Decisive pass, or suitable passport?

My football interest gets rekindled every four years, fueled with the excitement of watching top players Messi, Mbappe, Haaland, Ronaldo, Bellingham and the exciting new talents Lamine Yamal, Endrick and more on the World Cup stage across one compact action-packed month.

As we live in the UAE, this time due to some rights issue, we were forced to switch from traditional TV beams to digital broadcasts.

“Try Dragon Mart,” my friends informed me, but I was unsure about the stability, so I subscribed to a service offered across multi-devices. I convinced myself that if anyone at home was watching Netflix on TV, I could watch football on the tablet, or vice versa.

Unlike the last edition in Qatar 2022, for which I travelled and was privileged to watch a Fifa game instadia, this time the games were at odd hours, like 11pm and 2am. “Sorry, the games are too late for us to step out,” I informed my family at home, as we enjoyed the finger-licking buffalo wings from the comfort of our living room. The restaurants must be equally disappointed here, to miss on the footfalls! Somehow, the dry North American commentary missed the crescendo of the South American commentators screaming “Gooooooal”. I nodded to myself silently in agreement, as I dipped another taco in the salsa.

So here we are with 48 teams in the fray and many first time debutants. I scanned through the qualification criteria, and after the first round, the 32 qualifying teams have to slug it out in an absolute knockout in every match thereafter. “Isn’t this brutal?! I told my office colleagues!” as we snacked on some maple cream donuts and sipped hot French vanilla.

Something at this Fifa World Cup made me sit up and take notice of an undeniable fact. Players born in other countries are flooding other nations. I was shocked when Morocco become the first team to have 11 players on the field born outside the country, when they played against Brazil. Japan has a goalie born in the USA. The smallest country in this World Cup, Curaçao incidentally has the most players in its squad born outside their own country, and mostly in The Netherlands. And every game we watch we notice a mix and match of players who seem to have originated from different countries.

And then there are countries that pride themselves in playing 100 per cent home grown talent including powerhouses Argentina, Brazil and Columbia. Now add relatively newer teams such as Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Sweden to the list. And yes, coming back to that Morocco vs Brazil match! What a contrast – 11 migrant players vs 11 native-born, on the same field. Unprecedented indeed!

As we try to catch up with match results in the early mornings, I would opine that players across different nations now have different goals. Instead of waiting for a decisive pass, they yearn for a suitable passport!