As England and Norway play the quarter finals of the World Cup 2026 in Miami, this blog was wondering if 2026 is the year to call it a day on international sports competitions. To ‘call it a day’ means not to call it this day of 11.07.2026 but to call it the last day, or at least to start the winding up process.
Miami is included in ‘the topics’ although being just outside the Tropic of Cancer, and another reason the human definitions of Earth and the universe and the natural world and climate science and human health are all too exact in western science. Apart from the night and day created by Helios, and land and water, and life and death itself, most things are in gradiated increments and the climate in which England -v- Norway fight it out is tropical, give or take a latitude degree or two. It’s far too hot for northern Europeans to be exerting themselves in this manner, and far too hot for thousands of people to be flying around the USA between locations, and far too hot for the teams and the fans to then jet off back in all directions from the USA when the 2026 World Cup has finished.
This blog was thinking as it saw the photo of the Norwegian team restoring proper Viking life of the waterside gathering in appropriate attire of tunics, leather, shields, and a few long spears, with longboat ready behind to take the warriors over the seas. Similar scenes would have been in 793 when the Norse Vikings set off over the North Sea to raid and destroy the Christian monastery on the island of Lisdisfarne (just one Farne Island but holy to the Christians and a major medieval centre of that religion). It is complicated, because the Kingdom of Northumbria were both Anglo-Saxons (which race were under the government of Norse gods but who had turned away from the true gods) and native Celtic peoples of Britain (native for over 1,000 years anyway and who had turned away from the true gods of Celtic Britain and Ireland) and all were devout Christians.
But the photo of Norwegian Norse warriors preparing to set sail on their longboat was only a photograph, not reality. Instead they boarded a plane to join the 2026 World Cup in the USA and Mexico, in the most terrifying heatwave on planet Earth. Pretty much all of the Norwegian team are Northern blood line and much has been made of the striker Erling Haaland because of his Norse warrior appearance – which for humans is made up of height, hair colour, skin colour, physique of muscle and bone length, eye colour, etc. He is a ‘social media sensation’.
The Norwegian fans who have flown to the USA, and those who live there already, have also stated the Norse identity with their Row, and ‘the Row’ in Viking context also means warfare. Team and fans are bonded in image and intention, tonight being not to cross the North Sea to end the Christians on Lindisfarne but to end the English football team in the quarter finals of the 2026 World Cup. The English team because they are ethnically more mixed, and because England is now a very complicated concept, do not have one clear performance to fall back on. It could be a pint of beer, a folk band singing maybe, but really there is no clear national or cultural identity to bring out on such an evening.
However, the fact of two national teams from up here in northern Europe and Scandinavia battling it out in Miami heat and in this heatwave, it is a valid question to ask whether global sport has had its day. ‘Has had its day’ is more general than ‘let’s call it a day’ but still refers to time passing and maybe our present activity should not continue through many more turns of Helios. If sport were returned to where it became relevant again, which for Europe is alongside fierce nationalism, as probably it is for every region on Earth, then climate would begin to correlate with activity, less air flights would be taken, FIFA would have less ability to put prices in the £1,000s and Boston would still have some alcohol in pubs to serve its local inhabitants.
The events of heat in summer 2026 are scary, and Spain at present is battling devastating wild fires. The next World Cup, in 2030, or the one in 2034, is going to be in climatic disasters of which we are only seeing the beginning. The modern world in all its global links has no get out clause but maybe the physical necessity now of learning to live in unknown heat will bring up a list of a few activities that are not essential to survival and best left to regional battles as of olde.