Long before the United States turned the World Cup final into an orgy of pop music and advertising, the signs were already there that this year’s co-hosts should never have been allowed within a thousand miles of the tournament. The garish half-time show curated by Chris Martin of Coldplay seemed to reinforce that – but then came a moment of improbable genius.
I was surprised. The last time America hosted, the problem wasn’t commercial overkill so much as sheer shrugging apathy. I was in New York during USA ’94. Apart from a few flapping banners outside the Nike store, you wouldn’t have known one of the world’s biggest sporting events was taking place. This, in hindsight, was a blessing. Football was allowed to football.
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In our rampantly hypercapitalist age, we can only dream of such innocence. In the run-up to its 2026 iteration, co-hosted with Mexico and Canada, the cost to supporters of handing the lion’s share of World Cup games to America’s supersize-everything culture became horribly clear, from obscene ticket prices to price-gouging by local authorities over travel to games, with a $13 train ticket to the MetLife Stadium, venue for the final, hiked to $105. Then came the announcement of so-called “hydration breaks” midway through each half. This was in no way just an excuse for American broadcasters to cram in more advertising. Never again.
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On the eve of the tournament, things only got worse. Africa’s top referee, Omar Artan, was refused entry to the States for having the temerity to be Somali. Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein was detained and questioned for seven hours on arrival at O’Hare airport. In a better, saner universe, all 48 competing nations would have boycotted the whole thing in solidarity at this point. But the reaction of the Fifa president Gianni Infantino to any concerns was to tell us to “chill” and “relax”.
Then Fifa announced that this year’s half-time would last 25 minutes – breaking the organisation’s own rules – due to a pop concert along Super Bowl lines. On the day, it began bizarrely: Madonna singing Music on some weird sci-fi Jeep deep in the bowels of the stadium, then emerging from the tunnel flanked, randomly, by Brazil legends Ronaldinho and Ronaldo. The rest of the show was a surreal jumble. Two men exchanging wisecracks, their presence baffling to anyone who doesn’t watch Ted Lasso. The Muppets doing Seven Nation Army. The uncanny valley faces of K-pop megastars BTS looking more like AI creations than flesh and blood. Shakira being Shakira. Wandering minstrel Justin Bieber doing a mournful acoustic ballad called Everything Hallelujah that’s the very antithesis of a bop, planting the crowd’s arses firmly back in their seats.
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But then Chris Martin pulled out his Trump card. After footage of Pelé saying the word “love” on the big screens, Coldplay performed a song called Believe in Love, with lines including “Be kind to each other / We’re in this together”, surrounded by dozens of children of multiple ethnicities – the sort of kids Trump’s ICE squads would doubtless deport in a heartbeat – wearing T-shirts with slogans such as “all of us a family”, “I am you and you and you”, and “stars that make a galaxy”. They’re sentiments that would feel trite in more privileged times, but feel radical and essential in 2026. Finally, the sky above the stadium exploded in rainbow smoke above the bleak Sopranos hinterland around the MetLife, an unmistakeable statement of LGBTQ+ solidarity. One can only imagine what the president made of it, behind the bulletproof glass. Martin was, effectively, trolling him.
The US isn’t the only ethically questionable host of a World Cup in history: think of Qatar in 2022 and Russia in 2018, and some of us have memories going all the way back to Argentina in 1978 (and we’ve got Saudi Arabia coming up in 2034). But it’s the first to mess with the fabric of the actual sport, and to relegate football to a sideshow, subservient to the gods of commerce and celebrity.
Ultimately, the Super Bowl is theirs. Let them do what they want with that. Football is ours, everyone’s. Here’s hoping, naively, that some future incarnation of Fifa will consign Trump and Infantino’s venal and vulgar innovations to the dustbin. In his own way, Chris Martin has shown us how.
