FIFA has described the 2026 World Cup as the greatest in the tournament’s history. The tournament has had deadly celebrations, coordinated racist abuse of players, a $4.2 million single-day gambling loss, two New Jersey women killed in a hit-and-run while walking home from a watch party, a government department’s social media post backfiring nationally, a manager flying home after his mother died, and a fan who was shot at a watch party and survived to write about what happened next. These are not mutually exclusive with greatness. They are the texture of greatness at this scale.
Per HuffPost’s live blog, which has been tracking the tournament’s accumulated controversies since June 12, one fan was shot at a World Cup watch party and described the aftermath as “even more disturbing” than the shooting, a headline that requires reading the full piece to understand and which HuffPost describes as producing “grim fascination.” Two women in New Jersey were killed by a suspected drunk driver while walking home from a different watch party. A player received what HuffPost calls “shocking social media abuse” following a match this week, a description journalists use when the specific content is too severe to quote.
A single gambler lost $4.2 million on prediction market platform Polymarket in less than 24 hours of World Cup betting, per Breitbart, which is a number that requires both a significant bankroll and a sequence of very confident incorrect predictions. The gambler’s identity and specific positions have not been disclosed, which is the privacy that $4.2 million in losses purchases.
The tournament has also broken attendance records. Three million six hundred thousand fans attended through the end of group play, per Breitbart. The football has been genuinely excellent. The expansion to 48 teams produced upsets, drama, and genuine sporting moments. The USA beat Bosnia 2-0. England are through. Germany lost to Ecuador and Nagelsmann was furious. Morocco beat the Netherlands on penalties.
FIFA describes all of this as encouraging progress. The greatest World Cup in history is what you get when you run a tournament this large, in these geopolitical conditions, in a country simultaneously debating its own identity. It is genuinely great. It is also producing a watch party shooting, a gambling catastrophe, and two dead in a hit-and-run.
When the greatest World Cup in history includes all of these things simultaneously, what exactly is FIFA measuring?
Sources
HuffPost: Celebrations Turn Deadly, Players Face ‘Appalling’ Racist Abuse: 2026 FIFA World Cup Live Updates
HuffPost: Fans Boo Hydration Break During England-Croatia World Cup Match
