And Then There Were Two

On Sunday July 19 at 3 p.m., an estimated two billion people from around the planet will watch as the very last two surviving teams meet in the FIFA 2026 World Cup. 

Over those 90 minutes, those two teams will exhaust themselves trying to win the most treasured sports trophy in history. What a moment we have coming on Sunday afternoon! Somewhere between the round of 32 and this climactic moment, the World Cup stopped being a tournament and became a fever. Forty-eight nations have been boiled down to four, and by Wednesday night they will be boiled down to two. My son Sam (who had been with me at the Spain v Saudi game in the group stages) texted me at midnight after Argentina finally, agonizingly, saw off Switzerland: “It’s happening.” 

He did not need to specify what “it” was. We both knew. The old rivalry between England and Argentina over the past sixty years was to be re-lived in 2026. Oh my, this game puts your life in perspective. 

Here is the number that ought to stop you in your tracks: for the first time in ninety-six years of this competition, the four semifinalists are precisely the four teams that FIFA ranked highest in the world before a ball was kicked. Argentina, Spain, France, England. No Cinderella. No Croatia sneaking through on penalties, no plucky Belgians spoiling the party. 

FIFA, sensibly, redesigned the bracket this year so that the top four could not collide before the final four, sorting them into separate pathways the way Wimbledon protects its seeds. It worked exactly as drawn. Whether that is a triumph of competitive integrity or a small tragedy for chaos is a question I leave to wiser heads than mine. I confess a part of me, the part that fell in love with this sport watching minnows torment giants, misses the chaos a little.

Chaos, mind you, was not entirely absent. It simply arrived early and left its fingerprints everywhere.

Two Old Kings, Different Endings

This World Cup will also be remembered for the quiet, parallel farewells (surely) of two rivals who have shaped a generation. Cristiano Ronaldo, at age 41, became the first man in history to score in six consecutive World Cups, doing so with a brace against Uzbekistan that also made him Portugal’s all-time leading scorer at the tournament. He has confirmed, without ambiguity, that this was his last dance; Portugal’s exit to Spain in the round of 32 closed the book on a World Cup career spanning twenty years. Lionel Messi, three years his junior and the only other man to have played in six editions, offers no such certainty. Having become the tournament’s all time leading scorer with eighteen goals, he has simply refused to say the word retirement, telling reporters he is “living one day at a time” and will keep going “as long as I can contribute.” The 2030 centenary tournament, split across two continents and three nations, would find him forty-three years old. Nobody expects it, exactly. But nobody who has watched him this summer is quite prepared to rule it out either.

The USA, and a Very Peculiar Red Card

One of my great joys this past six weeks has been to witness the enthusiasm Americans have shown toward the still somewhat unfamiliar game of (real) football. Of course that enthusiasm has been galvanized by the United States team and its impressive run. The USMNT thrilled millions, and fans chanting U-S-A celebrated the nation’s 250^th birthday and the success of their team at the same time. 

Yet, the FIFA World Cup is also a heartbreaker. The United States team’s run ended in Seattle at the hands of Belgium, 4-1, a result far more lopsided than the mood beforehand suggested it would be. But the story that will be remembered from that night began days earlier, when Folarin Balogun’s red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina, a straightforward one match suspension under FIFA’s own rules, was abruptly lifted by FIFA’s disciplinary committee mere hours before kickoff. Belgium, understandably astonished, protested. UEFA (the European body of FIFA) called the decision unprecedented and indefensible. The involvement of the American president in lobbying FIFA’s leadership only sharpened the sense that something unusual, and uncomfortable, had occurred. Balogun played. 

The United States still lost, and lost badly, which rather undercuts any theory that the whole affair was worth the trouble. It leaves an odd taste, this business, and I suspect it will be debated in football governance circles long after this World Cup has ended.

The Viking Row

Then there was Norway, where my other son, Lewis, lives and works. Norway arrived at this tournament with no expectation beyond respectability and instead produced the most purely joyful story of the summer. 

Erling Haaland scored in each of his first four World Cup matches, equaling a record set by a Polish forward in 1974, while his compatriots performed their now famous Viking Row from the steps of Times Square to the touchline of every stadium that would have them. It ended, fittingly and cruelly, against England in the Miami heat. 

Haaland was visibly spent, hauled off with fifteen minutes of extra time remaining. As his manager conceded, with startling honesty, he probably should have been substituted ten minutes earlier. Jude Bellingham of England scored twice. Haaland and Bellingham, former teammates at Dortmund, embraced at the final whistle, and something in that image, two young men who plainly adore each other on opposite sides of heartbreak, felt like the whole tournament in miniature.

Azteca Chaos, and Henderson’s Freak Night

England’s own passage to the semifinal produced the strangest footnote of the summer. Against Mexico at the fabled Azteca, England won an extraordinary match three goals to two. In the chaos of celebration, Jordan Henderson, an unused substitute who had not kicked a ball all evening, was booked from the bench for remonstrating with the referee, then fell attempting to leap the advertising hoardings to greet the fans. He broke his wrist badly enough to require surgery and end his tournament. A yellow card and a serious injury, sustained without playing a single minute. Football, I have long maintained, specializes in the absurd.

David, Goliath, and a Heavier Heart

I would be remiss not to pause here, briefly and soberly, on two matters that resist my usual playfulness. Cape Verde, debutants representing fewer than 530,000 souls, came within a whisker, an own goal in extra time, of eliminating Argentina and producing perhaps the greatest upset in the tournament’s history, before falling three goals to two. And this week brought the genuinely heartbreaking news that Jayden Adams, the twenty-five-year-old South African midfielder who played through the death of his own grandmother to help Bafana Bafana reach their first ever World Cup knockout round, has died. No cause has been given, and none should be speculated upon. He deserved better, and so do the family and teammates now grieving him.

Wednesday

Which brings me, hand pressed nervously over one eye as promised, to Wednesday. To meet publishing deadlines, I am writing this before Wednesday. When you read this, it will be history and we shall all know what it delivered. For on Wednesday, England faced Argentina, ancient adversaries bound by 1966, 1986 and 1998, in a semifinal that carries the whole weight of history on its shoulders. Two wins from the final. I shall be watching from Georgia, thinking of Sam and Lewis, thinking of Wembley, thinking of Maradona’s hand (the infamous “hand of God”), hoping that this time, at last, it goes our way.

Christopher Blake is president of Middle Georgia State University. He is a passionate supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, and the men’s and women’s national football teams of England and the United States.