World Cup now an ‘Infantino fluffing event’ as FIFA kill football

FIFA are destroying international football and the World Cup is a high-profile victim; there’s not a lot of giddiness here.

Is anybody really looking forward to this World Cup apart from Daniel Storey? Mail us at theeditor@football365.com

The World Cup has been destroyed

Warming up to the World Cup I’ve just watched the Italia 90 documentary on Prime. I’m of an age where ‘90 was the first World Cup I really got into being 13 at the time.

It’s widely regarded as one of the best ever World Cups, however the football was generally crap. Without doubt it’s more vibes based, especially from an English perspective. Gazza’s tears, Platt’s volley, World in Motion, Nessun Dorma. Cameroon with Roger Milla, Cannigia assaulted. Italy having a beautiful shirt with the late Toto being a single tournament icon etc.

One thing that did jump out to me watching the documentary however was that the fan experience was a sign of the social climate, not only in this country but the last true “tournament for the people” not an Infantino fluffing event but one before modern-day capitalism had taken hold.

The 80s being plagued by terrace hooliganism mirroring the street rioting around the time of Thatcherism. It was a reflection of society, that was how the frustrations of working-class people filtered into football. A different time, pre internet and social media, a time when the game was working class, looked down upon by politicians who distanced themselves from the sport, when football was not monetised and fans could realistically go to an international tournament without mortgaging their house for the experience.

The last true World Cup we had was in 2014 in Brazil, a true football country but even that was impacted by politics as the country couldn’t afford the financial expenditure imposed as a pre requisite to hosting the tournament by FIFA.

A 20 year overview of World Cups past and present: to be clear, people far more qualified and eloquent than I have gone further into the details so this is only a synopsis:

2018 – War mongering megalomaniac
2022 – Dictatorship with tournament built on migrants deaths during construction
2026 – War mongering megalomaniac
2030 – Planet destroying multi continent event in order to give a free pass to:
2034 – Dictatorship with tournament built on migrants deaths during construction

FIFA are destroying international football, accelerating the switch that I expect to happen, to the club game being king. Hence the power grab by FIFA expanding the World Club Cup as they can see that their power is on the wane.

Going back to the point of this mail, which is longer than expected unfortunately, is that the World Cup is now a competition that can only be attended by the super rich in despotic countries that have no heritage in football and are only hosting the tournament for sports washing and money.

The result of this being that working class football supporters who dream about going to a World Cup have been priced out of realising their dream due to capitalistic monetisation of the sport they love.

This is an extension to the position in the UK where the working class have, in many cases, priced out of supporting their clubs due to the capitalistic monetisation of the Premier League. Global growth – tick. Local support and club mobility within the football pyramid – big cross.

The main plus point compared to the 80’s and 90’s is that these supporter battles borne out of frustration are no longer on the terraces and/or streets where people were seriously injured or killed but is now in online forums where no physical harm can be done. Vastly more people involved however and the mental health of people can be called into question but….

Modern football isn’t it, no longer jumpers for goalposts, more dividends for shareholders.
Brian (BRFC)

Re-watching some England woe

I’m just binge watching all goals World Cup 2002 on YouTube (my favourite World Cup, first one I was old enough to go to the pub, the Argentina and Denmark games being in the morning led to two epic all-day parties).

Anyway, that’s irrelevant. I have also watched back, for the first time I think, Germany 4 – England 1. I remember Upson’s goal, I remember the Lampard “goal”, and I remember England being dog shit. But I had no memory of how terrible all four Germany goals were defensively. Absolute shambles.

No conclusions, just needed to say it to someone and it’s 20 past midnight.
Paul

What are we expecting from England at the World Cup?

So a couple of things about the World Cup for England: firstly, what’s par this time?

Obvs QF is the default, but I think we’ve currently got the best combination of manager and players I think we’ve had in my lifetime so aiming higher might be fair? 3 of the 4 QFs under Southgate were successful, and his time in charged has been fully retconned as a national embarrassment for some reason, so matching that probably isn’t enough anymore.

Also the media absolutely *hates* Tuchel, so any sniff of underperformance will have Rowley Birkin on the warpath again. The group seeding stuff that I’ve paid no attention to will probably help, but are we genuinely one of the best four teams? No. Have we magically worked out how to deal with playing in the summer? No. And the shiver I felt at the sight of Burn and Maguire being fired out of the Mark Wright cannon to salvage a draw vs Japan in the spring has not been forgotten.

And secondly: do we know who the press has lined up as their Black scapegoat this time, or is it just Bellingham for the foreseeable? I pay no attention to the Farage Fanzines now but I haven’t seen any outrage nonsense seeping out about having tattoos, big headphones, buying stuff for your mum, having a nice watch, etc. Are we due a Beckham year?
Neil Raines

READ: Eze aims to resist walkout again as unlikely England hero emerges – World Cup squad number analysis

Which Premier League clubs will be diddled by World Cup?

Following the publishing of the list of ‘Which Premier League clubs have the most World Cup players’ – what would be really interesting is how many minutes those players have played this season and will likely play next season – versus how many minutes they could feasibly play for their country with a “most affected” weighting. (Though I’m sure we’re all too busy to put it together)

Unsurprisingly, City and Arsenal top the list of attendees – with players like Haaland and Rice, varying degrees of knackered from 50+ games in the season, then (assuming Norway go deep as I expect them too) another 5+ starts in the tournament, then Khusanov and Eze who will likely be a bit tired, but then unlikely to play more than a few games worth of minutes due to being a lesser-used player, or playing for an unfancied side, and finally, say, a Trafford and Merino who have done very few minutes in the domestic season, followed by being a lesser/never used player. With both, naturally, have the benefit of deep benches anyway, even factoring only a few of their attendees are first teamers both ends, they’ll live.

On a more weighted scale, my pick for “most affected” would be Villa – a long season of relatively intense football for a limited squad, Champions League football again next season – Digne, Konsa, and Martinez*, all likely to be first teamers that go quite deep into the tournament, Rogers possibly, but definitely likely to get quite a few minutes with Watkins, even if he doesn’t start, McGinn will be ever-present in the group and put a real shift in, and could get out of the group if fortune favours them, and Tielemens and Onana both representing a Belgium with a group that they should destroy, and a very comfortable “vs a 3rd placed team” next round – and while they actually didn’t play that many more games than, say, United, in 2025/26, the average age of their attendees is a jump on the averages of those around them with numbers going.

Oh look, it’s only 3 full paragraphs!
Harold Erval Hooler

Konate a reminder of human element

Just read Konate admissions regarding his depression during this last season. We hold these guys up and hero worship them, we berate them and hate them / love them but we never truly know them.

I actually felt sad reading his interview for him of course but also for myself, whilst watching him underperform during the season never once did I think he had issues that were affecting him.

That’s just bad and a poor reflection of me and I guess the vast majority of us football fans.

It just demonstrates that you never truly know what someone else is going through.

In the game of life money contributes to happiness but it doesn’t guarantee it!
Chris Glasson

A defence of xG

Disgruntled, RSA writes that “xg means nothing and it’s one of these faux stats that people have made up to try to quantify the unquantifiable”

xG isn’t always right. Hull is a brilliant example of this and there are always outliers with statistics. That doesn’t mean it’s faux stats and it can’t be a good measure to use in general (unless you take one example in isolation obviously…)

So I thought I would run these faux stats over the last six Premier League seasons looking at the expected league positions, taking the xG (expected goals) – xGA (expected goals against) and see how accurate faux stats are.

20/21 – predicted 4/6 of the top 6 accurately. predicted 3/6 of the bottom 6
21/22 – 6/6 of the top 6, 4/6 of the bottom 6
22/23 – 6/6 of the top 6, 4/6 of the bottom 6
23/24 – 5/6 of the top 6, 4/6 of the bottom 6
24/25 – 5/6 of the top 6, 4/6 of the bottom 6
25/26 – 4/6 of the top 6, 4/6 of the bottom 6

So it accurately predicted the top 6 and bottom 6 positions of 55 out of 72 times, so an over 75% hit rate. Not bad for faux statistics. If someone told you there was a statistic that let you predict 75% of the Euromillions numbers over the next 6 weeks, I reckon you would use it no?

I wanted to double check the whole table so I ran an average of how many positions the statistics were off from reality.

20/21 – 1.9 average variation in position
21/22 – 2.3
22/23 – 2.6
23/24 – 2.7
24/25 – 1.6
25/26 – 3.1

So the faux stats are accurate within 2.4 for expected league finish over 6 seasons. Not perfect but that feels pretty accurate to me. In 21/22, it even got the top 5 order exactly correct. There were of course exceptions:

Brighton in 20/21 season were expected to be 4th but came 6th.
Brentford in 23/24 season were expected to finish 8th but came 16th
This season was wild with both Sunderland (expected 18th) and Villa (expected 6th) smashing their expectations. Palace also dropped from an expected 7th to 15th

So yes statistics aren’t perfect. The problem with statistics is, they are often pretty damn accurate.
Rob A (Dan, London is right, we are loving it, keep complaining everyone) AFC

Briefly back to Arsenal and the external noise

I’m hugely late to the party here, but I read Dan’s mail saying that Arsenal fans are loving living rent free in other people’s heads and wanted to present a counter argument.

Like pretty much all of us, I watched the game on Saturday and thought the better team won. Objectively, it’s hard to complain when you lose a match after having <30% possession and one shot on target.

This was a point that I brought up with the only Arsenal supporter I know. He’s a guy I used to go to school with, and met by chance again after 20+ years when I started a new job six months ago. I have zero history of moaning about Arsenal’s style of play to him, or any agenda to wind him up.

Yesterday I sent him a ping on the work messaging platform, congratulating him on winning the title and commiserating on the PSG defeat. I also asked if he thought Arteta might now evolve the team’s style to move away from the fine margins-based approach after the defeat, given the flak they’ve taken for being negative.

What followed was an exchange that highlighted that actually, there’s a whole host of online trolls living rent free in his head. He’d been in Budapest, and seemed convinced that Arsenal had been undone by pedantic refereeing on Saturday – “blowing every time a PSG player was touched”.

As a counter, I mentioned that the Trossard/Saka handballs are the sort of thing that I’ve seen given repeatedly this season (citing the pen given against Bayern at the Parc des Princes) – “nope, everyone just wants Arsenal to lose so they go looking for things”.

I tried my hardest to bring the conversation back to how Arsenal refuse to go for the throat in 95% of their games, suggesting it invites mental fatigue. “No, look at what we have to compete against. Strongest ever Premier League, cheating City, cheating Chelsea. It’s so stressful for the players”.

I pointed out the billion pound squad assembled to deal with the attrition of a long season, and mentioned that if they tried to put teams away early more often the stresses might not accumulate so relentlessly. “No, everyone has an issue with Arsenal’s style of play and they make it the focal point, it’s bullshit”.

I could go on, but this is already long enough. Suffice to say, I was surprised that someone who had plenty to celebrate had been so completely undone by the external noise surrounding his team. So much so that he started talking in circles as a kind of defence mechanism, pointing to the same 2 or 3 gripes over and over.

So while there are doubtless plenty of people cut from the same cloth as Dan, surely there’s likewise a large cohort who recognise the kernel of truth at the nub of all the denigration. Because if there weren’t any truth in it, why be bothered by it?
Keith Reilly

Pedant corner

In a recent correspondence about how much he despises Arsenal, Simon S reminisced about assuming the identity of Robert Fleck during his jumpers-for-goalposts sessions as a young whippersnapper. This was because of ‘watching Norwich in Europe, going head to head with Euro giants’ which stuck in his head. Sadly, Robert Fleck never played in Europe for Norwich, so Simon S can take solace in the fact that he is likely to have forgotten how diabolical Arsenal were in 30 years time, and will probably be pretending to be Marouane Chamakh from the 2025-26 Arsenal vintage entertainers in the garden with his grandkids.

Yours in everlasting pedantry.
D*cky Malb@lls