The manager is the foremost spectator, a tragic figure confined to his small patch of grass, a middleman responsible for a circus he can only speak to. He is an avatar for others—his players, his club, his federation, his country. The manager can be many people: former idols who triumph with ease or fail miserably; retired role players keenly aware of their convictions, strengths, and limitations; no-names who climbed the ladder with chips on their shoulders as heavy as their childhoods. Some were once bankers, economists, engineers, interpreters, dentists, and gynecologists. A few wear ties; others don tracksuits. They smoke, chew gum, scratch their asses, and pick their noses. For every stoic philosopher, there is a belligerent visionary. For every lucky fool, there is a forgotten pioneer. Few become winners. Most remain losers. Regardless, these men are hired and fired, revered and despised, knighted and marooned. The manager is as necessary as he is useless, as significant as he is inconsequential, as principled as he is brutish.
Soccer is a game of errors. Whoever commits the fewest errors, wins.” If you were to guess which manager was the source of this definition, you might think of the many conservative pragmatists who have shaped the sport. The charismatic and divisive José Mourinho, perhaps. Or Helenio Herrera, the father of catenaccio—the door-bolt system—and son of an exiled Andalusian anarchist. Diego “El Cholo” Simeone, or Otto Rehhagel, the architect of Greece’s ugly and unlikely Euro 2004 victory. Or Zlatko Dalić, Croatia’s greatest ever coach. Instead, this pessimistic diagnosis belongs to Johan Cruyff—arguably the best player to never win a World Cup, and a highly influential manager in his own right, the patron saint of totaalvoetbal. One of his many loyal disciples is Pep Guardiola, a living legend who “knew nothing about football until [he] met Johan Cruyff.” What does it mean when the icon of lyrical, attacking soccer describes the sport as a game of mistakes? For me, the answer is as simple as it is complicated: Soccer is a game of contradictions.
In the world of soccer, one must inhabit paradoxes and navigate alternating realities. Following a gunpoint kidnapping attempt on his family in their home—months before the tournament—Johan Cruyff decided not to participate in the Netherlands’ 1978 World Cup campaign. Had he played in the final, César Luis Menotti’s Argentina might have never lifted the trophy in Buenos Aires, a victory that the host country’s dictatorship weaponized into effective nationalist propaganda and distraction, both domestically and abroad. In his tournament-opening speech, military dictator Jorge Videla declared the 1978 edition of the World Cup as a “triumph of people at peace.” Inspired by the free-flowing tactics of the 1974 Dutch team, the long-haired Menotti preached and implemented an attractive, celebratory brand of attacking soccer. “There’s a right-wing soccer and a left-wing soccer,” he said. “Right-wing soccer wants to suggest that life is a struggle. It demands sacrifices. We have to become of steel and win by any method…obey and function, that’s what those with power want from the players.” Later in life, Menotti lamented the propagandism that often overshadowed his team’s historic victory, while also arguing that their success and style of play were an ode to an alternative, democratic Argentina. Before each match, Menotti reminded his players to “Go out and look at the people. Play for them.”
Videla was in attendance to celebrate Argentina’s first World Cup triumph. Alongside him was Henry Kissinger, his guest of honor. Less than a mile away, prisoners held at the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy could hear the celebrations at the Monumental Stadium. Nearby, a group of mothers protested on behalf of their missing children. Off the coast, the bodies of sedated prisoners were dropped from cargo planes into the sea. It’s estimated that Videla’s regime had already disappeared 22,000 people by 1978—leftists, students, unionists, writers, journalists, artists, anyone who was considered a potential threat to the junta.
What does it mean when the icon of lyrical, attacking soccer describes the sport as a game of mistakes? For me, the answer is as simple as it is complicated: Soccer is a game of contradictions.
Four days prior, Argentina had played Peru with their place in the final on the line. Due to the playoff system, they needed a margin of victory of at least four goals to advance to the final instead of their archrivals, Brazil. Videla and Kissinger had paid a crucial visit to the Peruvian team’s locker room moments before the match; it’s rumored that they secured Argentina’s ticket to the big game before the opening whistle was even blown. Argentina defeated Peru 6-0. A lifelong soccer fan, Kissinger offered his own delineation: “I love the sport. American football and baseball are a glorification of the human experience—soccer is its embodiment. So it offers a lot to its fans, because it multiplies the situations where you feel the great vastness of the human condition.”
From the sky above, a full stadium looks like an anthill. Empty, the layered bleachers look more like the scars of a strip mine. These are fitting images for a sport grown into a well-oiled machine for worldly fortune—a game that is, in fact, a matter of life and death. Zoom in, and you will see the players on the green stage. More often than not, they have grown up poor; they wear the crest of their club or country over their hearts, often with the team’s sponsor over their stomachs, their chosen names and numbers on their backs. When it comes to club teams, the vast majority of players (the exception being the sport’s biggest stars) are often bought and sold without much say, their wages covered by some of the most extractive nations, corporations, and individuals on the planet. When it comes to national teams, many players take the field wearing the flags and colors of countries they weren’t born in, the empires that may have recently colonized their ancestors, the republics that oppress many people they know and love. Bloodthirsty fans call them the worst names they can think of, occasionally threatening these young men and their families. The players are worshiped as much as they are hated.
Their manager stands at the foot of the stage. Like his players, he’s a grown man governed by the same states, salaried by the same merchants, and plagued by the same compromises. His job, in a way, is quite simple: to win, then to make some sense of it all. On the practice field, he’s a teacher. When he diagrams his plans for the next match, he’s an engineer. After the game, in the locker room and in front of the press, he’s a philosopher. When his team loses their spirit, he’s a preacher. He’s also a father-figure. The manager is a combination of all these archetypes. And he’s seen this way by others, too. For the millions of people who are devout in their soccer fanaticism, the manager’s words hold the keys to larger truths of life, work, duty, and defeat. The same way a teenager’s love for a pop star can save their life, or a young poet’s devotion to a favorite writer can light the way, the manager often functions as a particular cultural avatar, one whose perspective a follower can borrow to comprehend the world, whose ideologies one can wear as if they were one’s own. This is not always for the best, of course, but that’s beside the point. The point is that the manager is a person who sees their sport, their industry, and their time from a particular vantage; through this person, we can glimpse the shape of reality, for better and for worse.
Generally speaking, a manager is lucky to represent any country at the World Cup, and is especially fortunate to have more than one chance to do so. If his team does well but doesn’t win, he’ll likely become infamous for one or two bad decisions. Despite leading France to the 2006 final, Raymond Domenech may be equally memorable for the 2010 tournament. Due to an unpopular dismissal of striker Nicolas Anelka, his players staged a mutiny, refusing to get off the team bus for training, with some even refusing to play in the team’s final match. Luiz Felipe Scolari led Brazil to a World Cup title in 2002, and yet his name might be just as synonymous with the team’s epic 1-7 semifinal loss to Germany, suffered when Brazil hosted the tournament in 2014. Even for accomplished managers, heading any team at the World Cup puts a lot at stake.
This year will be no different. Set to be the largest ever shared human experience, the 2026 World Cup is expected to gather around 6 billion viewers. For more than half a century, the tournament has stood as our highest common denominator tradition, one equally tied together by forces of humanity and inhumanity. Under FIFA, the sport of soccer has become inextricable from the disgraces of modern history. One need not look much further than the catalog of host nations, namely: Italy 1934, Argentina 1978, Russia 2018, Qatar 2022, North America 2026, Saudi Arabia 2034, among others. If one is feeling extra curious, feel free to investigate the corrupt tenures of FIFA’s last three presidents—João Havelange, Sepp Blatter, Gianni Infantino—as well as the histories of their longstanding partners, Adidas and Coca Cola. The FIFA World Cup is a traveling EPCOT casino headquartered in Switzerland, defined by rampant corruption, money laundering, authoritarianism, and an ever-growing list of fatal human rights violations. It’s also the biggest stage for the most beautiful sport there is. When we watch soccer closely, we can see the world.
One wonders if the scale of the 2026 tournament’s distraction will be proportionate to its tragedies. Just as any technology can be used for connection and destruction, so too can the most special of traditions and occasions. Is that what Kissinger meant when he said that soccer embodied the great vastness of the human condition? Was he referring to the sport in its purest state? Or the organized, mobilized spectacle? The average cost of a parking spot at a 2026 World Cup match is currently $175. In ancient Rome, the bread and circuses were free!
The manager’s job, in a way, is quite simple: to win, then to make some sense of it all.
Tactically, I’m curious to see if the trend of high-scoring World Cup soccer continues. The 2022 tournament was the highest ever, with 172 goals; the 2018 and 2014 tournaments clocked in at 169 and 171. Hopefully, these national teams force one another to play high-risk, high-reward soccer. The previous four champions have been a mixed bag. In 2010, Spain won their first ever World Cup, their manager Vicente del Bosque the figure of a respectable grandfather, stoic and gentlemanly. Despite their famous tiki-taka, they were a low-scoring team, winning each knockout round match by scores of 1-0.
In 2014, Joachim Löw’s Germany was highly organized: sturdy in its shape, fluid in possession, and overwhelmingly active with its repetitive runs, continuously producing good scoring chances all the way to the title. The coach himself—uniformed in tight business casual, Bieber bowl-cutted, and afflicted with the habit of nervously eating his boogers—helped humanize the mechanical nature of his team’s play.
In 2018, Didier Deschamps’s France was overflowing with physicality and talent. They had no problem sitting back and defending; as soon as they won the ball back, they counter-attacked wide open spaces with ease and startling pace. Having served as the captain for France during their first World Cup win in 1998, Deschamps projected a serious and value-driven paternal persona, insisting on a healthy group environment. He famously left Karim Benzema, arguably the best striker at the time, out of the squad due to an off-the-field scandal that included his involvement in a plot to blackmail his countryman, Mathieu Valbuena.
Most recently, in 2022, Lionel Scaloni’s Argentina won in a different, but likewise strikingly pragmatic way—their manager, as a player, had been a longtime middling right back. The team had no trademark team style and approached the tournament with the awareness that its best player was in the twilight of his career; tactically, their manager tailored the formation and gameplan for each match with specificity, completely altering their formation from one game to another. They were perhaps more distinctive for their disposition: a physical, shameless, and antagonistic group, they were one of the most emotional teams of all time. Like the eldest cousin of a huge family, Scaloni was relentlessly vocal with his instructions on the sidelines during matches. He sobbed into his hands moments after his team’s right back converted the winning penalty.
This June, Deschamps and Scaloni will both seek to win their second men’s World Cup titles as managers, a feat only Vittorio Pozzo has reached, with two consecutive Italian triumphs in 1934 and 1938. Who are the other dramatic leads looking to make history this year? The betting favorites, Spain, will be led by former Athletic Bilbao defender Luis de la Fuente. After two decades out of the spotlight, mostly devoted to coaching youth players and Spanish Under-19s, 21s, and 23s, he has the chance to follow up his impressive 2024 European Championship with a World Cup win. His teams attack with and without the ball—directly, indirectly, intuitively, spontaneously. And yet he has the demeanor, and wardrobe, of a school principal.
As one of the most respected and decorated club managers of all time, Carlo Ancelotti finds himself in unprecedented territory. He is a benevolent figure, as professional as he is widely beloved by many, including Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez, as well as the scandal-ridden Italian media mogul, former prime minister, and AC Milan owner, Silvio Berlusconi. With the demeanor of a cool-headed corporate executive—always dark-suited, clean-shaven—Ancelotti has the intense privilege of being the first foreign manager of the Brazilian national team. As the old saying goes, Brazil is a country with 11 players and 200 million managers. In terms of talent, this year’s team doesn’t come close to that of its predecessors, especially compared to the 2002, 1994, and 1970 sides. And yet Ancelotti’s club teams have always had a special knack for knockout, tournament-style soccer. The last time the World Cup final was played in the United States, Brazil defeated Italy on a missed Roberto Baggio penalty. Ancelotti was the losing team’s assistant manager. This summer, he’ll be chewing gum on behalf of the Brazilians.
There are several other foreign-born figureheads, of course. The adaptive Thomas Tuchel will do his best to counter German stereotypes in Britain and get a strong generation of English players into the final—and, unlike at the Euros, over the hump. Likewise, there will be a range of Argentinian managers on opposing sidelines. Mauricio Pochettino will helm a disgraced host nation in the US, even as he must sometimes wonder why he was not the Argentine manager to bring the republic its third World Cup title. Néstor Lorenzo will try to go one step further with the Colombian team after losing the final of the 2024 Copa América—a tournament more memorable for its nonsense and shithousery than its soccer. Marcelo Bielsa, longtime managerial cult figure, was in the center of the chaos until the quarterfinals, representing the Uruguayans just as he will again come June.
If any 2026 World Cup manager represents the mythological status of the manager, it is Bielsa. Now seventy, “El Loco” is more respected for his philosophy, knowledge, and obsessiveness than for his resumé. His career has been a peripatetic one—glittered with meaningful successes for a range of distinct underdogs, including Newell’s Old Boys, Athletic Bilbao, the Chilean national team, and Leeds United. He has also suffered epic failures on the biggest stages, most notably as head of Argentina’s 2002 World Cup campaign, eliminated in the group stage. With his reading glasses and tracksuit, Bielsa used to spend much of each game perched at the edge of his technical area, like a hawk. This summer, he’ll do the same with the help of a makeshift bench in the form of a cooler. Fittingly, his best teams are remembered for their effort, intelligence, and tenacity, surrounding their opponents all over the pitch and creating chances from their constant pressure.
“El Loco” is known for being something of a living encyclopedia who edits an ever-growing video library of analytical soccer recordings. He brought 2,000 videos alone for Argentina’s catastrophic exit in Japan. Figures like Bielsa recall bygone moviemakers like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a resemblance that makes me wonder if the manager is more like a director than anything else. Who else sets out to convince a hierarchy of driven personnel to play certain roles, all in concert? Who else controls so much, and so little, at once? And just as a visionary director instructs with metaphysical notes, Bielsa is infinitely quotable. Guardiola had displayed a Bielsa quote in his office about the toxicity of victory and the gift of failure. My favorite is another. Following an infuriating draw and an obviously incorrect disallowed goal while managing Olympique de Marseille, Bielsa congratulated his players for their efforts and preached process: “Congratulations, guys. To all of you, to all of you. Even if it’s impossible, don’t gripe. Swallow the poison. Accept the injustice, because everything will balance out in the end.”
In many ways, this World Cup has already been overshadowed by the United States and its violent oppressive antics, both at home and abroad. There’s no doubt that the primary host nation’s regime will continue implementing its many overlapping agendas throughout the tournament—be it through ICE, Operation “Epic Fury,” constitutional amendment, or annexation of Cuba. The only thing left to be seen is whether the World Cup will be a stage for these realities, or whether it will successfully cloud them again.
Meanwhile, Mexico is set to become the first nation to host the men’s World Cup three times. There, in 1970, Pelé won his third title. Sixteen years later, Maradona, with the help of “the hand of God,” led the Argentinians past England and the rest of the way to their second World Cup win; the 1986 World Cup is iconic for that bit of controversy as well as Maradona’s goal of the century minutes later. But it’s personally memorable for other reasons. The tournament had originally been awarded to Colombia, my parents’ home country. Unable to meet FIFA’s demands, the Colombian government withdrew from their duties. Before resigning from his post, the president of Colombia’s soccer federation criticized the country’s leadership. “Colombia,” he said, “is a dwarf country.” Eight years later, following their golden generation’s incredible qualification, the Colombians entered the 1994 USA World Cup as one of the big favorites. Pelé picked them to win the tournament. The history of that Colombian team is a famous one, well-documented by the 2010 documentary, The Two Escobars. Narco wealth had completely permeated the sport throughout the country, elevating and sustaining the quality of domestic Colombian soccer while cleaning itself through the cash-heavy business that was club ownership. It’s an awful story that rhymes with FIFA’s own history—corruption, wealth, power, organized violence, and entertainment.
In 1994, Colombia’s manager was Francisco Maturana. Born in Chocó, home to Colombia’s largest Afro-Colombian population, as well as the poorest and most neglected region of the country, the young Maturana soon after moved to the city of Medellín, my father’s home city. His most notable managerial success came as the manager of Pablo Escobar’s Atlético Nacional, when, in 1989, the club won the Copa Libertadores, South America’s biggest club trophy—the first Colombian team to do so. It was a victory my father celebrated from a great distance—in his new country, The United States—alongside my mother, then five months pregnant with my older sister. He had grown up attending each Atlético Nacional match as a child and teenager, with his family. The match wasn’t televised anywhere near his apartment in New Hampshire, and he learned that his team had won from a brief long-distance phone call from back home.
Maturana didn’t have the same luck as manager of the national team for the 1994 World Cup, a tournament that resulted in disaster on and off the field. They lost their first match to Romania, 1-3. Prior to their crucial Rose Bowl match against the United States, the national team received death threats through their hacked hotel room TVs—if defender Rafael “Barrabás” Gómez played, the entire team would be killed. Everyone called home; Colombian police guarded the houses and apartments of players’ families. Like a cursed diplomat, Maturana gave in to the violent demands. The team went on to lose 1-2, thanks in large part to Andrés Escobar’s own goal. Escobar died a week later, in Medellín. He was shot six times. The killer shouted “gol” after firing each one.
My parents were at the Rose Bowl to watch their beloved Colombia play their adopted United States. Born six months prior, I was back home with my three-year-old sister and our babysitter—it was the first time, my mother tells me, they’d ever hired one. We still have the photos. My mom and dad inside the sunny stadium, smiling ear-to-ear in matching t-shirts and hats, cameras in hand. Andrés Escobar, moments after his grave mistake, lying alone on the grass. Francisco Maturana, in a light suit and tie, staring into the great void. That day, the Colombian manager’s face reflected the realities terrorizing millions. Thirty-two years later, it still does.