FIFA has decided to award the winners of the 2026 World Cup with championship rings for the very first time. The custom is usually associated with American sports like the NFL and NBA 💍30 rings will be made available to the world champions, with a further 1,996 rings going on… pic.twitter.com/v8V8P41Rd9— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) July 17, 2026 The game is gone. Fire Infantino into the sun.
Uefa has told its VARs they must not consider potential simulation as mistaken identity.Two players were booked for diving at the World Cup, with Breel Embolo sent off against Argentina.Uefa says mistaken identity is factual offence, diving is not.👇https://t.co/TM1oxgJLjI— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonBBC) July 17, 2026
I mean, not even U.S. teams make replicas to sell to fans (generally, I won't rule out its happened). This is beyond "Americanizing" the game.
Given the total lack of yellow as a predominant color Sunday and the prevalence of navy… why not just a literal “gold” kit with black trim? Because adidas didn’t plan for that, right? They only did the black or the white. Sigh.
This is great. I do laugh, though, that they “learned” from Ecuador v Germany and note that, when I called it as the worst matchup pre-tournament.
It really is great. It does explain the absurdity of why Canada wore black i will say it almost comes off as a propaganda piece to justify some of the kit decisions, but it is really thorough in the detail they went into. I just fundamentally disagree with the no red versus blue and it's obvious they pick and choose it when they want to enforce it. 4 years ago Morocco played France and they both wore their traditional kits at night too. There is no reason that France could not have worn their traditional blue kit this World Cup. Also, the Portugal vs. Croatia clash didn't need both to be in their secondary kits.
I would love to have that guys job. Lol. Kit manufacturers and broadcasters would hate me as I would do everything in my power to make sure both teams wore their main kits.
30 rings seems very low. With 26 players, it means the trainers and physio and travel secretary and the like won't get rings, at a minimum.
Once they give a few to Tom Dundon's kids, some of the scrubs at the end of the bench might not get one either.
Stuff like this makes me feel like we could do a better job from our couches than the professionals getting paid big bucks for it. I still think of Croatia vs Denmark and Croatia vs England in 2018, with Pitana and Cakir both wearing red, as prime examples of these kinds of mistakes. Just so much red everywhere on the field! But god forbid the referee clash slightly with a goalkeeper (which of course is a rule that’s only selectively applied).
I tend to agree with it, but maybe that's for reasons that aren't valid. Specifically, maybe the percentage of people in the Third World who watch black-and-white TV and read newspapers with black-and-white photos is lower than I realize.
https://refereekithistory.com/referees-earn-their-world-cup-stripes-part-2/ Who knew that there have been only two games in World Cup history where the referees didn't wear black socks.
And as the article said, one of those games didn’t even need colored socks because all field players and the referee were wearing essentially the same socks! My personal opinion is that officials should only wear colored socks at the high professional level when one team is wearing a sock color that looks similar to black at game speed. So if a team is wearing black or navy, absolutely. If a team is wearing dark green or dark purple, maybe/probably. Other than that, just wear black socks. And at the levels that 98 % of us referee, no need at all to wear colored socks.
The Ifab confirms in a circular that mistaken identity should not be used for simulation as it was at the World Cup. pic.twitter.com/Sv4bosbGpd— Dale Johnson (@DaleJohnsonBBC) July 27, 2026
It is, and it isn’t. It does say that the law as written can’t be applied as FIFA applies it in the World Cup. Which is pretty notable
And clearly deliberate that they waited till after the cup to say it. FIFA)Colina did its thing. As many of us argued, it wasn’t supportable under the LOTG. Of course, this means many people are saying the referees were wrong to do it. But that clearly wasn’t a referee decision to make up “mistaken identity” for simulation, but a clear directive.
Maybe Im selectively forgetting past WCs but Collina seems to be going down the "LOTG are what I make them" path more and more. Wonder what happens when that role isn't filled by someone seen as the GOAT (or one of the GOATs).
So we were right all long that it was gobbledygook? When Makkelie did it in the US game it never made any sense and we knew it. For someone who seems so smart, Collina does have this weird perversion of everything must be "fair." I truly believe that he is driving a lot of these changes.
Pretty obvious to read between the lines and work out what happened here (see second from top left). https://www.uefa.com/news-media/new...on-refereeing-matters-ahead-of-202627-season/
I think it goes even deeper than that. If the LOTG are supposed to be THE Laws of the Game that EVERYONE is supposed to follow, how does that work when the biggest competition in the world knowingly makes up its own variations?
⚽️ 🗣️ FIFA Spokesperson:“FIFA's interpretation of Mistaken Identity was consistently applied during the FIFA World Cup. There were two instances in which a player was mistakenly identified as having committed a yellow card offence and the VAR advised the referee to correct the… pic.twitter.com/yiAi52t58r— FIFA Media (@fifamedia) July 28, 2026 This is wild. IFAB and FIFA are going back and forth. FIFA's gymnastics here are really becoming Orwellian in nature. "Mistakenly identified."
There's some sort of advanced level SAT analogy question involving comparing UEFA-FIFA-IFAB to the SEC-NCAA-Congress. Actually, maybe it's not a question. Maybe that's just the answer.