The World Cup Isn’t the Best Soccer Has To Offer, but the World Loves It Anyway

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! There’s no need to leave early and beat the traffic this week, so take your time reading today’s newsletter.

We’ve got four quick hits on four very different topics this week, covering everything from the World Cup, to campaigning on sports, to Formula 1, to the NBA and NHL finals. Get ready!

• President Donald Trump’s attendance at Game 3 of the NBA Finals appeared to be relatively drama-free, other than some booing and some security chaos. (Trump thought it was amazing.)
• A last-minute lawsuit is trying to halt the UFC fight on White House grounds on Sunday.
• World Cup immigration is a mess: A referee from Somalia was not allowed into the country. A Swiss player was held up because of an incident that happened eight years ago. An Iraqi player was detained and a team photographer was sent back to Iraq.
• Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby has somehow created even more chaos for college sports: Initially suspended by the NCAA for betting on his own team while at Indiana (which he admits to, in violation of NCAA policies and state laws), a judge granted Sorsby an injunction that will allow him to play all but two games this season (against Texas Abilene and Oregon State). Now schools are refusing to schedule games against Texas Tech in any sport.
• I am increasingly convinced the Protect College Sports Act is going nowhere because various factions are going to get bogged down in the details (Democrats on collective bargaining, Republicans on immigration and transgender athletes). It is not promising that a markup hearing was supposed to happen on Wednesday, but was pushed back and still hasn’t been formally announced.
• The Bears took another step closer to moving to Indiana, but it’s not a done deal yet. The latest step happened because the Illinois legislature adjourned without passing any kind of bill to give the Bears a special deal.
• The Toronto government bought 3,500 World Cup tickets with plans to sell them for a profit—even though last month, the Ontario government started enforcing its new scalping ban.
• Elsewhere in Reason, by Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey: “The Enhanced Games Proved Enhancement Works But Youth Works Better.”
• Ohio is a state full of bad decisions.
  

  Ohio gave these people $600 million public actual dollars. https://t.co/4q02KBNoXx

  — Jonathan Smith (@DegenerateTBone) June 4, 2026

There’s a dirty little secret among die-hard soccer fans, kept from the casual viewers who just pop in every four years to watch the World Cup: This isn’t the best stuff soccer has to offer. The best storylines, traditions, and atmospheres in soccer aren’t at the international level; they’re at the club level, where players spend 90 percent of their time.

The World Cup isn’t even the highest quality of gameplay. International teams only get together several times a year for two weeks at a time. Meanwhile, players with clubs like Arsenal, Barcelona, Manchester United, etc., train together almost every day for the vast majority of the year. At the club level, teammates gel so well that players can pass the ball without looking because they know exactly where their teammates are headed. The best teams in Europe are like superteams, pulling the best players from every nation in the world. Arsenal would probably beat the Brazilian national team because Arsenal has better players and more training time. The international game is stilted, less fluid. The tactics are usually more formulaic because that’s how you can get every player on the same page with limited time in training.

As Simon Kuper says in his great book World Cup Fever (half memoir, half history of the World Cup), sometime around the 2006 World Cup hosted by Germany, the best soccer leagues caught up to the World Cup in terms of quality. He writes: “I sat in the Cologne stadium thinking what I often thought at World Cups: why are so many people watching this?”

The answer, of course, is that it’s not about watching good soccer. People watch the World Cup to feel a sense of pride and belonging in where we’re from. As I wrote in March during the World Baseball Classic: “If there’s one thing most people seem to feel strongly about, it’s geography. The place they’re from? It’s better than the place you’re from.” International sports, much more than pro team competitions, give an entire country the chance to come together and support the team. It’s not just on a national level, though—it’s about texting your soccer friends, or your sports group chat, or your family about the amazing moments that make you go crazy. The stadium atmosphere is amazing, but there’s also nothing like watching a big soccer game in a crowded bar with like-minded fans—and then feeling like the roof is going to blow off the place after a huge goal.

The more people that watch a sporting event, the more other people want to watch—to see what all the fuss is about, or to feel part of the gang. Being together is what it’s all about. While pro and college sports divide us up by city and state, giving the whole country something to watch and talk about together gets people even more excited.

This is beyond politics. Pride in where we’re from, and sharing in that feeling with others, isn’t something created by politicians or the government. Even if your country almost certainly isn’t going to win, the World Cup is still a great way to express that pride.

At The Atlantic, Nathaniel Frum writes that “Democrats Must Learn to Talk Sports.” That take earned plenty of mockery:

I’ve covered the intersection of sports and society (politics, religion, economy and race) for almost 20 years, almost all of it in hard-red states.

This is the dumbest goddamn thing I’ve read in a long time. https://t.co/lyvGIC8U7I

— Steven Godfrey (@38Godfrey) June 2, 2026

I certainly don’t want politicians to talk more about sports (or at all, really), but that’s separate from whether this can help politicians, on either side of the aisle, get elected.

Frum makes an important distinction in the piece. He is not saying politicians should make clumsy sports pronouncements, like when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz went out of his way to say nice things about the Lions and Packers, or when his campaign posted that “@AOC can run a mean pick 6.” (Another terrible example of this comes to mind: When 2016 Republican candidate Carly Fiorina tweeted, a month before the Iowa Caucuses, that she was supporting Iowa in the Rose Bowl instead of her own alma mater, Stanford.) Frum is asking for politicians to combine sports and populism—and to not be afraid to trash talk.

Basically, he’s saying Democrats should sound more like Trump when they talk about sports, and not be afraid to say negative things just because sports aren’t as important as healthcare or economics. “What’s relatable is irrationally caring for your team and irrationally hating its rivals—not pandering by saying that you happen to like all of the teams in key Rust Belt swing states,” Frum writes. For it to work, the politician has to be a genuine sports fan. If they’re not, Frum says, maybe they shouldn’t be a politician at all: “If you can’t relate to something that resonates so strongly with American people, then you need to reevaluate your role as a politician in an electoral democracy.”

It’s not a perfect solution. A lifelong Republican isn’t going to vote for a Democrat just because the Democrat said something human and normal about sports. A Nazi tattoo isn’t excusable as long as you say something hateful about the Yankees. Kitchen table issues will always rule the day in politics. But people also like to vote for politicians who seem normal, or at least like human beings they’d want to spend time with. Sports are the biggest thing in culture these days, after all. I’d rather politicians left sports alone, but if they can talk about sports like a normal sports fan, it might help them.

Just don’t do this:

Jeffries: It’s not clear to me that Donald Trump is a big Knicks fan. Does this guy even know the difference between Karl Rove and Karl-Anthony Towns? I don’t think so. pic.twitter.com/Bvky3vfG0H

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 8, 2026

Hoo boy—I try not to whine too much, especially when a lot of Formula 1 fans are jumping to conclusions, but the Monaco Grand Prix was a farce. It was possibly the worst race (albeit not the most boring one) I’ve seen in my five seasons watching every grand prix. Ideally, races should never be about decisions made by off-track officials, but that came up all too often on Sunday.

Everyone complains about how the Monaco race is always Formula 1’s most glamorous affair but also its least exciting race. The walls are too tight for on-track passing, so drama is usually dependent on crashes or weather. The newest Formula 1 cars (smaller than their predecessors) were supposed to help with that, but we still got only a handful of passes. One could also easily blame the new cars for the engine troubles that took Max Verstappen out at the start. Throughout the race, there were numerous penalties for speeding in the pit lane, causing lots of confusion about whether a sensor or measurement was broken and whether the penalties would be upheld. Then, after two crashes in the same turn, officials threw a red flag to fix some pavement that was breaking up—as if this were NASCAR at Martinsville in 2004, and not one of the richest principalities in the world (though the crashed drivers blamed mechanical issues with their cars rather than the track surface).

The state of the asphalt in Monaco after this weekends action😬
📸(@FulvioVigilante) pic.twitter.com/fNHv21ce7N

— Cadillac F1 News (@CadillacF1News_) June 8, 2026

Other than the top handful of drivers, the finishing order seemed largely random. I’m not saying Formula 1 should leave the historic circuit like my fellow Arsenal fan Joel Embiid is saying, but Formula 1 and its sanctioning body, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) need to make sure their biggest event looks better than this.

I’d love to hear from my fellow Formula 1 fans if they have any ideas here: Email me at freeagent@reason.com

Thanks to those of you who responded to our survey on the NBA and NHL finals.

Turns out 80 percent of you are pretty upset with how the NBA Finals are going (slightly less so after Game 3)—only 20 percent of you said you’re rooting for the New York Knicks over the San Antonio Spurs. I’ll allow it from the people who said “Have been Knicks fan since 1960” and “Team of my youth (I grew up in NYC) even if I despise Dolan. Pop always wore on my nerves.” Unfortunately for you two, everyone else wants you to be sad. We got responses that said: “Sad NY fans make me happy,” “bc Mamdani would be sad,” and “I can’t stand the Knicks or their fans.” The survey’s written responses aren’t connected to the Knick vs. Spurs responses, so I have no idea if the people who responded with “Wemby” and “Wemby, Wemby, Wemby” are lovers or haters.

On the ice, we’ve got a much more divided fanbase, with the Vegas Golden Knights edging out the Carolina Hurricanes and getting 52 percent of your support. Many of you have strong geographic feelings here. One Canes supporter wrote, “A desert city shouldn’t win the Stanley Cup, I object on moral grounds,” while a Knights fan wrote, “Carolina should not have hockey.” I do not find this one to be a plausible excuse: “It gets cold in Nevada sometimes, and hockey is a northern sport.” And while I miss the Whalers just as much as whoever wrote this (possibly my brother), the move from Connecticut long predates the current ownership: “Moved the whalers, and no sparty.” Given the negative press Canes owner Tom Dundon has been getting for looking like a cheapskate as Portland Trail Blazers owner, this was an interesting response: “I’m a Trail Blazers fan….if the Canes win, it shows that Dundon may be able to share his successes running the canes with the Blazers.”

We lost the game but won the hype war in this friendly against Germany. If this had taken the lead in a World Cup knockout match, I’m not sure my heart would survive. (Here it is in Spanish.)

Antonee Robinson UNLEASHES 😱 pic.twitter.com/nGjr1voa0q

— B/R Football (@brfootball) June 6, 2026

That’s all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, the UFL’s championship United Bowl on Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern, featuring the Louisville Kings against the D.C. Defenders and the Audi Field beer snake.