Cult of celebrity feels like a fundamental tension at the heart of the game

The Guardian

21-06-2025

It is in the details that the truest picture emerges. Quite aside from the endless politicking, the forever-war with Uefa, the consorting with autocrats and the intriguing broadcast rights and partnership deals, there has been, not a new, but growing sense during the Club World Cup that Fifa doesn't really get football. There is something cargo-cultish about it, creating outcomes without engaging in processes.
Perhaps that is inevitable with Gianni Infantino's style of leadership; like all populists, he is big on vision and short on practical reality. It was there in the expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams.
OK: how will the tournament be organised? Sixteen groups of three. Won't that mean either lots of potential dead rubbers (one team from each group goes through) or opportunities for collusion (two go through)? Oh, actually, the four-team groups at the 2022 have worked so well, we'll go with 12 groups of four. Sure, but then you have eight best third-place teams going through which: a) diminishes jeopardy; and b) undermines sporting integrity by giving an advantage to teams in later groups because they have a clearer idea of what is needed to progress, again offering opportunities for collusion. No response, because all that matters is a bigger tournament equals more votes for the president and (in the short term) more revenue.
One of the oddest aspects of the Club World Cup has been the way players are greeted on to the pitch individually, like swimmers before an Olympic final. At Ulsan HD v Mamelodi Sundowns, they may as well have gone on and introduced the crowd as well. Who needs this? Who wants this? Why does the first player out have to hang around for several minutes waiting for the 22nd player?
For well over a century the two teams have walked out side by side. This has always been part of the gladiatorial ritual of football. This is the contest: one team against another. But as Fifa has sought desperately to improve attendances and stimulate interest, its focus has become more and more on the individual.
That is why there was all that talk, much of it emanating from Infantino, about Cristiano Ronaldo potentially securing a short-term deal with a qualifier, and why qualifying was gerrymandered to ensure the presence of Lionel Messi's Inter Miami. But there is a potentially self-defeating short-termism to this.
While the desire to see Messi is entirely understandable, especially as he enters the late autumn of his career, Inter Miami are sixth in MLS's Western Conference, their form having disintegrated since the end of March. From an MLS point of view, the ideal scenario would have been for one of their sides to beat a storied opponent, perhaps push on to the quarter-finals, generating interest in North America's domestic league. The best way of doing that would have been to have the best-possible MLS representation, but Inter Miami are in no sense one of the best three sides.
As it is, none of the MLS sides won their opening game, although Porto's dismal form and Messi's dead-ball ability may get Inter Miami through anyway. It might also be pointed out that Auckland City are not the best side in New Zealand, nor are Red Bull Salzburg one of the best 12 sides in Europe, but the consequences are greater for the host nation, particularly when there is apparently so much potential for growth.
The celebritisation of football is not new, but it is intensifying. When Paul Pogba returned to Manchester United in 2016 and, rather than speaking of the Premier League or becoming a European champion, said he dreamed of winning the Ballon d'Or, it felt shocking, a player elevating his own interests and a silly bauble above the glory of team success. But that has become normal. Improving his Ballon d'Or chances is one of the reasons Neymar left Barcelona for Paris Saint-Germain; even Trent Alexander-Arnold mentioned the Ballon d'Or as a motivation for joining Real Madrid (good luck with that from right-back).
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The marketing of football is almost all focused on individuals. That's been particularly so at the Club World Cup, but it is true of almost every competition. Even the way lineups are introduced on Sky's Premier League coverage, with the players performing a fake celebration, seems designed to introduce them as characters.
Yet there is a tension there. While individual players are celebrated, the increasing use of data means image and self-projection may never have mattered less. The stats will find the talent, even if the talent has no gift for self-promotion. At the same time, the best teams have never been so cohesive, so integrated.
PSG provide a useful case study. For years they signed stars with seemingly little thought to how they might play together. Although their immense resources won them the French league, they habitually choked in Europe. Then there was a change of approach, the money was spent not on Neymar and Messi but on players on the way up who still had a hunger for success and who could play together. The result was the Champions League and, despite their defeat by Botafogo, possibly the inaugural world title in the expanded format.
If it was conceived as a two-stage strategy – build the brand through celebrity, then win the actual competitions – it has worked to perfection; in reality, it's probably trial and error that has brought them to this point. At Real Madrid, meanwhile, Florentino Pérez still seems locked in his galáctico vision of football, insisting on adding Kylian Mbappé to a squad that already contained Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo, resulting in imbalance and an expensive downturn in form.
This goes deeper than transfer policies, though. This feels like a fundamental tension at the heart of the game. What, after all, is success in modern football? Manchester City for the past decade have been a much better football team than PSG, and yet they have nothing like the brand awareness. Is success winning trophies, or making money? Is it winning trophies or becoming more famous? Is it winning trophies or marketing the individual?
The individual walk-ons only blur the lines further, suggest organisers who struggle with the concept that football, perhaps more than any other sport, is a game of the team.