From Ticker Tape to Tailgating

My first world cup memory – of Argentina 1978 - isn’t exactly a great one.

I was almost seven and it was bed time. After researching it this week, it must have been a match between the hosts and either Italy, Poland or Brazil as those kick-off times align with that of a young boy going off to bed. That, or I had really terrible parents.

Either way, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was after 10pm (my Dad let me watch Alien on VHS two years later) as I was somewhat reluctantly dragged off to my room, I happened to see the TV and the football match that he was about to watch. It was mesmerising, even if I only saw about eight or nine seconds of it.

White bits fell from the sky, resembling square snowflakes that seemed to swirl perpetually around the stands. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. I’d never watched, or even cared, about football before – although I knew all the older members of my family did – so this was my first glimpse of the beautiful game that I knew nothing about, but I did instinctively know this wasn’t typical. Square snow didn’t fall at every match.

The one other thing that stuck out was that the goalposts had black bases. Some have tried to politicise this, but it’s an Argentinian thing that goes back to a time before the military coup that darkened this world cup. Either way, I’d never seen it before, and I lived directly opposite a large field with several pitches and where the goalposts were painted entirely white.

I didn’t realise it, but my love affair with football had begun. Over the next two years it slowly began to creep into my consciousness. By the time the next major tournament kicked off in Italy in 1980, I was completely hooked. But there was no paper in the air  – I’d now learned it was something called ‘ticker tape’ – and no black base on the goalposts either.

But that first memory had cut through. As my interest grew, my parents had got me a Subbuteo set as a gateway into the sport and possibly because they’d tired of picking little plastic stormtroopers blasters out of the carpet. As a bonus, a cousin who was considerably older donated me all of his teams (including Brazil, Argentina, France and Poland), as well as a scoreboard, some grandstands and supporters, and even some little police constables who stood around the pitch to keep the mainly unpainted fans in order (this was in the days before stewards did it while the police waited in the local coffee shops). Now my parents could pick those out of the carpet instead.

Even Better Than The Real Thing

I’ve always been one of those people who enjoy the set up as much – if not more – than the game itself, and I carefully crafted my Subbuteo match day in the way millions of young football fanatics would have done all over the world.

But not quite. I’d also sat patiently cutting up some A4 paper for hours until I had a bag full of teeny, tiny squares. And – as my Dad was an electrician – got him to put some black installation tape around the foot of the goalposts. With the teams lined up ready for action, I emptied the paper onto the pitch. It was so thick in places that the ball wouldn’t move properly. It was also perfect.

And better than the actual World Cup in Argentina. Much better in fact.

I’d learn that over the years.

Argentina spent a lot of money on their world cup – an awful lot, estimated at over 5x what Spain spent on theirs four years later. It started a trend. Every tournament since has run into financial overruns and failed to recoup anywhere near the outlay with massive infrastructure costs and huge stadiums that only use a fraction of the capacity for much of the year.

South Africa spent an eye-watering $3.5bn for the 2010 edition, but that feels like loose change after Brazil and Russia spent several times that, and Qatar shelled out over $200bn, although that included the major infrastructure projects that the country will ‘benefit’ from for years.

But one thing is clear. While FIFA might send out the invites; it’s the host that pays.

In 1978 the Argentine tourist economy was supposed to see a massive spike. It didn’t. The attempt to entice fans from all over the world failed. Although it had been predicted (at one stage half of Scotland’s population claimed to be going), and local hoteliers were licking their lips at the influx of global ground-hoppers, it turned out that – when push came to shove -people weren’t prepared to spend a lot of money to travel thousands of miles to visit a country that was under a military dictatorship.

Hotels were empty. Neither money, nor people, flowed into the country. The tax pesos that were spent erecting walls to hide some of the atrocities was somewhat wasted. Because the hosts won the World Cup, it was still seen as an overall success by the military junta ruling the country, or at least that the end justified the means, because it shone a light on them although possibly not quite the kind of light they might have hoped for.

As the USMNT are unlikely to be crowned champions at the New York Stadium (that’s not in New York) in July, then the Donald probably isn’t going to be able to use that as political capital in the way they tried to. Of course, he may just say they won it on Truth Social and refuse to accept any proof to the contrary.

But because the stadiums in the US, Mexico and Canada are largely already in place, the costs for this year’s hosts are much smaller. In relative terms, the spend will be much smaller than that of Argentina’s in 78.

Given that was also the last time the world cup finals was contested by sixteen nations, the bloated tournament we’re about to see bears little resemblance to it, other than perhaps that the inflation seen on ticket and travel costs are the kind of increases you might see in, say, somewhere like Argentina.

With Or Without You

At first, it seemed that FIFA and the hosts were all in it together; a defiant show of capitalism writ large that would see football’s governing body make a gigantic $11bn (a figure that almost doubles what was made in the Qatar cycle).

But now attorney generals in New York, New Jersey and California are making moves that suggest that wasn’t necessarily the case. The ticketing and transport costs have been described as a ‘gauntlet of confusion, fake scarcity and impossibly high prices’ that are ‘deeply troubling’ and potentially infringe upon US consumer-protection laws. An investigation is underway. FIFA are being asked to explain. The hosts might be on the hook for the party, but it seems that they aren’t going to just accept that the price of the balloons has…ballooned.

And with the way the governing body take over the stadium footprints, it's now emerged that tailgating (the US/Canada tradition for the pre-match build up) was being slowly forced out of the picture, causing stadiums to relax their initial policies and deny that this practice would be banned.

FIFA has booked, then cancelled, thousands of hotel rooms. Just like in Argentina 48 years ago, the North American hotel owners are waking up the fact that the predicted surge isn’t going to happen. The FIFA bookings (standard practice, they say) has created a false sense of scarcity, but this hasn’t translated into customers paying over the odds. AirBNB, by way of comparison, seems to be doing quite well.

And despite claims that the same scarcity exists with tickets, there are currently ones available at face-value for a staggering 86 of the 104 games. And the flight and accommodation data just doesn’t add up to the volumes of tickets that FIFA say have been sold on their website and resale site.

FIFA had a chance – post-Blatter – to be better. To bring the game to more people, to equalise the inequalities that currently exist, to right some of the obvious wrongs that had blighted previous tournaments and their hosting bid competitions.

But it looks as if, almost fifty years on from Argentina, very little is that different.

And it’s not just the fans that have been misled this time, but maybe the hosts as well.