When you think of Bruce Springsteen, you think of…New York? FIFA seems to think so.
FIFA caught a lot of flak Sunday when they announced that the 2026 World Cup Final would take place in “New York New Jersey” and included a series of fun facts that were anything but factual.
Their redo effort on Monday didn’t help matters.
Originally, the bulleted fun facts on FIFA’s “Did You Know?” page said Michael Jordan was among New York’s most famous natives, which was technically correct although his family moved to North Carolina when he was five years old . There are a million interesting New York natives they could have chosen, which made the inclusion of Jordan, who is never associated with the state, all the more puzzling.
It also had a fun fact about how the “Monopoly board is largely based on the streets and locations within New Jersey’s Atlantic City,” which was another technically true but controversial inclusion .
Apparently, FIFA wanted to cut down on the negative feedback it was getting about the Jordan mention, so they swapped him and Scarlett Johansson out for a new pair of famous New York natives, Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen.