As a child, the World Cup felt like magic, one of those rare events that made the world seem united rather than divided. Kids would sit on the floor in front of a boxy old TV, cheeks sticky from mango juice, watching a sea of colours swirl across the screen. It was a global festival of wonder, not a business. Today, for the same fans in their twenties, the same tournament can feel like a beloved childhood cartoon being rebooted by an out-of-touch studio: overproduced, sanitised, stretched thin, and dripping with corporate cringe.
If the old World Cup was Toy Story, the new one feels like a bloated Fast & Furious sequel, older, longer, shinier, but hollow at the core.
Somewhere along the way, football’s grandest stage has stopped being a dream and has become a money-printing machine.
And the evidence is everywhere.
Trump in the Spotlight
No single figure dominated the draw more than U.S. President Donald Trump. Awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, Trump received a gold trophy depicting hands reaching from the underworld, a surreal choice that seemed to unintentionally mirror the farcical tone of the night. U.S. Marines escorted him to the stage amid a high-security environment, while Infantino repeatedly called him his “good friend” and coaxed the audience to chant in honour of the three host nations.
Trump accepted the prize with characteristic theatricality, praising his supposed role in ending conflicts in Gaza, DR Congo, and even India and Pakistan. The claims were wildly overstated, with reports emerging of ongoing skirmishes mere hours after the DR Congo-Rwanda ceasefire announcement. Watching him dance awkwardly to the Village People, fist-pumping like a striker claiming a goal in a video game, one could only marvel at the surrealism. Football had become the backdrop to political self-aggrandisement.
Infantino’s fan club
Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, appeared determined to milk every second of the draw for personal and political gain. His opening remarks, an odd mix of overearnestness and forced charm, included exhortations for the audience to chant the names of the host countries. He gushed about football being the world’s “happiness provider for over 100 years,” a claim so divorced from reality it made the audience squirm. At one point, Infantino openly declared, “It’s in America, so it has to be a show,” a line that encapsulated both the absurdity and the self-indulgence of the ceremony.
Infantino’s obsession with Trump extended throughout the ceremony. He insisted the president had personally brokered multiple global peace agreements, appearing at nearly every stage to praise and pose with him. Even the act of presenting the Peace Prize was staged with exaggerated solemnity, involving a medal and a certificate read aloud in full, prolonging the moment to uncomfortable extremes. Infantino debased himself on a global platform, transforming a footballing event into a political theatre where no one, including the spectators, knew whether to cringe or laugh.
The Celebrity Circus
The ceremony’s entertainment lineup further muddied the waters. Kevin Hart and Heidi Klum, tasked with hosting the event, provided a surreal pairing. Hart’s attempts at improvisation fell flat, while Klum appeared out of sync, her enthusiasm staged rather than genuine. Hart at one point exclaimed, “I can’t freestyle this, I’m freezing!” drawing attention to the absurd logistics, while trying to keep a crowd hyped in minus-3C temperatures. Klum chimed in with a promotion of Infantino, describing him as “football’s number one fan,” further emphasising the disconnect between the ceremony and the sport it supposedly celebrated.
Musical acts ranged from Andrea Bocelli performing Nessun Dorma to Robbie Williams in a silk fuchsia suit, joined by Nicole Scherzinger. Williams’ performance, while energetic, felt corporate and soulless, like a celebrity cameo in a commercial rather than a celebration of football. Meanwhile, the Village People performed at the YMCA, with Trump joining in. The scene evoked both mirth and despair, a reminder that football’s magic was being overshadowed by celebrity antics and over-the-top theatrics.
Rio Ferdinand, one of the few footballing figures present, was inexplicably cast at the centre of comedy skits, his legendary career reduced to awkward punchlines. He attempted to explain the draw while simultaneously performing in staged videos, creating the sense that even the most respected figures in football were mere props in FIFA’s extravagant show.
Sporting Humiliation
The draw also highlighted moments of extreme embarrassment for figures revered in other sports. Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl champion, appeared lost on stage, struggling to handle the draw balls and fumbling attempts to extract them. Wayne Gretzky, hockey’s greatest player, repeatedly mispronounced team names, calling North Macedonia “North Mackadonia” and “Kuracko,” leaving the audience cringing. Watching these GOATs of their respective sports reduced to confusion and minor incompetence emphasised the absurdity of the event. Their reputations for precision and excellence were incongruously juxtaposed with fumbling hands and awkward pauses, underlining the extent to which FIFA’s spectacle had replaced skill and merit with overproduced chaos.
Even the simplest procedures became unnecessarily complicated. Balls had to be drawn multiple times, clarifications were requested repeatedly, and the audience watched legends of sport struggle to maintain composure while adhering to poorly rehearsed protocols. This wasn’t a celebration of talent; it was a high-budget comedy of errors, and the humour was almost uncomfortably real.
Politicized Pageantry
FIFA’s emphasis on political messaging overshadowed football. Infantino’s repeated assertions about Trump’s role in global peace were starkly disconnected from reality. Video montages of children playing football and waving flags attempted to create emotional resonance, but instead highlighted the dissonance between genuine footballing passion and staged political spectacle.
The ceremony, with its heavy-handed symbolism and choreographed grandeur, turned the draw into a dystopian display. Fans endured long queues in freezing temperatures to witness a show in which football took a backseat to political posturing, celebrity antics, and ritualised praise of world leaders.
Draw as an Afterthought
After all this mismanagement, football, the actual reason the world gathers, has somehow become the least-discussed part of the World Cup.
The group-stage draw should be a moment of global anticipation. Instead, it felt like a footnote squeezed between controversies.
The only universally discussed matchup is Mbappe vs Haaland superstar duel packaged like a movie trailer.
Everything else? Overshadowed, overlooked, underwhelming.
Small teams are being tossed into uneven groups where they’re treated more like content fillers than competitors.
Fans across Asia, Africa, and Oceania will set alarms for 2 AM, 3 AM, and 4 AM only to sit through two weeks of tepid, predictable matches before the tournament finally reaches the part worth staying awake for.
Football isn’t a Netflix show with slow first episodes.
By the time it “gets good,” fans are already exhausted.
A Soulless Spectacle
The 2026 World Cup draw was a spectacle dominated by political grandstanding, celebrity theatrics, and sporting humiliation. From Trump’s Peace Prize farce to Infantino’s over-earnest grovelling, from Kevin Hart’s failed jokes to the Village People’s disco chaos, and from Brady and Gretzky’s embarrassing stumbles to Ferdinand’s comedic reduction, the ceremony felt like a surreal, overproduced parody of football.
The bloated 48-team expansion has created a structure that drags, stretches, and dilutes the intensity that once defined the tournament.
Instead of ensuring representation, it ensures repetition: meaningless games, group imbalance, and fixture congestion.
The rhythm of the World Cup is broken.
The intimacy is gone.
It feels engineered not for football, but for revenue: more teams, more matches, more tickets, more ads, more broadcast deals.
Quality sacrificed for quantity.
Magic sacrificed for money.
FIFA must remember that football is not a stage for political theatre, celebrity showcases, or manufactured spectacles. The World Cup should celebrate skill, passion, and unpredictability, not medals, awkward dance moves, and fumbling legends. Expanding to 64 teams for Saudi 2034 would only amplify the problem. Fans deserve a tournament that respects the sport and the stories that made the World Cup magical in the first place.
What hurts most is not that mistakes happen; they always have.
What hurts is that football, the purest of games, is being weighed down by bloat, incompetence, corporate excess, and commercial hunger.
The World Cup used to feel like a gift.
Now it feels like a subscription.
And the child who once watched with wide-eyed wonder now watches with a sigh, wondering how something so magical became so mechanical.
