Five billion dollars. That is what SoFi Stadium cost to build, making it the most expensive sports venue ever constructed anywhere on the planet. When I first walked into the stadium for an NFL game in 2023, the immediate impression was not of a sports ground at all — it felt like stepping into a […]

I have been inside MetLife Stadium twice for American football and once for a Copa America match, and each time the sheer scale of the place hit differently. It is not beautiful in the way Estadio Azteca is beautiful, nor architecturally striking the way SoFi Stadium demands attention. MetLife is functional, enormous, and built to […]

Miami in June is not for the faint-hearted. I have covered football matches in warm climates across three continents, and nothing quite prepares you for the wall of humidity that greets you when you step off a plane at Miami International. The air is thick, the temperature rarely drops below 28 degrees Celsius even after […]

I covered the 2018 World Cup semi-final between England and Croatia from a press box in Moscow, and the tension in that stadium still sits with me. Eight years later, these two meet again in World Cup 2026 Group L — and while the names on the teamsheet have changed, the rivalry has not. For […]

Hosting a World Cup changes everything. I saw it at Euro 2024 in Germany, where the home crowd turned routine group matches into cauldrons of noise that visibly affected visiting sides. Now multiply that by a factor of ten — the United States, the land of spectacle, hosts World Cup 2026 with a squad that […]

Scotland drew Brazil. Let that sink in for a moment. Our Celtic cousins — a nation that waited 24 years to return to a World Cup — walked out of the draw ceremony with the five-time champions, the 2022 semi-finalists Morocco, and Haiti making their first appearance since 1974. If you are an Irish fan […]

The opening night of a World Cup belongs to no one and everyone at the same time. On 11 June 2026, Estadio Azteca in Mexico City will roar back to life for the third time as a World Cup venue — a distinction shared by no other stadium on earth. Mexico face South Africa in […]

There is a moment, about ten minutes before kick-off at Estadio Azteca, when the noise builds to a frequency you feel in your chest rather than hear with your ears. I experienced it during a Liga MX match in 2019 — a regular-season fixture, nothing special by Mexican standards — and the memory has not […]

I have watched football in car parks, cowsheds and one memorable evening in a stadium that doubled as a cricket ground. None of that prepared me for the scale of what the 2026 World Cup is about to deliver. Sixteen stadiums across three countries, eleven of them American football fortresses originally designed for a sport […]

Every World Cup needs a group of death. It is one of the rituals of the draw — pundits point at a group, declare it impossible, and then argue about it for six months until the ball starts rolling. Usually they pick the group with the most famous names, which is precisely the wrong way […]