Big-Toe-Gate and the Use of AI in the World Cup

Artificial Intelligence running amok on the soccer field

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Growing up with fútbol looks a lot different than growing up with soccer.

Soccer is expensive.

It needs to happen on a schedule, and parents need to drive the kids around before carting them to other resume-building activities.

Middle-class kids are enrolled in expensive after-school programs and are shown the drills, but not the love.

And just like it arrives, Soccer season is over and a new sport season, one of many, many different sports options in the United States, bubbles to the top.

Fútbol is different.

Fútbol is not expensive. Fútbol is cheap. That’s why not only Europe but so many countries that struggle economically, like those in South America and Africa, are good at it.

Because it doesn’t require much to play fútbol.

If Fútbol depended on the things that soccer depends on, mainly disposable income and purchasing power to buy the uniform, and the cleats and the expensive bags to carry it all along with the latest and greatest gadgets, then fútbol would be dead or at least only played in the United States in the appropriate season.

Also, countries that play fútbol don’t have other sports. There are no options. It is fútbol and nothing else.

We don’t say ridiculous things like, “Oh, it’s just that there is no more scoring. If they could just change that, I could maybe be on board and carve a few minutes a week from the other thousand sports I keep up with.”

Guess what?

We don’t care. Keep your sports where you can make 100,000 points.

Growing up in countries where Fútbol is the only sport we pay attention to, we spent our days outside of school, turning anything that could roll into a soccer ball. Our parents don’t get involved. They barely buy us cleats to play. Sometimes we have to figure out who can gift us their old cleats.

When walking back from school, we would take a break to play soccer. We would form our teams, put down two peñones (big rocks), and go to town trying to score against our friends, but only after trying to sneak the ball in between their legs, the highest form of insult there is in the sport.

We obsess over Fútbol; we follow our national league and, then, to boot, we keep tabs on what’s happening in the leagues in Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Italy, England, then the UEFA, then the continental games. We talk about it with our friends, we play it every time we can.

So it is hard to explain that soccer is not the closest sport to fútbol.

Baseball is.

Fútbol is the national sport in our countries the way baseball is in the US.

But it is more than a sport; it is a way of living.

That’s why it is hard to explain that something unsettling is happening to the sport, and it is not just Trump’s desire to show us that he is the King of all countries in the world and also of all organizations.

It is the use of Artificial Intelligence to referee games.

By now, you are up to date on all the political news and societal tragedies around the world, and you may have heard about “Big-Toe-Gate.”

No one is calling it that. I am calling it that. So get on with it.

On June 27, 2026, Colombia’s center-back Davinson Sanchez scored the only goal of the game against Portugal in the World Cup Group K game.

The Colombian players celebrated while the announcer showed the play from every angle — a totally legitimate goal, if anyone would’ve asked me.

But no one asked me, so the play went up for challenge.

Back in the day, if a play was challenged, the three referees would get together to discuss it.

The main referee and the really weird guys on the side whose whole job is to lift the flag if a player is offside. (Other memorable times when they lift the flag are when there is a corner kick, and when the ball goes out over the sideline. That’s the entire job.)

If an offside wasn’t visible to the human eye at the time, the call would be made.

Win or lose.

Whatever the result.

Which resembles something in our life.

Do you know what it is?

Oh, yeah, life itself.

We would gather around the TV, shouting obscenities at the screen, hoping whatever we were screaming would change the ref’s mind, and, surprisingly, it never did.

Everyone who grew up playing or watching fútbol understands the nature of how definitive referee calls are.

Now, if a play is challenged, it is sent to an undisclosed location, where it is run through a computer. The computer, called the Video Assistant Referee, constantly monitors the match and intervenes when clear and obvious errors occur.

Let it be known that the qualifying ending to that phrase is, “Clear and obvious error” to the machine. Imperceptible to the human eye but not to the ever-knowing machine, which the technogods have taught us to worship.

This is yet another instance in which technology adds nothing to the human experience.

We are meant to keep technology where we need it, like in data entry, not in the middle of a game where all the players are doing is kicking a ball and trying to put it between two posts.

Because it went up for challenge, the omniscient robot found a toe, invisible to the human eye, that was offside in the play, and the goal was disallowed.

The overreliance on AI for things that don’t need it is terrifying, but more than anything, I’m just concerned about how this injustice against the big toe spells doom for the future and the participation of other appendages in the sport.

You know what they say about big feet?

Okay, but do you know what they say about big toes?

Well, they get you in trouble at the World Cup.

At least that’s what happened to Colombia’s center-back, Davison Sanchez, whose goal against Portugal was disallowed because of his big toe.

More than anything, I am concerned that the use of AI in refereeing soccer games and discrimination against big toes will lead to discrimination against the nail-less toe.

El dedo sin uña (or the nailless finger) is a vulgar way to refer to the penis in the area of Colombia where I grew up.

(That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I’m talking about the penis. I’m not comfortable writing about it, and I’m sure you are not comfortable reading about it, so from now on, we will use euphemism to talk about this important topic that needs to be discussed, and we will refer to the penis as “The other toe.”)

You may be thinking, “Do we really need to talk about this? Not everything comes back to the other toe.”

To which I will respond, how much do you even know about the other toe? Not much, I bet.

So believe me when I tell you that the other toe has been an active participant in soccer, and, as such, we need to ensure that it is not being discriminated against, because, unlike the control we can exert over our feet and hands, the other toe just dangles.

That’s something you need human understanding for, something that AI and VAR are completely devoid of.

You don’t believe me still?

Let’s go down a handful of notable moments that vary in the nature of the participation of the other toe.

In 1991, El Pibe Valderrama was groped on the other toe by Real Madrid player Michel. The incident was categorized as a maneuver to distract the other player. Whatever the intent, the truth is that the play was only available because the other toe was dangling and available.

In 1993, El Tino Asprilla was photographed alongside his toe evading a defensive move by a Chilean player. The moment has gone down in history as the time when “Se le salio la anaconda” (or when the anaconda escaped) occurred. El Tino decided not to wear underwear, which enabled the escape of the other toe. After the photograph, he wasn’t marked as often because people signed up to play soccer not to babysit snakes.

In 2014, Liverpool player Gerrard suffered a deep tear to his toe from an opponent’s sliding tackle.

And in 2016, Albacete defender Mariano Bittolo needed ten stitches to the other toe after taking cleats to it.

I rest my case.

I don’t know what the future of ƒútbol looks like, but it doesn't feel like AI belongs in it.

AI belongs in soccer.

But it is here, and it is going nowhere, and when discrimination against the other toe starts happening, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

No one is asking me about this play, and just like I screamed at the screen as a kid, it doesn’t seem like anyone is listening to me.

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