![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/lol_argentina_fans_fail.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Despite the fact that I tongue-in-cheek declared the World Cup over<\/a> after Mexico and the United States were bounced from the tournament nearly two weeks ago, I obviously still watched the remainder of the matches, and the tournament did a little roller coaster in that span and in the end, everything seemed to work out, kind of beautifully, and I find myself wanting to write just one more post about the World Cup, and how it\u2019s truly sad to see that this magnificent journey, has come to an end \u2013 officially.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s interesting, because I don\u2019t think I was really wrong about how the general fun and the feelings of elation and celebration of futbol were kind of sucked out of the tournament once Mexico and the US were eliminated, because fans of sport and story alike all love a good Cinderella story, and both were in the midst of impressive runs, before they hit the walls of Eurpoean opposition.\u00a0 And once the pretenders were bounced, the World Cup kind of devolved back to its typical state of serious business, where the real contenders of the Cup were the last ones standing, and all of the remaining matches were these super serious affairs, between super serious futbol countries.<\/span><\/p>\n One by one, I found myself rooting for the lower seeds of all these matches, like Norway against England, Belgium against Spain in spite of their terse domination over the US, and true to the whole anyone but Argentina mentality, the Swiss as well.\u00a0 And in each case, they all lost, reinforcing the notion that the World Cup always ends up being a race between the same pool of countries, narrowing down to a final four of countries that have all won a Cup at some point.<\/span><\/p>\n By default, I found myself pulling for France over Spain, because I had put France down as my champion in my work bracket that only three people participated in and I\u2019m pretty sure the other two have already forgotten about it, and England over Argentina because they were the team opposing Argentina, plus it was hard to root against a guy like Jude Bellingham who seemed so talented on the pitch while being so charming off of it.<\/span><\/p>\n So naturally it ended up being the surgical dismantling of the French by Spain, who I didn\u2019t even notice had only allowed a single goal the whole tournament to this point, and Argentina beating England after several days of artificial build up, swirling around all of the ugly and nasty factors of why people outside of their fans were all seemingly souring on Argentina, in a hard-fought contest, that naturally ended in controversy, with the generally classy Jude Bellingham almost coming to blows with an Argentinian bench scrub after FT.<\/span><\/p>\n Going into the final weekend, it basically boiled down to France vs. England in the notoriously seemingly unnecessary third-place match that neither team was going to care about, and a match between the Colonizers versus the Racists, where it was surprisingly easy to be pulling for the Colonizers, solely based on the fact that they were not Argentina.<\/span><\/p>\n Usually the third-place match is a pointless match that doesn\u2019t mean anything to most participants, especially if it\u2019s a clash between powerhouses like France and England.\u00a0 It\u2019s my belief that such is usually the case, except when it involves a host nation and\/or a Cinderella surprise team, like when Korea found themselves in the third-place match against also-upstart Turkey in 2002, where both teams let it all hang out trying to end their journeys with a W, which naturally Korea would lose, but the fact of the matter is that they actually cared.\u00a0 But the last few third-place matches have been apathetic and unwatched, and there was little reason to believe this one would be any different, seeing as both had high aspirations to win it all, and anything short of that was just failure.<\/span><\/p>\n But I happened to catch the third-place match, and at first it wasn\u2019t really anything out of expectation, with both France and England emptying out their benches and letting everyone who had been wearing the pinnies throughout the tournament start, save for Kylian Mbappe for France whom most had suspected was going to be playing in order to take and possibly ice the Golden Boot award from Messi.<\/span><\/p>\n And England raced to a quick lead, scoring two in pretty quick succession, and going into half with an absurd 4-0 lead.\u00a0 It was clear that neither team was really trying too hard, with the goals being all the younger players getting some international experience, as well as everyone just trying to avoid getting hurt.<\/span><\/p>\n The second half starts, and someone reminded Mbappe to go get his Golden Boot, and he scores two in the next 20 minutes, France closes the gap to 4-3, England stretches it out to 5-3, France closes it back to 5-4, and at some point around the 80th<\/sup> minute, Jude Bellingham, who had started on the bench, checks into the game, and goes on this ridiculous run and scores England\u2019s sixth goal right before FT.<\/span><\/p>\n It was an absurd exhibition, but the primary thing about it all is that it genuinely looked like both teams were having a blast, and just having fun.\u00a0 It was a true international friendly between two teams who had been facing extreme pressure over the last week, and I felt as if it was probably really cathartic for all the players, especially guys like Mbappe and Bellingham who had probably been facing the most pressure, being the scoring aces for their countries, and it was really refreshing to seeing everyone being smiles and laughing, and after FT, all hugs and respect from all participants.<\/span><\/p>\n A surprising A+ third-place tilt, from what everyone had written off as a pointless exercise.<\/span><\/p>\n And then we get to the main event, where there\u2019s not much to really say that hasn\u2019t already been said at this point \u2013 Spain defeats Argentina, ending their insufferable onslaught, bringing relief and joy to futbol fans, old and new, almost entirely based on the fact that Lionel Messi and Argentina were denied the World Cup trophy, as well as FIFA who did very little to combat the narrative that they were trying to manufacture their victory.<\/span><\/p>\n It was an interesting affair from start to finish, with entertaining tidbits throughout the whole event.\u00a0 The orange shithead getting booed the fuck out of New Jersey (no \u2018and New York\u2019 bullshit here, the match was in New Jersey and only New Jersey<\/em>), Argentina playing dirty as ever, drawing five yellow cards, including two satisfying ones by the especially dirty-playing Enzo Fernandez, resulting in his ejection, and FIFA officiating doing absolutely everything they could in order to favor Argentina, with countless non-calls for Spain and a parade of bonus free-kicks and stoppage time that benefitted Argentina.<\/span><\/p>\n But the thing with futbol, as well as any sport or competitive contest, a competitor must attempt to score points in order to have any chance to win a contest.\u00a0 I was apoplectic<\/a> in 2018 when Korea took zero shots on goal against Sweden, so I can imagine the collective rage and anxiety and frustration from Argentinian fans, when their team took a big fat zero shots on goal, and it was very evident that their entire game plan was to get the game to penalties, if the refs couldn\u2019t help them manufacture a scoring chance, to help negate Spain\u2019s legendary tournament-wide defense, and this was magnified when Enzo was booted, and they had to play a man down for the remainder of the match.<\/span><\/p>\n However, Spain persevered the stacked deck against them, and 30 seconds into 2OT, scored their goal, which would be enough to overcome a dirty opponent with tournament-wide favor from FIFA.<\/span><\/p>\n Argentinian players and most importantly, their front-running fans were sad.\u00a0 Unsurprising, the amount of post-match respect and congratulations were minimal.\u00a0 The Argentinian fans were sad.\u00a0 The orange shithead made (yet another) an embarrassment of himself, photobombing the Spain celebratory trophy hoist.\u00a0 Argentinian fans were sad, and got the fuck out.<\/span><\/p>\n Futbol prevailed.<\/span><\/p>\n What a wonderful World Cup this was.\u00a0 I\u2019m sad that the whole thing is over now.\u00a0 2030 has an insanely high bar to live up to, after how fantastic this one was.\u00a0 But looking forward to it already.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Despite the fact that I tongue-in-cheek declared the World Cup over after Mexico and the United States were bounced from the tournament nearly two weeks ago, I obviously still watched the remainder of the matches, and the tournament did a little roller coaster in that span and in the end, everything seemed to work out, … Continue reading World Cup 2026: in the end, futbol prevails<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[176,100,164,22,83,58,69],"class_list":["post-51379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-murica","tag-comparison","tag-futbol","tag-mexicans","tag-observations","tag-sports","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51381,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51379\/revisions\/51381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}