How is it going?

I have really tried to enjoy the World Cup; trying to find that magical feeling of a tournament that has defined my love for football. I have been to two of the matches in person, enjoying the atmosphere and beautiful stadiums. I have had beers over matches and been to fan zones and bars in four different cities in three countries; I have read, listened, talked and written about the tournament.

How is it going as we enter the round-of-16 phase of knock-out matches?

Not good. 

While the good things generally outnumbered the bad things four years ago in Qatar, there are too many bad things about the tournament to enjoy it:

• 48 teams are too many; too many poor sides and defensive matches that will barely be remembered. A few good moments on the pitch, but it is too far between them.
• VAR: the technology continues to be used far beyond its original purpose. Instead of settling controversies, it just deepens them, as it is clear that most decisions have a level of referee discretion. It thus becomes an excuse for referees not to make decisions, as well as a waste of time, rather than the tool it could be in selected situations.
• Hydration breaks are a terrible symptom of the excessive commercialization of the World Cup; an excuse for commercial breaks that directly damages the flow of the game. 
• Prices: I lived this myself; prices of tickets, but also of everything surrounding the tournament, from increased consumer prices and cable network subscription packages that include the World Cup. I am not suffering economically, but can see that the peoples’ sport has become exclusive to a rich globalized minority.
• The fans: A video has been circulating showing a Mexican woman who, unprovoked, pours beer on two Ecuatorian fans before the Mexico-Ecuador match. Social media has poured its collective punishment on the woman, who is said not to represent Mexico. Obviously she does not, but she does represent a growing part of football culture: ignorant supporters all over the world who have been herded like sheep by social media and FIFA's commercialization of nationalism to see football less as a shared celebration than as a way to express hostility towards others.  

Football does not unite.

Perhaps that is what saddens me most. I have spent this tournament trying to rediscover the feeling that made me fall in love with the World Cup as a child. Instead, with every match, I find myself feeling more distant—not only from the tournament, but from the world that has grown up around it.