SOCIETY TALK: Beautiful game hit by hate, bias

Finally, it's over! Wives can have their husbands’ attention for a while before the next Uefa or championships thing comes again. More importantly, they get back their free reign over the television.

An estimated 1.8 billion people watched last week's Fifa World Cup final live. In fact, the World Cup final is said to be the most-watched televised event in the world. One would assume this is a unifying event, right? Wrong!

If anything, this particular World Cup series has proven that the world is more divided than ever. And we are not talking about being divided along the teams we support. Rather, people are literally showing their ugliness on and off the pitch.

We get it. Racism and xenophobia is the ‘in thing’. Politicians all over the world are campaigning their positions on hate. But to bring such hatred to the football pitch is ridiculous.

It is not the first or last time hate has been brought to the pitch because of differences in race, culture or religion, and I’m guessing it won't be the last. Even with Fifa's moves of using more cameras, Video Assistant Referees and penalising players who cover their mouths to say something, this has still been the worst World Cup of all time.

The players were horrible to each other, the fans were extremely racist and to some extent, politicians from other countries chimed in on the racism and xenophobic attacks. Kylian Mbappe and a female Paraguayan senator got into a heated exchange on the social media platform X. The female senator wrote a tirade of racist comments targeted at the French player after Mbappe refused to shake hands with the Paraguayan goalkeeper at the end of the match, after which the keeper threw the football he was carrying into Mbappe's back. The Paraguayan team had been viciously attacking Mbappe all through the match, and their aggression towards the player was intensified after Mbappe scored the winning goal.

Meanwhile, Argentinian fans were screaming racial profanities and making monkey noises at the popular YouTube star iShowSpeed, when he showed his support for Switzerland over Argentina in the quarterfinals. The Argentinian team was seen to be favoured, especially during their games against Egypt and Cape Verde, with the referees siding with the Argentine claims of foul plays and disregarding penalty shouts, goals and other grievances of the opposing teams.

While the players were roughing each other up and the fans chanted their racist chants, I walked down the lane of sweet sentimental moments of my youth as we huddled around the one TV in the house and stayed up late to watch football finals. My youth was passed in the glorious days of Ronaldo, Cafu, Ronaldinho, Kaka… Yes, I was a Brazilian supporter. But much like people of my time, we supported skill over fame.

We all gasped in unison as we watched Zidane headbutt Materazzi during the 2006 Fifa World Cup. The whole finals was overshadowed by the defining moment that was Zidane's last time on the pitch. I was 18. Yahoo was the popular email choice and computer-generated content was just starting to take shape.

It was the love of the game that brought us together. People rejoiced when they won and lovers kept their composure and humility. The pitch was a place to show off skill rather than attempt to injure opponents. Fans laughed and cried but they did not use race to tear each other down. They also never looted and torched down establishments in anger, as is the case with Paris every time France loses.

To me, football is the unison sounds of the vuvuzelas and the dramatic thumps of the samba drums. Football is the light teasing of the losing team. My own father used to buy sodas for fans of the losing team to heal their wounds. That's what sportsmanship looks like to me.

I don't know what Fifa has done but whatever was taking place in the last month was a championship that walked in the former glory of itself. It's no longer about the game. The only good thing I can say about this past World Cup is that we now all know where Cape Verde is on the map.