“Do not go gen­tle in­to that good night; Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dy­ing of the light; Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight;

And learn, too late, they griev­ed it on its way;

Do not go gen­tle in­to that good night.” (Dy­lan Thomas, Welsh po­et, 1914-1953)

In the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of last Sun­day’s World Cup fi­nal, Le­an­dro Pare­des, a lim­it­ed de­fen­sive mid­field­er for­mer­ly on the books of Ju­ven­tus, Paris St. Ger­main and Ro­ma but now ap­pro­pri­ate­ly back in the MMA Ar­gen­tine league, lost what lit­tle self-con­trol he had left and led his team mates in a re­bel­lion against the fi­nal­i­ty of what con­front­ed them - the Mes­si-less abyss. The luck they en­joyed against Cabo Verde, Egypt and Eng­land had fi­nal­ly de­sert­ed them. Mes­si had failed to save them one last time. Be­lit­tled by Span­ish tac­tics, they at­tacked the Span­ish play­ers, wild­ly rag­ing against the dy­ing of the light. It was a dis­grace­ful, sym­bol­ic end to their rot­ten, con­tro­ver­sial World Cup cam­paign. The truth is Ar­genti­na re­vert­ed to DNA in the fi­nal. They have been kick­ing their way through in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball for decades. My ear­li­est en­counter with this be­hav­iour dates back to Eng­land 1966. Led by cap­tain An­to­nio Rat­tin, Ar­gen­tine tac­tics against Eng­land in their quar­ter-fi­nal were sim­ple - slow, walk­ing foot­ball and short pass­ing, clear­ly de­signed to dis­rupt Eng­land’s play. The game spi­ralled in­to a kick­ing con­test which over­whelmed the Ger­man ref­er­ee Kre­itlein. When Rat­tin was dis­missed on 33 min­utes chaos en­sued for al­most 8 min­utes as he re­fused to leave the pitch. Eng­land sent them home 1:0 but the Ar­gen­tine pen­chant for dis­taste­ful, down­right nasty be­hav­iour is nev­er far from the sur­face.

Mes­si put a gloss on that for two decades but in the end, re­duced to a spec­ta­tor by Span­ish tac­tics, he could do noth­ing to help his team last Sun­day. Spain was al­ways go­ing to dom­i­nate Ar­genti­na be­cause they have bet­ter play­ers and were the best TEAM in the tour­na­ment. They suf­fo­cate their op­po­nent with their over­whelm­ing pos­ses­sion and their de­fen­sive counter-press­ing, mak­ing the game nar­cot­ic (tell me you did not fall asleep dur­ing their match­es) but they are ex­treme­ly ef­fec­tive in their style. They av­er­aged two goals per match and con­ced­ed one goal in eight match­es - ti­tle-win­ning foot­ball. Their sec­ond World Cup ti­tle now con­firms Spain as the best coun­try in the glob­al game. Their se­nior, Un­der-17 and Un­der-20 women, are al­so world cham­pi­ons while their Un­der-19 men are UE­FA cham­pi­ons and their U-23 men are Olympic cham­pi­ons.

A Eu­ro­pean team was al­ways go­ing to win the World Cup. France was the favourite of many but favourites sel­dom win the World Cup. Sun­day’s win means Eu­rope has won five of the sev­en World Cups played in the 21st cen­tu­ry. With Mes­si ab­sent in 2030 Ar­genti­na will now suf­fer the World Cup mar­gin­al­iza­tion Brasil has en­dured since 2002. No oth­er South Amer­i­can coun­try has the ca­pac­i­ty to chal­lenge for the world ti­tle on a con­sis­tent ba­sis. Eu­rope is bleed­ing the con­ti­nent of young tal­ent and spoil­ing it. In­deed, the Amer­i­c­as, as a whole, failed mis­er­ably. The twelve coun­tries of the two con­ti­nents man­aged to ad­vance one quar­ter­fi­nal­ist. Con­sid­er the fact that Mo­roc­co, Por­tu­gal and Spain will co-host the 2030 tour­na­ment. The world will be hard pressed to pre­vent one of them from tak­ing the ti­tle.

<Don’t cry for me Ar­genti­na>

Ar­genti­na won its third world ti­tle in 2022 and im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan its de­scent in world es­ti­ma­tion by chant­i­ng a racist song against the black play­ers in France’s de­feat­ed team. Four years lat­er Ar­genti­na has mor­phed from world cham­pi­ons in­to the most hat­ed team in the world. Its 2026 cam­paign was plagued by ac­cu­sa­tions of his­tor­i­cal racism and pop­u­lar be­lief in a FI­FA con­spir­a­cy to en­sure Mes­si’s team held their ti­tle. All of this was com­pound­ed pri­or to the fi­nal by the geopol­i­tics of the Is­rael-Pales­tine con­flict.

Spain’s left wing so­cial­ist gov­ern­ment has been ro­bust in its sup­port for Pales­tine and Pales­tini­ans, in stark con­trast to many oth­er Eu­ro­pean na­tions. The ma­jor­i­ty of Span­ish cit­i­zens are pro-Pales­tine and polling in­di­cates that a sig­nif­i­cant ma­jor­i­ty - of­ten cit­ed be­tween 60% and 82% - view the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Gaza as a geno­cide. A large ma­jor­i­ty al­so sup­ports the of­fi­cial recog­ni­tion of a Pales­tin­ian state. We well re­mem­ber Lamine Ya­mal wav­ing the Pales­tin­ian flag in FC Barcelona’s vic­to­ry pa­rade af­ter win­ning last sea­son’s La Liga ti­tle. By con­trast, right wing Ar­gen­tine Pres­i­dent Javier Milei has long de­clared, “I am sin­cere­ly proud to be the most Zion­ist pres­i­dent in the world.” He has in­te­grat­ed this pro-Is­rael stance di­rect­ly in­to Ar­genti­na’s geopo­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy. Fu­el to fire, mere hours pri­or to the fi­nal sev­er­al promi­nent Is­raeli politi­cians, in­clud­ing Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, ex­pressed sup­port for Ar­genti­na. Ne­tanyahu was gift­ed an of­fi­cial Ar­genti­na shirt by the Ar­gen­tine Am­bas­sador to Is­rael, who de­clared on X, “Is­rael is with Ar­genti­na”. Thus, Spain ver­sus Ar­genti­na be­came a geopo­lit­i­cal proxy bat­tle.

Spain’s win was cel­e­brat­ed in the streets of Gaza, and for count­less sup­port­ers across the Mus­lim world, from Casablan­ca to Kuala Lumpur, Spain’s cham­pi­onship means more than win­ning foot­ball’s great­est tro­phy - it is a vic­to­ry for the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple over Is­rael. Foot­ball and geopol­i­tics have hard­ened an­ti-Ar­genti­na glob­al opin­ion and giv­en rise to a pe­ti­tion ti­tled “Ar­genti­na Out” that calls for the coun­try to be kicked out of the World Cup per­ma­nent­ly. The pe­ti­tion ac­cused FI­FA and its ref­er­ees of be­ing “bi­ased to­ward Li­onel Mes­si and Ar­genti­na”. Now closed, the ap­peal gained more than 23 mil­lion sig­na­tures from 170 coun­tries, ex­em­pli­fy­ing (and quan­ti­fy­ing) the depth of glob­al an­i­mos­i­ty to­wards Ar­genti­na and FI­FA. This will not re­move In­fan­ti­no but it un­der­scores the de­gree to which his and FI­FA’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and im­age have been shred­ded.

<The 64 mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion>

Mean­tine, In­fan­ti­no is al­ready count­ing the rev­enue from his newest idea - a six­ty-four team World Cup. The lo­gis­tics of such a mon­strous event would be fear­some - du­ra­tion, trav­el, ac­com­mo­da­tion, fa­cil­i­ties, cost. The fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions could prove even more sig­nif­i­cant. By mak­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tion eas­i­er, a six­ty-four tour­na­ment ⁠could re­duce the com­mer­cial val­ue of con­ti­nen­tal qual­i­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tions while in­creas­ing the im­por­tance of FI­FA’s own flag­ship event. If broad­cast­ers place less val­ue on qual­i­fy­ing cam­paigns, foot­ball’s six re­gion­al con­fed­er­a­tions could be­come in­creas­ing­ly de­pen­dent on FI­FA’s dis­tri­b­u­tions, po­ten­tial­ly shift­ing more fi­nan­cial in­flu­ence and pow­er to­wards the glob­al gov­ern­ing body. Six­teen more teams, that should be two, or per­haps three more for CON­CA­CAF, in­creas­ing the num­ber of qual­if­ers to eight or nine. More places? More mon­ey? Less op­po­si­tion. Bin­go! In­fan­ti­no knows this is a win­ning for­mu­la, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the in­sa­tiable bel­lies of Glob­al South foot­ball of­fi­cials. Ex­pect this idea to trans­form it­self in­to a pro­pos­al for the 2027 FI­FA Con­gress in Ra­bat, Mo­roc­co, when the Supreme Leader will be coro­nat­ed for a fourth term and prob­a­bly de­liv­er this grand gift to his fawn­ing sub­jects. Ex­cept that UE­FA has a long-brew­ing con­flict with FI­FA.

Led by Sloven­ian Alek­sander Ce­ferin, UE­FA are con­cerned by In­fan­ti­no’s re­lent­less cam­paign to swal­low up more of foot­ball, e.g. his Club World Cup and his ex­pan­sion of the World Cup. They see these as acts of ag­gres­sion. Ten­sions have been ag­gra­vat­ed by In­fan­ti­no’s po­lit­i­cal ties to Don­ald Trump, per­ceived favouritism to­ward cer­tain teams at the World Cup, the Ba­lo­gun af­fair, the treat­ment of Iran’s team dur­ing the tour­na­ment, and the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing FI­FA and the Ar­genti­na FA. In a sig­nif­i­cant move Ce­ferin ab­sent­ed him­self from the fi­nal. With the World Cup now his­to­ry but with Eu­ro 2028 ap­proach­ing, Italy, Ger­many, Por­tu­gal, Nor­way, and Ire­land have dis­tin­guished them­selves moral­ly and po­lit­i­cal­ly from In­fan­ti­no’s FI­FA, de­clar­ing Eu­ro 2028 would pri­or­i­tize tick­et af­ford­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, sport­ing in­tegri­ty, and the tra­di­tion­al spir­it of foot­ball. Some UE­FA as­so­ci­a­tions are al­so said to be con­sid­er­ing an al­ter­na­tive can­di­date to chal­lenge In­fan­ti­no for the FI­FA Pres­i­den­cy, a fu­tile act giv­en that he has al­ready been en­dorsed by more than 200 of FI­FA’s 211 mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions for the 2027 pres­i­den­tial “elec­tion”.

Mean­time, ac­cord­ing to the New York Post, Trump be­lieves In­fan­ti­no “is re­spect­ed by every­one around the world, and rec­og­nizes [In­fan­ti­no] has a spe­cial abil­i­ty to bring peo­ple to­geth­er” so he wants him as the next Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary. In­fan­ti­no would re­quire the en­dorse­ment of nine Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil mem­bers and no ve­to from any of the five per­ma­nent mem­bers - Chi­na, France, Rus­sia, the Unit­ed King­dom and USA. Then his name would be sent to the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly for the fi­nal, of­fi­cial vote. So far, sev­en can­di­dates have re­ceived of­fi­cial nom­i­na­tions, in­clud­ing CARI­COM-en­dorsed Am­bas­sador Car­olyn Ro­drigues-Bir­kett of Guyana - with the es­tab­lished prece­dent of ge­o­graph­ic ro­ta­tion fa­vor­ing can­di­dates from Latin Amer­i­ca, South Amer­i­ca or the Caribbean. But I have news for Don­ald - it ain’t hap­pen­ing bruv. In­fan­ti­no may con­trol FI­FA but his light has long died.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.