The World Football Cup began in London this week with a match at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium. This statement is true but may need clarification: it might sound like a report from a parallel universe in which the Fifa nobs sent their 2018 tournament to England not Russia.
The World Football Cup is not quite the actual World Cup. It is not even a consolation event for the countries temporarily locked out of the World Cup, those obscure places such as Italy, the Netherlands and the United States, who failed to qualify. It is more of a consolation prize in life.
It is for those places locked out of Fifa and, in almost every case, the international community as a whole: the world’s outcasts, the dispossessed, the not-quite nations, the once-were nations and in many cases never-will-be nations. Some are not geographical entities at all, such as Japan’s Korean minority. There is also an undercurrent of humor and satire. Among the 47 members of the Confederation of International Football Associations (Conifa) are Yorkshire, admitted too late for this tournament, and Cascadia, a greenish, libertarian, un-Trumpian confection with a slight whiff of dope, covering British Columbia and the north-western states of the US.
This tournament makes one think hard about what we mean by nationality as a concept, as Britain has had to do twice in the past four years, over the Scottish referendum and then Brexit.