Are we guilty of treating nostalgia as evidence?

Are we guilty of treating nostalgia as evidence?

It's a question I've found myself returning to over the last couple of weeks. With the World Cup on the horizon, I have been inundated with social media content of  clips from past tournaments and songs that seemed to soundtrack entire summers while I was going through my teens. The strange thing is that instead of feeling excited, I've mostly been wondering why those older tournaments still occupy so much space in my mind.

Is it simply nostalgia? Maybe I'm not actually remembering the World Cups of 1998, 2002 or 2006, I'm just remembering who I was when I watched them. Slow and long summer evenings with friends, staying up too late, watching an underdog nation take on a giant and genuinely believing anything was possible. But once you peel off the upper layers of this you realize its not the whole story.


Bring back not knowing what Ronaldo had for breakfast


Back then, footballers still felt slightly out of reach. We caught glimpses of them on television, in newspapers or through the occasional magazine interview. The World Cup felt special because it gathered these almost mythical figures in one place. Zidane, Ronaldo, Figo, Beckham. They weren't part of your daily life. They appeared every few days and then disappeared again.

Today we have unlimited access to players. We know what they wear, where they holiday and what they had for breakfast. In theory, that should make us feel more connected to them but in practice, I wonder if it's had the opposite effect. Familiarity has replaced mystery. Access has replaced anticipation. The players are more visible than ever, but perhaps a little less magical.
I sometimes wonder if part of it is simply visual. The World Cups I grew up watching were captured in a way that feels noticeably different today. Maybe it was the film stock, the grain, the softer colours or the slightly imperfect broadcast quality. Maybe it's because those images have aged the way old photographs age, acquiring a warmth and character that wasn't necessarily there at the time. When I watch clips from 1998, 2002 or 2006, everything feels richer somehow. The yellow of Brazil, the blue of France, the floodlights, the packed stands. Or perhaps that's just another layer of nostalgia speaking

I found myself thinking the same thing while revisiting old Nike and Adidas campaigns. Were they genuinely better, or did they simply exist in a world with less noise? Today every campaign arrives alongside a hundred reaction videos, behind-the-scenes clips, podcasts and social posts. Nothing has enough space to breathe, to exist before it flourishes and to eventually become a part of culture. Even the music felt different. Every tournament seemed to have its own sound, its own atmosphere, its own sense of place.


 

 

The part I can’t quite ignore


Which brings me to the part I can't quite separate from all of this.

Growing up, the World Cup felt like football's great equaliser. A competition where nationality, race, language and geography became something to celebrate rather than divide over. For a few weeks, the world felt smaller in the best possible way.

Today, against a backdrop of constant conflict, increasingly divisive polotical rheotoric and growing hostility toward migrants and minorities in many parts of the world, that ideal feels harder to reconcile with reality. It's not that football has changed. It's that the world around it has.

Would it be any different if say Mexico hosted the whole tournament?
I even found myself wondering whether I'd feel differently if the tournament was being hosted entirely by Mexico. Not because Mexico is perfect—no country is—but because it feels easier to connect the tournament to a place with a distinct football culture, language, history and identity. A World Cup should feel like a celebration of a host nation as much as a sporting event. Perhaps what I'm struggling with isn't the tournament itself, but the political reality surrounding it and the compromises we've become accustomed to accepting.
And that’s objectively unfair. Every generation, old and young - firmly believes in the fact that everything was better celebrated in their times . With that as a context, i believe there is an element of disservice to the younger fans by constantly comparing their experience to ours. If we spend all our time telling them sport was better, the music more authentic, the culture more rooted and as a result the world far better, where does that leave them? Nobody benefits from a young population that is entirely despondent and filled with pessimism. 

At the end of it all, as the curtains on the world cup are practically being raised -  the real question isn't whether those yesteryear World Cups were better; It's whether we're remembering the tournaments themselves, or simply mourning a version of the world—and ourselves—that no longer exists.