For the History Books

Hello dear reader. However you stumbled on this post, thank you for being here. My name is Niama Al-Nima, I am an independent filmmaker based in New York. I wanted to create this blog at this time for three reasons. The first one is that I love writing and storytelling, the second is that I love football, and the third is that the world cup is the perfect way to combine my love for storytelling and football. The world cup is more than just a football tournament. In every edition, you’re not just witnessing rivaliaries, storylines and epic moments taking place on the field, you are also witnessing the way that power dynamics, politics and human affairs speak in tandem with the history of this tournament. I will be discussing in considerable detail the footballing side of the world cup, what my predictions are, what I am looking forward to seeing, the storylines I will be keeping an eye on. But I will also be covering topics that relate to the politics and implications of holding the biggest tournament in the world in the United States and the way current events will affect the experience. There is a lot at stake currently, both on a global level and a personal level, and I feel compelled to bear witness and document these moments in a more free form type of way. I have a feeling that, for better and worse, this world cup will be one for the history books, and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it. Of course, there is one more obvious reason why I’m doing this, which is because I fucking can. Thank you for being on this journey, and let’s see how bad my predictions end up being… 

I will be going into greater detail about my predictions and breaking down some of the key teams that I will be keeping an eye on in the next few posts, but for my general predictions, here is what I have. 

Winner: I have Spain vs. Argentina in the final, with Argentina to win it again. I think Argentina are still the team to beat and with the experience that they have, they will go back-to-back. 

Golden ball (Player of the tournament): Lionel Messi. 

Young player of the tournament: Lamine Yamal. 

Golden Boot (top goalscorer): Harry Kane.

That’s it, that’s all I have for this one. A big part of why I’m doing this is to connect with people, so please share your thoughts and predictions if you feel compelled to do so, I would love to hear from you! First kick in a few hours time…