Been played by deep play? How FIFA World Cup 2026 shapes the modern football fan

Many of us, seasoned and obsessive viewers of football at the stadium or on TV, came reluctantly to the spectacle of this year's Fifa World Cup. Not only was the lead-up to this global watchfest, through indescribably tasteless promotion and toadying by Fifa president Gianni Infantino, calculated to repel us, but evidence of racial and political bias multiplied apace as the tournament got underway.

Nevertheless, fandom is a complex psychological disorder, as Nick Hornby's classic 1992 auto-analysis, Fever Pitch, demonstrated. So, despite my own resolve not to watch a single match, I was sucked in like all the rest, paying up resentfully for the glitchy and exorbitantly priced ZEE5 app, and staying up night after night to get my football fix.

This was partly because of the extended format of this year's tournament, 48 teams instead of 32, bringing little-known countries (but mostly known players), onto the world stage. On the one hand, this helped Argentina to advance to the semifinals without meeting a single top-15 Fifa-ranked team, where they knocked out England, ranked 4. (Arguably, Spain, France and England, the other three semifinalists, were more severely tested by facing at least two top-15-ranked teams in their run-up.)

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On the other hand, we witnessed fantastic displays of skill, strength and resilience from teams like Cabo Verde (drawing with Spain and Uruguay, and threatening Argentina in the Round of 32), DR Congo (striking fear into England), Iran (ranked 20 and undefeated in the group), and obviously Norway, ranked 31 and in the quarterfinals. The stars all dazzled, including the ageless Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, Michael Olise, Ousmane Dembele, Mohamed Salah, Erling Haaland, Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Rodri, Lamine Yamal, and even Vinicius Junior in a ragged Brazil team.

But more names stood out: 40-yr-old Cabo Verde goalkeeper Vozinha, Egypt custodian Mostafa Shobeir, 18-yr-old Ayyoub Bouaddi of Morocco, 17-yr-old Gilberto Mora of Mexico, and Enzo Fernandez of Argentina. All this made for huge excitement in the early stages, and raised hopes of real upsets in the quarterfinals and semifinals.

But no. The semifinals featured the top 4 teams: Argentina, Spain, France and England. Were they helped to get there by refereeing decisions, including questionable uses of VAR technology? VAR disallowed a wonder goal by Egypt, but the referee failed to refer Argentina's decider in that match to VAR after what looked like a foul on Salah in the penalty area. This drew outrage from Egypt, and stoked conspiracy theories worldwide.

Of course, conspiracy theories have flourished at all World Cups, and highly publicised incidents of illegal actions include Diego Maradona's 'Hand of God' goal in 1986. Fifa 2026 has seen a rescinded red card after intervention at the highest level (followed by the ignominious bundling out of the team so aided).

Through the tournament, indignation at on-field injustice and off-field sabotage has jostled for primacy against admiration for superb on-field play. This made for a fraught viewing experience. Still, as we wait for the final tomorrow, between European champions Spain and world champions Argentina, we know that they deserve to be there.


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What does this say about spectatorship? In 2007, German filmmaker Harun Farocki mounted a 12-screen video installation called 'Deep Play' at the art exhibition documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. It ran 27 hrs of footage of the 2006 Fifa World Cup final match in Berlin between Italy and France (90 mins plus extra time and a penalty shootout that Italy won) on segmented loops of 135 mins each.

Farocki's mediascape placed the spectator at the centre of a ceaseless stream of visual data, testing their capacity to feel the fan's emotions of identification, shock, rage and joy. Some of that final's 1.5 bn viewers would recall their emotions when Zinedine Zidane, the French captain, was sent off for a head-butt on Italy's Marco Materazzi in extra time with the score at 1-1. This was the final's decisive moment, a tragically discordant end to a great career, followed by Zidane's retirement.

The head-butt was a moment of entropy, even of madness, never fully explained by Materazzi's provocation. Zidane's red card drew attention to race, ethnicity, honour and the unforgiving excesses of modern sport. Inevitably, France went on to lose the penalty shoot-out.

Yet, watched on multiple loop, the scene appears absurd and unreal, as if the head-butting is taking place in some other, parallel universe. The memory of our own viewing becomes a mere trace, a repetition without content.

The 2006 France-Italy final was an instance of 'deep play' in anthropologist Clifford Geertz's sense - a contest between two footballing nations in the highly charged atmosphere of modern competitive sport, fuelled by money, national loyalty, pride and cross-national fan following worldwide. Farocki's resolute evacuation of the scene of viewing, laying bare its technological production, targeted the media amplification and digital streaming of international sporting contests.

If we in the 'global south', passionate fans of Argentina or Brazil, ask ourselves what skin we have in this game, we might be forced to confront uncomfortable truths. Those truths will be held in suspension as billions worldwide are glued to screens on Sunday night.

The writer is professor (emerita), Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata