The goal that decided the World Cup was scored by Ferran Torres in the one hundred and sixth minute, in the second period of extra time, against Messi's Argentina. The day after, in my feed, there was barely a trace of that goal: what was doing the rounds was him shirtless on the parade bus, red cap backwards, a cross chain, the face of someone who knows exactly the effect he has. «Shirtless. The chain. The backward cap. Oh YES», wrote someone under the video, and three thousand people agreed.
Under the very same clip, reshared, was the blue tick of Barça Archive, an account that normally catalogues assists and tackles, with a dry caption: «Ferran Torres celebrating shirtless». The unofficial fan archive and an account of pure concupiscence had landed on the same frame, with the same fervour. One of them admitted it.
The 2026 World Cup is best told this way, by watching who was watching what. For the entire tournament the real views champion was a midfielder's body. Jude Bellingham, English, twenty-three years old, became what GQ called, without the slightest embarrassment, «the World Cup's biggest crush», complete with a pink background and hand-drawn little hearts: the secret diary of a fourteen-year-old girl from 2003.
An account with a rainbow flag posted a rear shot of him, «Jude Bellingham, I hadn't had a proper look», and a hundred and eighty thousand people went to check.
Another crowned him «our Princess Diana». The midfield, by now, mattered to almost nobody: what people were watching was how he filled the frame.
Twenty years ago, selling Beckham in his underwear or Cannavaro tanned beside a watch required a campaign, a photographer and a contract. Someone decided to sell you that body, and at most you bought it. Now no one needs to decide to sell it: everyone sells it.
Variety, yes, Variety, the Hollywood trade paper that tells you how much a film made at the box office, published its ranking of «25 Hottest Soccer Stars at the 2026 World Cup». Inside: De Paul, Pulisic and Bellingham. Vogue Scandinavia lined up fifteen, those with the «most lethal face cards», and opened the list with Lucas Bergvall: twenty-year-old Tottenham player, the youngest Swede ever to play a World Cup, a record nobody cared about in the slightest, because in the meantime the montages of his close-ups were already clocking millions of views and the internet had elected him «white boy of the month». The tournament had become a beauty pageant with a football match inside it, and the jury was us, for free, one thumb at a time.
The case that amuses me most is Maduka Okoye, the Nigerian goalkeeper, anointed by half the internet as the most beautiful man at the World Cup. The only problem is that Okoye wasn't at the World Cup: Nigeria hadn't qualified. He went viral walking towards the goal in a friendly against Portugal, picking up roughly a million followers for a stroll.
Asked about the phenomenon, he answered with the line all impossibly handsome men use when they pretend not to be: «Women have always been a bit crazy about me. I appreciate it, but I don't let it go to my head.» Sure.
Then there are the straight male fans of football. On the eve of England vs Mexico a story that was only half true had been doing the rounds: sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, is not banned by anti-doping rules and has been studied for reducing certain effects of physical exertion at altitude. From there, the theory that it might help England's players with the altitude at the Azteca.
Thomas Tuchel had said he knew nothing about it, but the internet had already translated everything into «England authorised to use Viagra». Below: twenty-three thousand hearts and the comments: «They don't just want to beat them, they want to f*** them»; «over 2.5 erections in the first half».
For certain men it's the only socially permitted way of talking about other men's bodies: a joke vulgar enough to let them look while pretending to laugh.
I watched them the way you watched them: scrolling, saving two or three videos «for research purposes», sending a friend Bellingham from behind with nothing written underneath except «anyway». Desiring footballers is as old as football itself; fans of all kinds have been filling stadiums for a century, and long before that Greek athletes were painted naked on vases.
What changed is the signature. Now we put desire in writing: first name, last name, blue tick, employer in the bio. Ferran Torres scored the most important goal of his life and the day after he was a shirtless photo with thousands of hearts beneath it. Of all the places at the World Cup, the only one where people kept talking about football was the pitch.
