to be bid upon soon. Fox/Univision, NBC/Telemundo, Disney/ESPN/ABC, Netflix, Amazon, & YouTube are the early partners & competitors, and the asking price is $1.5-2B. For comparison, Fox paid FIFA $485M for the US broadcast rights to the 2026 World Cup. FIFA wants to bundle English & Spanish language US broadcasts in 2030. Fox is upset that English speakers in the US are watching Telemundo over Fox broadcasts.
The popularity of the World Cup (like the NFL, NBA & MLB) will eventually put these games behind a paywall. In 2026 every game was on either Fox or FS1 (cable), meaning people could watch most matches for free with a ‘rabbit ears’ antennae. If FIFA & its corporate partners have their way, this World Cup will likely be the last time that happens.
Sun 19 Jul 2026 10:15 AM CDT
This is the only mainstream article I could find on the Fox NYC technical difficulties yesterday at the World Cup. It’s remarkable how the Fox World Cup broadcast, which everyone was watching, has had virtually no media commentary concerning its obvious issues yesterday. Near the end the article it reads, “In a last-minute wrinkle, a transmission issue forced the team to bring in a full production truck — Mobile TV Group 53RP is parked on Water Street — instead of the BRISK (Broadcast Remote IP Studio Kit) unit that has supported nearly all the remote studio shows throughout the tournament.”
That “last minute wrinkle” was obviously the severe thunderstorms which washed-out Saturday’s pregame broadcast from Brooklyn, as well as the Dodgers-Yankees that evening. Fox Sports senior VP of remote studio operations, Rod Conti, waxed artistic on his production choices, “In the old days before mass media, paintings were commissioned to tell a story. If Napoleon won a battle, the painter who was commissioned would represent him however the story needed to be told. That was like your press. And that’s essentially how I look at our backdrops for sets… When you see this backdrop, you’re seeing Manhattan, you’re looking at the Brooklyn Bridge, you’ve got the Freedom Tower in the frame. We all felt like this was gold.”
The problem for the most logistically complicated production that Fox Sports has ever attempted was that it couldn’t stand the weather. Therefore viewers missed out on Adidas promoting their “New York home of soccer” complex, Tom Rinaldi, and all the rest that Rod Conti & Fox had planned. It was a welcome third-place match reprieve for football fans. Sunny conditions in NYC today– for better or worse.
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Like every football fan, I’m awaiting Spain v Argentina. Like every sports-loving American, I’m awaiting the fan response to Trump being shown on the big screen at NY/NJ Stadium. The world’s leading war criminal will then present the FIFA World Cup trophy to the winner. This will be visceral for everyone, and the mass media will surely downplay the ferocity, intensity & totality of World Cup fan response to Trump. It will be surreal. If I was Rod Conti, I would commission surrealist painter René Magritte to depict this story.
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Exclusive US broadcast rights (English & Spanish) for the women’s World Cup in 2027 & 2031 are held by Netflix, and according to Google AI, the financial terms of the broadcast deal between Netflix & FIFA have not been publicly disclosed. Netflix says there will be no subleasing to cable or over-the-air networks. The World Cup for women has disappeared behind a tech giant paywall. Note the 2031 World Cup will be jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Jamaica.
Today, US viewers have the option, for the last time, of switching to Telemundo for the World Cup final. I want to hear the crowd singing and the football coming off the feet of the players, but I don’t want to listen to John Strong & Stu Holden reciting their scripts & MLS promotions. I also want to hear the crowd reaction to Trump, without Fox jump-cutting & AI filtering what’s going on. This option to switch from a major Fox Sports broadcast to Spanish-language Telemundo will NEVER be allowed to happen again in capitalist America.
* According to Google AI, macro-level data reveals that nearly half (49%) of the total US World Cup audience chose Telemundo & Peacock over Fox Sports during the tournament.
Sun 19 Jul 2026 03:20 PM CDT
Participation trophies for everybody / as long as you can afford to pay-to-play
That was the halftime show message from Global Citizen. Insert banal melody & repeat ad nauseam. The crowd was NOT electrified by this lip-synced halftime show. Football fans went to a World Cup final in NY/NJ, and a bad Fox Sports musical production broke out.
Sun 19 Jul 2026 05:35 PM CDT
Spain 1, Argentina 0 after extra time. The best team won. Football won. The broadcast was much better on Telemundo with two Spanish language teams on the pitch. I noticed Telemundo gets the same feed as Fox (& presumably Peacock), but their resolution isn’t as good. No matter. It’s the announcers energy & passion that hold the English-speaking viewer. Telemundo also stays on the field during the hydration breaks, instead of cutting to commercials like Fox. FIFA clearly had a deal with Fox Sports on this and fans saw right through it.
Fox Sports blew this 2026 World Cup because their executives thought they could get away with doing whatever they wanted. There is a palpable level of Fox executive contempt for international football, who feel this game threatens their beloved NFL. But streaming & a Spanish language alternative in the US gave fans freedom of choice, so football & Telemundo won. Over half of Fox’s viewing audience tuned them out by the finals. Sponsors who paid for World Cup advertising on Fox aren’t happy. How does Fox explain that?
That’s a wrap. The World Cup ends just like that, and leaves everyone wanting more. If the world wants more amazing World Cups to enjoy, they will have to be fought for & earned. Over & Out
US soccer is controlled by hedge fund billionaires Ken Griffin & Scott Goodwin, who provided the $6M/year salary for Mauricio Pochettino. Now that the USMNT has disgracefully crashed out of the 2026 World Cup, it’s decision time for everyone involved.
The problem for the USMNT wasn’t Mauricio Pochettino, but he’ll make a convenient scapegoat when it’s all over. The biggest issue for the USMNT during the World Cup was Trump’s belligerent intervention with FIFA to lift Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension. Two US soccer officials were suspended by FIFA ahead of the USMNT’s game against Belgium– team manager Sam Zapatka and US soccer vice president of security Frank Pannell– who worked for the Secret Service & CIA before a career in private security. What are these people doing in US soccer? What do they have to say about their actions? Is there ANY accountability here?
These type of people aren’t helping the USMNT win. They are part of the problem, meddling where they aren’t wanted or needed. Zapatka & Pannell were the USMNT proxies that worked with Trump in lobbying FIFA before the Belgium match. They did it secretly, hoping they wouldn’t be exposed, but when FIFA suspended them, they were outed. This was done because FIFA boss Gianni Infantino doesn’t like having his pants pulled-down in front of the world.
The other problem for the USMNT was too much hype over players who aren’t good enough. This particularly involved Fox sports, who are covering the World Cup and had a vested interest in shamelessly promoting the USMNT. After losing 4-1 to Belgium, Fox largely went silent on the USMNT performance to cover their tracks.
I have made my recommendations for US soccer, but I don’t think anyone in charge has the slightest inclination to do what’s necessary to get the USMNT into a position where it can actually compete at the World Cup. These are billionaires making all the critical decisions, and they act as if they know everything already. Any good ideas that aren’t their own are disregarded. It’s all about egos and who calls the shots. In a nutshell, this is why the USMNT loses.
These rotten politics have existed in US soccer since it began in the 1980’s. It’s how Alexi Lalas became a “key guy” for the USMNT in 1994 & 1998. There has always been a lot of potential for US soccer, but it’s being choked-off by billionaire money that dictates everything from policy to player & coach selection. Personal favorites & recognized names still dominate a USMNT roster which produces nothing but mediocre results.
Top international players have year-round football camps in the US. The idea is to create new players from the US diaspora. Most of these young players aren’t good enough to play for their national teams in France, Spain, etc, but would be more than good enough to play for the USMNT. US soccer needs to open up its minds, and everything else, to these kinds of ideas.
Most of the US soccer hierarchy is only interested in protecting its perks & privileges. Once every four years it has to face-the-music at the men’s World Cup. After every disappointment, their idea is to sweep all these deeper issues under the rug and continue on as before. As things stand, that’s what awaits the USMNT in the 2030 World Cup.
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Have you noticed how few former US players are involved in US soccer leadership? A glance through the US Soccer Federation (USSF) board reveals a bunch of bureaucrats who never played much. These are the people in charge of US soccer. The USSF board is thoroughly comprised of bureaucrats, politicians & former fringe players who do what they are told. There is no one here with the spine needed to tell an ignorant billionaire he is wrong.
Where are Carli Lloyd, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Alex Morgan, etc? These are the names US soccer fans recognize & respect. Clearly their services aren’t wanted by the USSF. That explains why these soccer talents are now analysts on television, or retired from the game. The USSF is mostly interested in enriching itself. Producing a competitive USMNT hasn’t been a priority for the USSF. The results speak to that.
Current USMNT goalkeeper Matt Freese is a “Athletic Representative” on the USSF board, which makes me wonder why Kasey Keller & Tim Howard aren’t. The USSF smacks of favoritism, cronyism & mediocrity in its ranks. It’s a rotten bureaucracy, like all the rest, and it needs to be replaced with something that actually represents the best in US soccer/football. That’s the only path to World Cup success for the USMNT.
* The controversial decision to waive Folarin Balogun’s red-card suspension in the World Cup was made solely by FIFA disciplinary chair Mohammad al-Kamali, without input from any of the 17 other members of his committee, The Times of London reported Sunday. I initially described the “FIFA disciplinary committee” as a smokescreen, and here it is. That completes the loop and anyone can connect the dots. Of course, these conspirators will all deny their involvement & minimize the significance, that’s the FIFA & American way.
In summary, US President Donald Trump decided to intervene in Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension by contacting FIFA boss Gianni Infantino, who went directly to the disciplinary committee chair Mohammad al-Kamali, who ruled in favor of the USMNT without consulting any other member of the 18-person disciplinary panel. It’s still unclear at what point US soccer VP Sam Zapatka & CIA security guy Frank Pannell got involved, and what exactly their roles were. Was using Trump to strong-arm Gianni Infantino their idea, or Trump’s? Who first brokered this really bad idea? Unsurprisingly, no one involved is commenting.
It’s also interesting to note that it’s the Times of London who investigated & published this FIFA disciplinary committee fraud revelation. It wasn’t Fox or ESPN discovering these facts. Does that surprise you? ESPN hasn’t given us much on US soccer VP Sam Zapatka & CIA security guy Frank Pannell either. Those are some uncomfortable questions that need to be asked, so they don’t get asked. They get away with no comment and move on. It’s been very hush-hush for the USSF since this murky Trump-FIFA affair came to light.
Mon 13 Jul 2026 08:12 PM CDT
According to Google AI, Fox has decided on John Strong-Stu Holden as the broadcasters for both semi-final matches. This cheats World Cup fans watching in the US. Ian Darke-Landon Donovan are Fox’s best team, followed by Darren Fletcher-Owen Hargreaves. Derek Rae-Rob Green are better than Strong-Holden. This is Fox promoting its MLS announcers. It’s called soccer. It’s disrespectful to bring Ian Darke overseas for your World Cup broadcast team, only to sideline him at the end. It’s like benching Wayne Gretzky for the Stanley Cup finals, and it’s just another ignorant Fox executive decision.
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A record smashing 42 million Americans tuned-in to see the USMNT humiliate itself in its 4-1 loss to Belgium in the round-of-16. Fox pumped up the hype, but when the bubble burst, Fox quickly went back into its reactionary shell. There has been no serious analysis from the aforementioned ex-national team players whom Fox pays to analyze what happened. Fox doesn’t allow it, so apparently this World Cup is supposed to fizzle out as far as the USMNT goes.
I’ve seen nothing close to my level of serious inquest towards the USMNT & USSF anywhere in the US corporate media. Everyone there is content to vent for a few days and then go on making money, regardless of results. I’ll be leaving this World Cup more convinced than ever that there is no hope for the USMNT. It’s a lie & a fraud from top to bottom. You just can’t win with these people.
Tue 14 Jul 2026 01:50 PM CDT
The women’s World Cup is in Brazil in 2027, so that now becomes that focus for the USSF. In the 2023 World Cup held in Australia, the USWNT struggled throughout, eventually losing their round-of-16 match against Sweden– in a goalless draw they lost 5–4 in a penalty shootout. Megan Rapinoe missed the decisive PK. Corrosive Subway commercials became a storyline.
Without question, the failures of the USSF & the USMNT have also eaten away at the success of the USWNT. Current women’s FIFA rankings are: Spain, US, Germany, England, Japan, France, Brazil & Sweden as the top 8– in that order. Seven of these nations are teaching their women to play football, while one is still stuck on soccer.
In 1991 the USWNT won the inaugural women’s World Cup held in China. No one cared. FIFA didn’t even put its name on it until after it was over, because it wasn’t initially convinced it was a legitimate event. It wasn’t until the summer of 1999 that America and the rest of the world cared about the women’s FIFA World Cup. This springboarded into the NWSL, and even helped the WNBA. Mia Hamm is why athletic young women today get NIL deals with the NCAA.
The great US players from the past need to step up and be more vocal in the soccer/football discussion, because the bureaucrats have taken over and everything is turning into crap. What’s going now in the USSF isn’t an inquest, it’s a whitewash. Do you see how this mirrors American politics? It’s the same thing because there is big money & powerful influence in football.
Rob Stone, John Strong, Stu Holden & Alexi Lalas have been handed the reigns by Fox for the rest of the World Cup. Are those the great players & voices you remember? Let’s be clear: Christian Pulisic isn’t the greatest men’s player ever, that’s Landon Donovan– the guy who led the USMNT to the quarterfinals in 2002 and was voted the FIFA best young player of the tournament. Landon Donovan got the USMNT there, not Bruce Arena.
Fox has Landon Donovan stifled when it comes to commenting on US soccer and the national team during their broadcast. I keep hearing in the corporate media from past USMNT managers– Klinsmann, Arena, Berhalter… I’m not interested in hearing from the people who were fired from their job because they failed, who are now commenting on how the job should be done. I’m tired of the media giving a megaphone & legitimacy to these incorrect past voices.
Therefore, I’m fully expecting the USSF to select a MLS coach to be the next USMNT manager. As far as who that will be, John Strong & company know better than me. Note that it also depends on the billionaire benefactors who’ve paid Mauricio Pochettino all that money. For background, the salaries of the USMNT & USWNT managers must be the same. That was fought for & (supposedly) hashed-out by the USWNT in the late 1990’s. The 2026 World Cup manager salary was “augmented” with private capital contributions (mentioned above) that paid Mauricio Pochettino his $6M/year salary. That will be an issue for whomever is selected as the next USMNT manager.
Wed 15 Jul 2026 11:53 AM CDT
Slava Malamud, Daniel Garb, Moshik Temkin, Eugênio Leal, Melissa Reddy, Mehdi Hasan are among the published pundits who now say Trump hurt the USMNT with his FIFA intervention. But at the time, NONE of them said Trump’s intervention was a bad idea. These are sycophant Monday morning quarterbacks, posing as responsible leadership.
Folarin Balogun stated a week after the 4-1 loss to Belgium, “My initial reaction was I was happy to be back on the team. But when I kind of started to reflect, I knew it was going to cause a lot of controversy, and I could almost see within my teammates, a bit of nerves because it was something that’s so unique. But the closer we got to the game, I tried to just focus as best as I could. But it was difficult, you know, a lot of outside noise.”
So why didn’t anyone else on the USMNT or USSF management notice? Why was the US media 100% cheerleading the Trump-FIFA intervention when it happened? What we have here is an exercise in hand-wringing and historical falsification. Everyone involved with the USMNT applauded the red-card overturn and was only delighted that Folarin Balogun could play against Belgium. Now all these media flakes posture as early opponents of Trump’s meddling when it ended in disaster. Disgraceful.
Equally bad are ESPN articles, such as those titled, “The USMNT’s struggles at the World Cup can’t be fixed by overhauling youth development.” Fixing US youth development is the ONLY way the USMNT can ever become competitive at the World Cup. The USSF doesn’t want people to know that, because it holds them accountable.
I believe the USSF has a deal with the NFL to never call their game football– and always call it soccer. The USSF has acquiesced to higher powers and accepted their place as a second-rate sport. These are the fundamental problems with US soccer to which all these mentioned parties are contributors. The problems with the USMNT run much deeper that what you see on the field, and it’s these people’s jobs to hide it from the public. That’s the fundamental problem and it’s going to take a revolution to change it.
AJ Preller is considering trading Fernando Tatis, Jr. The team AJ Preller has built around Tati hasn’t met expectations for many years now, and it has collapsed in 2026. The Padres aren’t a good team anymore. As a fan, I gave up on the 2026 Padres on July 1, when they lost 23-3 to the Cubs.
By the numbers they have the worst starting pitching in MLB and the worst LF. Catcher is still a black hole, and they don’t get nearly enough from their DH. The Padres are punchless. Their once elite defense is now league average. Their elite bullpen is overused and succumbing to injuries & fatigue.
AJ Preller is the Padres GM and he’s at a crossroads with Fernando Tatis, Jr. AJ Preller stole Tati from the White Sox in 2016, but the kid hasn’t performed up to expectations. Fernando Tatis, Jr has incredible talent, but lacks maturity & focus. He gives away too many at-bats and gets himself out too often. His kind of carefree leadership doesn’t beat the Dodgers. Still, he’s age 27 and a generational talent– and that’s worth a lot. I believe Tati needs to be on a good team with an established leader, and I think AJ Preller knows this too.
The MLB trade deadline is approaching in a few weeks, and AJ Preller is already gauging the market. Ace closer Mason Miller is the prize every contender covets. AJ Preller paid a lot to get Mason Miller last trade deadline, and he can probably get the same or more now. AJ Preller also knows the winter hot stove season is the best time to deal, in terms of trading away established talent because the 8/3 trade deadline puts a gun to the head of any GM that has to sell.
Over the winter, everyone is a buyer & seller. This makes it easier to put together big deals, and trade bigger players. More teams can get involved and there is no rush from November through mid-February when pitchers & catchers report. The Yankees, Mets, Red Sox & Dodgers will always shortchange any team compelled to trade high-end talent at the August deadline– in any season.
So what AJ Preller is doing, through his MLB press secretary AJ Cassavell, is determining what the top return value is for this trade deadline. Ace closer Mason Miller would be the top asset, so that sets the market. AJ Preller is a master at this on every end– buying, selling & holding. When Padres star Juan Soto needed to be traded, he was first floated at the 2023 trade deadline. When paltry returns were the market response, AJ Preller held. He instead traded Juan Soto to the Yankees that winter for a much better package than he would have gotten in a trade deadline deal.
Manny Machado & Xander Bogaerts will also go if Fernando Tatis Jr is dealt. AJ Preller needs fresh prospects, particularly pitchers. It probably won’t happen at the 8/3 trade deadline, but you never know with AJ Preller. He’ll have his hand in the market, influencing it profoundly. For sure AJ Preller will be busy from November onward rebuilding his team that collapsed.
The biggest problem AJ Preller has is being up against the bleeping Dodgers. It’s simply impossible for the Padres to compete anymore. After the Dodgers won the World Series in 2024, they went out and signed ace starter Blake Snell that winter. That was bad enough, but it was the Dodgers also signing lefty closer Tanner Scott to a 4/$72M deal that exasperated AJ Preller and many other MLB executives.
Tanner Scott has been acquired by AJ Preller from the Marlins at the 2024 trade deadline, and was an ace for the Padres against the Dodgers in the divisional round series the Dodgers won in 5 games. Tanner Scott completely neutralized Shohei Ohtani at the plate, so that winter the Dodgers went out and signed Tanner Scott so no other contender would have that lefty reliever who could neutralize their best hitter late in games. No other team could afford to do that, but that’s how the Dodgers take out insurance on winning the next World Series, which they did in 2025. Tanner Scott had arm issues in 2025 and wasn’t even on the Dodgers post-season roster last fall. This year he’s healthy again and now their ace closer.
The Padres are currently being sold by the Seidler family for a MLB record $3.9B to an investor group led by private equity billionaire José E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones. What’s next, who knows? Since Peter Seidler’s death from cancer and the bankruptcy of the Diamond Sports Group (DSG) in 2023, the Padres have been existing on borrowed time. The Padres are now one of 8-10 fringe teams which has MLB broadcast their games directly, meaning they get much less TV revenue than the Yankees, Dodgers & Cubs. The Padres are a squeezed team in the same division with the Dodgers, meaning their immediate future looks pretty hopeless.
The San Diego Padres don’t have enough money to comp[ete, and they can’t make up the difference with their farm system because the Dodgers already have a top minor league system. Since Andrew Friedman took over as GM of the Dodgers after leaving the Tampa Bay Rays in October 2014, the Dodgers have figured it out and there are no organizational holes for other teams to exploit. Plus, they have unmatchable clout.
In 2026, the Dodgers carry a competitive balance tax payroll of $413M. MLB is the only sport where teams are still allowed to crush each other with crazy big-market spending. The penalties for overspending aren’t enough to stop the Dodgers from monopolizing the top talent. Every winter and every trade deadline. the Dodgers get what they want. They get the best talent, and they get it first. After they have fed, everyone else gets to fight over the remaining crumbs. It’s not very interesting to watch anymore.
This has been a frustrating season for the Padres and AJ Preller has kept himself quiet throughout. That’s a red flag right there. AJ Preller surprises MLB with his moves. It’s when you hear no whispers that you should be expecting. AJ Preller’s moves are bold & innovative. They always have a managerial logic that withstands fan & media scrutiny. No GM can be perfect, it’s about winning more than you lose and building a solid organization over time. AJ Preller has done that.
The Padres were a joke when he took over in 2014. AJ Preller has had to endure meddling ownership that brain-childed the Matt Kemp deal, trading away young prospects Max Fried, Trea Turner, etc. It’s an organization that needed a total rebuild, and the Padres competitive foundation is much better than it was 12 years ago. It’s the only extended period of competitiveness in franchise history, which goes back to 1969.
With new ownership, I don’t know how long AJ Preller will have his job. For many Padres fans, he’s our team favorite. AJ Preller made the Padres respectable, and they’re now selling for $3.9B because of it. How much new ownership values & respects that is to be seen.
When a national team is defeated in the World Cup before expectations are met, there is traditionally an inquest. This consists of intense media & fan scrutiny of what happened. Inquests in Brazil & Germany are quite harsh to say the least.
Alexi Lalas is part of the problem and the sporting media (which should have known that a long time ago) is finally figuring it out. “Cultural factors” are also being cited. What’s meant by that is upper-middle class kids are the only ones who can afford to ‘pay to play’ in the US. It costs $20,000 and up per year for a kid to play on exclusive traveling teams & youth clubs which supposedly have the expertise & resources to teach kids how to play.
The best football players around the world typically grow up in poverty. They see football as a way out, it’s their life’s dream. In the US, soccer is mostly about getting an advantage for an already-privileged child. Sports academies are expensive. The rich kids aren’t so interested, it’s the upper middle class that dominates the strata of US soccer. Getting a NCAA scholarship is always a primary goal for the kids/parents in these families. No team spirit can be build with this failed model.
Soccer moms have yielded to identity politics, which only produces disappointing World Cup teams that are disjointed & whine too much. There’s no toughness or grit on these soccer teams, with too little football talent.
The USMNT needs a complete rebuild from the ground up. It’s going to have to start with a new manager. I don’t see Mauricio Pochettino wanting to stay when it’s time for him to go. He did a great job, but this position needs a long-term commitment to US soccer which I doubt Mauricio Pochettino is willing to make. He is Argentinian, with dual Spanish citizenship. This USMNT needs an American manager for a lot of reasons including name recognition, stability & trust.
The italicized paragraph below was written near the end of my last World Cup piece, and I’ll repeat it here:
If Mauricio Pochettino leaves as USMNT manager, my top replacement candidates are Landon Donovan & Carli Lloyd. If I’m the head of the US Soccer Federation, I’m getting those two in a room together and presenting this, “We need an American manager for the long-term. We understand there are serious issues at all our levels. Therefore the contract for USMNT manager will be through the 2034 World Cup. I would love to hear both your thoughts & ideas on this, so we can work it out together and pick the best person for the job.”
I also wrote earlier:
Carli Lloyd is there as an analyst to remind the US men that they have never won anything at the World Cup. She usually just sits there smiling, and it’s written all over her face. It’s great. Carli Lloyd was the linchpin in the second golden era of the USWNT with Alex Morgan & Megan Rapinoe that won two World Cups. The original Michelle Akers-Mia Hamm USWNT (1991-1999) won two World Cups also. Those are the great World Cup teams Americans remember with joy.
Landon Donovan needs to be offered the job out of respect. He’s our best men’s player ever, as far as players who can’t touch the ball with their hands go. He’s still loyal to the USMNT, but he’s not a cheerleader like Alexi Lalas. Landon Donovan knows the game well, and was a coach type of player. He has the qualities to be a great manager, but I’m not sure he wants to leave the broadcast booth to manage the USMNT. I sense he’s content with what he’s done & where he is.
This leads us to Carli Lloyd, who appears (to me) to be somewhat unfulfilled as a Fox analyst. I see her as the best candidate for USMNT manager. The men will play harder for her. I know I would. She has the resume as a winning player and understands the game. Player selection & tactical cohesion are the USMNT manager responsibilities. Carli Lloyd can probably do that better than anyone. This is a revolutionary idea. No other country in the world could consider this, but I believe it actually makes sense in the US.
Name recognition matters, and if the US Soccer Federation were to make this bold move, it would re-energize the USMNT at two minutes to midnight. This World Cup which began with so much promise, ended in disaster & humiliation for the USMNT. Never again can that be allowed to happen. That needs to be resolutely resolved, and it should be done while everyone is still watching the World Cup. Now is the time to act bravely & decisively in order to turn an embarrassing showing into an ultimate victory.
Carli Lloyd has the requisite resolve. She also had the vision to see the USMNT was walking into a buzz-saw after the Trump-FIFA red card intervention went public. She said it on Fox before the US-Belgium match, when just about every other American was still cheerleading the USMNT. An inquest should start with self-examination of the inquisitors– meaning the corporate media. What role did they play in this disappointment? Are they part of the problem?
A broader inquest needs to come from American football fans, and that’s what this is about. We lost badly because of all these issues which are so deeply woven into US soccer. There is no hope for recovery without massive wholesale changes in the entire US program. Carli Lloyd as USMNT manager sends that message. This doesn’t mean we replace men with women at every position, but instead it means we now judge things on merit. It’s based on respect and that is earned, not bought. If you can’t get on board with this, then you get left at the side of the road.
Freeloaders, carpetbaggers, and hangers-on need to be rooted out at all levels of US soccer, and qualified replacements need to be found. Gender, sexual orientation & race are of no matter. It’s about the game of football, which doesn’t value those distinctions, but only if you can play.
Preface: The is the fourth installment in a coverage series. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.
Football is the world game because it gets into your soul. Each nation wants an international football team they can be proud of, and the cost of entry is relatively low. Respect in football is measured by results in big tournaments & how you play the game. If the game is not officiated fairly, it’s not football. It becomes rugby or American rules football if excessive & reckless physicality is allowed. Fans come to watch football skill, not players being hacked.
France v Paraguay was a painful game to watch. Paraguay hacked & flopped all over the field, and were never issued a yellow card in the match, while France had three. Paraguay characterized their performance with shameless play acting, referee pleading, provocative baiting, time wasting, mind-game garbage, dirty tricks, and unsportsmanlike behavior that was allowed for the entire match.
FIFA controls the officiating, so this disgraceful match is mostly on them. Paraguay losing 1-0 to France in the round-of-16 is remembered as a travesty. It was a professional performance for France, as the excellent Fox play-by-play announcer John Strong eloquently described at the end. Strong & Stu Holden are one of their best analyst teams for the World Cup, and you could sense them pleading with FIFA off-mic to make the officials to get the game under control. That’s an entire referee crew that needs to be sent home. “Stay in CONCACAF where you belong until your chops get better,” should be the FIFA message to them.
VAR is what saved this match from further disgrace, as the game-winning penalty kick for France was only awarded after VAR finally interceded. This illustrates why VAR is so necessary. It used to be that reckless hacking style teams like Paraguay could get away with that, with no replay review of these obvious fouls. Paraguay are specialists at fouling off-the-ball, where the refs aren’t usually looking.
Teams hack because they lack the skill to play without hacking. Paraguay players flop & act as if they were hit in the face, when there is no contact. I’m convinced I saw them practicing getting fouled and going to the ground (with two hops on a leg) as they were coming out of the tunnel & warming up for the second half.
It’s a way to play football, but not a good way. Paraguay leaves the 2026 World Cup in disgrace, even though they upset Germany in the-round-of-32. This reflects poorly on all the people of Paraguay, which is the biggest shame. A national team can go to a World Cup and not meet expectations as far as results go, but they can’t disgrace the people of their nation– and that’s what the Paraguayan team did. The game of football is about respect. Paraguay don’t respect players who play football the correct way. They disrespect the best footballers, whom everyone else respects.
In sporting competition, you must always maintain respect for your opponent and the game itself. If you lose this spirit, then you lose your sporting soul. This means you can never win, and will always fall short of earning opposition respect. It leaves such a team with nothing to build on, and often ends up being the type of team football fans try to forget.
This describes the difference between being a nationalist fan, who only cares about winning, versus the international football fan who respects the game’s best. That is sacred. That love & respect is the soul of football which connects so many fans globally. It can’t be earned through cheating or false trickery. Respect in sports is about always playing the game the correct way.
Jesse Marsch is the manager of the Canadian national team, who lost 3-0 to Morocco in the round-of-16 today. Football fans have a lot of respect for how Canada played, and how they handled defeat. Canada pressed against Morocco, especially in the first half, and tried to win the game. They just ran out of steam in the second half, and honestly they weren’t good enough.
Jesse Marsch knows this. He also knows this bold style leaves his team more room for improvement,than if they just play it safe and defend. That’s good football managing. If you do things correctly & take risks, you give yourself a chance of getting better, which is what Canada needs. Canada needs talent and a lot of luck, but if correctness isn’t part of their process, they have no shot. That is Jesse Marsch’s message and he is correct. Canada have a long climb to qualify for World Cup 2030, after getting the automatic host bid this time. Hosting is what catapulted Canada to their 2026 run where they met expectations on the easy path they were given by FIFA, but did no more.
A final word on host paths. FIFA wants the host national team(s) to have a good World Cup run. It’s good for everyone if this happens. That’s why Canada, the US & Mexico were all given favorable draws & brackets in 2026. It is fair? No. Is it good business? Yes.
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Watching these matches you hear a lot of commentary on line-ups, formations, and players moving around to help their team get an advantage, etc. The same principles apply for a World Cup television broadcast. In summary: Rebecca Lowe, Thierry Henry & Zlatan Ibrahimović are the “A-team” for Fox in the studio. Jules Breach is pretty & has enthusiasm, but little else, while Peter Schmeichel is slow. Javier “Chicharito” Hernández has to cover Mexico’s games, and he’s a plus. Mikel John Obi needs to slow down (like Thierry Henry does) because of his thick foreign accent. My advice to him would be to repeat this sentence, “In Hartford, Hereford & Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen.”
Alexi Lalas is a problem because he’s Alexi Lalas, so he’s finally been moved off the Rebecca Lowe A-team to the Rob Stone B-team. This is the “USMNT announcer” line-up with Landon Donovan & Clint Dempsey. Landon Donovan does a nice job handling Alexi Lalas, so I like him more & more. Clint Dempsey understands the game & is honest, but he isn’t as sharp & well-spoken as Landon Donovan. That’s a broadcasting team dynamic which works, since Fox insists on Alexi Lalas. I say Lalas should have been red-carded out of the 2026 World Cup long ago, but what do I know about soccer? Anyway, this is how the Fox broadcast has “grown into the tournament” and created a winning formula for itself.
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These two matches discussed briefly above were played on the 4th of July. The Declaration of Independence is an enlightened document of monumental historical significance. For 250 years, Americans have said no to kings. The Declaration of Independence empowers the American people (and people of the world) to resist & overthrow any form of tyranny. It is a democratic & enlightened document which can NEVER be deemed irrelevant. That is what real Americans celebrate on the 4th of July, while fascists & conservatives promote nationalism & militarism.
The American Revolution of 1776 inspired the French Revolution of 1789, yet all Fox broadcasters could talk about was the Statue of Liberty & Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) as a Philadelphia icon– and that’s per Donald Trump to Rupert Murdoch & FIFA. Perhaps the best Fox television moment of this cerebration day was a football fan outside of Philadelphia dressed-up as Thomas Jefferson looking into the camera holding up a red card, to presumably King George III, and signaling him off the field. That’s true modern football spirit from a country built on sense-of-humor, which finally gets it.
Sat 04 Jul 2026 11:30 PM CDT
In 1994 the US v Brazil in the round-of-16, there was a red card handed out to Brazilian defender Leonardo, who viciously elbowed Tab Ramos fracturing his skull. Tab Ramos was hospitalized for weeks where he was visited by Leonardo. Brazil played most of the match a man down, yet the US still mostly stayed in their protective defensive shell. Eventually the US tried to attack and turned the ball over which led to a Brazilian fastbreak goal from Bebeto– 1-0, the winning goal.
The rub came when the US still stayed in their defensive shell after going down a goal, indicating their willingness to lose 1-0 to Brazil. Brazilian players roundly criticized this US style as cowardly, and by winning the World Cup in 1994 it validated that sentiment. That, and the tragedy of Andrés Escobar are why I never viewed the 1994 World Cup as a victory for US football/soccer. It established a flimsy beachhead for US soccer, but left a lot of work to do. In 1998 the USMNT lost every game in group play and finished 32nd– dead last.
As discussed above, sometimes the story of a national team from a particular era(s) can get so ugly that football fans prefer to not talk about it. The MLS MVP award is the Landon Donovan Award. He’s best position player the USMNT ever produced. The goal of the 2026 USMNT is to (at least) go to the quarterfinals. Landon Donovan led the USMNT there in 2002 as the best young player in that World Cup held in Japan. It’s the furthest the USMNT has ever gone in the World Cup.
In the 2006 World Cup in Germany the USMNT crashed out in the group stage, as Landon Donovan had no goals or assists. I vaguely remember it as Brian McBride being the only other guy the USMNT had as a scoring threat with Donovan. It wasn’t nearly enough. A lack of quality in the final third and a shaky defense defined that team.
Landon Donovan played every minute for the USMNT in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. He scored twice in the group stage to help the USMNT draw and win a game, helping them finish top of their group for the first time ever. Landon Donovan scored a penalty in the round-of-16 against Ghana, but the USMNT lost 2–1 in the extra time shootout. Landon Donovan’s five World Cup goals is the most for any man representing a team from CONCACAF.
As discussed in an earlier installment, Landon Donovan wasn’t selected in 2014. In May 2014, Donovan was named to the preliminary squad for the upcoming World Cup and joined the team in training camp, but was then clumsily omitted from the final USMNT roster shortly after by manager Jürgen Klinsmann. Landon Donovan was still the best player the USMNT had, and this was going to be his last run.
Landon Donovan helped the USMNT get into the 2014 World Cup, then he was cut from the team just before it began. That’s a shabby way to treat the best American soccer/football player ever, and that bad blood relationship philosophy carried over to the USMNT not qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. I notice that Landon Donovan & Clint Dempsey don’t discuss this 2014 World Cup slight when analyzing the USMNT for Fox.
In Qatar 2022, the USMNT made it out of group play, but lost to the Netherlands 3-1 in the round-of-16. In 1998 & 2006 the USMNT was eliminated in group play. “Home before the postcards,” as the English say. That’s how things currently stand.
Landon Donovan says the USMNT is now better than Belgium, and will win– which gives me hope. Landon Donovan also tempers that optimism with the reality that it is really close and very much a coin-flip game with Belgium. He says it’s mission accomplished either way, I say the USMNT needs this game badly. If they lose, it’s a massive disappointment. If they win, they’re football heroes.
In 2014, the US lost 2-1 to Belgium in this round, in a game they weren’t expected to win, and over-performed due to Tim Howard in goal. This time the USMNT is expected to win, so the pressure is on. The MLS has gotten better since it’s inception in 1996, but I still watch the Premiere League on NBC versus MLS on Fox for a reason. The USMNT needs to beat a European or South American powerhouse (or two) for the MLS to get any international football respect.
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The round-of-16 is strong, with only three teams (in my judgment) that didn’t belong there. Paraguay, Canada & Switzerland were beneficiaries of favorable draws & bracketing as discussed already. Two have already been eliminated, while Switzerland plays Colombia in a few days. Every other game looks like a cracker of match in this round.
I’m therefore selecting the Netherlands, Senegal & Cape Verde as the three most-deserving round-of-16 teams in 2026 that fell a game short. They are followed by Japan, Croatia & Germany and these should be (or approximately be) the new FIFA men’s rankings after the World Cup.
If a 48-team field is to be the new World Cup format, then FIFA rankings from say ten to around fifty have to better reflect reality & results on the pitch. Blood-soaked Middle East oil monarchs bought their way into hosting the World Cup in 2022, and had too many teams in the 2026 field.
The football leagues in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc, are all homegrown players of mediocre-to-poor quality. They pay well to keep their own, but have a hard time attracting international talent. It’s like LIV, where oil monarchs offer crazy money to top golf talent, but eventually the top players come to realize they need to be on the PGA to seriously compete for the top prizes– majors.
Qualifiers are there for a reason. It keeps the World Cup tight. A compact schedule reduces injuries. Now the best teams have to play an extra game (round-of-32) which is a big factor in a knockout tournament, from an elimination & injury attrition perspective. New Zealand was a joke. So were Haiti, Curaçao, Tunisia, Iraq, Jordan & Uzbekistan. Home before the postcards.
I earlier mentioned the Azteca in Mexico City as the most beautiful football field in the world. Wembley Stadium in London is the only argument, even if it’s not the original Wembley. England is the birthplace of football, and Wembley is the cathedral. The Cup is always coming home for English football fans. It’s just part of what makes the Mexico v England match such a cracker y una fiesta grande.
The English way to prepare for a cracker of a football match is to fix a cup of tea, or toss down a few pints. The Mexican way is to drink tequila with cerveza chasers while smoking marijuana. This is a fascinating contrast in styles that becomes too difficult to analyze. Whichever team wins gets to claim their style is best. That’s the World Cup.
Sun 05 Jul 2026 06:00 PM CDT
World Cup 2026: President Donald Trump reportedly called FIFA’s Gianni Infantino to review Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension
Above is the Yahoo headline about two hours ago. So far, I’ve written over 10,000 words on the 2026 World Cup. Somewhere early I reviewed FIFA corruption & politics. This was done for the express purpose of educating sports fans who are new to FIFA. Then this happens, and it’s no longer a conspiracy theory– it’s an actual conspiracy. This morning FIFA announced that its disciplinary committee was suspending US striker Folarin Balogun’s red card from the previous match.
First and foremost, the red card was unjust. But the bigger issue is FIFA ethics. Would FIFA do the same for a player in a similar situation for Ghana, or say Iran? To ask the question is to answer it, and it’s why football fans (especially Belgian supporters) are so upset over this. A US President used his personal & business influence with FIFA boss Gianni Infantino to secure an unprecedented World Cup ruling in favor of the USMNT.
In the end, it’s questionable whether this will help the USMNT against Belgium. It feels very much like when Trump showed up in Madison Square Garden to support the Knicks in the NBA finals a few weeks ago. That’s the danger for the USMNT here– the Trump effect, which is always negative. On the other hand, I’m happy the kid can play because he deserves to.
Why did it take FIFA so long to make the reversal decision? Who are the FIFA disciplinary committee? What is their response to these optics? What did the USMNT do to influence this decision? Why does Trump feel the need to intervene on behalf of the USMNT?
International football fans will be demanding serious answers to these burning questions. This isn’t the WNBA where tough questions can be ducked & deflected because the liberal corporate media has the same agenda as the league. Media from around the world are going to be asking US manager Mauricio Pochettino & his players these tough questions over & over for awhile.
Mon 06 Jul 2026 07:36 AM CDT
Donald Trump will be presenting the World Cup trophy to the winners on July 19 in NY/NJ Stadium. He insisted on that, and Gianni Infantino readily agreed. FIFA is about money & power at the highest levels, so of course there is backroom influence & corruption. Trump’s “FIFA peace prize” is proof of that.
There have been hysterical denunciations of Trump’s pardon of Folarin Balogun. The Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) issued a statement yesterday expressing their sharp disagreement with the FIFA ruling. It even contained a veiled threat of possible legal action in the future. Their best response would have been to keep quiet and take the high road, but no one does that anymore. Instead, everyone gets on their soapbox and preaches their version of integrity. The RBFA have cast themselves as the victim with a hashtag cause, as Trump takes a victory lap knowing his heavy-handed intervention achieved the result he desired. The blatant hypocrisy all-around is nauseating.
This closed-door politicking has become the story of US v Belgium, which is a shame. Trump has his black hand all over this World Cup. Those who hysterically claim that Trump has ruined the World Cup with this action, simply haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on. Corruption & backroom dealmaking have been there from the start. All this hand-wringing has become fodder for those who create party-line talking points & convenient political narratives.
To be clear– this game tonight will be decided on the field by the players who participate. The sanctimonious outrage from the Belgian manager & company was a bad play. Most Americans understand the mechanism of corruption involved in this process, as they’ve experienced it many times before with Trump– and don’t approve. The most severe & effective criticism of this FIFA corruption is coming from within the US.
For sports-loving Americans, it speaks poorly that a US President arm-twisted FIFA into this special favor. Everyone sees it and understands it, so from a Belgian football perspective there is no need to posture as a victim. It smacks of whining and creating an excuse to lose, which makes Belgium look weak.
If Folarin Balogun scores two goals tonight and the US wins 2-1, football fans will never hear the end of this. If the USMNT loses, then the narrative becomes they couldn’t win even though they had a special advantage handed to them from above. Trump’s meddling has put the USMNT in an impossible situation, where they can no longer win with honor. It’s a terrible thing Trump has done to the USMNT, and he did it (as always) to satisfy his own ego & interests. He wants to hand the Jules Rimet trophy to the USMNT on July 19, and will shamelessly do whatever it takes to see that happens.
This has raised the temperature of the US-Belgium match to a fever pitch. As I’ve explained repeatedly, the World Cup is about a lot more than football.
Mon 06 Jul 2026 10:36 AM CDT
Gregg Berhalter took over as manager of the USMNT after the Jürgen Klinsmann/Bruce Arena disaster era of 2011-2018, which has been outlined already. The USMNT didn’t make it out of group play in Qatar 2022. When the USMNT failed get out of group play at the 2024 Copa America, Gregg Berhalter was canned.
Mauricio Pochettino has done his job well since taking over as manager of the USMNT in 2024. His task was to organize the talent on an underperforming USMNT roster into a respectable 2026 World Cup team. Everyone in football agrees he’s done that. As a result, this is probably the best USMNT ever produced for a World Cup, as far as competitive ability & overall talent goes.
From here on in, it’s all about the USMNT players and how they perform. There is only so much a manager can do, as his job is to organize the team, select the roster, and decide who plays– where & when. Tactics & game-planning are certainly important, but once the start whistle blows a manager’s role is greatly reduced as far as influencing the result. At that point it’s on the players, as there are no excuses or crying allowed in the World Cup.
The only match I’ve seen in the 2026 World Cup where I felt the manager cost his team a chance to win was Australia v Egypt in the round-of-32, when he substituted his fantastic young goalkeeper late in extra time to put in a cold veteran keeper for the upcoming penalty shootout. I felt badly for both keepers, the young one who deserved to be in the game, and the veteran keeper who was put into an impossible situation by his clumsy manager. The penalty kick takers Australia selected were also a bit curious. That’s over-coaching, and the kind of tactical blundering which deserves scrutiny.
Latest news: The Folarin Balogun situation is now being appealed by Belgium, with a final FIFA ruling expected later today. What a disgraceful mess, and one has to feel for Folarin Balogun who just wants to play for his team. First he was victimized by poor VAR officiating, Now he has been thrown into a situation where he really can’t speak for himself, due to all the rotten politics in the air. Folarin Balogun is somehow now the bad guy (to much of the world) if he plays, and this is an example of how dirty politicians use people for their own purposes, and then discard them without regard for the consequences.
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The r-r-rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain. –Eliza Doolittle
Sometimes off-beat analysis is what’s needed. I really like Darren Fletcher & Owen Hargreaves calling a World Cup match as they did with Mexico v England cracker last night. But must I confess there are times I just can’t understand what the heck they are saying due to their heavy English accents. They do work brilliantly together. Do you suppose they would understand if they were told to take a lesson from professor Enry Iggins? For the record, I love the “Fletch count” on James Corden’s After Hours. Good fun at the World Cup.
I honestly don’t know if the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain, but I do know they have an excellent national team. This is a team that can beat France. First they have to get by Portugal. I heard Fox play-by-play announcer John Strong refer to the Brazilian Ronaldo, who helped them win the World Cup in 2002, as the “real Ronaldo” during a recent telecast. I laughed, I will confess.
Cristiano Ronaldo has scored enough professional goals to laugh at that too. He’s a great player who just hasn’t had the support needed to win a World Cup. Football is the ultimate a team game. The playing pitch is far too big for one person to dominate by himself as Michael Jordan could in basketball. Cristiano Ronald is an all-time great footballer, but not winning the World Cup is seen like not winning the Indianapolis 500 in racing or a Super Bowl in the NFL. You aren’t considered at the very top if you don’t check that box. Whether that’s truly fair or not is what fans love to debate.
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Clarence Seedorf is a legendary Dutch footballer whom I saw play in the World Cup. Charming may be the best word to describe him. He’s got a warm, inviting presence that adds to any football broadcast. I prefer the less-is-more analyst style in any sport. That means speaking well when it’s your turn, while being charismatic, clear & concise. Always be professional in your style.
Carli Lloyd is there as an analyst to remind the US men that they have never won anything at the World Cup. She usually just sits there smiling, and it’s written all over her face. It’s great. Carli Lloyd was the linchpin in the second golden era of the USWNT with Alex Morgan & Megan Rapinoe that won two World Cups. The original Michelle Akers-Mia Hamm USWNT (1991-1999) won two World Cups also. Those are the great World Cup teams Americans remember with joy.
Mon 06 Jul 2026 01:10 PM CDT
Gianni Infantino is an international businessman. FIFA is the most powerful sports entity in the world. Those are facts. FIFA must deal with all nations when it comes to hosting tournaments and attaining visas for foreign teams, travel & lodging, etc. This requires the cooperation of governments and their corporate partners.
So when the president of the US asks FIFA boss Gianni Infantino to do him a favor during the 2026 World Cup, you can start to understand why this is such a big issue– much bigger that a football match. Gianni Infantino is friends with Donald Trump and this is a mafia relationship. That means everything is done in secret and there is an understanding among the two. “FIFA disciplinary committee” is a smokescreen. Trump told Infantino what he wanted and Infantino made it happen. So now Gianni Infantino has to explain to the world all the hows whats whys & wherefores of this murky affair.
That’s not the kind of friend you like to have if you’re Gianni Infantino, but what can he do? He sits with dignitaries of every nation throughout the World Cup. We see him on camera taking in the action at every big match. He has to maintain delicate relationships with countries like Belgium who are outraged that they can’t even have a World Cup anymore that isn’t rigged for the US. This has foreign relations repercussions that Trump hasn’t even considered.
As discussed above, football is about respect. Trump had no respect for due process or transparency when he arm-twisted Gianni Infantino. The Belgian national team had no idea there was an appeal in process. They received the news of the lifted red-card suspension as fait accompli, like everyone else. FIFA is still adjudicating on the matter with 6 hours to go before the match. These are not professionals in charge, these are prejudiced clowns. I expect Fox coverage of this to be poor, because it’s gotten so political. Sports analysts don’t want to talk politics and neither does their boss.
As I was finishing this section, FIFA ruled in favor of the USMNT, so Folarin Balogun will be available tonight. He has no choice but to play, and I’m sure he wants to play. This is what happens when overblown wannabe’s meddle where they don’t belong. Over & Out on this.
Mon 06 Jul 2026 09:50 PM CDT
Belgium 4, US 1. Yes, the Folarin Balogun situation absolutely affected the USMNT. Carli Lloyd was afraid of that before the game too. You could just feel it coming– if you were paying attention. The quality isn’t there at every level for the USMNT to consistently beat a world-class team. The cupcakes the USMNT feasted upon up until now made them sluggish, tentative, overconfident & not ready for serious World Cup pressure. They needed more competition in group play to prepare them better, IMO.
The progress isn’t there. The USMNT desperately needs more depth. Unfortunately, everything I’ve written this World Cup on the USMNT needs to reviewed and taken seriously. We don’t have enough good coaching at the youth levels, where the technical skills need to be learned & mastered to keep up in international football. Belgium’s response to the USMNT after the game was “Overturn this.” Leaves you speechless as an American, doesn’t it?
Respect for the game needs to be emphasized at the youth level. Coaches need to be required to appreciate the best international players who kick the USMNT’s ass every World Cup. The USMNT gets a ‘C’ for this tournament. I don’t believe American fans fell in love with this team, that was all Fox hype. They weren’t around long enough for that. I’m still not sure who the USMNT’s best player is. I didn’t see enough of them against good competition to really be able to accurately judge. Malik Tillman probably.
Lots of shame to go around after all the FIFA shenanigans, which were a bad idea from the start for reasons I explained above. How much did Folarin Balogun actually help in that 4-1 humiliation? It’s about doing things the right way. When you try to take shortcuts or cheat for advantage, this is how you get clipped. The officiating was tight against the USMNT the entire match, and that’s how Belgium got their edge, after the USMNT got their’s with a red card suspension suspended before the match. It wasn’t worth it. Sometimes you need to accept a bad ruling against you, to use that as inspiration to overcome adversity.
The ‘Trump effect’ here was real, just as it was in MSG when he showed up (mostly) unwanted for game 3 of the NBA finals a few weeks ago. Trump sucks all the juice out of whatever he gets involved with, which in this case was the USMNT during the 2026 World Cup. It’s a bad way to blow the opportunity of a lifetime for the USMNT. The process needs more work & refining before US football fans start seeing significant improvement in USMNT World Cup results.
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The millstones of the World Cup knockout rounds grind slowly, but exceedingly fine. Like everyone else, I like Argentina v Colombia as the final quarterfinal match-up to be determined tomorrow. This is a STRONG final 8. I still like France, but Spain is impressing me and Norway is tantalizing me. The USMNT needs a striker like Erling Haaland. That’s what I’m talking about with difference makers. Without Erling Haaland, Norway is already eliminated. With Erling Haaland, Norway can win the World Cup. You need to discover & develop that magical player.
Those are the type of players that need to be homegrown in the US & Canada for those national teams to improve, and that takes time, care, and a lot of hard work. Corporate America is mostly interested in hyping shortcuts, and too busy making money to understand this, which is the root of the problem. Speculating in crypto seems more sensible to these American business leaders, who understand little about building something real that people actually care about.
Among former US national team representatives on Fox in Seattle today, it was Carli Lloyd signing the most autographs. The USMNT needs to be much more grassroots, in-touch & organic with the kids, as previously successful USWNT’s were. To the USMNT: Stop promoting yourselves as stars when you aren’t. Be real. Don’t be bitcoin. “Take a few more cues from Carli Lloyd,” would be great advice for the entire USMNT & its cheerleaders.
To get really good at something, you first need to admit you stink. Then you can get better. The truth hurts and it’s painful, but it also inspires. You have to be honest to improve, and it starts by looking in the mirror. I’m still waiting to see these qualities in US men’s soccer/football.
We’ll see again in 4 years in Spain/Portugal. With the expanded 48-team field, the USMNT should certainly qualify. I see it as the same bar in 2030. They have to make the round-of-16, and it would be great if they finally won that game. Landon Donovan is still our best footballer ever. No disrespect to him, but that has to definitively change for the USMNT to earn more international football respect. He’s taken American soccer as far as it can go, so it’s up to the future generations to build on that. Thank you, Landon Donovan. This is what Thierry Henry was talking out post-match with levels.
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Every match in the quarterfinals is looking to be a cracker. I’m looking forward to see who the Fox broadcast teams will be. I rate Ian Darke/Landon Donovan as their best, followed by John Strong/Stu Holden & Darren Fletcher/Owen Hargreaves. Ian Darke can carry a World Cup broadcast by himself. He’s the Vin Scully of international football. Amazing. If any of these aforementioned broadcast teams are calling the match, you’re in good shape and really should pay attention. The rest on Fox are a level below that mark, meaning they are still very competent, but lack chemistry or whatever.
I’m curious to see if Owen Hargreaves can keep a clean sheet on the Fletch count. It’s usually gone by the first hydration break. At the Azteca before the England-Mexico match, Owen Hargreaves joined Jules Breach & company during the pre-match rain delay. Jules Breach looks great in a wet poncho, but she couldn’t carry the delay alone, so guests were trotted-in including Owen Hargeaves who admitted he had had a few tequila shots with the Mexican fans outside the stadium beforehand. It’s that kind of brilliance that makes you fall in love with the World Cup.
Tue 07 Jul 2026 01:09 PM CDT
Argentina 3, Egypt 2. One of the great World Cup matches ever. It had everything including a blatant VAR overreach in favor of Argentina which took a goal away from Egypt. Rob Green spoke eloquently on the spot for football fans on that, and for it Derek Rae/Rob Green deserve the final quarterfinal broadcast assignment along with the three teams already mentioned above.
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Whispers around the White House report Trump called Gianni Infantino after the Belgium match last night to request the FIFA boss “find 4 more goals” for the USMNT. I got that from a Yahoo commenter.
Mauricio Pochettino has a lot of thinking to do before he decides if he will return as USMNT manager. He could go anywhere, as he’s respected in international football. The USMNT is an unsolvable paradox and I’ve outlined why. This job is a huge headache (with all the corporate politics involved) that leads not to heartbreak, but despair. America needs the best talent managing the USMNT, but more than that it needs a great US player. Or two, or three… We have so few great players in our history. The international standard is getting better, but the US is falling behind– again. Egypt, Senegal & Cape Verde have much better World Cup teams than the US.
* If Mauricio Pochettino leaves as USMNT manager, my top replacement candidates are Landon Donovan & Carli Lloyd. If I’m the head of the US Soccer Federation, I’m getting those two in a room together and presenting this, “We need an American manager for the long-term. We understand there are serious issues at all our levels. Therefore the contract for USMNT manager will be through the 2034 World Cup. I would love to hear both your thoughts & ideas on this, so we can work it out together and pick the best person for the job.”
Tim Howard was one former USMNT player who didn’t jump on the World Cup Fox bandwagon. He said early on elsewhere the USMNT needed to play four perfect matches from the round-of-16 on to win the World Cup and that wasn’t realistic. Tim Howard works with Rebecca Lowe covering the Premiere League, so it seemed like a natural fit he would be part of the pre-match team, especially since Fox did a feature on his 16-save game, but he wasn’t there last night or at all on Fox. Apparently, Tim Howard didn’t want to be part of the USMNT slow motion train-wreck, so he wisely stayed away. Tim Howard shunning the current USMNT was another early tip-off for me on the US-Belgium match and the state of the team in general.
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You can’t grow into this tournament if you are being helped along. Soft groups and easy-path bracketing were the short-cut choices of the three host nations. They all had their early glory, but now instead of going home they stay home. Hopefully their young fans will watch & appreciate the rest of the World Cup. That’s where it starts as far as the next cycle goes.
Chauvinists turn off when the US is eliminated. Real sports fans stay to watch the best decide the matter. Football fans watch every World Cup match they can with wonder & enthusiasm. The USWNT got this concept long ago and have won four World Cups for it, while the USMNT continues to be mired in outdated dogma combined with corporate arrogance & ignorance.
I watched the US v Belgium game as a neutral. I wasn’t rooting for or against the US. Instead I said, “Prove yourselves.” As the match progressed, I felt that all-too-familiar disappointment. The lack of skill, control, poise & connectedness. Too many guys still don’t know how to play. We get beat technically & tactically at every level. It’s going to take a magical young player to change this, and it isn’t anyone you saw on the pitch last night.
Wed 08 Jul 2026 12:03 AM CDT
Frenchman Jules Rimet founded the World Cup in 1930 as a way of uniting nations in sporting competition after the massacre of WWI. Let’s have a World Cup instead of killing each other was the spirit. Italy under Mussolini won it in 1934 & 1938. The fascist movement used sports as propaganda to promote nationalism & racial superiority.
When Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, Goebbels compelled the Austrian national team to play for Nazi Germany in the 1938 World Cup held in France. An Austrian player who refused was murdered by the Nazis. Adolf Hitler coveted the Jules Rimet trophy, which Italy held from winning in 1938. FIFA officials in Italy during WWII hid the Jules Rimet trophy from the occupying Nazis in search of it. The World Cup is serious politics so know your history. Over & Out
Preface: This continues as the third part in a series on the FIFA World Cup. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.
Video Assisted Replay (VAR) has played a prominent role in the 2026 World Cup. Let’s review the good, the bad & the ugly in FIFA VAR so far.
Belgium v Senegal in the round-of-32 was an astonishing game that had it all, an example of World Cup football at its best. VAR came into play late in extra time with the score tied 2-2. A penalty kick was correctly awarded after VAR consulted with the referee and had him check the monitor replay to review his initial no-call. Watching the play initially I thought it was a foul. The Belgium player was about to put a cross on goal from 3 yards away and the defender fouled him to prevent that. That’s a penalty kick. Excellent use & application of VAR.
Germany v Paraguay, also in the round-of-32 was an example of VAR over-application and taking jurisdiction on a play the referee initially called correctly. Germany gets a header goal on a corner kick. The crowd goes wild, while VAR signals to the referee to review for goalkeeper interference on Germany. Fox analyst Peter Schmeichel, who was for 8-seasons the keeper for Manchester United called the VAR overturn “soft.” That was my impression of the play also. The Paraguayan keeper falls to the ground after minimal contact from a German attacker. The FIFA idea is goalkeepers need to be protected. Everyone agrees on that, but there is also an element of physicality that is inherent to the game.
Players are tugging each others shirts, grabbing & holding all over the field and it’s mostly no-calls; and then you bail out Paraguay with that weak stuff? Germany should have been ahead 2-1, in a game they lost in a shootout. Fox loves the drama the VAR overturn created, so immediately it gets you thinking about the motive for that overturn. Former USMNT-er Clint Dempsey earned his analyst stripes on Fox by backing Peter Schmeichel as “a solid member of the goalkeepers union,” or something to that effect and agreed with an all-timer great goalkeeper’s assessment of that soft VAR call.
For the record, Germany looked slow & old, and would have been destroyed by France in the round-of-16, so I don’t lament their World Cup exit. Paraguay will give France a better game because they play with more passion & energy. But with that said, VAR is the huge historical asterisk in that game.
Note: VAR applied this keeper interference rule more correctly in the first half of the Spain v Austria round-of-32 game. Spain was disallowed a goal off a corner kick on a correct VAR ruling. The rule should be interpreted as the goalie has to play strong in the box in order to get a keeper interference call. Germany-Paraguay was a bailout call, in NBA terminology.
England v DR Congo in the round-of-32 had a really bad no-call on a foul by the Congolese goalkeeper on Harry Kane in the penalty box. Kane was about to touch it and shoot into an open goal to tie the game 1-1, when the keeper wipes him out. The referee missed the call, but after a 10-second VAR check it’s play on. Before most people even had a chance to see the replay, the no-call had already been upheld by VAR. Obviously VAR needed to recommend the referee take another look, like it would with Belgium-Senegal later that day.
This is a decision which VAR officials should have to answer directly to the sports media. Fans really want to know why the referee wasn’t instructed to AT LEAST take another look at that play. This is the World Cup, and you have to get those calls right for the fans to fully believe in the game. That needs explaining and full transparency to avoid repeating itself in a more crucial later match.
Switzerland v Qatar, was a first-round group play match. The Swiss got a goal on a set piece that looked clearly offside on all replays, but VAR never showed the 3-D image of the play to confirm it onside. Switzerland’s goal counted in a game that ended in a 1-1 draw. Four-and-a-half hours later FIFA declared a “technical outage” happened on that play, but that it was confirmed just before and unfortunately no image exists to confirm this. It sounded an awful lot like the official explanation of Jeffery Epstein’s death by suicide. I mentioned this incident in my initial discussion of FIFA VAR in part 1 of my 2026 World Cup coverage.
United States v Bosnia-Herzegovina in the round-of-32 was another over-application of VAR. US striker Folarin Balogun was sent off with a VAR recommended red card, on a play that deserved only a yellow. This makes him ineligible to play against Belgium in the round-of-16. Folarin Balogun is one of the USMNT’s best players, so this adversity will test their depth & resolve against a world-class team.
Belgium is about two levels below France & Argentina who are clearly the best teams in the World Cup. They’re below Brazil & Spain too, which puts Belgium & probably the US at the middle-to-bottom of that mish-mash with England, Portugal, Colombia, Morocco, Norway & Mexico. These are mostly good, but not great teams.
As I’ve outline from the start, the draw and bracketing have put the USMNT in the best possible position. From now on, they have to beat a good team. Bosnia-Herzegovina couldn’t score, even when the US went a man down. Belgium, and what comes after aren’t such cupcakes.
Once a team wins a match at the World Cup, all its fans instantly believe they can win the World Cup. Call it irrational exuberance, but that’s the level of excitement this tournament brings. It never fails to bring athletic beauty, competition and controversy to life. It’s reach is so global & powerful that it can’t be resisted. All I attempt to do is analyze based on my experiences. It’s tough to predict, and I’m not a betting man anyway. For me it’s about understanding what’s going on– on & off the pitch.
Some form of VAR is used in all sports. Who controls this technology and when & how it’s applied are the critical questions for players, managers & fans. If replay officiating mistakes aren’t acknowledged & understood, then they will continue to occur. That’s true in all professional sports.
Belgium v US in the 2014 round-of-16 was a legendary match that gives fans context for this upcoming contest. Tim Howard had 16 saves and was Superman in goal. Belgium should have won 2-0, or 3-0 in regulation, if not for a superhuman effort from Tim Howard. Belgium won 2-1 in extra time. Clint Dempsey had a chance to tie it at the very end, but the Belgium keeper made a great save. The USMNT maybe could have used Landon Donovan in that game but manager Jürgen Klinsmann didn’t select him for the team.
This version of the USMNT is stronger & better managed, and should do better against Belgium. On the flip-side, Belgium has shown resilience and the ability to play from behind, which makes them extremely dangerous. This is by far the toughest test yet for the 2026 USMNT. In many ways, this is the match that will decide their World Cup fate. If the USMNT wins, it will silence its long-term doubters who have been mostly correct for so long. If the USMNT loses, it establishes their ceiling as a good, but never great team– kinda like Mexico. This is World Cup pressure, and the round-of-16 is where it separates the men from the boys.
Thu 02 Jul 2026 08:58 PM CDT
The best teams eliminated in the round-of-32 were the Netherlands, Croatia, Senegal, Japan & Germany. Note that this is published before Argentina v Cape Verde & Colombia v Ghana. The Netherlands rightly belong in that group of above mentioned good-but-not-great teams in the 2026 World Cup. They were given a brutal bracket to accommodate the host national teams’ chances of success. The Netherlands were bracketed with Morocco in the round-of-32, and those murky dynamics were discussed in part 2.
Estadio Azteca, or Aztec Stadium in English, is the most beautiful football field in the world. It will host one final match in the round-of-16, Mexico v England, which should be a cracker. Rebecca Lowe will recommend leaving plenty of time for cup of tea before kickoff. Ian Darke recommended football fans record the match times in their diary, so they don’t miss them. And after hearing all this & more, I’m chuckle to myself and think along the lines of professor Henry Higgins, “Why can’t the English learn to speak?”
More 2026 World Cup matches deserve to be played at the Azteca (& Monterrey), but instead, converted NFL stadiums will host the remaining matches in the US. I glanced on the politics of this in part 1. Unless there’s a major upset no one saw coming, that’s it for this inaugural round-of-32 knockout stage in the World Cup. Notice how all the small-nation feel-good stories have disappeared, or are about to disappear. The level of difference between many of the teams remaining and those just eliminated is very slight, but that fractional difference in quality & team play has a way of shining through to get a winning result.
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Italy was the best team to not qualify for the 2026 World Cup. For the 4-time tournament champions, this signals changes need to be made with the Italian national team. For brief context, Italy’s Serie A is one of the “Big 5” football leagues in Europe, along with the Premiere League (England), League 1, (France), La Liga (Spain), and Bundesliga (Germany). Most of the top players on all these national teams play (or have played) in at least one of these top leagues, which again are all in Europe.
Italy gets criticized for playing not-to-lose, ugly football. The Italian style traditionally emphasizes defense, scoring on set pieces, and being aces at penalty kicks. The traditional issues with their national teams are creativity & lack of scoring. Italy last won the World Cup in 2006, and it was in their style.
But in this modern game, speed & explosiveness– particularly seen from the African national teams in this World Cup– expose the deficiencies of this type of outdated football thinking. In short, I don’t believe an “Italian style” can win anymore, just as I don’t believe the “German style” of playing in the air and being physical can win either. Those great players aren’t there anymore. Meanwhile the rest of the world has improved, the rules have changed, and we have VAR now so traditional World Cup national styles matter less than ever.
Even the “Brazilian style” of controlled passing in tight spaces can be neutralized with disciplined packed-in defenses in the box, so they play in the air as needed. Both Germany & Italy need to re-think & re-invent their playing styles if they hope to win a fifth World Cup. World Cup winning teams play all these above-mentioned styles, as needed. Plus, you need young legs to create goals & prevent them. Teams that tried to hang on with older players got outpaced at the 2026 World Cup. That’s modern football.
The sixteen 2026 World Cup teams eliminated in group play were (in order): Haiti, Türkiye, Tunisia, Jordan, Panama, Czechia, Qatar, Curaçao, Iraq, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Scotland, Uzbekistan, South Korea, Iran. The mild surprise in that group is Uruguay, who could manage only draws against Saudi Arabia & Cape Verde. I’m not going to miss any of these teams, and neither will most football fans. I still insist that most (if not all) of these teams shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Cape Verde advancing to the round-of-32 has been hailed as a feel-good story which validates expanding the World Cup field to 48 teams. I’ve discussed the mercenary, free-agent character of these smaller national teams in my earlier World Cup piece, so I’ll rest on that. I’ll only add that Cape Vere plays Argentina next, and that’s when reality sets in for these smaller World Cup teams.
Of the 32 remaining teams, there still remains much mediocrity in: South Africa, Canada, Paraguay, Sweden, Ecuador, Congo DR, Senegal, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria, Switzerland, Algeria, Australia, Egypt, Cape Verde, Ghana. That’s 16 teams listed, and a few play each other in the round-of-32, so some will survive into the round-of-16 simply due to bracketing advantage.
Meanwhile, two very good teams– Netherlands & Morocco– face off in the round-of-32, which illustrates the clearing-out of other brackets to appease the host nations, while opposite brackets such as this one are stacked with good teams. It smells of FIFA corruption. Football fans know that Switzerland v Algeria, Australia v Egypt, Canada v South Africa, shouldn’t be knockout-round games, but there they are. I’ll pass on those games for sure.
The manager of Ghana even said the game has been diluted as the expanded field isn’t good for the World Cup. This was after his Ghana team benefited from the new format by making the round-of-32 as a 3rd-place team. Even enabled beneficiaries of this expanded field don’t support it. It would have been nice if the current field of 32 teams could have been selected through a fair system of qualifiers, instead of diluted group play. Much of group play was painful to watch, and I skipped a lot of it.
The issue is that FIFA wanted to expand because it meant more money, power & influence. FIFA boss Gianni Infantino has a bloc of African nations, CONCACAF, and Middle East oil sheikdoms under his control. FIFA helps them with their national team aspirations in exchange for supporting his ideas like expanding the World Cup field & mandatory hydration (3-minute commercial) breaks. As a result, impoverished Caribbean islands, African semi-colonies and Middle East monarchies get more of their teams into the World Cup, in exchange for fans having to watch an inferior version of World Cup football with more commercial interruptions, and Fox analysts not telling fans why this is.
The synthetic turf at US NFL stadiums have all been converted to natural grass per FIFA. This has been done at great cost & time expense, especially for the domed stadiums in Dallas & Atlanta. This has led to renewed discussion among NFL players as to why they can’t play on natural grass. The bottom line is these NFL stadiums also host rock concerts, tractor pulls, rodeos, motocross races, etc, so it best serves the stadium owners to use synthetic turf which holds up better than grass.
As a sports fan, I don’t feel much sympathy for NFL players anymore. Their behavior towards others is generally atrocious, and their impulses towards violence are far too frequent. The NFL does everything it can to keep all this ugliness quiet, so I view the NFL players as spoiled, as many others do. Until American football players learn to behave more humanely towards women and the educated public in general, I’m not so interested in their labor grievances. These overblown gladiators thoughtlessly serve corporate America & US imperialism with their brand of unrestrained mayhem. Placated & enabled from the youth level with sports corruption & privilege, these professional athletes turn around and expect the oppressed working class to care about turf v grass. In terms of their politics, they couldn’t be more lost.
The grass will be ripped out after the World Cup. and all these stadiums will go back to their pre-existing playing surface. This is a touchy subject among NFL owners, players & fans. FIFA is a game that insists on being played on natural grass because it protects the players and allows for a better game. American football insists on synthetic turf because it’s about the stadium owners being able to profit from a multi-use facility. That defines a major difference between FIFA & American football.
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We have learned in 2026 that FIFA has the power to dictate stadium naming rights, which is an eye-opener. For instance, AT&T stadium in Dallas is where the Cowboys play. But in the World Cup it’s renamed Dallas stadium because FIFA dictates. This demonstrates powerful international authority. All this also explains why tickets are so costly for this World Cup. The above discussed turf-to grass conversions took ~10 weeks of non-use for these stadiums, to allow for 5 weeks of World Cup play.
That’s a lot of cost & lost revenue, but it’s more than made up for by FIFA in ticket sales & event buzz. There is nothing like the World Cup. It’s bigger than the Super Bowl because it’s global and only happens once every four years. I like it better than the Olympics because there is only one competition– football– which is the world game. The World Cup gives every nation (except Russia) a chance to qualify, and earn the right to compete in the most-prestigious athletic competition in modern sports culture.
There is nothing like hosting the World Cup. It allows the host nation(s) to automatically qualify, which in 2018 was an issue for the USMNT, who didn’t qualify for the World Cup held in Russia. World Cup 2026 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the USMNT to capture the hearts & minds of Americans who mostly call this game soccer. They kinda did it in 1994, but not really. All we got out of that was MLS.
The USMNT needs to beat Belgium in the round-of-16, and at least give a good showing in the quarterfinals against a world-class team to call this tournament a success. The lesson in their last-second 3-2 loss to Türkiye in group play is this team can only go so far. Temper your expectations because they aren’t that good. Rabid USMNT supporters say they believe in miracles. The reality is the USMNT would need four miracles to win the World Cup– starting in the round-of-16. A perfect game is a sports miracle, and it means you play your best as a team, while your opponent who normally over matches you, plays poorly.
It can happen once, like when a pudgy Italian-American kid named Mike Eruzione scores the winning goal for the US hockey team against the USSR machine in 1980. In 2026, sports miracles are manufactured by the mechanisms outlined above. The problem is when the hype fails, and fans are left with resentment due to unmet expectations. Promotion is double-edged. If performance & results don’t match the hype, the USMNT is finished as far as ever competing for a World Cup. That’s what’s on the line as the USMNT enters the knockout rounds. Bosnia-Herzegovina are their first opponent, and they should be dispatched easily by the USMNT playing at home.
Belgium will be more problematic. I’m presuming they will beat Senegal, but nothing is guaranteed at this point. Belgium looked sluggish for much of group play, yet still won their group. Senegal is a murky African team. They were stripped of their Africa Cup title, after the team left the pitch to protest a penalty kick given to Morocco, in a game Senegal eventually won 1-0. This FIFA matter is now being decided in court, and it’s a huge mess. Senegal is talented, but there are team issues and they were fortunate to advance. Senegal is one of those teams that can be dangerous if they put it all together, but more than likely won’t.
This why I’ve always seen a US v Belgium match-up in the round-of-16. Belgium is going to create all kinds of problems for the US, to which I don’t believe they have an answer. It’s this match that is probably going to decide the ultimate fate of men’s football/soccer in the US. Hosting gives your national team a huge home-field advantage that only comes around now. The USWNT has already left their legacy, four World Cup titles. The men have only reached the World Cup quarterfinals once– in 2002. This is their chance to do that again, and if they do so, they will have earned a substantial amount of respect in international football. Those are the lofty, yet still doable expectations for the USMNT.
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I’ve previously discussed ‘football v soccer’ as far as sports terminology goes in the US. Soccer became popular in the US in the 1980’s. It was coached largely by adults who never played the game, and often didn’t even watch the World Cup or European league football. They barely knew the rules, much less how to play. As a consequence, the US developed its own distinctive style of football known as soccer, which is a punt & run style of football. Soccer coaches love the kid who can boom the ball the furthest down the field. That’s their center midfielder. Accuracy, pace & timing don’t matter so much in the soccer school. Punting, physicality, and dribbling through multiple defenders is how the ball is typically advanced in soccer. Trying to get 11 players to work together and methodically control the ball was unheard of in US soccer early days. This losing football style has always ended is hard failure at the World Cup for the USMNT.
If you watch a team like Brazil pass the ball around in every World Cup, you realize why they are always competitive and a 5-time champion. You must control the ball as a team, while producing magical playmakers to win at football. US soccer has failed to produce a USMNT that is competitive at the World Cup because its team consistently lacks quality at every position, save goalkeeper. It values the wrong kind of players, while teaching poor strategies & bad tactics.
You must control the ball, one touch pass under pressure, and maintain a connection with all your teammates to compete with the best at the World Cup. The USMNT is at least two levels short of top tier, as the long-taught soccer style continues to stunt football from flowering in the US. The talent is there, but the correct skills, style & philosophy aren’t being taught early enough to produce the great players needed to compete with France, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, etc. Youth coaching needs to improve by several levels for the US to seriously compete at the World Cup.
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Specifically– being able to clear, trap, pass, serve into the box, and shoot with your left foot (assuming a right-footed player) is required in football. Too many US soccer players have no left foot, and that shows under pressure. Good teams will press your weaknesses until you crack, and that’s typically how the USMNT gets beat in the World Cup. With no left foot you’re half a football player.
As far as team play goes, you can’t be connected if some players don’t have the skills to control the ball under pressure. In football, every player needs to have these ambidextrous foot skills. On US teams that have competed in past World Cups, typically 3-4 players (at most) have international quality. I’m being generous on that, but the point is you can’t connect as a team when two-thirds (or more) of your players just aren’t good enough.
This leads us to USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino, who in my judgment has done a fantastic job with this team. Mauricio Pochettino had to rebuild a USMNT that was crushed when the Jürgen Klinsmann/Bruce Arena led team failed to beat Trinidad & Tobago to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. That was the nadir for football in the US.
Christian Pulisic was on that team. Mauricio Pochettino has stuck by his best player, and now their hopes rest on Christian Pulisic creating some real magic for the USMNT. He’s been hurt, so we haven’t seen much of him. Their group was among the weakest (with Canada’s), so it’s really hard to know how he’ll fare against some real competition. Remember the USMNT didn’t need to qualify this time, so most American sports fans haven’t heard much about the USMNT before this World Cup. This USMNT is still basically untested & unproven.
All-time leading U.S. scorer Landon Donovan was left off the final roster for the 2014 World Cup by Jürgen Klinsmann, which was considered to be one of many of his managerial mistakes. Today, Landon Donovan is probably the best US analyst of World Cup football. He works well with Ian Darke on Fox. He has an understated, compact color analyst style, a quality I always felt was mostly lacking among my youth soccer teammates. I had criticized Landon Donovan earlier, but I take it back– he’s much better than Cobi Jones, Clint Dempsey, or Alexi Lalas.
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Alexi Lalas has stuck his foot in his mouth repeatedly as a Fox 2026 World Cup analyst, and he personifies so many problems the US has in international football. Alexi Lalas always insisted he was better than he actually was. He was good at cutting a figure and politicking in a way that elevated himself while diminishing his teammates. He would publicly project a team spirit, while backstabbing & bad mouthing those whom he thought would expose his phony act.
The best players on the 1994 USMNT, which put US soccer on the map, were Kasey Keller, Eric Wynalda & Cobi Jones. Alexi Lalas was a hanger-on who politicked & promoted himself very well. With “teammates” like this, US soccer has always underachieved on the international stage. Selfish, conceited mediocre players like Alexi Lalas stealing the spotlight for themselves is a major reason why so many American kids quit the game early. You just can’t win playing with people like that.
Eric Wynalda recently summed up the Alexi Lalas schtick quite well in saying, “I think it’s been unwatchable at times. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think a lot of people feel that way. I mean, Alexi is, kind of true to the Fox brand, has been told: this is what we need you to do, start a fight, say some things, insult some people, say something outlandish that no one will believe, and we’ll see how many people will click into that. I think the American public has grown up now. I think our community, our soccer community is way too knowledgeable to fall for that anymore.”
It is from the perspective of a youth player who didn’t make it, that reveals some major deficiencies in US football/soccer. There were thousands if not tens-of-thousands of other kids like me, who had football ability, but were frustrated with the lack of coaching & skills among teammates. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t go into professional sports, because it’s just too physical for my liking, so I’m not bitter about any of it. But I do know there were many others who could have helped a USMNT achieve better World Cup results, if only they had been recognized & properly coached. That is the difference Eric Wynalda is referring to concerning football IQ & level of play in the US today, versus the riff-raff of Alexi Lalas in 1994 & before.
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The point of all this is to illustrate & illuminate what’s been going on with the USMNT since it took flight in 1994. None of its former players & coaches, especially those who have become analysts for the World Cup on Fox, will honestly describe to the public what I’ve discussed. Even though all the best players know that what I’ve described to be absolutely true. It’s too shameful, as the consistently poor USMNT results speak to a bad process & poor leadership. Every player who participated is complicit by association, and I feel for those who really, really tried to make it work. The USMNT just didn’t have enough of them.
Facts are stubborn, and it’s an inflection point when amateurs can outshine overpaid professionals. It’s more about being honest about basic issues than access to top talent & media glitz. The point is there really isn’t any top US-born football talent to speak of. The best we’ve produced (outside of goalkeeping) are good, but not great by international standards. This is a shortcoming that isn’t honestly discussed, therefore it doesn’t ever get addressed, much less remedied.
The ball has energy which is directed by foot, leg, chest or head as it travels across the pitch. Each of the eleven players need to touch this energized ball at the right time, in the right place, with skill, continuity & connection. It takes a lot of serious practice to get to that. But there’s still too much politicking at the top levels of US soccer, which negatively affects youth football development. All the other top football nations have had their youth infrastructure in place for a long time, while the US is still trying to figure it out.
All this should be understood before jumping on the USMNT 2026 World Cup bandwagon, lest you look like a fool when they only do what they’re expected to do and no more. That’s the standard they’ve set. It’s up to this team to break through. Last chance. I’m neutral on all this. I don’t root for the USMNT, I watch them and take notes during the World Cup. I expect the USMNT to prove themselves worthy before I support US soccer again. I’m an international football fan first.
Preface:This is the second part of a current series. Part 1 is here.
Strategy’s STRC is a high-yield, dividend-paying preferred stock that was first issued in July 2025– about a year ago. STRC was specifically created to raise capital to buy bitcoin by offering high annual income to investors. The stock is designed to maintain a stable par value of $100. Dividends are distributed to shareholders semi-monthly in cash.
Currently STRC is trading ~$75, with an effective yield that is about to go up from 11.5% to 15% on June 30– which is this Tuesday. As the STRC stock price goes down, the investor yield goes up. This fundamental capitalist feedback loop is now becoming the weakest link in the crypto house of cards.
Note this early promotional image below from Seeking Alpha of STRC. which was presented as analysis, capping the STRC dividend level at 12% over the next 16 years. As discussed above, STRC is already at 11.5%, and about to go three percentage points off their yield scale (to 15%) in less than a year. In other words, STRC is about to break through the yield projection models that were presented as legitimate crypto analysis less than a year ago.
Ever since Grayscale won their Supreme Court lawsuit against the SEC in August 2023, the nature of crypto has been flipped. Bitcoin is now publicly traded on Nasdaq, NYSE, etc, in the form of Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) that allow investors to get into bitcoin/crypto without actually buying bitcoin/crypto. The fact that bitcoin needs ETFs to attract investors who don’t really know (or care) what bitcoin is, tells you a lot about the nature of the crypto industry.
Nearly three years later, no one left in bitcoin/crypto advocates for it as decentralized finance. Bitcoin/crypto is now mostly traded in the form of stocks which are highly manipulated by the futures traders in the derivatives market. Most futures traders are shorting the market now because they no longer believe in Michael Saylor’s Strategy.
Note that STRC has no direct bitcoin backing, as it merely represents a claim on the company’s residual assets. Strategy’s only “asset” is the 846,000 useless bitcoins it holds for which it is ~$16,000/bitcoin underwater. This sinking ship, the USS Strategy, keeps trying to reshuffle deck chairs to maintain the illusion of rational business management.
How can Michael Saylor’s Strategy pay their ever-increasing dividend obligations to investors when no one wants to buy bitcoin anymore? Everything depends on the price of a useless asset (bitcoin) going up, and that’s not going to happen because the word is out.
Donald Trump, Elon Musk, etc, are widely seen as the leading crypto criminals. The Clarity crypto bill which Trump advocated for so strongly in 2024, is now dead in Congress. This crypto-sponsored legislation, along with the stablecoin bill, were designed to give a legitimate regulatory framework to crypto, in order for it to be eligible for a taxpayer bailout if the industry needs it.
The industry will definitely need a bailout to survive, the issue is the political pressure lawmakers have received over the Clarity & stablecoin bills. Traditional banking leaders have argued crypto capital requirements & consumer protections aren’t there. The fear is a crypto crash could take the entire financial system down, and they are correct.
The Fed will not be lowering interest rates anytime soon, which chokes crypto out. Bitcoin came out of the post-2008 subprime mortgage crash, as a new form of financial manipulation based on perpetual near-zero interest rates. After 2008, interest rates were kept near zero for over a decade, stimulating speculation into high risk assets such as crypto. Bitcoin mining is dependent on low energy costs and low interest rates, neither of which exist anymore.
Everyone in crypto wants to spin their narrative. No one in the industry wants to rationally look at the entire picture, gather all the facts, and come to an objective conclusion. In a macro-political sense, bitcoin is dead because Trump tariffs & his foreign wars (Venezuela. Iran, Lebanon…) have raised the cost of doing business for everyone. The crypto industry survives on cheap credit and small margins, which have been obliterated by the increased cost of living since Trump began his second presidential term.
The entire crypto market is dependent on bitcoin. Bitcoin is entirely dependent on Michael Saylor buying more bitcoin. When Strategy can’t buy any more bitcoin, and in fact has to sell bitcoin to pay its high-yield dividends to spooked investors, that’s when the big one hits. If Strategy tries to sell more STRC, the value of that stock will continue to decline, as the investor yield goes up, so that’s a downward spiral. If Strategy tries to sell bitcoin, well we saw what happened when word got out Strategy sold 32 bitcoins a month ago. Bitcoin went form $73k to $60k within a week, where it’s tenuously stayed since.
Who wants to give Michael Saylor the bailout loan he so desperately needs? He’s close to Trump, so he’s in the right circles, and that’s what’s kept him solvent up to this point, but patience is running out with big finance, and Trump has never been a partner in business that could be trusted. Trump’s own personal family fortune now rests on crypto, under his Trump Media umbrella, so he definitely has vested interest in keeping the bitcoin Ponzi scheme going. The question is now becoming, who is going to pay the bill on all the unpayable debt invested in useless crypto/bitcoin? That question has revolutionary implications which are not too far off. That is the question which bourgeois economists/politicians can’t/won’t honestly answer.
Bitcoin mines at $78k per coin, while it is currently trading at ~$60k. Bitcoin has been mined at a loss for the last 5 months. One million bitcoins are left to be mined, requiring greater & greater computing power to produce– meaning higher mining costs in the future. But miners can’t continue to mine bitcoin as a business when it loses that much money. New supply of bitcoin is being squeezed due to thin liquidity and weak demand.
Furthermore, Strategy (MSTR) can no longer afford to make massive buys of bitcoin. After selling 32 bitcoins in late May to test the market, bitcoin quickly dropped from ~$73k to its current $60k level. What this revealed is that Michael Saylor can’t sell any bitcoin without causing a massive slide in bitcoin price. Michael Saylor has been the only large scale buyer of bitcoin for some time now. He has financed his bitcoin buying with MSTR preferred stock sales, promising healthy monthly returns to investors, which he soon won’t be able to pay.
The Block reports that if bitcoin slides to $50k, then MSTR stock will fall to $60; if bitcoin goes to $40k, then $36; if bitcoin falls to $30K, then $13. Strategy stock needs to trade at $100 and over for Michael Saylor’s dividend plan to remain solvent. Strategy is currently trading at $85 and falling, and Michael Saylor is running out of cash.
Strategy can’t sell bitcoin, because when it does the crypto market crashes. Strategy has reached its limits in selling stock as investors are losing confidence in the bitcoin market. It is a market waiting for buyers– and there aren’t any. ETF outflows on bitcoin are now ~$500M/day. Futures traders (the derivatives market) are betting on bitcoin going down.
Bitcoin faces downward pressure in retail & institutional buying (ETF outflows), derivative shorting, and Strategy being tapped out. Their debt is massive, and unpayable from any rational perspective. But rationality left the station long ago in the world of capitalist finance. In this post-2008 crash era of financial manipulation & parasitism, bitcoin rose to prominence as ‘digital gold’, the future of money, decentralized finance free from government regulation, etc. Today bitcoin personifies the Ponzi scheme hucksterism which inhabits the crypto-fascist White House.
Coindesk just reported that of the approximately 20 million bitcoins now in existence, ~11 million of them are held at a loss. Back in early 2020 when COVID hit the US, bitcoin was <$10k. After rising to $126k last October, it has more than halved in trade price since. This means the losses for each bitcoin holder who is underwater are much, much greater than any previous era, and they represent 55% of all bitcoins held.
This is unsustainable. You can’t have a supposed currency which few people use that is a net loss as an investment for over half of its supply. As discussed in the earlier linked piece, if bitcoin falls to ~$20k it’s lights out for crypto. With the latest data that’s been made public, the bitcoin ‘kill price’ is probably now closer to $30-40k– due to Strategy be so over-leveraged & cash-strapped. The important thing is that bitcoin doesn’t need to go to zero (or anywhere close) for the entire crypto market to crash.
It’s a death spiral for bitcoin, for which there is no way out. Bitcoin will soon crash, and when it does, the banks and large financial institutions that have loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to bankrupt crypto ventures will be demanding another US taxpayer bailout. Bitcoin/crypto has very little public confidence anymore. Many early Kool-Aid drinkers have been pushed out of bitcoin, and lost their money to crypto whales. Only inside traders & Ponzi scheme chieftains are benefiting in crypto.
Capitalism is an unfair, rigged game, and that is the lesson Libertarians refuse to learn. They thought bitcoin would change the world. Instead it became just another financial bubble, deeply tied to US imperialism & corporate financial swindling. Bitcoin in its 15-year-or-so history has risen from obscurity to become a global get-rich-quick phenomenon, which is now an albatross for the entire global financial system.
All eyes in crypto focus on Strategy and what Michael Saylor will do. He’s the massive whale on the hook, with over 850,000 bitcoins he bought at an average price of $76k. His ‘buy high & hold’ strategy is in ruins, with no hope for a price recovery, as all the big tech money is shifting into AI. MSTR needs a bitcoin buyer and there aren’t any.
An Eye for an Eye (1981) is the great lost Chuck Norris movie, if there is such a thing. Chuck Norris died a few months ago and I let his death pass unnoticed. I’ve already reviewed his movies here & here. This will be my final critical review of Chuck Norris and his impact on Hollywood.
The story in An Eye for an Eye is about a Chinese drug smuggling operation into the US, which Chuck Norris is hell bent on stopping. His police partner gets killed early, then his partner’s wife. This leads to Chuck Norris resigning from the police force to become a vigilante. Chuck Norris unwittingly confides in a police buddy who is working with the drug-dealing Triads, and is surprised (stunned silence) at the end when he discovers this betrayal. Every character is a stereotype that can be deciphered in about five seconds.
Chuck Norris doesn’t kill the main villain in the end, so it really isn’t the Biblical revenge promised in the movie title. It’s a lot of James Bond type explosions & helicopter chases, with hitmen who are often reluctant to use their guns & automatic weapons when facing Chuck Norris. This allows Chuck to kill many bad guys, which is the point of the movie. Christopher Lee sits in his palatial mansion with spreadsheets & a prospectus for all his well-healed partners in the heroin trade, going over every typed-out detail of the illicit operation, just as SWAT & the SFPD are about to raid them. There’s no real purpose or wrap-up at the end, as An Eye for an Eye stumbles towards the closing credits as the plot fizzles out.
I firmly stand by my controversial thesis that Chuck Norris movies must been seen as unintentional comedy– hideously silly tripe– for there to be any value in watching them. An Eye for an Eye is the third movie in his peak-era trilogy, following A Force of One (1979) & The Octagon (1980).
Upon final viewing I’m rating An Eye for an Eye as Chuck Norris’ second-best movie, behind The Octagon. It’s better filmed, directed, lit, edited & produced than A Force of One, which is grittier and more 8-track than the direct-to-VHS classic An Eye for an Eye. Chuck Norris movies seem to look better on TV for some unexplained reason. USA Network & TBS is where his movies lived in the 1980’s. The constant commercial interruptions on basic cable were often welcome relief to this Chuck Norris film buff.
Movies start in the public as a trailer. You view it before the main feature, or see a commercial on TV, and decide whether you want to go to the theater and see it when it comes out. In An Eye for an Eye, the trailer is better, much better, than the movie– and that hooked us back in the day. The music is better, the promo announcer adds to the excitement, and no doubt about it– action fans wanted to see this movie. White Lightning is back…
There was no social media back then to warn kids this movie is a turkey– you had to pay up & learn the hard way. Word-of-mouth reviews from Chuck Norris fans were unreliable at best.
To watch Chuck Norris movies you need to be able to absorb pain. The cast in An Eye for an Eye is mostly good enough, it’s Chuck Norris who keeps delivering the pain. He just doesn’t care, and clearly won’t do a second take when a scene needs one. With that established, let’s meet the rest of the cast.
Professor Toru Tanaka (above) played the henchman Oddjob in Goldfinger (1964) who wore a Square-Crown Bowler hat that doubled as a guillotine. He appears as a club-footed assassin in An Eye for an Eye. Diminished somewhat, but still a menacing villain, to me Oddjob doesn’t look like he’s aged a day since he battled James Bond to the death. He’s a perfect foil for Chuck Norris because he doesn’t speak, he growls & grunts while letting his wrestling moves do most of the talking.
Maggie Cooper is probably the best lead actress with whom Chuck Norris ever worked. Again, that’s a controversial statement, and I’m sure this will set Chuck Norris message boards ablaze with debate. There’s detectable chemistry for the first, and perhaps only time in his acting career. She really goes for it, but it appears in retrospect that it didn’t get her very far. Like so many other actresses before her, Maggie Cooper’s career wilted & died after working with Chuck Norris– and it was probably for the best. In this she best compares to Jennifer O’Neill in A Force of One, for the powerlessness she brings to her role.
Chuck Norris fears two things in his movies: intimacy & truth. Chuck Norris exits virtually every scene alone, always having to be the tough guy who walks out & rejects the other person first. When asked a serious question, he freezes like a block of ICE.
Mako was a Japanese-American actor who plays martial arts mentor to Chuck Norris in An Eye for an Eye. Mako had some talent and tried his best to lend some dignity to this movie, but Chuck Norris just wouldn’t allow it. Mako constantly reminds him to concentrate, but Chuck always shrugs him off with a smile. It’s not clear if Mako is referring to his sloppy martial arts or stunted acting, but he repeatedly implores to Chuck Norris, “Concentrate!”
Richard Roundtree [Shaft (1971)] gets a plum role in An Eye for an Eye, as Chuck’s boss in the SFPD. The best line in the movie is early on when Shaft remarks how well Chuck Norris’ left shoulder has healed, only a few scenes after he has taken a bullet wound. Chuck Norris apparently compensates for this by always punching the bad guys with his right hand throughout the movie.
Most kicks, punches & strikes in An Eye for an Eye are cut-away shots. Chuck Norris by now is relying more & more on editing tricks because he can’t do the martial arts well enough to impress/fool his audience. Many scenes are very well-composed, with impressive backgrounds and expert cinematography in An Eye for an Eye. The problem is when Chuck Norris enters the frame. He typically says little and does nothing. The idea in entertainment is to ‘get through the glass’, and reach your audience. Instead, Chuck Norris shrivels-up in front of the camera every time he’s asked to act. It’s comical. There is no one else who became such a big star, who was that bad artistically.
When Chuck Norris decides to go for action in An Eye for an Eye, he does stupid stuff like set fire to a freighter cargo hold full of fireworks because he couldn’t stay quiet & hidden. You must riff Chuck Norris movies to get through them without a lobotomy, and this leads us directly to the main villain in An Eye for an Eye— Christopher Lee.
The title character in The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969) was the role Christopher Lee was born to play. When you are a name actor who stars in possibly the worst movie ever made, that’s the role you were born to play. Christopher Lee, the UK-born actor, plays Fu Manchu like no one else can, making that film impossible to remake because you just can’t do that anymore.
Billed as a horror-adventure film, I feel there is an Andy Warhol quality to The Castle of Fu Manchu that has been overlooked. Unfortunately it’s so vague & indecipherable, I can’t define it– and neither can anyone else. If I had been paid to review movies at the time, and was asked by my editor to do a write-up of The Castle of Fu Manchu, and be kind; I would have written something like, “Fu Manchu is an assault on your senses!!”
Anyway, Christopher Lee brings his boring overblown act to An Eye for an Eye, and he becomes a comic delight as the evil bad guy whom no one is afraid. He makes speeches, acts indecisively, then cuts a figure for the camera on his closeups, while doing everything wrong in order to allow Chuck Norris to capture him in the end. Basically, Christoper Lee mimics his role as Fu Manchu. Gesundheit.
If you watch An Eye for an Eye in this spirit, the riffs will come and you’ll be thankful for them. This was the last movie where a studio invested in a decent script, crew, etc, to try to make a good Chuck Norris movie. After this it’s turds like MIA Braddock & Delta Force franchises, and then finally Walker Texas Ranger where Chuck Norris was permanently consigned to the small screen where he always belonged.
I’ve always felt Chuck Norris would have been best suited to be on a game show as some kind of mascot or attraction. Maybe a sidekick to the host. He could just stand there and be Chuck Norris and people would laugh & jeer. Imagine Chuck Norris as the co-host of Love Connection… now that would be entertaining!
In my alternate version of this classic dating game show, Chuck Woolery still hosts, but any date that goes badly would require the contestants to visit with Chuck Norris for romantic advise. Something like:
Chuck Woolery: Roberta & Jeremy had issues on their last date, so we’re sending them to Dr. Chuck to see if he can help them make a Love Connection…
Roberta [to Chuck Norris]: Jeremy doesn’t get aroused when I flirt with him. How can I remedy this?
Chuck Norris:
Roberta [to Chuck Norris]: Jeremy likes to drink beer and becomes abusive when he’s drunk. Does this need an intervention?
Chuck Norris:
Roberta [to Chuck Norris]: Jeremy likes to shoot his guns, sometimes more than he likes being with me, I feel. Is that a healthy relationship?
Chuck Norris:
Roberta [to Chuck Norris]: My vagina needs special stimulation before intercourse, can you give Jeremy any tips on that?
