Honestly, the world game of soccer did itself a lot of good in the past six weeks. And then, like the scorpion, it reverted to form. It blew away virtually everything else on the media carousel. A Norse Viking, a dilutive Argentinian, the Cabo Verde party bus and the predictable collapse of England led the bill de faire.

They even answered the question “What ever happened to 67-year old Madonna?” (They were less successful answering why we should care.)

As we detailed here the quadrennial exhibition of excess and gaudiness was perhaps the biggest takeaway.. “One of the joys of the current World Cup soccer event is seeing the unbridled joy of the Europeans who have decamped to North America to follow their teams. The Caledonian Crusade of kilted Scots in Boston. The Hup-Hup Orange flood of Dutch fans in Dallas. The massed Norwegians pulling en masse on the oars on a Seattle escalator.

Peak Euro summer has to be the German tourist meandering around North America to follow the Mannschaft while discovering the sheer joy of fast food. Bucc-ee gas stations. Endless interstate highways. Ordinary stuff that Euros can’t believe. Liker Waffle house. And Wal Mart. And drive-thru restaurants.

Because their own media only spins leftist slants, Euros were expecting the America of race-crank, Joy Reid: “Nobody black I know is really excited about the 4th of July." It is the celebration of slaveholders who freed themselves from having to pay taxes to the Crown for their slave empire.”

nstead they got friendly restaurants, 100-stall gas stations and fabulous stadiums. Which they will take back to their home countries. @pstonge East Germans snuck to West Germany and were blown away by capitalism. Today it's the Europeans who are blown away by America.”

But like any visitors the soccer crowd started to rot by the end of the first week. As the field narrowed and the skies darkened with Canadian smoke the event began pushing its luck till there was nothing left but the game that the America media and public ignore for most of the intervening World Cup years.

As the French seemingly threw away the third-place game to England, and Argentina outlasted a passive Argentinian squad, the event itself was becoming a turgid festival of the same-old same-old. Cliches about the refereeing and the art of the dive started to predominate. None of which was helped by the sore loser rumble of Messi and Argentina at the end of the game . Punctuated by Argentina turning its back on the Spanish team receiving its medals.

Amazing thing about how talented soccer players are. They're athletes. They're lawyers. They're tragic actors. They're cheerleaders. They're fashion models. They’re sore losers. Truly remarkable.

Retired legend Roy Keane comes at it from a bias as an Irish international and former coach during the days of soccer hooligans and fans mocking black players, But he was less than impressed with the hyped Final played before Donald Trump and his bridge buddy Mark Carney. Especially the referee’s attempt to keep the total goals under 2.5 by disallowing a likely game-winner late in the second half.

“I’ve just seen the biggest robbery of this World Cup. The ball comes into the box, nobody touches anybody, everyone goes up for it, then one Argentina player starts shouting. The next thing you know, two defenders are on the floor appealing, Nico Williams has scored, and Emiliano Martinez … who wasn’t even touched… is somehow lying there as well asking for a foul. The referee blows immediately. No VAR review. No replay. No check to see if there was actually any contact. Just disallowed.

Apparently if enough Argentina players fall over at the same time, that’s now considered conclusive evidence. If we’re being honest, Paredes shouldn’t even still be on the pitch after some of the tackles he’s made today. Yet somehow the only thing the referee managed to spot instantly was an invisible foul.”

Okay, Roy is a biased hot head. But having him sum up the final stanza of FIFA2026 is not a good look for the organizers who’ve just fleeced Canadian and American cities for billions. The disallowed Spanish goal was far from the only flash point — hello, fouls 100 yards from the goal—but It raises integrity questions about a highly questionable organization that lets nothing get between itself and mountains of cash.

While Trump’s America at any price can be understood in a mercantile fashion, the FIFA crowd are the people who’d sold their brand to Qatar— going so far as moving to November of 2022 to rake in the euros. So any suspicion that the event wasn’t square are legit.

(Not to be outdone on the Fawlty Towers hospitality award, the Globe & Mail’s Irish columnist summed ups the entire event for Canadians by saying they will never be any good at it, and why not just take up hockey sticks? Probably just upset that Ireland gagged their qualifier.)

So best that the orgy of soccer that endeared itself to fans goes away for a while to let quasi-fans forget what they saw at the end. Perhaps the best summation of the outcomes comes from @MsMelChen World Cup Exit Reactions:

South Korea: immediate national inquiry, special tribunal. Coach canceled from polite society

Norway: Massive rowing party in downtown Oslo. Everyone’s drunk on aquavit and happy

Germany: Emergency DFB (Deutscher Fußball-Bund) Summit to analyze what went wrong with soul-searching German efficiency and thoroughness. Already produced tactical white paper titled “Gegenpressing 2.0: Rebuilding the German Soul.”

USA: sorry? what is this sport? oh right, it's gay anyway.”

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2023 book Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, was voted a Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 His previous book with his son Evan, Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/106980270

Strong Start, Limp Finish: FIFA WC 2026 Overstayed Its Welcome