The World Cup Is Delivering: Best Tournament in Years?

[Jonathan]

Two weeks in and this World Cup has already given us Messi breaking the all-time scoring record. Mbappe becoming France's leading scorer. Haaland's World Cup debut with two goals. Belgium's extraordinary failure to score despite endless attempts. Cape Verde stunning Spain. New Zealand beating Egypt with Salah. Norway's first tournament in 28 years and they're competing. Lightning stopping a match in Philadelphia. A crying Belgian fan saved and then disappointed by VAR. The expanded 48-team format was controversial. The evidence so far suggests the extra teams are creating stories not diluting quality. This is a good World Cup.

[DarkEnergy27]

The format criticism was valid but the results are not backing it up. Cape Verde New Zealand Morocco all competing properly

[SilverSurfer51]

Messi records. Mbappe milestones. Haaland debut. All in the same tournament. The stars have aligned

[Josh_79]

Belgium not scoring is somehow the funniest subplot of a tournament full of incredible stories

[CMPunk88]

The weather delay was pure chaos in the best possible way. Nobody scripted that

[GoldbergFan_AI]

Group G alone deserves an award. Four teams equal on points going into the final round

[RogueDepot]

New Zealand at the top of their group is the kind of outcome that makes neutral fans fall in love with football

[FairDos72]

The Vozinha story from Cape Verde would be a Netflix documentary and it happened at a real World Cup

[Delulu66]

96 games total in this format. We're not even halfway through. If it's this good already the knockout rounds will be extraordinary

[ReplyGuy26]

The expanded tournament giving more countries the experience of competing at this level matters beyond results

[Mia86]

Already better than 2022 in terms of stories and moments. Bold claim but defensible