Assessment of the World Cup: Controversies, Football Quality, and Historical Rank

Perhaps it’s too early, with the shreds of gold tape still fluttering through the New Jersey sky, to make a proper assessment. That will only come when everything has sunk in properly, when memories have had the chance to settle and shape themselves, when the consequences of certain events have become clear. But let’s try anyway to make some sort of assessment of where the World Cup that ended with Leandro Paredes grappling with Gavi ranks historically.

The Balogun Affair could yet have major consequences. At the moment, it feels that the world has moved on, but that’s the nature of tournaments. They have a momentum of their own, a drive towards the finish that tends to sweep everything else aside. But there can be little doubt that the bending before political pressure, sweeping aside 64 years of precedent to ensure a particular player could take the stage, just as Gianni Infantino had done with Cristiano Ronaldo, just as he had done in gerrymandering the qualification criteria for the Club World Cup to ensure Lionel Messi played, represents a milestone.

Perhaps in the future we will simply accept the principle that famous players get dispensation because making money is more important than justice or the good of the game – the prioritisation of revenue generation has been a feature of the 2026 tournament – or perhaps this will stiffen the sinews of opposition to Infantino; it’s been notable, for instance, how many British politicians – and some American ones – have taken to criticising Fifa and its president. An immediate consequence could be the expansion of the World Cup to 64 teams as Infantino looks to shore up his base, particularly given the damage US (and Canadian) immigration policy has done to his claims to be a champion of the global south.

Other issues that have sunk into the mulch of games will surely resurface. The treatment of Iran, for instance, was scandalous, and sets a worrying precedent. Ticket prices may be lower at the 2030 World Cup, but the idea that a reasonable proportion should be available to the regular fans who go to league football every week is now gone. The World Cup is no longer a mass movement but a luxury event.

The price paid by the host cities, similarly, will only become truly apparent in retrospect. That is financial, but it’s also social. In the US and Canada, there have been street sweeps of the homeless, people with very little deprived of what few possessions they have, ID and medication. In Mexico, there has been an outcry about water extraction and environmental damage linked to World Cup projects.

The Italian newspaper la Gazzetta dello Sport ran a double page on Saturday calling the World Cup a “disaster”, outlining certain major issues: ticket prices, Balogun, the weather, the increase in games, the decrease of rest. That may be an overstatement, but what followed really was a disaster as the newspaper found its ticket allocation for the final slashed from five to two. It’s not entirely clear whether the two were linked, but the idea that a media outlet could be denied access for rejecting the official narrative that this World Cup has been the greatest ever is dystopian.

That fitted the generally contemptuous attitude of Fifa towards the media at this tournament. While some venues – notably Houston and Atlanta – went out of their way to be welcoming, basic organisation and facilities were the worst for at least six World Cups. Quite understandably, nobody in the real world cares about journalists and whether the wifi works, but it’s indicative of a more general approach: fans are revenue units to be milked mercilessly; the media an irritating imposition.

The football, meanwhile, was good but not great. There were a number of fine and dramatic games – Brazil v Japan, Morocco v the Netherlands, England v Mexico, Argentina v Cape Verde, Norway v Côte d’Ivoire, Belgium v Senegal, Norway v Brazil, Argentina v Egypt – but unfortunately almost all of them were in the last 32 or last 16. The quarter-finals were not especially inspiring. Argentina’s win over England in the semi was thrilling and involved a collapse that will be discussed for years, but Spain’s win over France was almost too easy; Spain quickly established a degree of superiority over the French that was never really challenged.

And the final was dismal, an awful affair. The right team won, in their familiar bloodless way, but the grim spectacle was a direct consequence of the indulgence shown Argentina earlier in the tournament. The ending, inevitably, colours what went before, and drags this tournament behind 2022 and 2018, let alone the glorious World Cups of the 1980s or 1998. Posterity can judge where exactly in the middle rank it sits, whether above or below 2014 and 2006. It was not great but it was good and, beyond the Fifa bluster, that’s fine.