A ship called Dignity.

 

It was always coming, wasn’t it? The day when everything we loved about football would be sold for 30 pieces of silver.

The last 8 years of a podcast and Columns were all pretty much leading up to this news. A perfect storm of greed, unprincipled leadership, non-existent transparency, governing body civil war, and the forces of soulless money.

It was inevitable.

Because if you insist to call sport an asset class, it will eventually behave exactly like one, to its fullest potential.

 

Market forces are never half-pregnant.

It has been depressing to see almost the entirety of our industry gleefully celebrate “the commercial success” of this World Cup. And then this week observe the same people all be “shocked” at what is just the natural next progression of the direction of travel. They still don’t understand markets and finance. Why can’t they ever join any dots?

Have they not watched the X-rated courtship of the American pro leagues and PE? The disruption wrecked on the NCAA? Why did they think football would be immune? Did they learn nothing from the Superleague?

Our industry has made growing revenues without conscience its North Star for over a decade, and if you live by the sword, you will eventually also die by the sword. Untethered capitalism doesn’t stop when you want it to, the animal spirits never relent, and they can only be managed as best as possible by leaders of dignity and sensitivity. Without certain core foundations and pure objectives, sport will not be able to represent what its fans want and, frankly, its history demands. If the only measure of its success is revenues, audience and up-front cheques, it is undoubtedly doomed.

This week was inevitable, the reaction of UEFA predictable and very needed, and we are now late in the 9th innings on all of this. Our industry is faced with two very different distinct futures.

Tradition and glory, or money and power. 

 

If sport is indeed an asset class, Gianni might be right.

No this is not a joke. Just note the conditional conjunction: IF.

In the eyes of an elite corporate financier, the pro, the deal that Infantino is proposing could be argued to make a lot of sense if the deal valuation is correct, and not sandbagged to let his new buddies in on the cheap.

The case for the defendant would go like this.

Short version: Great traders always sell at the top.

Longer version: The CEO has the wisdom to realise that we are near the top of the Everything Bubble, and we are well overdue a very nasty crash. Old media broadcasters today are still obliged to bid big for sports rights (see Foxtel and rugby league), and for now in the main still have a Balance Sheet that can allow it. They will be considerably weaker in 5 years. The new platforms of Amazon, Netflix, YouTube and Paramount at the same time are looking to build out their sports strategies with aggressive bidding. So there is a florid demand for top sport IP, but no one knows how long this will last. All of these companies are dependent on the macro health of a stock market and economy that frankly is utterly dominated by lunatic valuations of AI businesses (none of which make money). If the capex behind datacentre expansion ends, the whole circular Ponzi scheme implodes with alacrity, and everything comes down very dramatically. Look at Korea. Netflix is already starting to stagnate, Paramount depends wholly on Oracle’s AI gamble, the SpaceX IPO has been a flop, and all these jam-tomorrow high-multiple businesses are all starting to whiff more than just a little. One can make a very cogent argument that this will be seen as the very zenith of the “bid” into sports rights. At the same time, the industry of private equity/debt is creaking under the weight of its own leverage, there are no exits to be seen, and the whole narrative depends on the fugazi of continuation funds. For all of these reasons, Gianni Infantino is taking some money off the table at the “top”.

No one will put forward such an argument, because they are utterly blind to the Everything Bubble, but this is the sharp analysis. If we are indeed on the brink of the dotcom-bust redux, FIFA would be seen as genuinely visionary if it forward-sells its rights this year.

But we are not just elite corporate financiers, and Infantino is not a leader of dignity and sensitivity who thinks like this. He’s a scallywag. But most of all, sport is not an asset class, and the debate is entirely moot. You don’t ever “trade” your most precious and unique belongings, you pass them down to the next generation. Football passion is the ultimate family heirloom.

 

Sport is also royal and ancient.

LIV won’t see 2027, and golf has been the major “sport asset class” in play in the last 5 years. The status of its main star is telling.

Bryson De Chambeau, great golfer that he is, does not have the respect of his sport, and after his myriad shenanigans over the last 5 years, was already in danger of missing the “dignity” cut. What he did with rules officials in Birkdale for sure hasn’t improved that situation.

One of the core tenets of the governance of sport has always been to reject all forms of government interference. We, for good or bad, self-govern. This summer has now killed all that stone-dead. A box belonging to Pandora has been wrenched open, and chilling precedents have been set, even before these new investors now really get their teeth into it.

Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcomes. 

Bryson is being very badly advised, or isn’t listening, because golf still likes its heroes cut from a certain cloth, and it is very unclear why he chooses to walk in the exact opposite direction. What becomes of Master De Chambeau post-LIV will be very illuminating because golf this July honourably stood firm, having none of it, in what was one of the most important and optimistic moments of the summer.

The Royal and Ancient held the line, and were rewarded with a great Sunday denouement and an outstanding new champion. 👏

Football less so.

 

Every World Cup is really a cultural time-stamp.

That’s the real value of the event that happens only every 4 years. It’s a natural pit-stop for a State of the Nation reflection on our football, yes, but also on the basic humanity and global culture of that exact moment in time. Never more-so than this year.

Each of us will take different things from this American Mondiale, and today’s Column is about mine.

The dramatic news this week should not cloud some of the other deeper messages of this year’s edition.

I was dreamin’ when I wrote this

Forgive me if it goes astray

When I woke up this mornin’

Could’ve sworn it was judgment day

Prince

We are not dreaming, sadly, and a civil war in football does feel like judgement day. The metaphor is stark for a world that seems to have lost all of its values and decency, and gone completely astray. 

The Straight of Hormuz is still closed, Ukraine and Russia burn, Marine LePen looks on the brink of creating a political earthquake in Europe, and our stock market valuations are still partying recklessly like it was 1999, (when the dotcom bust and 9/11 were only months away). As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Twins Towers, who would have bet money, back then, that in 2026 the city would be run by a Muslim Communist?

Very dark thoughts bounce around the head like panicked protons in CERN. Nothing makes sense.

Oh to have one of those simple minds of the comfortably numb. It would be so much easier to get through the day. 

 

With great power always comes great responsibility.

None of us should be surprised. All the signs were there. The peace prize, the arse-licking, it all tracks. Money and power are now all that matters. And power without soul and dignity has no limits.

Nothing articulates that better than the bullying attempt to get a red card overturned. Worse than the gesture itself, grotesque in the extreme, was the real sadness in seeing so many of our American friends (many of high profile and intellect) unable to understand the full import of making that call. Bryson understood it all too well.

Rules don’t matter, Donald can pardon anyone he wants, bullying is rewarded, the good guys don’t win. In this summer of sport, a new set of stones was brought down from Mount Sinai. 

Our metaphor holds. Values generally have changed for the worst, and daddy has become mean. 

The hegemon has definitely gone rogue, and that alone has to be the real State of the Nation signal from this World Cup. The kindly Policeman of the World, that we have all taken for granted, has morphed into the playground heavy, leaning on a compromised and weak leader of a global institution (FIFA), for selfish benefit.

It didn’t need to be like this Uncle Sam. We always knew you weren’t a saint, but we thought you had our back, wore some kind of white hat, and would always show us the way. Post-war, many working-class kids all over the world viewed America and its free market capitalism as a lighthouse, a land of opportunity and social mobility.

Now? Who knows the long-term damage of all this? 

Trump should remember the immortal words of one of his own cultural icons, the legendary Stan Lee

And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come great responsibility!

The first ever Spider-Man comic.

 

There is eventually a price for selling your soul.

Even before this week’s earthquake news, the World Cup in America under Trump had left ugly scars, that require reflection. And not just on football. 

On modern heroes and leaders, on the tyranny of the majority, on the inelegance of the bully, on the imperious rise of imperfect tech, on 60-year-long failure. But above all that, on the cardinal risks of selling your soul for money and power.

”Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil.”

Million-dollar seats, refreshment ad breaks that disfigure the game format, unwatchable SuperBowl halftime shows designed for God-knows-what audience, winners’ rings. This FIFA jamboree has been a significant step-change in the avarice of our industry. The event that is our premium brand flagship reduced to a classless treasure-hunt for a fistful of dollars, always ready to drop all decorum to count up a few more. 

All that was bad enough, but we now see that those micro examples of greed were always just the canaries in the coal mine of what is now in plain sight. After all the medals have been handed out, cups lifted, what we have really witnessed this summer is an American cultural takeover of the game invented in England’s green and pleasant public schools.

These people will now set its course.

Who would manage the sell-off? Thrive Eternal, owned and led by billionaire investor Joshua Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, will lead the “proposed investor group for FFE”.

The Times

In one paragraph enough bile in the mouth to turn your stomach.

It’s not just capitalism, it’s crony capitalism. The barbarians at the gate have reached a majority stake in our ship called Dignity.

That’s dramatic.

But what practically does this mean for our future? After the hostile take-over, delivered bloodlessly by the compliant CEO, what will they now do with this full control?

A 64-team edition next time, a biennial Club World Cup, the European closed Superleague? Sell forward much of the tomorrow’s revenues to give the CEO enough money to buy all the votes he needs to retain power forever and a day? All of the above?

Sadly I’m not sure I even care at this point. I’ve done my bit warning about the dangers of this direction of travel. My conscience is clear. So I will likely be on the west coast of a lake, perhaps even in a dinghy, definitely sipping down Raki, always following the money reading Maynard Keynes. Remembering all too well what ultimately happened to Jonny Favourite’s egg. 

One always hopes for a Captain Kirk to beam us all up. But those are very thin on the ground in 2026.

 

A bear market in leadership.

Trump is what he is, and many of the people who voted for the Republican Party knew that very well. He was and is the “lesser evil, hold your nose” candidate for many, sick to the back teeth of aggressive woke policies. Few of us really expected him to ever understand the dignity of sport and its rules. Any of his golfing partners, including Bryson, should know that well by now.

But here is a guy now pushing the very boundaries of every (professional) decency we used to hold dear. He is not even hiding the squalor anymore. 

This represents nothing other than legitimised insider trading. Grand larceny directly compromising the free markets that are the basis of the American Dream. Scarcely believable although, by now, we are all immune to his rank amorality.

But Infantino? He is the current custodian of the game, and he has let the fox into the hen-house. 

Does he have no pride, no self-esteem? An oleaginous sycophant whose legacy will be damning and definitive. Watching him nodding and clapping like a seal when Trump speaks is truly repulsive. I actually feel for Gianni. He must have no one close to him who cares, coz I’m pretty certain my own family and friends would not let this pass if it was me.

Watching Donny and Jonny this summer tells us tragically that we are now children of a lesser God. In movies, music, politics and finance, it is undeniable that our leaders and icons are just no longer as impressive as they once were. Where are the current Paul Newmans or Audrey Hepburns, the David Bowies or Aretha Franklins, the Margaret Thatchers or Tony Benns, the gravitas of a James Goldsmith or Steve Jobs.

We see the top of the tree in all disciplines now inhabited by lightweight, disposal chancers, specialising in grift and opportunism. Where the crafted populist narrative du jour, more than actual facts, can command the “engagement” of the followers in life. And that’s the word, isn’t it? Followers. The only currency of leadership in 2026.

Intelligent people however don’t ever equate popularity with value, and the greats never write themselves into the history books by consensus-building. Serious leadership is almost always about having the courage to take your people in a different direction, on a harder road. Speak up even when it’s not in your personal interests. Eventually fall on your sword if for the greater good. 

Every people has the governors it deserves

Joseph De Maistre

Football has managed itself appallingly since the generation of Sir Stanely Rous passed stewardship of the game to the robber-baron lineage of Havelange, Blatter, and Infantino. So maybe we all deserve the pathetic pantomime we have seen in this World Cup, culminating in a horrendous final on and off the field?

And now the carpet-baggers.

Yes maybe we do deserve it! Ask any football fan if they would want Mason Greenwood in their attack next year. When you realise what the answer will always be…

… it is naive to then think that the leaders of our game will be St Francis of Assisi. Or John F Kennedy. 

Let’s allow a more authentic Johnny summarise all that much better…..

You wanna live that kind of life, I wish you the best. I’ll be on the other side somewhere.

Everyman for himself now. 

Big bureaucracy is on the run everywhere in 2026. The real world is reversing everything about globalisation, and questioning the validity of all pan-national institutions, like the EU, United Nations, Davos, NATO. For the first time in our lives much of what was created post-war at Bretton Woods and Potsdam is being dismantled.

FIFA, remember, is the ultimate international unaccountable bureaucracy, with all the usual platitudes of inclusive democracy. It too is more vulnerable than it thinks. 

In these weeks it has shown just how close to dictatorship it can become, through the tyranny of the majority. A principles-free and talentless bureaucrat like Infantino can exercise absolute power by appealing to the “under-represented” with their hands out, who can deliver him the votes he needs.

Christ, he even looks like Palpatine.

That trend is everywhere in the social economics of the West today, and our metaphor is still delivering. You get elected by promising free shit to people, paid for by soaking the rich. That’s FIFA by any other name, and the rich would be European football in this case.

Europe and its clubs pay for the global game, let’s be crystal clear on that. It is they who employ the players who put on the show of international football. Gianni then gets to large-it with the likes of Global Fan Ambassador Adriana Lima, putting on the greatest show on earth, because he has no Cost of Sales.

In short, the tyranny of the majority surfacing a dictator, handing him a multi-billion business, with no cost line, that he can then sell to his mates.

Ouch!

We have indeed all fucked up, and this boil now needs lanced quickly. UEFA has a big couple of years coming up and it needs more than just rattling sabres.

It’s time to go to the mattresses. Now or never.

Do they have what it takes? Do they have the gravitas to corral all those national federations? Will the rich European clubs even listen to UEFA?

We are about to find out, and all scenarios are possible now. Power is decentralising and the patriotic nation state is back in vogue.

If America just showed us this summer that it isn’t going to be a benevolent policeman anymore, I’m afraid that it’s everyman for themselves from now on. 

“Get tooled up”, as they would suggest in Glasgow.

 

Don’t believe your engagement, it lies. 

The time-stamp of this World Cup will now always be branded as peak American arrogance and the glorification of greed. It is a message way beyond Association football, and the clearest of alarms that our world and its values have dramatically changed in the 4 years since last time. 

Popularity does indeed seduce, and the Portuguese Ronaldo in this tournament, with his millions of followers, gave us another vivid lesson. The dopamine from his engagement stats has protected his ego from the truth of his obvious pitiful decline, and he isn’t intelligent enough to separate the two.

Hubris remains humanity’s most ironic inside joke. If only someone had created a cool character to describe that.

And with today’s human Icarus dazed and confused, what of the rise of the machine? 

If this World Cup has been a terrible advert for man’s leadership, it hasn’t done much for the machine either. And in this tipping-point moment of civilisation’s mass adoption of AI, that’s a big message coming out of this summer.

 

Technology doesn’t have a soul.

Be careful what you wish for.

Gary Kasparov, the first chess champion to ever lose to an AI computer (Deep Blue) is a credible witness to call to the stand, and he delivers the definitive opinion.

The most perfect, omniscient technology in the world, which VAR clearly is not, let alone the ball sensor, can’t substitute for transparency in its selective use.

Technology, like VAR, like AI, in superficial or corrupt hands, becomes an insidious tool for manipulation and propaganda. In football this summer it has undermined core faith in the integrity of the product, whilst removing the inherent joy and emotion of footballing immediacy.

A lose/lose for the ages. Copyright dumb and dumber. 

This has been a tournament utterly defined by the idea of selective re-refereeing by tech. In America, the geographical home of innovation, football is subconsciously showing us an urgent imperative to revisit all our objectives for AI. Specially when no bugger can yet make any serious business out of all the AI capex trillions that solely prop-up our economies and stock markets.

 

The balm that soothes all.  

With so much to taint this World Cup off the field, it would still be an error to not consider what happened on the field. There is no way today’s Column doesn’t talk about the football. No matter how ugly the portrait of Dorian Gray may be in the attic of FIFA, we all still see every day nothing but a handsome young man in his prime.

Thank God.

 

Cometh the hour, Cometh the man. Always.

If this wasn’t an epic World Cup full of leading men, it did have some very valid cameo performances. The purity and dignity of Japan and Luka Modric, the compelling appeal of Africa’s teams and their fans, the glorious odyssey of the mother of Nico Williams.

But sport always reminds us she is a cruel mistress. It’s 5 minutes here or there and your destiny is set. Spill a shot as a substitute goalie and that’s your life defined forever. The son of Cholo doesn’t track back and Spain score; he also scuffs a very decent chance for redemption and penalties.

It’s dramatically harsh and always has been. We love it. 

Zenga, ci hai fatto perdere un Mondiale!

Walter has never lived a day since Naples without being reminded that he “lost us a World Cup”. Imagine the regret of that, every breath you take.

But in New Jersey, thankfully, at least the best team won. We need to realise and accept that Spain has deservedly been the dominant school of football for a full 20 years now, and was always going to prove it here. Our metaphor in the same moment poignantly offers us the binary choice our wider society now faces; between a Ferran Torres and a Javier Bardem.

Then there was the GOAT. A short guy in his forteith year who decided to impose his will on history, and drag his team to a final they absolutely didn’t deserve. At this point his talent is beyond comprehension. That cross-assist with his wrong foot was as close as you get to footballing perfection, and every single one of us reading this knows that to be true. On reflection it should have been his cue; he should have retired right there and then. Let Lautaro play. His last images instead in a World Cup are now all entirely negative, and that’s unfair, but his greatness remains intact. Football always trascends. The two greatest figures in all of Argentine history are footballers, and they define their nation more than Evita Peron or Belgrano.

Ps: what about the complete lack of long-range shooting and spectacular goals from distance. Anyone going to mention that?

Pps: one reads that the American football team has to pay half its wage packet winnings from this World Cup to the women’s game, like a 1950s husband giving his wife her housekeeping allowance. Is this really independent feminism in 2026?

 

Waiting for Godot.

The real “story” this year has to be England, and it truly is becoming Shakespearean. The richest football nation in the world, the inventor of the game, and yet the serial underachiever.

Backbeat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out

Noel Gallagher

A German coach (don’t mention the war), the Falklands match-up (oh, do mention the war), the magnificent resilience in the Azteca, Jude, and the ultimate inevitable surrender in another big match, from a winning position. Something now resembling a 60-year choke.

Moods turn on a dime, the same tactical decisions, lauded when successful, are damned the next day if not bringing home the bacon. Football is very fickle, but nothing new there.

So when will it ever come home? Most likely not until an entire nation drops its hubris and entitlement. Sadly, like Godot, that may never materialise. English football and its coaches today just can’t match the Spanish school, and their best chance of actually winning something may be in starting to admit exactly that.

 

What are we left with?

The World Cup, Wimbledon, the (British) Open, are in the rear mirror, and the summer of sport is over. It walks into the lilac sunset asking some serious questions of what we now want our elite games to be, and represent.

That deserves a serious answer.

Here is mine. 

Only when you look the devil squarely in the eye, as we are all now forced to do with FIFA, do you see the real truth about value and goodness.

As you get older, with many more yesterdays than tomorrows, you come to realise that what really matters in life is having the respect, and perhaps admiration, of your peers. Moreso in sport, because that life is played-out in storied arenas, in front of the eyes of the world, and people really care. You are either in the Pantheon or you’re not.

You normally find out at the end. 

All true champions are obsessed with competing, besting their life rival, but real greatness also requires a full acknowledgment from the sport and its fans that you wore it well, with integrity and ideally panache. Like a Gary Sobers. Like Kevin. Never more poignantly showcased than in “Chris & Martina: The Final Set.” 

Legacy is the respect of your peers. That’s what they put in your coffin. Not much else.

Among the very few I liked, the fewer I respected, the only one I envied.

This is sport. And this is life. 

 

See you in 4 years?

Yes, every World Cup is a pit-stop, a time-stamp, a metaphor, a breath, where one contemplates everything around them. I leave this edition with one overarching thought:

Where will our sport, and our world, be in four years time?

I’d love to be optimistic. But sadly, I’m not comfortably numb.