Good evening and welcome to this week’s Inside Sport newsletter.
At the very least, there is one moment from the upcoming World Cup that I will fondly look back on in years to come: the rush of childlike excitement as I carefully tore open my first packet of Panini stickers a few weeks ago and spotted the grin of Scott McTominay beaming back at me.
They say football fans measure their lives in World Cups. Well, even with Scotland joining England in the Panini album and returning to the international stage for the first time since 1998, this one has yet to grab me. If you’re feeling the same, you’re not alone.
There are also some very valid reasons why so much of the joy that should accompany the build-up to a World Cup feels to have been sucked away; whether it is the sky-high ticket prices and the opacity of the overall strategy, the role of Fifa and the relationship between Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino, or the last-minute attempt to ban fans from bringing in their own reusable water bottles.
But after months of this enormous 48-team World Cup seeming to hover just over the horizon, the week of the opening game has finally arrived. Perhaps the next few days will bring the bite of tournament fever. There is, after all, nothing quite like the thrill of a breakout talent, the beauty of a kit that instantly becomes iconic, or getting stuck into the teams and groups to watch.
Perhaps, like the glimmer of a shiny Panini sticker, the excitement will arrive unexpectedly too. |
Harry Kane found the back of the net as England laboured past New Zealand in their pre-World Cup friendly (Getty) |
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Mexico-South Africa will become the first fixture to open the World Cup for a second time (2010, 2026). The first meeting finished as a 1-1 draw in Johannesburg. Before that, when was the last opening match at the World Cup to finish as a draw? |
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| Answer at the bottom of the newsletter |
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Answer at the bottom of the newsletter |
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Germany are no longer inevitable as painful World Cup failures loom large |
Germany’s last game in the knockout stages of the World Cup remains their 2014 final victory over Argentina, notes Richard Jolly. The reputation of a country who were once the ultimate tournament team is in need of some repairing. |
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Perhaps Germany have a mountain or two of their own to climb this summer, including ones they normally ascended as a matter of routine. It was a seismic shock when the defending champions exited the 2018 World Cup in the group stage, the sense they lost their way summed up by the sight of Manuel Neuer losing the ball 80 yards from his own goal seconds before South Korea’s Son Heung Min slotted his shot into the unguarded net. It was an ignominious as well as an early end to their campaign.
But there was an action replay of sorts in 2022; Germany, caught out by Japan’s comeback in their opener, could not remedy the damage. They may at least welcome a new format where third-place teams stand a chance of progressing to the knockout stages. |
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World Cup 2026 kits: Every home and away shirt ranked and rated |
Did we really need someone to go review all 96 shirts at the World Cup? No. But Lawrence Ostlere did it anyway, and it is wonderful. |
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Why are Ghana wearing a spider web? What is that on Haiti’s hip? Why have Croatia made us angry? And which kit has won our highly coveted top spot? So, from worst to best, from the visually upsetting to the optically arousing, here are our World Cup 2026 kit rankings. |
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The Curacao blueprint and how Guyana are targeting a similar World Cup miracle |
After Curacao did what most assumed was impossible, Will Castle delves deep into one of football’s unknown nations, Guyana, to uncover what it takes to chase such an unlikely dream of World Cup qualification |
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The expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams has created new opportunity for international minnows to compete at a level that once looked impossible to reach. Those at the top may feel Fifa have made the tournament too big for their own good, diluting the quality. But there’s an argument for the opposite; with new doors now opened, smaller footballing nations are crucially now seeing a greater justification to invest in the development of the game from the ground up.
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Alexander Zverev’s chaotic French Open win showed just how far ahead Jannik Sinner is |
Sinner’s stunning first-week exit at Roland Garros presented a golden opportunity to the rest of the men’s field, writes Flo Clifford in Paris, but they failed to impressively capitalise upon the chance
On the face of it this French Open was not particularly surprising: the trophies went to the second and eighth seeds, respectively a man long dubbed the best to have never won a slam and a teenage prodigy tipped to win a major since the age of 15.
While the final results were hardly seismic, the manner in which both players got there was, with nerves dominating the tournament as both draws, particularly the men’s, opened up. What had been expected to be a procession for Jannik Sinner turned into a complete free-for-all after the top seed melted in the first-week heat.
To say his defeat sent a shockwave through the draw would be an understatement. The question now is whether that shockwave will have fundamentally shifted the landscape of the sport, or whether Sinner will return, refreshed from an extra couple of weeks off, and re-assert his grip on tennis once again.
Read more here. |
Alexander Zverev finally got over the line in a grand slam final (Getty) |
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1986, with a 1-1 draw between Italy and Bulgaria at the venue of this year’s opening match, Mexico City. |
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