“Does anyone else associate World Cup summers with this deep sense of relaxation tinged with childhood nostalgia?” Sohrab Ahmari asked a few days after the tournament began. I do. Time slows down during World Cup summers, even for adults. If you watch enough games, you start to feel something akin to a flow state. It must be the languid pace of most soccer games, at least before those rare moments of intense tension. This pace resembles the languorousness of baseball, another relaxing summer pastime. But one advantage that soccer has over baseball is fewer commercial breaks. In fact, according to the laws of the game, a soccer match breaks only once, for halftime. This means that for at least forty five minutes, the viewer can enjoy a match without interruption.

Unfortunately, the organizers of the 2026 Cup introduced “hydration breaks” into each half—effectively dividing the game into quarters. What these breaks really are is commercial breaks. Players have always found ways to grab a quick drink of water in the midst of a half. (And anyway, during the Cup, hydration breaks take place even in games played in air conditioned stadiums.) This year, Fox cut to commercials in the hydration breaks during its English-language broadcasts. Telemundo constantly bragged about not doing so during its Spanish broadcasts, banking on the fact that commercial breaks during the half are seen by most fans as an abomination.

So much for commerce. Who doesn’t like a good underdog story? Cape Verde, a small island nation of half a million inhabitants, conquered the hearts of millions after playing surprisingly well in its first-ever World Cup. Who could help falling for Vozinha, the solid forty-something Cape Verdean goalkeeper who plays with a soothing paternal sangfroid, a late bloomer who once worked as a bus driver and electrician, and almost retired on the eve of the World Cup? (His mother was initially denied a visa and missed Vozinha’s heroic performance against Spain. His father was a soldier.) Moreover, Cape Verde, which was expected to lose every game, was fun to watch. The normal way an underdog gets by in the World Cup is by “parking the bus,” i.e., playing a defensive formation and keeping the game at zero–zero for as long as possible, while possibly trying to sneak in a goal on a counterattack. But Cape Verde did not park the bus. The team scored twice against Uruguay and Argentina—elite teams.

But there are underdogs, and then there are underdogs. A few days after Cape Verde lost to Argentina, another underdog, Paraguay (population: seven million; G.D.P.: sixty billion dollars), faced off against the mighty France (population: seventy million; G.D.P.: more than three trillion dollars) in the Round of 16. The French players are among the best and most highly paid in the world; with a few exceptions, Paraguay’s players mostly play in South American leagues or the United States. “Paraguay’s total squad value is €153.7 million,” reports Football Whispers. “France’s total squad value is €1.52 billion.” The Paraguayans came from humble origins. The team’s goalkeeper, Orlando Gill, was forced to sell his soccer gear to cover medical expenses for his newborn. (Full disclosure: I was born in Paraguay.)

The world was angry with Paraguay after it lost to France. The team only lost one–zero, and the French goal came from a penalty kick. The scrappy Paraguayans kept France at bay for most of the match. After the game, critics denounced Paraguayan “dirty tricks,” “rough play,” and “anti-football.” “I don’t want to talk about Paraguay,” said a disgusted Fox Sports commentator after the game.

Paraguay, like Cape Verde, was playing to win. But it used different methods. Defensive tactics worked against Germany, which Paraguay had beaten in the previous round, a big upset against a country that has won the World Cup four times. Paraguay did park the bus; the team was cautious in attack, even when it had an opening to counterattack; it was tough, defensive, and worked the ref at every turn. The team also played dirty: cameras caught the midfielder Matias Galarza slapping the Frenchman Kylian Mbappe in the first half.

Some people said that Paraguay should have played more like Cape Verde. But the Cape Verde team had certain advantages that Paraguay lacked. Most of its players were born abroad, at least five trained from an early age in elite European soccer academies, and others had played their entire careers in European leagues. I don’t blame Cape Verde for looking for top players among its diaspora; Paraguay would do it too, if it had a larger diaspora. Both teams played with the cards they were dealt with. One of them charmed the media, while the other beat Germany.

The biggest controversy of this year’s Cup was an American story. In a rare moment of consensus among the commentariat, the talking heads of Fox, E.S.P.N., and Telemundo all agreed that Folarin Balogun should not have received a red card in the United States’s match against Bosnia for stepping on another player’s ankle. The slow-motion video replay made the foul look worse than it really was. Moreover, it wasn’t intentional; Balogun was merely landing on his feet, and landed on an ankle. In any event, his expulsion meant that Balogun would be suspended for the Round of 16 game against Belgium. The U.S. would be without its best striker. But then Donald Trump intervened, and F.I.F.A. mysteriously lifted the suspension, without questioning the validity of the original call.

The Balogun affair exposed the paradox at the heart of the American national team: it is an underdog in soccer, but a superpower in politics. Before teams like France, Germany, England—even Belgium—the American team might be seen as dangerous, even threatening, but never as an equal. The much-fabled 1994 U.S. World Cup team embraced and drew strength from its underdog status. But those were early days in the reconstruction of American soccer after decades of neglect. The U.S. Soccer Federation would not tolerate underdog status for more than one tournament. Ever since, it has inflated American fans’ expectations, even promising at one point to be a World Cup contender by 2010.

American soccer fans can’t see themselves as underdogs for several reasons. One of them is the marketing campaigns which build up the reputation of players such as Christian Pulisic and delude the public into thinking that they are equal in talent to the top players of Europe. Another is the deceptive nature of early American soccer history. We played in the first ever World Cup in 1930 and made it to the semifinals (though only thirteen teams competed). We even beat England in the 1950 World Cup! (It was a fluke.) Then there is America’s sheer size. Look at the map: what do you mean we are underdogs? We live in the most powerful empire history has ever known. We have more people and money than England and France. American youth soccer is a forty-billion-dollar industry. How can America be so big and an underdog at the same time?

I know several people whose gut reaction was to celebrate the lifting of the suspension—or who really, really wanted to celebrate, and would have done so but for a slight prick of conscience. This is understandable. If the Argentines can celebrate Maradona scoring with his hand against the English, then Americans can celebrate a lifted suspension. If Cape Verde and Paraguay used all the means at their disposal, then can’t the U.S.?

The problem is that while the American team is an underdog, the American government is not. In any case, unlike Argentina in 1986, or Paraguay and Cape Verde today, the U.S. in 2026 is a globe-bestriding hegemon. When it leveraged its imperial power to ask an already corrupt F.I.F.A. to become even more corrupt and arbitrarily lift Balogun’s suspension, it struck a blow against the integrity of the game itself. Hence the negative reaction to the event, which was almost universal among the commentariat. In any case, the gambit backfired: Balogun and the rest of the American team played a mediocre game against Belgium, while the Belgians, energized by outrage against F.I.F.A. and Trump, scored four times.

Perhaps the U.S. can’t embrace underdog status because, unlike Cape Verde, it can’t be a true underdog. The Balogun affair reveals that it will always have an ambiguous status. You can’t be David and Goliath at the same time.

America is one story, but it’s safe to say no one has ever called Brazil an underdog. For decades it has been something unique in all of sports: a charming Goliath. The joyful and skillful Brazilians, with their jogo bonito (beautiful game) and their smiles, will always conquer a neutral. But this World Cup, it became clear that their magic had all but disappeared. “Everything points to a structural decline,” lamented an editorialist in Folha de São Paulo after the team was knocked out by Norway in the quarterfinals.

This was a great feat for Norway, which had not qualified for the Cup since 1998. On the other hand, Brazil will have to wait at least another four years to win a World Cup, making this the longest ever drought in its history (the last time the team won was in 2002). Some argued that Brazil could no longer compete against the superiority of European tactics to Brazilian ones; others even blamed the decline of Brazilian Catholicism. All agree that the jogo bonito that Brazil is known for—picaresque and full of flair—was nowhere to be seen in this Cup.

The Brazilians were beaten by a player who embodies the same lightness and low-stress joyful playing style that they themselves were once famous for. It’s the second half of the quarterfinal. Norwegian Erling Haaland strolls around the pitch. Cool and relaxed, but secretly focused, he deceives the Brazilian defense twice. The first time, he walks slowly, then quickly accelerates when a cross goes up from his teammate, and leaps and beats the Brazilian defender Magalhães before scoring with a header. The second time, he is standing at the top of the area, looking leisurely yet alert a man playing hot potato and waiting for his turn. He receives the ball, shifts focus, tees up for a shot in the far lower corner twenty or so yards away. Goal.

Haaland is known by fans as the “cyborg” for his distinctive gait, and he charmed American fans with his happy demeanor and his enthusiasm for Americana -- he bought a cowboy gear in Texas (where the quarterfinal was played) and was seen exiting the plane back in Oslo with a taxidermied racoon. Equally jovial inside the field and out, he was a reminder to the Brazilians of what they used to be. He is also a reminder that renewal can come from unexpected places.

***

The great British soccer journalist Brian Glanville once wrote that the 1970 World Cup final between Brazil and Italy was an allegory of the struggle between the spirit of creativity and play, on the one hand, and that of caution and negativity, on the other. Most finals don’t lend themselves to literary interpretation, but the one between Spain and Argentina taking place on Sunday just might.

We live in a time when soccer, at least in Europe, has become predictable. Tactics are driven by highly calibrated systems, and coaches depend less on the genius of individual players. The traditional number ten, the playmaker, has all but disappeared. “Same styles, same tactical shapes, same rehearsed patterns of play, players and teams with similar profiles. A coming together of standards. . . . Teams playing the same way no matter the match situation or whether they’re home or away,” wrote Jonathan Northcroft of the London Times a few years ago. “The game became more strategic, more about the manipulation of shape and structure to create space or overloads,” wrote Jonathan Wilson last month in The Guardian. Both authors find the source for these developments in the legendary Spanish manager, Pep Guardiola, the coach who has won the Spanish, German, and English leagues and whose tactical innovations have changed the game.

Today’s Spanish team is more elegant and more fun than all that. It isn’t as methodical and contained as the old Spanish tiki taka team of the 2010s, which emphasized meticulous passing and possession, and which won Spain two Euros and a World Cup. (“They’re a slow crescendo,” is how Brian Phillips described their style, but “they will rip out your throat in a flurry.”) But it is dynamic, retains position, and has brilliant individual talents like Lamine Yamal. It’s the best version of a highly organized, tactically sophisticated European team.

Whatever you can say about the Argentine squad, it is not predictable in this same way. It depends so much more on guts, on feeling, on personal relationships between players, and one particular thirty-nine-year-old man, Lionel Messi, who has scored eight goals already and is having the tournament of his life. The Argentine team can play dirty. The players aren’t great in the air. They have defensive lapses. But they made it to the final, too, just like Spain. The matchup should be fascinating to watch. I am excited for the game, but my excitement carries with it an anticipatory nostalgia. I am going to miss the World Cup when it’s over.