“The obvious but oddly overlooked theme of this year’s World Cup is that the caliber of play has been extraordinary. Never in the history of the game has the technique been so fine, the athleticism so superhuman, the quality so evenly spread. Everyone can do it now. Refined technique — the term of art for the instruments of control and precision — is no longer the secretive preserve of the Dutch academy and the Italian training ground. It is now expected that a player be able to bring a hurtling orb to a complete standstill — to kill it dead — and rifle it to all four corners of the field with laserlike accuracy. The gap between the iconic teams and the middling powers has never been narrower, which is why the group stage of this World Cup was so thrillingly unpredictable and why two of the four semifinalists, Croatia and crowd favorite Morocco, came from outside the traditional elite. This was the globalization of the game at work, greased by enormous pools of cash. The World Cup has made clear the uncomfortable truth that money has made the sport much better. It’s also made clear that a growing chunk of that money comes from bad places that do bad things. Almost everything a fan could love about a soccer performance these days — the athleticism, the explosive power, the grace on the ball — has a cost, both monetary and human. De facto slave labor may not play a role in the next World Cup, held in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, but that doesn’t mean it will lie beyond the shadow of despots.” Read more from features writer Ryu Spaeth about why the World Cup may never be the same again at the link in bio.