Strong opinions, backed by evidence. On the rules, the culture, the business, and the future of the game.
Latest Since 1956, France Football has handed out football's most coveted individual award. It has produced some correct answers. It has also given the trophy to the wrong player more times than anyone cares to admit — and the story of those failures tells you more about the award than the victories do.
Manchester City dropped two points at Hill Dickinson Stadium they could not afford to drop. Arsenal sit five clear of the chasers and three games from a first league title in twenty-two years. Here's what's left, who plays who, and the specific scenarios under which the title is still actually alive.
Mohamed Salah is the highest-scoring African player in Premier League history. Achraf Hakimi is among the world's best full-backs. Victor Osimhen, Ademola Lookman and Mohammed Kudus have all been the most-watched performers at recent international tournaments. The pipelines that produced them — Génération Foot, Right to Dream, JMG, ASEC Mimosas — have done more institutional work for European football than any single elite academy on the continent. They have rarely been credited.
Inter Miami pay Messi $20m a year. Atlanta United fill 70,000-seat stadiums for regular-season Wednesday matches. The US men's team is, on the latest evidence, a top-12 international side. MLS turns thirty in 2026, and on every metric except the one that mattered to the original sceptics — competitive depth — the league is somewhere it was never supposed to be.
The 2021 announcement collapsed in 48 hours. The 2023 European Court of Justice ruling effectively reopened the door. The 2024-2025 Unify League proposal kept the structure alive in a different shape. The Super League — under whatever name — is no longer a punchline. It is a permanent shadow over European football's institutional architecture, and the case against it has been getting weaker because nobody has been making it loudly enough.
Côte d'Ivoire won at home after a tournament that produced two of the most coherent tactical systems in 2024 international football. The deeper story is what the tournament said about African football's institutional depth — the coaching, the squad management, the recruitment pipelines — and what European football has been quietly stealing from CAF.
It is just over three years since Cristiano Ronaldo signed for Al-Nassr. The wages have inflated, the spending has slowed, the 2034 World Cup has been awarded, and Al-Ahli have just defended a continental title. The honest assessment is more complicated than either the boosterism or the dismissal.