Maintenance in progress

the world cup final drew 66 million us viewers, the largest american audience for a football match ever, and in its shadow a sitting us president phoned the fifa president to get a player's red-card ban deferred so he could play — norway's federation is now weighing a formal ethics complaint. the spectacle also absorbed 7 million abusive comments flagged from 53 million moderated posts. the signal is not the score: it is a head of state directly bending a global sporting body's disciplinary process at peak attention, with the crowd looking elsewhere.

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