The month of June this year is preparing to write an epic and indelible page in the history of sports. As happens every four years, the entire planet will hold its breath, stopping to admire the monumental stage that will light up across the United States, Mexico, and Canada from June 11 to July 19. It will be a month of pure collective catharsis, an authentic emotional storm in which entire nations will find themselves united in dreaming, laughing, shouting, rejoicing, and crying in unison. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the year of the World Cup: the supreme theater of football, a legendary arena where only one people will walk toward the eternal ecstasy of triumph, while all the others will be condemned to endure the glorious, heartbreaking suffering of defeat.

And yet, this competition will go down in history as a controversial edition, perhaps even more controversial than the previous two. One only needs to think of the recent past in Russia, where FIFA—a well-known ambassador of diversity and inclusion—allowed a World Cup to take place in a country where being homosexual is a crime punishable by law. Not to mention the Qatari edition, where over six thousand migrant workers died during the decade the country spent preparing for the event and where the survivors lived and worked under conditions bordering on the inhumane.

Why is the 2026 World Cup edition already so controversial, without even having started? There is plenty to write about, so let us dive right in.

2026 World Cup: 48-Team World Cup.

For 7 editions, the World Cup featured 32 teams. Considering that FIFA counts around 200 football associations, those 32 national teams represented the elite of world football, or, at the very least, they were deserving teams that, in one way or another, always participated with honor in the competition. I am thinking of Turkey in 2002 or Morocco in 2022, both capable of pushing all the way to the semifinals.

In this North American World Cup, the teams have increased to 48, adding a whopping 16 spots. This has raised the issue of a drop in quality. Let me explain.

Between 1954 and 1978, there were only 16 nations, which meant emerging African and South American footballing realities were unfairly cut out. 16 teams to represent the world were very few, effectively making the event an expanded European tournament.

Then FIFA, between 1982 and 1994, expanded the format to 24 teams. African and South American nations thus consistently reached the World Cup in subsequent editions, but there was always a lingering feeling that Europe dominated the scene. From 1998 until 2022, it shifted to 32 teams, a formula that allowed for a fair balance in the representation of various continents. Each continent was represented in a balanced manner, and a true sense of "inclusivity" was felt, without losing quality, given that spots remained limited and only the best nations managed to qualify.

With the 48-team World Cup, the gates have been opened to national teams that, in my honest opinion, have nothing to offer in terms of prestige and quality. I am thinking of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Curaçao, Haiti, Panama, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. What do these nations have to offer? They have no footballing tradition, no viable domestic league, and almost all of their players play overseas. These nations have only served to create a "social media" effect to generate buzz around the World Cup, but during the tournament, they will all get slapped around in the group stages.

2026 World Cup: Round of 32.

With the 32-team World Cup, there were 8 groups of 4 teams. The top two from each group faced each other in the round of 16 before moving on to the quarterfinals, semifinals, and the final. With the expansion to 48 teams, however, FIFA had to add the round of 32.

This new format still rewards the top two finishers, but it also guarantees a pass to eight of the "best third-placed teams," making access to the knockout stage entirely too simple. Previously, if you lost the first match, you were already at high risk of elimination; now, it is no longer a real problem: you just need to manage your goal difference and scrape a few points together to have an excellent chance of advancing. It is a sad concept, because the World Cup should be brutal in its competitiveness. If anyone can advance, where has the true nature of this tournament gone, which is to crown the best team in the world?

This is an unnecessary format. Just think of this scenario: a team that dominates its group by winning three matches out of three (I am thinking of England), showing stellar football, risks finding itself in the round of 32 playing a single-elimination match against a third-placed, wild card team that perhaps played ultra-defensive "catenaccio" and scraped together three draws. In a single-elimination match, a single episode, a penalty, or a red card can eliminate the better team. How terrible would a moment like that be?

2026 World Cup: Performance.

Physical Condition.

This World Cup will undoubtedly be dictated by physical condition. The players who feature in European clubs (both European and non-EU citizens) have, in fact, been playing uninterruptedly for three years without a real break. They faced the 2023/2024 season; in the summer of 2024, they played the Euros in Germany, then came the 2024/2025 league season, and in the summer of 2025, the strongest European teams took part in the new Club World Cup. Immediately after, the 2025/2026 season began, and now they find themselves facing this World Cup too.

If you take into account that European teams have now been playing three times a week from September to May for three years—between domestic competitions, European cups, and national team duties—this World Cup will perhaps be characterized by very low tempos, with teams stretched wide open after just half an hour of play. We already witnessed this during last year's Club World Cup, which also took place in the United States, where European teams played at a snail's pace while South American teams ran twice as fast.

Weather Conditions.

This World Cup will also be heavily conditioned by climatic and geographical factors. In Mexico and the United States, it gets hot in the summer—very hot. We saw this clearly during the Club World Cup, where matches were played in America in the middle of the afternoon with temperatures close to 40 degrees: not exactly the ideal condition to play the best possible football, especially if you have heavy legs after three years of continuous play. To this, you add the problems related to time zones (there is a three-hour difference between the East Coast and the West Coast of the United States) and altitude, given that in Mexico, matches will also be played at over 2,000 meters above sea level, where the air is thinner and breathing becomes much more exhausting.

Furthermore, FIFA cannot think of moving all matches to the evening to escape the heat. Doing so would mean that in Europe, which represents the largest and most lucrative television market, the matches would be broadcast in the dead of night and on working days, when the population has to wake up the next morning to go to work.

There is a high probability that FIFA will sell a performance to televisions and spectators that is "obscene" from an athletic standpoint, fueling even more the controversies that are already beautiful, alive, and thriving today.

2026 World Cup: Timings.

As I mentioned, with the World Cup taking place across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, broadcast times for Europe and Africa will often be prohibitive, with matches starting even at two in the morning during the work week. The situation will not be any better for Asia and Oceania either, given that the matches will be broadcast at times when people are at work and will not have the time to follow them.

As a European, I have already experienced this problem firsthand. It was 2002, and the World Cup was being played in South Korea and Japan; Italy found itself playing constantly between eleven-thirty and one-thirty in the afternoon. I was at school, and my parents were at work, just like the vast majority of people. Managing to watch the World Cup was a real problem. Not to mention the final between Germany and Brazil, which took place when it was one in the afternoon in Italy on a summer Sunday.

In this North American World Cup, the entire knockout stage will be played when it is late evening or deep into the night in Europe. If we look at the group stage, it suffices to think that four matches will be broadcast in Europe at 6 in the morning and many others between 2 AM and 4 AM. Only the most die-hard fans will stay awake to watch them. For a competition that should not only reach as many people as possible but also fuel the dreams of future generations, these timings are exactly what should not be done.

2026 World Cup: Politics.

FIFA has always claimed to be detached from political issues, taking refuge in the rhetoric that "sport is more important than geopolitical events." It did so in Russia, where it ignored the suppression of internal opposition, and in Qatar, in the face of systematic discrimination against foreign workers. In this World Cup, however, it has decided to interfere heavily.

In the first place, it established and presented a "Peace Prize" to Donald Trump during the draws in Washington, right while the White House was maintaining extremely high international tension in the Middle East. No one really understood the meaning of this honor: it had never happened before that the president of a host nation was awarded by FIFA even before the start of the tournament. Furthermore, the organization is applying complex diplomatic pressure on Iran. The ideal scenario for the organizers would be for Iran not to participate, avoiding a massive logistical and security challenge. Tehran's federation has no intention of quitting and had officially requested to move its group stage matches to Mexico, but FIFA rejected the request, forcing the team to play in the United States amid enormous bureaucratic difficulties and visas denied to some directors.

Not to mention accessibility for fans: strict American immigration laws risked preventing fans from several African and Middle Eastern nations from traveling. Only after tough negotiations did FIFA manage to obtain a partial waiver for commercial ticket holders through the "FIFA PASS" system, revoking the monetary bond previously required from countries like Algeria or Tunisia. Despite this, ICE has already confirmed extremely rigid security checks within the host cities. In the face of this obvious limitation of fan freedom, FIFA preferred to remain silent so as not to dent its profits, passively accepting the national security protocols imposed by Washington.

2026 World Cup: Prices.

Logistics is already a problem for attending the World Cup. To this, you add the wallet. When the first tickets went on sale, something incredible was witnessed immediately: for the opening match, official prices in the hundreds of dollars were seen, which, however, went out of control right away. Due to official reselling circuits like Ticketmaster and the policy of "dynamic pricing," a category 1 or 2 ticket for the opening match at the Azteca Stadium is being exchanged today at insane figures, oscillating between 2,500 and over 6,000 dollars. Such numbers had never been recorded for a World Cup before.

The situation becomes even more extreme for the grand final. While officially FIFA sells tickets in a range from 400 dollars (for Category 4) up to 3,000 dollars (for Category 1), on authorized reselling channels, the price skyrockets from 5,000 dollars for the most distant seats up to over 100,000 dollars for pitch-side seats. Under these conditions, the World Cup final stops being a popular festival and transforms into an exclusive elite event for multimillionaires, leaving the true fans outside the stadiums.

What infuriated the public was not just the cost itself, but also the detachment shown by the leaders of football and sports finance. The response of FIFA President Gianni Infantino was emblematic: he justified the rates by explaining that they are in line with those of major American entertainment events (which is not true), reiterating that football cannot be undersold and that business serves to finance the global development of the game. Even more direct and ruthless was Tom Wagner, an American billionaire and owner of Birmingham City, whose famous statement on expensive tickets has become the symbol of this drift: "The reality is that we are offering a premium product. If you cannot afford it, it means you have made life choices that do not allow you to buy it."

Certifying the failure of this elite strategy are the merciless data from the hotel sector. Large chains and small operators, convinced of a boom in international bookings, had initially quadrupled room prices; today, instead, they find themselves dealing with a vertical collapse in requests, which has forced many structures to slash rates by up to 40% in a desperate attempt to fill beds. To make matters worse, FIFA itself, after pre-booking huge packages of rooms for sponsors and delegations, had to make a resounding U-turn, canceling reservations and dumping thousands of unsold rooms back onto the market.

Honestly speaking, what fan coming from Cape Verde, for example, can afford thousands of dollars for tickets, flights, and hotels, topped off with an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) check on the street, just to follow their national team? They might as well stay at home and watch it on television. Because of this elitist policy, the television view risks being dismal: thinking of an American or Mexican stadium with 50,000 spectators that hosts only 10,000 paying people is not exactly the image of a "global celebration" that FIFA hopes to sell to sponsors.

Brief Reflections.

Ultimately, this North American World Cup risks going down in history as the point of no return, the edition in which FIFA definitively bartered the soul of football in the name of profit. Between insane calendars that wear down champions, a 48-team format that degrades technical quality, impossible time zones for historical markets, and a ruthless, elitist pricing policy, the most beautiful sport in the world is transforming into a massive and wildly expensive private show for the exclusive use of sponsors and multimillionaires.

When the ball begins to roll on June 11, the magic of the pitch will try, as always, to sweep the dust under the rug. But the truth is already written in the data of half-empty hotels and in the anger of the fans left at home: this is no longer the people's World Cup. It remains only to be understood whether, once the floodlights on the pitch of MetLife Stadium are turned off, FIFA will realize it has pulled the rope too tight or if the football we have always loved is destined to remain just a romantic childhood memory.

M.