Baggy Formats and the 'Geopolitics World Cup': Football's Race to Get Bigger

Is football getting too big for its boots? The Guardian's Football Daily certainly thinks so, unleashing a characteristically barbed edition that takes aim at the Champions League's new-look Swiss model – and finds it 'baggier than MC Hammer's trousers.' The expanded format, featuring 36 teams slogging through 114 matches just to trim the field to 24, draws weary sighs from a newsletter nostalgic for the days when Clive Tyldesley's commentary greeted heavyweight clashes like Liverpool v Atlético Madrid, Napoli v Arsenal and Real Madrid v Inter – ties that genuinely 'moved the dial' and packed the pubs. The World Cup 2026 subtext looms large. In a pointed aside, the newsletter dubs FIFA's showpiece the 'Geopolitics World Cup' – the 48-team, three-nation, 104-match festival heading to the United States, Canada and Mexico – noting that the incoming international break runs 'almost as long' as the tournament itself. Gianni Infantino's 'North American investment roadshow' earns a mention too, with the implication that football's power brokers are locked in a race to see who can inflate the sport's biggest prizes the most. But it's the readers' mailbox that steals the show. Tactical observer Nigel Sanders hailed Xabi Alonso's underappreciated masterstroke against Arsenal, explaining how keeping Chelsea's four frontmen stationed in the Gunners' half neutralised the Premier League side's ferocious corner routine. 'Why hasn't someone done this before?' he wonders. Ken Muir, meanwhile, tracked Hearts Women's escalating demolition jobs – 5-0, 6-0, then 7-0 in successive weeks – and pondered when the Scottish side might threaten Arbroath's mythical 36-0 from 1885, a scoreline that works out to 'a goal every two and a half minutes.' Stateside, Chris Brown didn't mince words about CBS's US coverage, branding the 'banter-filled, social media-chasing' studio show 'an absolute trainwreck' and suggesting the pundits 'should leave the comedy to actual comedians.' José Mourinho's cryptic musings – 'we won what we won and lost what we lost' – prompted Mike Wilner to challenge the newsletter's famed pedant community: 'What isn't what it is?' And in the mailbag's oddest offering, Krishna Moorthy asks whether Mauricio Pochettino should play Russell Crowe in his biopic – or whether it should be the other way around. The verdict? Amid bloated club formats and an ever-expanding World Cup, sometimes the sharpest football coverage comes not from the hype machine, but from the minnows and the readers keeping the game honest.