Every four years, football briefly becomes the centre of global culture. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is already doing what it always does best: forcing billions of people to care about the same stories at the same time. This edition is the biggest in history, featuring 48 teams instead of 32, spread across three countries and 104 matches. The format is new, the geography unprecedented, the questions familiar. Who wins? Which star defines the tournament? Which underdog captures the world’s imagination?

My own relationship with football started at another World Cup. In 1998, PTV’s coverage brought the tournament into homes across Pakistan and cracked open a window to a much larger world. Dennis Bergkamp’s winner against Argentina in Marseille, that extraordinary takedown from a 60-yard pass and the outside-of-the-boot finish, made me fall in love with the Oranje on the spot. I remember the excitement around Brazil and Ronaldo, then the bewilderment of his subdued final, a performance that left a lingering sense of unease. Croatia’s run caught me too, Davor Šuker clinical up front as the debutants reached third place and announced themselves on the world stage. Around the same time, ESPN introduced me to English football, and watching Manchester United through the 1997-98 season became a lifelong attachment. What strikes me looking back isn’t just the football. It’s how quickly the sport became a key into different cultures, histories and whole societies.

That’s why football has never really been just a sport. It’s one of the most effective windows into culture, politics and social change, a lesson I absorbed through an unlikely source. Like most football-obsessed teenagers of my generation, I was addicted to the simulation game Championship Manager. Before you even started a save, the game flashed information about Kick It Out, English football’s campaign against........

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