Category: World Cup
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Infantino puts the FIFA ‘Greed Machine’ into overdrive with $20bn proposal
FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants to sell a minority stake in a new $20 billion commercial entity to outside investors, dangling $20 million in development funding for each of football’s 211 member associations, including the South African Football Association. UEFA has voted to boycott FIFA tournaments if the plan proceeds, and Britain’s prime minister has…
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Bafana Bafana’s moment of truth: Every path to the World Cup knockouts — and how likely each one is
Listen here Bafana Bafana are one result away from making World Cup history — but the path to the Round of 32 is complicated. With one point from two games and South Korea standing in their way on Thursday morning (3 AM SA time), Hugo Broos’ men still have multiple routes through. The question is:…
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Daron Acemoglu on BizNews: World Cup teaches us what extremists don’t want to hear
Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu uses the World Cup — and Germany’s Turkish-Syrian match-winner Deniz Undav — to demolish a central myth of our polarised age: that diversity and national pride are incompatible. Every serious World Cup contender fields players from immigrant families, yet billions of fans cheer them as national heroes without a second thought.…
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The Economist: Secret to World Cup glory? Open borders beat big budgets
The Economist’s data-driven dissection of World Cup success delivers a counterintuitive verdict: immigration beats wealth. Wealth, population, height, and geography explain 70% of performance variation — but the sharpest competitive edge comes from embracing foreign- born talent. Morocco reached the semi-finals with 14 of 26 players born abroad; France’s squad is almost entirely children of…
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Hedge Fund thinking meets the beautiful game — Inside America’s World Cup ambition
An offhand text message among friends spirals into a high-stakes intervention in American soccer’s future. When frustration with the US men’s national team reaches a boiling point after a disastrous Copa America, hedge fund manager Scott Goodwin finds himself at the centre of an unusual power play – where billionaire wealth, personal passion, and national…