FIFA Men's World Cup

Between Spain’s run of back-to-back European Championships with the 2010 World Cup sandwiched in between, Cesc Fabregas and David Villa put La Furia in La Furia Roja. 

Fabregas was the top assist provider at Euro 2008; Villa won the Golden Boot. Fabregas assisted on Andres Iniesta’s match winner in the 2010 World Cup final; Villa won the Silver Boot. Fabregas was named to the Euro 2012 Team of the Tournament; Villa tragically missed the tournament with a broken tibia (although he finished top scorer in UEFA qualifying Group I with seven goals). 

With FIFA set to begin the general sales phase of tickets for the 2018 World Cup in Russia today, two previous phases have resulted in an allocation of 1,303,616 tickets for the 64 matches — knocking two matches entirely off the docket: the final at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow and June 16’s Group D opener between Argentina and Iceland at Otkritie Arena in Moscow. 

As a little kid, I would feverishly collect Panini World Cup sticker albums every four years. The World Cup rush was even further intensified as everyone at school was collecting the stickers. Of course, all kids specially valued their national team stamps above anything else.

There was nothing a Mexican boy or girl would hold dearest to his or her heart than a Cuauhtemoc Blanco sticker.

With 102 appearances, 18 goals and as a veteran of two World Cups, history is on Giovani dos Santos’ side. However, his play on the field over the last year and a half makes his inclusion in Mexico’s 2018 World Cup squad, by Juan Carlos Osorio’s own stated standards, a real doubt.

When Dos Santos arrived in MLS in 2016, his initial return of 14 goals, 12 assists and a place in the MLS Best XI seemed to fully justify a Designated Player salary of $5.5 million per year. 

Get ready to hate this song. You might not hate it now, but you will hate it in June, when it plays every 10 minutes and you are left with no choice but to pull all of your hair out by the roots.

The song is "Colors" by Jason Derulo, and it is the official anthem of the 2018 World Cup. It is going to nestle in your eardrums in mid-May, make itself comfortable and not leave until July. Sorry, but that's just the way it goes. Hands up for your colors. One hand two hands for your colors. Show your true colors.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic hasn’t played for Manchester United since getting the halftime hook in a 2-2 draw with Burnley back on December 26, and he wasn’t named in the club’s 18-man squad for Monday's win over Crystal Palace, but that doesn’t mean we should stop talking about the Swedish lion. 

United boss Jose Mourinho recently revealed that this’ll almost certainly be Zlatan’s final season in Manchester.

The 2018 World Cup was always going to be a little unhinged. This, after all, is a country in which groups of ultras get together before league games and partake in semi-organized brawls. After the Russians took the spotlight at Euro 2016 in France with some, well let's be polite and call them "antics," folks were right to be worried about fan safety during the World Cup.

Sepp Blatter, the asshat who once allowed corruption to run rampant as the longtime president of FIFA, spoke out about the 2026 World Cup on Thursday. The man who helped award the next two World Cups to nations with countless human rights violations gave the joint bid from the U.S., Mexico and Canada a boost by saying Morocco is the logical choice to host the tournament in eight years.

For readers in the United States, we live in a time where no one can agree on anything. NBA players can’t agree that the earth isn’t flat, conspiracy theorists can’t agree that Parkland students aren’t actors and politicians sure as hell can’t agree on anything. Well, maybe that last one isn’t quite accurate. On Wednesday, 44 senators came together for a bipartisan agreement, and somehow it involved soccer. The 2026 World Cup, to be specific. 

As the World Cup gets closer and closer, it’s never too early to prepare for the spectacle on television. The World Cup TV schedule has been released for the United States and we’ve listed what channels each match will appear on when the tournament begins on June 14. 

The English-language World Cup TV schedule was made by Fox, which will be showing matches on its over-the-air FOX network as well as FS1. Fox has opted to not use FS2 for any matches, though that’s subject to change for simultaneous matches at the end of group play.