The Inimitable Power of the World Cup
We watched what was probably the greatest World Cup final in the history of the tournament, and it was decades of storylines colliding with top-tier talent from some of the greatest soccer players this century. Billions of people were invested in this tournament altogether, and billions watched the final between Argentina and France. What I noticed on social media during and after the intense match was how the World Cup was being compared to other professional leagues and exclaimed how these other leagues and tournaments should try to emulate the energy and passion that you see every four years in the tourney.
Problem is, its impossible to duplicate.
World Cup is on a league of its own, as it took decades for it to garnish the power and passion it currently possesses. If say the NBA, NFL, or MLB ever wanted to even come close to matching its money, ratings, power, and cultural relevancy, it would require making changes that very very few owners would ever agree with. Even if the other professional leagues were open to some wild ideas, nothing can compete with the passion of playing for your country, your people, your culture, as well as having to wait literally four years for another opportunity to obtain the title. No other major sport can compete with the global stranglehold and organization FIFA has on all the professional soccer leagues underneath its umbrella.
The first major draw of the World Cup is the rarity of the tourney, which is every four years. Good luck convincing the NFL to have a Super Bowl every four years and spend three years collecting statistics to rank the teams and have them compete in a variety of smaller tourneys to qualify for a playoff. Makes no sense to Roger Goodell and the owners he works for, but because FIFA has such dominant control, they have organized year-round events of smaller but still passionate tournaments among nations to determine who gets a chance for the main prize and who has to do some extra battling for an outside shot---or who needs years before even making an attempt. That rarity of the championship makes it that much more valuable, that much more desirable, and the celebration and release of euphoria is infinitely deeper.
Find me any professional sports league in North America willing to give smaller titles to teams with the best regular season and have their actual Playoffs and Finals occur every four years. Good luck.
Liga MX went the opposite direction and has TWO champions every season----which I actually would love to see Major League Baseball consider (that argument I’ll make another day).
Second off, the depth of talent that exists in the world of soccer just doesn’t happen in any other professional sport or game in the universe. Lionel Messi was noticed by top soccer clubs in Europe before he was even a teenager, M’Bappe was being coached while playing soccer at age SIX. The talent pool is fathoms deep, and all these countries invest money in youth programs, development courses, and a wild variety of other services that creates these soccer soldiers that breathe the sport and can play it blindfolded. Did anyone see the United States national basketball team try to recruit a high school LeBron James in the way the Cleveland Cavaliers did? Absolutely not.
Combine that with the fierce relegation/promotion system that exists in almost every top-tier soccer league and it becomes a brutal battle for talent among professional teams around the world. The Oakland Athletics is never going to strive to find the next Mike Trout to send to their farm system because their position in Major League Baseball is guaranteed and certified, whether or not they want to actually compete---and nowadays they have openly chosen to stop competing. But a team like Nottingham Forest is not certain they get to remain in the Premier League every year, which is why they have to be in a constant state of improvement and maximum effort, or their placement disappears and the money drops.
The path to the World Cup involves many paths of relegation/promotion through tournaments over the years, so if you aren’t invested or as committed, you may find yourself shockingly out of the tournament altogether like what happened in 2018 when we saw the United States, Italy, and the Netherlands suddenly out of the tourney and surprises like Panama and Iceland entering instead. This all but guarantees top talent hunting and producing year after year.
World Baseball Classic and the FIBA World Cup still doesn’t see the depth of talent searching and production from the nations competing, and even the athletes themselves don’t see as much value in those tournaments as soccer players wanting to compete at the highest level possible. WBC and FIBA is not the highest level of their sport, that distinction belongs to Major League Baseball and the National Basketball League respectively (who also aren’t as invested in the global tournaments as they should).
That being said, another big advantage from FIFA is their century-long existence which has allowed them to evolve with the times, fix their problems, and grow along with the rest of the world as technology improved and we were able to hear the games on radio, and then ultimately see the games on television---which is something Major League Baseball infamously has failed to do. Back to the global tournaments however, the World Baseball Classic and modern iteration of FIBA World Cup are from this century, so maybe they primarily need time to be more of a global tradition like what the World Cup has become.
But they’re not soccer.
Lastly, soccer is the most popular sport in the entire universe, and no matter how good your hockey league or tournament is/can become, it’s not the Beautiful Game, its not Football, its not the poetic game that the entire world knows how to play and is madly in love with. Cricket is huge but not global, same with basketball and baseball. Soccer however? It has its cultural footprint in every continent, and the World Cup knows how to harness this unduplicatable (not a word, don’t care) sports magic and maximize its dramatic potential.
You’re never going to come close to the World Cup, this world is too embedded and in love with soccer for any other professional sporting institution to come even close to its impact and importance to countries and people across the globe. Despite all of FIFA’s wild arsenal of problems, they’ve organized a nearly perfect system which has essentially forced all leagues and tournaments to step in line and connect with each other to establish a perfect pipeline of talent to the main tourney every four years.
Don’t try to imitate the inimitable. The World Cup is special, sacred, and one of a kind. Enjoy it, embrace it, learn from it, but don’t you dare try to challenge it.
P.S. And congratulations to Lionel Messi, may your legacy finally escape Diego Maradona’s overwhelming shadow and become its own special part of Argentinean history.