🃏 The best World Cup memes: Adani, Honda, FIFA and 6 more! 😂 | OneFootball

The World Cup is over: 48 teams, loads of late comebacks, unforgettable moments, shock eliminations and... memes galore.

Some are full-blown memes, others sit somewhere between serious (barely) and silly (much more so), and then there are facts so surreal they seem fake (if only).

Wilton Sampaio’s announcement in Mexico-South Africa

The opening match at the Azteca let us see that same light that shone on Italy in the “Game of the Century,” that 4-3 in 1970 that sent us to the World Cup final. 

In 2026, though, the Azteca gave us Wilton Sampaio’s English-speaking skills: the Brazilian referee sent off a South African player (Zwane) after reviewing a foul on the monitor.

The stadium announcement is almost impossible to understand, and player Mudau looks at the referee as if he were watching the best end-of-season cliffhanger on Netflix.

But this is one of those endings where you have to look up the explanation online: why did he give the red? What happened? “Serious foul play” is Sampaio’s answer. Ah, good thing I looked it up. I never would have understood that on my own.

Empty stands at the World Cup? FIFA: “The fans are in the concourses”

Some World Cup matches drew strangely small crowds: who wouldn’t tear their clothes off to watch Czechia-South Korea live? After all, a ticket only cost a few thousand dollars.

And so Guadalajara’s Akron Stadium looked half-empty in many sections, the perfect chance to go after FIFA, which always has an answer ready: “Several fans with tickets were seen standing in the concourses instead of remaining seated in their assigned seats for the full duration of the match.”

Whoever came up with that response has a master’s degree in “mirror climbing”, at the very least. Or they could also try “the elbow kind of like this”, just for the sake of it.

Balogun’s red card overturned

The decision to overturn Balogun’s red card after a completely normal sending-off would never be funny if it happened in a comedy show. It wouldn’t be funny because it’s objectively an awful joke. Too silly to be real and not exaggerated enough to reach full absurdity. In short, cringe with extra steps.

And yet it is funny because it actually happened, because news like that even reached people who don’t even know what a football looks like. Everyone was outraged, and almost everyone smiled when they woke up in the morning and read: “USA-Belgium: 1-4.” We can never say it enough: Charles De Ketelaere saved this sport.

US journalist mocks Bosnia, but her boss is Bosnian

ABC News journalist Abigail Velez says live on air: “I don’t know where Bosnia is and I don’t want to know, because Team USA is stronger than ever.” Let’s set aside the illogic of the sentence itself, let’s set aside the outrage, let’s set aside everything negative. Well, all that would be left is a facepalm.

And instead, the punchline arrives, karma giving us that little grin when someone we can’t stand has a harmless bit of bad luck. The president of ABC News is Almin Karamehmedovic: guess what country he comes from?

Keisuke Honda on commentary... but he knows nothing

Keisuke Honda’s adventures have led him to play matches between Bhutan and Cambodia, despite being 40 years old. We imagine the reasons in this form: $$$. Nothing wrong with that.

Much worse was his commentary on Japan-Netherlands as co-commentator. The former Milan man failed to recognize several players (“where does Dumfries play?”), was surprised by how tall others were, and complained about the hydration break. (Nobody touch Keisuke, at least on this point.)

Not content with that, he put himself forward as national team coach after the Samurai Blue were eliminated. Then again, one of the most famous Japanese proverbs says: “Asking is a shame for a moment, not asking is a shame for a lifetime”. We advise Honda not to follow this Confucian ethic.

RAI’s blunders

RAI’s slip-ups and inaccuracies during this World Cup were numerous, but these words are not meant to sound like an attack, because anyone can make mistakes. We’ll just stick to a list.

The Japanese fan who becomes “Hero Chicken Nugget Cookie”

During a FOX live broadcast, a perfect blend is created between the reporter’s enthusiasm and a Japanese fan: “My name is Hirochika Nakakuki... I cannot speak English, but I AM EXCITED!”. A smile and then scroll on? No. You check the comments, and that’s where the rabbit hole begins.

Under the official video, a comment goes viral, almost as much as the video itself: “Relax, Hero-Chicken-Nugget-Cookie is an incredible name”. Instagram could never let a sound that good pass by unnoticed.

And this Hirochika Nakakuki (or rather Hero-Chicken-Nugget-Cookie) does the only sensible thing in the face of the Internet wave: he embraces it with open arms on his profile. His 15 minutes of fame are already over, but in this case it’s really true: “We made the right person famous.”

Enzo Fernandez: “We love the English, the people who clean our house are English”

Enzo Fernandez scores the golazo for 1-1 against England in the semifinal, celebrates by putting his hands to his ears like “El mudo” Riquelme, and whips his fans into a frenzy. But he plays in England, so after the match he immediately has to explain his celebration.

His comment is not exactly one of his finest: “There was no malice in it. My family and I have great respect for the English, especially my wife. Everyone who takes care of cleaning and cooking in our London home is English, and we adore them.”

That half-synecdoche didn’t really come out very well. And thank goodness all the household staff Enzo hired are good people, otherwise who knows what he would have thought of all 60 million English people on this Earth.

Daniele Adani

Daniele Adani was the third most talked-about figure in Italy during this World Cup: ahead of him, only Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump. The comments directed at him range from sublime to rock bottom, depending on which side of life and football you look at it from (or Fútbol?).

The number 10 who needs to hydrate, the “Possession-sex-sex-sex”, the Einstein quotes during Argentina-England, the shouting until he lost his voice, and Alberto Rimedio’s arms trying to contain a torrent (Albiceleste, carajo) after Lautaro’s 2-1 goal.

Lele Adani from Correggio (Emilia, 5,029 km away from Buenos Aires) is certainly a divisive figure. Some love him on Que Viva el Futbol, and some “hate” him on RAI, thinking about that fraction of a cent coming out of everyone’s pocket and into his. But what does he really cost us? Very little, almost nothing. What does he give us? A lot, pretty much all of himself.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.

📸 Andrew Harnik - 2026 Getty Images