What does football do to the human mind?

It is not merely an inflated piece of leather rolling across green grass, nor is it 22 players chasing that piece for 90 minutes or more. It is a social, psychological, and cultural phenomenon that deserves to be studied at universities just as it is studied at sports science institutes.

They call it the magic round — a game whose tournaments and competitions push people into an exceptional state in which priorities shift, schedules change, and the public mood is rewritten. A small ball becomes capable of moving human minds more than politics, economics, or even war.

What happens to a person when a goal in the last minute can lift him to the heights of hope or plunge him to the depths of despair? What makes hundreds of millions of people, across all languages, religions, and races, sit down at the same moment, holding their breath before a screen, as though the entire world has become a single room?

During a World Cup, the rhythm of life changes. Vacations multiply, meetings are postponed, sleep schedules are upended, streets empty out — then fill again at the final whistle. The finance director who was debating a major institution's budget an hour earlier transforms into an analyst explaining why the manager got his substitutions wrong.

The surgeon who spent the day in the operating theatre becomes an expert in tactical formations, from the most famous in the history of the game — 4-4-2 — and everything that has followed. The taxi driver offers you sports analysis that rivals any pundit on a dedicated sports channel.

Football grants the human being a beautiful illusion of being part of making the event happen, even while sitting thousands of kilometres from the stadium. He shouts, grows angry, leaps to his feet, rebukes the referee, demands that one player comes on and another comes off, and calls for the entire game plan to be changed. It is an emotional relationship that does not submit to the laws of logic.

Football reveals a person to himself. In the moment of victory, generosity, tolerance, and reconciliation emerge. In the moment of defeat, irritability, agitation, and fanaticism surface. Some accept a loss with equanimity; others fall out with a brother or a friend simply because he supports the opposing team. It is as though the ball tests not only the players' skill but also the crowd's ability to manage its own emotions.

Social media has poured fuel on the spectacle. In the past, the argument ended at the door of the café or the gathering. Today it spreads across millions of screens. After every match, platforms fill with analysis, satirical cartoons, short clips, and mutual accusations. Within minutes a player becomes a national hero, then in the following match becomes the target of ridicule. It is a court that knows no appeal and refuses to acknowledge that error is part of human nature — that players are human.

Perhaps the real secret behind the magic of World Cup matches is that they remind us that no matter how far humanity has advanced scientifically and technologically, there remains inside every person that child who rejoices at his team's victory, dreams of lifting the trophy, and believes that the impossible can be achieved in the last minute.

For this reason, surprises are the fuel that powers the tournament. A young national team making its first appearance in the competition can defeat or embarrass a footballing giant, and an obscure player can become, overnight, more famous than many politicians, scientists, and inventors.

Football places before us a fundamental question: why are we able to gather around a 90-minute match — occasionally a little more — with such passion, while we are unable to gather around issues that determine our future?

Perhaps because football offers us a simple world — one with a winner, a loser, and a referee who blows the final whistle. Life is far more complicated and does not announce its results so easily.

Even so, we should not burden the game with more than it can bear. It is a space for enjoyment, not a cause for enmity. Allegiance to a team must remain a sporting allegiance and must not turn into a blind fanaticism that extinguishes respect for others.

Whenever I watch the crowds singing, weeping, laughing, waving their flags, and carrying their infant children up into the stands, I realise that the ball does not merely play with human minds — it reveals what lies hidden inside them.

It draws out the latent joy, the latent fear, the latent hope, and even the latent fanaticism. The question, therefore, is not: what does football do to the human mind? It is: what are human minds concealing that a small ball is able to expose in 90 minutes — to which are sometimes added stoppage time, two extra periods, and a penalty shootout?