Canada’s Group B full of exciting storylines

Apologies to Wales, Northern Ireland and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but how cool would it be to have the Canadian men’s national team open a home World Cup against Italy in Toronto? (It wasn’t really a question. The only answer is “super cool.”)

World Cup draw cartoonish, loathsome and repugnant

Believe it or not, a men’s World Cup will begin in just a few months. For the 42 national teams already qualified for the five-week, three-country, sixteen-city competition, a schedule has even begun to emerge. The full 48-team field will not be known until the last day of March, however, as FIFA has bloated the thing beyond recognition.

Anyway, if you’ve already forgotten that the Group Stage Draw was conducted on Friday, don’t worry. You’re not alone. The event that took place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., had little to do with the soccer set to kick off 187 days from now.

Instead, what we saw, what we’ll remember, was a clumsy pageant that put into speeches and songs what we’ve known for some time: that FIFA has completed its metamorphosis from sports organization to the promotional vehicle of a depraved American administration.

The actual draw took place the same day the United States, which will co-host the World Cup with Canada and Mexico, announced it would expand its travel ban to more than 30 nations — presumably including, as U.S. President Donald Trump described them in a tantrum earlier this week, “shithole countries” like Haiti and “garbage” like Somalia. Haiti, incidentally, will be a World Cup participant.