The World Cup Madness!

Let talk about the World Cup madness; only one named England player, Scotland's hopes and dreams and of course the fact that its being played where they refer to football as "soocer" in whole other times zone; nope time time zones!

Transcript

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Am I out of touch? Is the world weird or is it just me?

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Hello everyone and welcome to Am I Out of Touch? The podcast where everyday annoyances, minor inconveniences and completely irrational frustrations get the rant they deserve. From awkward social norms to pointless life admin, each episode asks the important question: is the world getting weirder or am I just losing it? Hello and welcome to the show, the only podcast where you can turn on hoping to hear about the weather and somehow still end up in a 20-minute conversation about England's pressing shape. I'm Alison and today we are talking about that magical, slightly deranged time that comes around every few years when an entire country loses its mind over a ball being kicked around on grass. Yes, the World Cup. Or as I like to think of it, a month-long emotional group project where nobody has a balanced perspective or at least one nation decides that this is definitely, definitely their year again. We're going to talk about three things today. England and the national obsession with one man in particular, Scotland and their incredible ability to emotionally sprint into the knockout rounds after about 20 decent minutes, and the small matter of the World Cup being hosted across the USA, Canada and Mexico, or as FIFA calls it, a football tournament, and as I call it, a very stressful contikey tour with extra VAR. So make a cup of tea, settle in, and if you're listening to this at 2am, because that's when kickoff is, I see you, I respect your terrible choices. Let's start at home England. Now I don't know what it is about the World Cup that makes this country go absolutely feral, but the moment it starts, everything becomes football. You cannot switch on the radio for two minutes without suddenly finding yourself trapped in a rolling seminar on England's tactical identity. Stations that 11 months of the year just play mildly sad songs and tell you there's traffic on the M25 suddenly sound like they're broadcasting live from inside Gareth Southgate's brain. And somehow every single conversation about England comes back to one man, Harry Kane. That's it, the whole squad. According to the coverage, the England team consists of Harry Kane. And some grass, and I don't know, background scenery. You'd think he was playing every position. Goalkeeper, Harry Kane. Left back, Harry Kane. Fourth official holding up the board, honestly, probably Harry Kane. Making the tee at half time, you guessed it, Harry Kane with a strong and commanding brew. The entire national strategy seems to be, right, lads, here's the plan. Give it to Harry, and then we'll sort of see what happens. That's not tactics, that's hope with shin pads. And the commentators absolutely feed into it. Every sentence is delivered like they're narrating a key moment in national history. England are really going to need something special here. Yes, from Harry Kane, again, we get it. The man could bend down and tie his shoelaces, and you'd have someone on Five Live going, Well, that's a massive, massive moment for the nation. Is it? He's just adjusting his sock, calm down. And the way they talk about him. If he scores, it's heroic. If he passes, it's intelligent. If he stands still for a bit, it's experience. If he asks for a bottle of water, it's leadership in difficult conditions. Meanwhile, there are ten other blokes running around, presumably also trying. If you go purely on the commentary, everyone else is just part of the scenery. A collection of supporting shrubs. Present, technically, but not really the point. And I say this as someone who only tolerates football, yes, tolerates the World Cup. For a brief fragile moment, the entire country believes that this time, against all precedent and common sense, things might actually go well. It's quite sweet, really, totally delusional, but sweet. The problem is you cannot casually know about the World Cup in this country. There is no light engagement option. You either go all in, wall chart, sweepstake, tactical diagrams, or you accidentally absorb information against your will. You're just trying to find out if it's going to rain, and before you know it, you're thinking, well, I personally prefer a double pivot in midfield, but only if Kane can drop into the half space. Where did that come from? You work in HR, you don't have half space. And yet we all go along with it. We accept without blinking that for an entire month the emotional well-being of this nation is in the hands of eleven men in shorts, and for some reason only one of them is allowed a name. Maybe that's what the World Cup really is for England. A very intensive group project where the entire country panics, nobody can agree on the formation, and Harry Kane is apparently carrying the PowerPoint. So that's my question. Is this football fever, or are we all just very, very committed to pretending one man is the England squad? Let's head north of the border because Scotland does something at tournaments that I find genuinely fascinating, and I'll be honest, kind of inspiring. They have this incredible ability to become utterly convinced that they're about to storm the knockout rounds after one vaguely promising performance. Not qualify calmly, not improve steadily as the tournament goes on. No, no, storm the knockouts, kick the door in, rewrite history, book the parade. And I say this with affection because Scottish football optimism is not arrogant. It's not like we're obviously the best. It's much more impressive than that. It's pure, undiluted emotional commitment to the scenario that hasn't happened, might not happen, and frankly, statistically, usually doesn't happen. All it takes is one decent half, just one. Twenty respectable minutes where nobody falls over or does anything catastrophic, and suddenly the conversation is right, if we win this and then draw that, and those two mysteriously implode, and the moon is in the correct phase, we're basically in the quarterfinals. You hear it everywhere. If results go our way, yes, if results go my way, I might become a morning person. We don't plan the parade. But that's the beauty of it. The confidence appears immediately. There's no warm-up phase, no cautious optimism, no, let's just see how it goes. It goes straight. Oh, that was quite a tidy passage of play. Two, right, quarter final route, let's talk about who we'd fancy in the semis. Quarter final opponents. This is a very advanced conversation for a team still trying to successfully complete a group stage without emotional whiplash. It's the sporting equivalent of going on one good first date and immediately Googling schools in the era for your future. Hypothetical children. And then of course the pundits get involved, which never helps. Because they live for this stuff. Well, if Scotland can just get through this group, you wouldn't back against them causing problems in the knockouts. I would. I would absolutely back against them. I would back against anything, most things that feel emotionally safer. But there's the charm, isn't it? It's not this analysis, it's not strategy, it's not even optimism in a normal sense. It's competitive daydreaming. A national hobby built entirely on emotional acceleration. Other countries wait for evidence, Scotland waits for mood. One neat passing move, and half the nation's like, right, I'll need the rest of the month off work, this is clearly going to be historic. And maybe there's actually healthier, maybe there's a better way to live like to look at one solid passage of football and think, history is shifting, the bracket is opening up, I might need to find my passport. It's slightly unhinged, yes. Is it deeply human? Absolutely. Because if you can maintain that level of hope with Scottish football, you can probably survive anything. Global recessions, extitential dread, your phone battery drying up at 3%, you'll be fine, you believe in the knockout rounds. And at this point, it feels less like sport and more like national character building. Now let's zoom out and talk about that actual tournament setup, because the World Cup is being held across the USA, Canada and Mexico. Three countries, not one host, three. At this point it feels less like a football tournament and more like a particularly ambitious package holiday. You don't need a wall chart, you need a travel agent. Fix just read less like group A match day two and more like day five city tour, optional museum visit, evening game, next morning, please beat the airport by 4 30am. And then there's this big cultural issue. They call it soccer. Yes, I know. We've all met that person who loves telling you. Well, actually, the word soccer originated in Britain, yes, and so did the phrase keep calm and carry on, and we've abused that as well. The point is, in 2026 they're calling it soccer, and it just sounds wrong. It sounds like a word you say while wearing a foam finger and eating cheese out of a pump. Meanwhile, back in Britain, football is a sacred, miserable, natural national pastime. We watch it so we can complain about it, that's the deal. You shout at the manager, you say that's it, I'm done in the 78th minute, you swear you're never watching them again, and then you're back the next match like some sort of emotional compromised goldfish. It doesn't feel quite right having the World Cup stretched across three countries where large chunks of the audience are still calling zero zero draw unamerican. And the time zones, the time zones are hostile. British fans are going to be looking at the fixtures list like an exam in advanced sleep deprivation. Kickoffs at midnight, two in the morning. Half past what am I doing with my life? At that point you are watching football or are you making just making bad decisions in a dark living room wrapped in a blanket, drinking a cup of tea that went cold forty minutes ago? You start to wonder if the real opponent isn't Brazil or France, it's your own Ceridian rhythm. And then there's the sheer scale of it. This isn't so much a tournament as it is a logistical riddle. The distances are ridiculous. You have one game in Vancouver, the next one in a place that sounds like it should be reached by the Oregon Trail. It's less World Cup, a more amazing race, but everyone wears the same kit. You need passports, domestic flights, an app to tell you which time zone you're in. And possibly a small emotional support programme for anyone trying to follow their team in person. And of course FIFA will sell it as this celebration of the global game, which in theory it is. Lovely, very inclusive, very international, big map. But from a British sofa, it mainly looks like a month-long exercise in learning time zones, maths while pretending it's normal to watch England at 1.40am in the morning. And you don't know if you've ever tried to emotionally process a penalty shootout at 3am on a work night, but it does things to a person. You're not built for it. You can't go straight from yes, get in, come on, to yeah, hi, just following up on that email from Tuesday. Your nervous system is still in Mexico. And this, I think, is my underlying problem with the whole thing. Not that it's in North America, that's fine. Lovely country, very spacious. It's that football, especially the World Cup, should feel a bit local, a bit muddy, a bit inconvenienced in familiar ways. It should not require you to understand transcontinent air travel and calculate the time difference between Manchester and Monterey before you know when to put the kettle on. Modern football is global, polished, commercially majestic. The World Cup is now less tournament and now more multinational event experience. But somewhere deep down it still feels like it ought to be you, your sofa, some crisps, a reasonable kick-off time, and the comforting knowledge that if it all goes wrong, you can be a bed by eleven muttering typical to yourself. Instead, we're going to be half awake, arguing about VIR at 2.30 in the morning, in a hoodie, eating cereal, wondering if we're passionate fans or just unpaid extras in this very expensive international scheduling era. So where does that leave us? Well, here. England emotionally dependent on one man to such an extent you'd think Harry Kane was going to personally negotiate our energy prices if we win the thing. Scotland emotionally halfway to the semi-finals after one above-average overlapping run, and the rest of us squinting at fixture lists across three countries, setting alarms for 1.57am, and trying to pretend that this is normal, sane way to experience sport. And yet we will all still watch. We'll complain about the times, we'll moan about the commentary, we'll insist that the coverage is over the top, but then we'll be there, nervously pacing the living room, arguing with pundits who can't hear us, and emotionally investing in men we have only ever referred to by their surnames. Because that's the World Cup. It turns normally rational people into part-time tacticians, full-time doom prophets, and occasionally occasionally wildly optimistic poets of possibility. Whether you call it football or soccer, whether you're booking flights or just trying to keep your eyes open at 3 a.m., it's the same ridiculous, beautiful, exhausting circus. And we will, of course, be back for the next one because we're all in, as always. I'm Alison. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to I'm Alison. This has been Am I Out of Touch podcast? If you've enjoyed this episode, feel free to subscribe, leave a review, or just shout Harry Kane at your radio every time you hear the word tactics. Thank you for listening, and may all your late night kickoffs be worth a lot to see.

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Am I out of touch? Is the world weird or is it just me?