Category: Soccer

I’m on my knees begging, here, FIFA. To recap the first three in this series, the way the 2026 tournament was structured made the third round of the group stage mostly unwatchable, or at least mostly dull. If they structure the next one the same way – or if they follow through on the threat…

In my last post, I discussed the game play in the recent tournament. It was a lot better than I had expected! As I mentioned there, many commentators have taken the position that this was a great tournament, possibly the greatest ever. This post attempts to establish how wrong those commentators are. The tournament had…

I’ve posted in the past about my World Cup Crew and our travels – starting in 2006 somebody has watched every match played, and a handful of individuals have seen almost all of them – personally I’ve missed a total of maybe a dozen or two over the last quarter century. We’re, you know, into…

I retired recently, so I suddenly have a lot of spare time. It’s neat! I like it! And I spent a lot of that spare time during the tournament developing (vibe-coding) a data visualization app to explore some of the hidden dynamics of the cup. It’s been a lot of fun. Feel free to go…