Mars, Venus, Bots and Football

Remember “Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus?” In his 2003 Of Paradise and Power, Robert Kagan argued that Europeans had entered an idealized “world of peace”, whereas Americans remained mired “in an anarchic Hobbesian world” requiring “the possession and use of military might.” Naive idealists vs cynical pragmatists. Well, the 2026 FIFA World Cup proved that when it comes to sports, Americans are from Venus and the rest of the world is from Mars.

This year, FIFA (football’s international federation) worked hard to make the World Cup into an even bigger business. It increased the number of participating teams by 50%, from 32 to 48: a classic inflationary move with Trumpian benefits, as it allowed organizers and commentators to tout ‘the biggest World Cup ever’ with ‘the highest attendance ever’ and better chances of new records on the field of play. (There is now talk of going to 64 teams, and FIFA has 211 members…)

In another ‘first ever,’ the final included a halftime show modeled on the Super Bowl, the showdown that closes the US football season (the other football…). It was a terrible idea. While many Americans look forward to the Super Bowl’s halftime show, I’m convinced most World Cup viewers felt like me: I couldn’t wait for it to be over and for the game to resume. That’s partly because a football game is itself so full of theatrics, with players throwing themselves to the ground, embracing and jostling each other, that the halftime show simply could not compete. The acting on the field will always be better.

Worst of all, last Sunday’s halftime show was embarrassingly saccharine, with messages of love, grown-up stars hugging children, and a cameo appearance by the adorable Muppets. The commercials insisted that football brings us together, erasing our differences and melding us into one harmonious community.

Football is the continuation of war by other means

“You still don’t get it, do you?” I muttered thinking of my fellow Americans, proud hosts of this year’s competition. “Did you not watch the England-Argentina semifinal? Have you not seen the post-game riots that plagued European cities throughout the past few weeks?”

Football is the continuation of war by other means, to paraphrase von Clausewitz. It divides us, stirs deep-seated hatreds and fuels fresh animosity on and off the field. In Europe, it perpetuates the ancient rivalries of city-states and kingdoms; supporters of opposing teams often have to be kept apart before, during and after a match by a substantial deployment of police forces. A baseball game unites Americans: we mingle on the stands with hot dogs and beers, chatting, cheering and teasing each other; it’s part of the common culture that holds us together. Football is something else entirely.

The contrast between the half time show and the game was comical. Soon after the play resumed, the two teams came close to an all-out fistfight. As if in reaction to the outrageous misrepresentation of what football is all about, Argentina’s players raised the violence up a notch, with a stream of gratuitous kicks and shoves which culminated in Enzo Fernandez being sent off for a particularly reckless tackle. After the game ended, Argentinian players assaulted the Spaniards on the field; then they all turned their backs as Spain’s team was awarded the trophy, in a beautiful display of unsportsmanlike behavior.

Share

There’s another major misunderstanding that struck me during the competition. US media made much of the fact that European visitors, players and fans alike, discovered the true America. The story went like this: Europeans came to the US expecting an authoritarian hellhole, plagued by poverty and inequality and full of bitter hostile people. Instead, they found a land of plenty, marveling at the bounty in giant stores and fast food joints and the friendly and welcoming locals; they discovered and embraced the true spirit of America. US soft power is alive and well!

This is only half true. I do think that visiting Europeans realized first-hand that America truly is a lot richer than Europe — something I have documented in previous blogs (see for example here and here). I imagine they were seduced by the abundance and the ample choice: the huge portions in restaurants, the endless aisles of packed shelves in megastores and the glitter of shopping malls. I doubt they fell in love with the spirit of freedom, risk-taking and competition. Maybe there will be more efforts to imitate the convenience: in my native hometown in Italy, shopping malls are crowding out the traditional small stores and hollowing out the city center. I don’t expect we’ll see support for deregulation, less government and more competition.

As Kagan said almost twenty-five years ago, Americans and Europeans are still from different planets:

They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory—the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.

The World Cup also confirmed that our fears and hopes about technology are overblown. More than perhaps any other sport, football has always been vulnerable to dubious referee decisions and cheating players. In some ways, football seems designed to be rigged, with low-scoring games easily decided by a penalty kick and an offside rule humanly impossible to enforce with reliable precision. This has bred a long and illustrious history of recriminations and grudges.

The advent of technology promised to change all this: now referees can immediately review a play with camera feeds covering every angle, and the ball is embedded with sensors that could register the inquisitive brushing of a cat’s whiskers. Still, this World Cup has seen as many controversies and complaints as ever. The referees maintain ample discretion, the players keep cheating, and the technology fails in mysterious ways. The human in the loop wins. The beautiful game remains beautifully flawed — and that, I guess, is the way we like it.