OFFSIDE | World Cup 2026: Mbappe, Ronaldo, and Trump – the Good, the Sad, and the Ugly
Hello and welcome to another edition of Offside. Yesterday was a rather odd day without a single match, which made all football fans feel like a drug addict without their regular fix. After a month of treating our circadian rhythm the way civic bodies treat Indian cities during the rainy season, it’s time to take a breather before the action starts again and cast a cold eye, Yeats style.Is this the best World Cup ever? That depends on your age.For us millennials, 2006 was the best one before social media algorithms decided to ruin our lives. It had the last gathering of the old gods and the first glimpse of the new ones. Zidane’s final dance, Cristiano Ronaldo’s emergence, Messi’s introduction, Ronaldinho’s last aura tournament, Rooney’s madness, Italy’s defensive epic, Germany’s rebirth, Portugal’s shithousery and the headbutt that became football’s Mona Lisa of madness.Every match felt like a Champions League final reunion, but the stats would deem that, at 2.3 goals per game, it was a poor showing. 2026, on the other hand, has had 2.92 goals per game, the best since Mexico 1970 (2.97), but there’s more to football than goals.And even accounting for recency bias, this tournament has had it all: last-minute winners, underdogs ripping up the script, a Viking warrior who doubles up as a wholesome meme, a dictator who won’t stop dictating, a GOAT who has tapped into the Fountain of Youth, and even an English team that has injected a degree of magic realism into the mix by rediscovering its national identity of keeping a Kipling-like stiff upper lip and not losing their heads after getting a red card.There is a President playing UNO cards, fans who drink cities dry, fans who clean stadiums and get scolded by their wives, endless anime edits that are the biggest intellectual argument against AI slop, and one of the greatest World Cup chants in memory: Aussie boys are on a bender, T**** is a sex ********.So, without discussing whether this is the greatest, let’s instead run a cold eye, Yeats style, over the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good
Even before the tournament started, there was consternation from perennial Cassandras that this would be a bloated, lopsided tournament thanks to the 48-team format, with mismatches that would result in cricket scores. It certainly felt like that when Germany whipped Curacao 7-1, but this has been a tournament where the underdogs have ripped up the script time and again. Cabo Verde became everyone’s favourite after a team put together on LinkedIn refused to lose a single match in normal time, holding the mighty Spain and only falling to a Messi special after extra time.In 2022, Morocco were a fairytale, but this time around the Hakimi-led squad look even more dominant, thrashing co-hosts Canada 3-0 and promising to give France a run for their money.Then there are the goals, particularly the late ones. As the BBC noted, eight of the 24 knockout ties so far had a winning goal after the 85th minute, while Argentina’s winner against Egypt was the 10th 90th-minute winning goal of the tournament.
Speaking of old gods and new ones, this World Cup has seen its best players step up to the plate. Lionel Messi is playing with a freedom that we haven’t seen from him since his peak Barcelona days, scoring and assisting at will, with the exception of when he is taking a penalty. Harry Kane has got rid of the Spurs curse after moving to Bayern Munich, brought his Bundesliga scoring touch to the world stage, and looks capable of scoring and pulling the strings in every match.Among the new gods, Erling Haaland has found a wider audience for his craft, with fans in awe of everything he does: his social media posts, his diet, and even his hair. The only downside is that now they are singing his Manchester City theme song.
And finally, we have “Dictator” Mbappe, whose meme-image has taken over the real world as he leads France with the kind of firm French leadership that hasn’t been seen since the days of Charles de Gaulle. Paraguay tried every sort of dirty trick to stop the French and failed, and in Mbappe’s own words, France can put its hand in the s****.
The Sad
Western logic dictates that bad must follow the good, and there have been a fair share of disappointments, but this one is more sad. First off has been Cristiano Ronaldo and his fans, who have repeatedly claimed he’s the GOAT, only for reality to brutally disagree. It was a painful watch for Ronaldo fans, particularly those who had seen him in his absolute pomp, as it looked like time had finally caught up with the GOAT.The other great disappointment was Brazil. Carlo Ancelotti and his eyebrow were handpicked to bring balance to the Brazilian football galaxy, but instead they huffed and puffed to get past Japan before being downed by Norway and its talismanic Viking, Haaland.
Another disappointment was Germany. There’s a fabulous book titled Das Reboot — which sounds like a Bengali man getting a second wind — but is actually one by football writer Raphael Honigstein about Germany’s return to winning ways after the international wilderness of the late 1990s. But their limp exit in a penalty shootout to Paraguay suggests that the team needs another reboot because when did Germany start losing penalty shootouts?Another deep disappointment was Uruguay, led by the enigmatic Marcelo Bielsa. They couldn’t win a single game and finished below Cabo Verde, with many blaming Bielsa’s “my way or the highway” coaching style for alienating players.Speaking of disappointments, the Dutch were knocked out in an awful penalty shootout where their players resembled stormtroopers more than footballers.
The Ugly
Now the ugly portion is a hard ask because it’s quite hard to choose what’s more annoying: seeing the same surrogate alcohol advertising ad for the zillionth time, the same conspiracy theories about FIFA favouring Messi, or the tendency of some white people to go full KKK after losing to a black person.Egypt played their hearts out in the match against Argentina and while one might argue that the VAR decision was harsh and even against the spirit of the game, it was within the rules. There’s no grand conspiracy of lizard-headed people running FIFA and deciding who reaches the final. Life isn’t an Akshay Kumar and Bobby Deol movie.Though one has to say that VAR hasn’t endeared itself. Purists have always argued that VAR robs football of its most pivotal moment: post-goal euphoria. But this time, VAR is guilty of another curious problem that people who use generative AI are familiar with: non-uniformity.There have been similar incidents that have been flagged by VAR and others that haven’t. One particular bear trap has been the post-VAR card rule, which dictates that only a red card can be shown after a VAR decision. That led to a red card for US forward Balogun, which was rescinded after a phone call from Donald Trump. Even corporate office tournaments have stricter rules than what FIFA has displayed at this World Cup.
The same was observed with the treatment meted out to Iran, who had to play under the most oppressive conditions, which perhaps gave the men’s national team a small taste of what women experience under the regime.Finally, we saw Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla launch a disgusting racist broadside at Kylian Mbappe after France beat Paraguay in a match that looked more like an MMA fight than a football match. The officiating in that match was below par, and Mbappe’s response showed that he can attack with élan beyond the football field.Meme WatchThanks to @nikhil_mehra, @kushanmitra, @novice_a, @vinit_shenoy and @sarathysatire for the memes. If you have any memes to submit, just tweet #TOIOFFSIDE and tag @nonsensicalnemo.
France vs Morocco
01:30am IST, July 10The Casablanca Derby, and a replay of the 2022 semi-final that saw France end Morocco’s fairytale.Yes, technically Casablanca is in Morocco and France are not a city, which is the sort of pedantry that ruins both football and dinner parties. But this fixture deserves the name. It is a replay of the 2022 semi-final, when France ended Morocco’s fairytale with the emotional efficiency of a tax department. Four years later, Morocco are back, France are still France, Kylian Mbappe is still moving through this tournament like a man issuing decrees, and Achraf Hakimi is waiting on the other side with unfinished business.
For those wondering why OFFSIDE would call it the Casablanca Derby, one of the pivotal moments in the classic film Casablanca — set in 1941, when the city was part of French Morocco — has the Nazis playing their music before Victor Laszlo gets the band to play the French national anthem, La Marseillaise. History, politics, love, exile and defiance all collide in one bar. Which, by football standards, is basically a quarter-final preview.France vs Morocco is technically 90 minutes of football. In reality, it is migration, memory, empire, family WhatsApp groups, PSG friendships, old colonial history, French academies, Moroccan identity and two full-backs trying to ruin each other’s evening. Somewhere in the distance, Sam is being asked to play it again, except this time nobody is quite sure whether the tune is La Marseillaise, Moroccan drums, or the Champions League anthem accidentally playing over a FIFA copyright graphic.France arrive as the tournament’s imperial force. Morocco arrive as the side that has grown tired of being described as a fairytale. In 2022, Morocco were the miracle. In 2026, they look like a team that will put three past you before you can have that thought.Warrior WatchPSG is at the centre of it all: former PSG man Kylian Mbappe and his mate Achraf Hakimi. The entire battle will centre on who comes out on top. Mbappe has seven goals and is chasing immortality as he tries to overtake Lionel Messi’s all-time World Cup record. Hakimi probably knows his every move better than most defenders. This match could potentially be, to make another laboured Casablanca reference, the end of a beautiful friendship.Battle PlanFrance’s plan is simple enough to understand and horrible to face: stretch Morocco, move the ball quickly, isolate defenders and wait for the first crack. They have Mbappe central, Barcola on the left, Dembele on the right and Olise floating as the connector. Of course, Deschamps could throw caution to the winds and pick a more balanced midfield instead of four attackers, but that would be a real shame given how well France’s front four has worked.The corrected tactical point is important: France are no longer simply giving the ball to Mbappe on the left and asking him to bend physics. Mbappe is the central danger. Barcola or Doué will be used to stretch Morocco’s right, pin Hakimi, drag the back line sideways and create central lanes for Mbappe.
France’s PSG connection makes this even more dangerous. Barcola, Doué and Dembele know Hakimi’s rhythm. They know when he gambles, when he overlaps, how quickly he recovers and where the space appears when he commits forward. France will try to make Hakimi defend his own instincts.The midfield battle is where Morocco can change the mood. If Ounahi, Amrabat and Brahim can find clean passes after regains, France will finally have to defend facing their own goal. If France win every second ball, Morocco will spend the evening clearing crosses and praying to every available deity.Dinner table conversationIf Morocco can beat France, we might just be looking at the first African World Cup champion.
