Let us be honest, dear reader: the World Cup has always been a theatre of the absurd. But this iteration, this sorry spectacle? It is not merely a sporting event.
It is a financial mutiny. British analysts, those grim realists who still remember the discipline of the Victorian ledger, are unanimous: the economics of this tournament make no sense. It is a monument to decadence, a spending spree that would make Caligula blanch.
Host cities are borrowing at interest rates that would make a payday lender wince. Stadia are being built with borrowed money for a party that lasts a month. The debt will outlast the cheers.
This is not investment. This is a cargo cult. We mimic the rituals of prosperity: the grand stadiums, the gleaming infrastructure, the corporate boxes.
But we have forgotten the substance. We have forgotten that Rome did not fall because of barbarians at the gate. It fell because of fiscal incontinence at home.
The numbers do not lie. The British Treasury, that staid institution, has run the sums. The return on investment is a joke.
A bad joke. The sort that makes an actuary weep. We are living in the final days of a civilisation that has confused spending with wealth.
The World Cup was once a moment of glory. Now it is a mark of bankruptcy. And we cheer it anyway.
That, my friends, is the real tragedy. We have become a people who applaud our own decline.
