Laura Williamson

No, no, I wouldn't have thought so.

And then the way football works, we'll be on to the next one.

But there is very likely to be a Women's World Cup in the United States, along with a couple of other countries in 2031.

So I think it's going to be fascinating to keep an eye on the lessons that have been learned this time to see what happens then.

We should say that FIFA's argument is always, well, this tournament is going to make $11 billion, which is going to be invested back into the global game.

But again, that's where the opaque nature of this comes into play in that, you know, the 211 FIFA member federations can expect to get about $8 million each.

from this tournament or during this world cup cycle but we don't know where that's going um how does that translate to kids playing soccer in senegal or ivory coast or wherever we don't we don't know we don't know where that money goes um so i think that also adds to the to the confusion and the feeling of well who is this tournament for is it is it for fans is it for um the member federations is it for growing the global game um a lot of questions swirling around

Yeah, and without being sort of oversensitive about it.

But what about the local kids who – so many of my colleagues in North America talk about 94 and being a kid and being at a game and actually getting this bug for this beautiful game, which at its best is simple and beautiful.

And if the ticket prices are as prohibitive as we've been discussing –

How do you get a family of four into a game?

It's impossible.

So I guess that would be my main concern going into it.

If you're talking about an opportunity to really grow soccer in the US in particular, are we missing an opportunity here, I think?

Yes, yeah.

I mean, Gianni Infantino was elected in 2016 on a ticket of two things, really.

It was, A, I'm going to clean up this game.

I mean, you can't overstate how damaging that 2015 scandal was.

I mean, I remember it vividly.

I was working at the Daily Mail and the FBI and Swiss authorities raided a luxury hotel on a lake in Zurich.