The real world has infiltrated the World Cup, magnifying the worst of human behavior

A politician in Paraguay was condemned by her colleagues because she couldn’t let a soccer match go by without outing herself as a bigot. A Cape Verde winger captained the purest fairy tale story of the 2026 World Cup under the very real, very dark cloud of rape allegations.

The South Korea coach needed protection from riot police upon returning home because he hadn’t led the country out of the group stage. The Egyptian coach strongly hinted at match-fixing in his team’s loss in the knockout round.

The football community in Gaza City is mourning the death of a watch party organizer who was killed on July 7 in an Israeli air strike.

The real world has invaded the World Cup. Or, truly, it has always been there, lurking beneath the propaganda of unity and the starry cutaways of A-listers in suite seats. Though we surrender our free time to the drama found in extra time, these 39 days of distraction can’t obscure the truth: The beautiful game is plagued by ugliness.

These matches should not divert our attention from something as serious as the sexual assault allegations and investigations facing three players in the tournament. Ghana’s Thomas Partey is awaiting trial in London and faces multiple rape charges, while Cape Verde’s Ryan Mendes and Morocco’s Achraf Hakimi — both their team’s captains — also face allegations of rape in New Zealand and France, respectively.

All three men remained on the pitch. It took a visa application to sideline Partey ahead of Ghana’s opening match because a host country, Canada, denied his entry. Otherwise, the players’ federations saw no reason to stop accused sexual predators from representing their countries.

In other real-life intrusions at the World Cup, racial and cultural ignorance reared again.

Early in the tournament, a Los Angeles-based television reporter played up her unawareness about Bosnia and Herzegovina — “I don’t know the first thing about Bosnia,” ABC7 Los Angeles’ Abigail Velez boasted, “and I don’t want to know” — as some kind of trash talk.

A Serbian commentator passed off stereotypes as analysis — “I have always said those players, and I’m really not racist, but Black players lack the concentration to last more than 60 to 80 minutes,” Rade Bogdanović crowed — when he tried to explain that a Belgian player of Congolese descent received a red card late in a match.

A Dutch pundit, Rafael van der Vaart, offered his insight into the challenges of marking Japan’s players because they “all look alike.”

And to think, football was supposed to bring us together.

During the buildup to the World Cup, I found myself falling for that lie. That naive notion that we’re all united by the love of the game, with advertisers creating an imaginary place where nothing else matters to the world except the next goal. Coca-Cola depicts a diaspora of fans gathering and praying toward a television screen. Michelob produces an entertaining, if not hilariously unbelievable, scenario in which a crowded hotel lobby watches in awe as Lionel Messi actually allows himself to be outdueled by Christian Pulisic in a battle for a bottle of Ultra.

In this land of make-believe, there is no racism, and no one dares to make ape gestures at a young Black American for wearing the wrong jersey (which actually did happen in the land of Miami at the Argentina-Cape Verde match).

But as Darren Watkins Jr. discovered while live streaming to an audience of millions during two Argentina matches, racism still thrives in the sunlight and in the mainstream. When the popular content creator better known as IShowSpeed wore the rival jersey to two Argentina matches during his live streams, the camera turned to a section of fans in their country’s blue-and-white stripes. Some appeared to be hurling insults his way. One man mimicked an ape. FIFA responded by opening an investigation into the alleged racist abuse.

It’s one thing for fans to flash their prejudice in the crowd; it’s even more jarring when an elected official feels emboldened to post something so blatantly and undeniably racist on her public social media. Paraguay senator Celesta Amarilla took it a step further than the Argentinians in Miami, throwing ugliness at a person not simply for wearing the wrong kit, but for being the wrong color.

When France defeated her countrymen in the round of 16, Amarilla called Kylian Mbappe a “colonized Cameroonian.” It didn’t end there, however. Amarilla also tried to diminish one of the greatest players in the world as less than human: “That brute never even learned to write. Instead of breast milk, he sucked on coconuts, and the most educated creatures he ever listened to were chimpanzees.”

Though Amarilla disgraced herself, many other elected Paraguayans wouldn’t let her vitriol speak for the entire country. This week, the Senate convened and passed a motion denouncing her “racist and discriminatory” remarks. It’s never a good thing when politicians have to make censures following a sporting event. Or when politicians butt in at all.

From South Korea’s president demanding an investigation into the team’s early exit and prompting coach Hong Myung-Bo to resign, to U.S. President Donald Trump not understanding what a red card is but dialing up FIFA anyway to look into USMNT striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension, this World Cup has felt like political grandstanding. Just a chance for the most powerful to flex their muscle and create crises over a sport, a game.

And the game of soccer never felt as insignificant as it did this week. During the Argentina-Egypt match, a 3-2 loss for the Pharaohs, Egyptian coach Hossam Hassan made the crossed-wrist ‘X’ gesture toward the officials to signal racial abuse, and after the loss, he accused FIFA of wanting Argentina to win. Before the match, at a watch party in Gaza, Mohamed Al-Wahidi — an aid worker who had organized public World Cup screenings — was killed when an Israeli missile hit the car he was traveling in.

Just because the four-year wonder has returned doesn’t mean all of life’s woes have stepped aside. To the contrary: This World Cup has served not as an escape from reality, but as a magnifying glass, enlarging the worst bits of human nature for all to see.

Still, Messi marvels at 39-years-old, a blond-ponytailed Viking from Norway captivates the States one match at a time, and Mbappe remains classy. So, yes, this World Cup keeps delighting us, administering the surest antidote for a divided world: football.

Still, we shouldn’t allow the pixie dust of sport to blind us to the harsh realities of the world.