About The World Cup (2026)

The soccer World Cup (2026) is nearing its end. I had some thoughts about it that I wanted to share. Also, I will consistently use the word soccer in this article instead of football, just because the world cup is in the USA ;)

Normally I only catch glimpses of matches here and there. I’m too busy working (and/or surviving the summer heat) to actually watch an entire match. And, more importantly, I’ve grown incredibly annoyed and bored with the sport.

This time was different. I was exhausted after working without pause on my first Steam game, my educational online store, and more. Just completely burned out, sick, struggling in the superduper heat wave that just started.

I thought to myself: why not take a break for a few days and relax while watching the first world cup matches? And so I did. And I was pleasantly surprised—or maybe it had just been so long since I watched soccer that I forgot how much I hated watching it. Players were actually playing. The referees didn’t get involved too much. Things happened, goals were scored, it all seemed exciting.

So I kept tuning in to all the games that were played at reasonable times. (I watched nothing after midnight, which usually meant I could only catch one game a day.) I watched full games with my father and brother.

And, well, if you followed the events of the world cup then you know the number of controversies and annoying stuff just kept increasing.

• An unprecedented act of corruption that overturned a red card for a USA player. (One of the hosting countries. And of course the one saddled with president Trump.)
• A crucial goal could be disallowed for one team for a certain reason, while a similar goal for the opposing team was not checked and not overturned. In the very same match! With the same referee!
• Silly accidental touches or movements became red cards; massive dangerous tackles weren’t even considered a foul.
• Games where the referee stopped the game almost every minute. (Every single time a player even came near another player, it was a foul.)
• Games where the referee was forced to stop the game every minute, because players kept diving and acting and pretending they were massively injured or had a head injury.
• Every single game, Argentina struggled to get anything going, until the referee finds a way to help them out massively and they end up winning at the last second.
• In general, big/popular footballing countries are always helped by the referee and get the benefit of the doubt, while smaller/underdog nations are always disadvantaged.
• So many games where you could film any stretch of five minutes and likely see 90% of the players literally standing still. Ball is very slowly passed back and forth between defenders. Whenever someone finds a gap, they immediately turn around and pass the ball backwards, because oh god they would take a risk or move forward for once.
• So many ads, at so many different moments, and always the exact same ones. It literally feels like you’re going mad. We ended up switching to the Belgian channel (which barely has any ads), and even then we had to forcibly walk away when they started to prevent going insane.
• All the “coaches” made the same mistakes again: get up a goal, start to play defensively (like COWARDS!), and end up losing.

Why should I care?

Why am I talking about this?

Because as the world cup continued, both me and my family became less and less interested again. We started skipping more matches. Started doing other things instead of watching. I gave football another chance, the biggest chance I ever gave it, I sat down and watched full matches with my full attention … and it showed that it still didn’t deserve it.

This has nothing to do with favorites or which country we support. The Netherlands played at silly times and went out too early (as expected!), so I barely saw them play. We generally support “whoever plays the best football / wants to actually play”. We don’t care who wins in any match, we just want a fun match.

And the rules of soccer ensure neither a fair game nor a fun one.

These events proved that there actually is at least some corruption within FIFA and some things are rigged. But there’s no actual proof that it’s so bad as people online claim it to be, saying things like “Argentina bought their way to the final”.

No, it’s something much simpler than that. Let me say it again.

The rules of soccer are horrible. They create a system that inevitably ruins the sport and leads to bad decisions and stupid events.

As you probably expected, the internet and newspapers are full of millions of people giving their opinion on these events. You can split them perfectly in two:

• Those that will say “the rule is X, the referee followed the rule, stop whining!”
• And those that will say “the rule is bad, the referee was clearly bought, you’re STUPID and BLIND, this is corruption!”

As usual, these are extremes and neither are true.

The rules of soccer are subjective and paradoxical. Most of the rules are not actual rules, but vague guidelines that are up to interpretatoin by the referee. Some rules directly contradict one another, and it’s again up to the referee to decide which one overrules the other (or which one they remember in the moment).

As such, the argument “the referee followed the rules, so there’s nothing to discuss” can’t exist. There is no way to “follow the rules” if they’re subjective suggestions.

But the argument “the referee is clearly bought / it’s rigged” also can’t exist, because you can’t actually objectively prove the referee was intentionally breaking a rule or forcing a desired outcome.

So now we get the really funny situation in which Americans are suggesting really reasonable fixes for the game and asking really sensible questions about why soccer is so weird. Americans! They barely know how soccer works! Until the start of the world cup, they truly believed half the USA players are top 20 in the world!

These newcomers ask things like “Why doesn’t the game end when it says it should end?” or “Why does one referee not even consider this a foul, while another pulls a red card?” or “Here’s an idea: use the penalty system that every other sport uses, where yellow and red cards are not full-match bans.”

And (European?) people are shutting them down with “we like our rules a lot, shut up please” and “your stupid ass clearly knows nothing, go back to playing hockey”.

If soccer implemented even half of the suggestions by Americans who just discovered soccer … then it would be much much better already. That’s how obvious it is that these are improvements and soccer rules are weird.

As I write this, we have four more matches to go. Two semifinals and two finals (one for 3rd place). And I’m just not interested anymore. The games will likely be way too slow, careful, and defensive. A few referee decisions will determine who wins—half the calls and actions will be questionable at least. Rinse and repeat, forever and ever.

I’ve fallen out of love with the sport again and won’t watch anything for a while. But I can’t even say I’m well-rested now, because watching those matches “to relax” for a week or two just made me annoyed and agitated :p What a bunch of wasted time. What a waste of what could be an even bigger and more awesome sport. I’d rather watch an amateur game where the referee stays out of it and mediocre people play their heart out, than one of these so-called professional teams. I’d rather play such a match myself than watch any more soccer.

Examples

I’ll give a few specific examples to clarify my points.

Example 1: There was a Switzerland game where Xhaka wanted to take a free kick, but an opponent player (I think it was Larin) sneakily kicked the ball away at the last second. Xhaka had already started his kicking motion, so he ended up missing the ball and kicking Larin, who obviously pretended he was dying from that touch.

The result? Xhaka receives a yellow card. And we’re just like: what the fuck? This should be a red card for Larin all day long. The current rules most likely peg this as a yellow card for Larin. But soccer rules are so vague that you could easily say that Larin acted completely against the spirit of the game and should get a red—or, as the referee did, just give the opponent a yellow card for no reason.

Example 2: Let’s stay on the topic of Switzerland. The famous dive (“simulation”) of Embolo against Argentina. It resulted in his second yellow card and being sent off, which was crucial for Argentina because they were losing that game.

Now, the discourse around this is very interesting. Most people say it was a “clear dive”, which is already problematic. What is a dive? How do you know someone is (not) hurt? How do you know it wasn’t just momentum, or they slipped, or whatever? There’s no definition of “simulation”, except for a vague “pretending to be touched/hurt when you’re not”, which you just can’t objectively check.

But okay, sure, it definitely looks like a blatant dive. The footage shows no touch and no reason why Embolo would go to the ground like he’s dying. Like everyone else, I hate the excessive amount of diving and acting in this game.

But then we get the next question: is this worth a red card? This is not “dangerous” play. This is not ruining the game: the ref could simply not blow his whistle and play goes on. Does it make sense to permanently send a player off the pitch—almost surely a death sentence in this game—for this?

No, I’d say not. I don’t care what the current rules say, because nobody knows what the rules say, because they’re more like contradictory guidelines. The rules should just completely ignore this. It doesn’t matter if people roll over the ground. It doesn’t matter if they fall or not. It matters if it’s a foul or not, and that’s all referees should be looking for.

And if we are giving a yellow card for this, then why not for the other fifty instances of this exact thing in every match? At its best, that’s incredibly inconsistent. At its worst, you get people talking about corruption or games being rigged. Because it feels like there’s no other explanation as to why some players can dive and cry all they want with no repurcussions, and others cannot.

Example 3: Okay, let’s talk about Egypt versus Argentina. Egypt has their goal disallowed because fifteen seconds earlier, at the other side of the pitch, someone touched the foot of an Argentina player. Some time later, Argentina’s goal has the exact same issue in the build up—Salah is touched—and is not disallowed.

In both cases, the referee did not call it a foul because the touch was far too light. He let play continue, which is the correct decision in my book. These kinds of small touches happen all the time. They’re not a foul, they’re just the reality with many legs moving around in tight spaces and random stuff happening.

To disallow a goal because something like that happened is ludicrous. If you look long enough, you’ll always find something that allows disallowing a goal. How far back should you check? One can argue that 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 120 seconds before the goal is also relevant and part of the build up. Because, well, that’s how time and cause and effect works.

To disallow it for one team and not the other is baffling. It’s like 15 minutes apart in the same game. Same referee, same players. Yet the exact same situations get wildly different resolutions. That’s how vague and subjective the rules of soccer are, and that’s how large the influence of the referee is.

Example 4: Let’s pick one from the semifinals. (I finish this article a few days after writing the first paragraphs.) Another infamous situation already. England are leading against Argentina … and they immediately decide to sub off all their attackers and play with like 8 defenders. Why the fuck do managers keep doing this? It almost always goes wrong!

What is the reasoning here? “Our current system has allowed us to score one goal and concede none … let’s destroy that system and go all defensive!” As we all know by now, England end up having only 10% possession for the rest of the game—a historic low—and end up losing 2-1 in regular time.

The same thing happened with every other team that decided to just not play the game and just put all the bodies inside their own penalty box. It’s boring to watch. It’s insane. Our local newspaper reported that the average amount of time, per match, that nothing was happening was 45 minutes in this world cup. Literally half of every soccer game is a standstill, a foul, wasting time, waiting for someone to finally throw that ball back into the field.

Why do people keep doing this? Why do teams keep playing like this? Because it works out often enough to be worth a try. Because the current soccer rules reward this kind of thing—more than they reward actually playing your heart out. Defenders are allowed to get away with all sorts of things, while attackers get the whistle blown (or goals disallowed) for the tiniest of things. The rules do not reward attacking play, but wasting time, “tactical fouls”, passing the ball backwards, having no passion at all because then the referee might give you a yellow card for playing too aggressively.

Afterwards, the England manager (Tuchel) said that “Argentina was getting too many chances, they were breaking through, I had to strengthen the defence” (paraphrased). Many people online agreed with this. It was the right move, it just “did not work out this time”.

Well, no. Argentina had one or two chances, but that’s a very low number, and even the worst side in the world will get that. Most of their chances were actually in the first half—the number of them wasn’t increasing.

Most of all, this childish logic of “defense bad = add more defenders” has to go. I can’t believe experienced managers are still doing this. England subbed off their entire midfield and, wow, what a surprise, this meant Argentina had the entire midfield and could do whatever they wanted. And wow, what a surprise, they have the most iconic midfielder in the world called Messi who will do stuff with that freedom. Who could have seen that coming!?

Literally one of the first things kids learn when they play sports is to be proactive. To have a system that makes sure they keep pressure in all parts of the field and stay dangerous. To position themselves such that they decide where the attacker goes, not the other way around. If you hang back and wait, then react, you will lose.

It honestly feels like soccer has somehow regressed a lot in the past decades.

Example 5: From the finals, Argentina vs Spain. Literally every commentator, analyst, viewer agreed that Argentina should have gotten at least fifteen yellow cards. They were randomly kicking players, hitting them in the face, pulling them down by their shirt. Players from Spain were dragged to the ground whenever they took a corner, and for some reason referees automatically call it a foul by the attacking team. (Remember what I said about defenders somehow being rewarded and attacking punished?) It looks bad at first sight. It looks even worse when you see the replay and Argentina just turn it into a wrestling match, and they don’t just “get away with it”, they are actively rewarded for it.

For some reason, referees prefer not to give out yellow cards too early (in the first half). Which is exactly the wrong thing to do! It’s baffling! Everyone knows that you need to draw the line early. It’s the same in life, in parenting, everywhere. The first time someone makes a foul that’s simply worth a yellow card, you give it. Now watch how fouls are reduced in the rest of the match.

In this situation, we get at least 5 offences that are a yellow card, if not bordering on red, and the referee pretends they’re not even fouls. This kind of thing often flies under the radar. When people talk about “referees being biased” or “the game being rigged”, they focus only on big moments like a disallowed goal. But it’s actually the hundreds of small moments that ruin every match and make it nigh impossible for the better team to actually win—a death by a thousand cuts.

(Near the end of the second half, we even have three instances of Argentina players blatantly kicking the ball away into the stands, long after the whistle has blown. This is one of those instances where the rules have improved over the years, because it was becoming a recurring issue, and they are now abundantly clear: immediate yellow card. Yet none was given. Huh?)

People say Spain wasn’t creating too many chances either. Well, how can you if your players are dragged and kicked to the floor whenever they get near the ball? It’s also not actually true. They created a lot of chances, but didn’t finish them at first, and then had the goals disallowed for … again … dubious reasons. Another very typical football touch that would never be called a foul, unless, of course, at some very crucial moments.

People say the aggressiveness/fouling was “both sides”, which is just not true. We counted two instances in 120 minutes in which a Spanish player did something you could maybe consider a foul worth of a yellow card. I dare anyone to watch the Spain games and look for dives, acting, complaining, aggressive behavior … and find more than a handful of instances. It’s just not needed. It’s idiotic. Let the rules forbid and punish all of it.

But this is where we are right now. One team is playing incredibly basic football, and they’re dominating everyone else and touted as some genius team. And the other team objectively reached the finals purely because of referees and the undefined rules of soccer. A finals in which Argentina literally had 0 shots on goal, and 0 shots at all until the 115th minute, which is a record bad world cup performance.

Spain won the world cup because they’re the only team who actually play. They pass the ball forwards instead of backwards or sideways. They actually defend, instead of just subbing on defenders and placing everyone inside their own penalty box like a meat wall. When Spain subs off an attacker, they bring back another attacker. What an invention!

When we watched the Spain games, we kept saying “if they had just one striker, someone actually IN THE PENALTY BOX, they would have five goals by now”. And then, near the end, they’d sub on Merino and immediately get the winning goal! Spain was clearly lacking in some departments, and still it was a walk in the park. They didn’t even look happy when they won. They were just like “too bad we had to play such shit teams that never even attack, but fine, we won, as expected, give us the trophy, let’s go home” :p

Conclusion

I think the final for 3rd place sums up all of this best.

Sure, it’s not a fair comparison, as France and England were not playing an intense match, there weren’t real consequences. But it was still a big match played (somewhat) seriously by big teams.

Beforehand, everyone was saying how stupid and useless the game was, how they probably would not watch. But, well, everyone loved that game. A 6-4 scoreline for England. Almost an amazing comeback by France.

It showed that players do not actually need to dive and argue and be childish actors bugging the referee. It showed that, if soccer had more strict rules that removed the constant fouls and stoppages, it would become a beautiful game again. High-scoring, attacking, creative, players having a laugh when funny things happened.

If the system wasn’t encouraging players to be their most infantile and aggressive selves, then soccer would become a beautiful game again.

As of right now, the rules of succer are much too vague, too subjective, too contradictory, and much too fast to reward defensive/wasteful plays and punish attacking/creative plays.

People forget that we play and watch sports for entertainment. The goal of the game is to win. But it’s having the goal that’s important, not the winning. By definition, most teams will never become champion of anything, they’ll lose at least 50% of their matches. Yes, you need to have a goal (win) and strive to reach it, that’s simply a requirement for something to be a game/sport. But this is a “journey versus destination”-thing: fans of the game love entertaining teams and fun matches, much more than they love their team winning boring games slightly more often.

I could go on and on with examples (from just the games I watched from this world cup). About refrees deciding the match, about soccer rules applied inconsistently within a span of 5 minutes, about soccer rules being stupid in the first place, and how easily you could improve it by simply copying what other sports do.

But I hope the point is clear. Yes, there is corruption within FIFA and referees are often slightly biased. But there’s absolutely no proof or arguments for saying the entire thing is rigged or corrupt. It’s simply the rules of soccer that cause completely inconsistent games and outcomes, and which encourage foul play and boring play. And, yes, most referee decisions can be defended by showing the relevant section of the rules, but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t get how people can say “yeah the red card ruined the game, but rules are rules! What ya gonna do! Stop whining!” Make better rules, change the rules, until applying them is not some convoluted controversial thing.

And it’s simply all these tiny mistakes and injustices—these thousands of tiny cuts—that compound into a massive pile of evidence that, for example, Argentina was basically gifted their way to the final.

This article became way too long. I just wanted to say that I watched a lot of the world cup—against my own expectations, to be honest—and soccer has just gotten worse in all sorts of baffling ways. Maybe, one day, they’ll actually hear all these voices calling for improvements and apply some. Until then, I’ll just stop watching and play soccer myself from time to time, because even watching random people playing in the park is more exciting and fair than this professional bullshit.

Tiamo