Quito, Ecuador – Somewhere between the Andes and a nervous hedge fund, Ecuador and Argentina are playing a game that looks suspiciously like football but smells unmistakably like geopolitics. The fixture itself—tonight at Estadio Rodrigo Paz Delgado—will decide little in the cosmic ledger: three points, a few million collective heartbeats, maybe a shattered TV or…
Ouagadougou’s Stade du 4 Août, 10 p.m. local time, and the mercury is still flirting with 38°C. The turf looks like it’s been blow-dried by a Saharan hair-dryer, which is fitting: everything about Burkina Faso vs Egypt these days feels like a slow-motion tumbleweed of geopolitical slapstick. On paper it’s a football qualifier—2026 World Cup,…
Guinea vs Algeria: When Two Nations Duke It Out and the Rest of the World Pretends It’s Just Football By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Conakry-Dar es Salaam Route Conakry, Thursday night. The lights flicker like a bad omen at Stade du 28 Septembre, which is fitting because every time Guinea and Algeria meet,…
Scotland vs Belarus: Two Cold Places, One Lukewarm Game, and the Entire Planet Pretending to Care By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, somewhere between Glasgow and Minsk Let us begin with the obvious: there are only so many ways two mid-table nations can disappoint their citizens on a Tuesday night, yet Scotland and Belarus…
