☀️ Is everyone watching the World Cup?
It's past midnight here in Portugal, a few nights ago, and I'm on the couch watching Cape Verde, a country with a population five times the size of my hometown in Romania, hold the reigning World Cup champions to a 2-2 draw. Argentina will go on to win 3-2, but in that moment I have no idea how it's going to end, and I realise I'm holding my breath over two teams I have no real attachment to. How am I so engaged? Who exactly am I rooting for? And why am I rooting for them?
Romania didn't qualify for this edition, so I did the next best thing and adopted the underdogs instead. Cape Verde, since we're on the topic, half a million people from a handful of islands off the coast of West Africa, holding their own against Argentina. Curaçao, not even x2 the size of my hometown.
And, naturally, I root for my adoptive country, Portugal (I genuinely think the country would declare a national holiday if they won).
This edition isn't necessarily about football, but about what's wrapped around this World Cup: what gets to count as belonging to a country, why we feel so much for teams that have nothing to do with us, and what happens when a month-long global party runs headfirst into the economics of ticket prices and stadium real estate.
📖 3 Articles to Spark Your Curiosity
What the 2026 World Cup Says About Migration and Identity
Nearly one in four players at this World Cup were born in a country different from the one on their jersey, and Paris alone has quietly supplied talent to nearly a third of the field.
→ Read on University of Birmingham10 Iconic Moments That Shaped World Cup History
From a fascist salute in 1938 to a headbutt that ended a legend's career on the sport's biggest night, ten decades of the tournament's most talked-about moments, on and off the pitch.
→ Read on EuronewsBeginner's Guide to the World Cup
A joyfully unserious primer for anyone realizing, somewhat against their will, that they might care who wins this year, complete with a fully official list of acceptable reasons to pick a team.
→ Read on Voices at the Table
🗞️ 3 Headlines Worth Exploring
The Smallest Nation Ever to Qualify for the World Cup Didn't Do It Alone
Curaçao, an island of 156,000 people, built its historic squad by recruiting Dutch-born players with island roots, and locals describe an entire nation painted blue with pride ahead of their debut.
→ Read on NBC NewsWhy the Economics Make This the Craziest World Cup Ever
Behind the record-breaking scale sits a pricing experiment few fans asked for, with some tickets pushed into five figures and a commuter train to the stadium costing nearly as much as the game itself.
→ Read on BBCFarewell Cape Verde, the Underdogs the World Cup Will Never Forget
A nation ranked 67th in the world came within ten minutes of eliminating the reigning champions, and left having done what no scoreline could undo: making sure people finally know where to find them on a map.
→ Read on BBC Sport
☀️ 3 Actions to Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
Adopt an underdog for the rest of the tournament
Pick a team with no business being this far (Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan, Uzbekistan) and follow their run properly. Learn a few names, understand how they got there, feel something when they lose.Watch one match somewhere that isn't your couch
A bar, a fan zone, a friend's living room. There’s a huge difference between watching alone and watching surrounded by people who are just as invested, even if they're cheering for someone else.Ask someone about their team, and why
Whether it's a coworker or someone next to you at a bar, ask what got them attached to their country's team. You might learn something about where they're from, or who they miss, that an ordinary conversation never would have surfaced.
⚡ 6 Quick Sparks
⚽ To bookmark: Every World Cup final result since 1930 in one place, for whenever you need to settle an argument about who's actually won the most.
→ Read on FootballHistory.org
🧠 To read: Why we say "we won" instead of "they won," and why rooting for an underdog like Cape Verde is really rooting for the idea that the world might be fairer than it looks.
→ Read on Miscelana
🗺 To see: A single chart showing the 2,181-times population gap between the biggest and smallest nations at this World Cup, all playing under the same rules.
→ Read on Randal Olson's blog
🏙 To check: On host cities turning into temporary neighbourhoods, complete with Japanese fans cleaning stadium seats and Kansas City restaurants hanging Algerian flags for visiting supporters.
→ Read on Zafigo
🎥 To watch: Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Ronaldinho, and more, for whenever you need reminding why people fall in love with this sport in the first place.
→ Watch on YouTube
🗣 To learn: What "nutmeg," "parking the bus," and "squeaky bum time" actually mean, useful for anyone trying to sound like they've followed this sport their whole life.
→ Read on NPR
🎲 This week’s wonderfully random corner of the internet
An interactive 3D globe that lets you spin the Earth and browse every match of the tournament by date, team, or host city.
→ Explore at worldcupmap.app
📝 Word of the Week
Communitas (Latin) - a term coined by anthropologist Victor Turner to describe the intense sense of equality and belonging that forms among people sharing an unstructured experience together, when the usual social ranks briefly stop mattering.
It's what happens in a fan zone in Kansas City when someone hangs a flag for total strangers, or when a stadium full of people wills a nation of half a million to hold on for one more minute against the reigning champions. For a few hours, the crowd stops being a collection of separate allegiances and becomes one thing, until the final whistle.
🧘♀️ Question of the Week for Introspection
Which underdog, in football or anywhere else, have you caught yourself rooting for this year, and what does it say about what you want to believe about the world?
See you next Sunday! Until then, keep your eyes open, your questions big, and your sense of wonder alive.
Your curious internet friend,
Ruxandra
