Before the final yesterday I was puzzled as to why Jennifer Hudson was singing the US national anthem: did they think we might have forgotten where the match was being held? As if in a fever dream I saw Robbie Williams, Tom Cruise, Donald Trump’s favourite ring announcer Michael Buffer (‘let’s get ready to rumble’) and, like something from the TK Maxx Gold Label range, a Louis Vuitton trophy box. No one scored in the first half. The half-time show – don’t forget this is America – looked like a long advert for Coca Cola, culminating in children singing with Coldplay and a gigantic carpet displaying the word ‘love’. Meanwhile the US war on Iran intensified.
The masked men had hidden the identification on their olive green private security uniforms. They wore sunglasses, body cameras and a variety of baseball hats; one said ‘Bailiff Services Ireland’, another ‘Police’. The actual Irish police force had arrived at around 9 a.m. to arrest two of the people inside, Eoghan Lynch and Seán Doyle. Now, thirty minutes later, this mysterious squad had come to evict the other six of us. The police vacated the building and left them to finish the job.
Michel Nkuka Mboladinga, also known as Lumumba Vea, at DR Congo’s match against Colombia, 23 June 2026 (Carl Recine / Getty Images)
English identity is a funny business: we can be one thing to ourselves and something else to others, and that changes depending on mood and context. During this World Cup – and particularly when DR Congo played England – I’ve realised that I am still unsure who I am to myself, and other people.
My friend Jawad Ali, a Palestinian American lawyer, was at his daughter’s graduation last month when he got a call from his sister in the West Bank. ‘She was crying, almost hysterical,’ he said, as she told him that settlers were ‘trying to burn us alive in our home’.
The hollowness of the RN revolution became clear this week, when Marine Le Pen announced she would be standing again to become France’s head of state, despite a criminal conviction for embezzlement being upheld. In 2013, she had asked: ‘When will we implement a lifetime ban on holding office for anyone convicted of offences committed thanks to their mandate or while in office?’
Jude Bellingham scoring for England against Mexico at the Estadio Azteca, Mexico City, 5 July 2026 (Li Muzi / Xinhua / Alamy)
The football games we obsess over are the ones that tell a story and this World Cup has been full of stories. I made it till after midnight waiting for England v. Mexico at 1 a.m. but when it was announced that kick-off would be delayed an hour because of the weather I decided to call it a day and watch in the morning.
The dodgy financing, the undeclared cash and the association with a flagrant crook could permanently tarnish Farage’s vaunted anti-establishment credentials. We all reach for the familiar when we’re desperate, and for Farage that means engineering a ‘people v. the establishment’ by-election.