A century of glory: The stories that made the World Cup

The world in 2026 is not, it must be said, presenting its finest face.

The evening news on TV now adds an ending “There’s Good News Tonight” segment after the glum stories that led the way. But now we can say, “There’s Good News This Summer,” since World Cup 2026 is on its way!

Having basked recently in a global moment of shared humanity during the Winter Olympics in Milan/Cortina, we do it all again in the spirit of togetherness at this summer’s FIFA World Cup. Both the Olympics and the World Cup are imperfect institutions, run by imperfect human beings, contested by imperfect nations. And yet both carry something rare and precious — the capacity to remind us, however briefly, of what we are capable of when we compete in a friendly spirit, when we measure ourselves against each other by skill and heart rather than power and might.

The World Cup arrives this summer with its usual pageantry — and this year, with something more urgent underneath it.

To understand why, it helps to know where this tournament came from. 

The dream of Jules Rimet

In 1930, a French lawyer and football administrator named Jules Rimet gathered 13 nations in Montevideo, Uruguay, for the first FIFA World Cup.

His vision was audacious and, to modern eyes, almost poignant in its idealism: that competitive football between nations could build bridges, foster mutual understanding and give the world a shared arena of peaceful rivalry. Uruguay won that inaugural tournament, and the gold trophy bearing Rimet’s name began its journey through history.

His dream was simple and radical in equal measure — that the nations of the world might meet on a football pitch rather than a battlefield.

The tournament has not always honored that dream — and, in a dark irony, neither has the trophy that bore his name. In 1966, just weeks before England hosted the World Cup, the Jules Rimet trophy was stolen from a London exhibition, sparking a national scandal. It was recovered, somewhat improbably, by a mongrel dog named Pickles, sniffing beneath a garden hedge in South London.

England went on to win the tournament — their only World Cup triumph to date, as I am reminded every decade or so — and the trophy was safely returned. Less happily, in 1983, the trophy was stolen again, this time from football headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. It has never been recovered — the most storied prize in world sport, almost certainly melted down by thieves who had no idea what they held and no interest in finding out.

Jules Rimet’s dream, it seems, has always had to contend with the baser instincts of our species.

The moments that defined a century

The stories accumulated across 19 World Cups constitute something close to a collective human mythology. In 1954, West Germany — a nation still raw with post-war shame — defeated the magnificent Hungarian team in what became known as the Miracle of Bern. For a broken country, it was the first hint of restored dignity. Football did what politics could not do yet.

Four years later, in Sweden, a 17-year-old Brazilian named Pele announced himself to the world with a performance of such athletic poetry that hardened European journalists reportedly wept in the press box. He scored twice in the final, and when the whistle blew, he collapsed in tears himself.

Here was the game at its most elemental — a boy from poverty in Santos, Brazil, illuminating the world’s largest stage.

Fast forward to Mexico City, 1986, and, in the space of four extraordinary minutes, Diego Maradona produced the two most famous goals in World Cup history. First, the “Hand of God” — a deliberate, unpunished handball that infuriated England and delighted Argentina in equal, tribally predictable measure. And then, from the restart, what FIFA would later vote the “Goal of the Century,” a 60-yard run past five England defenders that left commentators speechless.

In one afternoon, Maradona embodied everything complex and magnificent about this sport: the cheating and the genius, the controversy and the beauty, all tangled inseparably together.

And then there is the story that most painfully illustrates how far the game can fall from Rimet’s dream. In 1994, the World Cup came to the U.S. for the first time. In a group stage match, Colombia’s defender Andres Escobar deflected the ball into his own net. Colombia was eliminated.

Ten days after returning home, Escobar was shot dead outside a restaurant in Medellin — murdered, it is widely believed, by those who had lost money gambling on the tournament. The beautiful game had been touched, horribly, by the very darkness that Jules Rimet had hoped football might one day help us transcend.

America’s own story

Americans tend to believe their World Cup history begins with the 1994 hosting. In fact, it begins earlier and more dramatically. In 1950, the U.S. — a ragtag collection of part-time players and postal workers — defeated England one goal to nil in what most football historians consider the greatest upset in the tournament’s history.

England, who invented the game, went home humiliated by the Americans. The New York Times initially printed the scoreline as a typo. It was not a typo.

The price of the dream

There is, however, a shadow falling across this summer’s celebration — one cast not by geopolitics but by FIFA itself. When the U.S., Canada and Mexico bid for this tournament in 2018, officials promised group-stage tickets starting at $21, a nod to the democratic spirit Jules Rimet had always intended.

That promise has not aged well. Under FIFA President Gianni Infantino, tickets for the 2026 World Cup have arrived priced as high as $8,680 for premium final seats, with group-stage tickets for high-profile matches beginning at over $500. The price increase, compared to the 2022 tournament in Qatar, runs to roughly four or five times more.

Fan organizations across Europe have labeled the pricing “extortionate” and a “monumental betrayal” of the tournament’s traditions, while prominent football writers have warned that stadiums stripped of passionate supporters risk becoming little more than corporate hospitality events.

FIFA, for its part, introduced dynamic pricing to the World Cup for the first time — a ticket model borrowed from the American entertainment industry, familiar to concertgoers and NFL fans but deeply foreign to football supporters who have traveled on tight budgets to follow their nations for generations.

After a global backlash, FIFA offered a modest concession: a small number of $60 “Supporter Entry Tier” seats for each match. Infantino defended the broader pricing structure by pointing out record demand — over 150 million ticket requests in one sales window — suggesting that the market had spoken.

Perhaps it has. But markets and dreams are different things, and Jules Rimet was not a market economist. The worry is that the crowds in those magnificent American stadiums this summer will look rather less like the world than the World Cup ought to.

The world coming to us

And yet the World Cup endures, imperfect and irresistible. This summer’s expanded tournament — 48 nations instead of 32 — means that countries from every corner of the planet will compete on North American soil. Nations qualifying for the first time will bring their flags and their songs and their improbable stories to our stadiums.

Jules Rimet imagined exactly this: a world gathered in common cause, measuring itself in skill and heart. He could not have imagined the wars and fractures that would still mark the century ahead. But he would have found some comfort in this — through everything, the World Cup endures. The trophy bearing his name, though long since lost to thieves, left behind something more durable than gold. Billions of human beings still choose, for one summer, to watch rather than fight.

That is a dream we all need so much right now, and the World Cup tournament is a place for those dreams to thrive. The stories of a century are calling. It is worth pausing to hear them.

Christopher Blake is president of Middle Georgia State University. He is a passionate supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club and the men’s and women’s national football teams of England and the U.S.