Football

The Spanish anthem has no lyrics, so we have sung another one that has nothing to do with football: Nino Bravo’s

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The Spanish anthem or Marcha Real is a rarity: it does not have official lyrics (although there are those who have tried to compose it, from José María Pemán to Sabina or Marta Sánchez), which gives it a solemn aura, but prevents the participation of the masses in festive environments. Like when you win a Soccer World Cup, except that people become helpless “lo lo lo lo.” However, the fans I needed a letter for chant and celebrate the champions and found it within a melodic 1972 song milestone that doesn’t mention football once. When did it start? ‘A kiss and a flower’ by Nino Bravo already played in stadiums in the United States and Mexico throughout the tournament, and ended chanted in unison by players and fans after the whistle that put an end to the same. At the airport, hours later, the public address system made it sound while relatives from both teams shared a terminal on the way home. The verse that circulated the most on networks was the one that opens the song: “When parting, a kiss and a flower, an ‘I love you’, a caress and goodbye.” The original. It was composed by José Luis Armenteros and Pablo Herrero in 1972, with arrangements by Maryní Callejo, and it was number one on Los 40 Principales that same year, four weeks in a row. Its interpreter, Luis Manuel Ferri Llopis, better known as Nino Bravo, died in a traffic accident in 1973, when he was only 28 years old. This video clip that was filmed in the Balearic Islands For the Ministry of Information and Tourism it is the only color material that is preserved from him. Before this song, Nino Bravo had already triumphed outside of Spain: between 1969 and 1970 he recorded some sixty songs and his voice especially resonated in Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Chile and Colombia, markets where he shared the bill with Raphael without the divo overshadowing him in the slightest. That his repertoire (especially this one and ‘Libre’) is still alive half a century later in the stands and the streets is proof of how it has deeply permeated Spanish popular culture. What the lyrics are really talking about. The more extended reading He links it to the economic emigration of Franco’s regime: the years in which thousands of young people left “with the cardboard suitcase” for Germany, Switzerland or France in search of a salary that they could not find here (“I will leave my land for you, I will leave my fields and I will go, far from here”). That is why the song serves today, far from Spain, as an anthem of another exodus: in Cuba it is still associated with those who have had to leave the island in recent decades. The long relationship with football. In fact, Nino Bravo’s melody has been around for decades sneaking into Latin American standsalthough with the lyrics completely replaced. The fans of Barcelona SC, in Ecuador, adapted it to sing about his yellow uniform; Colombian Deportivo Cali did something similarand there is also a version for Independiente Medellín. In those cases the lyrics vary to encourage the team and the fans and launch the corresponding jabs at the rival. The Spanish case is special: there is no new or modified letter. The original is sung, which promises a return as the only very slight and common link with the circumstances of the competition. And be careful, the original letter does not distinguish flags. In fact, a curious phenomenon has occurred with it: despite its international significance, it has been chanted en bloc among Spanish players and fans because it has been judged in an intuitive and unspoken way that it is a genuinely Spanish anthem and that it represents us. Like the sun every morning. In Xataka | Argentina is clear that Argentina had to give away Argentina’s fourth World Cup. And no one in Argentina is very clear why.

FIFA has managed to distort football to the extreme and the proof is the disconcerting half-time show

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As a preamble to a soccer game, the truth is that it was all very strange. Hollywood’s most famous actor rambled on about sport in the abstract in front of thousands of spectators (or many millions, if we count the television broadcast) who essentially wanted to see the World Cup final that faced Argentina and Spainif possible without too many additives. And it was just the beginning: the anthem of Spain performed by a group of wind instruments, María Becerra singing that of Argentina… Just the appetizer. TheCruise. What did the protagonist of ‘Mission: Impossible’ talk about? He reviewed the “more than thirty days” of the tournament and stated that football is “a language that is spoken without words.” It was not his first foray into this type of staging: the actor had already starred in an acrobatic number at the closing of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The reaction on networks was immediate: many spectators They described the intervention as “shameful” and “ridiculous”; other international media spoke directly about the famous “cringe“. The anthems also had a great presence: Jennifer Hudson sang the United States anthem; the Spanish Brass band performed the Spanish anthem based on metals; and then María Becerra intoned the argentine anthem. Previously, Robbie Williams and Nicole Scherzinger had performed ‘Desire’, the official FIFA anthem, with Laura Pausini joining in for the Spanish part. Back to the intermission. FIFA had insisted in which the halftime show would not exceed eleven minutes. When the show ended, the complete break had been around 27 minutes, almost double the limit of fifteen minutes set by the regulations. The poster had generated skepticism even before anyone took the stage: Robert Smith, leader of The Cure, was once again the best of us all in summing up his opinion on the band’s official account with a laconic “Aaaaaaaaagh”, followed by hashtags such as “panycirco”, and the BBC confirmed in advance that would not broadcast the show, just as he had already done with the opening ceremony of Qatar 2022. What happened. Madonna opened the show from inside a giant ball and then climbed into a vehicle piloted by Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, in a feverish version of the Mystery Machine. BTS performed ‘Dynamite’, Shakira the de rigueur anthem and The Electric Mayhem, the Muppet band in which Animal is a member, played ‘Seven Nation Army’. Justin Bieber sang an acoustic ballad that was very out of keeping with the general violent vibes of the final and The Muppets from Sesame Street returned with Coldplay and a Staten Island children’s choir to close the show. My sleep paralysis demons Why all this. The final is FIFA’s second attempt to introduce soccer in the United States, and as El País tellsthis time instead of “footballing” Americans, it has been the country’s cultural codes that have ended up imposing themselves on soccer. The highly criticized hydration breaks, unprecedented in sports and presented as a medical measure, are in practice advertising breaks similar to those of sports with roots in the United States. That cultural tension was staged on Fox Sports broadcasts, where former American soccer player Alexi Lalas and Frenchman Thierry Henry came into conflict with opinions about how the game should be understood. Things are clear. FIFA has never hidden its pecuniary intentions with this World Cup, no matter how much they dress it up with children’s choirs. Gianni Infantino, the president of the organization, has openly compared the tournament to the Super Bowl, bragging about an audience equivalent to “104 Super Bowls” in one month. Throughout the tournament, hydration breaks intended for medical reasons turned into more than six hundred minutes of additional advertising space, such as we already talked at the time. The extension of rest time, criticized for violating the IFAB limitalso adds a real medical risk for footballers: muscle cooling after such a long break. FIFA had been trying for three decades to get soccer into the American public without completely succeeding. Having seen the final, he has decided that football should be a little more similar to what that public already consumes. At the moment, Spain is the champion of the title without any doubt, but there are questions about the future of the tournament that will be resolved, precisely, in Spain in four years. Let us remember that for the 2030 and 2034 editions, Netflix, Disney and YouTube They are already negotiating retransmission rights. And many things can be blamed on FIFA, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t put its cards on the table. In Xataka | You don’t need an earthquake to move a seismic needle: a goal from Spain is enough

FIFA had been trying for years to get soccer into the US. In this World Cup it has been American culture that has entered football

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Each match in the 2026 World Cup has been stopped twice for players to drink water. What FIFA sold as a medical standard has become one of the largest sources of advertising revenue in the history of football. The hydration break It is reminiscent of the one you already see in a LaLiga match in August, when the heat at four in the afternoon justifies it. Here, repeated in air-conditioned stadiums where more than one fan is seen wearing a cardigan, it sounds more like an excuse. It’s just the most visible symptom of something bigger. The panoramic. FIFA has been pursuing the American market for years without soccer finally gaining ground against basketball, American football or hockey. This summer he has changed his strategy: instead of selling football as it is, he has redesigned it with the cultural and television codes of the United States. Pauses that cut off the game, advertising in the middle of the game, celebrities paid to occupy the box, hospitality overflowing, very expensive tickets, a break from the final that doubles its usual duration to accommodate a concert… The tournament has also been played in Mexico and Canada, but it has not stopped sounding like the NFL and the NBA. The party has stopped being the product. He show prior, rest and show Later they are also products, they also compete for the same attention. In detail. The centerpiece is the hydration breaks: three minutes in the 22nd and 67th minutes of each of the 104 games, without discriminating by temperature. FIFA announced them in December as a health prevention and authorized television stations to fill the gap with up to two minutes and ten seconds of advertisements. It is not the only piece of the decoration: Halftime in the finals has been extended to about 30 minutes to accommodate a Super Bowl-style musical performance. One has appeared backroom VIP, very similar to the NFL boxes, where authorities, family and celebrities follow the game. Television production has adopted shots, access to locker rooms and tunnels that until now were the domain of American football. Between the lines. It is tempting to blame the United States for “Americanizing” soccer. But the one who has made every decision (breaks, calendar, 48 teams…) is FIFA, which has seen in the American entertainment model the fastest way to continue increasing income just when Europe, its traditional place, begins to show signs of stagnation. The French Ligue 1, without going any further, lost his television deals and has had to set up its own direct sales platform. behind the scenes. The change is not only a matter of changes in the regulations, it is also noticeable in how it is broadcast. The networks constantly cut to celebrities, boxes and reactions in the stands in search of the viral shot. Every break, every corner, every substitution is an opportunity for sponsorship, not just hydration. The fan in the stadium is no longer just a spectator, he is part of the set. The stands are lit, focused and edited, NFL style. In figures. The numbers explain why FIFA has been compensated for the change in model. The organization’s audiovisual income has grown by 36% compared to Qatar 2022, up to about 3,925 million dollars. Fox calculates entering between 250 and 500 million dollars only with the advertising of hydration breaks. A 20-second ad during a break has been sold in France for 425,000 euros. For the rights bid for 2030 and 2034, offers in the United States could start at $1 billion and reach $2 billion if both tournaments are packaged. Yes, but. Not all football has jumped on the bandwagon. The Premier League, the richest and least in need of new income, does not contemplate breaks: British regulations limit live advertisements and in England it is rarely as hot as would justify them. UEFA has said that He will not take them to the Champions League or the Euro Cup in 2028. And now what. CONMEBOL has already announced 90-second breaks for the Libertadores and the Sudamericana 2026. The MLS and the NWSL will negotiate their next rights with the World Cup precedent on the table. And FIFA is preparing the 2030 bid, with Spain as one of the venues, knowing that the networks will no longer pay only for the 90 minutes of the match: they will also pay for the minutes in which it stops. Featured image | FIFAXataka In Xataka | It is possible that today you will hear your neighbor sing Spain’s goal before you: the delay of streaming compared to DTT

24 years ago Oliver Kahn sued EA and won. Then a new goalkeeper appeared in football games: Jens Mustermann

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There are two things that I have to eternally thank my love for football simulators: locating places on the map and being familiar with a good part of the new talents that emerge in the quarries. I got off this annual roulette a long time ago, when the textures of the grass or the expressions of the players were not so important, but their faces were already well understood and you could recognize them thanks to the transfer of image rights, a tricky and lucrative topic even at that time. And for example, a button: Oliver Kahn’s. The name of the legendary goalkeeper of Bayern Munich and the German national team in the 90s and early 2000s disappeared from soccer games to return almost a quarter of a century later, it became an icon to close one of the longest and most curious legal disputes. Oliver Kahn’s lawsuit. Coincidentally, while searching for images of the special FIFA game for the 2002 World Cup, I found in the Xataka newspaper archive it is which illustrates the cover of this article and which is great for us. Because it was just then that the German goalkeeper filed a lawsuit against EA for image appropriation, as stated in the Ace article of the time: He believed that they were commercializing his identity without having given his permission or receiving compensation for it. The video game company faced a fine of up to 250,000 euros or up to six months in prison. Why is it important. This trial changed the rules of the game because it showed that video game companies cannot use the image of a famous athlete without their direct permission. In fact, it marked a before and after: from then on companies had to be much more careful with contracts, thus preventing big brands from taking advantage of the fame of footballers for their faces. After all, Kahn was a pioneerbut it could have been the tip of the iceberg of a barrage of similar lawsuits, such as explains the law firm Pinsent Masons. Context. It was the 2000s when football games began to look very real and in that image quality significantly improved compared to that FIFA 94 original Having the real names and faces of the stars was a powerful and attractive selling point. EA had signed agreements with FIFPro to be able to use player identities en masse, so in the hit FIFA series were represented virtually 800 players from 40 countries. The problem? That the union did not have the rights of everyone. It was one of the first train wrecks between the ambitions of a huge American technology company versus European privacy laws. Kahn 1 – EA 0, So titled Der Spiegel the goalkeeper’s victory in the German courts in 2003, ruling that the agreement that EA had with the FIFPro union did not cover the use of Kahn’s image, since the goalkeeper was not part of that organization. But it was more a moral victory than a practical one: Kahn managed to stop the distribution of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, but by the time he won, EA had already launched FIFA 2003. In fact, the goalkeeper tried to make ads featuring a blonde goalkeeper disappear, but the judge dismissed the petition: “Not all blonde goalkeepers are Oliver Kahn.” EA removed Kahn from the national team but kept him as Bayern’s goalkeeper under a separate agreement with the German league. The most striking thing is what happened next: to avoid any problems, the character based on Kahn was simply called “Jens Mustermann”, the equivalent of a completely generic and anonymous name like John Doe. Paradoxically, that name bears quite a similarity to that of Jens Lehmannthe goalkeeper who sent Kahn to the Mannschaft bench in the 2006 World Cup. Yes, but. Kahn won, but did not convince: The director of EA Germany stated that FIFA 2003 would still be on the market and that the new contracts were “even more solid” than before. EA did not change its business model: it continued to use block licenses and continued to operate normally. Kahn was absent from EA video games for years and It was not for legal reasons, but because he did not want to negotiate with them again. It has been now, with nostalgia and the evolution of modern game modes based on micropayments, when it has returned in the form of ICON card in EA Sports FC 26 actively participating in promotions and profiting from it. In Xataka | The most important thing about the ‘FIFA’ games was that they were called ‘FIFA’: EA is proving the hard way the weight of a franchise In Xataka | It’s World Cup time and millions of fans will pay for it with sleep: the graph that shows which countries suffer the most from FIFA’s schedules

Hydration breaks have turned football into a new sport

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It was the 21st minute when Liviano Comenencia shot a ball that was left without an owner on the edge of the Germany area. The shot is poisoned between the legs of one of the defenders and Manuel Neuer is surprised under the goal. As surprised as all of us who were in front of the television watching Curacao’s first goal in the final phase of a Soccer World Cup were. The game, by then, was beginning to go crazy. Germany was driving but the German team looked uncomfortable. The top favorite suit was not fitting him at all, it was obvious that the shirt was a little small and that the collar was too tight. The public began to dream of one of those historical feats. But five minutes were enough to wake us up from our reverie. Stop to take a breath. Cooling Breaksays on the television sign. And on the way back, there was Germany. Now he had replaced his shirt, already tucked well inside his pants. Before the usual break came, the Germans had already settled into the game and were winning 3-1. Curacao can boast of having tied Germany for a few minutes. And he will also regret being one of those great victims of a new football that is played in four quarters. From player protection to the advertising business In FIFA World Cup 2026™ matches, players will enjoy three-minute rehydration breaks midway through each half. With this measure, FIFA prioritizes the well-being of the players during the edition of the competition that will be held next summer in Canada, Mexico and the United States. When FIFA introduced hydration breaks for the first time 12 years ago he did it due to pressure from the players themselves. Faced with the extreme heat and humidity of Brazil, the footballers pressed until the highest body of world football agreed to temporarily stop the match in the 30th and 60th minutes, as long as the certified temperature exceeded 32 degrees. Two minutes and continue running chasing the ball. Since then, the measure has been extended to all types of competitions, as long as the temperatures and the weather conditions were extreme. But FIFA, as stated on its own websitehas decided that in this World Cup the match will be paused in the 22nd minute of each half. A measure, they say, that “gives priority to the well-being of the players” and that is applied “in all matches, regardless of the weather and prevailing temperaturesto grant equal conditions to all teams in all matches”. That is, the match stops even when it is played below the aforementioned 32 degrees. In fact, it stops even when the match is played in a stadium with the roof closed and the air conditioning on. When Germany-Curaçao stopped, the thermometer read just over 20 degrees. The Caribbeans were the perfect victim. The break, without exhausted players, was the perfect time to take the short break as a time-out, take a deep breath and reorganize ideas. Before the break, Germany had put ground in the middle and had crushed all Curaçao resistance. It is the best example that football, as FIFA wants in this World Cup, is a new sport that is played in four 22-minute quarters. And, incidentally, a new formula to put a new advertising break into the viewers’ eyes. More available screen time, more business, more millions. There was little doubt about the true purpose of these advertising spaces breaks for hydration but a cell phone is enough in the stadium to dismantle the FIFA discourse: the players waiting for the order of the referee who observes on a tablet if the announcements have ended on the television signal offered by the players. “These three minutes stop everything. We have to adapt. The televisions are happy, right?“, ironically said Didier Deschamps, France coach, in words collected by The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t like it. I only want them when the conditions are extreme but if the weather is good, it’s unnecessary,” lamented Mauricio Pochetino, United States coach. The most ridiculous situations have been seen when Germany players asked the referee to restart the match against Curacao after 90 seconds. It is logical that the meeting remained stopped. They explain in the American newspaper that advertisers pay around $200,000 for 30 seconds in these pauses but that the figure rises to $750,000 if the United States plays. They explain in that same article The Wall Street Journal that those responsible for the media do not hide from the true purpose either. Before the World Cup, Zac Kenworthy, one of Fox’s vice presidents, already pointed out that “FIFA is always looking for ways to innovate. They are very interested in the American market, in how sports are done here.” The implications of a new football “I’ve been watching all the games and when there’s a hydration break… well, I don’t really like it. I think they’re necessary if it’s really hot but you should treat each game separately.” With these words Virgil Van Dijk, captain of the Netherlands, was referring to the obligatory break to hydrate. “I’ve already talked too much,” he said to the camera with a face of obvious discomfort. Jürgen Klopp has been much less uncomfortable, who was the coach of Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund, believing that the pauses are “a golden cage built for advertisers. Football is being hijacked by managers entrenched in air-conditioned offices,” they report in Basque newspaper. And the problem is that these breaks completely change the nature of the sport. The three-minute pause decreed for each and every match breaks the rhythm and offers an advantage to those who run in all directions without finding the water with which to put out the fire. The unforeseeable in football, the temporary madness unleashed on the playing field paralyzed in favor of the umpteenth potato chip advertisement on television. EITHER, how they collect in elDiario.esthe official mayonnaise of the National Team. Necessary genuflections to … Read more

The Kings League was born in 2023 to put an end to traditional football. Three years later he declared an ERE

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Gerard Piqué built a soccer league for the Twitch generation, and three years later he has cut 50% of his team, closed his leagues in France and Germany with no return date at the moment, and paralyzed the Spanish competition for six months. and the internet numbers and engagement on the internet they were not badbut that wasn’t the problem. The problem is that real football has other places where it reigns without rival. What has happened? Kings League workers published yesterday a statement in which they dismantled the version that the company had leaked to the press two days before starting the ERE negotiations. The company had spoken of a 30% cut in the workforce and the real figure, according to those affected themselves, is 41 layoffs out of 83 workers: almost 50%. At the same time, the French and German leagues are paralyzed with no expected return date, and the Spanish league stops its activity for six months to, in the words of the organization, “prepare the product for the future.” Kings League CEO Djamel Agaoua, incorporated in 2025, admits in the corporate statement that “money has been burned.” The simultaneous expansion to Brazil, Germany, Italy and the MENA region, managed from the offices in Spain, was economically unaffordable. Story of an ambition. The Kings League started on January 1, 2023 with digital audience figures that scared LaLiga. The first day reached an average of 300,000 people watching the matches between the league channel and the streamers on Twitch. They achieved a peak of 800,000 viewers only on the league’s main channel, data similar to the average of all LaLiga matches the previous season. Comparisons were published everywhere: it seemed that Piqué had found the crack in traditional football. Streamer world. Streamers like Ibai Llanos, TheGrefg or Guarnizo were presidents of the teams, and that turned each game into an extension of the entertainment that their communities already consumed. The format had gamified rules, random penalties, special cards. It was soccer 7, but designed for those who have been playing ‘FIFA’ for ten years. The numbers trick. However, Twitch’s numbers don’t exactly measure sustained following. In 2024 the drop compared to the first figures was evident: the decrease was 54% compared to the first months of the competition, with an average of 192,000 spectators at the beginning of that season. That year’s final reached only 258,000 people on average with a peak of 425,000. In the first months of 2023, the same competition had accumulated more than two million viewers at its maximum peak, adding the official channel plus those of each streamer-president. By then, the Kings League had bought into its own narrative, and oversupply compounded the problem. The first split, the second split, the Queens League, the Prince Cup, the Kings Cup, the Queen’s Cup and the Kingdom Cup suffocated the product, and each new tournament diluted attention rather than focused it. One round. In February 2026, with audiences already declining, the Kings League closed an investment round for 53 million euros. The round was led by the American fund Alignment Growth, with the stated objective of expanding the competition globally, with the United States as a goal. With this operation, the Kings League accumulated more than 160 million dollars in total financing since its launch. Four months later the ERE has arrived, and the workers are pointing in that direction: the company has just raised 63 million euros and the savings that justifies dismissing almost half of the workforce is just over two million. A martyrdom The workers’ statement also describes the work culture that prevailed in the company: three years of seven-day weeks, averages of ten hours a day, and overtime systematically above the legal limit of 80 hours per year established by the Workers’ Statute, in most cases without financial compensation or rest. On June 8, the CEO congratulated the entire team on the success of the Queens League final and two days later, the ERE was in the media. Had he left? The question, then, is whether the Kings League has ever had the possibility of competing with football. We have a precedent in American football: in 2001, Vince McMahon and NBC they launched the XFL with the aim of becoming the entertaining alternative to the NFL, with fewer penalties and a format with elements of reality show. The first broadcast achieved 54 million viewers, but by the following week the audience had fallen by 50%, with a continuous decline until the closure after a single season. Apparently, viewers were not interested in a hybrid between sport and wrestling spectacle. Unbeatable football. Spanish football has fans in third regional teams that fill stands with 800 people every weekend. This link does not arise from the product being entertaining, but rather from the fact that it is part of the local identity and, in many cases, family or territorial traditions. A child who grows up watching Rayo Vallecano or Villarreal with his father does not give the same identification value to a streamer. Even though he has a million followers. Football accumulates emotional capital for decades and the Kings League had to build it from scratch. And now? There are some pending issues: the Kings World Cup Clubs in Italy will be held in July 2026, and we will try to move forward with those who are still in the company. Piqué, in turn, publicly tested after the Queens League final the possibility of compressing the entire competition into a format of a few days. That is, a possible solution is to lower the ambition. Maybe it would have been a good exit idea. In Xataka | The Kings League has debuted on traditional television. It has had less audience than a La 2 documentary

Serbia is building the world’s first football stadium that is a garden. China is manufacturing it with surgeon precision

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It will not be ready for the World Cup that is about to begin nor will we be able to see it at that event because the hosts are Canada, Mexico and the United States, but it is the most striking soccer stadium that will open in 2026: it is the first garden soccer stadium in the world and it is being built in Belgrade. In fact, the latest news is that the Chinese company CSCEC has completed recently the first major steel lift of the structure of the future Serbian National Football Stadium, a colossal mass of 139,000 tons. Stadium construction works are large-scale projects per se, but this one takes the cake precisely because of its dual function: it is a sports venue and an urban garden at the same time, which marks a milestone in urban planning and poses an unusual engineering challenge: hanging entire gardens from a cable structure suspended in height. The first garden stadium in the world. This pioneering garden stadium in the world has a total area of ​​about 76,000 square meters and capacity for more than 52,000 spectators. And although it is located in Belgrade (in the Surčin neighborhood), it is built by two Chinese companies and design it the Spanish studio Fenwick Iribarren Architects. The stadium aims to be more than just a sports venue: the idea is for it to be a public space open all year round, with walking areas, cafes and leisure areas in the surrounding area. The Madrid architecture team has created a very particular façade: it is made up of four suspended rings connected by cables and that house garden areas, arranged on three floors that surround the premises. The normal thing for a stadium is for the structure to be supported from below, with columns, but the Serbian National Football Stadium works as if it were a suspension bridge with cables. It is composed of 44 compression ring beams where each joint must fit with almost zero precision, as CSCEC accountthe Chinese company that is building it. However, this structure has to withstand soil, irrigation and vegetation that will grow over the years. Render of the stadium. Fenwick Iribarren Architects Why is it important. For some time now, large sports stadiums have wanted to be more than just the place where these events take place on specific days: it is now common to see them as a venue for concerts. This project takes another twist: the gardens, terraces and commercial areas are designed to function as a permanent public space, integrating the stadium into the daily life of Belgrade. And it does so by incorporating vegetation in a city where liquid trees are already being tested. As explains the European Environment Agencyurban green infrastructure has been shown to reduce heat island, improve climate resilience and public health Regarding the sporting field, when it is completed (predictably at the end of 2026), it will be the only stadium in Serbia that meets the requirements of both FIFA for World Cups and UEFA for Euro Cups. Or what is the same: without this stadium Serbia would not be eligible to organize these tournaments. Render of the interior of the stadium.Fenwick Iribarren Architects Context. Serbia has been working on the construction of its National Stadium for more than a decade: work began in 2024, but the first concrete proposals came in 2013. At that time the Serbian Football Federation with the help of the British consultancy Mace They designed the project roadmap to meet UEFA requirements and standards. Serbia has decided to become a potential host of top-level tournaments in style and without skimping on expenses: the initial budget in 2013 was 250 million and when work begins in 2024 was already around the billion euros. In detail. Behind materializing this engineering challenge are two top-level Chinese companies common in large infrastructure: the main contractor is Power Construction Corporation of China (PowerChina) and the specialized subcontractor is China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), in charge of the design, manufacture and installation of the steel structure. To achieve that brutal precision of just 0.43 millimeters of deviation in 719 meters of beams, they used high-precision laser trackers, 3D digital simulation and a 1:10 scale physical mockup to detect errors before building. Yes, but. The first drawback of this megaproject has already been revealed: so far it has already cost four times more than budgeted. And having a garden stadium is eye-catching, but also more expensive to build and maintain. On the other hand, also there are objections on whether it will be possible to fill the stands of the future venue regularly, something essential to guarantee its profitability. In fact, the Institute for the Study of Urgent Public Procurement and Stadium Affairs of Śrem Kamenica has carried out an analysis which concludes that it will take 420 years to pay off. In Xataka | Real Madrid invested 1,000 million euros in the Bernabéu to host concerts: at the moment it has tennis In Xataka | China begins construction of the largest football stadium in the world: 100,000 people in a gigantic lotus flower Cover | Fenwick Iribarren Architects

Argentina wants to get rid of parents who do not pay their children’s pensions. So he kicked them out of the football stadiums

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To enjoy a soccer match in an Argentine stadium it will no longer be enough to have a ticket. From now on, fans must comply another extra requirementequally or even more important: being up to date with your children’s pensions. In an attempt to hit where it hurts most, the football heart of the nation that gave birth to Maradona, Messi or Di Estéfano, the authorities have activated a system that prohibits access to the fields to parents who ignore the costs of feeding their children. The Government has 13,000 people in its sights, defaulters whom it just got complicated for them also the USA World Cup. “They don’t enter the fields anymore”. The phrase is from Alejandra Monteoliva, Minister of National Security, who recently announced, via Xthe decision to close the stadium doors to those who are not up to date with their pensions. “Delinquent food debtors no longer enter the fields. Starting today, together with the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, we incorporate debtors into the Safe Tribune program. And they will no longer be able to go in to watch a soccer game,” explains Monteoliva before underlining the basic idea: “He who does not comply with his children, off the courts.” Is it something new? Yes. And no. ‘Safe Tribunes’ It is not a new program. Carry years applying in Argentina and its objective is to reinforce access control to sports events, although until now the focus has been focused mainly on violent fans, accused, convicted or with arrest warrants. It is basically dedicated to checking the documentation of those who go to the camps to check their history or even if they are carrying drugs or knives. For a while now some jurisdictions of the country, as Buenos Airesalso decided to veto sporting events for those who do not comply with the alimony of their minor children. As a reference, the Buenos Aires authorities they assure that since March 2025, 173 controls have been carried out that have made it possible to identify 150 “delinquent food debtors”, fans who were prevented from accessing stadiums or concerts. “So far in 2026 alone, 84 have already been carried out with 75 offenders.” What’s new then? That Argentina has decided to go one step further, combining and reinforcing both initiatives: ‘Safe Grandstands’ and restrictions on access to stadiums for parents with debts. For this, the Ministry of National Security and the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Años have signed an agreement that “marks a qualitative leap” in field controls throughout the country. The key is in the exchange of information, which will allow thousands of new names to be included in the ‘Safe Tribune’ red list. To be more exact, we talk about 13,000 people, “delinquent obligors” registered in Buenos Aires and 13 other provinces spread across the country, such as Chaco, Entre Ríos, Formosa, Tierra de Fuego, Santa Cruz or Tucumán. From now on all of them will have a difficult time when they want to watch games in the stadiums, at least as long as they do not catch up with the food pensions they owe. Click on the image to go to the tweet. “Consequences”. Alejandra Monteoliva has not been the only one to insist on the advantages of the system. Something similar has been done, too. via Xthe head of Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Jorge Macri: “In the city a year ago we prohibited the entry of food debtors to stadiums and mass shows. Now, in joint work with the Government, we added our database to the Safe Tribune program to reinforce these controls throughout the country. Anyone who does not comply with an obligation as basic as feeding their children must have consequences.” Where it hurts the most. In his message, dated May 26, Macri left bouncing another fundamental idea: access controls with the debtor registry in hand will not only be done in the country’s stadiums; The idea is that they will also be applied during the World Cup. Milei’s team has sent a list to the US with more than 30,000 Argentine fans who have restricted access to the World Cup stadiums, which will start in a week in Mexico. And these include, confirms Monteolivathe 13,000 delinquent parents. It is not just another announcement or a declaration of intent. The new restrictions in Argentine stadiums have become official already in the Official Gazette and the Executive has also published a resolution (444/2026) announcing the sending to the US Embassy of information on people with restrictions to access sporting events. The measure is adopted based on the cooperation agreements signed between both Governments and its list would include the “alimony debtors”. Some sources they assure that the veto will extend to Canada and Mexico, the other hosts of the FIFA Cup. Is the problem so serious? In case the 13,000 registered in the system do not give a clue, in 2024 Unicef ​​provided another even more emphatic one: that year it published a report in which it warned that 56% of mothers living in Argentina do not receive child support when the father does not reside in the home, a percentage that rises to 68% if we include mothers who do not receive it regularly. Field access restrictions will only apply when there is a judicial or administrative resolution that demonstrates non-payment and the affected person appears in the official registry of defaulters. Images | Jimmy Baikovicius (Flickr) and Wikipedia In Xataka | The World Cup in the USA is making merit to be the most expensive in history: tickets are already reselling for 2.3 million dollars

Metro de Madrid has insisted on being a pop icon like London’s “Tube.” His plan: retro football jerseys

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There are cities that are recognized by their metro before you can place their flag. The iconic roundel red and blue Tube London has jumped from the tunnels and platforms to the closets of half the world, becoming a global emblem that people wear with pride. It is not a simple transportation logo: it is the city itself compressed in a circle. The Madrid Metro knows this well, which has been looking at its British counterpart for some time with the envy of someone who aspires to transcend their status as a mere public service. And he has just made his boldest move to close the gap: launching his own collection of retro football shirts. Nostalgia reaches underground. With its sights set on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the Community of Madrid has launched Metro FC: five retro t-shirts inspired by world champion teams, at 54.95 euros each, sold in the Metro online store and at the Ópera, Sol and Plaza de Castilla stations. Each garment bears the Metro’s own embroidered shield – based on the historic rhombus of 1921 – and the seven stars of the Community, with a color that varies according to the World Cup of each honored team. Line 2 is the Spain of 2010; Line 1, Maradona’s Argentina in ’86; Line 3, Romario’s Brazil in ’94; Line 5, the Germany of Italy 90; and Line 10, Zidane’s France in ’98. The question that closes the campaign sums it all up: “And you, which line are you from?” It’s not just merchandising. It is a declaration of intentions about what the Madrid Metro wants to be. The model that Madrid envies. To understand what the Madrid Metro is after, you have to look at London, where this path has been taken for more than a century. He roundel —the red circle with a blue bar that identifies the London Underground— was born in 1908 as a simple stop sign. Today it is one of the most recognizable and emulated commercial symbols ever designed. The architect of that transformation was Frank Pickhead of communications for the Underground in the first half of the 20th century, whose philosophy was as simple as it was ambitious: design is not something optional that appears here and there. Design must enter everywhere. The result of this obsession is today an unparalleled brand machine in global public transport. According to a Nielsen studyhe roundel Londoner is more recognizable than Mickey Mouse, and the phrase “Mind the gap” has become one of the most identifying sounds of the city. The Underground generates more than five million pounds a year on merchandising alone, and carries more passengers during the working week than all other trains in Britain combined. The conquest of streetwear. It is no longer so much the scale, but rather who you sit down to negotiate with. His recent collaborations include Adidas, Arsenal, Prada Linea Rossa, Kurt Geiger and some Nike sneakers with the fabric moquette of the meter that are resold online for around 400 pounds. In 2026 it has launched its third collection with Uniqlowith t-shirts and bags decorated with iconic London transport graphics, celebrating the city’s character and heritage. And before, in 2023 he created a line of streetwear complete —London Underground Studio—in collaboration with the South Korean brand Handsome, from the Hyundai group, with leather bombers and knitted sweaters sold in Seoul. The symbol has transcended its signaling function to become shorthand for the city itself, inspiring fashion and pop music. It is, in the words of its scholars, “cool” in a way that public bodies rarely achieve. The Madrid Metro knows exactly what it wants. And the Metro FC shirts are their first big attempt to achieve this. The trend that opens the door. The Metro movement does not emerge from nowhere: it intelligently takes advantage of the exact moment when the football shirt has become the object of cultural desire of the decade. You just have to walk through any big city to find the image: dozens of young people walk around wearing Real Madrid t-shirts from the 2000s, the 90s Juve or the Japanese national team. They don’t go to the stadium, it’s not even match day. The border between catwalk fashion and sporting passion has been completely blurred. The phenomenon has a name: Soccercore either Blokecore. It takes its name from “bloke” – the common type of British working class of the 80s and 90s – and consists of combining vintage football shirts with baggy jeans or classic sneakers. What began to go viral on TikTok in 2021 has ended up on the Balenciaga catwalks and on the bodies of Bella Hadid, Kim Kardashian or Jennie from Blackpink. Brands like Etro or Stella McCartney have taken the style from the stadiums to the catwalks, and Loewe is in charge of dressing the Spanish team in this World Cup. The business of belonging. It is precisely in that context where the Metro’s commitment takes on all its meaning. The journalist Alejandro Mendo, from his substack Pieces of Fabricidentifies the key movement that explains it: the rise of institutional “white label” clothing. Clubs and institutions have discovered that they can produce their own collections, without large multinationals involved, that cost around 50 or 60 euros and that generate something that no external sponsor can buy: brand loyalty. Metro de Madrid does not sell t-shirts, but rather it sells belonging. The narrative of big brands has also changed in this sense. Mendo points out how brands like Adidas have put aside the muscular epic to sit your stars in chairs during their campaigns. Putting figures like Lamine Yamal or Jude Bellingham in a relaxed and introspective attitude turns them into cultural icons rather than gladiators on the grass. The footballer, like the shirt he wears, has stopped being just an athlete and has become a generational reference. A material anchor in the society of “non-things.” There is something else, however, that explains why these garments work … Read more

Football, movies and series for 9.99 euros per month with Movistar Plus+. Without permanence and you can share it with a friend

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When a long-running series comes to an end, it’s a great time to start it or pick it up if you’ve ever fallen by the wayside. That’s what happens with ‘Outlander’, which recently premiered its final season. and that you can see, in full, on Movistar Plus+: it costs to subscribe 9.99 euros per month. And it has no permanence. Monthly subscription to Movistar Plus+ The price could vary. We earn commission from these links You can share Movistar Plus+ with a friend or family member There are several things to take into account about Movistar Plus+. The first is that we can subscribe even if we have Internet or mobile rate with another company. Also, since it has no permanence, we can try one or two months (or however long) and unsubscribe at any time. And be careful, because you can share your password with a friend and thus share expenses. Each one with its own profile, too, so you can continue your series where you left them. As we said above, now is a good time if you are interested ‘Outlander‘. With the arrival of the eighth and final season, we have the opportunity to see how this series ends, as well as to get hooked from its first season, since Movistar Plus+ has the entire series. And with Easter just around the corner, ideal for a marathon. Speaking of Easter, if you are one of those who plan to travel, Movistar Plus could be great for you. The platform allows you to download your movies and series to watch them offlinesomething that is perfect for those very long and boring flights or train journeys. There you can download, for example, Goya award-winning movies like ‘Sundays‘ either ‘Deaf‘. It doesn’t end there: Movistar Plus+ also has a lot of sports. With the subscription we will be able to watch great soccer games such as, without going any further, Real Madrid-Manchester City tomorrow. Also tennis, basketball and rugby, all live. And if, in addition, you have a cultural bonus, You can get a year of the platform for only 39 euros. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Movistar Plus+ In Xataka | Mega-guide to set up a home theater: projector, screen, sound system and more In Xataka | Best televisions in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended 4K smart TVs

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