I thought it was an antique car jack or Qatar’s version of a garden gnome.
The winner should have it melted down and re-poured into the shape of a Budweiser bottle.
I don’t think so, because “he was 21 cms offside and 1 cm outside even the tolerance distance” is not the same as “he was 0.5 cms offside”, I think it would be worth a try.
Blasphemy! It’s the absolutely most beautiful object in the universe.
Wait what, do you want Brazil to give back the old measly Jules Rimet cup?
They can’t, I think it was stolen.
By Pelé? 
Normal thieves, they then melted down for the gold.
It’s really a pity that such a unique object couldn’t be kept safe and got melted down for material value.
Ages of some of the US players for the next WC:
- Sergino Dest - 26
- Antonee Robinson - 29
- Tyler Adams - 27
- Yunus Musah - 23
- Weston McKennie - 28
- Giovanni Reyna - 24
- Christian Pulisic - 28
- Brenden Aaronson - 26
- Timothy Weah - 26
All of these guys have the potential to be starting for Champions League clubs at that time. Musah and Adams in particular really impress the hell out of me. If a real striker materializes in that time that could be a heck of a team.
And they’ll probably be playing at home.
Although, now that I think about it, the host country gets an automatic entry into the World Cup, right? What happens with the joint U.S./Mexico/Canada bid?
Did Japan and Korea both get automatic entries in 2002? If so, I guess all 3 would get it. One would assume at least 2 of the 3 would get in anyway, right? If that limits the number of other Confacaf spots, it could be an issue for Costa Rica and some others.
ETA: World Cup is going to 48 teams in 2026 anyway.
Yes, they did.
It is unclear what FIFA will do with 2026.
It’s a 48 team tournament. 6 CONCACAF slots including 3 automatic qualifiers.
Yeah, but it sounds like a terrible concept. 16 groups of 3 teams? With 2 out of the 3 in each group advancing to a KO round of 32. I can think of all kinds of problems with this format.
Collusion will certainly be much easier.
Why no Italy this year?
Crashed out in UEFA qualifying, including losing a last possible lifeline to North Macedonia.
North Macedonia also beat Germany somewhere along the way, so nice underdog team.
Didn’t qualify.
Rules are rules. It’s for the players to stay within them. They get paid millions of dollars after all. The rule isn’t totally being off side it’s any scoring part of a players body.
A decade ago when we started using replays in cricket (called Decision Review System or DRS) we heard similar complaints. What happens, players started minding themselves. And the game goes on.
Totally. And the best thing about pre-programmed or AI making the decision (as opposed to a human viewing a video replay), such as offside in soccer or ball tracking in cricket, is that there is no specific human to blame. So even when the outcome is still incorrect (still much rarer than human umpires), players seem to accept the result.