{"id":53674,"date":"2026-07-19T20:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T20:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/53674\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T20:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T20:06:12","slug":"2026-world-cup-final-opens-with-trophy-in-louis-vuitton-trunk-earnest-tom-cruise-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/53674\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 World Cup final opens with trophy in Louis Vuitton trunk, earnest Tom Cruise speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the 2026 World Cup<\/a> coming to a close, FIFA and the United States decided to end it on a (slightly baffling) bang.<\/p>\n

The final match between Argentina and Spain in New York New Jersey Stadium kicked off with a lengthy closing ceremony. After a rendition of the U.S. national anthem sung by Jennifer Hudson<\/a>, the World Cup trophy was presented in an unlikely place: a specialized Louis Vuitton trunk.<\/p>\n

Spanish tennis star Carlos Alcaraz and South Korean actress Jung Ho-Yeon carried out the trunk, resting it on a pedestal and opening it to reveal the iconic golden trophy.<\/p>\n

The ceremony then moved to a speech from Tom Cruise, who stood solo in all-black clothing to earnestly speak about the importance of the World Cup and the beautiful game.<\/p>\n

“More than 30 days ago, 48 nations began a journey. They crossed oceans, they crossed borders, they crossed cultures. And together, they showed us why this game belongs to the world,” Cruise said.<\/p>\n

You get the idea.<\/p>\n

The series of events raises many questions. It’s unclear why the French luxury brand was seemingly commissioned to make a trophy case, or why Cruise \u2014 whose pre-taped segment<\/a> for Fox was sponsored by his new movie, Digger \u2014 was the one tapped to talk about soccer.<\/p>\n

It also raises questions about the cost, though given the sky-high prices for the event<\/a>, it’s possible that FIFA decided to spare no expense for the festivities.<\/p>\n

Either way, it’s textbook FIFA: a little weird, and a little too over the top. Most fans were probably relieved when the soccer finally started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2026 World Cup coming to a close, FIFA and the United States decided to end it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12704],"tags":[612,5896,458,34455,34454,2773,4955,34453],"class_list":["post-53674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-louis-vuitton","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-fifa","tag-fox-sports","tag-jennifer-hudson","tag-louis-vuitton","tag-lvmh","tag-tom-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}