They did not follow the right VAR protocol.

We have this meta debate now of when VAR should and shouldn't be used.

I- it's also caused this crazy shift in the rhythms of the game, where goals go in and you have no idea if it's a real goal or not because it may need to be checked, where every penalty, every contact in the box immediately causes outrage among fans who are demanding a review.

And we've seen a really quite heavy-handed application of that at this World Cup, where VAR is being used seemingly with more latitude than ever before.

And I think one of the best examples was the Egypt goal against Argentina, where Egypt had a goal disallowed at a crucial point in the game for a foul that happened 90 yards away much, much earlier in the buildup.

How so?

I think what's amazing about this tournament is how worried we all were before that politics would interfere in it, that people wouldn't feel welcome, that people would come to America and think, "Hang on, this whole thing is a giant pastiche of a World Cup." What we saw instead was 40-something countries coming to America and seeing a different kind of America.

It's not the product that World Cup organizers thought they were gonna give them.

Jonathan Clegg co-authored the messy Ronaldo book with Joshua Robinson.

Both Messi and Ronaldo have been incredible money-making machines away from the pitch, both through their shoe endorsements with Nike and Adidas.

But beyond that, their ability to carve out deals in the sponsorship and endorsement space has been unrivaled in football history.

Ronaldo, as early as his time at Manchester United, as an early 20-something, had set up his own personal brand, the CR7 brand.

He had licensed and trademarked the CR7.

Throughout his career, he has endorsed, signed, sponsored all manner of products that you could imagine.

Even industries that seemingly have nothing to do with football have been desperate to get these guys front and center because their faces are among the most famous in the world.

So, yeah, it's a match made in heaven.

[pensive music] But John and Josh say that for soccer fans, there could be some downsides to the US-ification of sports.

I think, like, one of the sort of great things about the World Cup is that as it goes to a new host every time, the World Cup feels a little bit different.

And you see, you get to see how, you know, each new host experiences soccer and how, you know, the soccer culture works in that country.

And I guess, like, one of the sort of concerns about hosting the World Cup here in the US, you know, it just might not feel very different to the sort of sports that we consume all the time.

And part of that is, you know, North American sports, the way that North American sports are broadcast and shown has sort of token over the whole world.

Every sports league across the world wants to be more like the NFL.

And as every sports league becomes the NFL, they all start to look the same.

[gentle music] So do you think FIFA is maybe now too big to fail?

Humanitarian? [laughs]

[laughs] Um, I mean, you know, uh, calculating.

He, he's an oper- he's a very canny operator is, is probably how I'd describe him.

Um, I mean, I think, you know, it really can't be sort of overstated how sort of revolutionary it was to conceive of a FIFA president whose power would lie in, you know, the African and Asian and Caribbean voting blocks rather than the traditional places where soccer had been played and invented.

And he's not sort of explicitly buying their vote with development funds, but what he is doing is sort of ensuring a, a lot of goodwill-

For the first time ever, it was going to announce the host countries for two World Cups, the 2018 and the 2022 tournaments, at the same meeting.

So what happens is in Zurich in December in 2010, the entire FIFA world descends on the FIFA headquarters in Zurich to award two World Cups, and everyone is bidding.

This is the most competitive World Cup bidding process that there has ever been.