Sports At Politics

With the 2018 FIFA World Cup men's soccer tournament beginning Thursday, I'll take this opportunity to predict the outcome of every match of this year's World Cup tournament. For the group stage, each match in each pool is listed in chronological order (although the last two matches of each group are played simultaneously), and my prediction for each mach is listed using the following format: (Team A) (Team A predicted score)-(Team B predicted score) (Team B), and the individual match predictions are followed by predicted pool standings. For the predicted pool standings, standings for each team use the following format: (Wins)-(Draws)-(Losses) (Points); for teams that I predict to advance out of group stage, their elimination stage seeding is listed as (group ranking)(group letter), and any tiebreaking criteria used is noted as well. For the elimination stage, predictions for individual matches follow an identical format to those for the group stage, with three exceptio...

This tweet from President Donald Trump may have just sunk the joint bid by the United States, Canada, and Mexico for the right to host the 2026 edition of the world's most prestigious men's soccer tournament, the FIFA World Cup: The U.S. has put together a STRONG bid w/ Canada & Mexico for the 2026 World Cup. It would be a shame if countries that we always support were to lobby against the U.S. bid. Why should we be supporting these countries when they don’t support us (including at the United Nations)? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 26, 2018 In other words, Trump, at least implicitly, threatened to revoke U.S. foreign aid from countries that intend to vote for Morocco's bid to host the 2026 World Cup over the joint USA/Canada/Mexico bid. Morocco, a country in northwestern Africa, was thought to be a heavy favorite to be selected to host the 2026 World Cup even before Trump's threatening tweet, and is probably even more of a favorite to be selected ...