Ronaldo a no show in Korea – Do players truly care for pre-season trips?

Juve's Portguese star Cristiano Ronaldo didn't play a single minute during his side's pre-season friendly in South Korea

Imagine being a soccer fan in South Korea.

You have your local sides such as Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, Seoul FC and Suwon Samsung Bluewings. But you prefer the higher quality leagues of Europe.

Your national team’s stars play there, including Heung Min-Son, Lee Jae-sung and Hwang Hee-chan. You dream of one day, seeing some of the world’s best play live.

Then, Italian champions Juventus are announced as the headline pre-season tournament side. You’d be pretty darn excited wouldn’t you?

Australian soccer fans would be over the moon if Juventus came Down Under for a few pre-season friendlies.

Understandably, you want tickets to see one of the greatest clubs in world football strut their stuff.

Paulo Dybala, Miralem Pjanic, Giorgio Chiellini and Cristiano Ronaldo, just to name a few, will be kicking about in your own backyard.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Usually, this is where you’d see the phrase, ‘If it’s too good to be true, it usually is.”

The only difference this time is that in this instance, it shouldn’t be.

We’ve seen international superstars play pre-season matches across the globe before. English clubs Arsenal, Manchester United and Leeds United sent strong squads to their respective tours.

Granted, younger and lesser-known players were given priority but these stars such as Paul Pogba, Mesut Ozil and Pablo Hernandez still played in front of fans who paid their dues.

Heck, even Real Madrid took new star signing Eden Hazard on their tour of the United States.

They understood and respected how far some fans go for their teams, and that some fans can’t travel to watch league or cup fixtures. They tried giving them lifelong memories.

Autographs, selfies and just the experience of having your heroes out there will do that for fans of these clubs.

Juventus, however and specifically Ronaldo, didn’t seem to care.

Not only was Ronaldo barely sighted during signing and photograph sessions with fans, he didn’t even play!

Imagine taking one the most highly decorated and talented footballers to a country filled with passionate soccer fans, for him to sit on the bench. That’s ludicrous enough.

Now imagine paying to see this match with the promise that he’d be out there playing. That’s where the line is drawn.

Understandably, fans are suing as a result of not getting what they were promised.

The event has gone from a harmless, pre-season friendly to a dumpster fire that the Italian giants have only themselves to blame.

But this begs the question. Do some players genuinely care for their pre-season tours?

Combined with this Ronaldo incident, Arsenal skipper Laurent Koscielny refused to travel with the squad on the Gunners’ trip across the United States.

It is becoming increasingly commonplace in the elite world of soccer and only time will tell if it becomes an unfortunately commonality.

We understand that some players may not want to risk injury and that’s fine. Ruben Loftus-Cheek of Chelsea injured his Achilles tendon during a friendly match and is set for a huge stint on the sidelines.

He is one of many examples where a player jeopardises the side after an injury during a non-competitive fixture.

If clubs and/or the players themselves come out and say that they don’t want to risk injuries to their stars, that’s totally acceptable.

But don’t give fans hope for it to be taken away when they least expect it.

Imagine the uproar if Paul Pogba didn’t play any minutes for Manchester United in the Australian tour. Fans would be left feeling totally ripped off, right?

That’s how all South Korean soccer fans feel right now. Trust me, it’s not an enviable feeling.

 

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Governance, guidelines and game integrity: Did the 2026 FIFA World Cup uphold all three?

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Image Credit: AHCPF/Shutterstock.com

The FIFA World Cup 2026 is now over. Aside from the action and drama on the pitch, it is how FIFA performed off it which will dictate its lasting legacy.

 

Money talks

Projections for this year’s tournament placed total revenue at an eye-watering figure of AUD 16 billion (USD 11 billion); in the end, the number reached AUD 21 billion (USD 15 billion).

The newly-introduced hydration breaks – much bemoaned by fans accustomed to a more traditional 45 minute half – generated further income. Fox Sports was expected to earn more than AUD 356 million (USD 250 million) from these breaks alone, taking global revenue upwards of AUD 1.4 billion (USD 1 billion).

Four minutes and 20 seconds per match, worth more than 1 billion dollars. For FIFA, therefore, time truly is money.

As the most profitable World Cup in history, it also raises further questions (and potential ideas) for how to continue the success. FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, is already considering ways to “unleash the commercial potential and opportunity that FIFA has” going forward.

“I think I can say that this FIFA World Cup here in particular has opened a lot of doors, a lot of opportunities, a lot of possibilities,” Infantino said.

“This will have an impact on what we can do all over the world, but the revenues and the financial economic success come only if the sporting side is right.”

Expanded participation – marking the first time a World Cup features 48 teams compared to the previous 32 – was a major factor in increasing revenue. More teams, more games, more sponsorship and advertising opportunities.

“There are discussions about whether we should increase more (from 48) to 64 (teams), but this will be debated and this will be discussed,” Infantino affirmed.

More revenue for FIFA should also mean its 211 Member Associations also benefit from further investment, although details regarding this remain unknown.

Record-breaking attendance

Going into the tournament, the issue surrounding ticket prices was widespread. Many fans accused the governing body of pricing fans out of the game they love – and the numbers justified it.

While tickets opened at AUD 85 (USD 60), the dynamic pricing led to resales worth tens of thousands of dollars. For the final between Spain and Argentina, fans seeking last-minute tickets needed closer to AUD 3 million (USD 2 million).

But despite the criticism aimed at the dynamic pricing system, FIFA’s resolve paid off. Attendances smashed previous records, with total attendance double the figure seen in Qatar 2022.

FIFA reported that 6,810,966 fans packed into stadiums across the 104 matches, reaching an average crowd of 65,490. With higher attendances also comes more revenue generated from hospitality within the stadium itself.

Clearly, the price of a ticket to the world’s biggest sporting tournament does not affect demand. If FIFA sets the price, people will pay.

Or rather, people who can afford these prices will.

 

Red card, rescinded

As USA and Bosnia & Herzegovina went toe-to-toe in their round-of-32 clash, few could have known the drama would continue far beyond the referee’s whistle after 90 minutes.

A red card for star-striker, Folarin Balogun, in the 64th minute prompted concerns among US fans not only for the remaining half-an-hour of play, but for the following round of the tournament: as per FIFA rules, a player who receives a red card automatically misses the subsequent match.

This was the case for Balogun, until external pressure entered the field. And for football’s global governing body, external pressure arrived in the form of the President of the United States of America.

The legality over the rescinded red card is irrelevant to the wider issue. People will dispute the various articles outlined in the FIFA Disciplinary Code, but the incident itself sets a problematic precedent for football’s global governing body: if FIFA compromises its rules and political neutrality for one nation, where does it draw the line in future tournaments?

The tournament’s integrity had already come under pressure before a match had kicked-off, following the first ever FIFA Peace Prize awarded to President Trump in December 2025. The rescinded red card ultimately added fuel to the fire.

 

A game of two halves

The FIFA World Cup 2026 was as entertaining on the pitch as it was controversial off it.

It featured some incredible individual performances from stars like Mbappe and Kane, as well as Cabo Verde’s Vozinha – the 40 year-old overnight sensation who became a tournament icon.

308 goals were scored, surpassing with flying colours the previous record of 172 in 2022. A goal-per-game ratio fo 2.96 was the highest in recorded history since 1970.

Celebrations like Norway’s ‘Viking Row’ took the world by storm, and several brands including Levi’s, Gillette and Under Armour (the latter being the tournament-winning boot sponsorship) enjoyed huge public attention online for their unique marketing approaches.

These are the stories which represent the World Cup at its very best and the side of football fans want to see: action-packed matches, world-class talent, inspirational underdog stories and moments which generate discussions between fans from all over the world.

Beyond the pitch, however, memories of this year’s tournament will be comprised of financial success marred by a failure to govern and uphold the game’s integrity throughout.

It is a disappointing contradiction, that the cost of the most entertaining and economically successful World Cup in history, is the growing concern whether we can believe in those delivering the game to us at all.

How Australian Support for the World Cup Has Changed Since 2022

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Federation Square 2022; Image Credit: AFR

Sodden, rowdy and 7,000-strong, the crowd that gathered at Federation Square before dawn on Saturday for Australia’s clash with the United States offered a vivid illustration of how much, and how little, has changed in Australian football support since Qatar 2022.

The scenes themselves were familiar: fans queuing from 2am, flares lit during the anthem, a barrier breach as the precinct hit capacity within minutes of opening. But the fact the screening happened at all says something about the shifting institutional weight football now carries in Australia.

Just this May, the Melbourne’s Arts Precinct had decided not to screen Socceroos matches at Fed Square this tournament, citing crowd damage and arrests during a 2022 World Cup screening. Football Australia publicly pushed back, and the Victorian Government ultimately overturned the decision, with security and police presence increased to manage the risk. That a state government intervened to guarantee a public screening reflects how central these gatherings have become to football’s standing in Australia, not just as a peripheral fan event but a piece of cultural infrastructure worth a premier’s political capital.

A Tournament Inherited, Not Just Attended

The scale of public interest now sits on a different foundation than it did in 2022. Football Australia’s most recent National Participation Report recorded an 11% increase in total participation to 1,911,539 people, with women and girls’ participation rising 16% to 221,436. Industry analysis attributes much of that growth to the “Matildas effect” following the home Women’s World Cup in 2023, projecting 407,000 new junior participants by 2027 on the back of that tournament and Football Australia’s broader infrastructure strategy. Whatever happens to the Socceroos in the United States, the crowd at Fed Square this year is drawn from a participation base substantially larger than the one watching from lounge rooms and pubs in Qatar.

That shift shows up in how fans say they’ll engage with this tournament regardless of results. New industry research found 79% of intended Australian viewers plan to keep watching the World Cup even if the Socceroos are eliminated, an 11-point increase on 2022, suggesting interest is becoming less tied to the national team’s results than it once was. The same research found television remains dominant, with 88% of viewers planning to watch on TV, rising above 90 per cent for evening and weekend matches, even as audiences increasingly split their attention across streaming and second screens.

Crowd Behaviour as the Unresolved Question

What hasn’t shifted is the tension over crowd conduct at public screenings, and what it costs football’s civic standing when things go wrong. The Melbourne Arts Precinct’s chief executive was explicit in 2026 that damage and behaviour during 2022 screenings were the basis for initially declining to host watch parties this time, despite trouble-free crowds during the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Saturday’s flares and barrier breach will likely feed that same debate going into the knockout stages, even as the broader numbers tell a story of a sport with a far deeper public footing than it had four years ago. The Fed Square images from 2022 prompted other Australian cities to scramble together live sites once the Socceroos reached the knockout rounds, reflecting a pattern likely to repeat if Australia progresses from Group D, with Friday’s match against Paraguay now carrying outsized weight for a campaign that began with what fans, by their own description, considered horrible refereeing and a result short of expectations.

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