As the 48 teams gradually arrived in North America, every image further setting a grand stage, a thought struck managers like Thomas Tuchel and Carlo Ancelotti.

They were right to make the sheer scale of this World Cup more of a priority in planning. “United 2026” – as it is officially known – is enormous in every sense, from size to serious issues.

That only deepens the distinctive challenge a World Cup poses, and only elevates the meaning of victory.

A team can be brilliant and do everything possible to gear up for a four-year cycle over the long term, but the lifting of that great trophy really comes down to having everything – form, spirit, mood, fitness, tactics – just right for five weeks in one summer.

It’s really about a moment in time, and one that makes you immortal, although this time in a far greater space.

If the classic line is that people measure their lives in World Cups, this one is so immense it’s almost impossible to quantify.

That could lead to a few other predictable lines about an American World Cup: that it was always going to be super-sized, that size will matter, that more may be less.

The most immediate numbers, at least, do illustrate this. This World Cup involves: the most ever teams, at 48; the most ever hosts, at three; the most ever venues, at 16; and the greatest ever distance between venues, at 4,780km, with all of this adding up to unprecedented astronomical cost for fans and even federations.

The avaricious ticket pricing had been the dominant controversy in a largely shambolic build-up for Fifa, but has since been overtaken by the conflict with Iran and connected visa scandals.

So much for this World Cup being a return to the familiar after the highly politicised police-state sportswashing spectacles of Russia and Qatar.

It has instead thrown up more unprecedented issues than ever before – another one for the scales; another illustration of bloated indulgence. Such issues have only been added to by another more familiar element, which is the promise of record revenue at $14bn.

And yet one of the great uncertainties about this World Cup, which is causing nervousness at the top of Fifa, is whether all this will mean there is nothing like the record attendances of USA ‘94.

That competition will constantly offer a mirror to this one, especially when the memories remain so vivid due to its bright lights – in football and look.

There are instead so many shades to 2026, and a real darkness. For all Gianni Infantino’s vapid claims about the World Cup uniting the world, we here have a host at war with a participating nation for the first time.

The Fifa president’s own relationship with Donald Trump, meanwhile, weighs over the entire competition, especially with how just one decision from the US president has the potential to cause chaos.

Trump’s putative lack of decisions have already created enough chaos, since Fifa has received almost no help on anything it actually needs. So we have the farce of a long-vetted referee denied entry, and Iran forced into constrained travel around their games.

That darkness has also served to obscure otherwise uplifting elements of this World Cup, like the return to perhaps the competition’s most historic stadium: the Azteca in Mexico City.

It was the arena where Pele and Diego Maradona created their most lasting images. Now, 40 years after the “Hand of God” and the goal of the century, it isn’t considered worthy to host games after the last 16.

Canada has, meanwhile, been the forgotten host, and even the last games staged there and in Mexico will be overshadowed by the 250th anniversary of US independence – all amid a stilted embrace with the global game.

We will at least have a sense of the atmosphere by then, and whether this World Cup’s many issues can really allow that sense of international festival around the stadiums.

And all of this is why size is so much more than a defining detail.

The expansion affects what the World Cup is – and how it will go.

That is true of the most elemental experience of a tournament: a child’s.

Perhaps appropriately for a competition held in the commercial capital of the world, it is possible to paraphrase one of its culture’s most famous depictions of marketing. The World Cup isn’t just a football competition, as Mad Men’s Don Draper might have said; it’s a fountain of nostalgia. “It takes us to a place where we ache to go again” – to childhood memories.

The joy of that is memorising the groups, knowing exactly what teams are where and what games are when. It is actually no trivial thing that this World Cup is far too big to even do that, long before you get to Group L.

Similarly, there are almost too many games, and that’s in one day, as much as in the tournament’s total of 104. It’s impossible to take it all in, to consume every storyline. United 2026 instead has just a wall of football, where more very much means less.

The World Cup experience is directly diluted.

That isn’t to discount the exhilaration that debutants like Curacao, Jordan and Uzbekistan will feel, or the release Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo or Iraq will enjoy, but there is a serious point amid that romance.

This World Cup articulates the disconcerting sense of a sport becoming so big you can’t get a feel for it, of a game being taken away from its community, of an elitist event where parts continue to be sold off without anyone who actually cares able to do anything about it.

Welcome to the “Trumpification” of Fifa.

The expansion may also dictate this World Cup as much as dilute it. A number like 48 just isn’t right for the tournament, because it doesn’t evenly split into an eventual two. That needlessly brings back distorting third-place group qualifiers, a convolution that Infantino was forced into after he somehow realised four-team groups were exciting as late as Qatar 2022. United 2026 was initially supposed to have groups of three.

And yet it speaks to so many of these wider themes that Infantino realised it was more exciting, but evidently didn’t understand this was because of the competitive intensity that came from two going through out of four, as well as a 32-team tournament just creating the right balance between quality and novelty.

The man overseeing all of this didn’t truly get the game he was overseeing.

It could yet create results that go against World Cup logic, too.

As an example, Argentina have been talked up as potentially winning again due to the 2022 World Cup victory coming in a run of three successive trophies. They are the only team to do that outside Spain 2008-12, but that also gives them the jaded feel of Spain 2014. Most of the team is still the same, and they won’t have the same lightning-in-a-bottle energy of 2022.

These are ingredients that leave champions ripe for a classic first-round exit… except the stage is so forgiving. Argentina may go into their last group game badly needing a win, but that comes against Jordan. The debutants are one of five sides considered forgiving opposition, and the presence of any one in a group gives the other three in it a huge advantage in this system.

One win and you’re likely through.

To go with that expanded schedule, since it takes eight games to win it rather than seven, this is the first major tournament happening after two seasons of expanded European football. More, more, more.

Players, especially the quantity in the major teams, are exhausted.

That could restore some romance by favouring the “dark horses” like Japan, Ecuador, Morocco, Norway, Austria and Senegal.

Except, just like with Iran’s constraints, Senegal has already faced the disadvantage of being subjected to a humiliating tarmac security search.

It is just one of many ways the non-football elements shape the football.

The favourites, Spain, almost illustrate the difficulty of getting your head around this as well as the bodies.

The European champions have the best team at the tournament, but have also had the most fitness issues and major injuries.

The biggest of those is Lamine Yamal. He may be the mere 18-year-old anticipated to crown his rise to the best player in the world by seizing this tournament, but he’s also hoping to recover from a hamstring injury for the first game.

That can nevertheless work both ways, especially in a World Cup this long. Spain and Yamal might be stiff at the start, but then evolve into the best possible condition for the most important stages.

That is exactly what happened with Andres Iniesta in 2010. Their possession game may also prove decisive in a tournament that is going to be dictated by punishingly hot conditions. In the same way that United 2026 has more unprecedented controversies, it also has more variables.

Tuchel is one of many coaches who have been deeply considering how to work around all this.

France, who have faced a lot of concerns about the Didier Deschamps era going stale, may now find his stultifying medium block suits the conditions.

They do have the best array of attacking stars just waiting to be released, with Kylian Mbappe badly needing a big World Cup.

England are up there, especially with the differential of a goalscorer like Harry Kane. They may not have a perfect squad, but no one does.

That points to how this World Cup is nowhere near as strong a field as in 1998, where at least eight teams looked truly elite. The offset is that this “second tier” of outsiders is stronger than ever, offering the potential for something else a World Cup has never had: a winner like a Denmark 1992 or Greece 2004.

That’s where the competition comes down to more elemental qualities, the glorious intangibles, the very emotion the trophy inspires.

For all that everything about a World Cup changes, the meaning doesn’t.

It will still offer countries some of the greatest days in their national histories, with the very awareness of this global importance affording it a cultural significance beyond anything else in the planet’s history.

This is the emotional pinnacle, the peak of sport because the massif is so wide. It can be seen in the expressions of players, and even the great trophy itself. Those two arms “stretching out to receive the world… at the stirring moment of victory” – in the words of designer Silvio Gazzinaga – are representative of what everyone in football is reaching for.

Hence Infantino’s desperation for this to start amid so much controversy. The football still perseveres. The spirit perseveres. The competition is still, at its core, a global cultural good, no matter how it’s used.

As Maradona once said, “the ball never stains”. The World Cup retains a purity.

Duly, even a 48-team competition will evolve – as the writer Duncan Hamilton put it – “like a theatrical play”. While the numbers are gradually winnowed to two and then one, the drama, emotion and suspense only become more intense. Such feelings enrich the moments that really create World Cup legacies, but they are ultimately fostered by narrative, by stories.

This tournament has so many, even if it does not have many great teams.

Can Brazil somehow rise to that level under Ancelotti, and end a 24-year wait in the way they did for the last World Cup in the USA? Can a new band of successful club coaches show their acumen by showing everyone else what’s what, or will the different contours of international football embarrass them?

Will a surprisingly deep elder generation led by Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo finally cede ground to a new era of Yamal, Jamal Musiala and Erling Haaland, or will a slower tournament allow for those who can still produce individual moments?

Can any of the hosts make an impression? Can Mauricio Pochettino avoid a furious social media post from Trump? Can Canada do “a Korea 2002”, in the way they are privately talking about? Can Mexico finally get past a quarter-final?

Can Germany finally get past a group stage again, to prove maybe the darkest horse of all? Can the fancied Netherlands at last win it after three lost finals?

Can there be a new name on the trophy?

Can England finally lift this trophy amid all of the symbolism connected to 1966, given that was the old Jules Rimet?

Amid all of the challenges, Tuchel and his players should perhaps be mindful of something that Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni said at the draw back in December.

“Every day you are a world champion you feel younger.”

The sentiment, and the aspiration, may never be more important amid a World Cup so exhausting in so many senses. It’s an achievement of scale beyond anything else.