FIFA has managed to distort football to the extreme and the proof is the disconcerting half-time show

As a preamble to a soccer game, the truth is that it was all very strange. Hollywood’s most famous actor rambled on about sport in the abstract in front of thousands of spectators (or many millions, if we count the television broadcast) who essentially wanted to see the World Cup final that faced Argentina and Spainif possible without too many additives. And it was just the beginning: the anthem of Spain performed by a group of wind instruments, María Becerra singing that of Argentina… Just the appetizer.

TheCruise. What did the protagonist of ‘Mission: Impossible’ talk about? He reviewed the “more than thirty days” of the tournament and stated that football is “a language that is spoken without words.” It was not his first foray into this type of staging: the actor had already starred in an acrobatic number at the closing of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The reaction on networks was immediate: many spectators They described the intervention as “shameful” and “ridiculous”; other international media spoke directly about the famous “cringe“.

The anthems also had a great presence: Jennifer Hudson sang the United States anthem; the Spanish Brass band performed the Spanish anthem based on metals; and then María Becerra intoned the argentine anthem. Previously, Robbie Williams and Nicole Scherzinger had performed ‘Desire’, the official FIFA anthem, with Laura Pausini joining in for the Spanish part.

Back to the intermission. FIFA had insisted in which the halftime show would not exceed eleven minutes. When the show ended, the complete break had been around 27 minutes, almost double the limit of fifteen minutes set by the regulations. The poster had generated skepticism even before anyone took the stage: Robert Smith, leader of The Cure, was once again the best of us all in summing up his opinion on the band’s official account with a laconic “Aaaaaaaaagh”, followed by hashtags such as “panycirco”, and the BBC confirmed in advance that would not broadcast the show, just as he had already done with the opening ceremony of Qatar 2022.

What happened. Madonna opened the show from inside a giant ball and then climbed into a vehicle piloted by Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, in a feverish version of the Mystery Machine. BTS performed ‘Dynamite’, Shakira the de rigueur anthem and The Electric Mayhem, the Muppet band in which Animal is a member, played ‘Seven Nation Army’. Justin Bieber sang an acoustic ballad that was very out of keeping with the general violent vibes of the final and The Muppets from Sesame Street returned with Coldplay and a Staten Island children’s choir to close the show.

My sleep paralysis demons

Why all this. The final is FIFA’s second attempt to introduce soccer in the United States, and as El País tellsthis time instead of “footballing” Americans, it has been the country’s cultural codes that have ended up imposing themselves on soccer. The highly criticized hydration breaks, unprecedented in sports and presented as a medical measure, are in practice advertising breaks similar to those of sports with roots in the United States. That cultural tension was staged on Fox Sports broadcasts, where former American soccer player Alexi Lalas and Frenchman Thierry Henry came into conflict with opinions about how the game should be understood.

Things are clear. FIFA has never hidden its pecuniary intentions with this World Cup, no matter how much they dress it up with children’s choirs. Gianni Infantino, the president of the organization, has openly compared the tournament to the Super Bowl, bragging about an audience equivalent to “104 Super Bowls” in one month. Throughout the tournament, hydration breaks intended for medical reasons turned into more than six hundred minutes of additional advertising space, such as we already talked at the time.

The extension of rest time, criticized for violating the IFAB limitalso adds a real medical risk for footballers: muscle cooling after such a long break. FIFA had been trying for three decades to get soccer into the American public without completely succeeding. Having seen the final, he has decided that football should be a little more similar to what that public already consumes. At the moment, Spain is the champion of the title without any doubt, but there are questions about the future of the tournament that will be resolved, precisely, in Spain in four years. Let us remember that for the 2030 and 2034 editions, Netflix, Disney and YouTube They are already negotiating retransmission rights. And many things can be blamed on FIFA, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t put its cards on the table.

In Xataka | You don’t need an earthquake to move a seismic needle: a goal from Spain is enough