In an age when football’s authorities try to pitch and sell the game more aggressively than ever, we should have learnt one lesson over the past 18 months – ironically, through the success of Paris Saint-Germain, perhaps football’s fastest-moving commercial juggernaut. It is that what’s on the pitch, when done right, sells football better than anything else can.
When the football has been able to sell itself in the weeks since the 2026 World Cup kicked off in Mexico City on June 11, it has done so brilliantly. If we are honest, few expected it to be quite like this. There was the suspicion that the 2022 tournament in Qatar had been uncommonly good for a World Cup in the modern era simply because of its controversial move to winter, midway through the European season. This meant the best players were fresher, rather than crawling into the tournament on the back of a 60-game, elite-level season.
Yet despite widespread concerns about the 2026 tournament’s expansion to 48 teams, the entertainment levels and the overall quality of the football have been strong. There have been very few easy matches for the big teams; look at Cape Verde making finalists Spain and reigning champions Argentina sweat. Play has been of a competitive standard and most of the big stars of the day have brought their respective A-games; Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane, Erling Haaland and even Lionel Messi, in a tournament during which he turned 39.
There was plenty to fret about as the start of the World Cup approached. One example was the Americans’ refusal to admit Somali referee Omar Artan, Iran having to relocate their base camp from the US to Mexico and general trepidation over how the administration of US President Donald Trump might decide to intervene next.
Like every World Cup, though, it felt as if it was all alright on the night once the football itself started. The big kick-off being in Mexico reminded us that the tournament didn’t have a single-nation host. Social media was gripped by glorious scenes of Mexican and South Korean fans partying together in Mexico City like it was their last night on Earth. The Canadians brought colour and joy to their opening match in Toronto, too. US Soccer’s spectacular opening to their journey in LA’s futuristic SoFi Stadium, dismantling Paraguay, added to the sense of momentum.
Just as the voices questioning PSG’s state ownership, their huge financial advantage over domestic competitors and club president Nasser Al Khelaifi’s growing influence in European football’s corridors of power have been increasingly drowned out as the European champions dazzle us on the field, it felt as if it was going the same way in North America. What happens on the pitch has a habit of eclipsing every worry or complaint for the vast majority of spectators present or at home once a World Cup gets under way.
Even the widely disliked hydration breaks – or, more accurately, the brazen commercialisation of them – and half-time entertainment, framed in some quarters as an Americanisation of the match but really a Fifa-isation of it, were more the target of grumbles than full-on protest. So far, so good then, with locals warmly welcoming those who did brave the eye-popping prices of tickets and accommodation (in the US in particular) to make it over.
Gianni Infantino has spent his decade in charge of Fifa cozying up to divisive political figures, which usually carries a price. And when Mr Trump called the organisation’s president directly to question US striker Folarin Balogun’s red card against Bosnia-Herzegovina, it was time for the piper to be paid. It was never about whether Balogun’s sending off was the right or wrong decision (and it is worth underlining that the card itself was never expunged, just the ban suspended) but about how easy it was for a politician’s meddling to bear fruit. When one of Fifa’s claimed red lines had always been political involvement, here they were allowing their protocols to be brazenly violated.
Fans can park their dislike of a lot of stuff off the pitch until it begins to encroach on it. The use of VAR, for example, has been an issue in this tournament, especially in the case of Switzerland forward Breel Embolo, who was sent off against Argentina after he was belatedly found to have dived. Unlike Balogun’s situation, this red card completely changed the game, much to Switzerland’s chagrin. Rule changes are one thing, but when it feels like the authorities are playing fast and loose with the rules, public confidence can quickly be lost.
Ultimately, public confidence is everything, because Fifa could easily have got away with everything else – the ticket prices, the hydration breaks and the turning of a blind eye to outside meddling. It has controlled controversy in a draconian way in recent World Cups. Mr Infantino has, improbably, put himself under a degree of pressure coming out of this tournament.
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French fans celebrate at Bla Bla at the Beach in Dubai as their team scores. Photos: Ruel Pableo for The National -
Football fans flocked to Bla Bla at the Beach for the match. -
Morocco fan Milo Jay. -
French supporters were also out to cheer on their side. -
Moroccan fans were in high spirits despite the result. -
French fans celebrate their team's win much to the dismay of Moroccan supporters. -
Morocco fans during the match. -
French fans in Dubai were delighted with the result.
Maybe they will get away with it. Mr Infantino’s plan to examine the possibility of 64-team tournament for 2030 – that presumably would avoid the repeat awkwardness of a clutch of third-placed sides qualifying for the knockouts – is not being met with widespread outrage. Even if hydration breaks are difficult to envisage in major European domestic leagues in the short term, with fan power in Germany and England making it especially hard to imagine in the Bundesliga or the Premier League, we are already into the territory of becoming desensitised to them.
So much of whether the cultural impact of 2026 endures could well rest on whether Mr Infantino weathers the coming storm – although the 2030 edition, with six countries hosting games, is already in place. If anger with Fifa’s president is followed by widespread protest and perhaps even an unlikely coup, then he might come to reflect how the status quo is so much easier to maintain when the football alone is allowed to do the talking.
