The 2026 edition of the Fifa World Cup has come to an end with the final concluding with loads of drama – the good, the bad and the ugly. It is arguable that the unprecedented climate leading up to the global tournament – blocking access for some; crude examples of inhospitality – led many to panic. However, the collective global spirit of ordinary people; the light of the Beautiful Game has survived and maybe thrived.

Let’s first touch on the actual final, before commenting generally on this 2026 Edition, which was unprecedented in a number of ways.

Two photographs taken during the July 19 final provide some context. One captured the Spanish national team wunderkind Lamine Yamal hugging a sobbing Lionel Messi, while whispering into the senior icon’s ear. The teen exemplified us humans at our best, pausing the normal reflex to join the spontaneous celebration of team-mates; to console a person – whom he had just been competing against – but who was a personal inspiration.

Yamal set aside the dominant culture’s preoccupation of promoting “me” and attended to the “we”.

This, against a backdrop of 120 minutes of a final when Argentina – playing the man rather than the ball — had only two shots on goal against 20 from Spain. That aggression spilled over post-game with a couple of brutal attacks on Spanish players.

Having only turned 19, Yamal was born in the working-class district of Barcelona, to his 16-year-old mother from Equatorial Guinea and his 15-year-old father from Morocco. He remains a practising Muslim and thus subject to the anti-immigration, racist and anti-Islamic “divide and rule tactics” that are becoming more common in both America and Europe.

In spite of this vulnerability, Yamal leveraged the recent celebration parade for Barcelona FC – by waving the Palestinian flag to demonstrate his solidarity with the people experiencing genocide by the Israeli military in Gaza and the West Bank. This creative footballer is honouring a legacy – standing on principle – exemplified by the likes of (basketballer) Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Muhammad Ali.

The other picture was that of the national team of Spain. There is something of a media frenzy over whether the team purposely excluded President Trump from the picture. While their social-media posts don’t include him, the context is clear:

• At least two of the Spanish players could have been subjects of ICE “raids”, if they were US residents: Yamal and Nico Williams – whose extraordinary header set up the winning goal.

• The Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has been Europe’s most outspoken critic of the US support of Israel. He prevented Washington from using Spanish bases to launch their Illegal war against Iran. This has made the progressive leader a target of President Trump; lately threatening economic sanctions against Spain.

• On the other hand, the Argentinian president was promised $40 billion by Trump, successfully “helping” in a tight General Election in April. In recent months at the UN General Assembly, Argentina has been the only country voting in favour of the shared positions of Israel and the US. Those three nations stood against 122 other nations in a UN resolution regarding the history of slavery.

The World Cup’s expanded format allowed for “ordinary people” to emerge, to some extent. Cape Verde was the classic example, with its team, representing a population of 500,000, drawing with the new world champions Spain in their first game. Subsequently the islanders put the defending champions, Argentina, under pressure to the very end. Messi displayed great relief at the conclusion of that game.

That spirit of Cape Verde in football speaks to their struggle for freedom. That group of islands was a colony of Portugal – up to 1975 – for centuries, during which time they were politically connected to Guinea (Bissau) in West Africa. A movement started by African icon Amilcar Cabral in the 1950s, pressing for social justice in these joint jurisdictions, faced extensive repression across the 1960s. That said, with their perseverance the movement not only brought Independence to Cape Verde by 1975, but it also led to the end of the dictatorship in Portugal – through the Carnation Revolution.

In other words, the soldiers from Portugal who went to repress those people in various parts of Africa underwent a collective transformation through engaging with their victims. They returned to Lisbon and brought about peaceful change, ending dictatorship and freeing the Portuguese. Those who had been promoting the dark of oppression were themselves changed by the light of the struggle for freedom.

Examples of this light, were evident during World Cup 2026.

• Japanese fans cleaning up the stadiums following matches.

• Player-opponents often spontaneously helping each other up from the ground.

• England player Jude Bellingham suggesting that a member of Ghana’s team should have received the Player of the Match Award rather than himself.

• Spanish player Nico Williams went to extraordinary lengths to give his winner’s medal to his mum – another salute to the “we” rather than the “me”.