Football's Year Zero
The spectacle of fascism awaits
“Mackadonia”, says Wayne Gretzky as he reads out the potential winners of the World Cup route D play-offs. “Kurocko” flaccidly falls out of his mouth moments later, and his discomfort at saying the names of countries he’s never had to utter before is as apparent as his visual indifference to the very tournament he is drawing groups for. “Cabo Verde”, he then says perfectly. Touche, Mr Gretzky.
This was the 2026 World Cup draw, where another glorious flag was planted in the sand for the slow implementation of the spectacle of fascism. Or, if not fascism itself, the laying down of seeds that will germinate into another facet of cultural life becoming unrecognisable, and where the subject of the event itself (i.e. football) grows simply into nothing more than a solitary afterthought.
In its place is choreographed obsolescence. This was a night where Kevin Hart and Heidi Klum shared pained smiles in between lines of awkward, crushingly unfunny banter. Where Kevin Hart’s comedic personality became whitewashed, unconvincing, so separate from the true self that you ended up ignoring his spiel by default (another argument about calling it ‘soccer’, anyone?)
Lauryn Hill, Robbie Williams, and Nicole Scherzinger all performed, too. This is, after all, 2026, and nothing reflects the vibrancy of youth more than an average age of 49 and a song called ‘Desire’, containing the following lines:
Aim high, fly by, destiny’s in front of you
It’s a beautiful game, and the dream is coming true
One love, one kind, this life’s in love with you
You chase the sun, and the world will run with you
In a desperate attempt to drum up support for her 10-minute medley from 48 national football delegations, Hill had a go at some call-and-response. “Let’s go FIFA 26!” came first, and it flew into the assembled abyss with all the grace of a wet fart.
Sat upon the toilet of corporate gigs, Hill shifted and tried again minutes later. “FIFA 26, get on your feet!”. Unmoved in every sense, the abyss pretended she didn’t just say that. Some started filming the show on their phones, creating a god-sent barrier between the car crash and themselves. Naturally, however, they couldn’t look away.
Then came the big hitter, the most clear illustration of the chasm between hundreds of balding men involved in football administration and one of the most acclaimed musical stars of the late 1990s. Bringing out her son to sing a few lines, Hill tried one final, eye-popping push “Who likes Bob Marley out here?!”. The abyss stopped making eye contact; the commercial toilet remained unshitted.
It didn’t matter though. The draw wasn’t about the draw. It was about the spectacle, a bringing together of forces unmet and observing them interact, placing the lion with the lamb, the breakdancer with the ballerina, the bull with the china shop.
Fascist ideologies have always relied upon disorientation to achieve its goals. In Cambodia, Pol Pot placed Cambodian society in ‘Year Zero’ to unplug itself from any conception of its own identity. Left-wing groups in Chile were removed from public recognition altogether during Pinochet’s bloody rule, their existence only acknowledged when rounded up for their forced disappearance. For the past 77 years, Palestinians have suffered historical denialism of their nationhood, presence, and self by Israel through barbaric ideological consecration.
Take the football out of the equation and what do you have? A stage, an audience, and the benevolent dictator Gianni Infantino. Elected as the President of FIFA after running against nobody else, Infantino has shape-shifted into this footballing public intellectual. He just gets football. It’s a force of unity, a peace-bringer, something so seismic to the human condition that he simply can’t help but make every iteration of its administrative and practical process a pageant for the gathered officials and the millions watching at home.
And if the masses are involved, then so is the ability to affect their consumption of the sport itself. Why shouldn’t Infantino act in a sketch alongside Rio Ferdinand in which he encourages the ex-England defender to embrace the audiences and not be nervous about presenting the draw?
Infantino has experience in putting on a show for the crowds, after all. Who can forget his decolonial takedown of Western journalists and his declaration that he felt Qatari, Arabic, African, gay, disabled, and like a migrant worker in response to their perceived bullying. You could just about hear Edward Said applauding from the heavens.
Disorient, disorient, disorient. Little needs to be said about Donald Trump’s unchallenged victory for the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. Farcical at its worst, it typified the evermore intimate relationship between FIFA and ideologue politics. Sure, centre-right Mark Carney and left-wing Claudia Sheinbaum were on stage (because the World Cup is being hosted in Canada and Mexico too!) but again, this was for diplomatic show, a dusting of normality for bewildered viewers. Everything’s okay!
The cavalcade of guests, sketches, and interviews felt equal to a military parade. It was never ending and utterly disruptive. How many times did Kevin Hart say “but before we start” or “we’ve just got one more surprise for you!” before another delay to proceedings was allowed to unfold. Or the interviews with several footballing legends conducted in Spanish and Portuguese without any translation in between segments of the show.
Familiarity was left behind in the heat of the never-ending moment, and even when the draw started it took so, so long to reach its destination. Football had become sublimated, molded into a working arm of a marketing trick made to attract blind, vapid consumer approval and alienate the actual follower. The repeated dick-swinging refrain that this is the “biggest and best World Cup ever” will now become a continuous topic of conversation for future hosts - how can we make it even bigger, and even better?
Not through football. FIFA’s Viagra is to grapple with the parameters of a World Cup draw, making it echo a broader shift of the preference towards the spectacle. Capital will always side with its more affluent neighbours if they let it in. The FIFA rankings are now the “FIFA Coca-Cola World Rankings”, and the tournament is actually “powered by Aramco”. As a result, capital becomes the spectacle, too.
When the draw finished, you’re left thinking about what happened more than who your country will be playing against. Despite Jonathan Pearce’s best efforts to retain a sense of continuum on the BBC coverage, he was forced to resort to deadpan comments to, you would imagine, simply feel something. Think Graham Norton on Eurovision, just genuinely rather than performatively angry.
Pearce, a mainstay of English football commentary, represented to viewers common sense against everything unfolding around them. On Match of the Day he continually bemoans the decisions of players and managers on-field, representing a stick-to-the-basics form of footballing consumption that comes in and out of fashion depending on which way the wind is blowing.
He is, simply, a relic. A legendary one, but one nonetheless, and he represents a form of commentary - one that masterfully mixes respect for the occasion with a deep understanding of the game - that will soon be done away with.
Had it been someone like Alex Scott or Darren ‘Fletch’ Fletcher voicing over proceedings, it’s likely that they would have clapped along to Infantino’s tune. The 2023 Champions League final between Inter and Man City is enough evidence to charge Fletcher, and his then-employers BT Sport, of crimes against football in the name of a mindless, illusory stage show.
Three examples spring to mind from that night. Fletcher’s labelling of Ederson’s last-minute save as “the greatest save in Champions League history” was so, so stupid. Then, our old pal Rio Ferdinand declaring that the final was actually “all about you”. The ‘you’ in question? Departing presenter Jake Humphreys, who was ending a ten-year stint as BT Sport’s chief football presenter. Not the fans or any of the players, naturally.
Finally, after Kyle Walker’s description of his childhood in relative poverty and the work he’s put in to win the trophy, the presenters were left in awkward silence. The spectacle wasn’t made for genuine emotion. A 33-year old footballer has just spilled his heart out on live TV and seems genuinely beside himself for what he’s achieved. How do you allay this detour into sincerity? Cue Rio.
“Yeah mate, yeah. What you drinking tonight then?”. Stupendous, and completely removed from the remark that preceded it.
And so it goes. Rio Ferdinand will do ‘comedy’ sketches with Infantino, Salma Hayek, and Matthew McConaughey. The Village People, who closed the draw and have become Trump’s touring support act, will deny that their songs have anything to do with homosexuality. Lauryn Hill’s music will be indifferently received. Robbie Williams will write the anthem for a tournament taking place 20 years after his commercial peak. Kevin Hart and Heidi Klum pretend to be friends. What are we watching, again?
“I was very much aware that it was not about the deep insight of football today”, says Thomas Tuchel. Yes, that was abundantly clear. It makes you wonder when the deep insight of football today will become the main focus of attention, and then you realise that it probably won’t be.
Because the job of FIFA or Infantino is not to simply deliver a draw. It is to work with ideologues and build an institution so warped with sponsorships and special interests that the ones who enjoy whatever is put in front of them most are the ones who can afford it, both monetarily and mentally.
The simulacrum of football is changing. It will be bludgeoned and bloodied into something even more unrecognisable than what it already was. Maybe half-time shows sponsored by Multi-National Company X will become a globally shared tradition, or an even greater multitude of Soft Drink Ys will crowd the post-match press conference microphones. What do you notice - what the player’s just said, or the strange bottle of Gatorade accompanying his answer?
Powerful institutions outside of FIFA will not stop it. Instead they will tell us how exciting it all is, and that Trump’s inevitable presence on the stage to jointly lift the trophy with the winner as “a bit unusual”, but nothing more.
We are left with an exciting tournament all but gutted of it’s original purposes. Commonality is no more, and whatever is given to us will not compare to what we had before. It will not try to mimic it, either. Instead, it will be a side order to a buffet plate topped with brands you’ve never heard of, music you didn’t ask for, and disconnect you couldn’t dream of.
The new era will begin, past identities will be conveniently, or forcibly, forgotten, and we have to make sense of it all once again. Year Zero is approaching.