Tremendous!

So, we’re what, a third of the way through the 2026 FIFA World Cup? There are a thousand things to hate about FIFA (greed and corruption, mainly, not to mention the expansion from 32 to 48 teams), about all the Americanized changes that have been implemented this time around (forced advertising “hydration” breaks), about some of the more frustrating aspects of football (diving), but I must also say, it’s been a mostly great watch so far. It helps that Canada is co-hosting (Canada and Mexico are very much junior partners to the American show) and that Canada actually has a good team for the first time in my lifetime. We have a decent chance of making it to the round of 16, which would be quite an achievement for Canada. 

It’s also been hilarious to watch all the little reels and videos of fan behaviour that my wife dutifully sends my way each day (this World Cup is the only time in the four years since I went off social media that I felt the faintest hint of a minuscule twinge of regret… it quickly passed). Watching the Scottish Tartan Army take over a mid-season baseball game in Boston or an Italian discover free soda refills or a lone joyous Japanese fan dancing in a pre-match sea of Dutch orange have been a delight to behold. 

At any rate, it’s been fun. It’s also been interesting to watch American mega-NFL stadiums host these matches. And to listen to the (usually) British commentators marvel at the glittery air-conditioned venues in cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Dallas. These stadia bear scant resemblance to even the most hallowed European football grounds with their technological overload and general over-the-top American-ness (for lack of a better term). They are, truly, a sight to behold. 

This morning, I clicked on an article in The New York Times that ranked the sixteen World Cup venues. I have only set foot in one of them (Vancouver) so I am hardly qualified to evaluate the rankings themselves (Monterrey looks pretty amazing!), but I was struck by an innocuous few sentences in the entry evaluating the stadium in Dallas. After lamenting the location (closer to Fort Worth than Dallas) and the logistical challenges of getting to it, the writer said this:

Once you’re inside, though, it’s a tremendous experience. The big screen is so striking that it’s difficult not to watch play on that rather than look further down at the live action.

How interesting, I thought, that a screen so huge that it draws the eye away from what you’re there to see is described as “tremendous.” What a fascinating little window into our techno-cultural moment. 

I’ve been to a handful of football matches in Europe, three times in Munich, once in Frankfurt, and once in Madrid. Each time, there were screens, yes, but they were small, and off to the side, usually behind the goals (or thereabouts). They were not immediately above the centre circle. They were not enormous. They were not the point of the show. The football on the pitch was why people were there. That’s where people looked. If there was a goal, there was a short replay on the screens, but that was it. In general, the American spectacle of assaulting you with noise and advertising and (often highly contrived) hype from screens pretty much every spare second was absent. The hype came organically. I suspect that a sentence like, “the big screen is so striking that it’s difficult not to watch the live action” would have been greeted with bewilderment by most of the fans in attendance. I am almost certain it would not have been described as “tremendous.” 

My European football experiences all took place at least six years ago. Maybe it’s all changed by now, who knows. Maybe it’s now just normal everywhere to pay exorbitant sums of money to go to billion dollar cathedrals to watch live sports on gargantuan screens. Maybe we quite literally don’t know what to do with ourselves any more unless we’re watching something mediated to us via a screen and saturated with marketing and hype (how else would we know if it was real?). I hope not. But, well… 

I’m not normally prone to praising Toronto for anything, but I was simultaneously bewildered and pleasantly surprised to see it ranked #5 on the Times list of World Cup stadia. It’s by far the smallest of the World Cup venues. But it also looks like an old-fashioned European football ground. There are gaps in the corners between the four stands. It’s soccer specific. The fans are close to the pitch instead of miles away in a massive bowl. 

And the screens are off in the ends. Not central. Small. 

Allez les Rouges! Go Canada!