The World Cup Story, Part 3: ‘FIFA, What Have You Become?'

0:11We've had five solid weeks of World Cup fever.

0:20High highs. And low lows. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, what are we doing? No! There was politics. The president called the head of FIFA to discuss the controversial red card. FIFA on Sunday shocked the tournament by sidelining the suspension. Controversy on the field. Surely this is not within VAR's remit to review this. It's the full length of the pitch away. Foreign fans discovered American delicacies. Ranch. I love ranch. I taste it here. It's delicious. But even all the ranch dressing couldn't drown out that quintessential soccer emotion. Heartbreak. Joshua Robinson, Jonathan Clegg, both of your teams got knocked out in the semifinals.

1:09France and England. I'm so sorry. Fortunately, you know, 40 years of experiencing this heartbreak over and over and over and over again has sort of inured me to a crushing disappointment. I mean, and Josh, I feel like, you know, France was one of the favorites. Yeah, but it was a distinctly French thing to do, which is produce the most beautiful thing imaginable for most of the tournament and then revert to a completely different French emotion. Which is what? Which is utter disgust and contempt. Now, the tournament is down to just two teams, Spain and Argentina. They face off on Sunday. Ahead of the final, I got back into the studio with Josh and John to talk about the World Cup so far.

1:56What are some words that you would choose to describe this year's World Cup? The word I'd use is epic in every sense of the word, simply because of the size and scale of this whole thing, whether it's the sheer number of teams who are in this, the sheer number of fans who came over. What about you, John? Supersize. In keeping with the American setting for this World Cup, it's just been enormous, sprawling, different countries, you know, different time zones, but a spectacular run of games has made it a huge success. We're going to look back at the 2026 World Cup as a kind of BCAD moment in the history of the tournament.

2:36It's never been this big, it's never been this ambitious, and it's never been this unapologetic about itself as a commercial enterprise. It was the World Cup where they realized that there is not enough, there cannot be enough World Cup. There always needs to be more.

2:55Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Friday, July 17th.

3:10Coming up on the show, how this year's North American World Cup has changed the game of soccer forever.

3:41using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. This episode is brought to you by Optum. Healthcare doesn't always work great. If you ever waited on a refill or couldn't schedule an appointment, you get it. That's what Optum is changing They're using data and technology to integrate patient care, pharmacy, and everything else. So healthcare is connected, not complicated.

4:16That means cheaper prescriptions that are easier to get and care that looks at the whole person, how you need it. Optum is making healthcare work as one for everyone. Learn more at business.optum.com.

4:40How many games have you guys watched in person? I think I've been to 10. Wow. 10. So I've been to 17 games so far. 17! And I think taken 22 flights. I'm basically a flight attendant now. That was before the semifinals when we first spoke. It's now gone up to 12 games for John and 20 for Josh. All right, well, let's talk about the football itself. This has been the biggest World Cup ever. There's 48 teams instead of 32. How did that work out? I think we were initially skeptical about the 48-team format and thought that it would create a lot of mismatches and a lot of teams that just didn't really belong at the World Cup.

5:22Pretty quickly, we realized we were wrong about that. All of these teams, you know, the ones who were in that 32 to 48 space that wouldn't have made the World Cup previously, they all delivered. Right, you're talking about countries like Cape Verde, Norway, Paraguay. Exactly. They came and they were, you know, real teams of professionals who wanted to put their country on display. Think about Norway, for instance. That was a team that hadn't been to the World Cup since 1998. And here they were, led in by this extra room, an extra wiggle room in qualifying. And they became immediately one of America's darlings.

6:00And that's not to mention Curacao and Cape Verde. Cape Verde, thank you. on behalf of the world. You made us dream and watch your dreams lived out in real time. You know, Cape Verde, especially a team that managed to pull off a draw against Spain and play Argentina quite close in the knockout rounds. That was one of the feel-good stories of this tournament and they would not have been in without 48 teams. And I think it's no coincidence that the 48-team tournament is the first one where we've seen so many of the biggest stars in soccer, you know, hitting the heights and firing on all cylinders at the same time.

6:39He's smacked in, and of course it's Lionel Messi. Back away! Simply irrepressible. Erling Haaland meets the World Cup. The World Cup meets Erling Haaland.

6:58One of the other big storylines of this World Cup was this instant replay system that they have VAR, there were several controversial decisions that led to goals being disallowed or players being sent off after a VAR review. Well, we've seen the rapid rise of VAR across world soccer for the past five years or so. And what it's done is just created an entirely new sphere for fans to litigate every single decision. I don't know what is happening, but I feel like VAR is actually ruining this game. And I watch it in football and there's just like this massive element of doubt over every little decision.

7:35They did not follow the right VAR protocol. We have this meta debate now of when VAR should and shouldn't be used. It's also caused this crazy shift in the rhythms of the game where goals go in and you have no idea if it's a real goal or not because it may need to be checked, where every penalty, every contact in the box immediately causes outrage among fans who are demanding a review. And we've seen a really quite heavy handed application of that at this World Cup, where VAR is being used seemingly with more latitude than ever before. And I think one of the best examples was the Egypt goal against Argentina, where Egypt had a goal disallowed at a crucial point in the game for a foul that happened 90 yards away, much, much earlier in the buildup.

8:23Egypt felt that they were mistreated after a VAR intervention disallowed Mustafa Ziko's goal for a foul. Did Egypt just get robbed? I will say, I think one of the reasons that there has been such pushback and such outrage about the way that VAR is used in soccer is that as recently as sort of 15 years ago, soccer was something of a sort of Luddite when it came to technology in sports. There was no instant replay. There was no sort of goal line technology to let you know whether the ball had bounced one side of the line or the other. Offsides were decided on by the linesman, you know, whether he raised his flag or not.

9:03None of that stuff was automated as it is now. And that all changed at the 2010 World Cup at a game that I was at when England played Germany in the knockout rounds. And a guy called Frank Lampard struck a shot from outside the area that hit the crossbar and bounced about a foot beyond the goal line. Clear goal, even clear to me watching from the press box. That definitely went over the line by a yard. It was clear that the ball had bounced beyond the line, but the referee was the one person in the entire stadium who hadn't seen that. Did it go in? No, say the officials, over the line or not. Yes, most definitely.

9:42It's well over. England are denied an equaliser. Germany went on to win that game 4-1. and fifa's line at the time was that like this is the way football is sometimes these things happen and they're not fair but this is the human element of football and officiating will always be done by humans it's a sort of part of the game metaphor for life exactly you have to take the ups and downs because the next time the luck will go with you and the fact that we have now moved so quickly in the space of 15 years to an environment where we are you know litigating the smallest decisions in slow motion replay to determine whether or not someone, you know, intentionally or accidentally stepped on the back of somebody else's ankle.

10:26Soccer fans are still sort of taken aback by how quickly this has happened. After that controversial non-goal, FIFA introduced goal line technology to help determine whether a goal had been scored. As a casual soccer fan who like kind of really wants to be a soccer fan, watching this World Cup and seeing how VAR has been applied, it is honestly turning off. It makes me think that maybe I need to be careful before falling too in love with this sport. But I think it would be much the same experience if you were tuning into the NFL today for the first time or the last three minutes of an NBA playoff game where we have no idea what is a catch.

11:02The last three minutes take 15 minutes because you have six reviews. I mean, it's the... Although I actually think that it's a bit different because in football, if you're at the 10-yard line and you score a touchdown and it gets called back because there's a penalty, you know, you're still at the 10-yard line or you're moved back, you know, five or 10 yards. You get three more chances at the end zone. In soccer, they take back a goal and like, that's it. You know, you're back to the drawing board. You don't get any kind of credit for that progress that you had made up until that point. Yeah, and it's a low-scoring game.

11:31Goals are very rare. So the idea of one being chalked off, you know, for something that was not visible or notable in real time. Yeah, that no human would have caught. Exactly. All you can see on the VAR, the sensor inside the ball that it grazed the Croatian players head, you know. And I will say a lot of soccer fandom is like the joy of it is the long wait for that sort of fleeting moment of ecstasy that happens when a goal hits the back of the net. Yeah, exactly. And to take that away does feel, you know, sort of more emotionally difficult to sort of handle than it does when a catch is ruled, you know, incomplete or a completion.

12:03But I will say if you're finding it tough to sort of get on board with soccer because of that, I would sort of argue that actually all these things that we've seen, the seemingly arbitrary unfairness of instant replay. This is actually part of what makes soccer such an amazing game to follow. It is an outrageous game. You're a masochist, John, I think. You like pain. For many U.S. fans, the most painful and most replayed moment of this entire World Cup was the Fuller and Balogun red card. Balogun, the top U.S. goal scorer, got that red card only after a long VAR review, a review that showed him stepping on the ankle of a Bosnian Herzegovina player.

12:44The final decision is red card. Wow. Getting a red card meant he had to leave the field immediately, and he had to miss the next game. Did he deserve a red card? I mean, I was watching that game and thought, this doesn't seem like it was intentional. Yeah, he stepped on his foot, but it wasn't like he was trying to hurt him or making a play that wasn't just a soccer play. You could argue it either way, because the rules don't actually make a provision for intention. It remains a dangerous challenge. And so it wasn't a completely ludicrous call from the referee. I think how accidental it was also depended a bit on whether you were watching it with American eyes or Bosnian eyes, because I'm sure they felt it was an outrageous challenge that was absolutely deserving of a red card.

13:32And also at what speed, because the more you slow it down and the more angles you see this thing from, the worse it looks. But the call on the field wasn't the most shocking part. It was what happened next. So I saw the play, and I'm a person that loves sports and was a good athlete. And I understand sports really well, really well. And that wasn't a foul. That wasn't even an infraction. That was two guys running. I never thought I'd see the day that a U.S. president involved himself in something that happened on the field at the World Cup. After the break, Trump's intervention and what it means for the future of the World Cup.

14:13Plus, FIFA's cash bonanza.

14:27This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business. especially when your margin for error is zero.

15:06Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24-7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new Workday.

15:38After the game where Balogun got that red card, President Donald Trump called the head of FIFA, Johnny Infantino, a man he knows well. You can hear all about their relationship in our last World Cup episode. Yeah, I did. I spoke to Johnny, who's highly respected. Donald Trump calls his personal friend, Johnny Infantino, and simply asks him to look at this decision. He says that he doesn't explicitly ask him to overturn it. FIFA says its disciplinary committee revisited the decision and decided to suspend Balogun's punishment, meaning he'd be able to play in the next match, the quarterfinal against Belgium.

16:16How big of a moment do you think this will be in the history of FIFA World Cups? I mean, I think huge. I think it is honestly like a line in the sand that there will be a before and after the Balogun decision. Has anything like this ever happened before, where there was this kind of intervention, this high of a level? In the modern history of soccer, if you get a red card, you miss the next game, and that's just the way it goes. So there had been no sort of precedent for that in terms of the on-the-field decision. And the off-the-field decision, the idea of head of state, the U.S. president, the leader of the free world getting involved in something as sort of mundane as whether a player will be available for a World Cup game is certainly without precedent.

17:01But you will recall from when we spoke the last time that Gianni Infantino has spent the previous decade sort of cozying up to Trump and visiting the Oval Office numerous times, accompanying Trump on his many trips around the world for matters that have zero relevance to professional soccer. But this is the time when that relationship that Infantino has felt so long carefully building really comes into its own. In the end, Belgium beat the U.S. 4-1. In a statement, FIFA's disciplinary committee said, quote, reviewing the legal consequences of red cards in football is nothing new in the modern game.

17:39After their win, which eliminated the U.S., the Belgian team posted a message on social media. Overturn this. And the players celebrated by doing the Trump dance. The fact that there is now a precedent for a red card to be overturned, You saw it immediately in the days afterwards when other players who had been red carded or yellow carded immediately their national federations started appealing to FIFA, requesting that those decisions also be overturned. The fact that that precedent now exists means that there will always be that sort of gray area or window for FIFA to step in and intervene. And once that window has been jammed open, even a sliver, you know that these things will continue to happen.

18:23I think that this also marked a sort of sea change in how FIFA involves itself in the actual game that happens on the field. You know, we have talked a lot about FIFA's long history of corruption and under-the-table dealing in our previous episodes. But all of that was really concerned the stuff that happens around the World Cup. Where will the games be played? Which country gets to host it? How many teams will be involved? It's all really like about the sort of economics or logistics of putting on the World Cup. And this was the first time that FIFA had really intervened to affect what happens on the pitch.

19:02And that, I think, is a seismic change in what they were able to do. And one that even figures from FIFA's scandal-ridden past felt had sort of crossed the line.

19:15The former head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, who stepped down after FIFA's corruption scandals but was never charged, spoke out about the Balogun decision. He tweeted, Quo vadis, FIFA. Latin for FIFA. What have you become? And if you've outraged Sepp Blatter and his sense of what is proper, then you know you've gone a little bit far. FIFA, as an organization, has always, always preached this idea that they resist any political interference, any political messaging even, within the white lines of the pitch. That is sacred to them. And in one fell swoop, they've completely blown that up. How would you answer that question that Sepp Blatter posed?

19:59What have you become, FIFA? I think it just leaves the door open now to more interference, more intervention, and dense FIFA's legitimacy. I know it sounds crazy, but dense it in a way that it hadn't been before. You know, I don't think that it will affect Gianni Infantino's election prospects, but it does make it harder for him. We know that also any time he now preaches this idea of non-political intervention, that it's not true. It's simply not anything he can defend anymore. The fact that they were willing to row back on, essentially their most fundamental principle, to placate the U.S. president and get an American player's suspension put off is really a major moment in the organization's history.

20:46It also adds to the impression that FIFA is now less a sort of sporting organization, an organization of sports administration, and more the sort of content factory, like an entertainment conglomerate. John says this impression really started to emerge two years ago, during something called the Club World Cup. that was supposed to be a tournament of all the champions from the various leagues around the world, as in the champion of the Spanish league plays the champion of the English league, etc. And they promised to invite the champion of the US, the champion of Major League Soccer. But when it came to it, they actually did not invite the champion of Major League Soccer.

21:25They invited Lionel Messi's Inter Miami, who had finished the regular season with the best record, but had not won the championship. They were knocked out in the playoffs. Now, FIFA specifically found a loophole by saying that all the other champions who were invited were the teams who finish at the top of their table. But American sports does not work like that. The regular season does not decide who is the champion. The champion is decided by the playoffs. FIFA overlooked that, decided to invite Lionel Messi. And that was purely to ensure that Messi would take part in the tournament because they know Messi is box office and people will pay through the nose to watch Messi play in those games.

21:59And I think that was really the first sign of how far Infantino is willing to go to sort of put his thumb on the scale to make sure that the product, the games on the pitch, adhere to the sort of vision he has for FIFA, rather than letting the sports stuff happen and administering everything outside of that. So let's dig in on that entertainment value and the money that FIFA makes from that. We talked in our earlier episodes about how this tournament was expected to be super lucrative for FIFA. but they're talking about it as like 104 Super Bowls. Is it possible to get a sense of how profitable this tournament has been so far?

22:34Has it delivered on that? We won't know for sure until FIFA releases the numbers. The target was$11 billion. There was talk of it hitting$15 billion. And based on the games we've been to, nearly every game has been a sellout. None of these fears about tickets being too expensive to actually fill the seats came to pass. You know, everywhere we've gone, we have seen fans spend money like drunken sailors. Everyone's got a giant bag full of merch. Everybody's in debt now. Everybody's in debt. The ratings have been insane. The record for the most watched soccer game in U.S. history has been broken, I think, at least twice.

23:10We had England-Mexico from the Azteca, which was incredible. We also had the U.S.-Belgium game that instantly became the most watched U.S. game. So I think by all accounts, FIFA will claim this as a massive, massive success. Yeah, I think the number is going to be enormous. And I think it will exceed the 11 billion figure that they hoped for. And everyone's making out here. The broadcasters, we know that even the amount of ads they've sold in the hydration breaks, they kind of equaled what they made in advertising from the last World Cup just in the ads that they've sold during the hydration breaks.