The World Cup is compromised, commercialised and often grotesque – but it can still show us something true about belonging, about multicultural Australia and the complexity of loving something, while refusing to look away from its failures.

I love the World Cup. But I also hate quite a lot about it. I should get that disclaimer out of the way first.

I love the sleep-deprived madness of it all. I love the sudden expertise people develop over the reserve inverted left-back from a country they’ve never visited. I love the sometimes weird and wonderful kits. I love how a single goal can lift an entire nation.

But let’s be honest, the World Cup is, in many ways, a bit gross.

This World Cup has, at times, felt like late-stage capitalism dressed up in an overpriced polyester football shirt.

The sponsorship machine. The bank-account-busting ticket prices. The commercial insertion of advertising breaks dressed up as essential player hydration.

It’s a vast moral laundering operation that tells us football is for everyone, while pricing ordinary fans out of the game and cosying up to the powerful.

Then there are the sharper outrages.

Somali referee Omar Artan was denied entry to the US, ending what should have been his World Cup debut. Iran’s coach and players have been at the pointy end of what looks like a geopolitical conflict played out in entry visas. We can’t know what effect having to move their training camp to Mexico had on their football, but it can hardly have helped.

And........

© Pearls and Irritations