17.36 million. That’s how many people watched the World Cup final live on the German TV channel ZDF alone. A number that circulated on my For You Page just one day after the Spanish national team lifted the trophy. And that’s without including the US. Mexico. Canada. Europe. Or the rest of the world. But to put that number into perspective: If 17.36 million people stood shoulder to shoulder, the queue would stretch from Berlin to Rome.
I’m sure many of you would have been part of that imaginary queue, too. I certainly would have. A friend and I watched the match in a bar somewhere in Berlin, basically the first place we could find with enough room for the two of us to squeeze in. By 8:30 p.m., half an hour before kick-off, it felt as though every single seat in the city had already been claimed. Every chair, every bench, even every upside-down beer crate. My spot, a high stool right next to the cash register where everyone had to queue for drinks, was far from comfortable. But it was absolutely worth it.
Why? Because of the atmosphere. Ugh, the atmosphere. There was something electric about it. Excitement, anticipation, tension. It was the kind of feeling that briefly convinces you complete strangers have something in common. During the hydration break, the women’s bathroom had long exceeded its capacity, yet people passed toilet paper comradely from one stall to another. Tobacco was shared with strangers. The guy sitting next to us gave up his own bar stool for someone who had been standing for the entire match. When Leandro Paredes was shown the red card, the whole room erupted. And every time Donald Trump appeared on the big screen, the entire bar booed in perfect unison. For a moment, it felt exactly like Tom Cruise described it in his, what was meant to be an emotional, opening speech: “Football is a language spoken without words, a force that unites people, that turns strangers into friends and reminds us of what we all have in common.” Beautiful, right?
Well, this is where I started to grow sceptical. Not just a little. A lot. Because as the final unfolded, as I listened to Cruise’s speech and watched the first ever halftime show in the history of a FIFA World Cup final, more and more question and exclamation marks began to appear in my head. By the time Chris Martin invited the rest of Coldplay, Miss Piggy, the other performers and a children’s choir back onto the stage right next to a giant colourful ‘LOVE’ sign, I was certain of one thing. This felt off. More than anything, it felt fake. But to explain why, we have to start at the beginning.
2026 may have been the most commercial, theatrical and dramatic World Cup final we’ve ever seen. And you could tell immediately. An opening ceremony that played the American national anthem first, apparently forgetting that Canada and Mexico were also hosting the tournament. A-list celebrities around every corner. Pharrell Williams and Will Farrell in the audience (don’t confuse the names, they are completely different people!). There was Madonna, accompanied by Brazilian football legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. The Muppets, and a brief appearance by BTS. Ted Lasso introducing Justin Bieber, who walked onto the pitch with nothing but an acoustic guitar. Shakira and Burna Boy performing the tournament’s official song, Dai Dai, alongside Uganda’s dance group, the Ghetto Kids. That is a lot of names, I know. But bear with me.
Throughout the entire performance, the pitch was decorated with a giant peace dove, something that looked like a water-coloured version of earth, and these cheesy, massive ‘LOVE’ letters. Combined with a line-up that brought together artists from every corner of the world, the message could hardly have been clearer: We are all connected. Football brings us together. The world is united. And the United States is the place where that unity comes to life.
Maybe you can already see the problem. Because right now, the United States is hardly known for being an open and welcoming place for people of colour, for people from Latin America, or, frankly, for much of the rest of the world. No, quite the opposite.
For example, the Trump administration has imposed entry bans and travel restrictions affecting 39 countries. Citizens of countries such as Haiti and Iran were effectively barred from entering the United States, making it impossible for many fans to attend the tournament. Others, including people from Senegal, Jordan, Iraq and Côte d’Ivoire, faced significantly stricter visa requirements, with many applications reportedly being denied.
But none of this was new. We have known these facts for quite some time. So, what was it about Sunday that made it feel as though everything had reached a dystopian peak? Maybe it was the fact that two Spanish-speaking nations met in the final. Two Spanish-speaking nations competing for football’s biggest prize in a country where, since Trump’s return to office, the number of arrests of Latinos with no criminal record has reportedly increased around sixfold. A study by UCLA’s Luskin Center, for example, estimates that monthly arrests rose from roughly 900 to around 6,000.
So, while Trump continues to support policies that disproportionately target Spanish-speaking communities, he proudly stood on the podium congratulating the winners, tapping their shoulders, cheering next to them. And to be clear, that’s not a common practice. Presidents usually leave the stage at some point. Trump had to be guided off. The same president who, only weeks earlier, had threatened to suspend trade with Spain.
The background is not exactly subtle. For months, Trump has criticised Spain, a NATO ally, for failing to meet defence spending targets and for refusing to fully support the United States during the conflict with Iran. According to Tagesschau, Spain has rejected NATO’s proposed target of spending five percent of its GDP on defence, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez calling the goal “not only unreasonable, but counterproductive.”
Thinking about all of this, I found it incredibly difficult to believe in the image the tournament was trying to sell. The image of a peaceful, welcoming America hosting a sport that supposedly brings the entire world together. Because clearly, not everyone was invited to belong. And, as much as I love Burna Boy, his performance alongside Shakira and the Ghetto Kids could not change that.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not necessarily blame the performers. They were given the opportunity to represent their countries, from Colombia to Canada, Uganda to the United Kingdom, on one of the biggest stages in the world. In many ways, accepting that invitation could even be seen as a political statement. And yet, I cannot shake the feeling that something was missing.
In a way, I keep coming back to Bad Bunny’s Superbowl halftime performance, looking for that missing piece. Somehow, his performance beginning of this year felt infinitely more powerful. More relevant. More honest. Basically, more touching, in my opinion. You could feel the passion behind it. You could see it in the people he chose to bring on stage. You could immediately see the gratitude and support of his fans. And you knew what it stood for. After deliberately leaving the US out of his latest world tour, partly out of solidarity with his home country, his Puerto Rican and Latino fans who could be targeted by ICE raids, he eventually accepted the halftime show because it gave him the chance to use one of the world’s biggest stages to speak up.
Unfortunately, the World Cup final did not feel like that. Instead, the entire event, from Cruise’s opening speech to the decision to play the American national anthem before those of Argentina and Spain, from the halftime show to the giant peace dove on the pitch, felt uncomfortably close to propaganda. And that, by the way, is nothing new. Sport has long been used by governments to shape national identity, project power and present themselves as symbols of unity and greatness. The match on Sunday simply felt like another chapter in that history.
What leaves an even more bitter aftertaste is the money behind it all. For the entire 2023 to 2026 World Cup cycle, FIFA expects to generate around 13 billion US dollars in revenue. More recent estimates even suggest that the 2026 tournament alone could bring in close to 15 billion dollars, making it the most profitable World Cup in history. In comparison, the entire cycle leading up to the men’s 2022 World Cup in Qatar generated around 5.8 billion dollars, less than half of what is now expected.
I don’t necessarily want to hate on this World Cup. But as you can see, if I wanted to, I could probably write an entire book about it. There’s the US government. FIFA and that innocent little word, “corruption”. Argentina and racist incidents. Hydration breaks turned into marketing tools. The fact that the halftime break lasted more than 27 minutes, even though the usual limit is 15, partly to stop players from cooling down and risking injuries.
To be fair, there were good parts, too. Because this might have been the most online World Cup we’ve ever had, it also gave us some of the best memes of the year so far. I mean, I definitely didn’t expect to see an AI generated version of Erling Haaland as Rapunzel from Disney’s Tangled on my For You page. Did you?
The thing is, it’s incredibly easy to hate this World Cup simply because so many different emotions, changes and contradictions are crashing one another. Maybe we’re all still angry at FIFA because of Qatar. Maybe we can’t stand Trump putting himself, and the US, at the centre of a sporting event that likes to present itself as apolitical. Maybe football fans simply hate change because, in the end, it’s still a very traditional, male dominated sport. Maybe everything became too commercial and we’ve simply had enough of it. Either way, I know that whatever it is, there are important topics to talk about.
So, as I sat on that uncomfortable bar stool in Berlin, I found myself wishing that the feeling in the room had been real. I wished the sense of connection, community, and unity had extended beyond those four walls. I wished we lived in a world where our biggest problem really was building a queue that stretched from Berlin to Rome. I am sure many of you wish for that world, too. But as long as the world remains as divided as it is today, that version of unity that I felt that evening in the bar cannot be real. And that is exactly why we cannot allow ourselves to be fooled by this carefully curated performance.