I have always been interested in ‘good’ football. By this, I mean football that is played well. This is why, in 1995, I decided to support Manchester United. It is also the reason my interest faded after Ferguson’s departure. To say that I’m a ‘glory supporter’ would undersell my disloyalty because, even in United’s heyday, I would only watch games that directly and imminently led to glory, or were most likely to showcase the team’s glorious ability.
I had no interest in a Premier League game played in September against a relegation favourite. It carried no real consequence. I wanted to see games in which United were challenged and forced to play at the edge of their ability, because that was where the magic lived.
For me, the old Champions League format was the perfect competition. Everything about it encouraged the glory I sought. Two legs, played home and away, against elite European clubs whose playing styles varied wildly. Foreign players were encountered for the first time and entire footballing cultures seemed mysterious. The conquest element of the competition was its greatest asset.
Before matches, I would sit with my dad and debate whether United could do it against Milan, Barcelona or Juventus. Neither of us could really guess. This was an age when the internet still made strange noises and Football Italia was your only real window into the wider European game. Even though United often excelled in the competition, there was always a sense of “surely not”. It felt impossible that the Premier League could produce a team capable of matching Serie A or La Liga. English football simply wasn’t sophisticated enough to beat the Italians or Spaniards. When it happened, it always felt like a product of extraordinary effort, skill and, in United’s case, a good ladle of luck. It was like watching a British man pull in a Spanish nightclub, you were left in a state of admiration and wonder.
When United won the Champions League in 1999, it genuinely felt like a moon-landing moment and is also the reason why I couldn’t bring myself to watch them play Burnley.
For someone like me, the World Cup has always produced the same feeling. The prospect of global conquest against the world’s elite creates the pressure that produces brilliance. Every team carries the nationalism of a nation’s irrational men. Some dance through the burden, while others collapse beneath it. Like the old Champions League, only the elite gain entry, and only a golden generation can hope to win.
If you can play with freedom in hell, you are rewarded with immortality.
It is everything that is great about football. Perhaps even everything that is great about life.
Or at least it was.
Now that the tournament has expanded from 32 teams to 48, with 32 sides progressing to the knockout rounds instead of 16, the pressure has been diluted. A team can now move significantly closer to qualification with a single victory.
Scotland, a nation that has spent decades waiting to make an impact on the world stage, opened their tournament against Haiti, another side with little recent World Cup pedigree. One win later and qualification already appears a realistic possibility.
That may be good news for Scotland, but it misses the point of the competition. The World Cup should offer nowhere to hide. No soft landings. No room to breathe. Every game should feel consequential.
Instead, Scotland can now approach matches against Morocco and Brazil knowing that much of the job has already been signed off. After a single victory over a side ranked 83rd in the world, the pressure has eased. That cheapens the achievement and, more importantly, the feeling that comes with it. It is like shortening the hundred-metre track or shaving the summit off the top of Everest.
The greatest tournaments force players to confront failure every minute they are on the pitch. In the final stages of a group game, you want to see the whites of a player’s eyes as they contemplate the dreams of themselves, their families and their country evaporating. You want to discover whether they can respond to that panic with a moment of genius. Some improbable piece of skill or effort that causes an entire nation to bounce. It’s the anticipation and the jeopardy which is the key to the fizz. Christmas day should always be on the line.
The expansion also makes life easier for the strongest teams. Germany’s 7–1 win over Curaçao felt inevitable before a ball had been kicked. Once Germany recovered from the early equaliser, the contest became little more than an exhibition match. Yet only four years ago, Germany were eliminated from the group stage by Japan and Spain. That possibility of failure is what made those games compelling.
Supporters of the expansion argue that it introduces an FA Cup-style element, giving smaller nations a chance at immortality. There is some truth in that. But the World Cup has always contained a spectrum of quality. The 2022 tournament included Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Wales. The difference was that weaker teams remained the exception rather than the norm. Every group-stage match still allowed for genuine danger.
The fear mattered.
Ask any Germany supporter. Lose the opening game of a World Cup and suddenly qualification becomes a difficult and uncomfortable prospect. That anxiety creates intensity. Intensity creates drama.
And so, after only a weekend of football, I find myself surprised by how bored I feel by the biggest competition football has to offer. Not because the football itself has been poor, but because the subtext has.
Perhaps the group stage is simply something to endure before the knockout rounds awaken the tournament. Perhaps I should stop worrying about the structure and simply enjoy the movement of the ball. Or perhaps I will be proved wrong when England take to the pitch on Wednesday.
Who knows what will happen?
For me, the World Cup was once a tournament that demanded answers. Now it increasingly feels like one that postpones the questions.
Tomorrow's Chip Paper 