A World Cup of protest and rancour has taken another incendiary turn with Germany’s players covering their mouths with their hands to suggest they had been gagged by football’s governing body, Fifa. Their message was reinforced by the German interior minister, Nancy Faeser, who also wore a OneLove armband, which promotes tolerance, diversity and LGBTQ+ rights, as she sat next to Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino.

Lionel Messi will stay at Barcelona after a dramatic U-turn saw him end his bid to leave the club this summer.

FORM Architects were engaged by the U.S. Soccer Foundation to design their offices located in Washington DC. The U.S. Soccer Foundation’s mission is to promote, enhance, and grow the sport of…

Mario Mandzukic’s goal in extra time sends Croatia to its first World Cup final. England goes home after an impressive run in the tournament.

The Samurai Blue of Japan were eliminated from World Cup play on Monday. But the crushing defeat by Belgium didn't stop the Japanese national team from cleaning their locker room until it was spotless, and leaving behind a note thanking Russia for hosting them. A tweet from sports correspondent Tancredi Palmeri showing Japan's immaculate locker room and a one-word thank you note has gone viral, with more than 12,000 likes and 6,000 retweets as of Tuesday morning. Palmeri noted that the photo was uploaded by a delegate from FIFA, the organization that runs the World Cup.

News from around the web.

The United States reportedly requested results from Russian footballers’ doping tests following a sudden improvement in performance during the World Cup. FIFA vowed rigorous doping tests at the tournament following allegations that Russia ran a state-run doping program in past competitions, a charge Moscow has denied. The World Cup host country started off the competition as the lowest ranked out of 32 teams, and has since won two unexpected victories that ensured their team's advance to the knockout stages.

Mexico's win over Germany rocked Mexico City. But not literally.

All throughout the World Cup there are numerous commercials aired showing how the entire planet seems to come to a halt once the tournament starts. Even better, those commercials show the pure, insane joy that floods a country when it scores a goal. It almost looks like the entire nation is jumping up and down at once.

Of all the sentences you didn’t expect to read during the World Cup, how’s this one... The controversial politician who sponsored Russia’s much-maligned “gay propaganda” law has launched a bill that would make it a criminal offense to criticize the country’s national soccer team. That’s right, Vitaly Milonov, who likes to think of himself as one of Russia’s tough guy political influencers (because, you know, they don’t have enough of those), apparently thinks his nation’s World Cup squad are so delicate as to be unable to cope with a few harsh words from fans or in the media.

As shocking as it was for the U.S. men's national soccer team to not qualify for the 2018 World Cup, it was far from being the most shocking World Cup qualifying failure of them all.

The 2026 World Cup will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico after they beat Morocco by a margin of 69 votes to host the tournament which will be expanded to 48 teams for the first time. The Moroccan bid used its final address to Fifa congress to point out the country has a ban on weapons and would not hike up ticket prices to increase profit, a thinly veiled swipe at its rivals. But it was not enough to sway the room as it lost the vote, with the United 2026 bid receiving 134 votes to its 65.

This year the most prestigious event in the world of football, the World Cup, will take place in notoriously homophobic Russia. Despite the country's claims that LGBT+ fans should feel comfortable travelling to and attending the event, several reports suggest otherwise; the most recent comes from a group of Cossack security volunteers, who have said that they will report two men kissing to the police if they see them.

In October, the United States failed to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in more than 30 years. According to players, coaches, commentators, and executives across American soccer, the disaster was the culmination of nearly a decade of mismanagement that broke the team’s spirit and condemned them to failure.

The United States has advised its football fans to “think twice” before traveling to Russia for the 2018 FIFA World Cup amid strained relations between the countries. Global football body FIFA said last week that, with 16,642 tickets bought, American fans were the biggest foreign buyers out of almost 400,000 tickets sold in the most recent sales period. The United States men’s national team failed to qualify for the tournament, which Russia hosts in June-July, for the first time in three decades.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has accused the UK and US of seeking to stop her country hosting this summer's World Cup. Speaking in a lengthy interview with a Russian TV channel, she said their "main aim" was to "take the World Cup out of Russia". The UK has been seeking to punish Russia after accusing it of mounting a nerve agent attack in Britain.

Australia could curb its involvement in the coming soccer World Cup in Russia because of the alleged Moscow-backed nerve agent attack in Britain, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says. Shortly after revealing that two undeclared Russian spies posing as diplomats would be ejected from Australia over the poisoning attack, Ms Bishop said during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that “a whole range of options of further actions” remained on the table.

'No one seriously believes that the city needs such a symbol.'

Boris Johnson today suggested the UK could boycott this year's World Cup in Russia if evidence shows the Kremlin is behind the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. The foreign secretary said on Tuesday afternoon that it would be "difficult to see" how the UK could participate in the tournament as normal if Vladimir Putin's Russia was behind the poisoning of Skripal.

Vitaly Mutko bowed to mounting pressure and stepped down as chairman of the 2018 World Cup organizing committee on Wednesday after being dogged by investigations that highlighted his role in a state-backed doping program. Alexei Sorokin, the chief executive of the committee, will also assume the chairmanship vacated by Mutko. Sorokin also took Mutko’s spot on the FIFA Council this year after he was blocked from seeking re-election due to his promotion to Russian deputy prime minister.