A fanfare for the minnows

Curaçao supporters, from Instagram

"Minnows". That's the term that football cognoscenti use for national teams which aren't England or Spain or France and so on. They're the small nations, the ones who will not earn a single point during the group stage of a tournament, who are at a tournament like the World Cup and have won simply by being there.

This summer's Cup is the first one to have forty-eight teams competing. It was expanded from thirty-two teams. When FIFA announced the expansion, the howls were immediate. This would dilute the quality! This would make the tournament too long! This was more evidence of FIFA venality, as its president Gianni Infantino merely did it to secure votes from the federations which stood to benefit!

While I have no doubt that Signor Infantino pushed through the expansion to secure his own position and keep his followers onside—Hah! See what I did there?—this bit of iniquity has... actually turned out well. More than well. It has given this World Cup a verve and brio I wasn't expecting. I was against the expansion. I was convinced that between the exorbitant ticket prices and Trump's America, the Cup would be a fiasco with nearly empty stadiums. And that the expansion of the tournament would, in fact, make matches unwatchable farces, with the bigger teams pummeling the newcomers.

I say this now: I was wrong. I have gone from a detractor of this year's festivities to an avid exponent of them. Because what I noticed right off is that new teams like Curaçao and Cabo Verde didn't arrive in the Western Hemisphere simply as glorified tourists on a junket paid by their federations. Oh no, my friends. They came to play. They may not have won any matches. But their grit and tenacity have ground the attacks of bigger teams to a halt. Who couldn't have whooped it up when tiny Cabo Verde held Spain to a goalless draw, thus earning the team a point? And Curaçao? It has become the tournament's darling. Haiti? Its lack of points is belied by the fervor with which it has played. Egypt has won its first ever match after nine tries. And Scotland! A team which got into the tournament because of the expansion, and is on course to make it to the Round of 32.

FIFA is a corrupt mess. Donald Trump is a frustrated dictator. But that doesn't matter. As my partner Proud Establishment Dem detailed yesterday, America is showing its best face forward. But the real heroes are the players from nations which normally would not have had a chance to make it to the Big Show. Again, they are not here as glorified tourists. They are here to honor their countries, themselves, and o jogo bonito. 

And that's the thing. That's the thing about humans. They will strive to be their best selves if given the chance. And that's what these teams have done. And they may have reminded the big teams that they're playing for a collective goal. The footballers from the big nations are multimillionaires. The ones from the small ones are not. But they are all striving for the same thing. Not so much for the trophy; no, for something much more basic: self-respect, and a sense of self-worth.

Let's hear it for the minnows. They have dispelled my cynicism about the 2026 FIFA World Cup™. Everything going on in the suites might be corrupt. But on the pitch? It's as it always turns out to be: human beings striving for glory and achievement, without violence or rancor.