“The World Cup is a kind of religious feast. It’s like Easter, or Passover, or Eid, but it’s for all of humanity.” — A Church of England vicar, quoted by Simon Kuper

Nick Hornby measured his (sad) life in Arsenal fixtures. The FT columnist Simon Kuper has measured his in World Cups. His new book, World Cup Fever: A Soccer Journey in Nine Tournaments, is the Kuper story told through the nine tournaments he attended as a journalist — from Italy 1990 to Qatar 2022.
World Cup Fever is as irresistible as a Maradona slalom or a Pelé feint. In 1990, three Oxford students blag their way into Italy on Mars corporate tickets, pulling out library cards at the Swiss border to prove they’re not Liverpool hooligans. In 1998, France’s World Cup victory changes Kuper’s life — he buys an apartment/office in Paris and never really leaves, even writing World Cup Fever there. In 2006, the newly reunited Germany reinvents itself as the nice guy of World Cups, and the German Football Association’s designated handler of World War Two queries receives exactly zero calls. In 2014, Brazil loses one–seven to Germany in the most stunning result in tournament history — and Kuper watches Brazilian football lovers line the road to applaud the German bus.
But, after Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, those glory days might now be history, Kuper fears. The North American World Cup this summer will be the biggest yet — forty-eight teams, three host countries, and a grifter FIFA president (Gianni Infantino) not unlike Donald Trump. What could possibly go wrong?
So who will win in 2026? Kuper thinks England have their best squad since 1966. Spain are probably the best team. Messi will be thirty-nine. But the World Cup has so many random elements that none of that really counts. What matters, a Church of England vicar told Kuper, is that the World Cup is a religious feast for all of humanity. In a time when we’re increasingly lonely and miserable, it’s the most joyous communal event we have. As the non-doctrinal Kuper promises, “it’s like Easter, or Passover, or Eid, but it’s for all of humanity.”

Five Takeaways
• Every World Cup, You Remember Where You Were. June 25th, 1978. Eight years old. The dead are still in the room.
• The Oxford Library Card. Italy 1990. Border guards, Mars tickets, and “Studenti, Oxford.”
• One–Seven: The Wall Came Down. Brazil 2014. Fans applaud the German bus. The era is over.
• A Religious Feast for All of Humanity. The biggest communal event we have. Fans hug. Shirts exchanged. Shared humanity.
• England’s Best Chance Since 1966. One in six. Spain probably the best. Messi thirty-nine. But the World Cup is random.
A
bout the Guest
Simon Kuper is a Financial Times columnist and author of Soccernomics and World Cup Fever. He lives in Paris.

References
World Cup Fever: https://www.amazon.com/World-Cup-Fever-Journey-Tournaments/dp/0008548358

About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: life measured in four-year increments
00:02:07 First World Cup: Holland 1978, sitting with the dead
00:05:45 Nine tournaments in a row: the double life of a football writer
00:09:25 Italy 1990: Oxford library cards, Italian border guards, and Mars tickets
00:12:35 Gascoigne, Cameroon, and England’s last real chance
00:16:03 USA 1994: Maradona’s primal scream and the end of Germany as villain
00:18:23 France 1998: the World Cup that changed his life
00:22:16 Korea/Japan 2002: feeling four years old in Tokyo
00:24:36 Germany 2006: Wannsee, the new Germany, and zero queries about the war
00:31:20 South Africa 2010: nation building in his parents’ backyard
00:34:26 Brazil 2014: one–seven and the end of an era
00:38:48 Russia 2018: Peruvians on Red Square and the policeman who’d never met a foreigner
00:43:46 Qatar 2022: the World Cup of the Global South
00:46:30 USA 2026: forty-eight teams, Trump, Infantino, and why we shouldn’t boycott