Choose Panini sticker books. Choose kit releases. Choose ‘It’s Coming Home’ hitting the charts again. Choose megastars competing with unknowns. Choose rudimental internet research on some of the most obscure places, Kaliningrad, Manaus and Bloemfontein, those weird fun-facts stuck in your mind for the rest of time. Choose barbecues in the sun, with cheap disposable BBQs and slightly too warm beer, but without a care in the world because it’s the FIFA World Cup and you’re a little tipsy and unbelievably keen for Morocco versus Iran or Switzerland versus Serbia. Choose a Summer World Cup. But why would FIFA want to do a thing like that? They have a briefcase full of dirty bloody money. The bastards.
The FIFA World Cup, the crème de la crème of football. It is iconic. It isn’t for the cold, dark nights and it isn’t for the build up to Christmas. It is an absolute sham and despite knowing that this was the case for the best part of a decade, I am still pissed.
We all know the Qatar World Cup is a travesty. There isn’t anything to be said about the human rights violations that hasn’t already been said. Much smarter people than I have written better articles on this, and I urge you to read these. I don’t intend to belittle this but this article is not a human rights piece. I am focusing on the footballing side of this tournament and essentially bigging up a fun little idea to throw a double middle-finger at this horrifying winter World Cup. The solution… Create our own World Cup!
The FIFA World Cup takes place from early/mid June for one month. It has always been this way, so we here at Heart of Football have decided to make this a reality. We have simulated results (and by simulated I mean I have picked results with very little thought). I have then gone back and assigned scorers, red cards, bookings, penalties… the whole nine yards. We are going to be posting these updates via our Twitter feed (@heartoffooty) as if the games were happening right in front of us.
Group B will have the final participant selected through the play off between Wales & Ukraine, while Costa Rica and Peru have been selected to represent the other two playoff pathways by the Heart of Football voters.
This is a ‘screw you’ to FIFA. This is an ‘up yours’ to the Qatar World Cup. This is a royal ‘fuck you’ to Blatter, Infantino and every other crook who allowed this farce to happen.
Look, we know this won’t fix everything. This won’t fix the atrocities, and this won’t fix the summer World Cup that, as fans, after the torrid few years we’ve all suffered, we damn-well deserve. It makes us at HoF feel better though, because it’s something small that we can do. So what can you do?
You can share this article. You can share our tweet results. You can interact and predict scores and guess top goal scorers. Gianni Infantino isn’t going to see this, but football fans will, with any luck. Football Twitter and football articles are an incredibly saturated marketplace, but we are trying to make a difference. The FIFA World Cup is a summer tournament, and FIFA may have forgotten that, choosing to line their pockets in dirty blood-money, but Heart of Football remembers what this summer should be about.
So, #CloseButNoQatar, the Fake World Cup… there is only one question really. Who do you think is going to win?
Heart of Football 
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