WHAT CAN 2026 CUP LEARN?
Sunday’s World Cup final, which ended with Lionel Messi finally grasping the one trophy he’d never won, was the most dramatic in tournament history. It was great theater, a bare-knuckle brawl that played out over 120 minutes and four rounds of penalty kicks before Argentina was declared the victor following a game that ended in a 3-3 draw.
Which raises one very vexing question: What to do for an encore?
The next World Cup kicks off in North America in three years and will be the largest and most complex ever, with a record 48 teams playing 80 games in 16 cities spread across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It’s not so much a soccer tournament as it is a full-scale invasion.
U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone will be one of those trying to ensure it goes off without a hitch, and she will start that work by looking at what went right and what went wrong over the last month in Qatar.
“I’m the type of person that I can learn from everyone. So I took that approach with Qatar, taking a look around and seeing how they’re doing it, comparing it to how I think things may work in the U.S.,” said Cone, who spent two weeks in Qatar during the World Cup. “What could we do better? What things are they doing that we can maybe kind of adopt in the U.S.?
“There were a lot of things that we can take notice of and hopefully make 2026 the biggest and best World Cup.”
Preparations for the 2026 World Cup began before Messi set down the World Cup trophy after Sunday’s victory celebration. But it’s the differences more than the similarities that stand out when comparing the 2022 World Cup with the 2026 tournament. In Qatar, the 64 games were played in and around Doha, a city of 2.3 million people, and all eight stadiums were located within a 21mile
radius of the city center. In 2026, the tournament will be spread across four time zones with stadiums separated by as many as 3,500 miles, from the altitude of Mexico City and the humidity of Miami, to cosmopolitan Toronto and homespun Kansas City, Mo.
There are also different laws. Qatar strictly regulates the sale of alcohol while the U.S., Canada and Mexico pretty much encourage it. Qatar had to build seven of the eight stadiums and its Metro system from scratch and spent billions more to upgrade its international airport. All of the stadiums and much of the infrastructure for 2026 are already in place.
“Not everything can transfer, right?” Cone said. “What works in one country may not work in another country.”
There’s also the tournament expansion. The last time the men’s World Cup was played in the U.S., in 1994, there were just 24 teams. This time the field will
be double that size — so big that even FIFA President Gianni Infantino admits he’s not sure how best to organize the tournament. Should it begin with 12 four-team groups or 16 threeteam groups? Both scenarios have their pluses and minuses from a competitive standpoint, but Infantino quickly brought the conversation back to FIFA’s favorite subject: money.
“Three huge countries, 48 teams. More games, revenues will go up in terms of broadcasting, in terms of sponsorship, hospitality,” he said. “We will play in huge stadiums used for American football, 80-90,000 capacity. We are expecting 5.5 million fans traveling for these events.”
Which brings us to the most significant issue for both the three-country host committee and the 16 World Cup cities. FIFA has wrested control of much of the marketing and organization of the event away from its local partners, meaning
FIFA will reap most of the profits while leaving the costs to local organizers.
Notable
Thousands of fans in central Paris cheered the arrival home of a France team that lost one of the greatest World Cup finals. Kylian Mbappe and his teammates were still visibly disappointed a day after the shootout loss to Argentina when they arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on Monday night. But the team’s mood brightened when it was bussed to Place de la Concorde where hordes of fans warmly welcomed Les Bleus.
France forward Karim Benzema posted a message on social networks indicating that he is retiring from international play, a day after the national team lost the World Cup final without him.