At the 2025 Club World Cup, Jude Bellingham said the ball barely bounced and Luis Enrique said it hopped like a rabbit. Those pitches were shallow sod laid days before kickoff. For 2026, FIFA grows rooted grass to keep ball roll and bounce steady.

Staff can match two football sessions on energy cost, varying only intensity, to expose what a single GPS total hides. In matched runs, players lost 12% strength after high-intensity work versus 10.6% after moderate running.

Luiz Henrique plays for Brazil now and became an idol at Botafogo. At six, in Petrópolis, he curled one left-footed shot into the top corner, and a youth coach invited him into a small academy on the spot.

Bernardo Silva described Pep Guardiola’s centre-back experiment against Arsenal as “uma loucura” — madness. Guardiola then moved the experiment to left-back, and still called the first-half version “horrible.”

A new five-second restart rule for throw-ins and goal kicks will be used at the World Cup. If the referee judges voluntary delay, a visible count starts. At zero, a delayed throw-in goes to the other team and a delayed goal kick becomes a corner. ^{1 2}