Let’s be gentle and not say that football is under a new attack. Let’s call it an unnecessary experiment.
Fifteen months before the start of the FIFA World Cup in the USA, Canada, and Mexico – a tournament doubly premier in terms of both the number of host countries (3) and the number of participating national teams (48) – unease has arisen among people devoted to football as a game.
It has been announced that the halftime break of the 2026 World Cup final will be extended from fifteen to thirty minutes to make room for an event known as the “halftime show.” The band Coldplay was the first to sign on as performers, and there is no doubt that many more names from the top of the global showbiz scene will appear on stage at the biggest sporting event on the planet.
Many consider this adoption of an element from American football – specifically the Super Bowl – a very risky move. The more die-hard fans will say it’s a potential football artifact.
The Super Bowl is the showcase of the advertising industry. This year, a 30-second ad cost eight million dollars. The main creatives from the global football headquarters surely had these figures in mind before announcing their ‘plus program’ for the final in New York on July 19, 2026.
Most followers of football news barely noticed this. The main reason for the lack of broader debate about a proposal that strikes at the core of football is the spell cast by the ball, the scoreline, and the adrenaline rushes brought by top national leagues, the Champions League, and the Nations League every three to four days.
Here, I believe with full justification, I must ask: Will the planet go to the 2026 FIFA World Cup with one game and come back with Amero-football?
As a warning from the “American dream,” I’ll mention that TV viewership of NBA games has halved over the last two decades – partly because the new generation’s habits weren’t understood, and partly because games were turned into showbiz spectacles.
Football has existed, with certain modifications, for over a century and a half in its current form. It’s part of the daily lives of people from Vladivostok to Guadalajara, played in hundreds of spaceship-like stadiums, and on countless little fields where barefoot kids chase the ball. According to FIFA, four billion people are connected to football – either with a supporter’s scarf or in spirit. To them, it’s a “window,” a life, and a hope.
So I must also ask: Why tamper with the essence of this beautiful game?
If things continue this way, a football match will last until the final commercial airs! There will always be new formats and justifications for airing more ads.
And one serious problem is already here: with the introduction of VAR, the spotlight has shifted from players to algorithm-experts hunched over monitors. They are the ones who signal when the crowd should celebrate a goal. Football heroes have flown off the pitch and landed on video boards. A match has its own flow – why drag it into the back rooms of VAR to measure how much one player leaned on another at midfield? Goal-line and offside sensors are more than enough.
The game is already “chopped up.” And what will it look like if the American concept is copied thoroughly – with referees explaining every decision to the audience, or with halftime lasting thirty minutes like it will in New Jersey next July?
That might work in places where, after the game, people talk more about burgers than about the moments of brilliance or shocking misses that, here in Europe, are still the first thing we see the next morning.
And luckily – we’re not alone!
