2026 World Cup

[harimad]

My preliminary plan - rent an RV for like 2 weeks & travel between host cities watching matches.

Count me in. Let's add a week to it and catch a Reds series or two while we're at it?

 

[ianoconnor]

Count me in. Let's add a week to it and catch a Reds series or two while we're at it?

Maybe by then the Reds will be competitive...

 

[OnlyCyclones]

1. Nothing is more detrimental to the US than missing the WC altogether.
2. I think it does lower the quality of the WC, but honestly it's just one more game. Some of the early games suck already. It ultimately helps the US as the sport continues to grow because the US could play more games. For example, I'm a pretty fringe soccer fan. My kids play, we go to a Sporting KC game every year, and I've literally never watched a Gold Cup game or could tell you anything about it. I tune in every 4 years in a big way and that's basically it. Well, except this year when I've watched zero World Cup because the US isn't even in it.

I misunderstood that the new format will have two teams qualifying for the knockout rounds from the group of three, instead of one. My main beef was with the group stage being way too up to chance, but yeah this seems fine.

Let's not overreact to missing one World Cup though. It's the first they've missed in seven cycles. The odds of the US failing to qualify for a 32 team world cup are still crazy small, and it took essentially a perfect storm of administrative failure and bad luck for the US to miss this World Cup.