Mo Memes Ranked the 7 Stages of World Cup Heartbreak and Honestly I'm Stuck on Stage 8: Pure Rage

Right. Mo Memes wrote a piece ranking the seven stages of realising you can't afford to go to the 2026 World Cup and I'll be honest, I read it, I laughed, and then I got genuinely furious. Not at Mo. At FIFA. At the whole rotten circus. The kid nailed it. But they stopped too early. There's more stages. Trust me. I've been through all of them.

In their latest piece, Mo Memes laid out everything from blissful ignorance to full sofa acceptance, complete with skull emojis and emotional damage ratings. Very modern. Very Gen Z. Very accurate. But see, Mo's still young enough to have hope. I lost mine somewhere around the 2010 vuvuzela era and I never got it back.

Let me tell you what Stage 8 looks like. Stage 8 is when you're 62 years old, you've remortgaged nothing because you rent, and you're watching FIFA announce "record breaking ticket demand" like it's something to celebrate. Record breaking for who? Not for Dave from Rotherham who wanted to take his lad to see England play Iran in a stadium the size of a small country.

The survey Mo referenced is a proper eye opener. Fans worried about personal safety. Fans worried about visas. Fans worried about whether they can actually get into the country. And FIFA's response? Probably another advert with slow motion footage of kids kicking a ball on a beach. Lovely. Sorted. Cheers Gianni.

Back in my day, and yes I know how that sounds, you could follow your team abroad without needing a second job and a law degree. You'd get on a ferry. You'd sleep in a van. You'd eat something suspicious from a street vendor and you'd survive because your stomach was made of concrete. Now you need an ESTA, three forms of ID, travel insurance that costs more than the flight, and a ticket priced like it comes with the deeds to the stadium.

Mo's bit about the bank account and the passport getting equal amounts of dread. That's poetry that is. Pure poetry. Because it's true. Every fan I know is doing the same maths right now and the maths is not mathing, as the kids say. Flight. Hotel. Tickets. Food. Spending money. You're looking at the price of a decent second hand car just to watch three group games and come home sunburnt.

And the host cities are spread across an entire continent. It's not like popping from Dortmund to Cologne. You're talking New York to Los Angeles. That's five hours on a plane. Inside the same tournament. Inside the same country. Who designed this? Someone who's never paid for their own travel, that's who.

Stage 9, by the way, is when you accept the sofa. You buy new cushions. You get the big telly. You stockpile crisps. You tell yourself it's actually better this way because you can watch every game in your pants without judgement. And you almost believe it.

Stage 10 is when the tournament starts and you see some influencer courtside in Miami with a cocktail and you put your foot through the coffee table.

Mo's right. FIFA said everyone's welcome. They just forgot to mention the entry fee.

Football belongs to the fans. Except when there's money to be made. Then it belongs to whoever can afford it.

Same as it ever was. Only worse now. Always worse now.