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There is a phrase beloved of every business school lecturer, every venture capitalist and every man who has ever worn a gilet to a breakfast meeting: the level playing field.
It is the founding myth of competition itself, the idea that we all start from the same line, breathe the same air and sweat, roughly speaking, the same sweat. And this summer, FIFA has taken that noble concept, marched it into the Philadelphia sunshine and left it there to blister.
Because let us be clear about what is actually happening at this World Cup. On Saturday afternoon, France and Paraguay were sent out to play knockout football in Philadelphia with the heat index nudging an obscene 40C, the sort of temperature at which sensible nations close the shops, draw the shutters and lie down until October. Meanwhile, other teams in this very same tournament have spent a month wafting about in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston, three fully enclosed, climate-controlled pleasure domes where the thermostat sits at a serene 22C, roughly a fifth of all matches are being played in air-conditioned comfort, and the greatest physical hazard is an over-chilled bottle of Gatorade.
That is not a level playing field. That is not even the same sport. That is judging oranges against oranges, yes, but one orange has been kept in the fridge and the other has been left on the dashboard of a Ford Focus in a Texas car park.
And tonight it gets better, or worse, depending on whether you are English. England face Mexico at the Estadio Azteca, a cathedral of footballing suffering that sits 2,240 metres above sea level, where the air is thin, the oxygen is rationed and the home side has been living, training and playing up in the clouds all tournament. Mexico have played three of their four matches at the Azteca. England have had a few days to acclimatise to conditions that physiologists suggest need weeks. It is the sporting equivalent of asking a Surrey accountancy firm to pitch for a contract in Mexico City, in Spanish, while mildly concussed.
Now, I can already hear the rejoinder. Sport has always had its quirks of geography. True enough. But there is a difference between charming local variation and a structural inequality baked into the draw. When one quarter-finalist has spent the group stage at a constant 22C and another has been slow-roasted in Miami and Monterrey at wet-bulb temperatures the medics politely describe as dangerous, the bracket itself becomes a lottery of thermodynamics. Uzbekistan, delightfully, drew the coolest schedule of the lot. Tunisia drew the hottest. Neither earned it. The air conditioning did.
FIFA’s answer to all this has been the cooling break, that strange little ritual in which 22 millionaires gather round a cool box like wildebeest at a watering hole while the referee studies his watch. It is a sticking plaster on a sunburn. A three-minute pause does not undo 87 minutes of playing in conditions that would get a building site shut down in Britain, and everyone from the players’ union to the team doctors knows it.
Business readers will recognise this pattern instantly, because it is how markets fail. It is the incumbent with the subsidised energy contract competing against the start-up paying spot prices. We would call it an uneven regulatory environment and write furious letters about it. FIFA calls it a tournament.
And here is the properly British irony: while the players wilt, the UK economy is having a lovely time of it. The tills are singing to the tune of a £3.8 billion World Cup spending boost for pubs, bookmakers and takeaways, and smart small firms are already thinking MATCH to win the event economy. The only heat map that matters in Britain this month is the one showing which beer gardens have a big screen.
Tonight’s kick-off lands at 1am UK time, which is why unions are begging employers to allow flexible working on Monday morning, and why half the nation’s middle managers will be conducting their 9am stand-up from behind sunglasses. Spare a thought, as you yawn, for Harry Kane and colleagues, who will be conducting theirs at altitude, on 40 per cent less oxygen, against 87,000 Mexicans who regard the Azteca as a family heirloom.
So no, this World Cup is not judging oranges with oranges. It is a magnificent, chaotic, occasionally dangerous experiment in competitive inequality, and whoever lifts the trophy will deserve an asterisk shaped like a thermometer. If England prevail tonight, breathless in every sense, it will rank among our finest away days. And if we lose, well, at least we will have the excuse ready before kick-off. Which, as any England fan will tell you, is the true national sport.
