2018 World Cup in Russia

Pussy Riot says it is behind the four people who ran onto the field during the World Cup final between France and Croatia on Sunday.

The Russian feminist protest group and punk band, which rose to global prominence for speaking out against Russian President Vladimir Putin, took responsibility for the act on Twitter, saying it was a protest against “illegal arrests” and the lack of political competition in Russian.

The penalty kick in soccer is among the highest pressure moments in all of sports. The fate of an entire game, a tournament, even a career can hinge on a few fractions of a second between kicker and goalkeeper.

All that pressure is especially concentrated at the World Cup, with nearly half the world watching. And it ramps up even higher in elimination rounds, where penalty kicks are deployed as a tie-breaker. Since its introduction in 1978, 30 World Cup games have been decided through a penalty kick shootout, including two World Cup finals.

It wouldn’t be a World Cup without a controversy over a player crumpling with a maudlin cry of agony, clutching his shin, and plaintively pleading for mercy (and a penalty for the other team).

In the tournament’s first week, France’s Lucas Hernandez admitted to flopping in France’s 2-1 win against Australia in an attempt to get Australian midfielder Mathew Leckie sent off. Spanish defender Gerard Piqué accused Portugal’s captain Cristiano Ronaldo of exaggerating a fall to secure a penalty kick in their 3-3 nail-biter. Piqué said Ronaldo has a habit of “throwing himself to the ground.”

The 2018 FIFA World Cup final is set, and France will play Croatia to lift the famous trophy on Sunday, July 15, at 11 am Eastern.

It’ll be a drama-filled game: France and Croatia will prove a tense match with superstars on either side. For France, a young team full of bright young stars — especially Kylian Mbappe — may realize their talent in the most impressive way. For Croatia, a group of world-class professionals will try to win it the title for the first time in their first-ever final.

Fifty players at this year’s World Cup were born or raised in France. That’s far more than the number of those hailing from any other country, including Brazil, which is the country of origin for 28 players (making it second in this ranking). But not all these athletes play for France. French-born players can be found on the rosters of Morocco, Portugal, Senegal, and Tunisia. Why?

The answer is twofold and can be explained by examining the history of 20th-century immigration in France, along with the evolution of French athletic programs, particularly its soccer academy system.

The 2018 FIFA World Cup is entering the quarterfinals as eight of the tournament’s best teams — and Cinderella stories — fight for a chance to become the globe’s soccer power.

Oh, the drama!

The 2018 FIFA World Cup’s group stage is over — and now it’s time for the knockout rounds. This is by far the most dramatic part of the World Cup, as the time to crown a champion draws nearer.

The original field of 32 teams is now down to 16. After this round, the winners will play in a quarterfinal, and then a semifinal, ultimately leading to the biggest game in all of soccerdom: the World Cup final.

The 2018 FIFA World Cup will start on June 14 with the group stage. It’s where all countries in the tournament compete to make it to the final rounds in hopes of becoming the next World Cup champion.

The tournament kicks off with Russia, the host country, against Saudi Arabia in Group A. Each team will play three games — once against each opponent in their respective group — to determine who moves on to the single-elimination knockout rounds.

South Korea knocked Germany out of the 2018 World Cup on Wednesday, thereby helping Mexico qualify for the next round.

In response, Mexicans are celebrating South Korea — to say thank you.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just released a video praising Iran. Well, sort of. He actually praised Iran’s soccer team — and kinda sorta maybe advocated for a revolution in Iran.

Here’s what happened: On Wednesday afternoon Netanyahu tweeted out a video praising the Iranian soccer team for its performance in the World Cup against Portugal — and its star player Cristiano Ronaldo.

For nearly 40 years, women in Iran have been barred from attending certain men’s sporting events, including soccer.

But on Wednesday, female spectators flowed into the Azadi Stadium in Tehran to watch Iran play Spain in the World Cup. It was the first time women were let into a stadium to watch a soccer match since 1979.

After Japan surprisingly swept Colombia aside at the 2018 FIFA World Cup on Tuesday, the country’s fans did something even more shocking: They swept up after themselves.

You read that right. Japan’s supporters — who traveled all the way to Russia to watch an Asian team beat a South American team for the first time ever at a World Cup — didn’t start partying once Japan clinched its 2-1 victory. Instead, they picked up the mess of wrappers, bags of food, and more they made with garbage bags they’d brought to the stadium specifically for that purpose.

The World Cup started this week. Potentially thousands of fans and athletes who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer have arrived in Russia. As a gay woman and activist, I’m worried sick about what might happen.

I left the Soviet Union 29 years ago because of its discrimination against Jews. Ten years ago, I founded RUSA LGBT, a network for Russian-speaking LGBTIQ immigrants living in the US. I work all the time with people whose lives have been threatened because of their sexual orientation. So despite FIFA’s promise that they stand against “non-discrimination, gender equality and racism,” I’m very concerned that the World Cup-governing organization has failed to explicitly call for protection of LGBTIQ attending the World Cup. As if this wasn’t bad enough, FIFA awarded the following World Cup to Qatar, where homosexuality is prohibited by law.

Every soccer game is a story that opens up onto an infinite number of other stories. The World Cup is the ultimate concatenation of these stories, the greatest work of literature the sport has to offer. World Cup teams are perhaps the most visible embodiment of nations — collectives whose actions on the pitch can seem, in the moment, to determine the fate of a country. The biographies of particular players intermingle with that of the team, channeling and condensing our most vexed histories, those of nations and their unending quest to define themselves.

Yet while many of us root for a particular nation in the World Cup, our fandom during the tournament is often an expression of a complex web of allegiances. “In both soccer and life,” Kanishk Tharoor recently wrote, “it is perfectly possible to be a proud representative of your nation while being helplessly, incurably global.” While the World Cup is a “place for nations to live out collective dreams and tragedies,” it also turns national identities into “signs of longing for a wider world.”