The Absence That Strips Football of Its Magic 🗣️

Greetings from New York!

Rory Smith writes: By the time you read this, we’ll be somewhere in the region of 72 hours from crowning a (club) world champion. I’m pretty confident the show at MetLife Stadium will be spectacular. There’ll be fireworks, and lots of them. There'll be that gigantic golden trophy, glinting in the sunlight. Maybe Gianni Infantino will ride in on a horse, or a Harley, or floating on his own sense of self-satisfaction.

It will be what happens after that, though, that will go quite a long way to determining what these last few weeks have meant. My sense is that most fans have watched the Club World Cup with an air of curiosity. We’ve talked a lot on podcasts about the feeling that it is decaffeinated soccer; soccer without jeopardy; soccer where there is only upside. It does not really seem to mean anything.

Not yet, anyway. What happens after the tournament may be almost as important as what happens during it. Chelsea, apparently, does not have any plans to stage a victory parade should Enzo Maresca’s team (somehow) win at MetLife on Sunday. Paris Saint-Germain may be more inclined to celebrate. Seeing the streets of the French capital fill with fans would help confer this new tournament with prestige. The final itself should be good: PSG is a breathtaking team to watch. But what comes after matters, too.

Enjoy,

Rory

The Absence That Strips Football of Its Magic 🗣️🏟️

The sound of soccer changes from one country to the next. In an English stadium, the noise of the crowd tracks the game being played out in front of them. The volume rises and falls, changes in tone and timbre, as the action itself ebbs and flows. The fans effectively act as a Greek chorus; they use their voice to interpret the drama for the audience at home. They tell us how we should feel about what we are seeing.

That is not the case everywhere. It’s not possible to track what is happening in a German game, for example, purely aurally. There, the sound is essentially constant. A team’s organized fans – its ultras and the various groups that swirl around and adjacent to them – gather behind one goal. Their chants are led by a conductor, a fan whose devotion to the team is such that they do not even watch the game; their aim, instead, is to make sure the noise is as great, and the choreography as accomplished, as possible.

An Italian stadium makes a different noise to a Spanish one, say. You could not reasonably describe the sound that emanates from the crowd when Napoli scores at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona as a cheer. It is too deep, too guttural, for that. Given that the stadium’s bottom tier is often empty, it can sometimes feel on television as though the sound is the sky tearing itself apart.

At the Parc des Princes, the approach is more of a call-and-response. Paris Saint-Germain’s two main ultra groups occupy opposite ends of the stadium. They spend some part of the game either trying to outdo each other or engaged in what amounts to a very loud conversation. No ground in soccer groans quite like the Bernabeu. Argentine terrace songs are complex, lyrical; Turkish stadiums are a wall of noise. Some countries whistle when the opposition has possession. Others do not.

There is no right and wrong here. How fans interact with a game is a cultural thing; each is as valid as the next. To my British ears, football sounds most natural when the response of the crowd crests and crashes. The unchanging soundtrack of the Bundesliga is impressive and admirable, of course – for the stamina as much as anything else – but it lacks the dramatic resonance, the emotional journey. But that is a matter of personal taste, no more or less.

All of which is important to remember when we recognize the fact that the Club World Cup has sounded weird. It sounded weird when I was watching games on television, and it sounded weird when I was at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia and MetLife Stadium in New York over the last few days. 

Given all of the problems the tournament has encountered in what we should probably think of as its beta-testing phase, this may seem minor. It is not. The spectacle of soccer is what makes it appealing; it is what conveys its importance, its meaning. It is why the issue of empty seats has been of such concern to FIFA. If a game is poorly attended, it is quite hard to sell it as a major event. 

That has been solved, to some extent, by reducing ticket prices; attendances in Philadelphia and New York, as the competition has reached its climax, have been pretty robust. The issue of the sound, though, is just as important and it is a much more complex problem to unpick.

Initially, it struck me that the issue was primarily technological. Early in the tournament, even games that seemed pretty well attended, ones involving those teams who had been able to call on considerable numbers of fans, seemed to lack atmosphere. On television, the sound was dull, muffled, as though the crowd was singing underwater. 

My assumption was that somewhere along the line, the sound mixing had gone wrong. That might have been a production mishap – maybe the commentary was too loud, the balance was out of line – or it might have been a strategic one. 

At least one of the reasons England’s top flight has become such a global sensation is the fact that its microphones are placed deliberately so as to emphasize the noise of the crowd, rather than the sound of the players. This has the effect of making every single game sound like a roiling cauldron of passion, even if that game is actually taking place at a glum Old Trafford. It makes each of the league’s fixtures feel like events.

That could, of course, be easily rectified, but having watched games in person, I wonder if it is not quite the whole picture. Outside City Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, before Palmeiras played Chelsea, I took a quick survey of the Palmeiras fans present. Some were first, second or third-generation fans from the United States: Brazilian émigrés, or the children of them. The majority, though, had come from Brazil.

Some of those were members of the Mancha Verde, Palmeiras’ ultra group; their trips here had been crowdfunded by the organization, so as to ensure that the green-and-white flag flew proud, and that the Allianz Parque songbook was followed correctly. The vast majority, though, were not. Getting to the U.S. is an expensive business; the fanbase, most agreed, leaned more middle-class than might be the case in a typical Brazilian league game.

That pattern, it is fair to assume, has applied across the tournament. The crowds have been made up of curious locals, devoted general soccer fans and, obviously, supporters of one of the teams playing. But it seems fair to assume that, for reasons of cost and geography, only a very small fraction have been those who might ordinarily take responsibility for generating and sustaining the atmosphere. 

That may be inevitable, particularly given the dynamic pricing policy FIFA adopted for this tournament, but it is also a shame. Soccer, even when consumed on television, is a multi-sensory experience, an aural as well as a visual spectacle. When one of those elements is removed, the game itself seems to lose something; it is not quite as captivating, not quite as compelling as it might be. That absence strips it of some of its magic.

FIFA, of course, cannot be blamed for the cost and inconvenience of global travel. The United States is easier to access from South America than Europe, political tides notwithstanding, and vice versa. It is probably the best connected country on the planet.

But FIFA can be blamed for allowing tickets to become prohibitively expensive. The body that is meant to act as guardian to the sport should be aware that for soccer’s showpieces to work, they need both to look and sound right. That means making a small, but significant, cognitive shift: treating fans, the ones that make the noise, not as observers of the spectacle but participants in it. 

Rog, Rory Smith, and Some Very Special Guests LIVE Tomorrow at the Michelob ULTRA Pitchside Club 🍻

They will be joined on Friday at 6 p.m. by none other than chef, restaurateur, and massive football fan Marcus Samuelsson and the newest member of our network, the legendary Clint Dempsey. You can join us tomorrow FOR FREE by RSVPing here, we'd love to raise a glass with as many of you as possible. Come and be with us, revel in the football, and celebrate being together in New York City. RSVP HERE 🍺

The Sexy-Sustainable Axis 🇸🇦

One of the (relatively) early conclusions of the Club World Cup was that the whole experience has been a positive one for Saudi Arabia. Not just because it has further entrenched the country’s relationship with FIFA, but because its sole on-field entrant, Al Hilal, drew with Real Madrid, qualified for the knockout rounds, and then beat Manchester City.

This has been used as proof not only that the Saudi Pro League might not be the money-spinning retirement home it first appeared — a perfectly reasonable conclusion — but, in some quarters, as evidence of the shortcomings of Major League Soccer. Perhaps the league’s two entrants in this tournament, the Seattle Sounders and Inter Miami, might have done better if they had been allowed to plow as much money into their teams as their Saudi counterparts, the logic goes. Perhaps MLS’ financial rules hold it back.

MLS’ financial rulebook is, admittedly, insanely complex. There is certainly a case to be made that its salary restrictions could be loosened, even a little. A league probably should not be run primarily to ensure the profits of its owners.

There is an important ‘but’ here. MLS and the Saudi Pro League represent two polar opposite visions for soccer. One is top-down, the other bottom-up. One emphasizes the immediate pulling power of star names. The other slowly, painstakingly, embeds teams in their communities. One is based around four financial behemoths. The other prioritizes competitive balance. 

And one, ultimately, is much less sustainable, much less organic than the other. The Saudi Pro League depends almost entirely on the political good will and focus of the country’s authorities. As we saw with China, if that changes, then the wealth of the league disappears overnight. Whatever its flaws, MLS has ensured that will not happen in the U.S. Maybe the short term results are worse. Long term, though, there is no question which is healthier than the other.

Excited for the 2026 World Cup? Our USMNT Only newsletter is your go-to source for backstories, insights and narrative surrounding Poch’s squad in their run to (hopeful) glory. Subscribe now. 🇺🇸

What I’ve Been Writing and Reading ✍️📚

• I found the death of Diogo Jota almost indescribably heartbreaking. I hope I paid him a fitting tribute.

• This might sound Euro-centric but the Club World Cup’s fate rests on Europe deciding it matters.

• A wonderful piece from a colleague of mine on how Formula 1 separates fans from their money.

• It’s not just in soccer that fans are being exploited. Music, too, according to The Quietus.

Any Other Business 🎸

So many of you sent in recommendations for my 36 hours in Philadelphia that I feel intensely guilty I was only able to visit a fraction of them. I’m especially sad that I didn’t get to hit South Philly Barbacoa, which sounds like exactly my sort of caper.

But I did manage to get to a few spots, including the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen, where the sandwiches are intimidatingly large; Gran Caffé L’Aquila, home both to excellent pasta and what I can only describe as Italian-grade gelato; and Tequilas Casa Mexicana, which produced possibly the best chicharrón I’ve ever had. (Admittedly, this is not a huge amount of chicharrón, but it is some.)

Still, this felt insufficient to me, and so I’m going back on Saturday: a friend of mine is driving up from D.C. and we’re going to eat our way around Reading Terminal Market. I went for breakfast — the vanilla cinnamon challah French toast, delicious — but that leaves at least two more meals to be sampled. I’ll report back again, but in the meantime: my waistline thanks you for your help. 

That’s all for this week. If you’ve made it this far down before Friday and you find yourself in the general vicinity of New York, come and see me and Rog at the Michelob Ultra Pitchside Club in Midtown. We’re doing a live taping on Friday evening, and we’d love it if you could join us. Otherwise, you can reach us anytime at [email protected].

Thanks,

Rory