Now, Muchachos, we’re going to get excited
Written by Ruairidh Barlow
Sometimes it feels like we take it for granted. If the last decade has seen divides deepen, trenches drilled deep and the online world increase its consumption of our time, football, despite all of the forces acting against it, maintains its place as the finest form of entertainment on the earth. In our humble opinion.
Given the increased time we spend online, it is somewhat problematic that Twitter, Faceboook and any other site of discussion are systematically designed to reward and promote arguments and anger. The algorithm itself makes us more negative. You will have noticed this if you too spend too much of your time on social media.
If you find the time to look up from the screen, you will see a World Cup built on the backs of cheap foreign labour and justified by intensive gaslighting. A World Cup designed uniquely with one person in mind – a straight male with money. Not exactly a twist on many other aspects of life, but the half-arsed attempts to hide the contempt for anyone else grate against what many are used to.
It has been held in winter. Which is justifiable if the world wants to take the game to places that do not run to European specifications, but there is something satirical about several players missing games due to colds, acquired in... the desert. In a year that saw Pakistan under water, the Carbon neutral claims about the World Cup amount to paying other businesses to plant trees. Qatar’s tournament will damage the environment more than any other in history, and by a considerable distance. In many ways, it is removed from reality.
All of which has been not just enabled, but actively promoted by the seventh horror of the modern world - the Fédération Internationale de Football Association. Determined to find new and inventive ways to infringe on the people’s sport, the ruling organisation behind it all managed to offend almost every group facing discrimination that they could think of. Being ginger is, of course, equivalent to being disabled (Gianni Infantino’s words not ours).
And yet, despite it all, the world will be very excited on a Sunday in December. How could you not be? It’s been an exhilarating 29 days of football. A multitude of storylines have invaded our lives for the past month, covering the globe and spanning humanity. Every 90 minutes has been infused of with joy and despair. Millions on the other side of the world have had their own hearts sink in empathy, as late goals and missed chances obliterate the hopes of a nation just like their own. Few events in the world make us as understanding of others, their context and their mentality.
This time we have had two of the greatest underdog stories in football history. One spindly man from the Balkans performs a magical act where he defies the aging process, doing things that should not be possible. Short of actually winning the World Cup, Croatia have come as close as fathomable to challenging Uruguay for the title of football’s great underdogs. Another thing none of us thought possible.
Opposite them in the other semi-final was a country that ran through barriers, for each other, for their compatriots, and billions more. It is entirely possible that no sporting team in history has united as many as this Morocco side, with many crediting them as representing Africa, the Muslim world and the Arab world too. Sticking it to the fomer colonial powers, beyond their success, what was so inspiring about Morocco was the way they did it. Like Croatia, it was mind over matter, people over person. It taught people not the American dream, but the Moroccan one.
Then there is the final. On the one side lies a Michael Jordan-esque assault on the most sought-after trophy on the sport. Only Lionel Messi’s last dance is far more captivating. This is not just a last chance to win, but a last chance to essentially complete football, winning every honour available to him.
Behind him, a side forged in the infernal fires of international football doom. Argentina had been over a decade wihtout a trophy when Messi arrived and then went on a masochistic journey for the next 16 years, each time seemingly finding a new method of disappointment. They too feel like they belong to the Argentine people, battling through their own national trauma together.
Opposite them are a historic French team. Should Les Bleus win, they immediately become a dynasty. The first side to win consecutive World Cups since 1962 and for most, the only in living memory. Opposite Messi is the young pretender. Kylian Mbappé has the chance to assert his dominance at the summit of world football by stamping on the king’s fingers, sending Messi plummeting into the abyss. At 23, he would have an achievement to his name that seems unlikely to be equalled.
In cinematic terms, the World Cup final could not be more rich with narrative. The football has been everything that fans might have asked for, and for many, beyond what they could have imagined. Sometimes you have to remind yourself of how absurdly delightful this sport is, no matter what is thrown at it. Now, Muchachos, we’re going to get excited about the greatest sporting event in the world.