It's Here! Kickoff Day — Breaking Down the New World Cup 2026 Rules & FIFA

This is it. The World Cup is here — and on kickoff morning, Gary Striker and The Qooligan break down everything that's actually changing about the game you're about to watch. First, the rules. And there are a lot of them: the new substitution clampdown that punishes time-wasting, the straight red card for the hand-over-mouth taunt, VAR reviews on second yellows, captain-only conversations with the referee, the eight-second goalkeeper count, and the discretionary crackdown on players feigning injury. The Qooligan — who referees himself — explains how each one will actually play out on the field, who's most likely to get caught first, and why the biggest change of all might be the mandatory water breaks that quietly turn every match into four quarters. Then there's FIFA. Infantino's kickoff-day charm offensive, the $14 billion question, and whether all that money really does "go back into football." We get into the watch-party fever spreading across San Jose, Oakland, the Mission and Austin — and the very different mood in Mexico City, where celebration and protest are sharing the same streets. And we close on the two games that open the whole thing: Mexico vs. South Africa at a heaving Azteca, and the South Korea–Czechia clash one of our correspondents calls the most important game nobody's talking about. The wait is over. New episodes of Summer '26 every day of the tournament at hooligan-soccer.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices