The Game’s Gone: It Should’ve Been About Football

The Beautiful GameFútbol, also known as the “Ballet of The Masses” as Dmitri Shostakovich addressed it. It is a game, a sport, an art full of passion and joy. A game created by the working class originally in England with the first records around 1302 AD, albeit the exact time still remains blurry. Although the information for earliest footballing dates still holds ambiguity, one thing for sure we know, that football was created by the working class and was made for everyone to play. The game is so inclusive that you basically only need a ball and your feet to play, very simple yet very fun. It was truly the world’s game, not only for the rich and bourgeois like most sports at the time.

Today, Football is undeniably the biggest and most popular sport in the world. According to FIFA, in 2025, 5 billion out of the 8.2 billion people in the world are fans of this very game, showing just how absolutely massive football is. With this kind of scale, it’s only fitting that the sport has an event where people from every corner of the world can unite through football. Enter the World Cup, the single largest sporting event in the world held every 4 years. It is so huge in fact, that every other event like the Super Bowl, the Tour de France, even the Olympics are dwarfed by this 4-year occasion. Proving this statement, let’s grab some data from FIFA and IOC on the latest events. In 2022, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar recorded around 1.5 billion more viewerships than the Olympics 2020 which has around 3.5 billion viewerships, that’s how big football is.

In this big 2026, the World Cup has finally reached the end of its four-year cycle, bringing back the pinnacle of world football yet again with 3 hosts. Those said hosts are Canada, USA, and Mexico, ranging from the Estadio Azteca in Mexico to BC Place in Canada making this the vastest World Cup ever in history. Another one for the history books is the new World Cup format having 48 countries rather than 32 like we used to have. It was an alteration that was said to make football more inclusive for everyone, so the smaller nations can have a fighting chance to play in the biggest sporting event humanity has. 

Well, the vision worked! Debut nations like Curaçao and Cabo Verde had stolen the hearts of billions of people around the globe. However, many people are still expressing their disappointment for most things happening in the world cup, why? The thing is, a lot of experts and pundits think that there is too much stench around the event especially regarding one of the host countries, the Land of Freedom also known as the United States of America.

La Pelota no se Mancha (The Ball is Never Soiled)

USA, a country that worships capitalism so much that they’re known to milk everything to make profit, including sports. Szymanski (2005) stated there’s a reason why America enjoys sport differently than the rest of the world, they chase the money. For example, the most popular sport in America is American Football with the Super Bowl as its main attraction. So why is it so popular there but not outside?

In a journal by Lombardi (2010) titled 11 Minutes of Action, he counted the average game time of American Football games. The result is that it averages only around 11 minutes on what was supposed to be 3 hours of total duration. He explained that most of the minutes are allocated into commercial breaks and other entertainment instead and because more advertising opportunities are present, they are way more funded than other sports that focus more on the game.

Another concern comes from the excitement of the American people itself. Reported from CNN, in 2022 only roughly 8% of the people answered football as their most favourite sport. Even more, it was actually a high peak for the sport in terms of popularity, because since 2004 it was always under 2%. The point is, they don’t really care a lot about football which makes them having a system for the football leagues very distinct from literally every other country in the world. They are basically franchises owned by the league which many argue lacks the horror of relegation and makes it more boring, but unfortunately the MLS is very content with the boringness.

Other proof regarding their obsession about money when it was supposed to be about football includes their youth development system. They have a system which costs around $1,183 annually per 2022 as stated in the projectplay.org report. This is very dystopian to every other country across the globe, making it more of a buyer/consumer and changing it to just a mere business. While across their country, in Brazil they have scouts roaming through the favelas and pay the talent’s family so they can play football. In Europe they also travel to the worker-class dense places to find geniuses and once again, pay their families so they can play football. Not only this brings the inclusivity which is one of the sport’s core, but this also creates legends such as Ronaldo Nazario, Cristiano Ronaldo, Luka Modrić, Pelé and many other great names.

Created by The Poor, Stolen by The Rich

Up to this point, some of you may think “Oh what’s all the fuss about of course they try to make money using sports, they keep it alive by doing that”. The main issue here is not about making money, it’s about ignoring football for money. This absolutely happened, because if you see the ticket prices nowadays, oh my god is it high. Even Gabriel’s ball was probably lower, and it was in the Budapest sky! If you dare take a peek at FIFA’s website to see the 2026 FIFA World Cup final, you will see that the cheapest one is around $8,500 as per 16th of July 2026. In comparison, in 2022 the most expensive one was over 5 times lower or $1607 while the cheapest was actually just around 40 riyal or $11!

This is mainly because of one thing introduced that was solely for making money: Dynamic Pricing. So here’s how it works, FIFA adjusts the prices algorithmically to follow the demand of the tickets. On one hand, this is good for FIFA because they get more money. On the other hand… there really isn’t any benefit for us fans though. It just makes the ticket much more unaffordable, basically making them as Veblen Goods or Luxury Goods however you want to say it. It dilutes the inclusivity the game should’ve had, and it should’ve been the world's game, not yours.

To respond to this though, Gianni Infantino made a new interesting rule to compensate for the price. They make the halftime longer from 15 minutes to 30 minutes in order to Americanize the sport by putting in halftime shows. This one wasn’t surprising to receive a lot of backlash. Most of the disagreement came from people who just wanted to enjoy the game and probably most fans don’t even care about the shows. This was actually supported by the UEFA Champions League Final in 2022 where the kickoff had to be delayed and fans didn’t care about Camila Cabello’s performance which made her ranting in Twitter calling us fans rude. It’s not really her fault though, it’s just because we want to watch our game! We want it more than any performance.

Another new regulation comes in the form of the infamous ad-breaks. Well, the official name for it is actually the hydration break, but it’s really the same thing. The rule itself says that in every game, every half must have one hydration break to let the players cool off to fight the heat. Actually thoughtful right? Until you realize that the stadiums are indoor and have air conditioning fully installed. Pundits responded to this announcement by saying that this is a “mindless cash-grab” because it gives the opportunity for commercial breaks by stopping the game. If we look at the numbers, BBC reports stated that  hydration breaks accrued an estimated revenue of $250 million in the USA and around $1 billion overseas. They want more money, but can’t really think of anything else, so they commercialize our attention to the game for that.

This thought process was actually supported by an economic framework of Szymanski (2015), the same guy from the last chapter. He said that since FIFA is in a monopoly market, they can’t really have any added value for their goods to milk money out of so they commodify the sport more over time. I mean, just think about it. They can definitely make this hydration break commercial space into a new inventory slot to grab profit, which has actually been a thing as published in This Sporting Mammon written by Walsh and Giulianotti (2001). So, economic issues, am I right? Can’t get really worse than that. What? It can? Oh god.

If I Speak I am in Big Trouble

Other than economic issues lo and behold we also have political ones. Now, one might say that you can’t really ever leave the politics out of football which is true. The heated match between England versus Norway, the Anglo-Saxons fighting the Vikings which started a long time ago. Or Croatia facing Serbia in reminiscence of The Croatian War of Independence. Those matches would have never felt the same if politics were absolutely null. It only becomes a problem when you weaponize politics.

Maybe kind of like using your powers as hosts to block off visas for supporters, officials, and even the players. For example, the referee from Somalia whose visa got blocked even when he was named the best referee of Africa and was finally compensated $100,000 for that. Of course it wasn’t enough though, representing your country isn’t the same as a pile of money. It’s about pride, about your cultures, and nothing does it better than the World Cup.

Adding salt to the injury, there are also the Iran players and officials who have to take a flight before and after the match to Mexico since their visas are also blocked. In football, this is a serious thing since it can give you a lot of fatigue for the match which means you won’t be as fit as you would be if you didn’t have to take a flight. Even the captain, Mehdi Taremi spoke about this blatant and unsportsmanlike unfairness. But FIFA said nothing, and they just move on like there’s no problem after all.

Chat Sh*t, Get Banged

To sum it all up, this is just a reminder for every football fan, that it shouldn’t have been football second. It should’ve been football first, and everything else second. We deserve better, the world deserves better. Football is the world’s game, it’s everyone’s game. Football belongs to us, not the elites, and we should keep football an all-embracing sport like what it’s meant to be. It belongs to the people, and we have every right to make it our identity.

Remember, this is football, the beautiful sport that unites everybody. Didier Drogba even united Ivory Coast when they were having a civil war at the 2006 World Cup because people wanted to see him play. People from conflicting countries can enjoy their time together thanks to football and the World Cup. Right in this 2026 World Cup, people gather and cherish their moments thanks to football. The Scotts in Boston, Mexicans and Koreans relishing each other, Norway fans rowing in the middle of everything, Wonderwall and Hey Jude chants that feel captivating. Those are what football’s supposed to be, not just some other ATM up for grabs.

Football is not an ordinary sport, it never has. As Maradona said “Football is not a sport, nor is it a game, it’s religion.” or Pelé saying “Football is like religion, I worship the ball and treat it like a God.” Football is something special. You can feel its magic everywhere in the world and you have no restrictions on why you can’t enjoy the sport. It is the World Cup after all, it belongs to the world. So put all your dirty hands off our sport and you know just, shut up and play

Sumber & Referensi:

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