Will Still: The Visa-Bending Football Coach Outrunning Global Bureaucracy One Match at a Time
Will Still: The Belgian, Brexit-Proof, Visa-Bending Football Coach Who Proves Bureaucracy Is No Match for Sheer Gall
By the time the paperwork finally caught up with Will Still, he had already beaten PSG, pocketed a handsome Ligue 1 salary, and become the living punch-line to every expat’s favorite joke: “I’m not illegal, I’m just waiting for the stamp.” The 31-year-old English-Belgian tactician, currently steering Stade de Reims with the panache of a man who treats immigration law like a mild suggestion, is the latest reminder that in 2024 the world is run by PDFs, but it is occasionally liberated by people who simply refuse to log off Zoom.
Globally speaking, Still’s rise from Football Manager obsessive to UEFA-sanctioned benchwarmer extraordinaire carries the geopolitical weight of a thousand Brexit think-pieces. When Britain slammed the door on free movement, it apparently forgot to bolt the cat-flap. Still simply hopped across the Channel, waved a Belgian passport obtained through ancestral loophole so obscure it sounds like a Monty Python sketch, and carried on drawing diagonal arrows on tactics boards. If that isn’t a metaphor for post-Brexit Britain—simultaneously sovereign and sprinting after the last Eurostar—then nothing is.
From Brussels to Bangkok, immigration authorities are scratching heads. The Belgian FA has already adopted him as proof that their youth coaching modules can produce world-beaters (or at least PowerPoint champions), while the Home Office in London is rumored to be drafting an emergency “Will Still Clause” to prevent other citizens from realizing dual nationality isn’t just for oligarchs. Down in Argentina, where half the coaching staff still operate on handshake contracts and a crate of Malbec, they’re bemused that Europe needs a visa to talk about gegenpressing. Up in Norway, where even reindeer have digital ID chips, officials are quietly furious that one man’s Adobe Acrobat skills have subverted an entire continent’s HR department.
The broader significance? Bureaucracy, that great 21st-century religion, just met its first agnostic saint. Every multinational corporation currently spending millions on compliance software is now watching a 31-year-old kid with a laptop and a laminated badge outmaneuver them. Meanwhile, the International Labour Organization reports that 52 percent of global workers are now “digital nomads,” a euphemism for “perpetually on tourist visas.” Still isn’t just a coach; he’s the patron ghost in every co-working space from Lisbon to Lagos, the holy spirit of overstayed welcomes.
Of course, the joke is on football itself. The sport that once trafficked in dodgy Serbian passports and West African birth certificates now employs VAR to spot an offside toenail but still can’t spot a coach who technically shouldn’t be on the touchline. FIFA, an organization that needs three forms and a retina scan to change a lightbulb, is powerless because Still’s paperwork status is “pending,” a Schrödinger’s Cat of administrative limbo. Somewhere in Zurich, a mid-level compliance officer is stress-eating Toblerone wondering whether to classify him as “staff,” “consultant,” or “performance art.”
And yet the stands keep filling, the results keep coming, and the global audience keeps streaming. Because in the end, we all secretly root for the guy who games the system without actually breaking it—who proves that rules are just polite suggestions once you’ve got talent, Wi-Fi, and the audacity to treat border control like a yellow card: annoying, but hardly a sending-off offense.
So here’s to Will Still: the accidental revolutionary who turned a work-permit glitch into a masterclass of modern statelessness. If he wins the Coupe de France, expect a thousand LinkedIn posts about “disruptive immigration strategies.” If he doesn’t, he’ll still have taught us that in an era of walls and widgets, the most valuable passport is self-belief—and maybe a half-decent Wi-Fi connection. As for the rest of us, clutching our residence permits like rosary beads, we can only watch, applaud, and quietly update our CVs to include “comfortable with legal ambiguity.”
After all, the world will still spin, bureaucracy will still churn, and somewhere, in a dimly lit government office, a very tired clerk is about to stamp “approved” on the assumption that anything lasting this long probably deserves to stay. Welcome to 2024: where the rules are made up and the points—like visas—don’t matter until they suddenly do.
