Link: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/apr/16/ticket-to-ride-america-2026-world-cup-actively-hates-you

The $95 bus trip to Foxborough highlights a tournament unique in modern times – one that ultimately makes no secret of its disdain for the paying public

Leave it to the US to host the greatest sportswashing event of them all and come out looking the worse for it:

The result is a World Cup unique in modern times: one that ultimately makes no secret of its disdain for the paying public, its goal of sweating its monopoly asset, its intention to make the spectator experience as joyless and exploitative as possible. This can be glimpsed, too, in the travel bans imposed on four of the competing countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iran and Senegal), the intentionally hostile entry process, the still-live threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in host cities. If Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 were at their heart grandiose sportswashing exercises, elegant acts of persuasion, then America 2026 is the World Cup that actively hates you, that brandishes the darkness of its late-capitalist heart as a proud badge of honour.