Buckle up. The next FIFA World Cup Final will have a half-time show featuring as-yet-to-be-announced musical acts selected by Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin and the band’s manager Phil Harvey, just like the Super Bowl… only this time the players aren’t allowed to pick the ball up. Right?
Come on. If you think about it, this was always going to happen. After all, the next World Cup, taking place in 2026, will be jointly hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico – if they’re not all at war with each other by then – so of course they were always going to ‘improve’ things…
And with the States only just coming up with the brainwave of having TWO Super Bowls a year instead of one (what took them so long?) OF COURSE there was going to be a World Cup half-time show in 2026.
The ‘surprise’ announcement broke cover courtesy of the sport’s governing body FIFA, whose president Gianni Infantino, while appearing at the FIFA Commercial & Media Partners Convention in Dallas, took to Instagram to drop his fun-filled bombshell: "I can confirm the first-ever half-time show at a FIFA World Cup final in New York New Jersey," he… confirmed.
"This will be a historic moment for the FIFA World Cup and a show befitting the biggest sporting event in the world."
The next World Cup Final will take place on 19 July 2026 at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, home to the New York Giants and New York Jets American football teams.
Hashtag FootballUnitesTheWorld…
Of course, the Super Bowl half-timers have become a vital part of the American Football centrepiece event, and with an American Football game lasting on average three hours 14 minutes some respite from the action – and an opportunity for a big-name star to benefit from the media focus – has become a welcome part of the event’s tradition.
But with soccer matches clocking in at a tight 90 minutes with a single 15-minute break, die-hard fans are already questioning whether there’s room for such obfuscation.
In fact, Coldplay involvement aside, it’s this potential extension to the game and its subsequent interruption to the fine flow and pressure experienced by the players that's forming the core of fan’s concerns.
At present the new addition is being described as “a 15-minute break” but at the time of writing it’s not known as to whether that’s an extra 15 minutes added to the already scheduled 15-minute half-time, or whether the show will be forced to fit into the existing 15 slot that fans know and respect.
While American Football half-times run to around 13 minutes – with the chosen celebrity artist for the Super Bowl working hard and under pressure to keep their show within that – needless to say the break is often extended to twice that in order to make for the logistics of creating then vanishing a stage upon the pitch.
And it's an understatement to say that any notion of altering the break in a World Cup match – final or otherwise – hasn’t gone down well.
Notable comments from around social media as to the merits of the enterprise so far include:
Does America turn everything into a circus?
Make Soccer Great Again (keep it away from the yanks)
The Chevrolet soccerball halftime show, in association with McDonalds. Can't wait…
Football as you know it - Rest in Peace
And the succinct:
Get this nonsense away.
We can only hope that Chris Martin – who, it's now confirmed – will NOT be one of the acts appearing – manages to pick a line-up that every football fan (in every country, of every age and every musical taste) will love.
Good luck.
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