The World Cup is over: 48 teams, loads of late comebacks, unforgettable moments, shock eliminations and... memes galore.

Some are full-blown memes, others sit somewhere between serious (barely) and silly (much more so), and then there are facts so surreal they seem fake (if only).

The opening match at the Azteca let us see that same light that shone on Italy in the “Game of the Century,” that 4-3 in 1970 that sent us to the World Cup final.

In 2026, though, the Azteca gave us Wilton Sampaio’s English-speaking skills: the Brazilian referee sent off a South African player (Zwane) after reviewing a foul on the monitor.

The stadium announcement is almost impossible to understand, and player Mudau looks at the referee as if he were watching the best end-of-season cliffhanger on Netflix.

But this is one of those endings where you have to look up the explanation online: why did he give the red? What happened? “Serious foul play” is Sampaio’s answer. Ah, good thing I looked it up. I never would have understood that on my own.

Some World Cup matches drew strangely small crowds: who wouldn’t tear their clothes off to watch Czechia-South Korea live? After all, a ticket only cost a few thousand dollars.

And so Guadalajara’s Akron Stadium looked half-empty in many sections, the perfect chance to go after FIFA, which always has an answer ready: “Several fans with tickets were seen standing in the concourses instead of remaining seated in their assigned seats for the full duration of the match.”

Whoever came up with that response has a master’s degree in “mirror climbing”, at the very least. Or they could also try “the elbow kind of like this”, just for the sake of it.

The decision to overturn Balogun’s red card after a completely normal sending-off would never be funny if it happened in a comedy show. It wouldn’t be funny because it’s objectively an awful joke. Too silly to be real and not exaggerated enough to reach full absurdity. In short, cringe with extra steps.

And yet it is funny because it actually happened, because news like that even reached people who don’t even know what a football looks like. Everyone was outraged, and almost everyone smiled when they woke up in the morning and read: “USA-Belgium: 1-4.” We can never say it enough: Charles De Ketelaere saved this sport.

ABC News journalist Abigail Velez says live on air: “I don’t know where Bosnia is and I don’t want to know, because Team USA is stronger than ever.” Let’s set aside the illogic of the sentence itself, let’s set aside the outrage, let’s set aside everything negative. Well, all that would be left is a facepalm.