Happy and vainglorious: Curtain falls on gaudy World Cup

“Just four years ago I was in my mom’s house, streaming, barking ‘SUI’, lighting my house on fire. And I just performed at the World Cup final.” That was Darren Watkins, aka IShowSpeed (about whom two of Google’s most-asked questions are: “How did IShowSpeed get so rich?” and “Why is IShowSpeed so famous?”), generational irritant and probably the world’s most famous streamer. “Do you know what that means bro? You can do whatever you want.” Here is perhaps the defining line of this World Cup, and certainly of its showpiece match. From Gianni Infantino to Chris Martin to Leandro Paredes: you can do whatever you want.

Boredom does strange things to the mind. Trapped within the MetLife Stadium’s intergalactic prison interior, reality began to pierce through, as though emerging from a dream. Everything we had forgiven for five and a half weeks suddenly became unforgivable. The cliches were having a ball.

It really started with Tom Cruise pre-match, perched atop a plinth which made him at least 5’9”. We’ve heard these lines ad nauseum across Atlanta and Toronto and Guadalajara – “football is a language spoken without words”, “these stories belong to each and every one of us (able to part with $10,000)”, “this is football, this is unity, this – this is greatness” – but somehow they felt more egregious in a speech so gallingly out of place, force-feeding fans The Message. Entertainment Weekly headlined their report “Tom Cruise opens World Cup final with rousing speech, meets Elmo”. It is as yet unclear whether Elmo is open to the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard.

The TV cameras spent every break panning to totally disinterested millionaires being rapidly acquainted with the realities of football, of sport. At one point we reached Timothée Chalamet squared, the real thing watching his own Adidas advert on the jumbotron.

Looking like a minor Sopranos henchman in a blue velour tracksuit, Fifa Music Ambassador Robbie Williams performed “Desire”, the official Fifa anthem, alongside Nicole Scherzinger and Laura Pausini, who is apparently a big deal in Italy. It bears saying “Desire” is different to the official Fifa song, “Dai Dai”, played pre-match then performed by Shakira and Burna Boy at half-time, which is regrettably quite good. Opposite the technical areas, 15 or so sat on blue velvet sofas pitchside in direct sunlight, broiled alive with perhaps the worst view in the stadium, for just $1m per head. Anyone who had ever watched football live would never consider buying these tickets, but as with so much of what unfurled, that simply wasn’t the target audience. On the train to the ground I chatted to a man who seemed utterly disinterested in the match, but informed me BTS were performing as though hailing the second coming. Most people here had either paid over $10,000 to attend, creating a bizarre clash between those who had paid simply because they could, and those who had paid because they believed they had no other choice.

This has been a great six weeks for Fifa’s cultural capital and brand recognition, a drab and often dysfunctional governing body now cast by Donald Trump as the “official happiness provider to humanity”. American fans took to calling the World Cup “the Fifa”, and those four letters were everywhere, on hundreds of flags and in giant font ahead of the trophy presentation.

The Topps Final Halftime Show eventually ran to 27 minutes and 24 seconds, not only almost double the length of what is set in football’s laws but just two minutes less than the ball was in play throughout the first half. It was curated by Martin, and you could tell, saccharine and soulless. He cast a collection of muppets, plus Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. Justin Bieber was introduced by Jason Sudeikis, in character as Ted Lasso, before strumming his way through a morose ballad as though testing how quickly he could remove the air from a stadium. The theme was the sort of corporate technicolour which vaguely hints at acceptance and openness without actually standing for or saying anything, the pretence of caring. Fifa chose not to erect a Superbowl-style stage and so instead laid out a multi-coloured pitch-sized canvas, daubed with graffiti which I’m charitably hoping was designed by local children. At one point Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, seemingly dressed by Williams’s tailor, drove Madonna around the edge of the pitch so as not to damage a pitch already in dire need of a surreptitious trip to Turkey. It ended with LOVE spelled out in gargantuan letters, but the O was a globe. Get it? For something which caused such massive inconvenience it was remarkable how little thought or effort had seemingly been put into it, yet another example of Fifa’s disdain and profligacy.

The first Powerade hydration break was soundtracked by the Ketchup Song, the second by the Macarena, as though trying to frame this as light and unserious, while also selling it as a fitting culmination to “the greatest human, social and cultural event that mankind has witnessed”. The full-time whistle summoned an army in suits and white trainers onto the pitch, far outnumbering players, led by their style icon Infantino. In front of a 10 metre-high World Cup trophy, Ferran Torres was awarded the Michelob Ultra Superior player of the match by Shakira. Pau Cubarsí won young player of the tournament, awarded by Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan, wearing his chair of Aramco’s board of directors hat. Aramco, of course, is 90% owned by the Saudi Arabian government. It was all here, the power and the vainglory.

And then it was time for what we’d all been waiting for, the big dog doing big dog things. Trump trudged onto the pitch looking exhausted, bored into a stupor, and was promptly whistled as though he’d just two-footed Lionel Messi. Claudia Sheinbaum and Mark Carney were there too, just always a little out of focus. This was yet another sporting event at which Trump caused extraordinary inconvenience to attendees while seemingly jinxing the actual sport, increasingly the grim reaper of entertainment. Cristian Romero blanked his handshake before he was wholly if politely rejected by Rodri from joining Spain’s celebrations, moved on by Infantino scuttling across the frame with levels of obsequious previously considered beyond human capacity, beyond human comprehension. After the trophy lift, the sky rained gold as Trump and Infantino wandered off together, their work done, the world bought and sold. And here it was once again: you can do whatever you want.

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Photograph by Hannah Peters – FIFA via Getty Images