{"id":557532,"date":"2026-07-19T14:03:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T14:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/557532\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T14:03:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T14:03:24","slug":"world-cup-2026-spain-v-argentina-final-live-how-to-watch-listen-follow-on-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/557532\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Spain v Argentina final LIVE – how to watch, listen & follow on BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been a World Cup official – I promise you there is no favouritismpublished at 14:46 BST<\/p>\n

14:46 BST<\/p>\n

Spain v Argentina (20:00 BST)<\/p>\n

\"\"Darren Cann
Former Premier League assistant referee<\/p>\n

According to many fans, social media timelines and corners of the internet, Fifa wants Argentina and Lionel Messi to win the World Cup – and the officials are all in on it.<\/p>\n

As referees, we are forced to deal with the idea that we are part of some kind of conspiracy theory all the time.<\/p>\n

And it is nonsense. I can’t stress this strongly enough.<\/p>\n

I was lucky enough to be an assistant referee at two World Cups, in 2010 and 2014, as part of a team which featured referee Howard Webb, with Michael Mullarkey running the other line.<\/p>\n

We were independent, and we made our own decisions. I can assure you this has not changed.<\/p>\n

The referees are from all four corners of the globe, all from different football associations, separate confederations, and Fifa effectively borrows their services for six weeks.<\/p>\n

They are completely distinct from Fifa, in a separate training camp.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry to disappoint any conspiracy theorists, but I can promise you there aren’t any clandestine meetings between Fifa’s executive committee and the referees.<\/p>\n

We don’t see any of the suits at all.<\/p>\n

You are basically working every day – physical training, watching clips, debriefing the matches from the previous day.<\/p>\n

They are full-on days. There’s not a lot of downtime, and once you have completed one assignment, you are preparing for the next one.<\/p>\n

\"dd\"Image source, Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’ve been a World Cup official – I promise you there is no favouritismpublished at 14:46 BST 14:46…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-557532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}