Please Just Freaking Enjoy This World Cup
This is why we can’t have nice things. This is why, if there is a God, he or she has decided we are doomed to just argue about dumb shit on Twitter. We now know our finalists in what might end up being one of the greatest—if not the greatest—World Cups ever played.
Read that again. Not "one of the most controversial." Not "one of the most political." Not "one of the most horribly officiated."
One of the greatest.
The quality of soccer has been phenomenal. The atmospheres have bordered on religious experiences. Entire cities have collectively forgotten what productivity looks like. Office attendance has plummeted every matchday. Teachers have wheeled televisions into classrooms. Perfectly respectable adults have hugged complete strangers because someone they've never met kicked a ball into a net from twenty yards away.
That's the World Cup.
It temporarily convinces civilization that perhaps deadlines aren't all that important after all. And then there are the storylines.
Oh, the storylines.
Lionel Messi is thirty-nine years old.
Thirty-nine.
At an age where most footballers are happily collecting enormous paychecks in retirement leagues while explaining to younger teammates what life was like before social media, Messi somehow appears to have reached another level. His legs may have surrendered half a step over the years, but his brain seems to have stolen three. Watching him now is like watching an old chess grandmaster who no longer bothers trying to outrun anyone because he's already calculated the next twelve moves before everyone else has finished the first. Every touch feels deliberate. Every pass looks inevitable. Every defender who thinks they've finally closed him down discovers they were actually chasing a ghost.
It's no longer just brilliance. It's craftsmanship. Like an aging jazz musician who can't quite hit every note he once could but somehow makes the music sound even better because he knows exactly which ones matter.
Then there's Cape Verde.
Good grief, Cape Verde.
The tiniest nation ever to grace a World Cup decided that history books are merely suggestions. They just about survived the group stage but proceeded to kick the door off its hinges and wandered through like they'd been expected all along. Then they pushed Argentina to the absolute brink in the knockout rounds, punctuated by an equalizer deep into added time that instantly joined the pantheon of unforgettable World Cup goals.
Forget tactics for a second. Forget expected goals. Forget possession statistics. That's why people fall in love with sports.
Because every so often, a nation with fewer people than many American suburbs reminds the rest of the planet that courage doesn't care how big your population is. For 120 minutes, every neutral on Earth became Cape Verdean.
That's magic.
Cristiano Ronaldo?
Well...
Let's just say history has already reserved him a rather comfortable seat at football's table. This tournament simply served as another reminder that even legends eventually discover Father Time remains undefeated. The greatest careers aren't diminished by their final chapters. If anything, they're defined by the impossibly high standards they established long before the ending arrived.
Then there's something nobody could have scripted better if FIFA had hired Aaron Sorkin to write the tournament.
All three host nations survived the group stage. The United States. Canada. Mexico.
Every one of them gave their supporters meaningful knockout football to rally around. Every host city remained emotionally invested. Every stadium kept crackling with anticipation instead of politely applauding someone else's national anthem. For years, skeptics wondered whether North America would truly embrace a World Cup.
Turns out the question wasn't whether people cared. It was whether they'd ever been given something worth caring this much about. Now we know. And somehow...Despite all of that...
People still can't stop complaining.
Don't Let Scapegoating Ruin It For You
I swear we've reached the point where some people would complain about finding a suitcase full of cash because it wasn't organized by denomination. Every tournament. Every major sporting event. Every heartbreaking defeat. The script never changes.
Fans demand someone's head.
Pundits begin constructing gallows before the postgame interviews have even finished.
Anonymous social media accounts with usernames like @BallKnowledge420 suddenly possess the tactical expertise of Sir Alex Ferguson after having learned what a throw-in was approximately three Tuesdays ago.
Coaches who just suffered bitter defeat mere minutes before now need to answer reporters’ questions of why they lost, and invariably, it’s some variation of “well, the referee was against us…”
It's exhausting.
Take France manager Didier Deschamps.
Following France's elimination, he questioned whether Spain should've been awarded a penalty kick. Now, I understand disappointment. Losing a World Cup semifinal isn't exactly the emotional equivalent of receiving socks for Christmas. But let's maintain contact with reality here.
If your defender introduces himself to an opponent's hip with something resembling a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick, referees have historically frowned upon that sort of thing.
This isn't legal ambiguity. This isn't one of those obscure rules involving pass-backs or encroachment that requires a thirty-minute YouTube explainer narrated by someone named Nigel. You clobbered the guy. Penalty.
Let's all move forward with our lives.
Let’s actually talk about the referees for a minute. Are they perfect? Of course not. They're human beings. Human beings occasionally make mistakes.
I've accidentally poured Jack Daniels into my cereal before. Once I confidently waved at a stranger in a grocery store for nearly twenty seconds before realizing I didn't know them. Imperfection comes standard with the operating system.
But by and large? The officiating has been good. Really good. Take Egypt's disallowed goal against now finalist Argentina. Heartbreaking? Absolutely. Enough to make Egyptian supporters briefly consider launching household appliances into low Earth orbit?
Probably. But wrong?
No.
VAR identified a clear foul earlier in the attacking sequence. That's exactly what the Laws of the Game require officials to review. Nobody enjoys seeing a goal disappear after two minutes of celebration, but the alternative is knowingly allowing an illegally created goal to stand because reversing it would hurt somebody's feelings.
That's not justice. That's customer service. Then we arrive at perhaps my favorite genre of World Cup overreaction.
"The coach has to go."
Oh? Really? Let's use the United States as Exhibit A.
Apparently Mauricio Pochettino became an incompetent football terrorist because Belgium beat the Americans.
Interesting theory. Let's examine the evidence.
Goal number one occurred because three American defenders simultaneously experienced what can only be described as a complete software update. Everyone stopped playing. Belgium didn't create some tactical masterpiece. They simply noticed the opposition had briefly forgotten soccer was still happening.
Goal number two? Yes, the Belgian attacker was allowed to bulldoze Tim Ream with all the subtlety of a Goldberg spear from late-1990s professional wrestling before heading home. It was a terrible missed call.
So what? Belgium scored twice more.
Matt Freese committed one of the biggest goalkeeping mistakes of the tournament. Chris Richards, emotionally spent and desperately trying to force something that wasn't there, surrendered possession late, gifting Belgium another opportunity.
Those weren't tactical failures. Those were individual mistakes.
It happens. That's sports. Sometimes your left back slips. Sometimes your goalkeeper drops one. Sometimes your center back chooses the exact wrong moment to donate the ball to the opposition like it's part of a charitable initiative.
The manager can't remotely control eleven human beings with a PlayStation controller from the technical area. Not yet, anyway.
Give FIFA another decade. Speaking of FIFA...
"FIFA IS CORRUPT!"
Yes. Thank you for your groundbreaking investigative journalism.
Next you'll be informing us that casinos generally prefer winning money to losing it and that politicians occasionally enjoy campaign donations. Of course FIFA has corruption problems.
The amount of money flowing through world football would probably make the Sultan of Brunei briefly stop counting and say, "Good heavens."
Deals get made. Politics influence decisions. Power protects itself. None of this is remotely new. None of this should prevent you from enjoying what has unfolded on the pitch.
Those are two separate conversations. One deserves outrage. The other deserves appreciation. Too many people insist on combining them until neither conversation becomes enjoyable.
And that's really the point. We've become addicted to assigning blame because blame is easier than appreciation. If your team loses because the other side played brilliantly, then you have to acknowledge excellence.
If your team loses because the referee, the manager, FIFA, the moon, Mercury being in retrograde, or a suspiciously aggressive pigeon sitting on the crossbar conspired against you, then you never have to confront the uncomfortable possibility that someone else was simply better on the day.
Scapegoats are comforting. Reality rarely is. So here's my humble request. Stop.
Just...
Stop.
There's one match left. Two magnificent teams. Ninety minutes. Maybe one hundred twenty. Perhaps penalties.
We've spent the past month witnessing extraordinary football, unforgettable underdogs, overflowing stadiums, aging legends refusing to fade quietly, and host nations embracing the biggest sporting event on Earth with exactly the passion we'd hoped they would.
Enjoy it. Because one day you'll wake up, the tournament will be over, and the only thing left will be highlights and memories.
Don't spend those memories arguing about imaginary conspiracies or demanding another coach be sacrificed to the social media volcano. Besides, scapegoating has one beautiful weakness. It requires an audience.
Stop listening. Stop participating.
Let the screaming echo harmlessly into the void while the rest of us pour another drink, settle into the couch, and appreciate what has very likely been one of the finest World Cups any of us will ever have the privilege of watching.
SPORTSWRITING WITH RECKLESS INTEGRITY
If you made it this far, you already know what we do here. We write about greatness and delusion, triumph and collapse, and the strange emotional hold sports keeps on people who should probably know better.
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