“Eighteen years ago many say they have the formula to stop Messi and they don’t get it”

After this wonderful experience that has been Qatar 2022, with 32 teams and 64 matches in the same city, with eight stadiums connected to each other by the most modern metro in the world, with more than a million fans from different countries fraternizing in the streets and celebrating at the fan festivals for a month, It has just been announced that Canada-United States-Mexico 2026 will be staged in 16 cities. One step back An elephantic and inarticulate tournament that surely will not have a World Cup climate in the cities, unless Argentina and Mexico or Brazil and Colombia meet in a match. We will have to travel four or five and up to six hours, watch the game, run to the airport, get on another plane, go to another venue, watch some more football, fly away again… A marathon that we find little meaning in . It will essentially be a televised World Cup. And very expensive for those who wish to attend. “It will be the World Cup with the highest earnings in history,” they announce. It happens that revenue is not the objective of this sporting and social phenomenon. In other words: profits for what…? for whom…?

The sixteen venues announced yesterday by FIFA are Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle for the United States; Vancouver and Toronto for Canada; Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey for Mexico.

It will be played again in the boreal summer, but it can be somewhat cold in terms of atmosphere. No city will prepare anything too special for the visitors because they will be swallows. No one will remain in a fixed site for more than three days. The stadiums will undoubtedly be packed, as the combined population of the three countries is 507 million. And the Latino segment of the United States is currently 62 million people -it will reach 65 in four years- and they are the ones who go to soccer. It will be an itinerant show, like the circuses that set up the tent, give the show and leave. I hope it surprises us and forces us to back down.

The venue was granted to the United States because, due to the principle of continent rotation, it corresponded to Concacaf. And to assuage American anger at having lost this Cup to the tiny Qatar. But, of course, the atomization that the Cup will suffer will distort the principle of host country. North America has 24,710,000 square kilometers, two and a half times Europe. A gigantism inappropriate for a tournament. It would lack a sub-headquarters in Alaska and we are complete.

FIFA boasted that in Qatar fans could attend, for the first time, two and even three World Cup matches a day if they wanted to. And many people did it for fun, to experiment. 2026 will be the antipode. Carlos Salinas, a colleague from the Lima sports newspaper Líbero, was seduced by “the possibility of watching two games a day, something impossible in previous World Cups due to the long distances between venues. I was able to do it and it is something that I take as a memory. In Qatar it was viable not only because of the proximity between stadiums but also because of the logistics used by the organization to mobilize fans and fans”.

Fabián Galdi, from the newspaper Los Andes, from Mendoza, Argentina, agreed, like many, on the topic of transportation: “Actually, I was impressed by three aspects: public transportation, punctuality, safety, and efficiency; 2) the majesty of the stadiums, with seats for each attendee, bathrooms in perfect condition and permanently cleaned; and 3) The Press Centers, which allow each accredited journalist to work comfortably”.

Jair Moná, a Colombian journalist covering EA Sports International, is precisely astonished by a very peculiar topic: “How do they drain 70,000 people from the Al Bayt stadium in one hour, all on buses…? Incredible. Because you go by metro to Lusail and from there 28 minutes by bus to Khor. And the evacuation is so neat and fast that you don’t understand how they do it… That and the infrastructure seemed fantastic to me”.

The highest point in Qatar, for the majority of journalists and fans, has been the concentration of the entire World Cup in Doha, something that will not happen in 2026. “What struck me the most about this World Cup is that in a single city They have seen so many and such good stadiums, with such order and organization -says Enrique Cruz, from the newspaper El Litoral, from Santa Fe, Argentina-. When I came I thought we were all going to be crowded here, but they brought in a million and a half people and we didn’t even realize it. They fell to the ground with all the preconceptions that we brought”.

the first runner-up

Today we will have the first finalist of the World Cup. Nothing less. The first name that next Sunday at 10 in the morning will seek the maximum glory of the sport: to be world soccer champion. Argentina or Croatia. We will not do the preview, always so fallible. We will barely outline what we glimpse. Both are very even and look a lot alike, with a collective game, very balanced and they respect each other a lot. Argentina is a physically and mentally tough team, they are very strong in the head and they have Messi. Eighteen years ago many say they have the formula to stop Messi and they can’t. In a single maneuver defines a party. Van Gaal said that Messi didn’t defend, and that was the key to beating Argentina; he shot himself in the foot.

At the same time, Argentina reveres Croatia for its fighting spirit, its indisputable ability to carry out difficult games, because it also has a genius -Luka Modric- and, above all, because Croatia thrashed it 3-0 in Russia 2018, a history of weight to walk with diving shoes. “This time it will be a different game,” said Tagliafico, one of the four Argentines who suffered that terrible defeat. The others were Otamendi, Acuña and Messi, who are still here. Croatia also has four survivors who started that game: Modric, Perisic, Brozovic and Lovren. Many names have changed. And especially the current affairs of Argentina, which looks infinitely better now. The tip is the goalkeepers, both magnificent: Dominik Livakovic and Dibu Martínez.

If they got this far it is because they are both great teams. Croatia has won only one game of the five played, the others were draws. It means that it is not easy to defeat him, but victory is not easy for him either. We see Argentina very well. We have remarked it before: the footballer from the River Plate, when he sees the goal nearby, he turns into a wolf. And they are already in wolves.

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