From ‘Waka Waka’ to ‘Waka Wobble’: a World Cup in search of its party

When harm doesn’t happen to humans, some calamities pass through the merely disappointing and emerge, blinking in the sunlight, as just rather hilarious. The 2026 Football World Cup, which starts in two weeks and is being jointly hosted by the US, Mexico and Canada, is not there yet. Nobody actively wishes it harm, least of all the people who have bought tickets, booked flights or spent their lives hoping to see their country play in the great carnival of the game.

But it is, let us say, showing early promise of being a gloriously mad mess.

For South Africans, there is a certain schadenfreude to watching this unfold. In the run-up to 2010, the world worried itself sick about us. Would the stadiums be finished? Would the Gautrain make it from Sandton to the airport without taking an unexpected detour through Botswana? Would anyone come?

The general international view was that South Africa had been handed the World Cup less as a host than as an experiment: one of those brave development projects everyone applauds warmly while standing at a safe distance.

And then, rather irritatingly for the catastrophists, it was glorious. Nearly 3-million tickets were sold. The stadiums were full. The country became, for one wonderful winter month, a vast noisy smiling airport arrivals hall. Siphiwe Tshabalala scored that goal. The vuvuzela, previously understood chiefly as a device for irritating relatives at school rugby matches, became a global sonic weapon.

Even the World Cup song, initially a subject of perfectly understandable South African grumbling, turned into a triumph. There was considerable irritation that the song for Africa’s World Cup had been handed to Shakira, who is many splendid things but not noticeably from Umlazi. Then Freshlyground joined her, Waka Waka took off, and the song became so inescapably cheerful that it is still wandering around the planet 16 years later, invading gym classes and wedding receptions.

A foot-shooting exercise

The 2026 hosts seem, thus far, to have attempted the reverse manoeuvre: beginning with every possible advantage, then methodically placing small rakes in their own path. It started with Fifa’s newly created Peace Prize, which was awarded to its inaugural recipient, Donald Trump, in an act so gratuitously obsequious it would make a Trump cabinet member blush – or would it?

Who knows if this act of marketing foot-shooting was the cause, but the fact is that the fans are just not showing up. The American Hotel and Lodging Association recently surveyed more than 200 hotels across the 11 host cities in the US and found that close to 80% were seeing bookings below original forecasts. This does not mean the World Cup will be played before an audience consisting of three security guards and a confused pigeon. Miami and Atlanta, in fact, have been doing rather well.

Still, when hotels in Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle begin describing the largest World Cup in history as a “non-event”, the phrase has a certain comic grandeur. A non-event is a school committee meeting, not normally a tournament involving 48 countries, 104 matches and Fifa’s capacity for producing branding slogans in quantities normally associated with printer toner.

Then there is the LGBTQ event due to take place outside the Seattle stadium, which is another of those moments when reality appears to be auditioning for satire. Local organisers had planned Pride celebrations around the city’s match on June 26. The draw then handed them Egypt versus Iran, two countries where you can be jailed or even executed for being gay. It’s also going to be enormously and possibly dangerously hot.

The entry rules add a less amusing complication. Iran and Haiti face full US travel restrictions, and Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire face partial restrictions, though all four have qualified. Players and essential officials have exemptions; many ordinary fans will find matters much more difficult. This is not quite the promotional message football administrators usually have in mind when they speak about the whole world arriving at one great festival, and definitely not what White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said would be “one of the greatest and most spectacular events in the history of mankind”.

And then there is the music.

Fifa’s official World Cup album began with Lighter, by Jelly Roll and Carín León. It may be a perfectly decent song in another setting. Perhaps advertising a truck. As a World Cup anthem, the internet has not exactly offered it the keys to the city. A YouTube comment proposed: “Put it in 2x [speed], it doesn’t sound better but it ends faster.” Another reviewer described it as a “truck driving simulator main menu” song. A third observed, with the ruthless economy available only to online music critics: “The first time I ever welcomed a YouTube ad.”

A case of the wobbles

Perhaps the whole thing will still turn out fine. World Cups are like weddings: terrible things may happen during the planning, but once everyone has arrived and someone starts dancing, people forgive almost anything. The tickets may sell, the hotels may fill late, the matches may be wonderful and the American public may discover, as it periodically does, that the game it calls soccer is actually rather good.

But there is a pleasant irony in the fact that the country once treated as the World Cup’s risky experiment produced a tournament remembered for joy, noise and Waka Waka, while the richest host country in history is approaching kick-off accompanied by soft hotel bookings, complicated border politics, a freshly minted Fifa Peace Prize and an extremely underwhelming theme song.

Disaster may be overstating it. But “Waka Wobble” seems entirely fair.

ALSO READ:

• Fifa, Sony, and the mystery of the missing ‘Waka Waka’ millions
• Where did the ‘Waka Waka’ millions go?
• Kolisi and Bavuma: shaping the South African psyche

_{Top image collage: Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images; Givafa/iStock/Getty Images Plus; Rawpixel; Currency.}