The message came through to our America 2026 podcast WhatsApp group at 5.25am. The sender was housewives’ choice Paul Howard, who has been taking his hosting duties far too seriously throughout the tournament. “I can barely believe it myself, but I’m watching Switzerland for Algeria,” he wrote.
Now. As well as being a lantern-jawed role model for Rose Of Tralee escorts everywhere, people will know Paul to be a writer of some repute. He has sold well over a million books in Ireland. He has written plays and musicals and TV shows, interspersed with decades of award-winning journalism. Yet here he was, unable to make a coherent sentence out of a 12-word WhatsApp message.
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In the States, there was a famous ad campaign in the 1980s called This Is Your Brain On Drugs, aimed at scaring kids away from the dangers of narcotics. Watching Switzerland for Algeria is your brain on one hour’s sleep. This is your brain on an American World Cup.
The tournament has split people into three buckets. In one, the maniacs like Paul. Down-bad sickos living in the dark, sleeping during the day, retreating from all public engagements and hygiene norms. In another, the normal people of society, carrying on their lives as regular citizens, maybe catching a highlight here and there if they happen across it. Be in no doubt, these people are weirdos too.
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Bucket three contains the rest of us, grimly hanging in there as long as we can most nights, kidding ourselves that we can make it to the second half of the 2am game. If you’re not wrenching your neck nodding off to USA v Bosnia and Herzegovina, you’re not doing it right. So we beat on, boats against the current, fighting sleep with a pathetic kind of doughy, middle-aged rebellion.
Ultimately, of course, the rebellion is against nobody but ourselves. Who are we putting it up to, after all? To whom are we cocking a snook by refusing to go to bed while Germany v Paraguay enters what feels like its seventh hour? Nobody worth annoying, that’s for sure.
The only person we are discommoding is our put-upon future self, the sleep-deprived dope who still has to get up at the usual time to pretend to be a properly functioning person in the world. There is no leeway afforded to the World Cup laggard, particularly with Ireland not being involved. You think the boss is going to go easy on you because you stayed up to watch the penalties in Germany v Paraguay? You’d get more sympathy if you turned up half-jarred.
Still, we do it. Or at least we try to. Christ knows, Fifa don’t make it easy. With hydration breaks and Var meddling, some of these games are going on longer than a Healy-Rae feud. The second half of Portugal v Croatia lasted a shade over 58 minutes. It was less a half of World Cup football, more a Ken Burns documentary.
But like, what are we going to do? Not watch? Please. There’s only a fortnight left in the tournament. Come Monday morning, we’ll be down to the last 12 matches. A dozen games and then it’s four full years until the next World Cup. A few late nights are the least we can do.
Are we handling it well? We are not. We are tired. We are pasty. We are lumpen and heavy on our feet, a zombified army marching on a diet of 1.45am Pringles. The World Cup has cast us in our least impressive light – lethargic, waspish and distracted. The Love Island producers have not been in touch.
And yet we have it in us to be judgey. Absolutely we do. There’s a certain sniffiness to the dead-of-night World Cup watcher, a kind of haughty assurance that we are the real ones, that nobody is as dedicated as us. We are not above sleep-shaming. Oh, so you didn’t stay up for Mexico v the Czech Republic, no? Pity. Missed a good one there. (You really didn’t).
We’re entering the home straight now and everything from here on out gets a little more normie-centric. Only two of the Round of 16 matches kick off after midnight Irish time – England v Mexico at 1am Sunday night/Monday morning, and USA v Belgium at the same time the following day. After that, one of the quarter-finals is at 2am (Argentina’s if they get there) but otherwise, everything else starts between teatime and 10pm.
Which seems a shame, really. Even those of us who haven’t quite been able to keep pace with the deranged Paul Howards of the world could have taken a stab at one last hurrah. The enduringly pointless farce of the third-place play-off, for instance. If ever a match deserved a 4am kick-off, surely that’s the one. Only the true World Cup perverts are watching it anyway. May as well properly test their mettle.
Truth is, we’ll miss these nights. Every World Cup leaves its own sense memory, that lasting trigger in the brains of those of who measure our lives by these tournaments. When we think of World Cup 2026 in decades to come, we’ll remember Messi and Mbappé and Haaland and Kane and all the rest of the stars that came out to play. Presumably, Trump will slither into view at some stage too and leave his own slime on proceedings for posterity.
But mostly, we’ll think of quiet nights in sleeping houses, the volume turned low and the sitting room in lamplight, trying to swallow a roar as a late goal flies in or a keeper gets low to save a penalty in a shoot-out. Alive in the dead of night, too tired to sleep now anyway. Watching Switzerland for Algeria.
Delirious, in every sense.
Source: The Irish Times
