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There are a million reasons why the World Cup is the greatest sporting event on Earth, and one of those reasons is that it's the rare setting in which soccer managers can be forced to eat some shit. American sports fans are spoiled by the traditional press conference. Yes, most press conferences are a waste of time and feature obsequious beat reporters lobbing easy questions at the coaches of the teams they cover, but there still exists in this country an impulse toward challenging a coach's thinking when the moment calls for it. If some bozo called for a field goal when he should have gone for it on fourth down, or left his starter out there too long, or or drew up a horrible ATO with the game on the line, he's at least going to be asked to explain himself after the game. If we get lucky, he may even get pissed and start yelling. Mick Cronin moments are harder to come by for the European soccer fan. If you're a fan of a Premier League team, for example, the only times you get to hear the manager speak are during a mid-week press conference that largely exists to provide injury updates, and during a brief post-match interview that is conducted by a single questioner who often works for the team. This can be a maddening experience, especially if your team sucks and you want someone to ask the dingus running the show why he keeps insisting on trying to turn a slow-footed full back into a wingback.

Dai dai. Ikou. Dale, allez, let's go. So says Shakira in the chorus of the 2026 Official World Cup Song "Dai Dai," in which she links up with Burna Boy to express the same sentiment in five different languages. Why find the universal in the specific when you can attempt to recreate the magic of your 2010 World Cup hit "Waka Waka" by finding the universal in the universal? “No one's getting tired, I know/‘Cause you got that fire, ayo” indeed. One Italian sportswriter described the lyrics of "Dai Dai" as “so generic they reach an almost spiritual level of abstraction” and compared listening to “contemplating a geometric shape.” It’s a tragedy that “No matter black, white, or beige/Chola or Orient made” was already featured in another anthem, and so could not be included in “Dai Dai.” The feeling, though, is the same. At one point in the song, Shakira sings the names of various iconic players: Pelé, Maradona, Maldini, Romário. What better way to celebrate the spirit of the tournament than with a list of those who, yes, have definitely played the game of soccer! She repeats the trick by listing a bunch of the participating countries, like a drunk uncle who hasn’t prepared a wedding speech and resorts to naming all the places people have traveled from to attend. “We got Wilmington, Delaware in the house tonight! Thanks for coming all this way!” As always, even supposedly apolitical World Cup choices are rife with politics; Shakira would never sing “Iran” in the song, despite its supple rhyming potential.  The utter unremarkability, the total insipidness of "Dai Dai" got me thinking about the genre of World Cup songs: Has it always been this bad? Here’s the answer, in a brief history of the music of the men’s World Cup.

In 2011, a Princeton Borough police officer gave me a public urination ticket as I was on my way to go drinking. I went home with someone that night and forgot about the ticket in my crumpled pants pocket. Weeks later I paid it off in a panic, hours before my delinquency would have added me to a New Jersey sex offender registry. For no particular reason, I was reminded about that while watching a femme top squat over a girl lying across a storm drain in the courtyard of a Holiday Inn in central Jersey. It took her a little while to find her stream, but she got there. While I’ve had interesting desires all the way back to my days furtively printing Final Fantasy fetish erotica off the family Epson, I’ve only been in the queer leather world for a few years now. Like many trans folks, turning myself into a girl destabilized my sense of my desires for the better. Cocksucking, anal bottoming, violence: These have become fixtures in my sex life, where before they were fantasies punctuated by shame spirals. But becoming what a good chunk of your country views as a pervert freak is a good way to force yourself to consider whether you might actually be a pervert freak. This is how I became one of 1,100 other pervert freaks converging on a Holiday Inn over a long April weekend for the 40th International Ms. Leather and 27th International Ms. Bootblack, a leatherdyke convention and celebration of kink and community. My first thought rolling up to the low and liminal three-story office park hotel we’re taking over is, Wow, look at all those dykes. Dykes behind registration desks, verifying COVID rapid test results, directing other dykes with luggage carts spilling over with duffels, hardshell Pelican cases, and sporting goods bags filled with what cannot be sporting goods. Dykes I know and don’t. Boy dykes and girl dykes and men who used to be dykes and dykes who used to be men, innumerable shades of exuberant faggotry, with canes and wheelchairs and mobility aids, some in leather vests dense with pins and patches, some in titleholder sashes, some in sweats and full beats. They embrace in many-way hugs and scream upon seeing each other, like sophomores back from summer. Across the parking lot, a pair of hoss-type white guys in performance basics are practicing golf swings. They’re there for hours, swinging and swinging in a perverse durational scene.

A recent New York Times story about former NFL insider Dianna Russini resurfaced an anecdote that Russini had previously shared on a podcast earlier this year. The story went like this: Russini was pulled over for texting and driving, and attempted to talk her way out of the ticket by telling the cop that she had only been texting because she was trying to break the news that Sean McDermott had just been fired by the Buffalo Bills. When that didn't work, she asked the officer who his favorite team was, and then FaceTimed the coach of that team. From the Times: “I FaceTime the head coach,” she said, without naming him. “Head coach is in his office. He said, ‘What’s up?’ I go, ‘I just got pulled over and I just wanted you to meet my friend, Officer Joe.’” The coach helped her get out of the ticket by telling the officer, “You should let her go, she’s a good citizen,” Ms. Russini said. As it turns out, that's not what happened. Adam Herbets of The Center Square obtained the bodycam footage from the traffic stop in question, and it shows that Russini was embellishing quite a bit while relaying this story to her podcast pals.

For the first time in history, Germany has lost a penalty shootout at the World Cup. A highly anticipated potential round of 16 matchup between Germany and France has been put on ice, and instead it is Paraguay that advanced on Monday, after a 1-1 draw turned into a 4-3 shootout victory for the South Americans. Paraguay followed the underdog script to perfection, scoring first and then frustrating, blocking, and clattering into the Germans around every corner, spoiling a dream matchup for the neutrals in favor of a dream outcome in itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGZGTRKNxvs Entering Monday's game, Germany held the advantage in almost every part of the field. FIFA's 12th-ranked side had better, more skilled attackers, a hard-working midfield, and an untested yet talented backline. (If there was one place on the field where Paraguay could have contested, it was at goalie, which did play a big role by the end.) But there is of course a reason why they play the games, and these countries engaged in riveting gladiatorial combat, in which the general rhythm was the same for 90 minutes of regulation. Germany would hold the ball for a long time, its vaunted attackers would get around, but not into, the Paraguayan box, and time and time again, the Paraguayan defense would stifle them. It was mesmerizing to watch, the way that this Paraguay team, so heralded for its rugged defending prior to the 4-1 loss to the United States in the opening match, lived up to its reputation by giving Germany hell when it came time for the favorites to try to score.

Bail for NFL cornerback Terrion Arnold, who has been charged with four counts of kidnapping and four counts of armed robbery, was set Monday at $1 million. Just a few hours after the hearing ended, the Detroit Lions cut Arnold, a former first-round pick who was set to enter his third season in the league. At the court hearing, prosecutors in Hillsborough County, Fla., had asked a judge to hold Arnold in jail without bail, but chief judge Christopher C. Sabella denied their request. Sabella also said Arnold could not contact his codefendants, had to surrender his passport, and must stay at home unless he is leaving for legal appointments or work. Sabella rejected a request from prosecutors to have Arnold wear an ankle monitor, saying, per USA Today, "I suspect that Mr. Arnold has a paparazzi monitor. If he's late for practice, ESPN will let us know."

Don't panic: We're about to discuss Draymond Green, but not because of his taste for provocation or his general Draymond-hood. It's just a little item ahead of NBA free agency opening Tuesday afternoon, which means there may be less here than meets the eye, but just enough to meet the funny bone. Green will reportedly decline his $27 million player option for 2027, days after Golden State Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. said the team was optimistic that he would return. OK, that's a little odd, but nothing to endanger your delicates over. It's the only thing we really know. But Green's decision offers the tantalizing notion that he might even consider leaving the only NBA team he's ever known, even though the more likely outcome is that he's taking a pay cut to bring in some new old blood. The Athletic suspects Green might re-up in Golden State anyway, while ESPN suggests it might be part of a byzantine plan for the Warriors to sign LeBron James to the $15.1 million midlevel exception, and somehow find a way to relitigate the 2016 NBA Finals all within one team.

Last week, my husband and I hosted a group of friends and acquaintances to celebrate our one-year anniversary of living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We marked the occasion by eating snacks and talking about our respective art practices. At one point, the group went around and said how they knew us, and I watched with amusement as most people told versions of the same story: me walking up to them at work, at the coffee shop, at the farmer's market, and introducing myself. I do not think of myself as a particularly social person. I am in bed with a book most nights by 8:00 p.m., and one of the ways my clinical anxiety manifests itself is through being afraid of new people. Maybe my saving grace is the fact that I was forced to move across the country every 2-3 years growing up with my military family. Against the odds, I've turned into a person who is able to establish roots in new places with relative ease. But even with a lifetime of practice, the prospect of Making Friends As An Adult often feels daunting. Do you know how many times I have cried in the last three years over shallow roots, loneliness, and a lack of community? More than five, for sure! Many adults lack the social infrastructure that places them alongside potential friends by default—things like church or Elks Lodge or whatever. Add in working remotely, and it can be very easy to go several days without speaking to another person. How are you supposed to find your people?

With the start of the 2026 Tour de France mere days away, most of the world's attention will focus on Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard as they race for the yellow jersey. The sixth consecutive installation of the mega-rivalry is obviously of heavy interest, but I don't think it's the most fascinating two-up contest on the cards. Experienced champions necessarily duke it out every year; by contrast, something like the fight brewing between 19-year-old Frenchman Paul Seixas and 22-year-old Mexican Isaac del Toro is unprecedented, and far more compelling. That scrap says more about the future of cycling, less for the undeniable talent of these two riders in particular than for the simple fact of their youth. The professional peloton has traditionally been an inhospitable environment for riders this young, yet cycling has been revolutionized by a profound youthward shift over the past half-decade. The shift goes far beyond this Tour's pair of golden children, who are merely at the vanguard of a broader youth movement that has swept through all of sports. Everywhere you look, younger athletes are excelling. A 19-year-old just won the French Open. The two best players on perhaps the best team at the World Cup are 18 and 23. The San Antonio Spurs relied on two rookies, a sophomore, and a 22-year-old to reach the NBA Finals in a playoffs largely short of consequential tricenarians. My Instagram feed is constantly showing me vertical videos of tyke-sized tennis children smacking crisp, ideal backhands. The nurseries are empty, their young charges having transitioned more or less directly from childhood into terrorizing their predecessors. In the process, this cohort of precocious athletes is challenging all manner of long-held conventional wisdom and threatening to redraw the lines around the most important part of any athlete's career: their prime. So, under what circumstances did this youth movement get started? Is it a new, permanent state of affairs, or something more fleeting? Why are so many talented children taking over sports?

The NHL draft was this weekend, and even though we had several weeks to get used to the image of Gavin McKenna in a Toronto Maple Leafs hat, the action in the rest of the top 10 was a good mix of unpredictable and intriguing. The Canucks, at No. 3, committed what has the potential to be an all-time goof-up by drafting their brand-new coach's son, Caleb Malhotra. (Anyone want to tell them how long coaches usually last in the NHL?) The Seattle Kraken, drafting at seven, ended up with a possible steal in defenseman Chase Reid, who surprisingly fell down the board after Buffalo swerved to draft Daxon Rudolph at No. 4 and the two teams that followed didn't change their plans. But of all 32 teams that added new blood, nobody should be more energized about their draft than the San Jose Sharks, who made a pair of major picks at No. 2 and No. 9 just as they're trying to shift into a higher gear. Oh, also, they got a really really tall guy at the very end. A few years back, the Sharks had sunk to rock bottom of their rebuild. But way down in those depths, they were gifted a glimmer of hope: Macklin Celebrini, the No. 1 pick of 2024, became their anointed franchise savior. He looked very, very good as an 18-year-old in the 2024–25 season, even as the team continued to lose a whole bunch of games, and in his second year, his skills exploded into the kind of fireworks show that gives suffering fans new life. Playing alongside a noticeably better, if far from complete, roster of developing youngsters, Celebrini finished top 10 in the NHL in both goals and assists, dragging the offense to something approaching league average even as the defense lagged far behind. The Sharks still missed the playoffs, but they improved on their previous year's mark by 34 points. The new core that Celebrini led already appeared promising, and especially after this weekend, these guys have earned the burden of genuine expectations. By drafting the winger Ivar Stenberg out of Sweden at No. 2, the Sharks are hoping to get another attacking talent whose upside will be clearly visible right out of the gate. While McKenna's lightning-in-a-bottle quality with the puck on his stick made him Toronto's top choice, there's a general consensus that he's going to have to learn some lessons about the subtler points of the game if he'll ever make the most of that electric skill. Stenberg, on the other hand, feels like a very safe add, with SHL numbers that compare favorably to other prospects who've successfully made the jump. He's got the maturity to make the most of his talent, scouts say, and San Jose can provide him with an ideal situation for a brand-new wingman. Put him on a line with Celebrini, the Sharks hope, and he should get comfortable very quickly.