What A Species We Are!

Soccer is the most beautiful sport on the planet, and the World Cup is the most beautiful event in the sport. It is also the most reprehensible and corrupt. FIFA is selling tickets for double what they priced the 2022 event. NYC's new mayor Zohran Mamdani had to negotiate directly with FIFA to allow attendees to bring their own water into these summer matches, rather than force them to buy $17 bottled waters inside the stadium. The United States, where I live, has refused to issue overnight VISA access to the Iranian support staff, and banned a legendary Somali referee from entering the country at all. Fans wanting to attend the games in spite of all that have had their VISAs rejected or put into slow motion. That's to say very little of selling arms to a country perpetrating multiple genocidal campaigns against other FIFA countries, or of our overtly white supremacist federal government's obsession with actively instituting a monocultural hegemony. And so on. Despite worldwide calls for a boycott, the tournament has begun, and it has been absolutely glorious.

As I write, it is still the early rounds. Some of the groups have not yet played their first matches. But already, Japan threw a stoppage time corner kick extra high into the box, despite being on average some 7 inches shorter than their opponents from The Netherlands, to score an equalizing header with just seconds left to play. Côte d'Ivoire pulled a late 1-0 against Ecuador in a stadium with at least 10% of the NY/NJ area's Ecuadorian-Americans in magnificent attendance. Cabo Verde, in their first appearance at any World Cup, packed 11 men into the box and for 100 straight minutes held global superpower Spain to zero goals. A complete and total shutout.

Canada unconventionally subbed their whole front line out for the second half and managed an extremely unlikely 1-1 against Bosnia's (nearly) invincible center backs. Curaçao scored against Germany. There are 39 German cities bigger than Curaçao. Just now, Iran, the nation against which we have been operating a not just illegal but deeply unjust war over less than nothing, toe-poked an equalizer to the back post in their opening match against New Zealand. And there are still 37 days and 90-something games to go.

So is the World Cup good, or bad? If you watch the World Cup, are you endorsing the actions of at least one of the host nations? If you enjoy the World Cup, are you supporting the FIFA decision to institute "hydration breaks"? Are you justifying the price gouging ticket fees? Are you validating the exorbitant VISA fees that prevented the families of teams from smaller countries from being able to even enter the US?

I don't know. Here's what this all made me think about, though.

In the US pro leagues, we already have a thing called a hydration break. It's too short to support a bunch of gambling ads and AI propaganda, and is only required in extreme weather situations. So for maximum clarity we need to understand that FIFA created a new thing - a broadcast advertising break - and gave it the existing descriptor "hydration break" as a justification and a kind of misdirection, and then wedged this gross new thing into the game, to the detriment of the teams, the audience, the broadcasters, and the art of the thing, the beauty of the game itself.

And even before the tournament began, the discourse, especially on social media, was framed in a kind of specific way, by both supporters and detractors. Detractors said the breaks were a corrupt and cowardly concession to a profit-hungry American corporation, and that the tournament should not have any hydration breaks. Supporters (not just FIFA) said that the breaks were necessary for the health of the players who will have to play in legitimately wild conditions across the US and Mexico this summer. Both sides are convinced they're right. Because they are! This is exactly why our pro leagues already have an actual hydration break when conditions require it. But, at least on social media, neither side seemed to grasp that they were not in argument but in fact in agreement with one another, and in their own ways both advocating for the return of the existing and satisfactory mechanism we already had.

So is the World Cup good, or bad? A boycott and blanket refusal to attend, given the extraordinary amount of harm one of the host nations has done directly to numerous participating countries, seems reasonable. Then again, watching the greatest athletes in the world performing the most magnificent and unexpected and deeply joyful feats for no particular reason except for the thing itself, that's something we all need as much as we need air or water or bread. And they are truly the greatest athletes in the world, with an emphasis here on the world. All six of our populated continents send competitive, beautiful, thrilling teams, running dozens of fluid and dynamic strategies, every size and color of athlete the planet has to offer taking the global soccer audience entirely by surprise even though they've all seen thousands of games by now.

Well, which is it?

I think framing these choices this way serves the purposes of the corrupt, the exploitation class, the creators of the so-called hydration break. Framing these choices as you will accept the new "hydration break," or else you will have athletes taking stupid risks in medically unadvisable conditions. You will accept the World Cup our way, co-hosted by a nation who doesn't deserve it, crammed with new ad breaks, stripping teams who earned their place here of their own support staff, or else you have to cancel it, boycott it, skip it, make it go away. These false choices obscure the available and fair third path of having normal hydration breaks, or hosting the tournament in a nation that has earned it.

So this month I'm gonna be watching the FIFA World Cup 2026 broadcast by FOX, cohosted by a nation ruled by war criminals, crypto-profiteers, and Epstein confidantes. I'll be breathlessly standing when I could just as well be sitting, watching Coba Verde break every "rule" of the tournament, and I'll be yelling like an idiot when the Netherlands slips one past a disbelieving kid from New Jersey who fills the goal for Japan's most promising side ever, and I'll yell again when Japan replies by lobbing one over the towering Netherlands defenders in the last seconds of stoppage.

I'll be marveling at the way a tournament intended to highlight our feudal national borders instead can't help but highlight every player whose mom is from one country and dad is from another but they were born in Brooklyn because of a flight regulation issue and now they play for a different third team because that's how the world has always worked. Like all great competitions, the World Cup is deeply, profoundly cooperative, and it's not every day you get to see the whole fucking world cooperate.

But the World Cup also teaches us that billionaires are parasites, clinging to the belly of all the things we have that are beautiful and necessary, demanding new fees, instituting new ad breaks, trying to take credit for the things we already had, and selling them back to us. Making us think the only choice we have is to accept stolen valor sold back to us at criminal rates, or else go cold and alone forever.

And these leaking, grasping, parasitic things, for all the horror and suffering they bring, for all the disgusting misery they shepherd pointlessly into our midst, are just sunspots. Massive, dangerous blemishes that will EMP all our stupid phones and PS5s, yes, but compared to the massive whirling sphere of folding, fusing hydrogen holding our planets in place, compared to the scintillating, devastating joy of the one man jumping over the other man to hit the ball with his head just really good, these blemishes are nothing. They're so small you need a special satellite and like 3 different graduate students to even map them. You can hear it in the voice of the man hired by the network to announce the tournament games, lamenting the stupidity of the break in the game that he wishes could just go on forever. And you can hear it in the voice of the audience, booing the stupid break in the game that they wish could just go on forever too.

But the Guardian's Daniel Harris puts it better than I could anyways:

"The corner picks out Oyarzabal at the near post, he flicks... and the ball misses everyone, then goes behind! CaAPE VERDE HAVE DONE IT! CAPE VERDE HAVE DONE IT! WHAT ON EARTH ARE WE WATCHING HERE?! I don't know what to tell you, people. The World Cup is the World Cup, football is invincible, and Cape Verde is the happiest place in the world right now, it's players enjoying the moments of their lives, the moments of a million lifetimes. What a species we are!"

-AA

P.S. Iran just scored again.