Last time, I ended up with the worst of all possible worlds. I’d kept an eye on the World Cups of 2010 and 2014, vaguely, but had, as a Frenchwoman, started feeling some uncomfortable things for the England team in 2018. I’d found the squad quite charming and compelling, and ended up having an absolutely terrific time because, in the end, my people still won.
2021 had been the year my then-boyfriend had got me into the Euros, and I really should have been completely swept up a year later: I just loved Gareth Southgate’s boys so much. The only problem was, well: slave labour. I just didn’t feel I could watch a tournament taking place in Qatar, as the regime had so obviously decided to host it in order to whitewash its image on the global stage. I wanted no part in it.
Mostly, I succeeded in my boycott. I didn’t watch a single game of the 2022 World Cup. What I did do, however, was refresh the Guardian’s sports liveblog approximately seven million times over the course of a few weeks. You see, I am half-Moroccan, and my mother loves football, as do most of the denizens of the country she grew up in.
Four years ago, the Moroccan team made history by getting to the semi-finals, and I just… didn’t see any of it. I refused to watch. Instead, I just tortured myself by looking up the various real-time scores, again and again and again. It was stupid and pointless, but I just didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to have a good time but I didn’t want to get off my high horse in order to do so, and in the end I just felt quite silly.
Something similar happened last weekend. Two years ago, I decided to give the Eurovision final a miss for the first time in well over a decade. I’ve always been a huge fan of the campness and the glitter and the overly complicated geopolitics of it all, but couldn’t bear to watch it while Israel was allowed to perform. The war in Gaza had just been too painful to even keep up with, and I couldn’t imagine supporting the country in any way.
I did cave last year, though. I felt weak and I guess I did just want to have fun, and I felt that my personal decision wouldn’t matter all that much anyway, and so I went to a friend’s house and I watched Eurovision. Do you know what happened, in the end? In 2024, I felt bad because I was missing out on something I knew usually brought me joy; in 2025, I felt bad because I didn’t feel I could actively enjoy this thing which, once upon a time, was the highlight of my spring. I picked heads, then tails, and lost both times. This time, again, I landed in the daftest of all possible worlds – boycotting, but still asking friends for detailed reports on all the songs.
The contest is over, but we still have a World Cup to deal with. I’ve absolutely no desire to support a Trump endeavour in any way, and increasingly feel that Fifa, in and of itself, ought to be boycotted by all right-thinking people. Even setting the politics aside, the mere idea of a “half-time show” at the final makes me queasy.
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Still, the only other option is to let my fear of missing out ruin my summer entirely. I love football and I love international tournaments most of all; my three countries have qualified and all of them may end up doing well. Why should I be the one punishing myself when all the worst people in the world are going to have a great time anyway? It just feels so amazingly unfair, living in these horrid times and being unable to distract yourself from said times because the ones responsible for the horrors have taken over our entertainment as well.
I suppose one answer would be to try to focus on more local matters; support a small, chaotic and plucky team, or go to my friendly neighbourhood cabaret. There definitely is a version of this piece in which I tell both you and myself that it is the solution to all our collective troubles, and that sometimes looking inwards, into our own bubbles, is the only thing we can do to save ourselves from the big bad world.
Sadly, it’s not this one. There isn’t really a happy ending to be found here; sometimes frustrating things are frustrating and there isn’t anything we can do about them. Once upon a time I allowed myself to ignore Azerbaijan’s actions in Armenia so I could watch some babushkas yodel to some hardcore disco, and I turned a blind eye to some of the more colourful entrants to the World Cup because I just loved football too much.
That era is now over and there isn’t much we can do about that. Well, or maybe I should just host a month-long event replaying the 1998 World Cup from beginning to end.
Maybe, if all else fails, Zidane can save us.
