
Cleethorpes Town · Defender · #0 · England · 30 yrs

Iran's national football team held its first open training session in Mexico on Thursday, offering a glimpse of a squad preparing for the World Cup under the shadow of conflict with the US as President Donald Trump claimed a breakthrough in efforts to end the war.

Ted Lasso will deliver a message of hope before the USA’s first game, in an America that is not a fit or desirable host right nowShortly before 6pm local time on Friday night at the Los Angeles Stadium, the actor who plays Ted Lasso – the fictional manager of a fake team in a falsely heartwarming version of football – will tell hundreds of millions of TV viewers tuning in to watch the start of the American leg of the Fifa World Cup that football unites the world.In an interesting twist, the actor Jason Sudeikis will do this at a time when the World Cup host is simultaneously bombing the second-ranked country in Group G, having recently murdered its head of state. The message of unity is one likely to be heard by the US president, Donald Trump, who has initiated six military conflicts in his second term, and whose brutally divisive immigration policies have now led to the barring of Omar Artan, the reigning African referee of the year. Continue reading...

FIFA's president Gianni Infantino has been most visible ingratiating himself with US President Donald Trump ahead of the 2026 World Cup, so much so that he has had to defend himself from accusations of breaching FIFA's duty of political neutrality. FRANCE 24's Emerald Maxwell reports.

BBC TV and radio host on sportswashing, the brilliance of watching Argentina up close and why Donald Trump won’t be able to hijack the football glory“Before every tournament there are always concerns,” Kelly Cates says as she approaches her fifth World Cup as a television and radio presenter. “There’s always something everybody’s worried about. This time I worry about the humidity and the altitude for the players and there are political concerns, obviously.“But there are also concerns that it’s not going to feel like a World Cup. In the US, they probably see that as a good thing. They probably see it as: ‘We’re going to make it better.’ Whereas we’re looking at it from a more traditional point of view, thinking: ‘Why are you going to change something that’s so amazing in the first place?’” Continue reading...