We are five days away from the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be held in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and as a European and a huge fan of this sport, I feel obligated to guide you through the competition so that, even if you’re not familiar with football, you can enjoy it more than anyone else.
Fan Kit
To be a true World Cup fanatic, you need to make a purchase that includes: 1,003 cans of beer (ten per match and 40 for the final); half a ton of ground beef for hamburgers; as much cheese as your fridge can hold; enough bread to wallpaper your house; 30 bottles of champagne (for celebrations); a jersey of your favorite team and a jersey of the team you think will win the final; scarves from various national teams (in case a surprise team from the Third World qualifies); and between 10 and 20 vuvuzelas (to annoy the neighbors).
Basic Notions About Football
Football is a sport in which two teams of eleven players play against another eleven, with the objective of getting a ball into the opposing team’s goal. That sounds simple enough, but you have to keep in mind that there will be another eleven guys trying to stop you, and sometimes three or four of your own teammates will also try to make things more difficult, and finally there is a referee with a whistle who stops the game whenever things get exciting and start to resemble the sports you actually enjoy.
In the end, the team that, despite everything, manages to get the ball into the opposing goal the most times wins, so in that sense football is quite similar to the pro-life fertility classes being taught these days at my parish.
How Many Matches Can You Watch?
The World Cup offers 104 football matches. A casual fan will only watch their national team’s matches — that is, a maximum of eight, if they even make it to the final. A casual fan who still wants to command respect will try to watch between 20 and 30 matches throughout the competition. A dedicated fan will attempt to watch around 80 matches. And a true die-hard fan, the kind who inspires admiration among friends, will watch all 104 matches; but in addition, they won’t miss the daily highlights on television, the sports talk shows on the radio, the betting odds, and will comment live on all of it, always making sure that in every tweet — this is a matter of common courtesy in football — they appropriately insult the opposing team and the referee’s mother.
What to Do If My Team Loses
A team losing is something that happens frequently. Except for the group stage, where a draw is possible, in the knockout rounds only one of the two can win, which results in serious discrimination that FIFA’s Committee on Discriminated Minorities, Racism, Homophobia, and Fatphobia is already working on.
In any case, if your team loses, you will feel a mixture of anger and melancholy that must be channeled appropriately. If the lost match is from the qualifying rounds, it is still possible to fix the situation, so you can console yourself by simply adding one or two extra beers for each goal conceded. If they lose in a knockout round, it is permissible to repeatedly hit household furniture, except for throwing vuvuzelas out of the window, which is reserved for the team that loses in the semifinal.
If your team loses the final, there is no consensus among experts on this matter, but I consider any violence against inanimate objects within a 25-kilometer radius more than justified. If you go out and don’t know what to break, I recommend you look up videos from a few days ago in which thousands of people in France, originally from Africa, set fire to Paris — in their case, not to channel anger, but to celebrate PSG’s Champions League victory (don’t try to understand it; it’s called “stupid European migration policy”).
What to Do If Your Team Wins
If your team wins, whether it’s a normal match or the grand final, all restrictions from your doctor, your wife’s household rules, your obligations toward children or dependents, your commitments to your pet, your boss, your job, and, depending on the case, even constitutional laws, are temporarily suspended for approximately 48 hours.
Moreover, 48 hours is about how long it takes a true World Cup fan to wake up shaking, strapped to a gurney, asking the nearest nurse for the last whiskey.
Extra tip: football is a sport, so play responsibly and in moderation, and in case of euphoric meltdown, deny everything the next day.
