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Governing body receives 15% commission from buyer and sellerThe court has ordered Fifa “to cease facilitating ticket sales without informing buyers of the seller’s identity and address [specifically for sellers acting in a commercial capacity] in a timely manner prior to the buyer completing their purchase”.The injunction applies only in Germany and is unlikely to have any effect on Fifa’s operations for the tournament. Fifa did not appear before the court in Frankfurt, with Ticombo now seeking to take its case to Switzerland, which will take some time.In addition to the high prices, there have been repeated complaints about a lack of transparency from Fifa, particularly regarding who is selling the tickets and the location of seats in stadiums. In May, the attorneys general of New York and New Jersey launched their own investigation into Fifa’s sale of tickets at the MetLife Stadium, which will stage Sunday’s final, after receiving complaints from fans that they had been misled over the location of their seats.New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said: “No one should be manipulated into paying sky-high prices for seats and fans should be able to trust that the tickets they purchase will be the ones they receive.”Ticombo accepts the injunction has come too late to make any difference at this World Cup, but wants to keep pressure on Fifa to alter its practices before the next tournament in 2030, the majority of which will take place in Spain and Portugal.In its submission to the Frankfurt regional court, Ticombo accused Fifa of “systematically concealing the identity and any possible trader status of its sellers to allow commercial entities to operate as undisclosed traders selling ticket allocations at heavily inflated prices”.Ticombo also claims Fifa uses “manipulative design features” on its last-minute sales platform, including:Bait-and-switch pricing, where prices initially appear significantly lower than those shown once consumers enter the purchase process, with prices automatically rising steeply at checkout.Imposing aggressive deadlines, with buyers given a strict, non-resettable six-minute countdown, which locks them out of the purchase if it is not completed in time.Manipulative defaults, such as using a “book the best seat” function, to remove consumer choice by automatically selecting the most expensive seat available.Concealed pricing, where individual ticket prices are not clearly shown to consumers until after selection had been made.“This historic injunction is an important legal and public-interest step for football fans,” a spokesperson for Ticombo said. “ We initiated this legal action to establish that transparency, fairness, and consumer rights must remain central standards in the ticketing industry, including for the world’s largest sporting events.”

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Whether it is our ‘identity maths’, naked nostalgia or diaspora experience. All seem scarred by the political contexts bearing down on this tournamentI have measured my life in World Cups. The first blurry moments of childhood memory, the passing into adolescence, starting university. Each tournament marks a season of life. Each one is also associated with potent, formative emotional events: Roger Milla dancing around the corner flag when Cameroon became the first African team to reach the quarter-finals in 1990; Roberto Baggio’s devastating goal that knocked out a Nigeria that had been on a thriller streak in 1994; Zinedine Zidane’s tragically ignominious head-butt in 2006 during his last-ever match. But this World Cup has felt different from the start.Watching the World Cup as a Black diaspora viewer is a broadly unhinged exercise that still adheres to an elegant logic. You might describe the process of deciding your allegiance as a sort of “identity maths”. You support the African teams until they get knocked out (and thanks to the extended format, this time around we had so many more heroic teams such as Cape Verde and the DRC). Then you move on to a combination of Black diaspora teams from elsewhere, then adopted homelands, and then just adopted teams because you like their vibe or their country’s politics. The last category is really tenuous and involves a lot of projection. Spain is a good example of this, a country that has a sort of unproblematic European outlier aura that imbues it with more political proximity to the post-colonial experience than, say, Norway. Then there’s France, which, despite being an ex-colonial power, has a majority-Black team and therefore trumps Spain. I do not make the rules of identity maths.This chopping and changing of our loyalties seems to echo a wider state of diasporic orphanhood, and the more that players of African descent come to play for big footballing nations, the more these loyalties become complicated by what individual players come to represent. They, often unwittingly, become avatars of our political frustrations and aspirations, rather than just players we feel we have some affinity with.This World Cup, more than all the others I recall vividly, has the weight of so many political contexts bearing down on it. There is anger at the United States under Donald Trump – a host country whose president has desecrated the tournament by interfering and securing a reversal of a red card for a US player. Anger at Fifa, an organisation that is increasingly seen as irredeemably and nakedly corrupt. And underlying it all, anger at anti-immigration discourse and policy across the United States and parts of Europe, which has formed the backdrop for this tournament.The result is that the identity maths has become notably less frivolous and fun, taking on more political gravity. Figures like Frenchman, Ousmane Dembélé, and his hijabi (low-key niqabi) wife, Rima Edbouche, become not just a totem of multicultural society, but a rebuke of Islamophobia and racism. Kylian Mbappé can’t just play, he has to fend off wildly racist attacks from a Paraguayan senator. The England team is majority Black, representing a country in one of its darkest eras of anti-immigration and far-right politics. The rightwing Reform MP Robert Jenrick posts “Come on England” in one breath, and announces that he wants immigration to be “less than zero” in another. As if these children of immigrants are different to those he maligns – a sort of permissible minority, supported temporarily, for accolade purposes. Black footballers carry the burden of achievement while constantly being subjected to personal abuse and political erasure. And so being a Black diaspora football lover in these contexts is to constantly be veering between anger and concern, happiness and disgruntlement, celebration and resentment. Come on England, yes. But also, how dare you?This tournament comes at a unique global moment in which we are suspended in a sort of interregnum of trauma. We are post-pandemic, post-Gaza, post-Black Lives Matter backlash, post-death of the rules-based order. And, of course, post-enshittification of X under Elon Musk. Together, these forces intersect in a swirl of digital and real life conspiracy and intrigue. These dynamics finally curdled last week, when Egypt’s goal against Argentina was disallowed, setting up Argentina’s eventual last-minute victory. It was all a fix, many said, with all sorts of lurid allegations about Fifa backing Argentina and Egypt being punished for its coach’s post-Gaza remarks. I get it. So much trust has rightly haemorrhaged from sporting institutions and political establishments – can you blame people for thinking something sinister was afoot when the actual president of the United States admits he had a word about a red card? When Trump has been awarded a risible Fifa Peace prize?I’m not being a football purist. The World Cup is fundamentally about, and in fact structured around, political tribes and the nation state. It is the very magic of the tournament that each team becomes a projection of a country. For better or for worse, states are how we are organised and socialised. But the beauty of it all was in the ability to micro-dose the politics, and not become engulfed by it.All I want is to watch football as I always have: on a laptop, with my back turned to it because I can’t handle the stress. I want to feel sick because the team that I chose only this morning, but who I will now die for, is losing. I want to gulp down tears along with the weeping players because life is beautiful and tragic, and not because a dodgy official or politician decided their fates. I don’t want a seminar after every match. I don’t want a Cup where every game becomes a metaphor for colonialism or the state of geopolitics or where every refereeing decision is scrutinised and overruled and dispatched as motivated. I don’t want our diaspora chemistries and playful underdog solidarities to harden into paranoia and disgust. I hate it!But still, as the tournament draws to a close, I find myself in awe of the way that the World Cup – despite its inexorable technical optimisations, commercialisations and organisational cynicism – remains stubbornly porous to whatever we are collectively feeling and going through. Because, ultimately, the World Cup is the only event that sees so many of us turn up, bringing our fears, frustrations, hopes and aspirations with us. It is the biggest and also most finely tuned compass for where we are, marking our coordinates, every four years. And this is where we are. I shall measure my life in this one, too. To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.What have been your highs and lows of this World Cup? Tell us by replying to this, or emailing us at thelongwave@theguardian.com and we may include your response in a future issue.

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L’Équipe laments ‘mentally sunk’ players iin DallasOuest France front page reads: ‘End of American dream’French fans’ expectations of their national team had been at an all-time high: a semi-final on Bastille Day, Kylian Mbappé a hero, a squad unbeaten. Across the country, bars had been packed with viewers spilling on to pavements, ready to crack open the fireworks ahead of hopes for the final.But the night was unexpectedly subdued, streets cleared early. On Wednesday morning, the French media were still digesting the disappointment of defeat in a World Cup semi-final, praising Spain’s performance in Texas while struggling to comprehend Les Bleus’ fall from a high.“Demolished” headlined the print edition of the French sports paper L’Équipe on its match report. France’s World Cup adventure “deserved more than this disaster of a game, this disaster of strategy and emotions”, wrote Vincent Duluc. He said France could not even complain about losing because of the “feeling of barely really having played, and of betraying the magic of this American dream”.Duluc felt the team had been physically not up to it, that there were technical mistakes and, above all, the players had appeared “mentally sunk by the emotional dimension of the match”.After the French team had been placed on the highest pedestal for weeks by fans back home, Le Monde’s correspondent Alexandre Lemarié was saddened. “The fall to earth is as brutal as it is painful,” the paper wrote. It was a “cruel disappointment”, particularly given the team’s performance up to now: “A collective failure.”This semi-final would be hard to forget for all the wrong reasons, wrote the correspondent for the regional northern paper, La Voix du Nord, saying it would “remain a nightmare”. Ouest France headlined its front page with “The end of the American dream” over a picture of Mbappé with his head in his hand. “They fell from very, very high,” was written in Libération.In Le Figaro, Baptiste Desprez was disheartened but recognised Spain’s skill. “Les Bleus, stifled, pummelled and incapable of three passes despite their promise from the start of the competition, faced players stronger than them,” he wrote. “It’s sad. Infuriating. But that’s sport. The strongest won.”

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How was the mood in your city? Did anything surprise you? What will be your enduring memory of the tournament?It’s nearly all over. The biggest World Cup in history – with 48 teams playing 104 matches over 39 days in three countries – is coming to an end. If you live in one of the 16 cities that hosted games, we would love to hear from you.Was the World Cup a success? What was the mood like where you live? Did people buy into the event and enjoy it? Did anything surprise you about the World Cup? Has it changed your view of football or, if you prefer, soccer? Do you think the tournament will have a long-lasting legacy? Has it changed how your country is perceived around the world? What were the highlights and lowlights? And what will be your one enduring memory of the tournament?If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

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Brilliant buildup play has often withered but control and flawless execution overcame France’s more variable chaosWhen the World Cup came to North America, with its final held in the planet’s biggest media market, the tournament was bound to fixate on stars.Fox’s coverage certainly enables that bias. Every game is billed like a boxing bout between two über-talented footballers rather than 22 players figuring things out across 90 minutes. One semi-final has been distilled down to MESSI v KANE (or MESSI v BELLINGHAM, depending on the broadcaster). The other leaned heavily on hope that Lamine Yamal’s hamstring would finally be at 100% after his April injury. MBAPPÉ v 600 PASSES PER GAME isn’t so snappy.Spain, despite entering as Europe’s reigning champions, have not garnered the same adoration in their run to a second World Cup final as their fellow semi-finalists. Many wondered how they could possibly contend with France. Online skeptics dished out a greater dishonor, accusing Luis de la Fuente’s side of being boring.There was no hero’s shot of Spain’s coach bellowing to the 70,176 fans in Dallas, asking whether they were not entertained. That isn’t the prize he and his charges are after. Any viewer is allowed to think Spain are dull compared to more breakneck alternatives at this World Cup, but as France learned on Tuesday, their approach is lethal when executed as planned.At Euro 2024, De la Fuente’s side operated in a similar style en route to their fourth continental title. They were a team determined to finish their opponents by making them suffer without the ball. Rodri cemented his Ballon d’Or case by anchoring the midfield and affording his teammates greater attacking involvement with expert shielding. Álvaro Morata made his critics eat crow by finishing the chances provided to him, finally the line-leader to actualize Spain’s potential. On either flank was one of the world’s trickiest young wingers: Nico Williams to his left, Lamine Yamal to his right.Most of those pieces returned for this World Cup. From the back, Unai Símon has left his box with some regularity as the team station themselves further upfield. Rodri has been in rare form this summer, a refreshing sight after his injury-riddled 2025-26 that followed the previous year’s anterior cruciate ligament tear. Fabián Ruiz has stepped up as a capable double-pivot partner, spraying balls up the flank if the lanes to Dani Olmo aren’t glowing.And yet, most of the focus has been on Spain’s relative inability to turn top-notch team play into goals. Lamine Yamal and Williams arrived fresh off of spring injuries; Williams has earned 98 minutes through seven matches and Lamine Yamal is not quite at his unplayable best. Morata missed out on this World Cup squad owing to poor form with Como. In sum, Spain’s brilliant buildup has too often withered upon entering the final third.System play like Spain’s looks far less glamorous without a commanding frontman. Like Queen without Freddie Mercury or U2 without Bono, even the best basslines and beats become background noise without someone commanding attention. A healthier Lamine Yamal might have been that kind of player, but in reality this has been a World Cup dominated by strikers and goalkeepers, not the inverted wingers who have come to dominate the Champions League and Premier League in recent years.Then again, Lamine Yamal did make a crucial impact on the game against France. Attackers know to look for overcommitted and unaware defenders making off-ground clearances, as Mathys Tel found in May. As Lucas Digne readied to side-volley a clearance, he created a window for Lamine Yamal to exploit without the ball. There’s no assist on Lamine Yamal’s ledger for drawing a penalty, but his was an act which created a 0.78-xG chance in a game of fine margins.From there, Spain’s control and flawless execution overcame France’s more variable chaos. Aside from against Paraguay, a team playing with less talent on paper, France played over and through lesser-organized opposition. Their ruthlessness against those opponents branded them as tournament favorites despite a fairly plush path to the quarter-final. Morocco were supposed to give the test they needed but showed up in Foxborough looking dazed and out of ideas before the opening whistle.Spain were hardly so timid, having beaten France at the same stage of Euro 2024 and the 2025 Uefa Nations League. Few national teams have the synergy of Spain, with so many of their players having come up in the post-Guardiola era. This is the football they aspired to play. These are the games they dreamed of winning. And, thanks to incredible commitment to their defensive responsibilities, they did so while cutting off a previously goal-drunken France.Granted, the argument for De la Fuente’s pragmatism grows weaker if Spain don’t capitalize on the luck they created. If Lamine Yamal doesn’t draw that penalty, France wouldn’t be on their backfoot before half-time. If Olmo can’t thread that perfect ball into Pedro Porro’s stride while taking contact, there’s no two-goal cushion. The worst-case scenario played out in their draw against Cape Verde, yet De la Fuente stuck by his principles. After all, a team as good as Spain can break through more often than not if everybody is on the same page.Spain are designed to make opponents suffer if they aren’t at their best. It’s a model that can work against any team in international football. Even – and, given three semi-finals’ worth of evidence, especially – mighty France.

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Not everyone supports the country where they were born or grew up. Sometimes fans are won over by a player, place, population or style of playFootballers need to be born in a country or have a family tie to that place to represent them at the World Cup, but those rules do not apply to supporters. Sometimes fans are won over by a team, a star player or even a country. Here six fans tell us why they decided not to support the country of their birth and instead root for teams with whom they have no family ties.Paul, 63, from Sheffield, started supporting France during the 1982 World Cup, when they reached the semi-finals. “It was exciting football and beautiful to watch,” he says. “Michel Platini, Jean Tigana, Alain Giresse … It wasn’t as exciting again until 1998. I introduced my four-year-old daughter to football. We had lovely summer nights, eating snacks, cheering along and shouting: ‘Allez Les Bleus!’”“I don’t know any other France fans. There have been incidents in the past, particularly during the 2004 Euros. At work everybody put a team flag on their computer. I had a France flag and everybody was laughing. France played England in an early game and England were winning 1-0 in the 90th minute, but France won 2-1. The next day, my manager took me aside and said: ‘We’re just sorting out your workstation’. Someone had absolutely demolished it. I wasn’t that bothered.”Paul never regretted his choice. “Since Didier Deschamps has been onboard it has been fantastic. Michael Olise is a joy to watch. I feel a brotherhood with him. Everybody thinks you should support or play for England because you’re born in England. Nope.”Porus Patwari Jain, 31, started watching the Premier League when he was 11 years old. “I’m from a very small industrial town in Rajasthan,” he says. “There was no football culture there, but there are many people my age who now follow football more actively.”His favourite club was Manchester United, where Cristiano Ronaldo played at the time. “Portugal became my chosen team in World Cups,” he says. “I started with Ronaldo, but stayed for Nani, Ricardo Quaresma, Pepe and Simão. That team had so much passion and grit. They were not a footballing powerhouse at that time, so the story of a small footballing nation fighting against all odds resonated with me.”Portugal have since given him “so many moments of distress”, he says, “and I wouldn’t change it for anything else”. The latest was their recent defeat against Spain. “Ronaldo has played his last World Cup match and I wish him all the best. Hopefully, they will give me the ultimate heartbreak someday, and end up losing on penalties in the World Cup final.”Iulia, 43, who is from Romania and lives in Hungary, has supported Argentina since she watched them play in the 1994 World Cup. She even spotted the team walking through Budapest last year. “I cannot be sure Lionel Messi was among them but I like to believe so,” she says.Funnily enough, a match between Argentina and Romania kindled her love for the South American team. “I was 11 and it was a big deal that my parents allowed me to stay up to watch,” she says. Romania stunned Argentina in the last-16 stage, winning 3-2. Having watched Romania beat Argentina, she assumed they must now be the best team in the world.In her “young, impressionable mind” Iulia thought she was rooting for the underdog, with Romania surely on course to become a football dynasty. Romania never did become world beaters but Iulia stuck with Argentina and, 28 years after falling for them, she celebrated as they won the World Cup in 2022.“I support a few teams,” says Rachel Fiegler, 38, who lives in New York. “The US team was never very good when I was growing up. I’ve never felt strongly as an American as I was raised to be proud of my Cuban heritage. Cuba is more of a baseball nation. I grew up around a lot of Argentinian friends and family, so naturally became a fan of Argentina. Everyone was so passionate watching them play.”During the 2010 World Cup, Rachel rooted for Uruguay. I thought they were a great team and I really liked the players,” she says. “I loved watching Diego Godín, Luis Suárez and all those guys. It was definitely rough to watch Uruguay at this tournament.”Rachel does, however, support the US women’s team. “They’re a huge team full of passionate and talented athletes. They really care. I never got that feeling from the men’s team.”Oliver, 32, from Jersey, watched as Edin Dzeko helped the club he supports, Manchester City, win the Premier League title in 2012. The Bosnian striker’s impact for City cemented Oliver’s support for Bosnia and Herzegovina.“Beyond the club link, the story of Dzeko’s childhood really hit home,” says Oliver. Dzeko was six years old when the siege of Sarajevo began and he was locked inside his family apartment for four years. Only when the sounds of shelling quietened was he allowed to play football with other kids from the neighbourhood. “I like to root for the underdog and I don’t think there’s any bigger underdog than a group of people who survived something so tragic,” says Oliver.Oliver visited Bosnia last year. “I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with the place as much as I did. I adored Sarajevo. It’s beautiful. It’s where east meets west. You can stand in the spot where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. Being a history major, it was weirdly a bucket list destination for me.” When Bosnia and Herzegovina beat Italy on penalties to qualify for the World Cup earlier this year, Oliver was delighted. “None of my friends could understand my jubilation,” he says. “To qualify for the last-32 stage was an achievement in itself, but this is only the beginning.”“Kolkata is a football-mad city,” says Angi, 35, who spent the first 20 years of his life in India before moving to Toronto. India have never qualified for the World Cup so football fans look for other teams to support. “Rivalries are drawn between neighbourhoods in Kolkata – you are either Brazil or Argentina.”Angi was born into a family of Brazil fans, who watched ashen-faced as their team collapsed in the 1998 World Cup final, losing 3-0 to France. “At school the next day everybody was talking about it,” he says. “We all wanted to know what happened to Ronaldo and Brazil.”Four years later, when Angi was 12, he watched as Brazil beat Germany in the World Cup final with Ronaldo scoring both goals. “Small neighbourhoods had huge Brazil flags and everybody was watching the game on small screens. Football cuts across all classes in Kolkata. Everyone is watching, dressed in unofficial Brazil tops.”Angi does not believe India will play in the World Cup in his lifetime, but there is an essence of home when it comes to supporting Brazil. “Kolkata and adjoining cities in Bangladesh come alive during the World Cup. I may never be a Brazilian but I will always support the Seleção.”

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Look beyond the flashpoints and flare-ups and perhaps this is the greatest and most romantic of footballing rivalriesIt’s about the ball, right up until the moment it isn’t. On Sunday afternoon Godoy Cruz played Defensores de Belgrano in Nacional B, the second division of Argentinian football, and among the sea of blue home banners were two crosses of St George, apparently expropriated from England fans at the 2014 World Cup. One reads: “Boys & Girls From Oakwell Barnsley.” The other: “Big Al – Y-Bird – South Croydon – CPFC.”Now I want you to reflect on the levels of pure and gorgeous malevolence – pettiness doesn’t quite cover it, nor does spite – required to travel to Brazil, obtain an English flag, fold it away, bring it home in your luggage, keep it in pristine condition for 12 years, only to unveil it in your second-tier football stadium in the week Argentina play England in a World Cup semi-final. The restraint and optimism required to allow your minor act of territorial banter to fester and mature for over a decade. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a footballing rivalry.And of course it is a rivalry that strikes so many other notes: war, culture, empire, nationalism, collective memory, the role of rules and law in constructing a society, and above all a mutual fascination that time seems to have deepened rather than dissolved. Often you will see Argentina v England described as a “grudge match”, but really this is a feeling so much more complex than hatred, so much more nuanced than tribal revulsion: a dialogic relationship defined not only by distance and difference, but by a weird and long-repressed kinship. No, we do not have more in common than what divides us. But the first does help to explain the second.For one thing, it’s often overlooked just how much of an influence this country has had on Argentinian culture. Unlike Brazil, which in the British imagination existed as an exotic, sensory jungle paradise, Argentina was raised as a kind of faithful son, the “sixth dominion” of the empire. From place names to street names, from the rugby and polo clubs established by the colonial elite to the culture of “merienda” derived from English afternoon tea. The only ever overseas branch of Harrods was in Buenos Aires from 1912 until 1998. English rock bands such as the Smiths and the Cure are wildly more popular in Argentina than in other similar-sized countries.In football this is evident in club names such as Newell’s Old Boys, River Plate, Arsenal, as well as more informal terms such as “crack” (a star player) or “orsai” (offside). For many years amateur matches would begin with a cry of “aurieli?” (are you ready?) from one captain to the other. Look hard enough and you can spot so many similarities between their footballing cultures: the depth of the pyramid, the neighbourhood club as an expression of local tradition, the role of song and mass overseas travel as bonding rituals, the preponderance of war and military tropes. For many Argentinian fans the Falklands war seems to occupy the same spiritual space that the second world war does in England, visible to this day not only on banners and murals but even tattoos, referenced not only on the terraces but even by the players themselves.“For the Malvinas, for Diego, for Leo’s last one,” the Argentina squad belted out in the dressing room after their quarter-final win over Switzerland. Rodrigo De Paul sent his framed shirt from the 2022 World Cup to the Malvinas veterans centre in Lomas de Zamora. And in fairness this is a process that was in train long before 1982, a postcolonial insurgence that arguably began in the 1940s and 1950s under Juan Perón, a gradual and deliberate refusal of English influence, through which football acted as a kind of rhetorical conduit.“Very early, an Argentinian way of playing football was born that clearly distanced itself from the English influence,” said Jorge Valdano, a veteran of the famous 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England. “We tried to be antagonistic to the English. If they liked long passes, we favoured shorter ones. If the English favoured passing, we’d focus on dribbling. Against England, there was something else at stake, and at the time it was worth more than the championship.”Over time the feeling became mutual, if not quite equal. If Argentina was once a favoured son, then perhaps the vitriolic reaction to its subsequent turn lay in a kind of guttural, butthurt disappointment. An ill-tempered friendly at Wembley in 1974 was marked by chants of “animals” every time Argentina touched the ball, echoing the accusation of Alf Ramsey eight years earlier. By 1986 Jimmy Greaves was cracking Falklands jokes on ITV’s World Cup coverage and proudly waving a German flag before the final against West Germany. “Just no class at all,” Sol Campbell said of the 1998 team who knocked them out in Saint-Étienne. “Whirling their shirts around, banging on the window. Just a bunch of idiots.”Yet whereas most sporting rivalries eventually become commodified and crushed by the capitalist machinery of Big Sport, somehow this one has remained pure through scarcity. The two countries have not played competitively since 2002, and for such a consequential footballing culture, Argentinian influence on English football remains modest. We got Ossie Ardiles and Sergio Agüero but never Gabriel Batistuta or Juan Román Riquelme, Mauricio Pochettino but never Diego Simeone, and of course never the two greatest of all, Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona, who even in the age of saturation still feel somehow remote and mysterious to us, a secret on which we were never quite let in.Too different and distant to be friends; too entwined and alike to be purely enemies; neither a clash of pure equals nor a simple parable of coloniser versus colonised. Perhaps this is why Argentina v England has a fair claim to be the greatest and most romantic of the footballing rivalries, less a blood feud and more a messy, century-long break-up.Look beyond the flashpoints and flare-ups and there is something more profound at work here. The teeth-baring may as well be a mark of respect: a shared and illicit admiration, perhaps even a love that dare not speak its name.

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Plus: back-to-back heavy wins and defeats, and an unsurprising challenger to a Lionel Messi recordMail us with your all of your questions and answers“The top four teams in the Fifa rankings are also the four semi-finalists at the World Cup,” writes Henry Conroy. “Has this happened before?”The men’s rankings have updated after every match of the World Cup, and Fifa surely missed a trick by not asking the great Martin Tyler to shout “And they’re live!” It means the order has changed during the tournament but the makeup of the top four was the same going into the semi-finals as it was at the start of the competition.The big four were aided by Fifa’s new seeding system, though they still had to take care of business: Spain beat the teams ranked fifth and ninth (Portugal and Belgium), while France saw off No 7 (Morocco). In rankings terms, England’s best knockout win was against Mexico (14th); Argentina’s toughest test was against Switzerland (19th).The Fifa men’s rankings, which were introduced in 1993, only cover the last nine World Cups. In the previous eight, the semi-finals never included more than two teams who were ranked in the top four at the start of the competition.Before we cover our hands in stats, we should point out that the early rankings were fairly primitive: how else to explain the fact that France were 18th in the world and the Netherlands 25th going into the 1998 semi-finals?This year’s semi-finalists had a combined Fifa ranking of 10, which is the lowest possible unless you have, say, two teams in joint third. In the men’s game, the previous best was a combined ranking of 25, which came in 2014:The highest combined ranking of 75 came in 2002, a tournament full of surprises. Only one of the top four got out of the group stage: France and Argentina were eliminated, and Colombia hadn’t qualified in the first place. (Their high ranking was largely a consequence of winning the 2001 Copa América.)Brazil flew the flag for the Fifa rankings and went on to win the entire thing. Four years later, and for the only time so far, none of the top four made the semi-finals. If you can name that top four, you should seek urgent help for trivia addiction. They were, in descending order: Brazil, Czech Republic, Netherlands and Mexico. This was the semi-final lineup in 2006, including a true heavyweight clash between two teams outside the top 10.On two occasions, in 2007 and 2015, the semi-finals included three of the top four. The 2015 Women’s World Cup produced a combined ranking of only 13, with France (No 3) and Sweden (No 5) the two teams missing from the world’s top six.“Sweden’s 5-1 victory against Tunisia was followed by a 5-1 defeat against Netherlands,” writes Dirk Maas. “Are there more examples of stunning World Cup wins followed by heavy defeats with the similar scoreline, or vice versa?”Chris Roe was first to our inbox to point out a more positive turnaround at the 2006 World Cup. “Ukraine lost 4-0 to Spain, and then beat Saudi Arabia by the same score in their next group game.” After their heavy opening defeat in Leipzig, Ukraine completed their Group H escape by edging past Tunisia – and ended up going further in the tournament than Spain, reaching the quarter-finals before losing to Italy.Jeremy Simmonds points us towards Group 2 at the 1954 finals – which we mentioned recently in a question on debut wins. While Turkey were beating South Korea 7-0 in Geneva, West Germany were being humbled by Hungary, losing 8-3 in Basel. A playoff was then required to see who would join the Magical Magyars in the quarter-finals.“West Germany rebounded from a five-goal defeat, beating Turkey by a five-goal margin (7-2),” notes Jeremy. “They went all the way to the final, where they exacted revenge on Hungary, winning 3-2 in Berne.”“Lionel Messi is Argentina’s youngest and oldest goalscorer – has any other footballer achieved this accolade or is likely to in the future?” asks Paul Gage.Dean Whearty has a suggestion, and the name may not surprise you. “This summer, Cristiano Ronaldo became Portugal’s oldest World Cup scorer at the age of 41. He also netted against Iran back in 2006 to become his country’s youngest World Cup scorer – a record which amazingly still stands to this day.”“Has any team been knocked out of the World Cup by the eventual winners more times than England?” asked Will Sturgeon back in 2002. “I can think of four times this has happened: Brazil in 2002, West Germany in 1990, Argentina in 1986 and Brazil again in 1962. Is anybody else as unlucky as us?”The long and short answer at the time was: yes. France and the Netherlands had been eliminated from World Cups by the eventual winners on four occasions, while it had happened to Brazil five times. Germany were also on four – all of them finals – if results recorded as West Germany are included.Brazil (5): Italy (1938, semi-final), Uruguay (1950, final game); Argentina (1978, second group stage); Italy (1982, second group stage); France (1998, final).France (4): Italy (1938, second round); Brazil (1958, semi-finals); England (1966, group stage); Argentina (1978, group stage).Netherlands (4): West Germany (1974, final); Argentina (1978, final); West Germany (1990, last 16); Brazil (1994, quarter-final).Germany (4): England (1966, final); Italy (1982, final); Argentina (1986, final); Brazil (2002, final).2026 update: Back in 2006, Italy beat Germany in the semi-finals and France in the final, adding one to each of their tallies. Four years later, Spain overcame the Netherlands in the 2010 final and Germany in the semis, while in 2014, Germany beat France in the quarter-finals before a forgettable semi-final romp past Brazil.In 2018, France did not eliminate any of the teams mentioned above, but they lost the 2022 final to Argentina, who also took out the Netherlands in the quarter-finals. So by our maths, France have now been knocked out by the eventual champions seven times, leading Brazil, Germany and the Netherlands on six.But wait! Another contender has emerged: Argentina. The Albiceleste have lost in three finals – 1930, 1990 and 2014 – and were knocked out of the group stage in 1958 by West Germany. Defeat to England followed in the 1966 quarter-finals, and they joined Brazil in the three-team group topped by Italy in 1982.Finally, Argentina lost 4-3 to eventual winners France in 2018’s last 16, meaning they are joint-top with seven. If France and Argentina end up meeting in this year’s final, then the losers will take the outright lead as a consolation prize.“Rubén Vargas scored the winning penalty for Switzerland against Colombia’s Camilo Vargas,” notes Matthew Wilkie. “Has anyone ever scored a winning goal before in the World Cup against their namesake?” [We’re also keen on examples from beyond the big dance, if you have them.]“Mexico restarted their last-16 game illegally after England’s third goal,” writes Mike Frost. “They dribbled the ball forward instead of passing it to a teammate, and England were awarded an indirect free-kick [3h 23mins in, UK only]. I can’t recall ever seeing this happen before. Has it occurred at the World Cup, or anywhere else?”We’ll have one more World Cup Knowledge special next week. Send your World Cup questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com.

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The full-back was supposed to be busy shackling France’s vaunted front line but found time to score the killer goal at the other end“Let me loose in a prison and I’ll end up owning the place,” Pedro Porro once said. Let him loose in the penalty area and that will belong to him too. The whole world might: to him and the entire gang. When the Spain right-back burst into the box like a jail break, sprinting on to Dani Olmo’s superb layoff, and steadied himself to guide the ball into the net and score the second goal in Dallas, there was still half an hour to go in this semi-final, but it was done. They knew it was. Somehow, it was like they always had.Porro kissed the badge and raced to the corner, his teammates streaming across the pitch and off the bench towards him. He was there to protect them from Kylian Mbappé, the tournament’s top scorer and one member of that terrifying French forward line, projected as if they were the four horsemen of the apocalypse: the toughest, most fearful men in the joint. Or so it goes. Yet he won’t back down, never has, and when it came to the decisive blow, he was the one who delivered it. Instinct had taken over, if only for an instant. And what an instant it was, guaranteeing Spain would go to the World Cup final.This was Porro’s second goal here; he has scored more than he has allowed. There was a moment before the semi-final when he was asked where the balance lay between going at opponents and holding firm, not allowing them past you. “It depends on who you’re playing: against Belgium I was basically with [Jérémy] Doku all game. I only really went forward once,” he replied, adding with perfect timing: “And that was our goal.” Well played, sir. Well played all of you. Here, he went only once too, but it will be for ever. “Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this,” he said.Spain, though, could. There was a reason for that a sense of certainty when Porro scored the second. Not only because the lead was two goals but because the match was theirs. Playing out exactly as planned. Because if he was there to defend, he had done that too. Because they all had; not so much through heroism but through domination, control, mastery of the game. “We knew one of the keys was keeping the ball,” Pau Cubarsí said. France had not been able to hurt them until then and would not be able to hurt them, they knew. Not if they played their way.Which they did. When Unai Simón saved from Ousmane Dembélé on 94 minutes it was only the second time France had had a shot on target. Spain have conceded once all tournament. They were superb, a collective with no flaws. That was seen in how they took the lead and how they now held it, playing out the rest of the game, this historic occasion, with the kind of calm that hadn’t been seen since ... well, since Mikel Oyarzabal scored the penalty that started it all.Of all the people in all the world that could have stood over the penalty that put them 1-0 up, there was no one they would have rather had. “Few things in football make me nervous,” the striker said recently, and penalties are not one of them. The biggest games aren’t either. He has scored in every final he has played, including the winner against England at the Euros two years ago. From the spot, he took Real Sociedad to their first Copa del Rey title in 34 years and another one five years on. He had taken 53 and missed six, scoring 89.65%, and he wasn’t about to miss this one.The quiet man took it with the same conviction and assuredness, the same steel, with which the selección played all afternoon. “We knew that with calm we could hurt them,” Oyarzabal said. With one break for it, they killed them off. Exhausted, Porro made way late on. From the bench he watched Spain see it out to a soundtrack of olés and with a sense of complete superiority.In the stands Xavi Hernández, Iker Casillas, Carles Puyol and Sergio Ramos saw it too. When they won the World Cup in 2010, Porro had celebrated by leaping into the fountain in the Plaza de España in Don Benito, Extremadura. He was a 10-year-old kid whose parents struggled to make ends meet, working all hours, his grandad Antonio took him everywhere. Now, the day after Antonio’s birthday, he and his generation are one step from emulating that side.“This isn’t mine, it is all 26 of us” Porro said. This belonged to him and Marc Cucurella, Aymeric Laporte and Cubarsí, their other absurdly talented 19-year-old. To Rodri, who was on another plane, alongside Fabián Ruiz. To all the men who have been on the road for a month and have one more stop left, the “family”, as the coach keeps calling them, who made France look so ordinary. They may not be stars, Lamine Yamal apart, but this was a victory for the good people. Spain were Spain, just as Luis de la Fuente had asked them to be. “Tranquility is power,” he likes to say, although once in a while, when the time is just right, you have to let loose.

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France finally let loose all their attacking power in this tournament and yet when the big test came against Spain they were too openMaybe Didier Deschamps was right all along. He has been criticised over his 14 years in the France job for being too cautious, for prioritising control, for not unleashing his great fleet of attacking players. In this tournament, his last as national manager, Deschamps has relaxed – from a tactical point of view at least; he remains as grouchy as ever in his public utterances. France have played some glorious football over the past few weeks but when it came down to it, against the first truly elite side they faced, they were overrun. France could have done with being a little more Deschamps.The paradox at this tournament was always that the better France played, the more of a waste the eight years since they won the World Cup appeared. Admiration for their attacking excellence in the US has been tempered by a sense of regret for the potential beauty and joy Deschamps’ cussedness has denied the world over the past decade. This was the France they could have been all that time, playing with elan and panache, evoking legitimate comparison to the glorious France of the early-to-mid 80s.It would be a stretch now to say they stand alongside the Hungary of 1954, the Netherlands of 1974 or the Brazil of 1982 as one of the greatest sides not to win the World Cup, but there was a point before the 1-0 win over Paraguay in the last 16 when that might have seemed an appropriate comparison.Deschamps leaves the job having won a World Cup and reached another final and semi-final. He reached a Euros final and a semi-final. To get to the last four of five major tournaments over a 14-year stretch sounds like a remarkable achievement and in some ways it is. But Deschamps has been blessed with generation after generation of extraordinary players; one trophy with those players is perhaps only par. And there is an argument, voiced most vociferously by those grown weary of his football labeur, that Deschamps, for all his apparent success, held France back.Why then did he change approach? He has been portrayed by some as the arch-pragmatist, committed neither to control nor to something more improvisational, but simply to what seemed best with the players at his disposal. It is indicative of just how out of character Deschamps’ selections have seemed how radically perceptions have shifted.At the Euros two years ago, France were regarded as the dour, defensive unit, playing an unlovely version of the “tournament-ball” that had carried them to the World Cup in 2018, while Spain were the dashing update on juego de posición, capable of retaining possession in midfield but elevated by the pace and directness of their wide forwards. But in this tournament, as France sparkled, it has been Spain, their attacking options from wide diminished by injury, who have suffocated opponents.If you include the Nations League, that is three tournaments in a row in which Spain have beaten France in the semi-final, process football triumphant.There has been a theory that Deschamps has been forced into his reset by the evident brilliance of his creative options, and perhaps that is true, but France have had great attacking options – maybe not quite so many or so varied as they have now – for at least the past decade. Deschamps always seemed reluctant to let his attackers simply play, to release the handbrake; this game was the perfect demonstration of why.There were only two doubts about this France: in midfield and at left-back. It was their misfortune that those matched up with Spain’s two greatest strengths. In the most obvious and direct sense, the penalty came from Lamine Yamal drawing a clumsy foul from Lucas Digne, but on a more fundamental level it was the result of Spain’s domination of midfield.The question over the past few weeks has been whether, against stronger opponents, Deschamps would replace an attacking player with an additional midfielder, changing from 4-2-3-1 to 4-3-3. France’s creative play was so intoxicating that eventually came to seem impossible, but here it would surely have been a good idea. There were spells in the first half when Aurélien Tchouaméni and Adrien Rabiot were overrun. As it turned out, Deschamps’s solution was not to supplement the pair but to withdraw Rabiot. After a fine tournament, he had an awful first half and, with a booking, was an obvious red-card risk.What if they had played Tchouaméni, Rabiot and Manu Koné from the start? What if they had played only two of Michael Olise, Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola alongside Kylian Mbappé? Given how little any of those three contributed, it could not have been any worse. With Spain dominating midfield, the vaunted attacking quartet simply did not get the ball often enough. Spain’s structure stifled them and, with too many players committed to creativity, France were left vulnerable to transitions.In his ultimate defeat, Deschamps achieved his ultimate vindication. Talent is never to be trusted.

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Consider this a spectacular telling-off for anyone tempted to cast Spain as underdogs. How they enjoyed dishing the lesson out here, booking a showdown in New Jersey on Sunday and reducing France to passengers. Didier Deschamps’ team had been billed as champions elect but their feted attack was never in the game. For Kylian Mbappé it will be another four-year wait to reconquer the globe; he was an isolated figure, snuffed out by opponents who completely dictated after going ahead.Spain could partly thank Lucas Digne for terrible defending that conceded a penalty midway through the first half, even if there were some doubts about the award’s validity. Mikel Oyarzabal converted emphatically and the jeopardy thereafter was entirely superficial. Pedro Porro’s slickly-worked second settled the issue emphatically. Nobody will make the mistake of downplaying their prospects of seeing the job through now; France, dazed and resoundingly beaten, cut the figure of a side that could not comprehend what was happening.A football match finally broke out after the unbearably shrill DJ-led buildup that worked tirelessly to demolish any semblance of atmosphere before kick-off. A World Cup semi-final deserves better than this, the closed roof doing nothing to alleviate the oppressive acoustic effect, but the sport has found a knack of riding out most attempts to cheapen it over the past month.These teams do not bellow indistinguishable noises into the eardrums; they are sinuous, subtle, scintillating when controlling the volume themselves. It was no surprise to see Spain sticking with the starting XI that overcame Belgium, meaning Mikel Merino would again be primed for a supersub role. Deschamps enlisted the fit-again Aurélien Tchouaméni in midfield, which felt harsh on Manu Koné, and chose the directness of Bradley Barcola over Désiré Doué’s defter gifts.Barcola skipped past Pedro Porro at the first invitation following six minutes of largely sterile Spain possession. Control would be essential for Luis de La Fuente and his players. An early chance arose for Álex Baena to take a more direct route but he smacked a free-kick into the wall from right of centre.It was that kind of start, Mbappé the next to squander a decent attack when overcooking a pass towards Ousmane Dembélé. When France found some flow, Michael Olise cushioning to Dembélé before a sublime first-time ball towards Mbappé, Spain’s defence were back in numbers.Then Digne’s carelessness blew such a respectful opening spell out of the water. The left-back did not get enough purchase on a cross from the opposite side, the ball popping up off his head and allowing Lamine Yamal to contest. Lamine Yamal nudged it past Digne, seemingly via the upper portion of his arm, and was crudely felled as his opponent panicked.The referee, Iván Barton, had an easy decision to make on that front but there was still the question of whether the video assistant referee would intervene. The on-field decision stood but replays appeared to confirm Lamine Yamal had turned limb towards ball.Oyarzabal, in no mood to reject a gift, swept the spot-kick past Mike Maignan. Within minutes France’s backline had a new disruption to absorb, William Saliba pulling up and making way for Maxence Lacroix. They were having to chase Spain and could not assert any grip in midfield. When Barcola managed another nibble at Porro, he ran out of ideas and slashed wildly over.This was a malaise, Maignan presenting a clearance straight to Baena. The sequence that ensued was thrilling, Dani Olmo and Lamine Yamal combining to tee up Fabián Ruiz. It would have been a tap-in for the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder had Dayot Upamecano not appeared from nowhere to block.Spain would have to content themselves with a narrow interval lead but could consider their mission accomplished perfectly so far. For all the pre-match hype, France’s attackers had barely caused a single ripple of anxiety.Koné replaced Adrien Rabiot, a walking red card since being booked early on, for the second period. France needed 11 players but also required an uplift in every area. Instead Spain remained in total command, Oyarzabal shooting over. France could not muster enough of the ball to pose any sustained threat. When they wrought an opportunity to build down the right, Dembélé passed straight out of play.Before the hour it was time for Doué. The bet on Barcola’s speed had failed and things soon deteriorated further. While Spain had been managing proceedings consummately, they had never looked blind to another opening. Porro’s goal was worked beautifully, a tumbling Olmo managing to return his pass as a chasm opened on France’s left side. The finish was unerring; Spain were making this look easy.The scoreline would have given exactly that impression had a narrow offside call not denied Lamine Yamal a third. It was the 64th minute before Mbappé made any kind of impression, Unai Simón batting his cross-shot from the byline behind. Then he saw Marc Cucurella deflect a drive just wide but Deschamps must have been desperate for the three-minute coaching break that followed.It made little difference. Mbappé whipped a free-kick over but Ferran Torres could have added gloss for Spain, who will take some beating now.