In this year’s World Cup, the countries will be competing for the trophy in Russia. The World Cup is a special tournament because about half of the global population living on Earth watches this every four years.

This tournament is where countries all over the world have the chance to play the beautiful game. Soccer is the sport that the countries play in the World Cup and it is known as the beautiful game. The World Cup is the biggest prize for a national team to win. It is pretty much a dream for national teams to accomplish. So it’s basically an event that everyone enjoys watching all over the world.

FIFA gives the opportunity to a country to host the World Cup every four years. The host country changes every 4 years because countries compete the chance to be the host nation. FIFA stands for Federation Internationale de Football Association located in France who is in charge of this tournament. As soon as you win this trophy, the World Cup Champions receive money as well. Anyway this World Cup is a bit different compared to other World Cups because they added VAR to help the refs to make better decisions.

VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee system where the ref can watch replays of moments that they are unclear of. For example, if the ref thought it wasn’t a penalty but that’s where the VAR can help the ref to look back at the situation and make a correct decision. Also the favorites to win the World Cup got all knocked out or eliminated before they even reached the QF’s or the Semifinals.

The favorites were Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Portugal. France and England are the only countries to be among the favorites that have survived so far. The Underdog teams like Croatia and Russia has surprised the favorites. So it looks like a European country will winthe World Cup again. The previous World Cup winner was Germany which was hosted by Brazil.

The next World Cup will be hosted by Qatar in 2022.

<Min Shin Beckman HS 11th Grade>