Matt Hughes

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74 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 10 Jul

Matt Hughes’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Today in Focus · How Trump’s intervention tarnished the World Cup – The Latest · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

So he's put on probation.

It's never happened before during a World Cup.

I think there have been 189 red cards in World Cups going back to 1930.

None of them have ever been frozen in this way.

So it was completely unprecedented.

Yeah, it has.

In the space of 24 hours, the USA went from being globally popular and people like to see hosts do well, it's good for the tournament, but they suddenly became pilloried and everyone was supporting Belgium and taking delight in their 4-1 victory.

So while FIFA may have dodged a bullet in a difficult legal action from the Belgian Federation if they'd have been knocked out,

I reckon the United States are probably the biggest losers from this.

And he raises serious questions about what role the FIFA president, Gianfantino, had in the process and if he was effectively letting Donald Trump dictate policy.

I mean, in any other walk of life, in any other sport, it probably would be.

But the way FIFA works, he's protected.

It's a one-member, one-vote organisation.

There's 208 countries, and essentially, FIFA make the vast majority of them all their money.

So in England or Germany and France, where there's obviously...

A lot of money in football, we can point out this shambolic governance, but many of the countries in the World Cup and others that aren't rely on the money FIFA hand out every year in their development grants, as they're called.

So although he does face re-election next year, I don't even think there'll be anyone who will stand against him because his position is so strong.

It's actually gone better than most people expected.

I think a lot of traditional fans were opposed.

There were concerns that the additional teams wouldn't be of the required quality.

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