A Hater’s Coda To The World Cup

It seems somehow right and proper that the final game of the World Cup was such a screeching drag, if only to remind us that the chief byproduct of a global anything is for most of the participants and supporters to grouse about how it ended.

I mean, Spain had a great time, to be sure, as it got to not https://defector.com/spain-won-as-only-spain-can">only write but prove all its best narratives, but every tournament has one winner and a thousand envious and angry losers.

When you frame it that way, the vision of the Turnip-in-Chief and his throw pillow Gianni Infantino https://defector.com/looking-good-sir">handing out the medals last night is both galling and instructive, for reasons that will come clear shortly.

And it is right and just for you to rise in moderate dudgeon and exclaim, "But I enjoyed the tournament," if you did.

Good on you.

Fun is not easy to come by, so you should enjoy every bit of what you can.

A lot of this past month was indisputably enjoyable.

There were a fair number of quality matches that exceeded what you would expect from a hastily bloated tournament, specifically those involving Vozinha and Cape Verde.

There was also the next generation of international stars who will replace the ones to whom we bade farewell, teams that didn't fire their coaches the day after their exit, and the bars that survived the Scottish fans.

There was plenty to cozy up to over the past month.

But joy is how you choose to find it, and sometimes in soccer it is in focusing on the miscreants that enraged you by making you care so much that you still have the rage and disappointment smeared across your chest.

Hey, it's how we do stuff in our pre-apocalyptic world—when in doubt, recriminate.

For example: