Sleep, studies, and more: What this World Cup took from me!

Tonight, either Lionel Messi or Lamine Yamal will end the World Cup holding the trophy. Good for them. After more than a month of football, the tournament will have its winner. I, meanwhile, will walk away with a ruined sleep schedule, questionable exam results, mental exhaustion and a lighter wallet.

Everyone keeps asking who will win the World Cup. At this point, I am more concerned about what the World Cup has already done to me.

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It started with sleep. With three or four matches scheduled every night, going to bed at a reasonable hour became almost impossible. I would promise myself that I would watch just one, but then the next match looked competitive and suddenly the sun was rising.

Living on three hours of sleep, instant coffee and the pure adrenaline of watching football was a regular thing. Sleeping after sunrise and waking up around noon or even in the afternoon soon became normal. Now the tournament is ending and I have to convince my body to sleep at night.

My academic life was the next casualty. Morning classes became increasingly difficult to attend. I tried studying between matches and it was a beautiful exercise of self-sabotage. With imminent exam deadlines, I was simultaneously justifying why a 3AM kick-off was more important.

The delusion that you could absorb an entire semester's syllabus during a fifteen-minute halftime break became widespread. And whenever a match became tight, concentration disappeared completely. We mutually agreed that future career prospects were a small price to pay for witnessing football history. The results will reveal just how badly I messed up.

The mental exhaustion was just as real. Every match brought tension and emotional swing. Even after the final whistle, football refused to end because of social media.

The referee was bought, the tournament was scripted, and all these became more tiring than the matches themselves. I only wanted to watch football, but I had to deal with those every time I opened Facebook.

Friendships also suffered, although mostly in the group chats. Old predictions were screenshotted, confident statements were brought back as evidence. Most of it was harmless banter. Still, some Facebook posts went beyond football and became unnecessarily personal or hateful.

People were turning on each other over minor fouls and debatable decisions. We spent weeks with insults and memes, and now that the dust has settled, we are left looking at our friends, wondering if we can ever truly look past their terrible football opinions.

Then came the financial damage. Watching from home might be affordable, but screenings and watch parties have their own cost. Add transport and the food that somehow becomes essential during every match and a supporter could easily spend a lot over the tournament. It’s like spending money to experience heartbreak in a crowd and let a game bankrupt us.

Now that the final is here, another problem has appeared: what happens afterwards? For more than a month, fixtures decided when I slept and spoke to my friends. Tomorrow night, there will be no match to build the day around.

I wanted my normal life back. Now that it is returning, I am not entirely sure what to do with it. After weeks of constant noise, even peace feels slightly unsettling. I will miss the chaos, although I may reconsider that once my exam results arrive. Only then will I discover exactly how much this World Cup took from me.