Sport
The 2026 World Cup — the first 48-team tournament, hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico — reached its final in a way that rarely happens. For the first time since world rankings began in 1992, the four strongest teams going in — Argentina, Spain, France and England — all made the semi-finals.
Sport
Once every four years the planet looks in the same direction at the same time. Why football: the game needs no words and no equipment — a ball and two goals exist everywhere, from the yards of Almaty to the beaches of Rio. How to read a tournament by its structure rather than by the score. Class shows after a goal conceded.
Sport
The final of a big tournament is one of the rare evenings when billions of strangers hold their breath at the same moment over a ball. Sport draws people not by its beauty but by its fairness: the rules are the same for everyone, the score cannot be rewritten by decree, and the result is visible at once. Nobody handed it down.
