SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The World Cup finally returned to the Bay Area after 32 years, bringing people from all around the globe together at Blank Stadium — don’t call it Levi’s, per FIFA rules— in unity for their love of the beautiful game and their deep, collective hatred of the star that keeps our planet alive.

Saturday’s Qatar-Switzerland game wasn’t so much a display of athletic brilliance as a 68,000-person experiment in a meticulously organized, comically overpriced survival test of both body and mind.

But just as thousands of fans flooded the exits in the final seconds of a soul-crushingly boring 1-0 game, taking with them serious questions about their life and financial decisions, we were all given a lightning bolt of a reminder of why the World Cup is the greatest sporting event on Earth.

Switzerland, having scored in the 17th minute, played around with the Qataris all game, turning a World Cup match into a glorified training session, but failed to score again despite 26 shots. The Swiss completed more than double Qatar’s passes overall, and more than seven times — 720% — as many passes in the attacking third of the field.

Yet, they tied 1-1.

Because Qatar centerback Boualem Khoukhi scored an outstanding header from a last-ditch chance in the fourth minute of second-half stoppage time — the greatest goal in Qatar soccer history and one that might have been the lowest in terms of probability for this tournament — to steal a point at the death.

And boy, did the 77-minute gap between goals feel like death.

For the vast majority of Saturday’s game, the defining emotion wasn’t passion. No, it was a primal yearning for shade. It was deep boredom that bordered on an existential crisis.

The World Cup in the Bay had all the charm and excitement of an international airport terminal.

The heat was punishing, the aesthetic was strictly corporate and the soccer itself was deeply atrocious.

The official kickoff temperature was a quaint 83 degrees. Anyone from the Bay Area knew that was a meteorological lie.

The real-feel temperature, per AccuWeather.com, hit a blistering 96 degrees by halftime.

It was hot enough that a Qatari man — in full thobe, as the vast majority of supporters were — bought a trash bag full of $7 Dasani water bottles (only the finest at this tournament) just to stave off the heat. The high in Doha was 110 on Saturday. Before that last-minute goal, I bet he wished he had never left such temperate weather, even if the Qatari government was subsidizing the trip.

It was the kind of afternoon that made you genuinely consider a $23 light beer or five. The Americans, Swiss and tourists from elsewhere did a noble job in taking the teetotalling Qatari’s quota there.

Still, by the 30th minute, fans desperate for any stimulation collectively sought salvation on their phones. Instead, they were surely greeted by that apocalyptic warning: “TEMPERATURE: Needs to cool down immediately.”

Even the technology was begging for mercy.

Naturally, the concourses didn’t empty after halftime. They functioned as concrete fallout shelters for the overheated masses.

Up in the air-conditioned hospitality suites, a completely different game was being played. True fans in a wild collection of jerseys rubbed elbows with “bigwigs” in too-tight suits and sneakers.

They were joined by jetlagged Europeans who looked legitimately awestruck by the sheer opulence of an American football stadium. They were equally baffled by the aggressive flavorlessness of a Michelob Ultra.

Those folks never left their chilled confines. Why would they? What were they missing out there?

Down in the lower bowl, the ice cream line stretched five sections long.

Sitting up in Section 421 — the upper corner of the stadium, directly in the sun — in the second half, the match functioned as a giant white-noise machine.

It only took two minutes for me to get a respectable back-sweat going, but the crowd was library-quiet. You could whisper, and the person next to you would catch every single syllable.

Heat-induced mania? No, it was strict dreariness here. Every toddler sleeping in the stairwells had the right idea.

It was a terribly bad day for the “soccer isn’t boring” crowd. Until that final moment.

Was it enough to save the event? Perhaps. At the very least, attendees won’t have to lie and say they didn’t go, lest they be questioned by their friends and family.

Without that incredible ending, the pinnacle of on-field intrigue would have arrived in the 13th minute when Qatari goalie Mahmoud Abunada took Swiss midfielder Remo Freuler’s thigh directly to the face in front of the net.

Abunada lay motionless for a moment, perhaps two. When he finally rose to his feet, he was promptly rewarded with a yellow card and a penalty kick for the Swiss.

Striker Breel Embolo of French team Stade Rennais casually scored from the dot four minutes after the play stopped.

His lone goal delighted the Swiss partisans, who were banished to the second level of the stadium. Meanwhile, the Qatari fans enjoyed the premium lower deck.

Apparently, petrostates comfortably supersede banking states in FIFA’s global hierarchy.

A nice plurality of Mexico fans — remember, that’s the most popular soccer team in the U.S. — tried to inject some life with a 36th-minute wave. They delivered a fleeting moment of good energy, but it was a brief fiesta. Fans quickly realized standing and sitting again would only take them closer to the sun and increase the sweating.

The only other surge of energy came during a second-half hydration break when the stadium blasted “Proud Mary,” proving once again that Motown remains America’s undisputed greatest cultural export.

Frankly, before the final goal, the most impressive thing I saw Saturday was a Swiss fan playing a harmonica while smoking a cigarette at the exact same time. Man of the match.

Under the grandstand overhangs, guys in full thobes and bucket hats played keepy-uppy. Thousands who paid hundreds of dollars for standing-room tickets ended up watching the game on the concourse TVs. By the 80th minute, the Swiss fans in the second deck finally started jumping and singing.

They weren’t celebrating a masterclass on the pitch. They were just giddy with the realization that they could leave soon.

Little did they know they’d leave disappointed.

In the end, the whole production was flawlessly organized. There was seamless admission, nothing but smiling faces, and unearthly sums of money minted for the “nonprofit” cartel that is FIFA.

And that is the true genius of this entire operation.

They can lock 68,000 people in a concrete microwave, charge a king’s ransom for tepid water, and deliver 90-plus minutes of aggressively unwatchable product.

But the second that header hit the back of the net at the death, the heatstroke was miraculously cured. The boredom was instantly forgiven. And those same thousands who were set to grumble walked out to the even-more-boring streets of Santa Clara, found some A/C, cracked open a cold one and realized the worst part of it all:

It might have been a pretty good time.

©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at mercurynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.