"We don't want it." Three words. That's the verdict from football fans after FIFA announced it's bringing a Super Bowl-style halftime show to the World Cup final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium — featuring Shakira, Madonna, and K-pop giants BTS, curated by Coldplay's Chris Martin.
The reaction was about as warm as you'd expect from a fanbase that has never once asked for a pop concert wedged into the sport's biggest match.
The Super Bowl problem
Here's the fundamental issue: football fans watch football. The Champions League final — the other marquee club event on the calendar — has a pre-match concert from The Killers this year. Pre-match. Not a 30-minute interruption after the whistle. There's a reason that distinction exists, and FIFA is steamrolling right over it.
One X user put it plainly: "Halftime show at the World Cup final feels like FIFA trying to be the Super Bowl. Players just want to focus and recover." Another went further, arguing that unlike American football, where casual viewers tune in specifically for the halftime spectacle, people watching the World Cup final are there for the football and the players — full stop.
The criticism about "Americanisation" is running hot too, given this edition is hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada. Whether that framing is fair or not, FIFA has handed ammunition to everyone who thinks the sport is being packaged for an audience that doesn't really follow it.
The logistics don't help either
A standard halftime in football is 15 minutes. Squeezing three headline acts — two of whom are among the most elaborate live performers on the planet — into that window borders on logistically impossible. Something will get cut, rushed, or the players will get a shorter turnaround than they're entitled to. None of those outcomes are good.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has framed it around the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, insisting the show will "bring together music and football on the biggest stage in sport for a very special cause." The charity angle is genuine, and the artists involved carry enormous combined fanbases that stretch well beyond traditional football audiences.
But wrapping it in good intentions doesn't change what it is: an entertainment product grafted onto a sport that has never wanted one. As one user noted, Shakira's return does carry a certain poetic weight — Waka Waka was the anthem of the 2010 World Cup, and closing that chapter on the final's biggest stage is at least a football-adjacent story. Madonna and BTS are harder to justify on those terms.
"Genuinely nobody cares," wrote one fan directly under FIFA's announcement post. That might not be entirely true — but it's closer to the consensus than FIFA's Instagram feed would suggest.
