FIFA World Cup 2026: What happened to the beautiful game?
How the World Cup has changed over the past 50 years and why there are only flashes of the beautiful game in 2026. “They don’t
How the World Cup has changed over the past 50 years and why there are only flashes of the beautiful game in 2026. “They don’t care about the beautiful game. They don’t care about the elegance of football. In my time, we used to think and give a little show.” The words of arguably the greatest player of all time, Pele, back in 2014 before the World Cup in Brazil, which Germany won, say it all about the state of the world’s most popular game. That tournament was a watershed moment for Brazil: it was meant to showcase the individual talents of the likes of Neymar, Oscar and Hulk in front of a global audience. Instead, Brazil were humiliated in the semifinals 7-1 by a ruthlessly efficient German side, a defeat that still haunts the nation to this day. Germany’s success was the perfect example of how hard-running, athletic teams that followed a strict tactical game plan were the dominant force in football, rather than teams full of individual brilliance, playing off the cuff and aspiring to entertain and win. Pele’s team that won the 1970 championship in Mexico is considered by many football historians to be the last great side to win a World Cup, exemplifying the “beautiful game”. Four years later, at the World Cup in West Germany, Brazil were overtaken tactically by other sides like the Netherlands and their mantra of “total football”. The year 1974 became pivotal as it marked the corporatisation of the game. The election of Joao Havelange as FIFA president that year ushered in a new era of lucrative global sponsorship deals.
Previous agreements had been local and independent, but by the mid-to-late 1970s, premium partnerships and worldwide brands like Adidas and Coca-Cola became entrenched FIFA partners in commercial marketing relationships that continue to this day. Broadcast rights mirrored this trend, with the cost of TV deals skyrocketing with the advent of national network deals, followed by sports cable subscriptions beginning around 1980. Football was now big money, and, as a result, the stakes had been raised. The increase in sponsorship and broadcasting revenue saw the financial rewards for teams reach levels never before imagined. Football became about winning at all costs, and the way one played the game was increasingly seen as outdated. Beautiful recreated: Netherlands ‘74 and Brazil ‘82 However, even with the sport becoming big business, there have still been teams that have played the game in a beautiful way. The two main examples in World Cups are the 1974 finalists Netherlands and Brazil in 1982. The Dutch team that reached the 1974 World Cup final might have replaced the creative and free-flowing match play of Pele’s famous Brazil sides with the total football concept – put simply, a system that meant no outfield player had a fixed position, meaning a winger could play as a centre back, for example – but it resulted in a team that played a brand of fast, fluid and attacking football, led by the incomparable Johan Cruyff. In doing so, the Dutch proved that the beautiful game could also be played in Europe, although their system was exposed in the 1974 final when the more pragmatic West Germans found a way to exploit their tactical weaknesses.
The BriefWire