The World Cup is over. I am not sure what to do with my days. I am booing a cardboard cutout of Alexi Lalas.

First of all: Thanks for reading and thanks for subscribing. The World Cup has been a huge driver of new readers and new subscribers. If you’re new and enjoyed the World Cup coverage: I care this much about everything! The newsletter is called Sports! not just Soccer!

Second of all: If you’ve enjoyed the World Cup coverage, I’d really appreciate it if you became a paid subscriber. We published 17 newsletters and about 50,000 words over the course of the World Cup and I didn’t ask you to become a paid subscriber in ANY of them, so I’m cashing in that goodwill right now. Sports! is almost entirely reader-supported. The newsletter is available for free, but the reason I’m able to devote so much time to writing it is because of paid subscriptions, and the reason I’m able to pay our growing staff (now TWO people! Shoutout to Louis and Bradley) is because of paid subscriptions.

I raised the price of new subscriptions from $5 a month to $8 a month. (Don’t worry, old subscribers, you’re grandfathered in and you’re still going to pay $5 a month. Unless you feel like paying me $8 a month, in which case go ahead.) The price is a dollar a newsletter. I think that’s a fair price, although it’s actually a bad deal for you since, again, the newsletter is available for free. But that’s why I feel OK raising the price: If you are paying, you are making an intentional and massively-appreciated choice to support this business. I’m just letting you know that the business needs a little bit more support right now. If the price is too high, I get it, and that’s why you’re welcome to keep reading for free.

Third of all: Some scheduling stuff. We’re going all soccer today to wrap up the beautiful month we’ve just experienced. On Thursday, we’re going to recap the big things that happened in sports while the World Cup was going on, since I’ve kinda been ignoring those. Next week, we’ll be back to normal for a bit.

– Rodger Sherman

I don’t think it’s fair to say my dog, Tayto, likes having ball. He needs having ball.

Is Tayto happy when ball in mouth? Perhaps. But when ball NOT in mouth, he is shaken. (Quite literally, he violently shakes when ball not in mouth.) If you throw ball, you might think from the ferocity and passion with which Tayto chases ball that he enjoys playing fetch. Wrong. He does not enjoy playing fetch. He is merely trying to minimize the milliseconds he is without ball. Ball, to Tayto and many others, is life.

So it is with Spain. Spain won the World Cup by having ball and being driven to madness by every moment they did not have ball. What do they want with ball? This remains unclear. Occasionally, they shot the ball into the opposing net, perhaps out of obligation, perhaps just to see how it felt. In a tournament filled with spectacular strikers breaking goalscoring records, scoring felt like a side quest for Spain, a diversion from their ruthless, fanatical need to have ball at all times.

They scored one goal in the World Cup final, after 100 minutes of dominating the game, after Enzo Fernandez’s red card reduced Argentina to ten men. (Technically it was a second yellow, but it was probably worth a red card straight-up. Smart: get your money’s worth, Enzo!) Here’s Ferran Torres’ 106th-minute finish:

(RIP to the corner flag.)

They say the best offense is a good defense. Or maybe they say the best defense is a good offense? Honestly, I forget. Regardless, Spain embodied that mentality, racking up a full hamper of clean sheets by simply never allowing their opponents to have the ball. The Spanish stranglehold was one of the most dominant tournament runs in World Cup history:

OK, enough celebrating Spain! The best part of the World Cup wasn’t the championship or the team that won. It was the month of joy and chaos and America and hope and love that came before it. It was the biggest World Cup ever, and one of the best, filled with thrills and confusion.

I picked out some arbitrary categories to hand out awards. Dai dai, iko, dale, allez, let’s go!

I could’ve made two categories for best goal — the most objectively beautiful strike, and the moment that meant the most. And they would’ve been the same goal.

Sidny Lopes Cabral played two years in the third division in Germany and scored one (1) total goal. Then he took the field against Argentina, at the World Cup, in extra time, with hundreds of millions watching around the world, and he scored the goal of a lifetime: a swerving, bending belter that ripped the top corner of the net. I’ll never forget the image of him running downfield with his hands on his head, as if he himself couldn’t believe the magic he’d made with his foot.

For a second there, it really looked like Cabo Verde might take Argentina to penalties. Of course, Argentina won anyway, their first of roughly 18 skin-of-the-teeth wins en route to the Final.

Second place? There is no second place. If this doesn’t win the Puskas, we riot.

This felt like an incredible World Cup for goalkeepers, with game after game featuring huge highlight saves. There were so many stupendous stops that I’m going with a save that didn’t even make this list of the top 10 saves of the tournament: Raul Rangel’s double save against South Korea. I’m rolling with the guy who kept a ball out the net while seated flat on his butt.

This save gets bonus points for me because a) Rangel wasn’t expected to be Mexico’s starting goalie until a late injury and b) he did it in his home city and stadium in Guadalajara.

I think my second-favorite save was Norway’s Ørjan Nyland coming back to the net and stretching out to deflect an own goal off the pole against Brazil.

This was the game where both teams could advance out of the group stages with a tie, so people thought it would be a 0-0 draw. WRONG! And just when it looked like the teams had settled on a 2-2 tie, Algeria lulled Austria into a false sense of security and launched a sneak attack to go up 3-2 in the 93rd minute, only for Austria to sub in a 6-foot-8 guy who scored in the 96th minute.

Sorry, just wanted a chance to talk about the third-place game. England went up 4-0, then France scored three straight to make it a game. I was howling the whole way through.

Kylian Mbappé sealed the Golden Boot with his performance in a losing effort in the third-place match … AS PREDICTED BY ME, HERE, IN SPORTS! THE NEWSLETTER. He’s also the new all-time World Cup goalscorer — again, thanks to a losing effort in the third-place match. Incredible stuff.

Iran faced a combination of logistical challenges and tough luck that no other nation had to deal with, starting with the fact that the host nation was bombing their home nation. They were about a foot away from winning two group stage games, but had two goals called back on razor-thin VAR rulings, including in the 95th minute of their final game. They were the team eliminated by that ridiculous Algeria-Austria finish, which came down to the last goal in the last minute of the last match of group play. And the host nation’s government openly celebrated the fact that they were eliminated. Iran deserved better, but they also never lost.

I knew Haaland was big, but I didn’t know he was big enough to carry a whole damn country on his back. Norway hadn’t been to the World Cup since 1998; Haaland scored seven goals to get them to the quarterfinals.

I came into this tournament as a Messi appreciator. I left as a Messi stan.

Argentina’s run to the World Cup final felt like something out of March Madness — buzzer-beater after buzzer-beater — but instead of being led by some going-pro-in-something-other-than-sports underdog, the greatest soccer player of all time singlehandedly willed his team to comeback win after comeback win.

Messi leaves the tournament as the all-time leader in World Cup games played, World Cup wins, World Cup assists, and World Cup goal contributions. Now let’s see whether he can climb out of second place in the MLS Eastern Conference standings.

James Tyler of ESPN went through the player introductions for all 747 players who started a game in the World Cup group stages and determined that only one guy did this:

Tyler somewhat generously described this as “lion’s roar,” even though Ashour is not roaring and lions do not do that with their hands. He could be imitating the monster from Pan’s Labyrinth that has eyes on its hands, or attempting to play goalie in handball, or trying to scare away a bear. Either way, I genuinely appreciate the attempt to do something unique amidst dozens of guys glumly folding their arms and trying to look serious.

🗣️AFTER REVIEW

🗣️NUMBER 10

🗣️PARAGUAY

🗣️COVER HIS MOUTH

🗣️DECISION IS

🗣️GRRRRRRRREATEST MOMENT OF WORLD CUP!

Blame his teammates for not stepping up and leaving it to their center back who had never attempted a penalty …

but damn, that dude missed the net by so much.

Millions of English-speaking Americans decided to tune into Spanish-language TV for the World Cup. Why? Did we prefer the passion of the Spanish announcers? Were we zoning out until the GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL call let us know that something happened? (After exhaustive research by The Athletic: The longest one clocked in at 52 seconds.) Are we casuals who prefer the vibes of soccer to actually understanding what’s going on? Were we trying to immerse ourselves in Spanish in an attempt to become bilingual? Did we simply hate Alexi Lalas?

All the above, I think. Huge W for Telemundo, which has picked up Champions League rights starting in 2027.

As much as I loved the “baffled European discovers Buc-ees” genre of American World Cup content, nothing made me happier this World Cup than the love affair between Algeria and Lawrence, Kansas.

In 2023, I drove around the country going to college football games, rolling into a few dozen college towns including Lawrence. People in college towns are particularly welcoming. They’re pre-conditioned to take in a bunch of kids from wherever and make them feel at home. They always wanted to tell me what’s unique and special about their town, and bent themselves backwards to offer me free food, free beers, and free tickets.

Lawrence somehow extended that hospitality to an entire country, and Algeria sent that love right back.

There was a moment before Cabo Verde-Argentina when the coaches exchanged gifts — a formality, happens every match. But instead of simply handing off the trinkets and going back to his team, Cabo Verde’s coach, Bubista, stopped his counterpart, Argentina’s Lionel Scaloni, and unfurled the banner he was handing over, revealing a map of the Cabo Verde islands. He wanted his opponent to know who he was playing against, and where they were from.

If you wanted to find out the best national soccer team in the world, you could limit the tournament field to a handful of countries from Europe and South America and be done with it. But that’s not the whole point of the World Cup. It’s a month of soccer that helps us learn about all the people we’re stuck with on this big rock hurtling through space. We get to see people representing places we’ll never go. We learn what their people look and sound like, what languages they speak, how they celebrate, and how they play.

And how did Cabo Verde play? Like freaking champions. They tied Spain, the eventual winners, 0-0, and they were tied 1-1 with Argentina after 90 minutes and had them on the ropes in extra time.

I know so much more about Cabo Verde now than I did two months ago. I know how to pronounce their country’s name. I know their capital city is the Portuguese word for “beach.” I know their diaspora spreads all over Europe and, for some reason, Massachusetts. I know they’re proud as hell of where they’re from. And I know they’ve got a roster full of dudes who would give absolutely everything they have to keep that ball from going into the net.

There’s nothing more half-hearted than an end-of-tournament “that was so fun, we should keep watching this sport!” (Any new fans stick to their promises to keep up with curling after the Olympics?) Like a friend from summer camp, we inevitably lose touch with our newfound fandoms.

But I think I have a solution for the American tradition of paying attention to men’s soccer once every four years and watching the USMNT lose in the Round of 16 at the World Cup. It’s easy:

We shouldn’t wait four years to pay attention to the USMNT again.

And I’m not just saying that because I run a newsletter called Sports!, in which I regularly urge people to pay attention to lots of sports. After watching the USMNT pop like a billionaire’s submersible against Belgium, I think this team needs to test itself under pressure more often.

On Deck is written by Rodger Sherman and Bradley Locker.

All week long, in Oklahoma City (Peacock)

Gonna be honest. I’ve been pretty wrapped up in soccer and don’t know very much about who’s going to be in contention at the canoe slalom world championships. BUT! This is going to be a big test for the 2028 Olympic venue in OKC. The last time an American won a gold medal at the canoe slalom worlds was in 2014 … the last time the USA hosted! — RS

Monday, 7 p.m. ET in Philadelphia (ESPN)

This series is a rematch of the 2025 NLDS, which the Dodgers claimed in four games. The headline is Philadelphia’s talented starters against Los Angeles’ vaunted lineup, with Cy Young candidates Cristopher Sánchez and Zack Wheeler slated to start the first two games. Considering Philadelphia currently owns the second NL Wild Card spot (despite a terrible start), it’s plausible that these two sides could see each other again in October. — BL

Monday, 7:10 p.m. ET in Boston (MLB.TV)

Can anyone slow down Boston? Despite a wretched first few months of the season (which included dismissing renowned manager Alex Cora), the Red Sox have caught fire. They’ve now won 13 straight games after a sweep of the first-place Rays over the weekend, making them 18-2 in their last 20 games. After being perceived as sellers through much of the season, the Red Sox are now far more likely to buy at the trade deadline — which takes players like Aroldis Chapman, Willson Contreras and Sonny Gray off the table. — BL