It’s not you, it’s me.
When we met years ago I was, literally, a kid. Maybe 8, 9 years old. My uncle and father, and even my grandfather, couldn’t stop talking about you. They were giddy in the days leading to your arrival, ecstatic during the time you were here and crestfallen the day you’d leave.
But they’d console themselves knowing you’d be back in four years, FIFA World Cup.
You always came back.
It wasn’t until my late teens that I developed a crush on you, enthralled by the excitement of a world soccer tournament that had the power to drive global audiences mad with each pass, goal, victory and defeat. For ages futbol—soccer—has been referred to as the beautiful game.
It is, I believe, in part because of the actual sport but also it’s ability to bring people of different cultures and countries together. For one month in the summer it felt like everyone was doing the same thing and having a good time. Revelling in hope, celebrating wins and consoling each other in loss. It was the people’s game.
But it wasn’t until I got older, World Cup, that I started viewing you differently. The game is still beautiful but the tournament seemed to be increasingly about money. Ad dollars and revenue appeared to be the driving force, not celebration for celebration’s sake. Maybe you were always like this. As I said, I met you when I was a kid. Naive and smitten.
But then FIFA took your quadrennial show to Russia in 2018 despite its human rights abuses and having invaded the Republic of Georgia just a decade before. Four years later you visited Qatar, a country with just as many if not more allegations of human rights abuses but deeper pockets. And in a few short days you will start up again but this time across three countries, the United States, Mexico and Canada, with the bulk of the games being played in the States. You know, the country where federal agents routinely snatch people off the streets for appearing to be here “illegally” and whose president bemoaned not winning a peace prize so you made one up for him last year, of course that was before he started a war with Iran in February.
The U.S. — where dynamic pricing to World Cup games is widening the divide between the haves and have-nots. It’s not about the people anymore, World Cup. And that’s why I don’t enjoy seeing you. It’s about the money. Maybe it always has been. It’s not you it’s —no, it’s you.
