Why don't we watch football anymore?

As the World Cup draws to a close, I find myself pondering a seemingly contradictory idea: we've never had so much football in front of us. And yet, paradoxically, perhaps we've never watched so little of it.

The other day, I asked myself a strange question. I spent ninety minutes in front of a football match. But how many of those ninety minutes did I truly spend watching it? At first glance, the question seems absurd. Of course, I watched the game. I saw the goals. The chances. The substitutions. The referee's decisions. Even the ads during the hydration breaks. By the end, I even knew the stats. Possession. Shots on goal. Goalkeeper saves. Corners for both teams. Kilometres covered. Heat maps. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that perhaps I had only seen what everyone else saw. And almost none of what actually happened.

Today, we don't just watch football anymore. We comment on it. We post about it. We argue about it. We clip it. We bet on it. We turn it into fifteen-second videos—sometimes less. We experience the game live, but we often stop observing it. Some people are in the stadium looking more at their phones than at the pitch. Some post an opinion before understanding the play. Some criticise a substitution before grasping its effect. And some even stop watching the game when their idol leaves the field. The case of Cristiano Ronaldo is particularly revealing. According to one study, when he was substituted in the Portugal-Croatia match, almost half of the television viewers stopped watching.

Perhaps that statistic says a lot about the times we live in. For many, the game is no longer the game. It's the star player. It's the moment. It's the clip. It's what fits on a phone screen.

We've never had so much access to football. We've never had so much difficulty contemplating it. A match still lasts ninety minutes, but for millions of people, it's boiled down to the moment the algorithm chooses. The goal. The mistake. The controversy. The meme. The rest disappears.

Maybe that's why so many left this World Cup convinced they saw everything, when, in reality, they mostly saw what social media decided to show them.

Watching football has never been just about looking at the ball. It's about watching those who don't have it. The full-back providing width. The midfielder closing a passing lane. The centre-back covering for a teammate. The forward dragging a defender out of position without touching the ball. The goalkeeper organising the entire team before making a save. Football lives as much in what is happening as in what is about to happen. And that requires time. Attention. Patience. Everything the modern world seems to have trouble offering.

Perhaps the most evident example of this transformation occurred during this World Cup. For the first time, we saw the introduction of two mandatory hydration breaks in every game. Officially, the measure was justified by the high temperatures. But these interruptions also ended up creating new moments for television and commercial exposure, bringing football even closer to the model of major American sports, where every break represents an opportunity. On the pitch, the effect was also clear. Many coaches began to use these minutes as tactical timeouts, reorganising positions, correcting behaviours, adjusting pressure, and changing strategy.

It's a sign of the times. Football is still the same game. But the way we consume, interrupt, analyse, and sell it is changing rapidly. For decades, football was a collective experience. Today, it has also become a succession of individual stimuli. Each fan watches their own game. One follows the stats. Another follows the commentary on X. Another waits for the viral video. Another only watches the controversial play. In the end, they all claim to have watched the same match. But perhaps almost no one has seen exactly the same thing.

Football has accustomed us to discussing results. But we should also discuss the way we watch. Because there is beauty that doesn't fit in a highlights reel. There is intelligence that doesn't appear in a clip. There are movements that don't go viral. There are players who have great games without featuring in a single viral moment.

We are gaining access. We are gaining information. We are gaining speed. But we are losing depth. Football doesn't just need better players, better coaches, or better referees. It also needs better observers. People capable of seeing beyond the goal. Beyond the mistake. Beyond the scandal. Beyond the noise.

As long as we are just waiting for the next viral moment, we will always be seeing very little of the beautiful game.

"Liderar no Jogo" (Leading in the Game) is the opinion column on abola.pt by Tiago Guadalupe, author of the books "Liderator - a Excelência no Desporto," "Maniche 18," "SER Treinador, a conceção de Joel Rocha no futsal," "To be a Coach," "Organizar para Ganhar," and "Manuel Cajuda – o (des)Treinador."