The Good, Bad and Ugly of World Cup 2026 So Far
While Aston Villa fans are either enjoying a summer off or worrying about UEFA cost spreadsheets, there’s a World Cup on. It’s a good chance to remember what football was like before the Premier League made it a product, or is it?
The Good
Up to the quarter-final point, it’s been a surprisingly entertaining World Cup, depending on whether or not you made the correct call to stay up and watch a game or caught the highlights the next day.
So far, the standout choices have been Mexico vs. England and Argentina vs. Cape Verde. Both of which were excellent games to practice your sleep deprivation resistance the next day.
If you decided to do it for some of the other games, your opinion might not have been the same, and that’s where the bite-sized highlights the next day have come into their own.
While it’s hard to appreciate the whole game, this is the future as far as broadcasting goes, and it’s only going to get shorter and less in-depth than we are used to. TIKTOK World Cup 2030 might already be here.
From an Aston Villa point of view, there’s been more interest than usual in the World Cup. Emiliano Martínez continues to help Argentina limp along to an unlikely defence of their title, despite standing watching most of the shots he faces fly in with little or no chance of stopping them. A trademark tip over the bar in the dying moments of the Cape Verde game was his highlight.
Other Villans did exactly as fans know they could do. Ezri Konsa, we will come to in a moment, but Rogers and Watkins, despite limited minutes, haven’t done anything wrong. Watkins, despite being on the bench the most, has managed to avoid injury, unlike Jordan Henderson.
Viktor Lindelof was fighting a losing battle as the one Swedish defender who knew how to defend in Graham Potter’s tactical plan, and Evan Guessand made as much of an impression for the Ivory Coast as he did for Villa.
Tielemans and McGinn put in goal-scoring performances for their countries, but alas for McGinn, he was playing for Scotland, who seemingly will never qualify from a group stage. After scoring in the win against Haiti, all McGinn and co. needed was another point, or not to get thumped, to make it through the expanded tournament.
Ex-Villan of the Tournament – Orjan Nyland
There was a time before Emi Martinez that Aston Villa struggled with goalkeepers. That time may be coming back sooner than we’d like, but one of Martinez’s predecessors has shown what Villa fans only saw in one game.
Nyland has been rock solid for the Norway side, and his performance in knocking out Brazil was just as good as the night he helped Aston Villa beat Leicester City to qualify for the League Cup final in 2020.
He saved Bruno Guimarães’ penalty, kept a comical own goal out with probably the save of the tournament, then trash-talked the retiring Neymar before laughing in his face.
Nyland was young and a bit poor at crosses in his time at Villa, but as that game against Leicester showed, there is a goalkeeper in there.
The Bad
It’s not all been good news on the Villa front. Amadou Onana suffered a ruptured ACL in Belgium’s win over the USA, ruling the Villa record signing out for a minimum of nine months.
This injury is a twofold problem for Aston Villa. Firstly, there’s the injury itself. Going into a Champions League season without one of your midfield options is less than ideal.
Secondly, the knock-on effect this has on the transfer window cannot be underestimated. Going into the window, the futures of many Villa players were up for debate, yet Villa, with a Europa League triumph and a fourth-place finish, were in a relative position of strength to withstand interest in Morgan Rogers, Emi Martinez, Ollie Watkins and anyone else, or at least deal on their own terms.
The UEFA settlement for breaching spending rules meant a one-in, one-out situation, but the previous worst-case scenario would be you go again with what you have and bank the Champions League revenue as profit.
Now, with a major injury, the position may change. While FIFA will pay a decent chunk of Onana’s wages while he is out, Villa are still down a player they need to replace. With Villa having one of the oldest squads in the Premier League, at least some fresh faces were needed. Now any plans will need to involve midfield cover, and to do that adequately, you’d imagine someone has to be sold.
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The Ugly
Where do you start in this, the most online and influencer-based of World Cups?
Will it be how the press has set the narrative of Ezri Konsa being the weak link in England’s defence, all because Reece James didn’t track his man versus Croatia?
Or is it the ultimate FIFA influencer, President Trump?
Konsa has been steady, if a little exposed, playing outside of the rigid structure of Unai Emery’s Villa. Reece James is one of the most out-of-position full-backs England could have chosen, as well as the most injury-prone. Djed Spence seems to have been picked because he’s a bit fast, and neither has actually given Konsa any cover.
For England’s media discourse to focus on Konsa as the problem when Stones, Guehi, and the midfield have been equally responsible for lapses is just their typical need for a scapegoat and detracts from what is England’s best chance of winning the World Cup since Southgate’s team fluffed their lines against Croatia in 2018.
The win against Mexico was a very un-English performance on the World Cup stage, full of grit and determination. If they can show that in the next games, the dream is on; the press doesn’t need to do anything other than report while the team are still in.
Then you have the ugliest influencer, President Trump, interfering on behalf of the USA to have the suspension of Folarin Balogun deferred. It’s not a surprise, considering how much Gianni Infantino panders to Trump, but to actually see it play out in real time is a farce.
Worse than that, it gives credence to conspiracy theories about the rest of the tournament. Should they have sent Messi off in the first game? Was Croatia’s offside snickometer goal fabricated to keep Portugal in? Did the referees abuse the VAR process to keep Argentina in against Egypt?
The answer to the on-pitch decisions is, of course, subjective. Big teams get decisions, while smaller, less fashionable teams show naivety, especially late on. It’s always happened and always will; there’s no great conspiracy at work.
However, the Trump intervention, which is so obviously an abuse of power, opens the door to theories from anyone online who isn’t happy about the outcome of a game.
The President has set a dangerous precedent here, and every contentious decision moving forward will be more open to accusations of favouritism that will detract from a World Cup that has delivered on the pitch.
UTV
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You have got wrong about PDJT as like in U.S he’s been cleaning up the corruption with USAID , what he said , to
Infantino was he thought it shouldn’t be a red card and said it should be changed ( all said in public) .
PDJT knows that these organisations are corrupt and just showed it up.