Sustainability

The World Cup 2026 Was Worth Celebrating

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A packed Dallas stadium during a FIFA World Cup 2026 match between the Netherlands and Japan, viewed from the stands.

For all the arguments that followed it, the 2026 World Cup left a simpler memory for those who were there: an enormous, varied and unusually generous sporting celebration.

Now that the noise around the 2026 World Cup has settled a little, it is tempting to remember the tournament through its disputes. There were valid questions about prices, travel, heat, the expanded format and the way football is packaged for television. A World Cup that spread 104 matches across three countries and 16 host cities was always going to ask a lot of players and supporters.

But a tournament should also be judged by the experience it gave to the people who entered it. In stadiums, on streets and in the long stretches between one city and the next, this one often felt magnificent. It made room for many different versions of football culture at once. It gave supporters a reason to travel a long way, spend real money and give up precious time—not because there was nothing else to do, but because being there offered something that a highlights clip cannot.

The World Cup is often called the world’s greatest festival. From a distance, that can sound like a slogan. On the ground, it is a useful description.

A continent-sized stage

FIFA’s first 48-team men’s World Cup was also its largest: 104 matches, staged across Canada, Mexico and the United States. The distances were real. So was the summer heat. Neither should be romanticised away.

Yet North America’s scale was not only a logistical problem. It was part of the tournament’s character. The United States in particular contains cities that feel markedly different from one another: their stadiums, climate, transport habits, music, food and local sporting rituals all change as you move across the map. The World Cup did not ask those places to become identical. It let the tournament pass through them.

That mattered because this was not a small, self-contained event. It was an arrival point for people from everywhere. To receive that many visiting supporters safely, keep them moving, fill large venues and still make the day feel festive is a serious achievement of planning and civic infrastructure. The host cities had the physical capacity, but just as importantly they had a familiar instinct for treating a sporting occasion as a shared public event.

At the matches I attended, that instinct was visible before the opening whistle. Music was chosen to speak to the teams and the crowd. Big screens and in-stadium hosts built anticipation without asking supporters to sit silently until the football began. In some venues, local cheer squads brought the grammar of American game day into a World Cup setting. It did not replace football culture. It added another layer to it.

A mass singalong can look frivolous on a broadcast, but it changes a stadium from a collection of ticket holders into a temporary community. A song such as Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer, sung by tens of thousands of people who arrived wearing different flags, has a very simple appeal. The same was true when Queen or Oasis filled the pauses around a match. For a few minutes, the competition did not disappear; it became easier to share.

More colours in the stands

The expansion from 32 to 48 teams brought familiar objections. More places can produce uneven group matches. The value of a single goal can feel different in a larger competition, and the draw carries more weight when the path is longer and more complicated. Those are reasonable football questions.

They are not the whole story. More teams also meant more songs, clothes, languages, rituals and football memories in the same places. Mexico’s support did not need an introduction, but the energy around Mexican matches and fan spaces still gave the tournament a pulse that no broadcast graphic could measure. Norway’s supporters, with their synchronized Viking Row, offered another kind of theatre: playful, specific and instantly recognisable. FIFA itself highlighted the tradition alongside French supporters’ clapping as an example of the fan cultures meeting during the tournament.

What stayed with me was not a sentimental idea that every supporter was the same. The pleasure came from the opposite. People brought different ways of showing affection for a team, and those differences made everyone else more aware of their own colours. A supporter can see another country’s style, admire it, laugh with it and then sing a little more loudly for home. Difference did not weaken identity. It gave identity an audience.

Club football has its own cosmopolitan beauty, but the globalised transfer market has made many squads resemble one another. National teams remain imperfect representatives of a country, of course. Still, the World Cup lets a wider range of local accents appear in public: not only in the players, but in the people who travel with them. The 2026 edition made that visible at a scale the tournament had not previously reached.

The pauses were part of the day

The mandatory hydration breaks became one of the tournament’s most argued-over innovations. Critics were right to notice that a three-minute pause can affect rhythm, tactics and the old expectation of two uninterrupted 45-minute halves. The heat risk was also genuine: FIFA introduced the breaks throughout the tournament as a player-welfare measure.

From a seat in the stadium, though, the pauses had another effect. They gave people time to drink water, find a restroom, settle a child, look around and return their attention to the pitch. The match did not necessarily become less intense; it acquired a different tempo. Rather than one long, unbroken demand on the audience, it had several distinct movements.

That will not persuade every traditionalist, and it need not. Football should be careful about changing its basic rhythm. But the World Cup is also a live event for a huge and varied public, many of whom are attending a match of this size for the first time. Making the stadium easier to inhabit is not automatically a betrayal of the game. In this case, it often felt like hospitality.

A difficult thing, done with ambition

It is possible to hold two thoughts at once. The 2026 World Cup was expensive, exhausting to follow across long distances and open to serious criticism in parts of its design. It was also an extraordinary piece of sports entertainment, staged with ambition and received with enthusiasm by many of the people who made the journey.

That distinction matters. The fact that a supporter has spent heavily to be there does not make the experience shallow. People with choices about where to spend their time and money still chose this tournament. They chose flights, queues, unfamiliar streets, stadium searches and the awkwardness of crossing a continent because the reward was rare: to be inside a gathering large enough to show the world to itself.

Online, the sharpest criticism usually travels fastest. It is easier to share a clip of a disputed decision or an argument about a rule than the quieter fact that strangers were enjoying a city together. In the stands and around them, I saw something different: supporters respecting other supporters, hosts taking pride in their city, and people treating a football match as a reason to be generous with one another.

That is not an argument for ignoring the tournament’s flaws. It is an argument for keeping the scale of the experience in view. The 2026 World Cup did not have to be perfect to be worth celebrating. It gave football an enormous stage, filled it with more of the world than ever before, and for a summer made the differences between us feel less like a problem than a reason to gather.

Still a Player at 59

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Kazuyoshi Miura warming up during Yokohama F. Marinos vs Fukushima United in the Emperor’s Cup at Nissan Stadium.

Kazuyoshi Miura did not play at Nissan Stadium. But watching him prepare to play may have explained why he is still here.

There was a strange anticipation around Nissan Stadium.

It was the second round of the Emperor’s Cup, Yokohama F. Marinos against Fukushima United. A J1 club against a J3 side. On paper, there were plenty of ordinary football reasons to watch.

But cameras kept turning towards one man on the touchline.

Kazuyoshi Miura.

Kazu.

King Kazu.

He is 59 years old.

And he was preparing to play professional football.

A Stadium Full of History

There was something fitting about the setting.

Nissan Stadium hosted the 2002 World Cup final. For Japanese football, it is one of those places where different eras seem to overlap.

Miura belongs to several of them.

Long before the J.League existed, he played in the rivalry between Yomiuri Club and Nissan Motors, the predecessors of two of the clubs that would help define the early professional game in Japan.

Then came the birth of the J.League, the national-team boom of the 1990s, Japan’s long pursuit of the World Cup, and Miura’s move to Serie A at a time when such a journey for a Japanese player still seemed almost unimaginable.

Now, more than three decades later, he was back beside the pitch at Nissan Stadium.

Across from him was another symbol of time.

Yokohama F. Marinos had 16-year-old Shin Miidera among their substitutes — a player 43 years younger than Miura. The possibility that the two might share the pitch became one of the stories surrounding the match.

It never happened.

Miidera came on in the 63rd minute. Miura remained on the bench. After the match, however, they exchanged shirts, and Miura encouraged the teenager to keep the passion he has now.

Football sometimes measures time more elegantly than a calendar.

The Player Who Never Came On

Yokohama led 1–0.

Fukushima stayed in the match.

And as the minutes passed, attention increasingly moved towards the Fukushima bench.

Would Kazu come on?

He warmed up.

Then he kept warming up.

Other substitutes gradually stopped. Miura continued.

From the stands, it was difficult not to notice.

There was nothing ceremonial about it.

He did not look like a famous former player waiting for the crowd to receive a nostalgic cameo. He looked like a substitute trying to convince his manager that he was ready.

Running.

Stretching.

Accelerating.

Again.

And again.

The photograph accompanying this article was taken from the stands that evening.

It is not a photograph of a goal.

It is not even a photograph of Miura playing football.

Perhaps that is why it says so much.

He Was Actually Trying to Get On

It would have been easy to assume that the appearance itself was the achievement.

At 59, merely being registered as a professional player is extraordinary.

But Miura’s behaviour suggested something different.

He genuinely expected that he might be needed.

That matters.

A week earlier, this was not simply nostalgia. Miura had started Fukushima’s Emperor’s Cup first-round match and scored twice from the penalty spot, extending his own record as the competition’s oldest scorer.

So when Fukushima needed a goal at Nissan Stadium, wondering whether he might appear was not entirely sentimental.

The substitution never came.

It is reasonable to wonder whether there was a way to use him. Fukushima were only one goal behind, and Miura is, after all, a forward. Supporters who had come hoping to see him play were understandably disappointed.

But perhaps the more interesting story begins precisely there.

Because Miura behaved as though disappointment changed nothing.

He kept preparing.

The Same Game

Miura’s career is often described through records.

Oldest player.

Oldest scorer.

Another year.

Another season.

Soon, perhaps, sixty.

But records may be the least interesting part of the story.

His career has repeatedly involved going somewhere where there was no obvious path.

As a teenager, he went to Brazil when becoming a professional footballer was hardly a conventional career in Japan.

He became one of the faces of the national team before Japan had ever played at a World Cup.

He went to Serie A.

Later came Croatia.

Australia.

And then the long journey through Japanese football that somehow never reached the expected final chapter.

Each move looked different.

But perhaps the underlying impulse was the same.

There was another place to go.

Another environment to enter.

Another version of himself to test.

At 59, the frontier is simply different.

There is almost no established map for what he is doing now.

How does a professional footballer train at 59?

How does he recover?

How much speed can be preserved?

How should his body be managed?

Can experience compensate for physical decline?

Can he still score?

There are few predecessors from whom to borrow the answers.

So, once again, Kazu is exploring.

Not a Legend Performing His Past

This is perhaps why arguments about whether Miura “should retire” often seem to miss the point.

If his objective were simply to protect his reputation, retirement would have been the easier option long ago.

His place in Japanese football history is already secure.

He does not need another appearance to become King Kazu.

What seems to matter is something else.

To train tomorrow.

To compete for selection.

To believe that the manager might call his number.

To enter the match.

To score.

That is a much more ordinary ambition.

And, at 59, an extraordinary one.

There is humility in that contradiction.

A man who helped transform Japanese football still accepts the most basic condition of being a footballer:

You may not be selected.

You may sit on the bench.

You may warm up for a long time.

And nobody owes you the next minute.

Former Sydney FC teammate and current Yokohama F. Marinos manager Steve Corica described Miura’s professionalism from their time together two decades ago and said that, seeing how carefully he managed his condition even then, it was understandable that he had been able to play for so long.

Perhaps longevity is built from moments exactly like this one.

Still Warming Up

The final whistle came.

Yokohama F. Marinos won 1–0.

Miura did not play.

The anticipated 43-year age-gap encounter never happened.

For anyone who came specifically to watch Kazu, there was disappointment.

But from the stands, there was also something unexpectedly satisfying about what remained.

A 59-year-old man had spent much of the evening preparing for a moment that never arrived.

And he prepared for it seriously anyway.

Maybe that is the point.

Miura has spent much of his football life moving towards places Japanese players had not yet reached.

Brazil.

Professional football.

The World Cup dream.

Serie A.

Croatia.

Australia.

And now this strange, almost unmapped territory beyond the conventional lifespan of an athlete.

People can debate how long he should continue.

Miura seems occupied by a different question.

How far can I go?

At Nissan Stadium, he never crossed the touchline.

But he kept running beside it.

Still preparing.

Still hoping.

Still a player.

When Weather Decides the World Cup

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Children playing football in the rain under dramatic skies during a stormy World Cup-inspired atmosphere

Football Cannot Escape Nature

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is already raising concerns about extreme heat.

Cooling breaks.
Adjusted kickoff times.
Debates over player safety and physical performance.

For months, the conversation around this tournament has focused on temperature.

But there is another element that may shape the World Cup just as much — and strangely, almost nobody is talking about it.

Weather itself.

Rain.
Humidity.
Wind.
Storms.
Mud.

Football has always belonged to nature more than many modern sports are willing to admit.

And this summer, nature may return to the center of the game.

Japan vs Netherlands — In the Rain?

Japan’s opening match against the Netherlands is currently forecast to be played in rainy conditions.

How many people even know that?

World Cup football is often remembered through bright sunlight, dry stadiums, and cinematic skies. Qatar 2022, held in winter in the Middle East, rarely dealt with rain at all. Even earlier tournaments — Russia 2018 or the previous United States World Cup in 1994 — are not widely associated with wet-weather football.

But football itself was never designed for perfect laboratory conditions.

It was built outdoors.
On imperfect grass.
Inside wind.
Inside rain.

And perhaps climate change is now quietly pushing the sport back toward those uncontrollable realities.

Football Is a Sport Played With Uncertainty

Most sports try to eliminate uncertainty.

Football never fully could.

The ball is round.
The pitch changes.
The weather changes.
Human bodies tire differently under heat, humidity, or rain.

And unlike many sports, football almost never stops for bad weather.

Unless lightning becomes dangerous, the match continues.

Anyone who has played football in the rain remembers the feeling instantly:
the unpredictable bounce,
the wet grass,
the slightly delayed reaction of the body,
the slide tackles that travel farther than expected.

There is frustration in it.
But also excitement.

Because in those moments, you are not only playing against the opponent.

You are also playing with nature itself.

The Endurance of Pressing Football

Modern football increasingly depends on physical intensity.

High pressing.
Repeated sprints.
Compact defensive transitions.

But heavy heat and humidity change everything.

Even the most carefully organized pressing systems begin to collapse when the body cannot recover oxygen quickly enough.

Rain creates different problems.

A wet pitch speeds up some passes while slowing others.
Timing changes.
Defenders hesitate.
Goalkeepers lose certainty.
One unexpected skid can decide an entire tournament.

At the highest level of international football, few teams truly want more uncertainty.

Yet uncertainty may become unavoidable.

Which Countries Adapt Better?

That raises an uncomfortable and fascinating question.

Which football cultures are actually better prepared for climate uncertainty?

South American teams may possess natural familiarity with unstable conditions.
Many Asian nations regularly deal with heavy rain, humidity, and exhausting summer climates.
African teams often grow up playing in environmental conditions European players rarely experience.

Perhaps resilience itself becomes an advantage.

Or perhaps Europe — through tactical structure, squad depth, and control — once again proves capable of managing uncertainty better than anyone else.

The World Cup may become not only a competition between football systems,
but between relationships with nature itself.

Football Was Never Meant To Be Perfect

Modern football increasingly seeks precision.

Data.
Control.
Optimization.
Scientific recovery.
Perfect passing angles.

But weather reminds the sport of its original character.

Football is not played inside a simulation.

It is played on Earth.

And maybe that is why rainy matches remain strangely memorable.
Not because they are clean.
But because they feel alive.

The 2026 World Cup may ultimately be remembered not only for tactics or stars,
but for something much older:

Twenty-two players trying to negotiate with nature.

The Beauty of Uncertainty in Football

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Football is shaped not only by players and tactics, but by grass, rain, soil, wind, and the unpredictable movement of a simple ball across living ground.

Some of the strongest memories in football are not only about goals.

They are about places.

The smell of wet grass after rain.
Dust rising from dry ground in summer.
Mud on socks.
Sand inside boots.
The sound of a ball bouncing differently on uneven soil.

Football has always existed slightly closer to nature than many modern sports.

And perhaps that connection is one reason the game still feels alive.

Football Is Played on Living Surfaces

Football is unusual because it is played directly on changing natural environments.

Grass grows. Soil shifts. Water changes movement. Wind alters trajectories.

Even at the highest level, football remains dependent on surfaces that are never completely identical from one day to the next.

That uncertainty influences everything.

Ball speed.
Passing rhythm.
Player balance.
Decision-making.

Ground conditions are not simply background scenery.

They participate in the match itself.

In some stadiums, grass is cut shorter to increase passing speed. In heavy rain, the game slows into physical struggle. On dry pitches, the ball moves unpredictably across rough surfaces.

Football constantly negotiates with the physical world around it.

The Ball, the Field, and Uncertainty

At its core, football is surprisingly simple.

A spherical ball.
Open space.
Human movement.

And yet from those simple elements emerges endless unpredictability.

Perhaps this is part of football’s beauty.

The ball never moves perfectly. The surface is never completely controlled. The environment always introduces small variations beyond human intention.

A wet patch changes a pass.
A bounce changes a goal.
Wind changes timing by fractions of a second.

Modern football increasingly relies on analysis, precision, and optimization.

But football never becomes fully programmable.

Nature still interrupts the system.

And maybe that interruption is essential.

Artificial Perfection — and What Gets Lost

Artificial turf reduces uncertainty.

The bounce becomes more predictable. Maintenance becomes easier. Conditions become more standardized.

In many situations, that consistency is practical and necessary.

Yet something subtle also disappears.

Perfectly controlled surfaces often reduce the strange emotional texture that natural environments create.

The game becomes cleaner.
More manageable.
More optimized.

But perhaps slightly less alive.

Because football has never been only about technical perfection.

It is also about adaptation.

Players responding to conditions they cannot fully control.

Teams negotiating rain, mud, friction, noise, fatigue, and atmosphere together in real time.

Natural imperfection creates part of the drama.

Why Football Memories Feel Physical

When people remember playing football as children, they rarely remember statistics.

They remember environments.

A local dirt field at sunset.
Grass stains on knees.
Cold air in winter training.
The uneven bounce that ruined or created a goal.

Football memories often remain tied to texture, weather, light, and landscape.

Perhaps this happens because football is experienced not only mentally, but physically through the environment itself.

The game enters memory through the senses.

And unlike many increasingly digital experiences, football still depends on contact with real surfaces, changing conditions, and uncontrollable surroundings.

Football is often described through tactics, data, and systems.

But underneath all of those structures remains something older and simpler:

a ball moving across living ground.

Perhaps that is why football continues to feel universal across generations and cultures.

Because despite all modern technology, the game still depends on uncertainty.

Grass grows differently. Rain changes rhythm. Soil shifts beneath movement.

And somewhere between human intention, physical law, and the unpredictability of nature, football finds its beauty.

Football and the Future of Sustainable Cities

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How football shapes mobility, public space, and urban life beyond the pitch.

On matchdays, cities move differently.

Trains become louder. Streets stay active longer. Scarves appear across stations, bars, and sidewalks. Thousands of people begin moving toward the same destination — not only to watch a game, but to participate in a shared urban experience.

Football has always been deeply connected to cities.

Not just economically, but spatially, culturally, and emotionally.

A stadium is more than a sports venue. It is a temporary center of movement, energy, and collective behavior.

As cities around the world face challenges related to climate change, transportation, density, and social fragmentation, football may offer unexpected insights into how sustainable urban life can work.

Stadiums as Urban Ecosystems

A football stadium functions like a living urban system.

Before kickoff, transportation networks intensify. Trains, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians begin synchronizing around a fixed point in space and time.

Local restaurants become temporary gathering spaces. Public security systems adapt to crowd density. Energy consumption changes throughout surrounding districts.

In many European and South American football cultures, stadiums are deeply integrated into existing urban structures rather than isolated from them.

This matters.

Because sustainable cities are not only about reducing emissions. They are also about reducing unnecessary fragmentation between people, transportation, and public life.

Football naturally creates density, walkability, and shared movement.

Why Walkability Matters

One of football’s overlooked strengths is that it encourages people to move through cities together.

In many football cultures, supporters do not simply arrive at stadiums. They walk to them.

They pass through local streets, cafés, small businesses, train stations, and public squares.

This creates a different relationship between sport and urban life.

Car-dependent stadium environments often isolate football from surrounding communities. But walkable football culture strengthens local economies and reinforces a sense of place.

The experience begins long before kickoff.

And sometimes, that experience matters just as much as the match itself.

Football Clubs as Community Infrastructure

The world’s most influential football clubs are rarely just sports organizations.

They function as social institutions.

Youth academies, local outreach programs, educational partnerships, and community spaces often become part of the club ecosystem.

In some cities, football provides one of the few remaining shared identities across generations, cultures, and economic backgrounds.

This social dimension may become increasingly important in the future.

As many cities struggle with loneliness, fragmentation, and declining trust in public institutions, football continues to create physical spaces where people gather regularly and collectively.

That kind of social infrastructure is difficult to measure — but increasingly valuable.

Could Football Help Shape Better Cities?

Football alone cannot solve urban challenges.

But it can help us rethink them.

Future stadiums may become laboratories for sustainable mobility, renewable energy, cooling systems, and mixed-use public space.

More importantly, football reminds us that cities are not only systems of infrastructure.

They are systems of human movement and emotional connection.

And perhaps that is why football still matters so deeply in urban life around the world.

Perhaps football has never been only about football.

It may also be about how people learn to share space, movement, atmosphere, and identity together.

In that sense, the future of football and the future of cities may be more connected than we think.