Tommy Martin: The World Cup is now a giant machine for generating happiness
HAPPINESS: Troy Parrott celebrates with teammates. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile.
Can we all just have a moment to say a big thank you to Gianni Infantino?
Such happiness the man has brought! We’ve spent the last week knee deep in Troy Parrott puns and admiring Heimir Hallgrimsson’s grace under pressure. We gasped at the leap that took Liam Scales above the Hungary defence to nod the ball down for Ireland’s winner in Budapest.
We marvelled at the cat-like reflexes of CaoimhĂn Kelleher and the transformation of Finn Azaz into prime Luka Modric. We cheered on Festy as he barrelled away at the Hungarian left flank and Johnny Kenny for his energy and industry in the dying moments.
Our social media feeds filled with madcap celebrations and commemorative memes, clips of the players on the razz and tearful interviews. One content creator, for no apparent reason, used generative AI to depict Troy Parrott metamorphosing into an actual parrot while celebrating his winning goal and we thought it was deadly.
And not a word for the man who made it all possible.
Nothing from the Scots either, too busy screaming like deranged orangutans at the injury-time goals from Kieran Tierney and Kenny McLean that took them to a first World Cup since 1998.
And the tiny island nation of Curaçao paid tribute to their veteran Dutch manager Dick Advocaat, who, citing personal reasons, wasn’t even there for the 0-0 draw with Jamaica that ensured they became the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup. But nothing about poor Gianni!
If it wasn’t for FIFA’s fearless leader and his genius idea to increase the World Cup to a 48-team tournament, would there be anywhere near this amount of global happiness going on right now?
They are jubilant in Jordan. They are cock-a-hoop in Cape Verde. Joy is unbridled in Uzbekistan. All these nations heading the World Cup for the first time. And then there’s the likes of Panama and Haiti, looking forward to only their second trip to the great global jamboree. Mind you, Hungary: not so happy.
There was a time when it was hard to get to the World Cup. Up until 1982 there were only 16 teams involved. Now almost a quarter of the planet’s nations can look forward to buying giant tellies and getting drunk during work hours next summer.
If you take out the ones that are more into cricket and obscure forms of wrestling and those that are merely billionaire tax havens or about to be submerged by rising sea levels, you can stick a pin anywhere into a spinning globe this morning and hit upon a nation struck down with World Cup fever.
Curaçao only has just over 155,000 inhabitants and they are going to the World Cup. That’s less than the population of Kerry, and Curaçao don’t even have David Clifford.
Even fusty old Europe is getting in on the act. There are only 16 places available for the old world for next summer’s tournament in the new world. But by the wonders of the playoff system, 28 nations get to be excited about life for the next few months, at least until next March, when 12 will feel the crushing pain which was probably their natural state anyway.
Infantino’s brainwave was to realise that the World Cup was not a football tournament but a great machine for generating happiness. By making it bigger he has created more happiness. Simples! I mean, think about it. The World Cup is so big now that even Scottish people get to be happy. This might be a first in modern times.
Plenty of misery guts pundits said Infantino was devaluing the tournament. But tell that to that guy in the CCTV footage from the pub in Cobh who climbed up on the bar while celebrating Ireland’s win, only to fall off the bar, then get right back up and rejoin the celebrations. Is he devalued? Don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical question.
Now, while the rest of us were celebrating qualification for the World Cup or at least the trifling detail of negotiating the playoffs, the FIFA head man was working hard to pay for the whole thing. There he was in the White House, networking with a host of dastardly masterminds, including Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, Elon Musk and Ronaldo.
Gianni’s mate Donald Trump had rolled out the red carpet for the Saudi Arabian ruler for the purposes of generating inward investment (mainly inward into his own family’s business accounts), hence the gala affair at which toasts were offered and mentions of the murdered Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi were politely discouraged.
Now, if there is brownnosing to be done and Saudi cash to be siphoned, Gianni is your man, and he was hard at it keeping the tap flowing on behalf of his grateful constituents in the ever-happier global football family. Indeed, there’s a lot of happiness riding on Trump-FIFA-Saudi axis this next while, given how much influence they have over upcoming World Cups which they are either hosting or bankrolling in some way.
Not that any of us care about the money side of things, when we are still buzzing with the historic national achievement of not being crap at football anymore. I’m sure the FAI got lots of money back in 1990 but presumably spent it on magic beans on the way from Italy given the state of Irish football in the decades that followed. But we still remember those days fondly.
No, hopefully the recent Parrott-related outbreak of unconfined joy continues all the way until next June and we can join all the happy folk from most corners of the world. Gianni will get his thanks from the people who run things in world football who will keep him in his job for life, and then everyone will be happy!
Though someone might need to check in on the Hungarians.
