The Blueprint: Everything happening around this World Cup

This episode of The Blueprint is all about the World Cup, but not the on-field side of it. Hosts John Baney and Trey Fillmore instead take stock of everything happening around this World Cup before the soccer starts and takes center stage.

The hosts spend a significant portion of the episode unpacking FIFA's deeply problematic ticketing process, walking through the use of dynamic pricing, the opacity around what the different ticket categories actually get you, and issues around FIFA's ticket resale portal and process.

Then there’s the ill-fated, short-lived reusable water bottle ban. An attempt by FIFA to force the fans already paying premium prices to get into the World Cup stadiums to exclusively buy water, necessary hydration, from stadium concessions, felt like a near-perfect symbol of the tournament's financial absurdities.

From there, the conversation gets heavier and shifts to the gigantic geopolitical shadow cast over the World Cup by United States actions and policies. There’s a laundry list of things hanging over the tournament, like the ongoing US military intervention in Iran; the travel bans affecting potential visiting fans from Iran, Haiti, Ivory Coast, and Senegal; and most recently, Somali referee Omar Artan being barred from entering the country and thus unable to work the tournament.

The episode closes on a more hopeful note, with John and Trey exploring the promise of the expanded 48-team format and the potential for this World Cup to serve as a possible breakthrough moment for soccer in the United States, though with that breakthrough depending on how the USMNT actually performs.

It's a mega-episode befitting the biggest World Cup field in history and also arguably the one with the most baggage surrounding it as the matches kick off. Listen to the whole thing at the top of this post, or find it by subscribing to The Soccer Journal Podcast feed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to podcasts.

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