The Catholic Church faced tech and didn’t flinch.
2,000 years in, still no update patch for tradition.
It doesn’t chase the “hit of the moment.” It buries trends. Outlives them. Stands.
Meanwhile, in football?
Yesterday: Patrice Motsepe delivered a Senegal pitch win to Morocco... in a bullion van.
Today: Gianni Infantino is delivering the World Cup to a dry cemetery... with a cellular device.
One guarded the game like scripture.
The other is livestreaming the funeral.
The Church said “No” to fads to save its soul.
FIFA said “Yes” to every phone call and lost theirs.
Tradition or transaction—you can’t serve both.
Rome picked the altar. Zurich picked the app.
Brothers, sisters, lovers of the beautiful game—I told you football was dead. Now I’m telling you why the wake lasted 90 minutes plus injury time.
We buried it when the World Cup Final stopped being a festival and became a courtroom.
We buried it when fear replaced faith.
Because there was a time we watched finals to see the Hand of God. Now we watch, waiting for the hand of the gods—small gods in suits—to decide if God was allowed to allow the goal.
VAR killed the miracle. Then politics buried the body.
And I saw it coming. I saw the devil on the cross taking minutes, keeping secrets while FIFA “cleaned the management cemetery.”
You remember Ebola?
I said it then: Ebola was a wonderful political tool.
A perfect red card for joy. A way to banish fans from stadiums. To empty the terraces of Africa and keep our nations lying in a bed of “Ebola roses” while the world played on.
Health became the new offside trap. “For your safety” became the new whistle. And just like that, the drum, the dance, the painted face—all flagged down.
That was the test run.
First, you sterilize the stands. Then you sterilize the pitch.
First, you tell us who can’t come watch. Then you tell us who can’t play.
So now here we are. 2026 Final.
Red cards overturned not by evidence, but by presidents.
Players resurrected by phone calls, not appeals.
A World Cup knockout decided 48 hours earlier in a room with no grass.
The game was jazz. Then it became maths. Then it became medicine.
Now it’s become foreign policy.
And foreign policy has never dribbled past five defenders.
The contradiction? We prayed for justice and got bureaucracy.
We begged for fairness and got fear.
Fear of the flag. Fear of the replay. Fear of the phone call.
Fear that the goal you’re celebrating was already vetoed in a capital city.
So I ask again, with the stadium lights burning holes in the sky: QUO VADIS, FIFA?
To the boardroom? To the bio-lab? To the ballot box? To the grave?
Because if Ebola can clear a stadium.
If politics can clear a suspension.
If a phone call can clear a player.
Then what’s next? Who’s next?
Will we need a diplomatic note to celebrate a goal?
Will we need a health certificate to sing for our country?
Will we need a permission slip to feel joy?
I don’t want a World Cup managed like a pandemic.
I don’t want a sport governed like a parliament.
I want 22 men, one ball, and the terrifying freedom to be wrong, to be brilliant, to be human.
Give us back the fear of missing a goal—not the fear of who allowed it.
Give us back the Hand of God—not the hand of a head of state.
Give us back stadiums full of Africans, not lectures about “Ebola roses.”
FIFA, you can’t serve the Cross and the Devil.
You can’t host the world and silence it.
You can’t sell “the beautiful game” and deliver a forensic audit of freedom.
The whistle blew. The phone rang. The people walked out.
That’s not a final. That’s a eulogy.
Choose now. Before the fans choose for you via our clan shrine in Kifuuta, Kyotera, Buddu.
