Disregard all of the political turmoil surrounding the World Cup and there are stories that emerge that still warm the heart, The pinnacle of football and arguably of all sport, this year's expanded 48-team tournament has given players from smaller clubs, who are used to playing in front of crowds of merely 1,000, the chance to play in stadiums holding more than 80,000 fans.
And this raises an intriguing question: among the 48 nations represented at this World Cup, who plays their club football at the lowest level of the professional game? Of course, comparing leagues from different nations is subjective, but there are a few players that do stand out.
Cape Verde's 40-year-old goalkeeper, Vozinha, who only turned professional aged 25, kept a clean sheet against European champions Spain and gained nearly 8 million social media followers overnight – a life-changing amount. He plays his football in the Portuguese second division for Chaves and has played in countries such as Angola, Cyprus, Moldova, and Slovakia.
Then there are two players that could lay claim to the unwanted accolade of being the person who plays at the lowest level at the World Cup, namely New Zealand's Tommy Smith and Haiti's Josue Duverger. The former plays as a centre-back for Braintree Town and was relegated to the National League South last season, which is the sixth tier of English football. The latter plays in the fifth tier of German football as a goalkeeper for FC Cosmos Koblenz, which is a one-and-a-half hour drive from Luxembourg.
If Duverger is picked to face Brazil, he will line-up against Champions League winners, English league winners, and Spanish league winners, to name but a few. While New Zealand's group is not of the same calibre, Smith will play against the likes of Kevin de Bruyne, Jeremy Doku, and Romelu Lukaku for Belgium, who are all stars in their own right.
The disparities between playing against sixth-tier sides in England or fifth-tier in Germany, and playing against world-class footballers is huge and should be recognised as a major achievement.
While, the aforementioned stand out, there is a whole host of players who play their football in the lower leagues across the globe. Haiti's Carl-Fred Sainthe and Curacao's Eloy Room will be playing close to home as they ply their trade in the USL Championship (US second division) for El Paso Locomotive and Miami FC, respectively.
Curacao's Leandro Bacuna and Cape Verde's Ryan Mendes both don the Igidir F.K strips in the Turkish second division, with Haiti's Dominique Simon also in with a chance for the title as he plays for Tatran Presov in the Slovakian second division.
Meanwhile, a large majority of the Uzbekistan, Panama, and Jordan teams represent the top divisions in their respective countries, which is likely a similar level to the lower leagues in some of the major footballing nations. Such as the likes of New Zealand internationals Ben Waine (Port Vale) and Matt Garbett (Peterborough), or Ar 'Jany Martha of Curacao (Rotherham United), who play in the third or fourth tier of English football.
As mentioned previously, it is all subjective, but the accolade for the player to have been playing the lowest level of football while at a World Cup goes to Richmond Forson who represented Togo at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. He played for Vendée Poiré sur Vie, who at the time played in the seventh tier of French football.
It is an aspect of the World Cup that makes it so magical and something that needs to be kept in the game.
