While the rest of the sentient world is busy contemplating the inevitable heat death of the universe or, more likely, how to afford a head of lettuce, the Confederation of African Football has seen fit to grace us with the schedule for the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations. It’s a group stage draw, that most hallowed of bureaucratic rituals where plastic balls are plucked from glass bowls to decide which nations will spend ninety minutes failing to solve the world’s problems on a pitch. The highlight, if one can use such a vibrant word for something so profoundly grey, is the announcement of a North African 'derby' between Morocco and Algeria. Oh, joy. Another opportunity for two neighbors to sublimate their various border disputes and historical grievances into the high-stakes world of tactical substitutions and offside traps. It is the pinnacle of human achievement: taking a century of geopolitical friction and distilling it into a game where people pretend to care about a ball for the sake of national pride.

Morocco, the hosts, have been handed this 'derby' as if it were a gift rather than a logistical headache waiting to happen. The narrative arc is already being written by people who get paid too much to use words like 'clash' and 'showdown.' In reality, it is just two groups of athletes being used as sacrificial pawns in a long-standing game of 'who has the better flag.' The irony of a 'derby' is always lost on the participants; it is a celebration of proximity-based loathing. We are expected to find it riveting that two nations who share a border but cannot agree on the time of day will now compete to see who can kick a synthetic sphere into a net with more patriotic fervor. It is a spectacle designed for the masses who find international diplomacy too nuanced but find screaming at a television screen just intellectually demanding enough.

Then we have Nigeria, the 'holders' of the trophy, because in the world of sports, we must always have a king—or in this case, a queen—of the mountain to resent. They have been drawn against Zambia, another matchup that sports journalists are currently trying to frame as a 'clash of titans' or some other equally exhausted cliché. Nigeria’s perennial dominance in this tournament is less an inspiration and more a testament to the crushing weight of the status quo. They are the 'holders' in the same way a debt collector holds a lien; it’s a permanent fixture that everyone else is tired of looking at. Zambia, meanwhile, is cast in the role of the plucky underdog, a narrative trope so old it probably has carbon dating results. The Copper Queens versus the Super Falcons—even the nicknames sound like they were generated by a marketing intern who had just discovered the concept of adjectives. It is a linguistic desert where creativity goes to die.

Let’s talk about the 'Group Stage' itself. It is the ultimate bureaucratic safety net. It exists to ensure that the maximum amount of television revenue can be squeezed out of the proceedings before any meaningful elimination occurs. It is a circular exercise in mediocrity, where teams play each other to determine what we already suspected: that some are slightly less incompetent than others. The fact that we are planning this for 2026—a year that feels increasingly like a fictional setting for a dystopian novel—is the ultimate display of human hubris. We honestly believe that by 2026, the world will still be interested in whether a midfielder from Rabat can outmaneuver a defender from Algiers. We plan these tournaments with the blind optimism of a man buying a treadmill on New Year’s Eve, ignoring the fact that the floor beneath us is actively rotting.

There is a peculiar brand of nihilism in watching people get excited about a tournament draw. It is the realization that we have reached a point in our evolution where the highlight of our week is seeing which name is printed on a slip of paper hidden inside a plastic egg. We are told this is 'growth' for the women's game, as if being subjected to the same soul-crushing commercialization and nationalistic drivel as the men’s game is a form of progress. True equality, it seems, is the right to be just as cynical, commodified, and boring as everyone else. The athletes will train, the fans will yell, and the bureaucrats will collect their per diems, all while the fundamental reality of the human condition remains unchanged.

In the end, Morocco and Algeria will play their 'derby.' Nigeria will defend their status as 'holders.' And the rest of us will be left to wonder why we continue to participate in this collective hallucination that sports actually matter. It’s a distraction, of course—a noisy, colorful, sweaty distraction from the fact that we are all just drifting on a rock through a cold and indifferent void. But at least we have the WAFCON 2026 groups to talk about while we drift. It’s better than talking to our neighbors, I suppose, unless you happen to live on the border of Morocco and Algeria, in which case you’ll have plenty of practice in the art of the 'derby.' It is a farce in several acts, and we have just been handed the script for the opening scene.