THE WARMUP

Happy Sunday. The Back Page is open.

Kickoff is this afternoon, and I’ve got Argentina going for their fourth title with Messi trying to go back-to-back, against a Ballon d’Or winner chasing his first for a country looking for its second, on a stage FIFA built specifically for the cameras. Somebody’s getting handed a trophy on that stage in a few hours, and that’s basically the whole subject of this week’s lead, so buckle up.

Also in the mix: a married couple who didn’t realize they’d already sat next to each other 26 years before they officially met, South Korea’s entire football federation getting torched by its own president, a G-Leaguer who’s funnier than most actual comedians, and Adam Friedland working the Falklands into a World Cup preview before pitching you extra-time prop bets.

Grab a cuppa and settle in.

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THE LEAD

At the 1950 World Cup final, FIFA president Jules Rimet had a speech ready, written in Portuguese, for the Brazilian federation and captain. In front of 200,000 fans at the Maracanã, Brazil, up a goal with the crowd already celebrating, somehow lost to Uruguay, 2-1. Rimet and the organizers scrapped the ceremony entirely and got the trophy to Uruguay in the chaos on the field.

Can you imagine President Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino scrapping today’s ceremony? Trump’s already got a track record at this exact stadium. Presenting Chelsea their Club World Cup trophy at MetLife New York/New Jersey Stadium last summer, he was supposed to hand it over and step off stage. He didn’t. Reece James ended up lifting the trophy with the president still standing next to him, because, apparently, nobody told Trump the plan involved leaving.

Whoever wins today, Lionel Messi or Rodri, gets the trophy on a prefab stage at the same building, then carries it to his teammates for the made-for-TV lift. Most of the world is probably hoping the exit goes smoother this time.

The ceremony has always had its share of pomp and improvisation. Host countries especially like to insert their own dignitary into the moment: Benito Mussolini handing off to Italian captain Giampiero Combi in 1934, King Juan Carlos doing the honors in Spain in 1982, Jacques Chirac handing it to captain Didier Deschamps in Paris in 1998, Vladimir Putin taking his turn in Moscow in 2018. The man’s been running Russia since dial-up internet was still a thing, so of course he made time to hand over a trophy.

The trophy lift itself wasn’t even a thing until 1958, when Brazilian captain Hilderaldo Bellini turned around after receiving it and, prompted by photographers wanting a better shot, held it over his head. Every winning captain since has ripped him off.

Staging came later. Bobby Moore led his team through the Wembley Stadium crowd to the Royal Box to get the trophy from Queen Elizabeth II in 1966. It’s the closest thing to a built stage the tournament had for another 40 years, until FIFA finally got around to building one on purpose, in 2006, when Sepp Blatter handed it to Italy’s Fabio Cannavaro.

By 2022, the ceremony had become its own production. The emir of Qatar wrapped Messi in a bisht before he ever touched the trophy, drawing out the moment for the cameras. That’s the version FIFA is running with today, with Coldplay curating an 11-minute halftime show involving Shakira, Madonna, Justin Bieber and BTS, because subtlety left the building sometime around 2006.

Whatever the pageantry, the trophy still goes to the captain first. Hockey gets that right too — the Stanley Cup goes to the team captain before anyone else touches it. Try saying that about the Lombardi Trophy or the Larry O’Brien Trophy, which passes through the owner’s hands before it reaches a single player. The World Cup, for all its dignitaries and staged robes, has never lost sight of who actually won the thing. Someone tell the American sports owners.

— Ian Powers

THE QUESTION

Guess the World Cup moment or legend from the emojis. No googling.

See answers below 👇

THE READS

Each week, we curate 4-6 of our favorite reads from this week. The selections came from our own curation and from dozens of submissions by our readers. Thank you so much, and keep them coming.

Jeff Howard and his wife were comparing notes on Braves playoff games they’d each attended in their younger days when she remembered a ticket stub from a 1991 game she’d found while cleaning out her mom’s house. He still had his stub too — same game, Game 4 of the '91 NLCS against the Pirates. Same aisle. Same row. Seats 14 and 15. They wouldn’t meet for another 26 years.

Rapinoe got pulled from a World Cup ad shoot this month after a brand’s AI flagged her trans-rights advocacy as a liability, which is as good a cold open as you’ll find. From there she digs into Washington’s I-638, a November ballot measure that would make girls, not boys, prove their sex through genital exams or hormone testing to play school sports. Her case: these bills don’t protect anybody, they just hand someone new the power to decide who counts as a girl.

South Korea crashed out in the group stage, and their reward for landing back in Incheon at 4 AM was a crowd there specifically to boo head coach Hong Myung-bo off the tarmac. The president of the country piled on next, accusing the federation of hiring Hong on connections instead of competence, which turns out to be a real accusation, because the Chung family that runs Hyundai has also been running Korean football for 33 years. Two resignations later, the country is still furious.

Bank of America gave away 2 million bracelets this tournament, one per host city, and somehow turned free swag into the smartest sponsorship play of the summer. Katherine Rowe’s read: most brands pay for eyeballs, this one made people work for it, adding new beads every knockout round so the only way to finish the set was to keep showing up. Free bracelet, paid-for obsession.

College jerseys can carry corporate logos starting in August, and the ink wasn’t even dry before the Big 12 landed a $20 million-a-year Monster Energy patch deal. Kansas one-upped it a day later, signing with Ripple to make XRP the official crypto of the entire athletic department — jerseys, arenas, the works. Ripple’s CEO is a KU alum who just finished paying the SEC $125 million to settle whether XRP counts as a security, so the timing isn’t exactly subtle. SMU already beat them to a fan token of its own, which the piece rightly treats with the same skepticism European soccer’s fan-coin experiment earned.

Liddick’s first MLB game, back in 2006, was a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park. Twenty years later, he walked through the same gates for the 96th All-Star Game, Philadelphia’s first since 1996, watching it from section 308 next to Barret, the childhood neighbor who got him into baseball in the first place and later stood up as a groomsman at his wedding. The game itself gave him almost nothing to root for — the American League blanked the National League 4-0, the 10th shutout in All-Star Game history — but between Jennifer Hudson, Patti LaBelle, and ceremonial first pitches from Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, he makes the case that the pageantry made the night bigger than the score ever could.

THE LISTEN

Each week, we curate 1-2 of our favorite podcasts. The selections came from our own curation and from submissions by our readers. Thank you so much, and keep them coming.

Chris Ryan is in studio for the World Cup final episode, and Friedland doesn’t even finish his intro before riffing on England’s semifinal collapse — working in the Falklands, joking that Argentina just annexed England’s southern border, and landing on “Maggie Thatcher is break dancing in her grave.” They preview the finals-week awards next: best player, young player, winning club, losing club. Then FanDuel gets a live read built entirely around extra-time betting markets, which somehow fits the show’s rhythm better than a normal ad break has any right to.

THE WATCHES

Each week, we curate 1-2 of our favorite videos. The selections came from our own curation and from submissions by our readers. Thank you so much, and keep them coming.

Justin Leusner traded one paperclip into an NBA Finals ticket back in June, so naturally the next move was doing it again for the World Cup final. He’s working the same trade chain toward a seat for Argentina-Spain, in his own home state, and he’s already up to a Messi jersey by episode one and four figures of memorabilia by episode two. Episode three, the actual verdict, is supposed to land on his channel before kickoff.

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Check Justin’s channel today to find out. https://www.youtube.com/@JustinLeusne.

THE PRESSROOM

Paul Lukas already had a Substack in Inconspicuous Consumption, his ongoing love letter to everyday minutiae. Now UniWatch, the uniform-nerd site he built and moved to ESPN and kept running long after ESPN let it go, has moved in next door. Same obsessive eye, new address.

Miller Kopp bounced from Northwestern to Indiana to four seasons grinding in the G League, and now he’s spending this year’s Summer League writing a daily diary that’s actually worth your time. It reads like a real journal, not a media-trained athlete’s PR account, self-deprecating in a way that makes it obvious he still loves being in the gym.

THE ROSTER

We want to celebrate as many independent creators on The Sunday Back Page as possible. Here are all the people who either submitted their work for consideration or were considered independently this week. Many of these creators deserved a place in this newsletter, and we hope they continue to submit their work. Please keep them on your radar.

Let’s Talk Football | The Full Scope | Michael King | Heart of a Fan | Jason Clewes | Eric Katz | Jesse Gerritsen | Gabriel Zabala | Sportsverse | Rough Notes | Wayne Coffey | Jack Carnefix | James Schwartz | Chris Rodriguez | Lindsay Crosby | Liza Sankar-Gorton | Adam Steinmetz | Chuck Hixson | Gary Garrison | Carla Bilche | Jarid Morton | Kwame Twumasi-Ankrah | Laurens Van Heuverswijn | Patrick McConnell | Beyond Talent by A.M. | Christopher Colman | Dan Fleming | Zach Weiss | NB’s Football | Robert Dunne | Tevin Morris | Rohan Ajit

Want to see your independent publication featured here? Let us know. There are hundreds more baseball Substacks out there. Give me a shout!

THE ANSWER

🐙🔮⚽ — Paul the Octopus, the psychic mollusk who called Spain's 2010 title.

🦷😬🇺🇾 — Luis Suárez biting Giorgio Chiellini, 2014.

👴🏿⚽🏆🏆🏆 — Pelé, the only man with three World Cup winner's medals.

🧥👑🇦🇷 — The bisht. Messi, 2022. It was mentioned in The Lead.

THE SCORECARD