THE 2026 FOOTBALL SIMULACRUM: Farewell, Farewell to the World Cup We Once Knew

Photograph Omar Ramadan

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by Ulises Paniagua

I miss football: the old kind, the real kind. The era of the World Cups we witnessed is fading into the distance, overtaken by a paradigm that erupted, ferociously, at Qatar 2022. The gilded splendour that adorned that sheikh-laden spectacle, the gold of the television ads, of social media, of the victors’ robes, was itself an omen. Something was about to shift underneath all that shameless ostentation. Gone was the World Cup as solace for the poor in our postmodern reality. Gone, too, was old football as a refuge; that “weekly rediscovery of childhood” Javier Marías speaks of when he approaches the game of kicking with tender regard.

This is a new stage, far removed from the time of the idols, who, for the ordinary people of the neighbourhoods, were saints who had ascended to glory. We are living the moment when, betting houses appear, looking like juicy investment possibilities; we are in a place now where speculation alters outcomes.

The World Cup being fought in 2026 should be a source of pride and celebration, but given the times we live in, it stirs more uncertainty than it does dreaming. According to an article published by El Economista in 2025, “over 3 billion dollars a year flow in the sports betting market in Mexico.” And in that market, football gathers the greatest number of bets. Digitalisation, of course, has upped the odds and plays a major role in the economic ecosystem. Today, “odds are updated in seconds thanks to technology and systems that crunch the statistics.” In the world of sport, the odds are King.

It’s not unheard of to hear about a player or a team betting against themselves to pull off a fabulous business deal. And if this is the state of things in Mexico, how are things faring at the international level? Imagine the financial windfall a World Cup yields.

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FIFA has lost its way! This World Cup overhaul extends an absurd logic: if I can mount a profitable business with 32 teams, why not increase the capacity to 48? Nicolás Samper, a Bogotá-based journalist, asserts that “a 48-team World Cup is no longer a World Cup,” but rather “an invitational where the billing is very good.” Ambitions of this sort produce dire results. Juan Villoro, in his book Los héroes numerados (The Numbered Heroes), brings up a case that also appears in the documentary Los entresijos de la FIFA (FIFA Uncovered). Villoro references an FBI investigation carried out at FIFA offices in 2015, where a widespread rumour was confirmed: “the host rights won by Russia and Qatar for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were obtained through bribes.”

For 2026, as is widely known, the United States secured the tournament through pressure, a degree of social bribery, and relentless insistence. The land of the Stars and Stripes is no fool; it knows that staging this tournament will generate exponential profits and softpower.

Corruption has always existed, of course. If you don’t believe it, you are invited and to learn a few facts about Joseph Blatter, former FIFA president, who isn’t even a footballing, man only a shrewd administrator who spotted opportunities in a sport he frankly does not really care for. Gianni Infantino, for his part, after Blatter’s ousting, went from being the Federation’s great hope to being embroiled in a nightmare of cronyism and influence-peddling, perceived to be giving support and favours preferentially to certain teams and a handful of people. Which ones? Those with the most money and influence in this vast market.

Speaking of the darkness dwelling within this sport of calcio, Villoro cites the murky events of Argentina ’78. He tells how the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, during the final stages of that World Cup, went so far as to visit a certain team’s locker room to intimidate them. He was backed always by Henry Kissinger (the American figure who was the architect of football’s big business in the United States). As for the match between Argentina and Peru (in a tournament that gave the South American nation its first championship), rumours swirl about the bribes offered to the players coming from the land of César Vallejo. This pressure from Argentina includes substantial economic twists and turns: “In 1999, the English journalist David Yallop published How They Stole the Cup, where he listed as official donations from the Argentine government thirty-five thousand tons of grain, the unfreezing of a fifty-million-dollar credit line to Peru, and smaller bribes to officials via Navy accounts.”

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The old game of football, born on English grass and in English towns, had lost its essence. Albert Camus once exclaimed: “All that I know most surely about morality and the obligations of men, I owe to football.”

I miss what it was. In other years, you loved and you believed: you loved the national jersey and placed your hopes on it, with a patriotic and festive human naivety. Goalscorers kissed the badge with passion. You saw players tearing across the pitch, mad with emotion, like Luis García at USA ’94, or Marco Tardelli playing in Spain in ’82 (when he scored the winning goal in what is considered the match of the twentieth century, the dramatic semifinal between Germany and Italy).

The romance between the eleven players and the crowd was genuine. Our naïve enthusiasm provided us with a release. Today, the relationship with the star is more a matter of commercial commitment or marketing interest; players have become brands, their siblings or parents are their agents. The football star is a source of family income. You only need to watch the documentaries about Neymar and Ronaldinho to grasp what I mean.

Where did our heroes go? Many are still there, but under the sway of big money. It’s likely, for that very reason, that women’s football, which is more authentic, will gain even more ground as the years pass. It makes sense: it isn’t so misused, and if anyone tries to lay a finger on it, they’ll get the same backlash that executive Luis Rubiales got from the female Spanish players, world champions in 2023.

“The ball does not stain,” declared Maradona in the turbulent years when, it is widely thought, he refused to take part in the corrupt schemes of João Havelange. The FIFA president took revenge on El Pelusa using the refereeing in the Italia ’90 final, where Edgardo Codesal awarded a more than dubious penalty in Germany’s favour, a penalty that, off the boot of Andreas Brehme, gave the Teutons their third title (they would win another in 2014).

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The World Cup turns into speculation. Companies seek to pull off outrageous business deals. The price of a box in the United States to watch five matches hovers around three million Mexican pesos, that is, 173,000 dollars. In Mexico, ticket prices range from 3,500 to 7,000 dollars per match, not counting the cost of concessions and parking. In Mexico, it is projected, the 2026 World Cup will generate a historic economic windfall of around 3 billion dollars, drawing over 5 million visitors. In Mexico City, the windfall could exceed 26 billion pesos.

On this last, by the way, I have never seen such poor public works – and I say this as an architect – along major avenues like Tlalpan. The metro stations have been remodeled in a frantic rush to host the World Cup. These stations are dangerous in their modifications and hideously redesigned. The sole aim of whoever is directing such works appears to be to spend a massive budget, hurriedly, on jobs that have remain unfinished ten days before the opening match. “Una verdadera vergüenza,” as TV commentator Christian Martinolli would exclaim.

For all these reasons that people are now saying that you can’t feel the World Cup atmosphere. The filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, an international cinema star, said as much to the press recently.

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What strange winds blow between the stadiums and the fans? This Cup has no organic life; it is an emotional simulacrum. And yet, people are so wonderful and the populace so splendid that they will surely make the world cup come alive despite everything. And the songs and passion will return, before a green red and white eleven clash against another eleven in different colours.

But something has now been lost. First, social media has bred a radicalised society where people are in full fanatic mode. To the extent that they might even threaten to kill another person for not “backing” their idolised team and idolised players. This happened to me in 2022 with the Messi effect in the face of a certain community from Argentina (a country I deeply admire). Umberto Eco, ever wise, said: “I don’t hate football; I hate football fanatics.”

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And, it’s unlikely that a millionaire crowd, those few who can afford such exorbitant prices, will fill the streets with revelry and drums, or the terraces with the chants and boisterous happiness that the working classes bring to football.

Yes, attending football matches has become the privilege of the wealthy. The game betrays its own roots. All that’s left is to wait and see what will happens to future tournaments. Who knows, the economic experiment of football as a business may even prove to be a failure, and perhaps we’ll have to return to football’s origin, to the seed, after a great fiasco.

May the ghost of authentic football rise again for the common good. Because real football comes from the masses. I hope this World Cup goes well in sporting terms (hoping there’s no shady business).

I feel nostalgia for the sacredness of the World Cup. It is beautiful that World Cups are organised. It’s even more beautiful that genuine people, in united as siblings, open, sing Cielito lindo together with people from other nations along the plazas and avenues. This is why I miss football, the real kind. Because we all wishe we could be again that great, family of humanity that we once were.

May the World Cup shine despite the many shovelfuls of mud and thick wads of green bills spaded onto it, and may we recover, in the future, the truth of this most beloved sport. As Alfredo Di Stéfano once declared: “No single player is as good as all of them together.”

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Ulises Paniagua (Mexico, 1976) is a narrator and poet. Winner of the Gabriel García Márquez International Short Story Contest in Colombia (2019). Interviewed by Silvia Lemus on the program Tratos y retratos on Canal 22 (2022). In 2023, he was interviewed in an episode of the series La ciudad es mi letra on Capital 21 TV. Featured in the anthology Puente y Precipicio, in Russia (2019). Author of two novels, nine short story collections, two books of chronicles, and seven poetry collections. His work has appeared in Nocturnario, Círculo de poesía, Punto en línea, Ígitur, New York Poetry, Altazor, Algarabía, and Periódico de Poesía. Published in Revista Anestesia through his column “Los textos del náufrago”. Director of the International Colloquium on Poetry and Philosophy (supported by FCE). Former director of the Digital Horror Collection at Editora BGR (Spain). His work has been translated into English, Russian, Greek, Serbian, Czech, and Italian. Ulises is also the Latin American Editor of Ars Notoria Magazine.