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What’s left after this World Cup? A kind of messy hope | Jonathan Liew
Kazakhs cheering Uzbeks, Bengalis wild for Argentina … This tournament was once a playground for nationalism. Now it shows how flimsy that allegiance is wlop.pl
It’s the World Cup final, so you pick a side. And don’t worry if you happen to be part of the 98.9% of the human race that is neither Spanish nor Argentinian – just make something up. Maybe you like the Spain kit. Maybe you’ve always been an admirer of Lionel Messi. Maybe you’re still raw about the Falklands or Diego Maradona, maybe you disagree with the Pedro Sánchez government’s stance on Palestine/Israel, maybe you once ate a dodgy empanada on your gap year. Nobody needs to see your working. Only two rules really apply: be partisan and be quick about it.
The MetLife Stadium on Sunday night was a melting pot of colliding incongruities and temporary identities. The former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was wearing an Argentina shirt. The comedian Trevor Noah wore a Spain shirt. Indeed, ticket sales data suggests that an overwhelming proportion of the crowd was American. The most consequential fixture in international sport was, as it turned out, little more than a grand cosplay for the New Jersey leisure market.
Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Report: Le'Veon Bell's arrest relates to child-support payments
When news broke that former NFL running back Le'Veon Bell was arrested in Canton on a warrant from Michigan, there were no details as to the underlying reason for the move. Via Aaron Hughes of the Canton Repository, the arrest happened due to allegedly unpaid child support.
Bell's lawyer, Thomas Shaffer, told Hughes that Bell's support payments "inaccurately" reflect his NFL salary.
"Six months ago he cashed in an NFL pension to pay $50,000 in child support for that child," Shaffer told Hughes. "His guidelines are still inaccurately being deemed based on his NFL salary and his professional boxing career. This is a revolving door because he pays a number that doesn't reflect his true income. The issue will never end. The court needs to reflect his true income."
That's fine, but Bell's NFL salary ended five years ago. He's surely not the first person with child-support obligations who had a significant reduction in his income. Whatever the solution, it should have been solved long before Bell was arrested for not paying amounts based on his income from five years ago.
The 2026 World Cup was full of spectacle, scandal and compromise | Jonathan Wilson
This was a good rather than great World Cup on the field. In the background, things were a lot less edifying
Perhaps it’s too early, with the shreds of gold tape still fluttering through the New Jersey sky, to make a proper assessment. That will only come when everything has sunk in properly, when memories have had the chance to settle and shape themselves, when the consequences of certain events have become clear. But let’s try anyway to make some sort of assessment of where the World Cup that ended with Leandro Paredes grappling with Gavi ranks historically.
The Balogun Affair could yet have major consequences. At the moment, it feels that the world has moved on, but that’s the nature of tournaments. They have a momentum of their own, a drive towards the finish that tends to sweep everything else aside. But there can be little doubt that the bending before political pressure, sweeping aside 64 years of precedent to ensure a particular player could take the stage, just as Gianni Infantino had done with Cristiano Ronaldo, just as he had done in gerrymandering the qualification criteria for the Club World Cup to ensure Lionel Messi played, represents a milestone.
Continue reading...Why Blue Jays’ Bieber needs to find his slider to keep building momentum