The list of goals does not match that of the tickets › Soccer World Cup 2022 › Granma

If the average number of goals per game in the current event, until yesterday, barely exceeded two per game (2.2), in addition to five games ended in draws without targets, there is another number in the World Cup in Qatar that skyrocketed before for the first ball to reach the bottom of the nets. The amounts for television rights are stratospheric.

Among the main recipients are the nations that have their national teams on the competitive stage, but also those that, although they did not arrive, have passionate and delirious fans. For example, in Europe, the four-time world champion, Italy, and in America, Colombia, with colorful and fierce football, which is missed in the Qatari squad.

For the current world event, these rights have been marketed for months by the International Federation of Associated Football (FIFA) in more than 200 countries, with the aim of selling exclusive signals, precisely, 85 years after the first game of this sport. broadcast live on television. That duel was, in 1937, a friendly in England, between the starting team of the Arsenal club and their substitutes.

FIFA calculations, before the initial whistle of the World Cup, placed the profits at 2,460 million dollars for selling the profits to the different television channels. It is clear that the planet, every four years, turns into a balloon. As it happens to us in Cuba, with our television, public and with rights for all, with the 64 World Cup matches, the television is the stadium with the largest capacity in the world.

Not all the negotiations include the 64 games of the fight. There are some that cover that 100%, but with a part of the crashes deferred; Others reduce the service to a number of matches, for example 32, plus those that play the country’s team. In the Greater Antilles, possessing a vast sports culture and great fans of football, all the matches arrive —for free, live and direct—, a privilege that has been enjoyed since the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. .

In this dance of the millions, there are no surprises; in it it does not happen, as it has happened in this World Cup, that an Argentina loses before a modest selection; or that the great Germany will be surpassed, despite showing their solid game, definitely not. In that other World Cup, the big fish eats the little one, or what is the same, he pays to see the party, or not to be eaten.

Faced with this rain of goals, or dollars, nobody remembers their needs and that the world is less and less equitable. But when the last goal is scored, after the euphoria of the world title, the goals of the little ones will once again be filled with the same anxieties as today and, just as the hardships disappeared for a month, apparently, the cry of goal to hear again the pain of the World Cup of inequality.