Football is fond of superlatives. Before this World Cup, column inches dwelt on its excess. Tickets were the priciest ever; there would be the most matches, the most teams, the most players. Amid the noise, many adopted that phrase favoured by Sunday League managers after a 9-0 drubbing: all we wanted was for football to be ‘the real winner’. Let the games begin.
We have been vindicated. The football has delivered and the hyperbole has quietened into background babble. But what could not have been expected was just how good it has been. Ahead of the tournament, naysayers implied it was already a damp squib. Fifa’s greed in expanding the number of participants to 48 from 32 would see each mismatch become a farce. England would sweep past DR Congo. Cape Verde would be flattened by Argentina. Yet precisely these minnows have provided the colour we were desperate for.
The idea of an expanded World Cup was championed by Gianni Infantino – the sport’s leering, omnipresent glutton. He campaigned for it as part of his election to the Fifa presidency in 2016, arguing that more countries should be allowed to compete for sporting (commercial) reasons. Underrepresented confederations were the beneficiaries: Africa and Asia together gained almost half of the 16 new places.
