I write the closing column of every World Cup tournament the same way: not as a recap — there are ten of those already on this site — but as a set of lessons that the next eighteen months of betting, watching, arguing and dreaming can be built on. The 2026 World Cup was the […]

Twenty-nine days, 104 matches, one trophy. Spain are the 2026 World Cup champions after a 1-0 win over Argentina in extra time at MetLife Stadium — Ferran Torres, a 62nd-minute substitute, finishing with his left foot 39 seconds into the second period of extra time. I have watched every minute of this tournament the way […]

There is a proper way to read the awards table at the end of a World Cup and there is a pundit’s way. The proper way is what FIFA voted on, and the pundit’s way is what I do here — grades, complaints and a verdict on whether each prize landed in the right hands. […]

This is the column I have been meaning to write since the early days of July, when the World Cup’s biggest off-pitch story broke and the rest of us were still paying attention to the football. The basic facts are not in serious dispute at this stage — Folarin Balogun was sent off against Bosnia […]

The last game of the 2026 World Cup — Saturday 18 July, 21:00 ET — turned out to be the most entertaining, and produced a result that has not happened for England since 1966 in a very specific way. England beat France 6-4 in the bronze final, the ten-goal game was the highest-scoring match at […]

This is the column I write once a tournament, after the dust has settled and the trading screens have stopped blinking. A proper read of every market that mattered in the final — what closed, how it settled, and what the punters of Ireland and the rest of the world should take from it into […]

Three group games in, and the 2026 World Cup has stopped being polite. The opening round was all handshakes and feeling-out; the second matchday is where the table starts telling the truth. I sat through the weekend card with a notebook on one knee and a fractional-odds screen on the other, and by the time […]

Four games today, and a Monday card that ranges from "fill your boots" short to "leave it well alone". I have gone through the lot the way I go through every matchday — odds first, story second, gut last — and I am only putting my name to the calls I actually believe in. Everything […]

This is the one. For all the British-Irish complications around England, there is no complication here — when Scotland walk out against Brazil on 24 June with a place in the knockouts within touching distance, every Celtic-minded household on this island will be roaring them on. And there is a genuine prize: per the form […]

Let me get the Irish bit out of the way first, because you are thinking it and so am I. Watching England at a World Cup from this side of the Irish Sea is a complicated business — part neighbourly interest, part the old reflex to back whoever they are playing. I have made my […]