World Cup

So unless you were hiding under a rock, you probably are at least peripherally aware that the FIFA World Cup just finished. Yeah, the soccer thing.

It was a massive event, and one of the few cups that actually warrants the "world" part: 48 countries, 104 games, 6.8M stadium attendees, 6B viewers around the world, and an expected economic footprint of more than $40B (I thank the Source of All Wisdom - there, I capitalized it, that makes it true).

By-and-large it has been a lot of fun to watch, with unexpected surprises, like islands nobody can point out on a map holding their own against worldwide soccer powerhouses. Scrappy Norway got props for sending Brazil home, which almost made up for their creepy lettering on their uniforms. England beat Mexico at home and ended their aspirations, and weirdly I ended up rooting for them to do it but then I had party remorse after the fact. Paraguay somehow sent four-time winner Germany home, in a surprising development that made Germany look like the nice guys. My schadenfreude got punished the next day when Morocco deservedly ended Holland's run. Argentina tried to out-thug everyone (outdoing Paraguay, Bosnia, Croatia, and several others that were of the general philosophy "don't care if it's the ball, just kick something") and almost got rewarded for it because, well, Messi.

Messi. I am so ambivalent. I have liked Barcelona going back to Cruyff in the 70s. Back in 2014 I got this adorable tiny #10 FCB shirt in Barcelona for my equally adorable then-4yo nephew. It ended up being his favorite shirt until he grew out of it and moved on to his Screaming Hand skate phase. Messi was just such an amazing player to watch. And it was clear that FIFA had a script that included a grand send-off for the aging legend with a final and repeat World Cup championship. But it was not to be, and I was surprised to be a bit sad to see Messi end his amazing run crying on the field while Spain received its well-deserved trophy.

FIFA's script was the subject of much discussion. Now FIFA, of course, has a long and well-documented tradition of racketeering, kickbacks and bribes, money laundering, rigged voting, financial exploitation of ticket sales, unfair tax advantages, and questionable relationships with questionable hosts. Even before the kickoff, there was a controversial Peace Prize that looked like someone was taking ass-kissing to a new level. But until this year, there was mostly trust that the games themselves were, well, not fixed or influenced. It was a spectacle but it was not believed to be a pre-ordained play.

That changed this year. There were a disturbing number of incidents that made it look like, well, FIFA cared who played and who won. We all do, of course, but we don't run the show. Here are some examples:

  • They found a loophole to enable Portugal's Ronaldo to play, "suspending" his remaining two-game red-card suspension that would have taken him out of part of the tournament. You know, OK, star power.
  • They used that as precedent to "suspend" US top scorer Folarin Balogun's red-card suspension so he could play in the knock-out game against Belgium. While the red card was clearly unwarranted, the whole process was tainted by the US President making a call and bragging about it and FIFA granting his wishes. The US team responded by basically showing that they wanted to win but not this way, and they "took one for the game" by getting pummeled by Belgium. Poor Balogun, who holds triple citizenship in the US, England, and Nigeria (the US one only because his mom missed her flight home) and who lives in Monaco because, well, he's not actually poor, was embarrassed by the whole thing and was glad to go back to Europe and put the whole thing behind him.
  • Then there was the "VARgentina" knockout standard. Highly favorable VAR calls, countless unpunished fouls, and a weird imbalance in borderline calls helped Argentina have miracle comebacks against first Egypt, then Switzerland, then England to reach the finals. Conspiracy -- is the beautiful game just a corporation executing on a feel-good script and maximizing marketing revenue and TV ratings? Or was this just a huge sequence of coincidences?

The US President and administration are not universally liked, so there was strike one even before any games started (the US has always had its detractors, so this would probably have been true even if Obama had been president, but yeah definitely now). But it didn't help that he put his finger on the scale and if nothing else, created the appearance that he influenced FIFA's decision and then gloated about it.

On top of that, there were plenty of other controversies:

  • Tickets were insanely expensive, which I discovered after optimistically signing up for a lottery to be "allowed" to buy tickets for duds like Qatar vs. Switzerland at our local stadium.
  • Current policies made it hard or impossible for many people to (want to) travel to the cup.
  • Iran had to play in a country they were at war with, and which did not make that easy for them. As a reward, they got to play Egypt in Seattle during Pride.
  • The weather was stifling in many of the stadiums, hotter than in Qatar last time, so they introduced "hydration breaks" which were conveniently about the length of a block of commercials, and which people didn't like because, well, it's a change. And they didn't like the air-conditioned stadiums because that's not green.
  • Apparently having a distributed tournament that requires flying all over the place is not green either.
  • The half-time show at the final was too entertaining. And what the hell does Tom Cruise have to do with soccer?
  • Time zones made it hard for people to watch in many places. Can't get around that, I suppose.

And so on and so forth.

But despite all that, it was exciting. It was a success, by most standards. The best team won (one of the few things we have consensus about).

And I'm so glad it's over.

Not because of FIFA's corruption. Or because soccer might have become a bit more like American Idol or WWF. But because it was yet another reason for lots of people to shit all over America. To me. As if any of this, from Balogun's red card, to Holland's deserved elimination, to Pulisic's mediocre play, to current immigration enforcement, to the weather, to Infantino's private jet, to the awkward final ceremony, was under the control of you or me.

And because I enjoyed watching, or even screaming or bitching about, or loving most of the games, somehow that shows moral weakness in me. 

Although maybe that's true, just a bit.

Because yeah, it did feel a bit rigged. But what a show!

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