EAST RUTHERFORD (United States), July 19 \u2014 The World Cup tournament was bigger than ever before this year, and so is the list of stars expected at MetLife Stadium for Sunday\u2019s final, from Tom Cruise in the closing ceremony to Madonna and Shakira on the halftime stage.<\/p>\n
After five weeks of more than 100 matches in three countries, Spain and Argentina will vie for the title, but before the 80,000 fans on hand and billions of viewers at home find out who the victor will be, the venue will glisten with celebrities.<\/p>\n
And US President Donald Trump, the reality show star-turned-world leader, will be in attendance as it all unfolds.<\/p>\n
At 1.30pm, Cruise is expected for the pre-game closing ceremony, along with British pop star Robbie Williams, Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger and Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, who will sing the US national anthem.<\/p>\n
After Cruise\u2019s show-stopping stunt at the Olympic closing ceremony at the Stade de France in 2024, when he abseiled from the roof to the stadium floor, pundits are hoping he spreads a bit more Hollywood stardust with his \u201cspecial appearance\u201d.<\/p>\n
American rapper-singer Post Malone and streamer IShowSpeed will also be there.<\/p>\n
High-wattage halftime<\/p>\n
But the 11-minute halftime show \u2014 the first in World Cup history \u2014 will be the main entertainment event. Fifa president Gianni Infantino has said it will be the \u201cbiggest in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n
Madonna, who just dropped a new album at 67, will share the stage with Justin Bieber, K-pop megagroup BTS and Shakira, whose song Dai Dai\u00a0with Burna Boy is the official song of the tournament.<\/p>\n
Other performers include Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel and a New York chorus accompanied by Coldplay, whose frontman Chris Martin curated the entire show.<\/p>\n
The halftime event will raise money for an education initiative led by Fifa and the non-governmental organisation Global Citizen.<\/p>\n
Will the show run over the usual 15-minute halftime match break? Setting up and tearing down the stage could indeed send it into overtime.<\/p>\n
During last year\u2019s Club World Cup final, held at the same stadium in the New York suburbs, the break lasted more than 24 minutes. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EAST RUTHERFORD (United States), July 19 \u2014 The World Cup tournament was bigger than ever before this year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,1376,284869,75,19200,246188,284870,40169,341],"class_list":["post-811696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump","tag-east-rutherford","tag-entertainment","tag-gianni-infantino","tag-global-citizen","tag-gustavo-dudamel","tag-metlife-stadium","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}