The 2026 World Cup is nearly under way and 48 teams and thousands of football fans are heading to the US, Canada and Mexico for the tournament.
But it is not just players and fans making the trip, joining them will be hundreds of people working behind the scenes and in the stadiums to make the event a success.
One of those is Adam Nunn, a match official from Trowbridge, Wiltshire, who is part of English referee Anthony Taylor’s team.
“When you go to these tournaments you’re spending six or seven weeks away from home and living in each other’s pockets, so you have to get on off the field and we do,” said Nunn.
“We’re not only colleagues, we’re close friends as well and that’s really important so that when you go out on to the green bit, that comes through,” he said.
“That makes the teamwork seamless on the day and when those big moments happen, that’s when you need to be alert and spot on with everything and it’s those relationships that help to make that seamless.”
Nunn has worked alongside Anthony Taylor in refereeing top level matches for a number of years and this is not his first World Cup.
Despite this previous experience, Nunn says the call up is made on merit and you never know whether you are getting it until the invitations arrives.
“Along with the referees comes us, the assistant referees, and we’re selected based on our performance and who the referee wants to work with.
“Your performances over that time dictate whether you’re inline to be selected and very often you know that’s the case from the games you do domestically or within Uefa.
“But until you get that notification that you’re going, you’re never quite sure.”
Crunching the numbers
At 22, Cristian Rieger, from Stroud, Gloucestershire, is about to experience his first World Cup.
Rieger has played in the academies of professional clubs, but says he realised as a teenager that he was not going to make the cut.
“Since three or four I was playing football and my passion has just stayed the same, just loving the game and trying to be involved in the game as much as I can,” he added.
That passion led him to pursue a career in performance analysis, where he uses data-driven insights to assess how players or teams perform.
After working with Southampton earlier this year, Rieger was selected as part of Fifa’s own analysis team and will be joining a specialist group that includes football legends like Gilberto Silva and Jurgen Klinsmann.
“I’ll be based in Miami with the Fifa performance insight and analysis team,” he said.
“We will have our own hotel where we can look at the data and all the analysis we get from the game,” he said.
Rieger’s first game will be USA against Paraguay on 13 June and will work on games in every round until the semi-finals.
“I’ll be live coding the game with the coaches next to me and just being really critical of every inch that happens during the game and trying to dissect all the information.”
While the information and metrics that Rieger will be gathering might be impenetrable for some, for others it forms an important part of appreciating the game.
“Coaches will love this information and data and will use it for themselves, because Fifa try and analyse as much as possible and want to cover every data point and get as much from this World Cup as possible.”
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