The World Cup has been going on for more than three weeks now and, as it does every four years, it has taught us more about ourselves as a society than many analyses. We have seen classic upsets, the kind that feel like David versus Goliath. Modest Cape Verde first earned a heroic draw against a Spain side that arrived as one of the favourites, and then put up a strong fight against Argentina in the round of 32. And what can be said about Paraguay, the team responsible for Germany\u2019s historic elimination before later falling to France? I confess that, like every four years, I had been waiting for this tournament with the excitement of a child..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps that is why the World Cup always ends up resembling something more than a football tournament. Every four years we think we are going to watch football, and instead we end up watching a condensed version of ourselves. This year, while working on UNDP’s new Report on Democracy and Development<\/a>, I could not help thinking that many of the questions we ask about our democracies<\/a> also emerge, curiously enough, every time a ball starts rolling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Football is one of society’s most honest mirrors. It brings together, in concentrated form, many of our virtues as well as our contradictions: who gets to participate, who is left out, how opportunities are distributed, how much rules matter, and how much resources matter. More than any other sport, football offers a miniature view of society. It is worth looking at Latin America and the Caribbean through that mirror. What it reflects is not always comfortable, but it is often revealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first reflection is the most uncomfortable, and it appears off the pitch. This is the most expensive World Cup in history: tickets for the final went on sale for nearly eleven thousand dollars, compared with sixteen hundred just four years ago. A game that was invented barefoot, in vacant lots and public squares, is becoming an increasingly inaccessible spectacle for the very people who made it great. The problem is not that money buys better seats\u2014that has always been the case\u2014but that prices have risen so dramatically that even middle-class fans who save for years to experience a World Cup are beginning to be priced out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When access to the game shrinks, football loses more than spectators: it loses part of the community that gives it meaning. Something similar is happening across Latin America and the Caribbean. For decades, millions of people escaped poverty, but that progress has begun to stall while wealth continues to concentrate. The stands and society are starting to look uncomfortably alike: a growing share of people watch the match from behind the fence, while the distance separating them from those in the best seats keeps widening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second reflection appears on the pitch. It is a debate as old as football itself: does the best player win, or does the best team? Every World Cup reminds us of the same lesson. Talent can decide a match, but it rarely wins a tournament on its own. Success requires a system of play, teammates who understand one another, respected rules, and an organization capable of turning individual talent into collective achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same is true of democracies. We often look for the leader who can solve everything, when in reality what sustains a society are the institutions that transform leadership into results. That is why development does not depend solely on economic growth, but also on the state’s capacity to turn decisions into well-being for its people. Yet across the region, expectations continue to grow that a single individual can solve problems that only a good team can address. Football teaches us, time and again, that this is a losing bet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third reflection may be the most important. What makes football so captivating is that nobody knows who is going to win. If the outcome were already written before the opening whistle, we would stop watching. Uncertainty is not a flaw in the game\u2014it is its very essence. Democracy rests on the same principle. Its strength does not lie in guaranteeing who governs, but in ensuring that competition remains open, fair, and credible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, however, uncertainty lies not only in the outcome of the contest, but also in the conditions under which it is played. Polarization, organized crime, disinformation, the technological revolution, and the climate emergency are transforming the democratic playing field. For a long time, Latin America and the Caribbean responded by trying to hold on, endure, and defend what had already been achieved, hoping the storm would pass. But it is no longer passing\u2014it has become the climate. A team cannot play an entire World Cup locked inside its own penalty area. Nor can the region simply contain mounting pressures. Either it renews itself to compete in this new context, or it will deteriorate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet there is a reason not to give up, and football teaches that lesson as well. Despite soaring prices, commercial interests, and disappointments, fans do not abandon the game. They fill public squares, watch matches in neighborhood bars, and teach their children the names of the players. Love for football survived even after the business of football began distancing itself from many of those who had given it life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same is true of democracy. Despite widespread disillusionment with governments and frustration over results, most Latin Americans still believe that democracy is the best way to organize life in common. They are like the supporter who stopped going to the stadium long ago but never stopped loving the team. That confidence may be worn, but it remains the most important asset upon which we can build democracy’s renewal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Albert Camus, who played as a goalkeeper before winning the Nobel Prize, once said that everything he knew about morality and the obligations of human beings he owed to football. He learned it through something simple: on the pitch, you do not play for yourself\u2014you are accountable to others. Democracy asks the same of us. It is not sustained by those who wait for others to play, but by those who understand that rules, institutions, and trust survive only if we are all willing to inhabit them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The World Cup lasts only a month. But the most important match is the one we play every day: keeping open a competition in which no one has victory guaranteed before the opening whistle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n