How the best week of the football year surpassed all expectations | OneFootball

As Steve Clarke finally settled and tried to make sense of what had just happened in Hampden Park, he seized the moment in his own way. The Scotland manager had been talking about those emotionally fraught seconds just before the qualification clinching goals of Kieran Tierney and Kenny McLean against Denmark.

“Everybody was in the stadium," Clarke began. "Nobody left, because they could smell the magic.”

How couldn’t they, after the week of football we had already witnessed? There was certainly a magic in the air. Something unlike anything else, which only the World Cup can do. These pages previewed this international break by discussing how this is the best week of football every four years, but the truth is that it surpassed all expectation. It was a rival for 1993. Scotland were one of many countries left marvelling at how "this doesn't usually happen to us".

open image in gallery

(Getty Images)

You only have to look at Hampden Park or the similar scenes involving Ireland, Iraq, Curacao, Haiti, DR Congo and Ukraine, to point to just the most prominent storylines.

Perhaps the only place to start is at the end, in a very literal sense. Scotland’s late strikes were two of eight genuinely decisive goals that came after the 90th minute in the week's matches. If you can’t get better sporting drama than that, there was still so, so much more.

Such strikes helped clear the way for 14 sides to confirm their places at the 2026 World Cup, with a further 22 still able to hope from March's play-offs.

Three of the European countries - Austria, Norway and Scotland - are enjoying their first qualification since 1998; Haiti their first since 1974. Curacao are meanwhile enjoying their first full-stop, to also make them the smallest country to ever qualify, with a population of just 156,000.

open image in gallery

(AFP via Getty Images)

They might yet be joined as fellow debutants by DR Congo, New Caledonia, Suriname, Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia, who are all in the play-offs.

The stories from these games alone would warrant books or the new brand of sporting documentaries we tend to see. Many football fans are consuming the scenes of celebration from Scottish and Irish fans, but there’s also what happened with Iraq and Suriname.

The latter - previously best known in football for being the ancestral countries of Dutch stars like Ruud Gullit and Virgil van Dijk - had gone into their Concacaf group on top. They then got eviscerated 3-0 by eliminated Guatemala, only for a 96th-minute own goal by Nicolas Samoyao to salvage a play-off spot. While that gifted Panama direct qualification, it denied Honduras in another group, due to the way that Concacaf's play-off spots were decided on a mini-league between runners-up. Such permutations, of course, are all part of the glorious chaos of such nights.

And, amid all of the euphoria, Honduras coach Reinaldo Rueda showed the other side. He was literally in tears and pleading forgiveness, as he spoke about football humbling you.

The United Arab Emirates might say similar. The state has pumped billions into football over the past two decades, to the point that their national team is currently made up of many naturalised players of Latin descent. And they were still beaten by a 107th-minute stoppage time penalty from Iraq's Amir Al-Ammari.

The sound of the roar in Basra was something to behold, as it contained within it a 40-year wait for the World Cup and so much else.

And that’s part of the reason why all represents so much more than the purest sporting drama, which it already is.

open image in gallery

Iraq scored in the 17th-minute of stoppage time to keep their World Cup hopes alive (REUTERS)

The World Cup goes to such peaks because it is the only truly global event, with that very universality offering unique moments of nation-building, and an authentically benign nationalism. That is all the more pronounced when it’s a country finding itself, or coming out of some kind of conflict of trauma - like Iraq. It’s where this is about so much more than football, and why this week has such parallels with 1993.

Haiti actually had to play their qualifiers in Curacao due to political unrest. Ukraine - where Oleksandr Zubkov is now a hero - are defiantly playing through an invasion, to give their people something to be happy about and also give themselves renewed focus in the international community. Years of violence in DR Congo don’t get the same attention, but World Cup qualification itself can change that. There is similarly a symbolism in how the national team’s brilliant penalty shoot-out win over a chaotic Nigeria was preceded by reports of a peace deal between the state and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group.

open image in gallery

DR Congo defeated Cameroon and Nigeria to advance to the play-offs (AP)

The World Cup, simple, means even more in such settings. It offers hope... an innocent happiness, to quote Irish writer Nell McCafferty.

It couldn’t be modern football, of course, without seeing the other side of this; the more problematic political side. Such qualifiers coincided with Cristiano Ronaldo visiting the White House with Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince of 2034 hosts Saudi Arabia. You couldn’t have a clearer illustration of “sportswashing”. Fifa president Gianni Infantino was of course present, later standing over Donald Trump’s shoulder as the US president spoke about potentially launching strikes in co-hosts Mexico, to aid in the fight against drug cartels.

open image in gallery

Infantino has a close relationship with Trump and is frequently a guest at the White House (Getty Images)

So many of the global football body’s decisions now are nakedly political, not least the otherwise controversial decision to increase this World Cup to 48 teams.

The increased places may have allowed some of these stories, but it’s not like they’re exclusive to this vote-guaranteeing expansion. They happened before.

Right now, they also leave the awkward situation of more qualifiers to come through the final play-offs, four months after the actual World Cup draw in Washington on 5 December. That could have a distorting effect. It also fosters the sense of some qualifiers being an afterthought, to go with the fans.

Many of the very people celebrating the moments of the last few days won’t even be able to attend due to the obscene prices of this World Cup, both in terms of tickets and travel. That’s the price of the capitalism the game has embraced.

Ronaldo’s own politicised presence was meanwhile all the more prominent given he his absence from Portugal’s last game due to suspension, which could see him miss Portugal’s opening games of the World Cup, following his red card against Ireland.

open image in gallery

Cristiano Ronaldo was sent off in Portugal’s defeat against Ireland on Thursday... (Getty)

open image in gallery

.... and then attended a White House dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday night (REUTERS)

That sending off was one of many absorbing sub-plots over the last few days, from the frustration of Trump ally Viktor Orban and form of Erling Haaland, to the resignation of Jamaica's Steve McLaren and the return of 78-year-old Dick Advocaat. They are all products of the kind of theatre that only sport can produce, and that the World Cup does greater than anything else. It is the ultimate in so many ways.

It’s also what’s worth remembering amid the rancour, all the problematic wider forces trying to use this very theatrical power.

There’s a “magic” to this, as Clarke said, and one of its tricks is to always eventually evade those issues, to leave us with the glow of what football is supposed to be about.

Only the World Cup can truly conjure that.