The Gold Cup 2025 Draw Spawns A New English Word | OneFootball

The pools for this year’s upcoming CONCACAF Gold Cup happened on April 10th, and without belaboring anything, here they are:

(Source)

Sharp-eyed punters immediately noticed the odd-team out (hint: look bottom right).

Comments on this xeet were swift to condemn the inclusion of Saudi Arabia in what is an international tournament for teams from North & Central America and the Caribbean confederation.

Nobody (even the mouth breathers at CONCACAF headquarters) could ever confuse a Saudi Arabian beach for a Caribbean beach. They both have soft white sand, but the latter have sunbathers, a faint whiff of reggae-music, shacks selling cheap rum punch, conch fritters and beer. The former are fully devoid of any females, foliage or fun.

A colleague of mine waxed thoughtfully via text about Saudi Arabia’s inclusion in Group D with this lead-in “At the risk of sounding Xenophobic….”

Not Just Xenophobia… Something Deeper

Then it occurred to me, what my friend was feeling wasn’t Xenophobia (fear of others); it was Petropolisophobia (fear of petro-states). Or more accurately: Petropolisfutboliphobia (fear that petro-states are taking over the beautiful game). After all, the inclusion of Saudi Arabia in the Gold Cup is another glaring example of the Gulf nations’ policies of sportwashing (e.g. using sports to improve their global image).

For more examples of sportwashing see:

This isn’t even the first time this has happened in the Gold Cup. In 2021 and 2023 Qatar was an “invited guest” of the tournament. It’s never stated which CONCACAF member was shoved aside so this “guest” could attend, but I guarantee their oil and gas reserves are much smaller.

Petropolisfutboliphobia. It won’t be included in the American Psychiatric Association’s seminal publication “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision”, but it’s real, man. Thousands of soccer fans (not just Gold Cup devotees) suffer through it every day.