The World Cup and us – we still can’t find a better way to tell our story than through football

What remains of this World Cup in the US, in a July as hot as a jaguar? The fact remains that we didn’t go. Knocked out in the first round in 1954, Brera wrote as follows: “I remember catching a remark by Lajos Czeizler whilst he was talking to Titkos. His colleague from Budapest asked him about his Italian lads. ‘Ah, they’re all good,’ said Lajos with a good-natured smile, ‘it’s a shame not all of them know how to play football.’ This remark, seemingly in jest, is indicative of an assessment firmly grounded in reality. (G. Brera, "Il principe della zolla"). It’s never nice when others leave and take the ball with them; it’s even worse if it happens because you’re not up to scratch. We need to tackle this new national shortcoming. We’re no longer up to it; it’s now more a land of tennis players than footballers. I haven’t quite worked out whether we’ve become too middle-class – have we sent our only children to posh little clubs? Do we put a racket in their hands? Are they just cuter? – or what other metaphor this might be, that of the loss of footballing ability; we’ll deal with that another time. 

The fact remains that the AI model had predicted a victory for Spain, who weren’t actually that big a favourite. So is artificial intelligence really that clever? Well done to the Spaniards, anyway.

Hydration breaks remain. According to FIFA, these are needed so that players can recover and gather their thoughts. I think of those who are losing and wonder cui prodest (advertising?). It’s enough to drive you mad. What would I say if things were falling apart around me and someone offered me a glass of water, saying, “This will help you think more clearly”?

The young lads remain. Lamine Yamal, born in Catalonia, raised in Rocafonda, with a Moroccan father and a mother from Equatorial Guinea. Nico Williams, born in Pamplona to Ghanaian parents. A few days before the final, Yamal had responded to the controversy surrounding identity with a statement that went something like this: "if football serves any purpose, it is to bring people together". The Spain that lifted the trophy is also the Spain of families who have left, arrived, been turned away, welcomed and blended together. The children of migration are the world champions.

It’s still the substitute’s decisive goal. Life has its favourites, its darlings, but then the supporting players come along. I’ve always had this notion that, when history wants to be elegant, it likes to send the reserves onto the pitch.

There stands Trump, frozen in place, not moving from the photo with all those young people who are ignoring him; some are dancing, others are giving him dirty looks, and a few certainly aren’t saying hello. We shall not mention the rhetoric of the man who loves borders, surrounded by the children of those who’ve crossed them – for heaven’s sake. Instead, I wonder: has he realised he’s getting in everyone’s way, or is he now too dazed to grasp the basics of society? I’d say the latter, and I realised it when Infantino arrived to tell him to move.

Then there’s the half-time show. That spectacular spectacle between the first and second halves. We don’t have them here; we head off to the changing rooms in silence and then come back – perhaps because we consider ourselves people of class, and we turn our noses up at bad taste – but they’re Americans and they do their American thing. Incidentally, these American-style antics are brilliant. Directed by Chris Martin, the cheerful singer, they treated us to: a delegation from "The Muppet Show", Madonna in a tiny car driven by Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, Shakira, BTS and Justin Bieber. Does being a bit daft and tacky bring joy? Yes. We can’t live on Nolan alone.

‘Wonderwall’ remains the soundtrack to it all, whilst we wonder whether we’ve already reached the point where the nineties can be hailed as the new seventies – a peak of ‘back in my day’ artistic output. Let’s rejoice and feel old, those of us who were there.

The ball remains, always round, and it remains the finest device ever devised to tell us, in ninety minutes, what even those who don’t watch the matches need to know: that when you feel strong, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll stay that way, and when all seems lost, things still have time to take an unexpected turn. That every act of determination has its own mysterious reward. That the war is won by whoever holds out for a quarter of an hour longer. Just like the Odyssey, with a meadow instead of the sea.