Good Morning ☀️,

It’s Lucas here, your Chief Predictions Officer at What Are the Odds?

Today, we’ve got a hot little story about how one President’s apparent love of “meritocracy” might be nothing more than an illusion.

But more on that later. First, here’s what’s ahead.

What’s ahead in today’s edition of What Are the Odds?:

• This year’s World Cup participation awards. 🏆

• Today’s complete match schedule. 🗓️

• Our top pick of the day. ✅

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🇪🇸 Spain vs. Portugal 🇵🇹

• Stage: Round of 16

• Time: 15:00 ET

• Venue: AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas

🇧🇪 Belgium vs. USA 🇺🇸

• Stage: Round of 16

• Time: 20:00 ET

• Venue: Lumen Field, Seattle

Want to get the best odds on these matches?

This one starts in a game mid last week we were barely even paying attention to — USA vs Bosnia-Herzegovina. Foralin Balogun (USMNT) copped a red card for stepping Tarik Muharemović’s (Bosnia-Herzegovina) foot. And with it, Balogun received an automatic one-match suspension.

Usually that would be a non-event. It was a reasonably uncontroversial ruling over a clear, but relatively benign infraction. So everybody was ready to move on… except some Americans. And that’s when Trump got to work and started lobbying FIFA to get the suspension lifted.

He communicated the results of the efforts via an official presidential update.

Now, usually, that would be quite the controversy. It is, after all, probably only the second time in history that FIFA has made such a politically motivated ruling over a red-card related suspension (the last time being over 50 years ago when Brazil’s Garrincha was cleared to play in the 1962 final after being sent off in the semifinal.)

And, in a way, it was quite the bit of a controversy. At least, it was enough of a controversy that Norway’s coach (who’d just finished making headlines of his own by knocking World Cup favorite Brazil out of the tournament) felt the need to comment rather than celebrate what Haaland has called “one of the sickest days” in Norway’s history.

But let’s be serious here for a moment. While such a ruling would usually be controversial, it’s also kind of hard to actually be properly surprised by any of this. After all, FIFA bending the knee for Trump has become so much of a pattern it almost feels like FIFA going against Trump’s wishes would be a bigger controversy.

If you don’t know what we’re getting at here, then here’s just a few examples, starting with the Tiffany & Co. 24-carat gold plated Club World Cup trophy (reportedly at around $230,000) that Infantino brought into the Oval Office in March 2025 for the grand unveiling.

By Trump's own account, FIFA never bothered to pick up the trophy after the unveiling. Instead, Infantino apparently said, “We’re never going to pick it up. You can have it forever in the Oval Office. We're making a new one.” And so FIFA manufactured a copy of the trophy. And when Chelsea actually won the thing in July, it was a replica that Clesea lifted while the original sat on Trump’s mantel. And just like that, there are now 3 Club World Cup trophies out there. (Trump keeps the original, FIFA keeps the replica, and Chelsea gets a replica of the replica.)

And while we’re on the topic of the Club World Cup, let’s not forget that time when Trump was invited to hand over the trophy, did so, and then just… refused to leave the stage during Chelsea's celebration, standing dead center as the players tried to lift the cup, with Infantino visibly trying to shoo him off and failing. Reece James (Chelsea Captain) ended up basically asking the president if he was planning to leave them to it while tournament MVP Cole Palmer said he was "a bit confused" about the entire situation that ended with the champions getting squeezed to the edge of their own photo. On merit, it was Chelsea’s moment. In practice, it was Trumps.

And speaking of winners — does anyone remember that time Trump openly campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, lost (it went to Venezuela’s María Corina Machado), and then, in December 2025, Infantino handed him the inaugural "FIFA Peace Prize" — a brand-new award, from a soccer federation, with no disclosed selection process whatsoever (and some senior FIFA officials only finding out about the prize when they read about it in the media). Infantino told Trump it was “a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go,” and Trump immediately hung it around his neck no less than 24 hours after a lethal U.S. strike in the Caribbean.

And then there was that time when FIFA decided to move its New York staff into Trump Tower, paying rent (terms undisclosed, of course) into a building tied to the sitting president’s family business, while simultaneously depending on that president for visas, security, and the entire logistical spine of the tournament. Nothing weird about your regulator being your landlord's tenant. Nope.

And we could go on — Infantino showing up at Mar-a-Lago during the transition, the Gaza-rebuild initiative announced at Trump's peace HQ, the relocation of the World Cup draw in a decision reportedly sealed in a chat between Trump and Infantino at the Club World Cup final because D.C. is home to “a showman president” — but you probably get it. Infantino himself has said proximity to the president is ”absolutely crucial” to the World Cup, which is the quiet bit being said out loud. So when three phone calls came in for Balogun? Well, Infantino only did what was logical given the pattern that’s been established.

Bu here’s the part that’s interesting.

Let’s forget about Balogun for a moment. After all, it was a soft red card, and we can argue that the VAR process for judging intent is a mess. Whatever. And let’s forget all the other stuff — Infantino's “you need the president onside” argument is just good business.

But notice what actually connects every single one of these stories — The trophy, the podium, the invented peace prize, the draw location, the red card…

In every case, an outcome that's supposed to run on merit — who won the cup, who stands on the winners’ stand, who earns a peace prize, who serves their suspension — got reassigned according to who’s got the most power in the room. Not who earned it. Simply, who could pick up a phone and cause the most problems.

That’s the thing that’s kinda funny in the bleak way.

After all, Trump is the guy who built an entire movement over a nonstop lecture about meritocracy. No handouts. No participation trophies. No more woke agenda. Instead, you should earn it — may the best man win. We’ve all heard the speech a thousand times; it's the entire brand.

Meanwhile the standard-bearer of that movement has, in the span of about a year, collected a trophy he didn't win, a backup medal handed to him after the actual winners got theirs, a spot in the middle of a champions' celebration he had no business being in, a peace prize that had to be invented from scratch because he couldn't win the one that counts, and now a rules exemption for his country's striker that no player in the automatic-suspension era has ever gotten.

And every one of those was handed over for exactly one reason — a reason that’s the dictionary opposite of merit.

In other words, the “no more participation-trophies” guy is out here with a whole shelf of participation trophies. Real ones. Gold ones. Tiffany-designed and engraved-with-somebody-else's-name ones. You name it.

So sure — call it back-scratching, call it soft corruption, call it a wildly transactional bromance between two men who never met a strongman they didn't want a photo with.

Whatever you call it, when you preach that everything should be earned and then accept every unearned thing that's dangled in front of you, at some point somebody’s allowed to ask the obvious question.

Is this really making America great again? Or is it just making America look like another whiny participation trophy recipient?

⚽ USA vs Belgium
🏟️ 2026 FIFA World Cup
📅 Tuesday 07 July; 02:00 (Europe/Paris)

• Why we’re watching: Have you seen the news!?

• Top 3 Stats:

  • USA is currently #16 in the FIFA World Rankings, and has 3W/0D/1L, 10 goals scored and 4 conceded in the tournament so far.

  • Belgium is currently #9 in the FIFA World Rankings, and has 2W/2D/0L, 9 goals scored and 4 conceded in the tournament so far.

  • The last time these two met (March 2026), USA lost 2-5 to Belgium.

• CXSports says: This is one of those rare games where the team with the best individual names (Courtois, De Bruyne, Lukaku) is also the team that just might not win.
  
  Now, to be clear, Belgium has hurt the USA before. And they may well manage to do so again. However, the shape of their World Cup run does throw the possibility of that into question. After all, they needed two goals in the final four minutes and a 125th-minute penalty simply to survive Senegal. And they could plausibly have lost both two of their group games (against Egypt and Iran). So what we have doesn’t exactly scream “this team’s controlling matches.” Instead, they’re a an aging team surviving on a mix of variance and elite goalkeeping while being repeatedly described as slow in the wide areas (which happens to be exactly where a Pochettino team built on pressing and quick transition wants to attack).
  
  The USA, on the other hand, arrive with a little more momentum. Maybe not massively so if you step back and look at the broader picture — their numbers, while slightly better, aren’t massively in front of Belgium’s. But narratively speaking, the USA just “feels” more on point. And let’s not forget about Balogun’s reprieve — his three goals in four games are what makes Pulisic, McKennie and Tillman more dangerous. So without him the USA’s edge would have narrowed considerably.
  
  Of course, that’s not to say that the USA is going to walk in and stomp all over Belgium. There’s still a strong case to be made of Belgium that it will ultimately be the quality that shapes the big moments. And this is a team that keeps finding those big moments — De Bruyne only needs one line-breaking pass to render forty minutes of American pressing irrelevant, and Courtois is the goalkeeper who can steal a knockout tie.
  
  And let’s not forget about the USA 2-5 Belgium match in March. Sure, it was “just a friendly”. But it does serve as a genuine warning that the individual gulf is real, even if the USA rightly point out that six of the players who started that friendly are now embedded in a sharper, more cohesive team. And let’s not forget that the version of Belgium we’re seeing in this tournament is a shadow of the one that ran riot that day — when a team has been this reliant on late escapes, the odds of the escape hatch opening a fourth time grow longer each round.
  
  As such, we lean ever so slightly toward the hosts. But not comfortably. And probably not in 90 minutes. The USA have the legs, the system and a Lumen Field crowd that has already delivered one win this tournament, while the Belgium side looks tired and beatable. However, the Belgium pedigree, which is still good enough to keep Belgium level deep into the night. So there’s a chance we could see this one follow the same script as their Senegal tie. And for Belgium, that might be the ideal outcome — if it goes to penalties, all bets are off (that’s Courtois’s territory), and it’s where the American dream could still die.
  
  Still, if you forced us to commit to a single outcome, the pick is still the hosts based on little more than sheer leg and lung capacity, a little more momentum, and the obvious home advantage.

• Score prediction: 2-1 for USA

Bet Option #1

• Bet: USA Victory

• Odds Range: 2.20-2.65

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Both Teams to Score (Yes)

• Odds Range: 1.45-1.58

Make your sportsbook work for you!

That’s a wrap for today.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back with plenty more as we gear up for Argentina vs Egypt and Switzerland vs Colombia.

Until then, enjoy the football. We know we will.