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Chapter 1: What are the main themes of FIFA World Cup 2026?
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Chapter 2: Who are the top contenders for the World Cup?
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Chapter 3: What should we expect from the U.S. Men's National Team?
I'm loving the NBA playoffs. My kids graduated from Drexel later this week. I also feel like we as a society and specifically in the world that we both live in, sports and sports betting, it is a wash in cynicism, greed, corrupt behavior, inconsistent behavior at every level. We're a part of it. College football is a part of it.
We're going to talk about the World Cup today with our good friend Anthony Dibundo. The World Cup is and always has been ground zero for corrupt, greed, hypocritical, shove it in the fan's face. We don't care how much we're gonna gouge you for behavior. And we're just in a, we're awash in bad actors. Yeah, the World Cup doesn't have the vibe I definitely thought it was going to have.
I thought by the time June came around, America would kind of be more on board and you would kind of see stuff everywhere, especially I live in a host city of Philly. There is no needle move. Nothing feels changed at all. We've talked a little bit about it, Chad. I'm trying to go to a game at the link. Cheapest seats are $400 per seat.
That's before all the fees and everything else, which is just ā that's not attainable to the normal fan, especially the fan that just wants to watch, you know,
france play a third tier level club um it doesn't it doesn't make sense what's going on right now and uh the the funniest thing is hearing europeans talk about it where it's like america didn't build any new stadiums blah blah blah and it's like brother we have the infrastructure you think we need to bake a new stadium i can't wait for them to see the stadium in la or the stadium down in atlanta like those new stadiums
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Chapter 4: How has the World Cup's format changed this year?
We don't need anything new. I think the coolest thing they did was bring in the real grass, which is like, to me, the NFL players who are arguing right now against the 18-game schedule, I feel like that's a guarantee that artificial turf will be gone. It will be grass in every stadium. If they could do it for the World Cup, there's no excuse. This is a billion-dollar league.
So, yeah, Chad, it's a... It's a weird feeling where I'm really excited for it, but I wish more Americans were excited for the World Cup. It's the best. And I know people are skeptical of America. I try to keep telling American fans, South Korea hosted it a couple, I don't know if that was 16 years ago. They finished as one of the final four teams.
So host nations do get a weird bump, and I'm hoping America gets that. We need a run. To me, that's what America desperately needs. If they could get a run and finish somehow in the top four, I do think that would change people's feelings for the World Cup because it's the best. It's the best, honestly, celebrating with people as a country. I mean, you remember USA Hockey, right, Chad?
How much fun was that? Yeah, it's the best. So I need it. I need us to be good, but I watched us play the other night, and, yeah, it still feels like we have a ways to go. Well, look, you bring up a really good point. And I do want to get to the World Cup because it officially begins today. Group play is underway. I want to get to the bundo.
But it's so fascinating to me, all the price gouging and the. You know, disgusting, horrible behavior of world cup executives, et cetera. And then we go to Brendan Swersby, the Texas tech quarterback who had admittedly bet on Indiana games. When he was at Indiana, he had bet about, I think 90 grand. He clearly has a gambling problem. He's admitted to that.
He was banned from being able to play for Texas Tech in this upcoming year. He was the number one rated recruit in the portal. Texas Tech dropped a bag to get him. Texas Tech has been very aggressive during the NIL era. Cody Campbell. oil billionaire has been very outspoken about the NCAA and how he wants to completely reimagine what college sports looks like.
Sworsby had been banned and yesterday a Texas judge decided to overturn the ban. And really that means Sworsby is going to play because any appeal process the NCAA can make will not be settled until after the college football season.
So now there's a lot of conversations about Sworesby and admit a gambler who better on his team is going to be leading one of the top programs in college football team that made the college football playoff this past year, expected to do it again.
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Chapter 5: What are the best betting strategies for the World Cup?
It's fascinating to me, the response that people have, because this will have, and this is a completely cynical view. This will have zero impact on fans and their love of sports. We see it constantly. Gambling scandals are all over sports right now. Ratings are only getting bigger in every single sport. MLB ratings up, NBA ratings up, NFL ratings up, NBA ratings up in the finals enormously.
And no league has had more problem with sports betting than the NBA. So World Cup. will be a global phenomenon no matter how disgusting the people are that run it it does not matter that's the cynical point of view do you have thoughts on and and just to finish this rant before i get to you simon I love hearing coaches, this goes back to 1980s SMU college football scandals.
I love hearing the people at Texas Tech saying, this kid deserves to be on the field. He deserves to be given a second chance. We need to take care of our student athletes. We need to take care of our young people. All that is true, then take care of them. Being on the football field is still a privilege. You don't get to sidestep all of the other stuff
Just because you happen to be a good football player, you shouldn't be playing football. That's a non-starter. But get him all the help in the world that he needs and continue to support him as you would have if he was going to be your quarterback because that's the human thing to do.
Chapter 6: Which teams are considered pretenders in this tournament?
And that's what it really means to support the student athlete, not he deserves to be on the field because it will help him with his recovery, which is an argument a lot of people in these circles are making. Yeah, I mean, all I can hope is eventually it goes the other way, right? We're in a weird tipping point in our society.
I agree it keeps getting worse, but I do think eventually it could go the other way. But, you know, if he wasn't going to play college, he was going to be in a supplemental draft. So, to me, college football, we've known for a long time it's a business ā this judge, I believe it might've been from Houston. So it was like, they try to be a nine, uh, bias judge, right?
They, they, they, they, they try to make it as fair as possible as, as what they claimed. But, um, we've known for a long time, right? NCAA has lost total power. They have no power, no power. And, um, you know, I, I feel bad for college football fans, but at the same time, I think what you just said is so true. It's like, they care. They'll stomp their feet. They'll tweet about it.
But at the end of the day, nothing will change. It's only going to keep getting worse because money rules all, and especially in that league. And, um yeah we're again we only have so much time here to talk about these different things but yes FIFA to me is the most corrupt organization in the world when it comes to sports no doubt about it but you know
they do, they do make right decisions, right moves. And I think the world cup setup between Canada and Mexico and USA, it's cool. Like I love this whole setup and this whole deal. It just sucks. Like you said, it's been so corrupt. Americans aren't behind it. No Americans paying a thousand dollars. for just two seats and the nosebleeds to go watch France play some crappy team in Philly.
I just don't know how these tickets are going to sell. So like we said, Chad, the thing guys, us is the people need to fight back. You can fight back with your money, right? If less people watch college football, you know, people turn off this whole college football playoffs being, what is it? Two months now. It feels like it starts in early December. Chad doesn't end till January. Yeah.
If people push back against it, that's the only way. With their money, I should say. That's the only way they're going to make change.
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Chapter 7: How can fans engage with the World Cup experience?
Things are changing right now, buddy. Every day, things are changing rapidly. I never thought a kid would bet on college football and be eligible to play again in college football. It's really, honestly, shocking. It's shocking. Truly. And I'm not one of those people who thinks that sports are fixed. You know, I actually feel like all the mechanisms are in place
to make sure that sports are legit, that every contest is legit. And I also feel like 99% of the athletes are actually not interested in betting on sports or in trying to fix the outcome of a game. It's news because it happens infrequently, although more frequently than it used to happen in the past. And there are a lot of protections in place.
I'm not so cynical that I think I'm watching games that are fixed, but I think when you're letting a quarterback who's admittedly bet on games that he was involved in be the face of a franchise that is supposed to get to the playoffs, I think we're treading on very, very thin ice. Dangerous, dangerous precedent. Here's the good news. We get to turn our back on all of our preaching
and just talk about betting on the World Cup. Anthony Dibundo. Anthony Dibundo, who we discovered at the Action Network when he was just a senior at Syracuse. We loved him. He left us to go to the ringer. He's covering everything for the World Cup, for the ringer. Anthony Dibundo, welcome to the show. It's good to be here.
I'm very excited to spread the world's game, the love of the world's game. I remember back when we first wanted to get a soccer podcast with our friends, BJ Cunningham and Michael Leboff, and Chad didn't want to give us a soccer show. He said, nobody likes soccer. And now here we are doing the soccer show on Sharper Square. Nobody likes soccer.
We're doing one soccer show every four fucking years for the World Cup. That's how much people want to talk about soccer. That's fine. We'll take whatever we can get. Listen, you're a young single guy on the make in Philly. Before we get into the soccer talk, tell us about your experience watching game one of the NBA Finals. Yeah, so we were actually in Sweden.
Spotify was celebrating 20 years, and the game started at 2.30. So immediately when we all got there, obviously a lot of us are sports fans, a lot of Knicks fans. We're looking around like, what are we going to do? There's not bars open past 3, so that's not going to work.
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Chapter 8: What are the predictions for the Golden Boot winner?
None of us have TVs in our hotel room where we can get local New York television or national ESPN broadcasts. So what are we going to do? We found a hotel conference room that sat about 11 people, and we fit about 35 people into this conference room, sitting on floors, sitting on the wall, sitting under the table.
35 people packed, mostly Knicks fans, at 2.30 in the morning in Stockholm to watch the finals. And then, you know, I think the weirdest thing about all of it is, okay, it's halftime, the room's kind of steamy, so a bunch of us are like, let's go get some fresh air outside. You walk out of the hotel and the sun is shining at four in the morning in June in Stockholm. It is a majestic feeling.
You know, you're out at midnight and you can still see the orange hue from the sunset. And then four hours later, it's bright and sunny. How does anybody ever sleep? I don't know. If I live there, I would be a deranged lunatic who probably would lose my mind every winter. But in the summers, man, what a special time. And yeah, go Knicks. I mean, they pulled it out and now we got a series.
Hey, listen, you're so good at the soccer stuff. even though you broke my heart when you ditched us at action for the ringer. My older son, who is graduating from Drexel in the coming days, he was like, hey, I want to get into the World Cup. A lot of my friends are into the World Cup. Who should I go read or listen to? I sent him your glossary page. Oh, thank you. That's so nice.
Now I want you to bring that knowledge to us, to Bundo, okay? We got a huge field, 48 total teams. that's going to be game for basically 40 days. The final is July 19th. Set the table for us. Explain the structure of the tournament. Yeah, this is the first time we've ever had a 48-team World Cup. Traditionally, it was very simple. 32 teams, eight pools. Top two from each pool make a final 16.
Then you have a traditional 16-team bracket to determine the champion. But now... FIFA said, hey, what if we expand the game? What if we grow the game and we deepen our pockets? We can make a 48-team World Cup with 12 groups But the problem is if you just took two from every group, you'd have 24 teams, and it's hard to build a bracket with 24. So they said, here's our solution.
We'll have 32 teams qualify. So we're only going from 48 to 32. And what the first group round will do, eliminate 16 teams. But the third place teams will also advance. So eight of the top 12 third place teams will advance to the knockouts to form a round of 32.
So not only is the tournament bigger, but now the champion team, whoever ends up winning this whole thing, will have to play an eighth game. Traditionally, it was seven. Now it's eight. So there's another game added in. There's also more space between the games because there are more teams. It used to be every four days you would play in the World Cup. Now it's every six or seven days.
So the teams have more time off in between games. The travel is bigger for this World Cup. They kept it mostly regional for the group stage, but still there's more travel with the U.S. being such a big country, Mexico and Canada. And as a result, I think there's a lot of confounding factors.
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