Editor’s note, July 31, 8:15 pm ET: FIFA announced it was scrapping the plan to sell a stake in the World Cup.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup wasn’t perfect, but it was still pretty great. Legions of fans got to experience the US (and Canada, and Mexico), and Americans embraced visiting teams in turn. There was lots of extremely good football (soccer), and Cinderella teams like Cape Verde had a chance to shine. 

Not even two weeks later, though, FIFA president Gianni Infantino is doing his best to kill the good vibes.  He has a new proposal to sell stakes in the World Cup to private equity, attempting to capitalize on an enormously profitable tournament — with record revenue of about $15 billion in this year’s edition.

Specifically, his plan would create a new entity to run the World Cup, with FIFA the majority owner. Up to 21 percent of the company would be offered to private shareholders, in a major departure from FIFA’s current, ostensibly non-profit model. 

And so far, nearly everyone hates it. Many of FIFA’s 211 member associations are in outright revolt; one of its six regional confederations, UEFA, which represents European football, has threatened to boycott FIFA events if the plan goes forward. “We will never lend this model our legitimacy,” UEFA wrote in a statement released Thursday.

Go a little deeper

UEFA is not the only governing body in football that has condemned Infantino’s plan to bring private money into the World Cup, though it has led the charge. Concacaf — which represents North and Central America, plus the Caribbean — and the Asian Football Confederation have also come out against the idea. 

Collectively, they make up nearly two-thirds of FIFA’s member associations, which creates a real math problem for Infantino — the plan would require approval from a majority of FIFA members to take effect. 

The intensity of the backlash has raised questions about Infantino’s future. As the Athletic reported on Thursday, he’s up for reelection as FIFA president in March, but he may no longer have an easy time of it. On Friday, FIFA’s chief operating officer described the proposal as “the project of one person” — Infantino — in a statement coming out against it.

For now, though, FIFA and Infantino say they plan to forge ahead with a “consultation period” for the plan. It sets up an even higher-stakes version of the battle over “hydration breaks” — which double as lucrative commercial breaks — that Roger Bennett, founder of the soccer podcast Men in Blazers, described to Vox in June.

“Ultimately,” Bennett told Vox, “the whole game of football is currently in a battle between its roots and the commercial imperative that comes from being as big as it is. … It is the last megaphone which is faintly audible around the world. And when you have something that big, it becomes deeply desirous to make as much money as you can out of it.”

One link for later

➨ Bail on plans the right way. If you’re currently staring down a weekend engagement you’d rather not attend, Vox’s Allie Volpe has some pointers on canceling without injury or offense. For starters, you can only bail on casual events with someone you either know very well or not that well at all. And you should offer an honest excuse before attempting to reschedule.

Before you go…

• Did you know…that, until 2016, scientists routinely excluded female mice from medical research? The National Institutes of Health now requires that researchers include both sexes to help guarantee that drugs work safely for both men and women.
• Today’s trivia: What’s the Vietnamese word for “festival”? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you to identify the “ugli” fruit. Ugli is the registered trademark for the Jamaican tangelo, a natural — and honestly, perfectly good-looking — hybrid that was discovered in the wild in the early 1900s.

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Just a few weeks ago, Americans were able to eat salad without the fear of liquid feces and breathe in air that didn’t taste like campfire ash.

And — we were just really excited to watch some soccer. 

One major concern at the outset was whether America’s foreign and strict immigration policies would impact the levity of the games, and, at worst, deny entry to people, and perhaps even athletes and officials, from countries at odds with the current administration (it did). 

But in the early days of the World Cup, Americans and fans across the globe were surprised by how much of the world embraced coming here — and vice versa. Visiting international fans shared their astonishment at the sublime oddities this massive country has to offer, posting about: ranch dressing (in bowls if you ask nicely), unlimited refills in towering glasses, dairy products, air conditioning, Tex-Mex, ammunition displays, chicken tenders, cowboy hats, and, among other things, the Cheesecake Factory. Oh, how we all rejoiced in seeing the rest of the world experience the Byzantine beauty of our chain restaurants for the first time, and how craggy we enjoy our fried chicken strips!

@bob.travel6

First meal back in Dallas and it did not disappoint! Every single dish was amazing!! #dallas #texas #usa

♬ オリジナル楽曲 – Bob(SEA→LA→MIA→NY) with $0🇺🇸 – Bob(SEA→LA→MIA→NY) with $0🇺🇸

Adding to the cultural exchange on the sidelines, fans were also pleasantly surprised by how well the United States — historically a country that’s been bad at soccer — showed up. 

We were high off the US team’s 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina. We looked like a team with guts! Malik Tillman scored a goal down a man after star striker Folarin Balogun was sent off with a (questionable — experts said) red card. Many players on the US team have immigrant parents, are army brats, or are American by birthright citizenship (a constitutional privilege that the Trump administration has sought to dissolve). Though Belgium, in the next round, was going to be a difficult matchup, you couldn’t count out toughness. 

Even though many Americans root for the underdog, and many see themselves as underdogs, it’s rare that America is ever actually the underdog. 

But in the context of the World Cup, one of the rare things that American men will never win because soccer is one of those rare sports that no American man has ever been the best at, the stars aligned for Americans to have the scrappy longshot team of our dreams. 

But it didn’t take long for the illusion to shatter.

As the Fourth of July weekend finished, FIFA announced that it had reversed Balogun’s red card and that he would, in an exception to the rules, be allowed to play against the Belgians. The move was unprecedented and fishy. 

That red-card reversal also ripped open a portal into a nightmare realm. 

Acting like a person who can’t keep a surprise party a surprise, President Donald Trump began insinuating that he might have had something to do with the decision. Then, on the morning of the match against Belgium, Trump said that he had placed a call to FIFA president Gianni Infantino about the red card and implicitly took credit for its reversal. Infantino not only confirmed the call but said that he takes calls from important and rich people all the time — a cartoonishly suspicious response from an organization that’s historically famous for corruption. 

Trump on Balogun: "I saw the play, and I'm a person that loves sports … that wasn't a foul. That wasn't even an infraction … this referee, who is a little bit suspect if you check his past. He made a call that nobody could believe … he's our best player, or one of our best… pic.twitter.com/YfIqb1JA4u

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 6, 2026

Some fans, upon learning that the laws had been bent for the host country, reacted with astonishment, if not fury. Ethically, FIFA’s bar is on the floor, and this blatant move to help the United States somehow seemed to confirm onlookers’ worst fears.

In that moment, it was clear the US was no longer an underdog. Underdogs aren’t supposed to be able to put their thumb on the scale. They surely aren’t supposed to have their papa call favors. Perhaps all that talk of guts and toughness and how the team was a band of overlooked outsiders was just a mirage — and all that ranch dressing merely a charm offensive.

Whether you’re a soccer fan or someone who is ambivalent about soccer but loved the vibes, the shift was palpable. We’re all experiencing a collective whiplash and perhaps a sports-affected melancholy. 

And now that the Cup is ending, Americans are now living in a country where vegetables, famously healthy, and good for you, carry the risk of “explosive” diarrhea. Diarrhea itself is something many would not consider a calm experience, so the idea that this is not just diarrhea but somehow a special, even worse diarrhea, one akin to detonation, feels especially terrifying. 

This week also saw swaths of the US living under a plume of wildfire smoke — the dirtiest air in the world. Breathing outside is, according to scientists, the equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes. Breathing in smoke-laced air and worrying about the looming spectre of diarrhea with every meal puts the shared cultural joy we had in perspective. But even without these extreme plagues, it’s worth mourning how fleeting those moments can be. 

F1 races are exhilarating. While racing alongside 21 other cars, an F1 driver can reach speeds of up to 231 mph, making it one of the world’s most dangerous sports.

And F1 drivers need to be physically prepared to prevent disaster. Over the course of a single race, they experience hundreds of pounds of force, temperatures up to 130°F, and risk extreme dehydration that can lead to lowered brain function. In order to stay on the road and not pass out, F1 drivers have to be in peak physical condition. 

In order to find out how F1 drivers can survive a sport that is so physically demanding, I hit the gym. Since F1 is such an international sport, there aren’t many specialized trainers in the US. So with the help of an F1 performance expert currently based in the United Arab Emirates, I worked out with David Dunlop, a strength and conditioning coach who works with NFL players. And it turns out that training for F1 is surprisingly similar to training to be a linebacker. 

Read more about the fitness required to drive in an F1 race: 

• Mercedes has an excellent breakdown of G-force on a turn.

• This article from The Drive breaks down the physics of an F1 race.

• Motorsport Industry Association on how F1 simulators help drivers train for the mental side of races.

• New York Times article about the history of F1 in the US (and why people in the states are talking about it now).

This video is presented by the Ford Motor Company. Ford doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this one possible.

Much like its indifference toward soccer, America’s aversion to public transport has made it a global anomaly, an oddity encapsulated by the nation’s sacred pregame pastime: the tailgate. 

Here in the US, celebrating sports means driving your big car to a colossal suburban gridiron football stadium, where you’ll grill, baby, grill until the smoky scents of burgers and bratwurst float across vast plains of asphalt. So entrenched is the nation’s car culture that the average American spends about half a month sitting behind the wheel every year. In fact, while the US has tens of millions more cars than it has people to drive them, even its largest cities have far fewer trains or buses per capita than our global peers. 

As a result, Americans are more than twice as likely to die in a car accident as Europeans, and nearly five times as likely to die in a car crash as someone in train-happy Germany. While many transit projects carry similar price tags, the US still boasts many dozens more college football stadiums than it does rapid transit systems or subway networks.

So, it’s no wonder that critics doubted that US cities hosting this year’s World Cup, the largest single sporting event in human history, could effectively find ways to schlep visiting fans around. After abandoning its initial pledges to shepherd fans for free, New Jersey earned scorn for trying to sell $150 round-trip train tickets to MetLife Stadium, prompting journalists to test how difficult it would be to reach it by foot, bike, or canoe. Kansas City’s shiny new pop-up World Cup buses got caught in hours of ensnarled traffic on their way to their city’s very first game between Algeria and Argentina. 

And yet, on the precipice of the tournament’s final stage, the nation’s widely expected World Cup public transit meltdown has simply not materialized. To the surprise of pretty much everyone, US cities have managed to absorb the influx of fans with relative ease, even under the pressure of record ridership en route to stadiums, watch parties, and fan zones. 

Eli Lipmen, executive director of the advocacy group MoveLA, said that he had “actually been pleasantly surprised and quite impressed” with how the Los Angeles transit system performed amid the World Cup. As he explained, that notoriously gridlocked city is in the midst of a “major cultural shift” around public transit. As Angelenos spend less time in their cars, the city has gotten quieter, he said. “People are happier. There’s more of a sense of community,” Lipmen said.

A renewed commitment to public transit infrastructure has played a part in that shift — and not just in Southern California. In the lead-up to the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, Los Angeles unveiled three new subway stations in May, its first new stations to open in over two decades. Meanwhile, Seattle’s Sound Transit shuttled a record-shattering 309,000 riders when Team USA faced Team Belgium, thanks in part to its completion of a light rail extension that had been in the works for nearly two decades. Atlanta overhauled its bus network, Miami made use of a new rapid transit line, and Kansas City spent millions to expand its tram service and rolled out pop-up shuttles. 

As it turns out, US cities can build new buses, trams, and trains much faster than they may think. The harder question now is whether they can keep up that momentum when it serves locals, and not just visitors. Just hours after Kansas City’s final World Cup match — Argentina 3, Switzerland 2 — its cash-strapped transit authority shut down its extended tram service with plans to slash a quarter of its regular bus routes by the end of this summer. 

Many host cities “are still not building [transit] as a serious modal shift” away from cars, said Eric Goldwyn, director of the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management. “They’re building it as a cutesy-patootsie complement.”

Americans learned to love soccer. Can they learn to love transit too?

LA is among the exceptions, and not only because of its looming Olympics host gig. The city has made a concerted effort over the past couple of years to invest in and rebrand its transit system, which had long had a reputation for grime and danger. “If you’d spoken to me two and a half years ago, this conversation would be about safety and security on the metro system,” said Lipmen, referencing a bus that was taken hostage in 2024, one of several “really horrible, very high-profile incidents” that left many Angelenos feeling unsafe on the system. “Now, the conversation is about joy and celebration.”

What changed? 

LA began investing heavily in building more trains, buses, and subway stations, and overhauled its public safety approach, which led to a 6.7 percent drop in violent crime on transit and a 33 percent drop in incidents like drug use and weapons possession. For Lipmen, the real shift came when the metro system opened its three new stations along the D line in May, and released a raunchy “Ride the D” shirt to celebrate it. Almost immediately, the Metro’s cheeky merchandise sold out, and would continue to sell out every time it was restocked for months to follow. 

It might sound silly, but the hype genuinely helped dull some of the stigma associated with taking the train. “People who were quietly riding transit all of a sudden felt comfortable in their own skin as a transit-rider, and proud to be a transit-rider,” Lipmen said. 

Overall, LA’s big bet appears to be slowly working. “LA is a transit city,” Jennifer Vides, Metro Los Angeles’s chief customer experience officer, told the Associated Press last week. “People want to try to say that it’s not. Obviously, we have a lot more expansion to do and we’re working on it. But people really want transit.”

Beyond adding new train lines or bus fleets, normalizing public transit requires “a dramatic recast of how people get around and travel,” Goldwyn said. Cities need a vision that ensures that there is an actual “destination on the other end” of their new transit line, like offices or the kind of housing California’s new bill aims to get built near transit hubs. Most cities will need a mixture of “carrots and sticks” to help people who are used to driving everywhere see the value in hopping on a bus or tram as part of their everyday commute, not just to get to the airport or the stadium. “If your transit is not connecting you to places you want to go, you’re not going to use it,” Goldwyn said. 

A single tournament, like a single train line, will never be enough to change how Americans move. But if this nation of football fans can learn to love soccer, then surely they can learn to love the train a little bit more too. At the very least, with LA28 precisely two years away, Los Angeles just got closer to making its car-free summer Olympic dreams come true.