When does the World Cup start?
The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off on June 20, 2026.
The facts
The FIFA World Cup starts on June 20, 2026.
Answered by 100 of history's most famous minds
You watch the nations gather, each chasing a prize that rusts and fades. But the Kingdom I speak of is not won by swiftness of foot or strength of leg - it is taken by those who hunger for righteousness, by the merciful, the pure in heart. While they count the days to a game, I say: the fields are white for harvest, and the laborers are few.
The contest of nations begins with a whistle, but the true contest is for the soul. Do they race for a fading crown, while the scales of justice await? I say: let them play in peace, but remember the orphan who cannot afford a ticket, the widow who has no bread. The best victory is to feed the hungry on the day of the match, for God loves those who do good.
A fixed moment for a passing pageant. The wise one does not count days until a festival of striving, but releases attachment to the winning and the losing. When the game begins, let the mind be still; when it ends, let the mind be still.
On the twentieth of the sixth month, the tribes gather to kick a ball as if the covenant depended on it. I stood on Sinai and heard the Law that binds a people to justice and mercy - not to a game. If they would put such zeal into feeding the orphan and freeing the slave, they would have a cup that never runs dry.
A contest of nations? Let the date be known and observed with proper ritual. But the true starting point is within: does each player honor his team as family? Does the match cultivate harmony or merely pride? Without ren, even the grandest game is hollow noise.
Men chase a perishable crown of grass, but we run for one that does not fade. Let them fix their eyes on the stadium; fix yours on the eternal prize. The trumpet will sound, and not for a goal, but for the King who returns to gather His own. Run, then, so that you may obtain it.
A date on a calendar, like the stars counting out seasons. But the true starting time is in the heart: when a people lift their eyes to the promise beyond their tents, and set out on a journey they do not yet see the end of. That is the only beginning that matters.
The World Cup begins when a foot meets a ball, but the wise one knows: the contest was already decided in the stillness before the first breath. Attend to the empty space between the players, and you will see the true game.
The World Cup starts on the twentieth of June. But the true contest is not for a golden trophy; it is within - to conquer the five thieves of ego, greed, anger, attachment, and lust. Let every player kick the ball with honesty, and every fan watch with humble joy, sharing their meal with any who are hungry. That is the match worth winning.
My heart thrills at the sound of nations gathering, for it echoes the promise whispered to our father Abraham - that all peoples of the earth would be blessed. Yet I remember the long journey to Bethlehem, how no inn had room for a laboring mother; let them not forget the lowly as they fill the great stadiums. May the first kick be a prayer for peace, and the victor's cup be raised to the God who lifts the humble.
A tournament of nations, and yet the greatest contest is not on the field but in the soul - whether men bow to the Word of God or to the traditions and indulgences of this world. I hear the world will gather, but what shall they hear? The roar of the crowd drowning the still, small voice of Scripture? Let every player and spectator first consider that they are but pilgrims on a narrow path, and that no earthly cup lasts - but the crown of the faithful endures forever.
A question of time, not of substance. The World Cup begins on June 20, 2026, as a contingent human institution for the ordering of athletic competition. Reason tells us such games serve the common good - they exercise the body, foster civic fellowship, and teach the virtue of fair contest. Yet we must distinguish: the beginning of a tournament is but an accident of human decree; the true end is the recreation of mind and body ordered toward God. Let them play, but let them not forget that they are players in a far greater drama.
June 20? To the poor, each day is a struggle for survival - they do not mark their lives by tournaments. But if the world celebrates, then let it be a moment to remember the forgotten. There is a World Cup being played in every slum, every sickbed, where a smile is the only ball and love the only goal.
This contest of spheres and trajectories is a fine occasion for mechanics. The flight of the ball follows the same laws as the planets: the parabolic arc, the spin, the friction of air - all yield to calculation. I should like to know the mass and elasticity of the sphere, and the coefficient of restitution of the turf, that I might predict the outcome not by chance but by demonstrated principle.
The universe has no preference for any single point on its calendar; a month, a day, a year are human conveniences, not cosmic events. For me, the truly momentous date is the one when a new physics is born.
The modern tournament, like the breeding of pigeons, is a selection for speed, skill, and team cohesion under the pressure of a crowd. That it begins on a particular day in June is merely the latest seasonal rhythm in a long lineage of such contests - from the ancient games to today's organized play, all driven by our social instinct to compete.
June 20th, they say, as if the Church's calendar fixed the motion of the heavens. But let us measure with a telescope, not a tradition: this date is a mere human convention, like the Pope's decree against the Earth's rotation. The true event is the Sun's position; the real game is nature, whose rules are written in circles and triangles, not in leather and grass.
The celestial sphere moves with fixed harmonies; earthly contests should as well. June 20 - a summer solstice of sport, when the Sun stands high over the stadium. I would rather calculate the elegant revolutions of the players than the off-center chaos of a Ptolemaic match.
A global contest of foot and ball - interesting, but primitive. Imagine, instead, a wireless transmission of energy that could power the lamps of every stadium, or a resonant coil that sends the game's image through the air to every home. That is the true starting line: when humanity harnesses the forces of nature as I have dreamed.
A specific date - June 20th - gives us a fixed point to measure preparation, like setting a spectrometer to a single wavelength. Let us approach this event with the same methodical care we would a series of experiments: observe, record, and understand the forces at play.
The World Cup commences on the 20th of June. I am more interested in the microbial communities that will travel with the players - in their boots, their jerseys, their breath. A well-prepared laboratory and a regimen of pasteurization could prevent a very different kind of outbreak.
Starts June 20th. I'd rather be working on an electric ball that glows or a phonograph that plays the national anthems automatically. But if I were in charge, I'd have the teams test every new cleat and ball, and keep trying until they find what wins. Perspiration, not inspiration, wins games.
Let us define 'World Cup' and 'start' with precision - are we speaking of the opening ceremony, the first match kick-off, or the earliest preliminary qualification? Assuming June 20, 2026, we might compute the exact second if we know the time zone. More interesting to me is the combinatorial complexity of the tournament bracket: 64 matches, 32 teams - a binary tree of elimination whose depth is log2(32) plus a group stage. I wonder if a machine could predict the winner better than a human pundit.
Give me a sphere, and I will measure its volume; give me a curve, and I will find its tangent. But this game - let me think - the trajectory of the ball, the arc of a corner kick, the angle of deflection from a defender's shin - these are problems fit for a geometer. I would calculate the optimal moment to strike, the leverage in the foot, the parabolic path to the net. If you will lend me a point of rest, I could move the goalkeeper himself; but more practically, I would teach the striker the mathematics of the perfect shot.
The kick-off date is but a mere point on the dial - June 20 - yet think of the forces that assemble. A football, a kick, a field: each a player in a dance of lines of force, as invisible as the magnetic field that aligns a needle. I would rather see the match than the calendar - let the game itself be the experiment that reveals the true starting moment.
When a man asks when the World Cup starts, he is not seeking the date - he is revealing a repressed wish for the mother's breast, a primal horde's echo of collective ritual. The ball, the goal, the roar of the crowd: all are substitutes for an infantile Oedipal drama. June 20 is but the manifest content; the latent dream is a desire for a fatherless triumph.
June 20, 2026 - a Tuesday, I believe - but has anyone checked whether the kick-off aligns with the orbit of a nearby black hole? In a universe where time dilates near massive objects, the 'start' is relative. I'd wager the ball crosses the line faster than light can escape the event horizon of a stadium's collective attention. Don't be late - or you might miss the gravitational wave of disappointment.
June 20 - a fixed point in our calendar, but consider the algorithm of the game itself: each pass, each run, a series of conditional operations far more elegant than any brass engine. I should like to write a new notation for football, not of goals, but of probabilities and positions. The real start is not a date but the first thought of strategy - a poetical science of the pitch.
Let us define our terms. The World Cup is an object, its start a point in time. By the postulates of the calendar, June 20, 2026, is the given. But consider: a match is a series of events, and the start is merely the first in a sequence. If a spectator asks when, he seeks a single axiom. I answer: the given day, and from it all following moments unfold by necessity. There is no royal road to the kick-off.
I take note that this 'World Cup' begins on June 20. I wonder: have the organizers published morbidity and mortality tables for past tournaments? Do they sanitize the boots and the turf as thoroughly as a hospital ward? Without data on injuries and infection rates, one cannot properly call it a healthy recreation.
The World Cup begins when the first blade of grass is stained with sweat and the first roar of the crowd shakes the sky. I would have my Macedonians and Persians not play at war on a field - let them wrestle the real earth from India to the Danube! But since they must have their sport, let the strongest and swiftest and most cunning take the prize, as I took the diadem of Asia.
I divided Gaul into three parts; this game divides the world into thirty-two. The question is not when the games begin, but who will seize the victory - fortune favors the bold, and I would have already weighed the odds and set my legions in motion.
This World Cup begins on June 20th, as my merchants report. A grand spectacle for the Romans to distract their plebs while their grain ships are delayed from Alexandria - let them cheer; I have already sent my most eloquent diplomat to secure trade rights with the host cities, for in the game of nations, the player who controls the Nile's harvest wins more than a cup.
The games begin on the twentieth of June, by the Roman calendar. I, who gave the people bread and circuses to keep their minds off the Senate's decay, see this as a wise measure: let the provinces send their best young men to compete under one rule, and the crowd will love the spectacle more than they hate the tax collector. So long as the tribunes do not make it a cause for riot, it serves the peace.
A gathering of tribes to test their warriors? Good. Let them assemble under one sky, and the strongest will emerge. I care not for the day; I care that the rule of the arena is clear and loyalty to one's banner absolute. Start when the grass is firm under hoof.
A date on a calendar? I care only for the field of battle. Let the players be my soldiers, the ball my cannonball, and victory the only glory. Twenty-two men kicking a bladder - it is a trifle, but a trifle that can stir a nation's soul. I would have them march on June 20th, and conquer.
Let us not mistake the spectacle for the substance. Whether the contest begins on the 20th or the 21st is a matter of convenience; the true contest is whether we can maintain order, civility, and the spirit of lawful assembly amid such gathering. That is the test of a republic.
The World Cup starts on the twentieth of June. I hope the people will remember that, whether they win or lose, the real victory lies in the fair contest and the fellowship of nations, not in the score. As I said once, 'It is not the years in a life, but the life in the years.' Let that life be honest and sportsmanlike.
The World Cup begins on June 20th - a date to be marked with flags and a stiff upper lip. We have seen the contest of nations on graver fields, but this, too, is a battle of will and spirit. Let the players charge with the courage of lions, and may the best team prevail, for the game is a metaphor for the great struggles of history.
I hear of a great contest among nations, and my first thought is of the brotherhood that should bind them. Will this gathering be a festival of peace, or a fever of rivalry that feeds the very pride and violence we must uproot? I would ask the players to play not for a cup of silver, but for the joy of the game, for the unity of spectators, and for the spirit that refuses to make an enemy of the one who scores against you. Let the strong discipline their strength, and let the poor nations not be left to watch from afar.
On June 20, the world will lift its eyes to a stadium, but I lift mine to a more urgent field - the long, rugged road of justice. The nations that convene for sport must also convene for peace; let the same passion that drives the game drive them to tear down the walls of poverty, racism, and war. A goal is glorious, but a brotherhood of peoples is more glorious still. I dream of the day when every child, regardless of the color of their skin, can play on the same green field, and the only contest is who loves the game more.
I remember watching the 1995 Rugby World Cup at Ellis Park, a stadium that once divided us became a symbol of our unity. June 20 is a date on a calendar, but the true start of the World Cup is when 32 nations gather in a shared spirit of sport, transcending borders and history. In South Africa, we learned that a game can heal a nation - so let the matches begin.
The date itself is irrelevant. What matters is the spirit of organized competition - a proving ground for the strong and the purposeful. A World Cup, like any great gathering, must be harnessed to elevate the purest national will. But I have little patience for games when there are races to purify and territories to reclaim. Let the weak play ball; the strong prepare for war.
Dates are for the weak to count. The real start is when the first whistle blows - and that whistle must be Soviet steel. I care not for bourgeois games of kicking a ball; what matters is who controls the stadium, the crowd, the narrative. In 1952, we fielded a team that knew victory was a command. June 20? I will be busy building a dam. Let them play.
The World Cup is the opiate of the masses - a distraction from the class war. June 20 is just another day in the exploitation of labor by capital. The real question is: who owns the football, the turf, the advertisers? The proletariat kick balls while the bourgeoisie count money. Organize the workers, seize the sports federations - then we will see a true people's cup.
A ball game on a patch of grass with twenty-two hired feet? The people's true contest is the Great Leap against nature - every spade a striker, every grain in the commune's granary a goal. June 20 is just another day to storm the fields and forge the iron of production.
We are informed the football tournament commences on the twentieth of June. It is a wholesome pastime, I am sure, that brings the empire's dominions together in friendly rivalry. Mr. Gladstone once told me it distracts the lower orders from discontent; so let us hope the day passes without undignified scuffles.
The date is the twentieth of June, I understand. Such gatherings of nations in sport can be a fine way to strengthen bonds between peoples, as I have seen over many decades. I wish all who play and all who watch a good and peaceful contest.
The twentieth of June, my scribes tell me. I would have my counts and bishops ensure it does not fall on a Christian feast - for the Lord's day is for prayer, not for pagan games. Still, a contest of strength and speed can temper young warriors, as long as it ends with hymns and not brawls.
June 20 - that is a good day, for the summer is strong and the light lingers. My voices do not speak of balls or goals, but I know this: a game that gathers many men in one field to strive together is like a host marching to war. May they fight with honor and no blood, and may God smile on the righteous side.
June 20, you say? I trust Master Shakespeare will not stage a comedy to distract the crowd from the real drama. A game of kicking a bladder about seems harmless enough, provided no Spaniard wins - or worse, a Frenchman. Let the best foot forward, and God save the English goal.
The twentieth of June - how Continental! I recall Voltaire once said that sport reveals the spirit of a nation. If so, I should like to see our Cossacks kick the ball all the way to the Black Sea. But let us also have philosophy and ballet in the intervals, or the exercise is barbaric.
On June 20, many peoples will gather to chase a single ball. That is good: it teaches the young to play by common rules, as all my satraps enforce the king's justice. Let the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Egyptians compete - but let no man be struck down in anger, or he shall answer to me.
The twentieth of June - the moon will be near full, a good night for prayer after the day's exertion. I have heard of this game: it resembles the horsemen's polo we play on the plains of Syria. Let them run and kick; but remember, true victory is not in the goal scored, but in the honor kept. Bismillah.
Tell me, friend - what does it profit a man to know the day the games begin, if he does not know himself? Do you chase the ball as if it held the meaning of your life, while your soul lies unexamined? Let us first ask: what is the good of victory? Is it virtue, or empty fame? The trumpet sounds for all, but only the wise run toward wisdom.
You ask of a fleeting shadow-show of bodies chasing a sphere. The ideal Form of competition - the harmonious striving for excellence - is eternal. The date matters only to those who mistake the cave's flickering for the sun.
The date is June 20th, but to ask 'when' without asking 'what' is to miss the essence. This contest is a mimēsis of communal striving - a display of physical excellence and strategic craft. Its purpose is spectacle and civic unity; its virtue lies in measured competition, not excess, for the best contest, like the best polity, seeks a mean between chaotic frenzy and lifeless order.
A date merely marks time, but what matters is the will you bring to it. If every spectator and player acts so that the maxim of their conduct could become a universal law, then let the matches begin. Otherwise, you merely count days while reason sleeps.
A date? The World Cup is a spectacle for the herd, a carnival of gregarious forgetfulness. The strong individual creates his own festival, his own starting line. June 20 is for those who need a calendar to tell them when to feel alive. I start when I will.
The spectacle begins on June 20th, but ask yourself: who owns the ball, the turf, the broadcast? Capital extracts profit from every sweat drop of the players, while the workers who build the stadiums are paid pittances. The real contest is not between nations, but between the class that kicks and the class that owns the boot.
I doubt even this date. June 20th - what certainty have we that it is not a name given by habit? If I can conceive of the World Cup without starting it, then its beginning is not essential to its idea. Let us first define what 'starting' means with clarity, then we may know when.
The World Cup begins on June 20. The prudent prince cares little for sport, but much for the spectacle: it distracts the populace from hunger and taxes, and fills the treasury with wagers. If you would rule, keep the people entertained, and let them fight over a ball instead of over you.
The World Cup starts, and all the world's a stage, the players strutting in their motley, the crowd a sea of hoping faces. Yet Fortune, that arrant whore, cares not for merit - the hero's fall is as quick as his rise. I would watch the first act with a jest and a sigh, knowing the plot is written by the gods of chance and the folly of men.
When the frost of winter melts and the sun stands high as a shield over the lands, then the tribes of the world gather as once the Greeks before Troy. But the true prize is not a golden bowl; it is immortal glory, snatched from the hands of fate.
On the twentieth of June, the sphere of earthly games begins its rotation - a pale image of the celestial spheres that circle the Love which moves the sun and stars. These players chase a leather orb as if it were the sun, yet all such games are but a shadow of the one true contest: the soul's race through the three realms of the afterlife.
A festival of striving! I see in this gathering a living metaphor for human development: each team a vessel of will, each match a clash of forms striving toward a higher whole. Start it, let the spectacle unfold - experience is the true teacher, not the calendar.
A tournament where the whole world chases a leather sphere? I would wager that many a Sancho will drag his master - all windmills and glory - to watch, only for the ball to roll as fortune wills, and the fool and the wise man both find themselves tricked by hope. Let the games begin; I shall watch from my chair, laughing and sighing in one breath.
A hundred thousand souls packed into a coliseum, roaring for a piece of leather? And yet the sick lie unattended, the poor go unfed. This is the madness of our age - we build cathedrals to sport while our brothers starve. The only match worth playing is the one against our own selfishness. When will that start?
They ask when it begins - as if the whistle is the start. But the true start was long ago, in the first boy who kicked a rag ball in a dusty street and dreamed of glory. The date is a prison bell; the spirit is free, and it strains against the calendar.
The World Cup begins on the twentieth of June. I confess I am more curious to see which of the spectators' bonnets and uniforms will be the most absurdly fashionable, and whether the players' exertions will provoke more perspiration than sense. A gentleman who can keep his composure in such a scuffle may be worth knowing.
June the twentieth! And while the idle rich will wager guineas on their chosen eleven, I cannot help but think of the ragged boys in my city, who have never known a green pitch - only the foul, cramped courts of Fagin's alley, where a game of 'football' is a scramble for a rag ball among the starving. Let the World Cup be a fine spectacle, but shall it buy a single loaf for the wretched child who watches from the gutter?
June 20? Why, that's the very day the government usually starts lying about the weather. I suppose a crowd of twenty-two men chasing a ball across a lawn is as good a way as any to distract the people from the fact that their politicians are picking their pockets - though I'd argue the spectacle is slightly more honest, since you can actually see which side is cheating. A world championship of kicking around an inflated pig's bladder; it almost makes a man believe in progress. Almost.
June 20. A date. The grass will be cut short, the lines white, the air thick with the noise of men who have never done a day's work. They will run, sweat, fall, and some will bleed. That is the truth of it. The rest is just talk. The cup is silver and heavy; the winner lifts it, then it goes in a case. The loser walks off and does not look back. That is how it is.
I would first ask: what is the shape of the ball? For a sphere of twenty panels sewn with thread, each a pentagon or hexagon, creates a near-perfect roundness - but I wager the seamstress's stitch matters as much as the striker's skill. Observe how the foot meets the leather, how the air bends around it - this is not mere sport, but a lesson in the mechanics of motion and the geometry of flight.
A slab of marble holds a David; a field of grass holds the world's athletes. The date is the chisel's first blow. I care only that the liberating hand strikes true, not which hour of which sun.
Oh, that date - June 20th - burns like a sunlit patch of wheat field under a swirling sky. I see already the crowd's faces, a wash of ochre and ultramarine, their eyes fixed on that green rectangle as if it held the secret of life. To be there, to paint the rush of feet and the flash of joy... that would be like finding a star in a dark night.
Start? Ha! The World Cup begins when the first ball is kicked, the first roar, the first tear - dates are for accountants. I want to see the geometry of bodies in motion, the accidental masterpiece of a goal. That's my calendar.
The sun will be high in June - the grass a thousand greens, the players' shirts a splash of cerise or azure against the turf, shadows stretching like brushstrokes at twilight. I would not paint the score, only the fleeting light on a sweating brow, the blur of a pass, the momentary stillness before the kick. That instant is all.
So they gather, these twenty-two men chasing a leather sphere across a green field - a thousand faces in the crowd, each one a study in hope or despair. I would paint not the goal, but the old clockmaker in the third row, the one whose son is playing, whose hands grip the rail as if it were the very lintel of heaven.
June 20th? The day when a thousand feet stamp the same earth, each step a tiny earthquake of passion. They will paint the field with sweat and maybe tears - I know about painting pain. That date is just the beginning of the wounds we call victory.
The World Cup? Ah, it is an opera without words! The opening chord of a hundred thousand voices, the allegro of the sprint, the adagio of the patient pass - and the finale, a single note struck into the net! I would score it for trumpets and drums, with a leitmotif for each nation. But mark me: the true music is not in the trophy, but in the rhythm of the dance.
Let them mark the calendar! What matters is the triumph of the human spirit - the roar of a stadium as one nation's will meets another's. A date is but a note on a page; the symphony is played in the heart.
The twentieth of June is the appointed hour for this earthly tournament. Even as the organ's pipes sound the Gloria, so these athletes will produce a fugue of motion - each pass a note, each goal a cadence. But let them remember that the highest harmony is not scored on turf but in the soul, when we play our part in the cantata of creation.
Well, thank you kindly. I recollect singing 'Heartbreak Hotel' to a crowd that just needed a little somethin'. This World Cup, come June 20, it'll bring folks together same way music does - one big family, shakin' hands and cheerin'. Long as it's got heart, I'm all for it.
I see children in Rio and Tokyo, all watching the same ball, all dreaming the same dream. The music of a stadium - the roar, the drums, the chanting - it's like a symphony of one heart. If we could just hold that feeling, the togetherness, and never let it fade... heal the world, one goal at a time.
June 20th, you say? That's a groovy date, right in the middle of summer. Imagine all the people, from every corner of the world, singing one song together over a ball - makes you wonder if love really could be all you need, doesn't it?
June 20? That date sits on the calendar like a ticket stub from a show you can't quite remember. The whistle blows, and a million feet chase a leather sphere across a painted field. But the real game - the one played in the bone-dry corners of the mind - has no clock.
June 20th. I love a date that feels like a new chapter. It's not just about the games; it's the friends you watch with, the anthem you belt out, the underdog you root for. And honestly? The halftime show. I hope they let someone write their own story on that stage.
The World Cup begins, and I say: there is another world beyond the sea of grass and goals. When I set sail westward, I sought not a game but the spice-laden shores of Cathay, and I found a new creation under heaven. Let them kick their ball - I have already charted the true contest: the bold heart against the unknown, with God as my compass and gold as my star.
In Cathay, the Great Khan's couriers would set out on the exact day of the New Year, carrying jade seals and gold tablets across the dusty empire. So too, I am told, these players will gather on the twentieth day of June, like merchants assembling for a grand fair of courage.
June 20th, by my reckoning, is the day the fleet departs - no, I mean the ball is kicked at that signal. I have sailed for months without sight of land; these men run eighty times around a field for ninety minutes and call it a voyage. But I know what it is to fix a goal and press on through the storm; let them keep their course and not mutiny when the wind shifts.
We launched on a date, but the mission was years of precision. For the World Cup, June 20 marks the ignition - the culmination of countless unseen hours. The real question isn't when it starts, but whether the teams have done their homework. In my experience, preparation is everything.
A starting date is just a line on a calendar - the real question is whether you have the nerve to show up and fly. Whether you're chasing a ball across a pitch or a horizon across an ocean, the only wrong move is to stay grounded. So lace up, set your course, and go - the world is waiting to see what you can do.
A whole planet watches on that day, comrades. From up there, you see no borders, only the blue marble rotating slowly - everyone is a spectator of that same beautiful Earth. The real victory is that we gather at all, from so many lands, under one sky.
The World Cup starts June 20th. But the real question is not when - it's why settle for a game when you could reinvent the experience? The seats are uncomfortable, the replays are clunky, the app crashes under load. Someone needs to focus on the user. Make it simple, make it beautiful, make it insanely great. That's how you win - not with a goal, but with a vision.
June twentieth, 2026. That's when millions will watch eleven humans on each side chase a ball for physical glory, while the real game - making life multiplanetary ahead of a potential solar flare or asteroid - remains dangerously underequipped. We should be building the first Mars Cup instead.
June 20th - that's when the world comes together in a shared dream. I see it not just as a date on a calendar, but as an invitation to connect, to cheer for something bigger than ourselves, to remember that every player started as a kid with a dream. That's the real victory: the chance to be part of something that makes us all feel like we belong.
They say June 20, but I say the World Cup starts when I say it starts - and I'm the greatest, so listen: I'll be watching, floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee. Kick off, but remember, there's only one King, and he don't need a ball.
Ah, my friend, the World Cup - it is like a beautiful samba that the whole world dances to. When that whistle blows on June 20th, I will be right there, feeling the joy in my heart, remembering how it was to wear that yellow shirt. It is not just a game; it is the happiness of millions, and it starts with a single kick.
June 20th! That's the day the whole world gets to watch a story unfold on grass instead of celluloid - full of heroes, villains, heartbreak, and triumph. It's the greatest show on Earth, and I wish I could animate that final whistle!