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The broadcaster’s tournament coverage was a mix of flat and fizz. It could also have been a long farewell with World Cup rights up for grabsGoodbye, then, to Fox, to its band of upbeat Brits and grown men dressed in suits and sneakers. Goodbye to constant cutaways to Gianni Infantino in the stands, his eyebrows a mournful tipi, his nude head sprinkling under the summer sun. Goodbye to Landon Donovan and his special gift for announcing every celebrity sighting (“And there’s Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz”) as if delivering the results of a colonoscopy. Goodbye to Rebecca Lowe saying “OK, OK” whenever she’s needed one of her on-set personalities to zip it so she can throw to a break. Goodbye to the momentum graph, which only flashed on screen when a match’s momentum needed no explanation; goodbye to “no golden goal” on the scorebug during extra time, referencing a rule that has not been in force at a World Cup for 24 years; goodbye to the connected ball, which never seemed connected when we needed connection most.Goodbye to Geoff Shreeves, Fox’s middle-aged Oliver Twist chirruping on the sideline for the approval of his American masters. Goodbye to Tom Rinaldi, to his pocket squares and his “lyrical” meditations on balls and planets and stars or whatever. Goodbye to Chef Nick, now forced to rein in the extravagance of his early contributions (kangaroo corndogs, fufu chicken tikka masala) in the face of the tournament’s gastronomically subdued final four. And goodbye to Jameis Winston, the Fox fan correspondent, whose distressingly antic and sweaty stadium dispatches gave him the unvarying appearance of a man being electrocuted in the middle of a baptism.Goodbye to it all: Fox has been the English-language home of the World Cup on US TV since 2018, but with the media rights to 2030 and beyond still up for grabs, the future remains uncertain and potentially Fox-less. “Fox Sports, World Cup broadcaster” was an eight-year sociological experiment conducted by Harvard University. The study is now complete; thank you for your time.Was this World Cup on Fox as bad as we thought it would be? It was not. But was it good? It was not. Or rather: it was good only in parts. For me, the abiding TV image of this summer of soccer will be the glasses of beer plonked before each guest on James Corden’s murderously unfunny late night show. Throughout the tournament these beers have remained three-quarters full, headless, and flat – and have become, in time, their own potent metaphor. Even at America’s own World Cup, Fox has steadfastly refused to give us the full pour.To be clear, 2026 is a distinct improvement on what came before. And yes, it’s always possible to watch on Telemundo or mute, but this is a review for the masochists who like their punishment delivered in English with the sound on. For those who didn’t witness it, it’s impossible to overstate how abominable the coverage of the 2022 World Cup truly was. Fox, learning the lessons of that disaster, wisely rebalanced its on-air talent pool for this tournament to include fewer hapless Americans and more elite foreigners. Lowe has been predictably terrific in the main anchor’s chair, holding an unruly panel of talent together with the stern mercy of a beloved schoolteacher. Jules Breach and Pien Meulensteen have brought much of the same vim to Fox’s coverage of the lower-profile games, while never quite dispelling the impression that they’re about to announce the next housemate to be kicked off the set of Big Brother. Speaking of which: with some of the world’s most historic skylines at its disposal, Fox bafflingly decided to park its expensively assembled team indoors, in a bland LA studio designed with curved graphic panels to resemble the airless rec room of some tech unicorn on the brink of insolvency. Between the makeshift stadium desks and this glitching green screen, the whole production has felt small and decarbonated. Manhattan? The Hollywood Hills? The skyway futurism of downtown Atlanta? Forget all that: here’s a corporate basement instead.The studio pundits have likewise offered a mix of fizzy and flat. John Obi Mikel has the gravitas to pull off a line like “The game needs a goal” and not sound like a complete dope, while Peter Schmeichel has huffed and interjected his way through the tournament like a perpetually disappointed dad, his contribution defined by the constant, pedantic insistence that Argentina won the last World Cup “three and a half years ago”. Thierry Henry has been uniformly superb, able to switch from tactical analysis to lip-quivering bombast with the assurance of a striker in total command of his own change of pace.Zlatan Ibrahimović mumbled through the first few weeks but grew into the tournament, eventually achieving a pleasant equilibrium between expertise, empathy, and disdain (for Ronald Koeman above all). Once he ditches the tedious “I am Zlatan” routine and allows himself to display his full emotional and conversational range, Ibrahimović is a fine pundit. Without Clarence Seedorf’s thoughtfulness and genial rumble of a laugh, Fox’s coverage of the World Cup would have been 10% inferior. Alexi Lalas? You might say I’m not a fan.As the mockery of Lalas online threatened to swallow the World Cup whole a few weeks ago, Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks went on the defensive. “Lex has been the cornerstone of our soccer coverage for as long as I can remember,” Shanks said in an interview. “He’s the straw that stirs the drink.” Putting aside the vile image this conjures of viewers needing to suck Alexi Lalas to ingest the “drink” of the World Cup (I know hydration breaks have been a big talking point this tournament, but Gianni, if you’re reading, do NOT use this as a basis for further “reform” in 2030), let’s think about the metaphors here. Lalas is a cornerstone (solid) and a straw (solid) in contact with a drink (liquid). Why not go all the way, Eric, and make Lalas a gas? After all, vaporizing Alexi is what many of us have spent years calling for, and the man already generates a good amount of wind, so he’s halfway to gaseousness already.Fox’s allegiance to its resident tap dancer is emblematic of a broader rot that has held the network back this summer, even as it’s tried to meet the grandeur of a World Cup on home soil. Take the Iranian team’s arrival in the US under the cloud of an illegal war launched by the US itself: the Fox analysts hardly even mentioned it, waving the war and all its associated inhumanity away as mere “noise”. Fifa’s extraordinary capitulation to Donald Trump to suspend Folarin Balogun’s red card ban and allow the US striker to take the field against Belgium? Well, it was regrettable, but the card never should have been given, so: play on! Unbearably high ticket prices? Ads during the hydration breaks? The US government’s discriminatory system of visa bonds for visitors from certain World Cup-participating countries? Who is the host broadcaster to disagree with – or even raise – any of this? Fox has been a perfectly pliant and apolitical vessel for the most consumingly political World Cup of our lives.Even the choice of Winston as Fox’s man in the stands carried a powerful whiff. The NFL quarterback began the tournament jumping about half-naked and has ended it barking at the screen in frankly terrifying fashion. But the real problem here is one of casting rather than performance. Only Fox would think to make its “fun” fan correspondent for this World Cup a man whose Wikipedia page includes a hefty “Controversies” tab. Are you a professional athlete with an entry on the internet’s encyclopedia that includes the sub-headings “Sexual assault allegation”, “Shoplifting incidents”, and “2017 groping allegation”? Good news: you may have a bright career on Fox ahead of you.Amid all the chattering excellence of the Lowe-led New Fox, it’s been useful to have reminders of how self-parodyingly bad Old Fox can still be. The unpredictability of the draw meant that the US team did not play on the Fourth of July. To compensate, Fox handed the reins to its stalwart Americans – Rob Stone, Clint Dempsey, Donovan and Lalas – at a live set in sweltering Philadelphia, where they were assisted in their coverage of the day’s matches by a marching band left at a loose end after the city canceled its holiday parade on account of extreme heat. In place of another exhibition of Pochball, Fox gave us some decommissioned trombonists powering through a rendition of Anchors Aweigh while Lalas waved a huge American flag outside Independence Hall to what appeared to be a crowd of 30 people on the verge of expiry under the Anthropocene sun. Somewhere, I’m sure, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin and the boys were all proudly looking on, safe in the knowledge that Fox Sports has carried on the legacy of elite cable TV programming for which they fought the British 250 years ago.Stone, demoted into a secondary anchor role amid his employer’s Anglo ascendancy, has been perhaps the biggest loser of this World Cup, but he’s nobly attempted to maintain a brave face. “Stoney” is the type of steady pro who can deliver the words “Your Fox starting lineups, brought to you by American Express” without drama, or gather every one of his 29 years of major broadcast experience into a line like “Deep-fried Mars bar – that’s a real thing in a lot of country fairs here in the United States as well”, which he dropped at the end of Chef Nick’s food battle between the Scottish Mars bar and Brazilian picanha. (The meat won in a knockout, for anyone wondering.) Ahead of the last-32 match between Brazil and Japan, Fox’s No 2 man introduced a feature on joga bonito with the words, “We paid a visit to Brazil to learn more about the roots of Joe Go Bonito”, making it sound like someone called Joseph had just gone absolutely mental on the dried tuna flakes at his local okonomiyaki spot. Did the moment get beyond him, or was Stone just hungry? Ultimately it’s this type of material that has kept us glued to the screen this summer, even as Fox’s coverage has threatened to become boringly professional.The World Cup, as I’ve written elsewhere, is always a drama of language, and wrangling foreign names into English can be hard, but this year’s installment has been uncommonly rich in mispronunciation and misunderstanding. Amid the usual roll call of manglings – I’ve counted about 12 different versions of “Quiñones”, “Türkiye” has veered from “Turk-eye-ah” to “Turkey: yay!”, and Lionel Messi’s first name has consistently been rendered like Lionel Richie’s – Fox has never stopped innovating, transforming football’s traditional halves into quarters and difficult last names into completely new characters. Raúl Jiménez has emerged as “Jim Ennez”, Marc Cucurella has become “Cuckoo Rela”, like he’s the crazy relative no one in the family talks about, and Japan left-back Takehiro Tomiyasu is now “Tommy Yiasou”, the wisecracking veteran waiter at a Greek restaurant that’s been feeding families since 1978.“We’ve spent a lot of time practicing the names of all the players in this World Cup, but there’s not much to worry about when you have a player called Ben Old coming on for Joe Bell”, observed Jacqui Oatley in the group match between Belgium and New Zealand, exhibiting the kind of dry wit that has made her one of the standout performers of the summer. I used to find her on-air partner Warren Barton’s insistence on crossing as the highest footballing art boorish, but as I’ve listened to him more over the years and tactical fashion has swung the way of set pieces, I’ve come to appreciate the back-to-the-land simplicity of his on-field philosophy (“Get it wide, get it in”). Stu Holden will forever look and sound like he’s just shown up for the first day of his summer job at a small town gas station, and there were many moments in the early stages of this tournament when Fox’s chief color guy was hyping up every routine trap and forward jog from Christian Pulisic as if “Captain America” was the second coming of Garrincha, and not a legspreading menswear model gearing up for a big summer of rest. But once the US games ended Holden was able to show the degree to which he’s matured as an analyst; his ability to convey in-game tactical fluctuations and capture the World Cup’s defining dramas have made this comfortably his best professional outing yet in the commentary box.Other announcers have fared rather worse. Darren Fletcher won points for noting during England’s first knockout match that “if it’s coming home, it’s taking a while to get there”, but lost them all for his execrable “siuuu” to mark Cristiano Ronaldo’s first goal against Uzbekistan, which sounded like someone dying mid-orgasm. In a World Cup that has seen much important and difficult work done to fit America’s artificial turf NFL stadiums with soccer-friendly grass, the reforestation of Donovan’s head still stands out as this tournament’s most impressive single feat of terraforming. But the proceeding hairline’s contributions this tournament have also proved an important modern truth: you can replant a bald head, but if you have a voice like a leaf blower, you’re stuck with it for life.John Strong, the play-by-play anchor of Fox’s top announcer team, has used this World Cup to launch a new style of ejaculatory emphasis in his commentary, by which he goes low then SUDDENLY GOES HIGH to make up for his chronic inability to match the excitement and personality of proceedings on the pitch. Whether describing plays (“Djed SPENCE, cuts it BACK, knocked DOWN, Declan RICE”) or throwing to a break (“Forty-five minutes down, FORTY-FIVE TO GO here in Seattle”), Strong has never met a sentence that could not be improved by division into this basic low-high dichotomy. To which the only reasonable response is: Shut UP, John STRONG, we’ve had ENOUGH, of this STYLE, of COMMENTARY, which is ANNOYING, and SUCKS, and never ENDS, even WHEN, there’s nothing HAPPENING, on the FIELD.Lowe, Breach, Oatley, Barton: Fox’s strongest performers have been mostly English, while the weak links are all homegrown. The level of mainstream media punditry about soccer in the US may be painfully low (“Could this be the year that France finally gets it done and they win the World Cup?” ESPN’s Stephen A Smith recently mused of the two-time champions), but is Fox’s collection of zesty Englishwomen, nonchalant Euros and all-American idiots the best we can hope for? There’s no question that British commentators, anchors and voices bring a certain romance, a plummy authority, to coverage of the sport. But I’ve long argued that American soccer needs more Americans on air, especially since the sport as it’s actually lived and discussed throughout the US bears little resemblance to the witless, bloviating face it’s given on screen. This country’s fans deserve better than Fox: why can’t American networks, pundits and analysts be the ones to deliver it?The incumbent will face stiff competition for the rights to the 2030 World Cup, and all these questions – plus the more elemental consideration of cost – will no doubt weigh heavily on the bidding. Fox has run constant plugs this past month for an enticing menu of shows, including Kitchen Nightmares, Nation’s Dumbest and The Quiz with Balls. But for those uninterested in sticking around to witness Ice-T’s struggle to spell the word “guarantee” or Gordon Ramsay’s likening of a set of poorly executed meatballs to “turds”, the road stops now. After eight years of Fox stinking up our screens every big tournament summer, we reach the end: the end of “players to watch, sponsored by Adidas”, of “keys to the match, sponsored by Jeep”, of “your moment of the half, sponsored by Visa”, of “your moment of the match, sponsored by Kinder Bueno”. Which brings us, at last, to your World Cup conclusion, sponsored by Aaron Timms: thank you for everything, Fox – and please don’t come back!

Football News

Former Arsenal boss calls out US pay-to-play modelWenger says academy setups are vital for growthArsène Wenger, Fifa’s head of global football development, has said that while the US faced numerous structural obstacles to becoming a real soccer power, many of those obstacles are being addressed by leadership at the US Soccer Federation and Major League Soccer.Speaking Thursday in a roundtable with US Soccer chief executive JT Batson and chief operating officer Dan Helfrich, Wenger heaped praise on the federation for its new $250m headquarters in Fayetteville, Georgia, saying “I feel it’s important for every footballer, somewhere, to feel you’re at home.”“We push, with the support of our president [Gianni Infantino], a lot to develop football in the States,” Wenger said, “because [of] diversity, what football likes and what makes football strong, because [there’s] a quantity, 350 million people, and I’m sure there is talent. We [at Fifa] are working together to give a chance to everybody to develop the game and to love the game.”However, Wenger cautioned, there is plenty of work to be done on the pitches that surround the complex. The former Arsenal boss said that there was “no alignment on the global policy of technical development” in the United States until very recently, but stressed that, considering the context of this country’s sprawling geography and disparate soccer ecosystem, decisions on how to move forward should be made by the federation, not Fifa.That said, Wenger had some notable criticisms of the US soccer development system – namely the pay-to-play model that can see fees for youth soccer participation rise into the tens of thousands per year for families.“From outside, I felt that people from a poor background had no real access to the game,” Wenger observed, “and that is quite a big part of a population. Usually, the best football players come from poor backgrounds, and so maybe there’s a job to do there as well to make it possible and available for everybody and, after, to be consistent because it’s not a short-term fix.”Wenger compared the current effort, which has seen teams in MLS, the United Soccer League (USL) and other leagues begin free-to-play academy setups for a region’s elite players, to one undertaken by his home country decades ago.“I was part of the opening of the first academies in France and it took 10 years. 1973, the first academy opened in France. 1984, France won the European Championship. You have to be consistent, and one of the things that is the most neglected is an identification of talent. It demands an eye. It demands an education. It demands consistency, to always give a chance to young players, to identify who has talent in five years – not now – and that is not easy to develop in every country.”Before the topic shifted, Batson stressed that it isn’t a thrifty undertaking.“This will take time and it will be hard and you have to commit and really stick to it,” Batson said. “And I think that is our commitment, to do that. But I think ultimately, this does take resources.“It’s not a coincidence that the teams that have gone the furthest in this tournament are some of the best-resourced federations in the world. They are able to ensure that there’s access. They’re able to ensure there’s great opportunity. They’re able to ensure there’s great coaching. And they have great government support. They have great community support. They have great professional club support. And so everyone’s working together with a shared mission to bring this to life. And I think that’s the opportunity we have coming out of the summer.”Helfrich said that the efforts to make youth programs more accessible will require opening a new “system” rather than making the current operation more affordable.“We are not seeking to make the current system more affordable; we’re trying to create a new system that then we make highly affordable,” Helfrich said. “It’s a really important distinction … We need a different system. We need a system that has the pathway open to more players.”

Football News

The tournament’s mascot came to herald the ubiquitous, commercial aims of a growing international spectacleDeep within a dark warehouse in Hillsborough, North Carolina, there sits a severed head. Encased in plastic, perfectly preserved and seemingly begging to be reanimated, it belongs to an American soccer legend.For a seismic summer 32 years ago, Striker the dog was more ubiquitous than any of World Cup 94’s players, plastered all over billboards, Coke cans, key chains, caps and hundreds of other items. Kids carried around Striker dolls. Grown men played Striker-themed pinball machines and Super Nintendo games and posed for photos with the pup in stadiums.As Striker’s remains – the foam and felt head, torso and limbs – lie in darkness at the US Soccer Hall of Fame archives, this summer’s World Cup has had its own trio of mascots. Canada’s Maple the Moose, America’s Clutch the Bald Eagle and Mexico’s Zayu the Jaguar seem caught in some bizarre liminal space between realism and cartoon fantasy, residents of a mascot version of the uncanny valley.That trio feel like AI slop, though. Striker? US Soccer chose a much simpler path with him, whipping together a cartoon dog. Years later, that choice has made him the one of the most memorable mascots in World Cup history.John Over and Joey Banaszkiewicz are responsible for some of the most well-known pieces of American animation of the late 20th century. They were young artists at Warner Brothers in the mid-90s, right around the time Steven Spielberg was leading that studio through an animation renaissance.The two had a hand in crafting the storylines and artwork for Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures, drawing characters that would become familiar to an entire generation of American children. Their work wasn’t always for kids – the first episode of Animaniacs that Over ever worked on was quickly pulled after Buster Bunny and Plucky Duck got drunk and stole a police car.The culture at Warner Brothers back then, Over and Banaszkiewicz will tell you, was something akin to the island of misfit toys.“I feel like some people got there right out of prison,” says Banaszkiewicz, who landed at the studio after graduating from Cal Arts. Over arrived after working for John Kricfalusi, the creator of another iconic piece of 90s animation: the Ren and Stimpy Show.“The currency there was ‘how hard could we make each other laugh,’” Over says. “We were just a bunch of 20-year-olds that were let loose. People were just doing foul drawings of each other and seeing how far you could milk a joke or an embarrassing situation. But it was fantastic, because that’s really how you get your creativity built up.”In the summer of 1992, in between seasons of Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, animators found themselves with nothing to work on. For a few weeks, they’d pass the time by taking hours-long lunch breaks or “playing several rounds of miniature golf across the street”, Over remembers, but eventually, higher-ups within Warner Brothers suggested laying employees off or furloughing them.Spielberg wanted nothing to do with that idea. At his insistence, staff were kept on, and Spielberg told executives to find them other work.Right around that time, the organizing committee for the 1994 World Cup was searching for a mascot. Alan Rothenberg, the US Soccer Federation president, picked up the phone and set a meeting with Jean MacCurdy, the president of Warner Brothers Animation.Thirty years earlier, Reginald Hoye and Richard Culley, employees at a London-area marketing agency, were handed their own brief. The 1966 World Cup was rapidly approaching and the two were tasked with doing something entirely new: creating a mascot.It’s hard to imagine, but World Cups to that point were largely bereft of the consumerism that so thoroughly permeates them today. There were barely any advertisements at all, really, or merchandise. And certainly no mascots.In 10 minutes, Culley and Hoye whipped up World Cup Willie, the first-ever World Cup mascot. There are layers to Willie. He sports the union jack and his shaggy, charming appearance was in line with England’s broader moment, as the country’s perception moved away from its staid past and migrated towards that of a cultural tastemaker. This was the era of the Beatles, the Stones and James Bond.Willie fit right in; he was an instant smash, and others followed. In 1970, Juanito – a small Mexican child decked out in a sombrero – was the first human mascot, a trend that continued into the 1974 and 1978 World Cups.Then came the produce. Spain rolled out Naranjito, an anthropomorphic orange, in 1982 and Mexico came back with Pique, a mustachioed jalapeno pepper, in 1986.Then things got weird. In 1990, organizers in Italy hosted a design competition and received 50,000 entries, portraying everything from dogs to eggplants to an anthropomorphic piece of ziti. A panel of judges, including such luminaries as famed Ferrari designer Sergio Pininfarina, settled on an entry from Lucio Boscardin, an unheralded painter and sculptor.Boscardin came up with his idea at a traffic light. He took the word “Italia”, broke apart the lettering and assembled it into a stick figure of sorts, employing a soccer ball as the figure’s head. The end result was Ciao, a modern art fever dream.Tournament organizers quickly realized that Boscardin’s cubist vision was impossible to represent in costume, so they just threw together a dozen or so sculptures of Ciao, toting him around from stadium to stadium.The designers of Striker weren’t going to make that same mistake, though their early concepts were just as terrifying.“There were a bunch of people trying to do a soccer ball thing,” Over says. “People didn’t know what to call it really. I think Joey’s version was called Soccerey Bally or something like that. It was like a humanoid soccer ball with arms and legs. Joey’s storyboards are always funny and outrageous, so he had like soccer players taking the thing out to romantic candlelit dinners, and there’s just balls sitting everywhere. The player is in bed with a ball, he’s having sex with a ball, he’s everywhere with a ball.”US Soccer was not in any rush to peddle soccer-based cartoon pornography, and thankfully animators at Warner Brothers began to explore about a dozen other possibilities, “both animal and humanoid”, said MacCurdy. There were space creatures. Cats. Cougars. Bears.“In the end we just ended up looking at a lot of the old World Cup mascots,” Over says. “A lot of them were just awful. One was just a giant orange? And a lot of them had historical significance or whatever. Soccer was sort of not super popular here, so we thought let’s do this ‘underdog’ kind of idea. That’s when we started doing versions of, you know, ‘soccer dog’.”With that, the two embarked on a design process that left them bruised and battered. Hearing Over prattle on about what happened will feel familiar to any artist or creative who has ever applied their craft to a commercial endeavor.“We ran into problems with these dorks at [US Soccer],” says Over, laughing. “They’d look at your drawings. As an animator you’re always exaggerating things. Somebody kicks a ball and you have the leg go way up. They would say – well, ‘a child could never kick a ball that hard.’ Like, it’s a freaking soccer dog, dude. It is a cartoon dog!”“It ended up being sort of a design by committee thing,” Banaszkiewicz says. “And in the world of animation, that’s always death. Pretty soon it’s ‘I don’t like these fingers’ or ‘I think his ears are too sharp’ or ‘can you give him a bigger smile?’ Pretty soon you don’t even recognize him any more.”The pup we now know as Striker was at that point still being called Soccer Dog over at Warner Brothers and the slightly more clever World Cup Pup in the halls at US Soccer, not exactly the kind of names that move merchandise. So the World Cup organizing committee, headed up by Rothenberg, decided to let the public name the mascot. They bought advertising space in hundreds of local and national newspapers, encouraging fans to call their vote via a 1-900 number ($0.95 per call, in case you were wondering) or mail-in ballot. To keep things simple, the organizing committee narrowed the list down to four names: Striker, Sweeper, Champ and Sidekick.About 25,000 people cast their vote over the six-week campaign, with Striker the clear favorite. At a cost of $2,500 each, the organizing committee ordered a dozen Striker costumes, thrown together by Scollon Productions, a mom-and-pop costume shop based in White Rock, South Carolina. They made a few refinements to his look, swapping out a rugby-inspired jersey for a soccer kit and positioning the ball at the dog’s feet instead of forcing him to carry it around in his hands.The pup needed a backstory, so the organizing committee put their best wordsmiths on the assignment, and they did not disappoint. Striker was birthed by Mr and Mrs Mutt, they wrote, graduating with honors from obedience school. His favorite song? Hound Dog, by Elvis Presley. As for whether Striker has a significant other – he’s officially listed as single. “Playing the field,” as they say.“He best represents sports and this country,” Rothenberg said at the time. “And, being crass and commercial, we want to sell as much merchandise as possible.” Tournament organizers estimated that they’d make more than a billion – yes, a billion – dollars off of merchandise bearing Striker’s likeness.One curious detail about Striker’s origin story is that promoters suggested the dog was neither male nor female. That idea didn’t seem to stick, though: the pup got male pronouns nearly every time he was mentioned.Striker’s boots are a size-24 wide, if you’re wondering. Huge shoes to fill. But somebody had to. That task fell to Carlos Parada.Back in 1986, Parada was a wide-eyed teenager with a dream to go to the World Cup in Mexico. So he did what any irresponsible college student would: he got a high-interest credit card and bought the next flight out, hoping to crash with a few friends he had south of the border.Parada ended up scoring free tickets to nearly every match at the Azteca. He watched Diego Maradona score with his “Hand of God” and then watched him score arguably the greatest goal in the history of the tournament moments later. He was there for the final, among the best ever played. He returned home to Los Angeles, determined to involve himself in soccer.“When the [organizing committee] moved from Chicago to Los Angeles before the World Cup,” Parada says, “I knew I had to get involved. You know. To get free tickets.”Parada signed up as a volunteer, then took a part-time post at the organizing committee’s headquarters, one that put him in the office at 6am, around the time Rothenberg arrived – “to get a jump on the east coast folks,” Parada remembers. The two became chummy, and when a full-time marketing position became available, Parada got the job.He was tasked with safekeeping two of the tournament’s icons. One was the World Cup trophy. The 27-year-old went continent hopping with it for months, always flying in first class. “One seat for me,” he remembers, “and one for the trophy, right next to me.”The other was Striker. Parada, assisted by Joann Klonowski, the tournament’s head of marketing, put together guidelines for those inhabiting the costumes –mostly volunteers, as Parada once was.“He never speaks,” Klonowski told a reporter at the time. “He is not allowed to remove any part of his costume in public; for instance, he can’t remove his head. That takes away the aura for the kids who see him. He – the character, actually – is neither male nor female. The character never acknowledges that there is a person inside. The character communicates through mime movements, or through a personal escort, who always accompanies the character.”Parada also contributed a training film which, like the guidelines, is a little surreal, with Parada cheering his volunteers along as they run through the motions in and out of costume.Striker was unveiled in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in October 1993, where he sank his paws into the wet pavement beneath him, as is the tradition with any big star. He was at pre-tournament friendlies, hobnobbing and posing with fans, even crossing the Atlantic for promotional events. He was at the World Cup draw, and everywhere else, plastered all over billboards, TV ads, airplanes and a boatload of other merch.One place he wasn’t: the opening ceremony. Folks at US Soccer had visions of throwing Striker alongside Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton, Diana Ross and the rest of the crew but Striker was banished, collateral damage after a war between Disney (the original organizers of the ceremony) and Opryland USA (the company that ended up putting it on). Striker, said one Opryland employee, “is not here because we think he’s stupid.”Many others did not find this soccer dog stupid. Mexico goalkeeper Jorge Campos, Parada remembers, developed a strange fascination with the mascot and was insistent on standing next to him before matches. The Argentina squad also took a liking to Striker. In one of the tournament’s more remarkable off-field scenes, they tracked Striker down after crushing Greece 4-0 in their group-stage opener, throwing him in the air in celebration. After their next game against Nigeria, Maradona was led off the field for a drug test, one that ended his international career.Kids and adults alike were equally obsessed, in part owing to the fact that the dog could actually play soccer.“I learned pretty quickly that if you got a kid who played soccer in the costume and put him in Sambas, you could have pretty good control of his feet,” Parada says. “People would go insane when they saw Striker juggling a ball, which he could do pretty easily.”After the World Cup ended, after the banners came down and the collectible pin sets, hats and sweatshirts were shoved into drawers or sent to thrift shops, Striker drifted back into the ether. Others followed in his footsteps: a rooster (Footix, France 98), a lion (Goleo VI, Germany 06), a leopard (Zakumi, South Africa 10), a wolf (Zabivaka, Russia 18), a trio of aliens (Ato, Kaz and Nik, South Korea/Japan 02). By the time Qatar rolled around in 2022, we got La’eeb, a floating garment, albeit an adorable one.As the tournament has become more and more bloated and more and more commercialized, Striker evolved into a symbol for a simpler time, when the teams were fewer and the tickets were cheaper.Rothenberg, though, more or less forgot about him – when reached for this piece, he conceded that he didn’t remember anything about the mascot’s development. Neither did MacCurdy – the animation head at Warner Brothers – or Klonowski, the marketing head who ran the project for the organizing committee.Over and Banaszkiewicz had no idea whatsoever that Striker had had any sort of impact on a particular generation of soccer fans in America, not until they were contacted at least. Banaszkiewicz put it bluntly: “I had no idea anybody cared, honestly.”Over remembered the short-term effects, yes – seeing his co-creation on the side of an American Airlines 747, at games and on light-pole banners – but that was more or less the end of it for him. When Over and Banaszkiewicz hopped on a call together and chatted for the first time in years, though, the memories came flooding back.Neither artist feels a terribly strong sense of attachment to Striker. There were talks of an animated series at some point, but in the end the dog was just a drawing to them, or an intern in a costume.“I remember Jean MacCurdy and I went down to watch them unveil Striker, when he put his feet in the cement at Mann’s Chinese Theater, right next to Humphrey Bogart’s [hand prints.] It all felt so … forced. This love for this character was sort of forced. So it doesn’t rank that high as far as the stuff I’ve done, because you’re not infusing it with any personality as a film-maker. There’s no story to it, it’s sort of a graphic placeholder.”For an entire generation of American kids, though, Striker was part of that magical summer, one where they fell in love with the sport of soccer and never turned back.

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The Queens Classic – Kerr’s return, Lavelle’s stunner, wildfire smoke and all in between – shows how far the league has come and also where it can still improveTen years ago, a National Women’s Soccer League game at a baseball stadium was a sign of just how far the league had to go. A match during the 2016 season was played at a minor-league ballpark on a woefully small pitch, dubbed “shocking and embarrassing” by the league’s own stars.Come 2026, NWSL games at ballparks are showpiece events. Attendance records were shattered at Chicago’s Wrigley Field and San Francisco’s Oracle Park in the previous two seasons. Wednesday night added another milestone: Gotham FC’s 1-0 win over the Washington Spirit on a hot, hazy night at Citi Field, the regular home of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, drew the second-largest crowd in league history (42,175) and set the record for the most attended women’s sporting event in the city’s history.After a month-long pause during the men’s World Cup, the NWSL resumed play on 3 July. If any match seemed fit to be a table-setter for the rest of the season, it probably was this one. San Diego still lead the league, but Wednesday’s result pushed Gotham even on points with the Spirit and the Portland Thorns. (The Spirit sit second, via the goal-differential tiebreaker.) The East Coast rivals met in last year’s final and over the past three seasons have combined for two championships (Gotham), two second-place finishes (Spirit) and three trophies in other competitions.At the same time, the match dubbed the Queens Classic was also a microcosm, full of the things that have come to define the NWSL at this point in its 14-season history: stakes, star power, sky-high ambition and still some controversy.Rose Lavelle, the standout Gotham midfielder whose goal decided last year’s final, delivered a brilliant curler in the 37th minute for the night’s lone goal. The crowd favored the home team, but the stands were scattered with the No 2 jersey of star Spirit forward Trinity Rodman, who was captivating as usual but was unable to convert any of her five shots. The loudest cheer of the night came in the 63rd minute, when Australian striker Sam Kerr earned her first minutes since signing for Gotham after six-and-a-half years at Chelsea. It was a sort of homecoming: she starred in the era when the club was known as Sky Blue, scoring the goals that would help make her the NWSL’s all-time leading scorer while navigating off-field turmoil and playing in front of crowds that barely cracked 3,000.“I feel so spoiled to play at this club, because we keep bringing in incredible players,” said Lavelle, referencing a transfer list that includes Kerr, Irish captain Denise O’Sullivan and Norwegian midfielder Guro Reiten in the past month alone. “I went up to her during a corner and said, ‘Welcome back, but chill,’” Rodman joked about Kerr’s return.When Kerr left Sky Blue in 2018, the headlines weren’t about the team’s attendance records or mega-transfers, but for their mediocre play, training grounds without running water and minimal resources. That version of the club seems light-years away from what exists now, for more than just the improved finishes, fresh colors and new leadership. Last week, Gotham announced they will relocate to New York beginning in 2028, just around the corner at the future Etihad Park. The buildup to this game involved subway advertising, promotions and even a $15 ticket offer organized by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and 70% of ticket-buyers were “new fans”.“It was really special just to see how many people were there that that was their first Gotham game,” midfielder Jaedyn Shaw said.It seemed fitting that the night’s opponent was Washington, another team who have built from the bottom and embraced ambition in a league whose structure doesn’t always encourage it.“In many ways, this is like a full-circle moment,” commissioner Jessica Berman told reporters at half-time. “We know that with investment, if you build it they will come, and this is a proof point for that.”This moment of rapid growth for the NWSL – the past 12 months have seen new attendance, TV viewership and expansion-fee records set – does not come without growing pains.Nearly 10 years to the day of the tiny-field fiasco, both teams seemed to agree that, while the pitch at Citi Field wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t the prettiest either. (“That’s showbiz, baby,” Lavelle said.) The match aired in primetime on ESPN, but the lone goal happened to occur while the screen was split for an interview, with the broadcaster and sideline reporter nearly tripping over each other in their commentary.The weather conditions Wednesday were far from ideal for playing soccer, and far from ideal for even being outside. A heatwave kept the temperatures in the 80s and 90s fahrenheit and pushed the heat index above 100. Much of New York spent the day under an air quality alert, with smoke from Canadian wildfires drifting south. The ballpark was cast in an orange-brown haze as the sun set before kick-off, and the smell of smoke lingered throughout the night.While the league has postponed games for poor air quality, it has also received criticism for going ahead with high-profile games even in adverse conditions for players and fans. The most significant incident came last year, when a marquee game between the Orlando Pride and Kansas City Current on national TV was played despite extreme heat that sent more than a dozen spectators to the hospital.In this case, the conditions did not reach the threshold for delay or postponement. Instead, with the air quality index above 150 – classified as “unhealthy” by the Environmental Protection Agency, but below the 180-200 mark for potential delay and the 200+ mark for postponement – the league instituted two hydration breaks per half. Spirit coach Adrián González was upfront with his disdain for the pauses, saying the lack of rhythm killed the game while acknowledging the necessity on the day.“I think on both sides, we were just like, ‘Damn, another break, another break, another break,’” Rodman said. “If we have to have a hydration break every 15 minutes, then we shouldn’t be playing the game, and that’s my opinion. … But at the end of the day, there’s 40,000 people, it’s a whole event. So it is really tough. I think it was a really hard situation for everybody to work around.”Wednesday night will ultimately go down as a success. Such scenes once seemed unfathomable; the Citi Field crowd more than doubled the total attendance across the 12 home matches in the home club’s debut season in 2013. But acknowledging two truths – that the league has come far, and still has a long way to go – is part of understanding this latest chapter.“It’s pretty cool when you’re out there and you realize that this is your job,” veteran Spirit midfielder Andi Sullivan said, “and that this is what your dreams looked like, or maybe what they haven’t looked like along the way.”

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The league is back in play after a six-week pause for the World Cup. We spotlight seven players to watch after their stints with their national teamsThe 2026 MLS season resumes Thursday, cleverly holding its return on the days between the World Cup semi-finals and third-place game. Fans of any of the league’s 30 teams will be trying to recall the state of affairs after a six-week pause, with more than half of the regular season still to be played and the Leagues Cup further congesting the schedule.The league was curiously absent from the World Cup, only cited during the broadcasts viewed by millions if a commentator named an involved player’s club and whose reach largely depended on the in-market efforts of its franchises. And yet, through the quarter-finals, MLS ranked sixth in total minutes by its players, the highest of any league outside Europe’s big five. Twenty-two of MLS’s 30 clubs had at least one man make a tournament squad.Forty-four players left their teams midway through the MLS season for the World Cup. Here are seven with storylines that’ll follow them back to their day jobs.Son Heung-min’s ineffectiveness in front of goal played a part in South Korea’s stunning group-stage exit. The ex-Tottenham icon led the team with seven shots, but just one landed on-frame. If not for the Concacaf Champions League and a May friendly against Trinidad and Tobago, Son would be goalless for club and country throughout 2026, as he has also failed to ripple the net in 13 MLS appearances for Los Angeles FC.Son is their second scoring option, behind downhill winger Denis Bouanga. Nineteen of Son’s 39 attempts have been taken from outside the box, while just seven of his shots have come from within 12 yards of goal. His eight assists have kept LAFC around the top of the West, but if they’re to get more out of the league’s record signing, they’ll need to get him in shooting spaces far closer to goal.Sebastian Berhalter’s stock rose greatly with his composed performances for the United States. He was the first man off the bench on most occasions for Mauricio Pochettino. He also plays a crucial role for the Vancouver Whitecaps as a possession epicenter with license to roam around the field and keep the league’s most tactically sound outfit whirring. He’s also among the best right-footed set-piece takers in the league and in the American men’s talent pool.Berhalter arrived with Vancouver as a bargain flyer and is nearing the end of his contract in December. As the club’s future hangs in the balance, other suitors may have a clear path to secure his signature. Will an MLS rival back up a Brinks truck to improve their engine room, or will the 25-year-old London-born midfielder leave the league altogether?Orlando City were one of the best-represented MLS teams at this World Cup, with Maxime Crépeau (Canada), Braian Ojeda (Paraguay) and Marco Pasalic (Croatia) each seeing the field for knockout-stage sides. And yet, the Lions struggled mightily in the season’s first trimester, entering the World Cup break 12th in the East with the conference’s worst goal difference (minus-21).Despite this, they’re just four points below the playoff places and should be far better with Antoine Griezmann joining the cause. Crépeau surprised some by being Canada’s starting goalkeeper over Miami’s Dayne St Clair, a move that could bolster his confidence after their run to the last 16. Pasalic also got more run-out than expected for Croatia and had a 12-goal, five-assist MLS campaign in 2025. In a wide-open East beyond the top two teams, Orlando could make a rapid ascent.Miguel Almirón had a doozy of a World Cup. An ill-timed flop against the US saw him be the first player to earn a yellow card from a “mistaken identity” review. In the next game, another VAR check resulted in him earning a red card that hatched a viral house anthem. Fortunately, he was able to return to start in Paraguay’s last-32 upset of Germany, capping his tournament on a high note.Atlanta United continue to flounder despite spending big, but getting Almirón back among the goals would do wonders toward that end. He’s one of four Paraguayans returning to MLS teams after that famous win over Germany, joined by Ojeda (Orlando), Matías Galarza (Atlanta) and Berhalter’s midfield partner in Vancouver, Andrés Cubas. Each has a chance to carry their cult hero status back to their club teams.Petar Musa wasted no time rewarding Croatia’s Zlatko Dalic for starting him against England, scoring a leveler midway through their eventual 4-2 defeat. He struggled to build upon that opening salvo, however, getting a half-time hook in their second group match and failing to see the field thereafter.Musa has been arguably MLS’s best all-around center-forward since joining FC Dallas, and his return will be a relief to head coach Eric Quill. Dallas originally signed Musa from Benfica in 2024, and many expected him to garner transfer interest after scoring 46 goals in 5,632 MLS minutes (0.74 per 90 minutes). Assuming teams aren’t banging down Dallas’ doors asking about his availability, he’ll have to turn their heads by resuming his previous high-level scoring.Mbekezeli Mbokazi had a strong World Cup, with the 20-year-old being South Africa’s most dependable defender as Bafana Bafana reached their first knockout stage. He’ll soon slot into the MLS All-Star team, and still has just a half-season under his belt with the Chicago Fire.Gregg Berhalter’s side is about to get a brighter spotlight with Robert Lewandowski joining after a distinguished career in Europe. The Fire sit third in the East, having conceded the second-fewest goals in the conference in part due to Mbokazi’s quick acclimation. The goals should come more steadily as Lewandowski gets his bearings.Since 2023, it has been nigh-on-impossible to discuss MLS without citing its headline employee. Lionel Messi has achieved almost everything he can with Inter Miami, including opening a new stadium with a stand named after him. He signed an extension last fall that keeps him under contract through December 2028, but his role as part-owner makes it a bit easier to discuss a potential retirement plan.Messi’s tears after every hard-fought Argentina comeback emphasize how imminent the end of his storied career may be. The scenes of his final pre-tournament friendly in Argentina seemed to close the door on a possible Copa América coda. The knock-on impact of his exit, whenever it comes, will be steeply felt throughout Miami’s organization and beyond across MLS. Will he keep entertaining tens of thousands across North America without the incentive of staying sharp for a World Cup defense?

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‘Boston cone’ arrives to fanfare in first-class seat from Glasgow before planned trip to raise money for mental healthFresh off its first-class flight from Glasgow, it received a reception befitting a visiting dignitary: a bagpiper in full regalia playing inside Boston Logan international airport. Waiting to greet it were diplomats, the governor and Boston’s mayor.The guest of honor? An orange traffic cone.Tuesday’s arrival of the “Boston cone” marked the latest chapter in the city’s unlikely love affair with Scotland’s tartan army, whose habit of placing traffic cones atop statues during the team’s World Cup run last month turned the humble orange cone into one of the tournament’s defining symbols.“I have to admit, this is probably – yes, it is – my first official welcoming ceremony for a traffic cone,” Maura Healey, the Massachusetts governor, said in the airport’s erminal E, before signing her name to the cone. “But it’s a pretty special one, isn’t it? Because this cone tells the story of what happened this summer. What happened in Boston, what happened in Massachusetts.”“And special thanks to the Scots for drinking all the beer,” she added to laughter. “I do promise you, when you return … we will never again run out of beer in Massachusetts.”During Scottish fans’ World Cup visit, Boston bars struggled to keep up with the tartan army’s thirst, with some running out of beer and scrambling for emergency deliveries. The fans transformed parts of Boston into an unofficial outpost of Scotland, filling downtown with bagpipes, songs and chants while bright orange traffic cones sprouted atop some of the city’s most recognizable landmarks, from a statue of Samuel Adams outside Faneuil Hall, to the Celtics’ Red Auerbach outside TD Garden, to former mayor Kevin White near Quincy Market and even to the beloved Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Public Garden.“There are still some traffic cones atop our most important statues,” the Boston mayor Michelle Wu joked Tuesday, recalling how Boston had “unofficially become New Scotland”.The official commemorative cone, decorated with illustrations celebrating Boston and Scotland and the slogan “No Boston, No Party”, will spend the next week visiting landmarks across Massachusetts to raise money for mental health charities before returning home to Scotland.The tradition dates to Glasgow, where placing bright orange traffic cones atop public statues began as a late-night prank in the 1980s before evolving into an unofficial symbol of the country’s irreverent humor. The best-known example is the Duke of Wellington statue in the city center, where the cone has become so iconic that repeated efforts to remove it have been met with public opposition.“It’s an in-joke that’s gone too far, actually,” one of the cone’s Scottish escorts, Danny Campbell, said, laughing as he stood beside the cone in a kilt. “But no, it isn’t a joke. This is a metaphor for life.”Campbell said people can become consumed by “going to our jobs and cooking sausages and all the sort of serious stuff that adults have to do” and lose sight of what matters.“That’s what our countrymen represented when they came here,” he said, speaking of Scottish fans’ stay in Boston. “They left stomachs and cheeks sore from laughing, they cleaned up after themselves, they spread joy, and these people came together with humor and they built relationships with each other.”“This is not just a silly cone,” Campbell said. “It means love. It means love, and that is the whole point.”