The facts of economic globalization will not change if Argentina defeats France.
Because European football towers over the rest of the world and the English Premier League alone.
Typically generates more revenue each season than the quadrennial World Cup.
Half of the players competing in the tournament play in just five major European leagues.
However something will have changed, as well.
It has been 16 years since a World Cup final was held in Europe.
As some of the emerging powers of the Global South have taken their turn, including South Africa, Brazil, and now Qatar.
With Ghana poised to advance to the semifinals, Pan-African hopes for South Africa 2010 seemed to be realized for a brief moment.
Although it ended up being more of a wake, Brazil 2014 was a celebration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Brazil and, by extension, the leftist governments that had transformed the continent.
On the other hand, Qatar 2022 was always about Qatar’s visibility, reputation, and strategic survival.
The country has been criticized, but it has accomplished much of what was intended.
Qatar’s position in the world is clearly stronger after four weeks of near-constant football and sometimes bitter off-field conversations.
But because it was the first World Cup to be held in a Muslim-majority, Arabic-speaking nation, it also wanted to stand for something else.
The tournament presented a world in which the Global South, with all of its myriad complexities, is more present and powerful through timing, crowds, and narratives.
It was truly a World Cup of our time
The Northern Hemisphere, particularly Europe, experiences a month-long summer fiesta of outdoor revelry in public spaces and beer gardens while the Southern Hemisphere is accustomed to a winter World Cup.
But even FIFA couldn’t stand the idea of playing in the Gulf’s summer heat, even in stadiums with air conditioning, so it rearranged the entire football calendar around Qatar’s climate.
As a result, Europe is currently cold and indoors; Even though there are a lot of people watching, there is much less of a sense that the World Cup is a collective ritual.
In contrast, celebrations have flooded the much warmer streets and squares of Dakar, Rabat, Rosario, and Riyadh.
The groups in Doha, inside and outside the arenas, mirror this worldwide recalibration.
Of course, they have been carefully selected for what we see on the screen.
Qatar paid for groups of soccer fans to travel from each qualifying nation and recruited its own “ultras,” highly organized soccer fans from Lebanon and Arab migrants to Doha.
Despite the stadium public address systems’ ear-splitting volume and relentless music, the crowd’s voices and energies remain the living heart of the spectacle, as we have seen enough to know that these are the most diverse World Cup crowds ever.
Qataris, as far as concerns them, have been an impressive whenever limited part of that exhibition.
The clean-cut white thobes worn by men and the black abayas worn by women have created a distinct aesthetic in contrast to Europe’s unpolished masculinity and drab color scheme.
Saudis and Emiratis, in particular, have been well-represented, wearing both replica shirts from the national team and traditional robes.