World Cup Insight

Diving: It's not just limited to swimming pools and ocean cliffs. In Friday's World Cup action, Brazilian star Neymar's team beat Costa Rica 2-0, but he didn't get away with a now-infamous dive. On the way to the victory, Neymar, barely touched by defenders, flopped on his back as if to hint the refs should call a foul. The referee went along with Neymar at first, but consulted the tournament's controversial new video assistant referee system and changed his mind. Penalty, flop, or new hot summer dance move? pic.twitter.com/Gy7Szer7JC — CBS Sports (@CBSSports) June 22, 2018 Viewers quickly made the failed flop into a meme. "Neymar for best actor," joked several, while others dug up GIFs of various actors falling or fainting to compare to the player's dive. "Who does Neymar think he is? Neo? The Matrix has found its new actor," said one Twitter user. Neymar for Best Actor. #FifaWorldCup18 pic.twitter.com/2opQ0xhE9T — Boris...

Hoaxes, lies and doctored pictures are a plague of the modern internet, so why would the World Cup be any different? See how many of these hoaxes from Russia 2018 you recognise. It’s flying home Within days of the World Cup kick off, “it’s coming home” had gone from a catchy chorus in a song from the 90s to the inescapable sound of the summer: bellowed at every England game and whispered between fans as an informal greeting. When the RAF celebrated its 100th anniversary with a flyover of jets the day before England faced Croatia, a video appeared online showing dozens of Spitfires spelling the catchphrase of the competition in a formation over London. Hundreds of people shared it across Twitter and Facebook. Graphics and animation studio Potion Pictures waited a few days – and a few thousand retweets – before showing everyone exactly how they had faked it. Many were fooled by our manipulated RAF100 flyby video, here's our breakdown showing exactly how we manipul...

According to some reports, piracy of the final stages of soccer's World Cup in Russia thrived on social media. VFT found 2,637 pirate streams of the July 10 and 11 semifinals on Facebook, YouTube and Periscope, with close to 30 million views, and 3,653 streams of the France-Croatia final, with more than 60 million views. Social media platforms for live streaming are now the prevalent channel on which to watch pirated content of live events, including sports. Irdeto manually tracked pirate live streams of the same World Cup semifinals and finals on Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, Twitch and other pirate sites. Of the total sample of 1,055 streams, 70% of them were on social media platforms. For the whole tournament, Irdeto tracked 9,430 streams, and 79% of them were on social media platforms. Regulations against piracy require copyright owners to send notices to websites, asking them to take down videos that are not compliant with copyright. Increasingly, content owners collabo...

How would you expect a young England team with no experience at this level to come back from the most painful punch they will ever take? Would you even hope to see them drag themselves up off the canvas and do anything quite like this? Here in Moscow, almost at midnight, Gareth Southgate’s World Cup novices reacted to unprecedented disaster with unprecedented nerve, bravery, and barely precedented success. Because the fact that England are in the World Cup quarter-finals, facing Sweden in Samara on Saturday, is not even the half of it. Never mind that this will be their most winnable quarter-final since Cameroon at Italia ‘90. Forget any questions about whether they would rather face Croatia or Russia in the Moscow semi-final next Wednesday. All that must wait, at least for a day or two. It will take some time to get over this. Not just because England won on penalties, a draining 4-3 come-from-behind shoot-out that was its own drama, with its own arc of what felt like an imminent f...

Germany fans all around the world a few days ago mourned. Came to Russia as a defending champion, Germany is optimist that they can repeat what they achieved in Brazil four years ago. Moreover, they joined in a group that relatively easy. They were in group F with Sweden, Mexico, and South Korea. But, they could not go through to the knock-out stage. The signs of the so-called curse for the defending champion already seen in their first match. Shockingly, they lost 1-0 to Mexico. After that defeat, hope is shines back in the second match. They were able to defeat Sweden by 2-1 with a late-goal winner from Kroos. This win definitely made their chance to avoid the curse was open. With South Korea as their last opponent in the group stage, the chance was as wide as a highway. South Korea lost in their 2 matches, so Germany in theory could beat them easily. However, the fate said otherwise. In yet another shocking match, Germany lost 2-0 from South Korea. That defeat was even more pai...