The Footnotes

Day 22 | 2 Jul 18:23 CEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

¡Es Posible!

« For Mexican fans, disillusionment begins at home. » Author Juan Villoro had some doubts about this rendition of the World Cup before the tournament started. Justifiably so. In his essay ¡No es Posible! he runs through the sports myriad crises of legitimacy, but ultimately lands back onto the one closest to his heart: 

« It could be said that the social contract between the team and its supporters is beginning to crack. While not yet time for divorce, the romance has entered a critical phase, in which the lovers can see it will be equally difficult whether they stay together or break up. »

No team has been to more World Cups than Mexico without winning the title. In fact, in seventeen appearances at the tournament, Mexico never even managed to survive past the first knock-out round.

A shocking statistic for a country so obsessed with the sport – but another record gives the country some hope. Mexico might struggle at tournaments, its domestic league might be riddled in controversy, its democracy might be tainted by long-lasting disputes Villoro outlines in his essay, but when « El Tri » play at home, particularly at the Estadio Azteca, they simply don’t lose.

« In recognition of the fact that football causes heart attacks, the Estadio Azteca was built near Mexico City’s Institute of Cardiology, » Villoro isn’t exaggerating. « The international press argued, with some justification, that playing at 7,200 feet [2,200 meters] under the midday sun would be an updated form of the human sacrifice practised by the Aztecs. »

What happens on the pitch of the Azteca is, undoubtedly, football, but it feels larger than that. It’s a location that, whenever the World Cup circus arrives, is guaranteed to cement another seminal moment in the sports history. Pele won his last World Cup in the Azteca. Germany played Italy in the « game of the century » in the Azteca. And England faced no other than Maradonna’s Argentina in the stadium, where tens of thousands of onlookers witnessed the infamous « Hand of God. »

Mexico only ever lost two games in the stadium, never a World Cup match. Yet the legacy of the Azteca isn’t about the results at all. Villoro argues that what cemented the Azteca’s great moments in history is its larger-than-life atmosphere. It’s an environment that this time around, empowered El Tri beyond belief: Mexico has won all of its group stage matches, as well as its first knock-out game yesterday, conceding no goals. The Azteca delivered.

They’re going to host England in the next round. About 40 years after the Hand of God, England looks for revenge not in the opponent, but in the venue that reduced its efforts to that of a bystander to greatness, that rendered England’s participation in a World Cup final into a mere footnote. 

Mexico won’t play any more games at the Azteca this tournament, even if it progresses. Villoro’s account of the stadium is mournful, describing its increased commercialisation and expenses, but if the past few games by Mexico are anything to go by, he does not have to worry. The Azteca looks likely to deliver its inevitable reminder:

« Aware that symbols can be more important than reality in Mexico, Ramírez Vázquez, the stadiums architect, gave the Azteca a brutalist exterior, supported by immense concrete pillars with a geometry that evoked the Aztec pyramids. 

It declared beyond all doubt that this extravagant structure was ours. »

Day 21 | 1 Jul 20:32 CEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

The moral relativism of haramball

Football has produced some memorable songs over the years: from Shakira’s Waka Waka to La Copa de la Vida by Ricky Martin or Wavin’ Flag by K’naan.

The submission of the United States, a country song called Lighter by Jelly Roll, has meanwhile landed on deaf ears – but don’t worry. Football fans have found alternatives: multiple nasheeds, Arabic vocal chants, have been going viral online, accompanying football clips with one of two captions: haram-ball, or halal-ball. 

Prior to going viral online, Haramball was known by its older name, « Anti-football », a playstyle that is, in short, boring to watch: teams that pass a lot, defend intensely (also known as « parking the bus »), and score, if at all, with set pieces like corners or free kicks, or with the rare counter.

The popularity of the haramball meme coincided with the recent successes of teams like Atletico Madrid in Spain and Arsenal, the current English champion: two teams known for their overly defensive, slow playstyles, despite their vast resources and players with great technical ability. In short, they could be playing more attractive football, but chose not to.

The opposing brand of the game, faster and more attacking, has since been dubbed «halalball » by online audiences, turning games between two professional football clubs into sites of battles between good and evil.

Yet, sometimes sinfulness is good: among the greatest upsets of this World Cup are overly defensive performances of lower ranked teams against household favourites: Cabo Verde against Spain, DR Congo against Portugal, or Paraguay against Germany. Yet, after these matches, that were undoubtedly haram in their style, there wasn’t much criticism? What made acts of haram become halal?

Underdogs, teams with players in lower leagues, get a pass. And maybe we shouldn’t be too harsh with them. Their performance against a favorite, to an extent, must be defensive, simply as a matter of survival.

Let the underdog sin.

Day 20 | 30 Jun 20:15 EEST

Sander Pleij

Jedermann sein Eigener Fussball

Yesterday two major European football nations bowed out against countries from Africa and South America, with which they each share a special bond. Morocco beat the Netherlands, where Moroccans form one of the largest immigrant populations. Germany lost to Paraguay, where Germans form one of the largest immigrant populations.

Both lost on penalties, the players who missed their kicks looked like zombies mid-panic-attack.

Now what?

Regroup, recalibrate, reorient, reflect, reposition and what have you. You can already hear the language from that wondrous crossroads of management-speak and new-age fluff. Maybe they should instead reach back, a bit more lightheartedly, to a brochure distributed in Berlin more than a hundred years ago: Jedermann Sein Eigner Fussball (here’s a facsimile edition).

On 15 February 1919, a motley procession moved through the center of Berlin, down the long Wilhelmstrasse, with both Dadaists and the brass band of a bowling club, hired by the Dadaists themselves, yet striking up nationalist songs. 

I’ve read several conflicting accounts of what happened, but it seems that, with great bravado, the Dadaists presented and sold the first edition of a four-page magazine from a flatbed cart. Avant-gardists and nationalist anthems together: as if they wanted to prove just how thoroughly confused everyone and everything had become. The young guard had been completely disillusioned with progress, which had revealed its true face in the form of bombs dropped from zeppelins, poison gas, and machine guns mowing down regiments of soldiers. The Kaiser had fled; communists, socialists, and nationalists alike all failed to seize power, and Berlin seemed to be sliding into civil war. The self-appointed Oberdada Johannes Baader shouted inside Berlin Cathedral: « Was ist Ihnen Jesus Christus? Er ist Ihnen Wurst. » (‘What is Jesus to you? To you he is a sausage,’ meaning: you couldn’t care less about him.) Church, state, capitalism, the bourgeoisie: nothing offered the avant-gardists solace. The Dadaists tried to show that everything was absurd, and that every order had to be torn down before a better society could emerge.

The procession ended in chaos, and the magazine Jedermann sein Eigener Fussball was confiscated by the police, its makers taken to the station. It seems that the very same afternoon, in a pub, the new magazine Die Pleite (bankruptcy) was founded.

So what did Jedermann sein Eigener Fussball actually write about football?

Nothing.

The cover showed a man whose belly was a football. The title expressed: Don’t let yourself be kicked around by others, take action yourself, kick your own football, don’t get kicked.

And so we’re back to the defensive posture of the Dutch team, which had shown its attacking skills in the group phase but now decided to sit back and let Morocco play their game. The predictable result: they were kicked around the pitch by opponents who chose to actually play football. For the German team, too, it seems an apt motto: Jedermann sein eigner Fussball. Don’t let yourself be kicked around any longer.

Day 19 | 29 Jun 20:35 CEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

The migrant cup

One of the earliest instances in which I consciously felt guilty was when I reflexively hoisted my fist into the air, sitting on the floor in the house I grew up in , screaming in joy after Turkey equalized in the 86th minute of the 2008 European Championship semifinal against Germany.

That house, as evidenced by its interior, was 100% Turkish. A round lampshade, adorned with a ring of fake diamonds illuminated the living room with a white fluorescent light. Our couches were beige, the armrests showing some hints of silver. The walls were bare, white, with the exception of a framed image of the 99 names of Allah. Our recently purchased TV receiver was still partially covered in its plastic wrapping, allegedly to avoid any damage although the wrapping would cause it to overheat. The couch table was filled with snacks and tea. I knew many Turkish living rooms that were almost indistinguishable from ours.

And yet I felt some guilt celebrating the goal, as I was supposed to root for both teams. This carefully constructed Turkish living room was surrounded, to all sides, by a foreign entity. Germany. A Turkish enclave in the heart of the German Black Forest.

Growing up as a second-generation immigrant, there are many instances in which the two (or more) nationalities one harbours, come to the forefront, or even clash. In my experience, these battles were weird. Take how one is supposed to celebrate a German or Turkish victory in football, from the POV of a Turkish migrant:

A German win was usually celebrated with a modest Swabian cheer to the neighbours. A timid but content conversation the next day about the tactical soundness of the team. The lack of passion was comforting to me, as it didn’t make me look too enthusiastic over Turkey’s demise. A Turkish win, on the other hand, was always an performance. A brief justification to step into a car, drive around and honk, playing Turkish music on loudspeakers. 

These two realities are difficult to reconcile when Germany finally plays Turkey.

It used to be obligatory for players like Mesut Özil, a German of Turkish origin, to continuously having to « prove » their commitment to the national team, even after performing well. The selective and limited empathy of domestic fans for players of migratory backgrounds continues to define much of the criticism they face today (like when Saka, of Nigerian descent, faced racist comments after missing a penalty for England in the Euro 2020 final).

But eighteen years later, things also feel different, at least to me. There have never been more foreign-born players at a World Cup. One in four was born outside of the country they represent. Over nine teams feature squads with a majority of foreign-born players. Among the top three are Curacao, DR Congo, and Morocco, with over 70% of their players born outside of the country they represent. Being born and raised elsewhere, even at times struggling to speak the language, seems to no longer be an exclusionary criterium for national belonging. Just look at Pico Lopes, Cabo Verde’s centre-back, who was invited to play for the team via LinkedIn, but initially didn’t understand the message. The Dublin-born player of Cabo Verdean origin didn’t speak Portuguese.

The importance of migration has become inevitable to the sport. Not only are the likes of DR Congo or Senegal mostly composed of players born in Europe, but the European powerhouses for their part, consist of players whose parents and grandparents were born in Africa, Asia, or South America.

In a tournament hosted primarily by a country that has created the world’s most expensive and vast deportation bureaucracy, the squads are a blatant example of how much migration can positively shape national identities.Something that comes back into play on Day 19, as the Netherlands faces Morocco. The majority of the Dutch team has a migratory background. Over 70% of the Moroccan team was born outside of the country.

Whatever happens, migrants will win.

Day 18 | 28 Jun 16:10 CEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

Revenge for Gijón

What comes first: the nation, or the national team? For Algeria, it was the latter: in 1958, eleven Algerian footballers playing in the French league escaped to Tunisia. While France’s colonial occupation of Algeria continued, they formed the Onze de l’Indépendance, an Algerian national team in exile. Four years before the country gained its independence from the French, their national team already toured the world, representing not a country, but its promise.

To Algerians looking to establish their own national identity after decades of colonial subjugation, the team « advanced the cause by ten years, » as Algeria’s first President claimed. The national team lived off this hopeful origin story, until anger started to define its footballing legacy in 1982.

At the World Cup in Spain, Algeria’s young nation put itself on the map: facing racist ridicule by other teams and staff, they beat West Germany and Chile, and lost to Austria – meaning that they were practically through to the next round.

Then West Germany played its final game against Austria.

The math, in short, was this: if West Germany won its game against Austria (by no more than two2 goals), both would go through, while Algeria would leave the competition.

The game kicked off in Gijón. Germany scored, and for the next eighty minutes, nothing happened. Players leisurely kicked the ball around with an energy more akin to an evening stroll than a World Cup group decider. Fans, German, Austrian, and local Spanish attendees, all started booing. It was obvious: Algeria, a nation of twenty years with a national team of twenty-four years, was being pushed out of the tournament by what seemed to be a mutual understanding between the two teams. And worst of all: it was boring. 

The «Shame of Gijón » haunted a generation of Algerian football fans. FIFA immediately changed its rules, playing the final round of group matches simultaneously to avoid match fixing – but fate would find a way to give Algeria a glimpse at revenge.

Today, Algeria played its final group match against who else but Austria. If Algeria had won, Austria would have been out – but then Algeria would face Spain in the next round, a world class team and tournament favorite. Third place would face Switzerland, a good team, but a much easier opponent.

Is this the revenge for Gijón? Algeria could deploy Austria’s tactics: refusing to win, drawing or even losing the game could throw Austria under the Spanish bus. If Algeria play as passively as Austria did in 1982, Austria would be forced to watch in agonizing passivity as even their best efforts, goals and a victory against Algeria, would only be rewarded with more hardship.

That would make for a nice story, but ahead of the game, Algeria’s team and staff, as well as its fans, didn’t seem keen on fighting shame with more shame. They wanted to beat Austria, at whatever cost. As a fan told the Guardian in an interview: 

« My friends and I are all on the same page. We want to beat Austria. It isn’t about hatred or nursing a long grudge. »

Algeria took the lead in stoppage time, 90+2. For a few minutes, Austria was out. Then they equalized, and will now face Spain. 

The Algerian fans from earlier continued. « Everything that happens in the world is connected to history and what came before. This would be a way of righting an old wrong. »

Day 17 | 27 Jun 17:26 CEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

All tied

Among the many reasons as to why football (soccer) never achieved the same popularity in the United States as it did elsewhere, must be the American reluctance to draws. The US-American sports story needs a winner, and a loser.

After all, who wins if it ends in a draw?

Cabo Verde, an archipelago nation off the coast of Senegal, might’ve changed some American minds. The nation had never been to a World Cup before. Many saw them as pushovers, only here due to the expansion of the tournament.

Then they played Spain in their opening match. The result was one of the most enthralling 0-0 draws in the history of the sport. Global audiences, including many, many American sportscasters and fans, collectively turned a tied, goalless game into one of the tournament’s greatest viral hits yet. The forty-year old Cabo Verdean goalkeeper Vozinha, keeping his team alive with his heroics, became a global sensation. His online following jumped from 50,000 to 17 million in a week.

Football, like other sports and much else in our daily lives, has become obsessed with metrics that try to dictate our behaviour. High among them, the “expected goals” (xG), a statistic that measures the quality of individual shots and chances to demonstrate how many goals a team should’ve scored.

Spain in its game against Cabo Verde had an xG of 2,2 – but didn’t score, such is the exciting nature of a draw: defying all logic, statistics, and likelihoods, two opponents become equals by the mere will of the underdog.  

Then Cabo Verde played Uruguay. A second draw, but of a completely different nature. Cabo Verde again faced an opponent who should’ve scored two goals, and this time didn’t leave their chances hanging. But rather than standing back and defending for their lives, Cabo Verde played with attacking frenzy, somehow scoring more than they should’ve. The game, an exciting back and forth, ended 2-2. Cabo Verde’s xG stood at 0,8.

Enticing audiences with two vastly different but impressive draws, they, for the first time entered a game not as complete underdogs. Their final match was against Saudi Arabia. 

Cabo Verde got a taste of its own medicine: by the metrics, they should’ve won this game, sitting in the driver seat for the vast majority of the game. A draw that wasn’t as much an upset as it was frustrating. Cabo Verde, for a moment, became like Spain.

And yet, it was enough: due to other results, the island nation qualified for the next round. They haven’t lost a match, and haven’t won one either – they just kept on striking a healthy balance.

Day 16 | 26 Jun 23:13 CEST

Sander Pleij

Virility van Dijk

He gazes into the lens, sultry, his head tilted slightly. One eye sits in shadow, the other is looking straight through you. His beautiful face is made a touch more striking by the small black goatee beneath his chin. Then the body, that long body. We don’t see his whole one meter and ninety-five centimeters. Only the torso is visible, but what a torso. The top buttons of his white shirt are open, and in the décolleté we see the smooth skin of his chest, not a single hair on it, his skin glinting as though forever lit by the sun of the golden hour. The shirtsleeves are rolled, flaring loosely halfway up his biceps and opening a view onto what appears to be a tribal tattoo. But the shirt is wet! Here and there it clings to the torso, and the golden skin comes through the white, sometimes with a small pocket of air still between. No jewellery, none needed, although in another photo, where he looks into the camera laughing, a tiny band is visible around the wrist.

Isn’t it time we talked about the erotic pull of footballers?

Virgil van Dijk stands like a god at the centre of the defence. For Liverpool the rest of the year, and during the World Cup for the Dutch national team, which beat Tunisia yesterday. He is the captain, the leader, the one who always stays calm and fronts up after the match, even when he has to answer for defeats or other faults. Virgil van Dijk is there. A picture of manliness. If footballers are gods, Virgil is enthroned high on Olympus. Interviewer Eliot Hayworth calls him, in the magazine Fantastic Man: « mature, hyper-manly. Also lithe, glowing, youthful, healthy. » There are fans who have his face tattooed onto their skin.

Would you like to know something about his skincare, too? You can: « Virgil’s skincare routine consists largely of Zwitsal baby oil, which he has used since childhood. » But Virgil doesn’t give everything away:

« His hair routine is a secret. ‘One day I’ll tell, but not today.’ When in public, he wears his long hair pulled back in a bun, but at home he wears it down.»

Fantastic Man is a fashion magazine for people who want to think for themselves. It features, alongside probably top-of-the-bill photo shoots, interviews on the brink of literary fiction. It has a pleasingly idiosyncratic eye for whom it portrays. A fantastic man is not per se world famous, yet a pioneer in his field, has a style of his own, and on every other front too: he is no follower. Van Dijk adorns the cover of the current issue, and he seems made for it. He looks entirely at home there. In the interview he talks at length about his skincare, his hair routine and his choice of clothes. As famous as he is, he can’t simply go shopping himself, but luckily he has a stylist for that, who together with his wife sees to it that Virgil is impeccably dressed. And beyond a story that shows how hard his road to success was, you learn that he has become a man of the world. Where the football hero was once a son of the people, who stayed ordinary, Virgil is a pioneer. He has a poor background, sure, but that’s not what defines him. He talks freely about his feelings and about how he tries to protect younger players, who are regularly torn to pieces on social media. He doesn’t hide his depth, after the death of his highly important teammate and star player Diogo Jota, he set up support groups for the rest, together with other senior players. Socially he is outspoken, but, like a politician, he also knows what he can and cannot talk about.

The Gods have died, their replacements are human. Once you could read these mortal’s virtues, vices and desires after their career, when the working-class hero snorted his nose to pieces or coasted on his fame at daytime TV. The desires of today’s men are represented by Virgil van Dijk, who already knows where he’ll be found after his last match:

« You know, Milan and Paris fashion weeks are coming up but there are so many games. It would be amazing to find a moment to go to one of the shows. If I’m over in Europe for a game I’d try to go to a show, or if I have a day off I’d definitely fly over. »

Day 15 | 25 Jun 18:09 EEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

The man who cursed Harry Kane

Last week, we wrote about England’s World Cup curse. Hours later, they convincingly won their first game against Croatia, their strongest group stage opponent. Next up was Ghana.

Once a football powerhouse, Ghana didn’t arrive in its best shape: key players have been injured, and the team’s performance in games and tournaments over the past few years (!) has been miserable. England currently stands at 4th in FIFA’s world rankings. Ghana is at 65th, among the worst teams of the tournament.

That’s before the traditional Ghanaian priest Nana Kwaku Bonsam got to work.

Bonsam claimed to have helped a sick man back in 1992 on his way home from work. The man thanked him with a « mysterious gift »” which gave Bonsam healing powers. That day, as Bonsam’s story goes, he became a traditional healer. Growing in popularity over the years, Bonsam had since expanded his reach, previously opening multiple shrines, schools, and a farm. He also has at least 14 children. Yesterday, he announced to name one of them after England’s star striker: « Harry Kane is not my enemy. »

But a few days prior, Bonsam cursed the English team, and their star striker in particular, to underperform against Ghana. What followed was, statistically, the greatest upset of the tournament so far: no team has ever had as much possession as England in a World Cup game without scoring a goal. Harry Kane only touched the ball 19 times, his lowest figure in his 116 appearances for England. The game ended in a 0-0 draw.

« I am now going to release Harry Kane so that he can score in England’s next match, » Bonsam announced after the game.

Bonsam went viral over the past few days, being called a « witch doctor » by English media – a term that dates back to English colonisers efforts to diminish local belief systems, replacing them through Christianity – a legacy he is still fighting against. He has had many feuds with televangelist preachers in particular, criticising their media empires and even secretly consulting them with his healing powers before leaking their meetings in churches. Ghana continues to be predominantly Christian, at least on paper.

Bonsam is « based in Ghana » as his personal website says, but he also spent a year inBronx about a decade ago. A New York Times article chronicles his life there: from skin operations, to feuds with local churches, funerals, birthday parties, and a Miss Ghana beauty pageant, Bonsam’s short stay reveals a lot about his character, and the role of traditional religion in modern-day Ghana. « I love New York, » he explains in the article « But it’s too cold here. »

Day 14 | 24 Jun 22:54 EEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

Everybody hates hydration breaks

By any metric, Germany was destined to breeze past Curaçao in their opening match of the World Cup last week. It has a pool of 85 million people vs Curaçao’s 150.000, a footballing legacy of multiple World Cup wins vs a team that didn’t exist sixteen years ago, superstars vs a crew of largely unknown players passing time in second divisions.

In light of this, Curaçao’s 21st-minute goal defied all logic. Germans couldn’t believe it, fans couldn’t believe it, Curaçao’s team itself couldn’t believe it. If football is a clash of conflicting narratives, momentum defines which one we get to witness in any given moment. Curaçao had all that momentum – for about one minute. Then the players had to stop for a hydration break.

Germany would have most likely beaten Curaçao anyway, but those three minutes that stopped the flow gave the visibly shell-shocked team an opportunity to reorganize. Germany won the game by 7 to 1 — most hydration breaks had similar impacts on a match’s momentum. 

It’s a pretty significant change to the game, and many teams, coaches, commentators, or especially fans, dislike it. Stadium DJs struggle to drown out the booing that accompanies every hydration break. If you can’t even get English fans to drunkenly sing along to ‘Sweet Caroline’ anymore, you’ve got a problem. 

Hydration breaks have become the posterchild of FIFA’s many controversies in this World Cup, probably because their premise is so easy to dispute: the two new breaks offer more ad space. Some estimate that they earn broadcaster FOX $250 million – a figure that fans like to share in agony on social media daily.

Commentators are meanwhile almost expected to announce hydration breaks with a smirky comment. « The Americans have actually managed to give our sport quarters, » is among my favorites.

But as heatwaves pass through much of Europe and players, at times, face off in weather upwards of 38°C, it feels oddly cruel to criticize an initiative that is meant to, at least officially, help players remain healthy.

Just a few weeks before the World Cup, the US hosted another sports competition: the Enhanced Games: an alternative Olympics, literally, on steroids. Athletes were encouraged to take performance-enhancing substances to break world records, earning solid payouts by investors like tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

The founder of the event explained that he’s building « a superhumanity to change the world. » One article on the games reads that « Inspired by transhumanism, these performance alchemists hope to use sports as a testing ground to provide ‘proof’ of the beneficial effects of the substances and methods they promote. »

Perhaps the hydration breaks are accidentally radical: rather than treating an athlete’s body as a disposable avatar for entertainment and profit, they show us that even larger-than-life figures and self-made deities need  a sip of water now and then.

Day 13 | 23 Jun 17:49 EEST

Sander Pleij

Resurrected for ninety minutes

Tonight, in the match against Colombia, he will stand upright again in the stadium: DR Congo superfan Michel Nkuka Mboladinga, or Lumumba Vea, the living statue who represents Patrice Lumumba. The Congolese freedom fighter and former president was deposed and then executed in 1961, a killing Belgium has since acknowledged its part in, and one the CIA had plotted as well. It is no small feat, because for the entire match Mboladinga holds his right hand raised to the sky, exactly like the statue of Lumumba that stands in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.

There is something fitting here: a man killed for his country, resurrected for ninety minutes as the figure who urges it on. Lumumba Vea, who now has a manager, is not the only superfan from Africa, I learn from the World Cup special of online intellectual platform Africa Is a Country. Superfans set the mood at matches, whipping up the crowd with chants, brass bands, painted bodies, dance and costume. They’re their country’s twelfth man. No mean calling. The Ghanaian government is sponsoring the trips to the United States of 800 such supporters. One of them is Abraham Boakye, the « One Man Supporter » who has been doing his duty for decades.

There are many more: Côte d’Ivoire’s Petit Bamba, Tunisia’s Ridha the Elephant, Algeria’s Barigou and his trumpet, and the bare-chested men with the letters S, E, N, E, G, A, L painted across their bodies (some of whom you might remember, furiously disagreeing with the referee at the final of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations).

The superfans are the joy of it; Africa is a Country‘s special explains the weight that lies behind them. I’ll leave the last word to its editor-in-chief, William Shoki (you can buy the whole thing here):

And so, to understand football’s importance is to understand something about modernity itself. The game emerged alongside industrial capitalism, urbanization, mass literacy, mass media, and the nation-state. This history is inseparable from empire. Football spread through colonial trade routes, missionary schools, mining compounds, military garrisons, and shipping ports. Yet like so many things carried by empire, the game escaped the intentions of those who introduced it. Colonized peoples appropriated football and transformed it into something else: a vehicle for anti-colonial ambition, urban identity, and national imagination. Modern football was born in the metropole, but it became global on the feet of those living in the peripheries. The World Cup itself emerged partly in rebellion against the insularity of Britain’s footballing elite. By the middle of the twentieth century, the sport had become one of the principal theaters through which the modern world staged its political dramas.

Day 12 | 22 Jun 20:25 EEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

Egypt never lasts that long

When Egyptian left back Ahmed Fatooh got a haircut prior to the tournament, he asked his barber to keep things short, so that his hair wouldn’t grow out by the latter stages of the competition.

His barber held back a laugh, telling him that he’ll be back for a refresher after the group stages.

When another player, Ramy Rabia, went on a date, his partner suggested meeting again in Miami after the first-round of matches ended. And defender Hossam Abdel Megid was asked to keep an upcoonming wedding date in mind. When he contests that he’ll be in the US on that day, the family busts out laughing. « Egypt never lasts that long. » 

The scenes are from a series of video ads produced by telecom giant Orange ahead of the 2026 World Cup. What’s on display is a common Egyptian pessimism: despite being football giants on the African continent (they won the Africa Cup of Nations seven times), the team had never won a World Cup game before. In fact, the team barely scored in the competition at all, consistently missing expectations until it’s become easier to just not expect anything at all.

While Orange went all-in on the self-deprecating tone, Vodafone’s ad plays on star player Mohammed Salah becoming the all-time leading Egyptian scorer at the tournmanet. Coca Cola and Adidas opted for a traditional route, talking about the hard work and glory of going to a World Cup in the first place. 

Egypt has a rich history of creative advertisements that routinely captures its Zeitgeist. Artist Bahia Shehab tracked these ads in A Trade in Dreams (2026), chronicling how Egyptian consumer culture came to relate to its its political and social identites.

« We became a nation that has traded its dreams for manufactured illusions. » Ads have been fulfilling this role ever since the end of Ottoman rule in 1880. « As apothecaries became pharmacies, healers became doctors, blond became more beautiful than brown, some notions of who we are were lost. » 

The book argues that ads, like those for the World Cup, haven’t been reflections of Egyptian culture, but actively shaped the country’s identity over the past century. She points to past examples, but we might have just witnessed a contemporary one: this morning, Egypt won their first ever World Cup game.

Did Orange ease the nation’s pressure? Did Adidas ignite their strength? Did Vodafone offer us a glimpse into the future? If you ask Orange, the future of the team is clear: « To all the doubters, this time we’re going all the way. » 

Day 11 | 21 Jun 17:22 EEST

Hazar Deniz Eker

They took our ‘staches

Back on day 5, we gave a glimpse into the at times militant expectations Turkish football fans have of their national team. Five days later, Turkey lost its second of three group matches against Paraguay – meaning that they will finish their group last, exiting the competition.

The reactions weren’t kind. Everything has been criticised, from their play style to the coach’s tactics and, rather frequently, the players’ haircuts.

Bleached undercuts, mohawks, and even braids all became the subject of not just ridicule but outrage, as pundits and fans reminisce of football’s older generations with « no-nonsense » looks.

In Turkey, someone’s political identity used to be shaped as much by their convictions as by their barber.  Towards the end of the Ottoman Empire, secular mustaches replaced longer Sunni Muslim beards – a visual choice to demonstrate the end of a political era.

After the Turkish state was established in 1923, the Kurdish Workers Party was awed by Stalin’s thick stache. Modern secular ultranationalists (known as Grey Wolves) would alternate between handlebar mustaches resembling the crescent moon of Turkey’s flag, or shaving clean. And President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s contemporary Islamist AK Party proudly wears the subtle badem (almond) mustache.

We’re only scratching the surface. Subtle differences fragment sub-groups further and further: clean-shave or stubble, long-beard without or with a mustache, etc.

No wonder then, that some, especially older fans, feel outraged by this new flock of uncregonizable, bleached and braided players, carrying Turkish flags on their chests while losing on the biggest stage.

But it’s important to remember that much has changed between Turkey’s last outing in a World Cup (2002) and today. Researcher Nazli Alimen writes of the influx of hipster aesthetics since the 2010’s: « These fashionable moustache and beard styles do not reflect an ideological standpoint or religious piety, but rather mark the wearer as a fashion-conscious person. » 

Mustaches, hairstyles, clothing, accents, and other signifiers have been used to categorise Turkey’s historically diverse society for centuries. These looks were never set in stone, but always reflected something about how Turkishness was evolving. Hipsters too are part of this Turkish journey, and so is this national team.