Every World Cup opening needs a theme to set the tone. Even the badly reviewed Brazil one had it. They dropped a giant spherical screen in the center, started with a Big Bang sim, then showed a planet growing water and plants as dancers embodied life blooming across the surface.
In the middle of Lusail Stadium, a huge chunk of limestone rose up, maybe three to five meters high. Dancers circled it, light steps and flowing moves, their sand colored gauze skirts rippling, using bodies to show yellow sand swallowing the limestone. The theme was clear, Qatar overcoming harsh nature at the country's birth.
Gotta say, all the dancers were Qatari locals.
"Mm," Chu Zhi watched the broadcast on the dressing room monitor. He got the idea, but the opening dance really wasn't his thing. He figured that was culture and region talking. The big event opener that stuck with him most was still the drum countdown from the 2008 Olympics.
When's China gonna host the World Cup? People always say it's a pity that the big powers, America and China, don't do football. Well, America's doing fine now.
Chu Zhi's thoughts drifted. Plenty of Chinese fans on site were feeling a way too.
Even though China didn't qualify, tons of Chinese spectators still showed up.
Eighty thousand seats, none empty. Most wore their favorite team's kit. Some even painted flags on their cheeks.
The crowd wanted to vent that heat in their chests. The thirty two teams stood in neat ranks around the pitch.
It was loud. Like, really loud.
"I heard Jiu-yé's a guest too."
"Of course. We came just for brother Jiu."
"With Jiu-yé on stage, it's gonna stun the stadium."
The two talking wore the number five jersey of a powerhouse team. They had the figure and the face to match any pitchside model.
A thirty seven year old guy nearby, Da Fang, heard them and frowned. He turned to see which fake fans were talking, glanced once, then looked away. Since they were hotties, fine, no problem.
He even got a bit worried. In this setting, forget Chu Zhi, even a king level superstar wouldn't matter. The World Cup audience only cares about football. Everyone else is just here to hype the mood. He figured the two beauties were in for disappointment. Chu Zhi wouldn't stun anybody.
The host nation's honor guard marched in with the flag. The Qatari flag looked like satin cut in two. After the showcase, they hustled up ladders and tools and broke down the big limestone block piece by piece. Surprise, it was a clever assembly.
In a few minutes a temporary stage stood at the center. Guest performers started rolling out.
First up was Josef. "Josef" in the West is as common as dirt, Hebrew for "may God add another son," but there's only one Josef like the guy planted dead center on the stone stage, overflowing with machismo, a voice that hit like a hammer and smoothed like velvet, the Danish singer Cowen Josef. He wore worker overalls with nothing underneath. If the two straps hadn't landed just right, we'd be filing indecency complaints.
His arms were tree trunks. Close up, you could see the chest hair. The song was pure fire. Muscles worked, wild charm on full blast.
Cowen Josef was strong, but the stadium was too open, and the crowd too huge. His voice and presence got eaten alive. The reaction was lukewarm.
Chu Zhi felt the problem too, even through the monitor. The noise floor crushed the vocal.
Makes sense. Think about how big eighty thousand is. If you met two new strangers every day from birth, you'd need over a hundred years to meet eighty thousand.
He glanced at the black water bottle on the table. He wasn't nervous. When he popped Drunken Immortal, he'd own the place.
His assistant wasn't so calm. "This stadium's massive, and no one's gonna hush up for a song," Xiao Zhuzi muttered.
"Don't worry, let's not get tense," Chu Zhi soothed her.
"I'm not tense. I'm worried you'll get tense," Xiao Zhuzi said. "Don't get tense, ok?"
"With you comforting me, I'm already better," he said. She relaxed a bit and they kept watching.
Next was rap star Hulk. People thought things would climb from here. Nope. He landed worse than Josef. Josef at least threw a lot of fourth octave highs that read better outdoors.
Fuck, shit.
Idiots, jerks.
Hulk clocked the stage problem too and cursed the crowd in his head. As he left through the players' tunnel he crossed paths with the next guest group and tossed a curse their way. You'll eat it too. He didn't even know who they were. He just didn't want anyone doing better than him.
The cursed guests were a South Korean boy group, not GZ, a newer rising act.
Anyone who knows K-pop knows it's heavy on dance. Any boy group that survives the grinder has solid basics.
The limestone stage had a quirk. It was narrow and uneven. Their choreo couldn't stretch. Just like Hulk wanted, the set wasn't clean. Back in the lounge he grinned like a split melon.
"Northern Koreans suck, they'll never be good," Hulk said.
Guests kept rotating. Some hit well. A few had done stadium shows, like Megan and Bell, and they were steady.
Most of the crowd watched the giant screens in the rafters. Megan hit the stage and drew a wave of screams.
"Make it a scream fest," Leite Ang told his four bandmates as Seven Men Band went up.
Dimitro and the others nodded, grabbed their weapons, bass and guitars. Madden almost tripped. The limestone steps had terraced ridges.
"Triumphant Return" was the pick. It was the English national league walkout track. Rock asserts itself. In plain speak, the contour's hot and loud. Even if you don't nail the singing, you can't be ignored.
It was one of their signature songs, decently known worldwide. No way it'd flop.
Whether it was extra practice or pressure, Seven Men Band turned in the best set so far. They even outshone Bell a bit.
You could hear it in the applause, louder than anyone before.
The wind died, the rain cleared, and Leite Ang felt himself again. "Thanks for the love, ladies and gentlemen. Next up, please enjoy a piece by my idol Chu Zhi. He won't let you down."
Same trick again. Doesn't it get old, Dimitro thought.
Leite Ang didn't feel tired of it at all. He wanted a show.
Was there gonna be a show?
You bet. Eighty thousand bodies flipped Chu Zhi's passive skill, Crowd Freak, to the second to last stage.
The stages are one hundred, one thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand, one hundred thousand. That buff's scary already, and this was the fifty thousand stage.
The moment Chu Zhi stepped out of the tunnel, every cell screamed, I'm ready, I'm ready. Add Drunken Immortal's ninety percent boost, and he was a live warhead.
With a will that could bulldoze the whole stadium, he climbed the stage.
"Asia's number one pretty boy?" Megan had heard the rumors.
"He'll flop for sure," Hulk kept cursing.
"So the closer's a Chinese singer," Bell said. He knew him well enough. Two years running on the Forbes list, Chu Zhi had edged him out.
Bell had planned to grab a shower. Seeing Chu Zhi step up, he put it on hold.
"Bring everything you've got," Bell thought.
The music desk fired the intro.
A referee whistle cut through a bed of conga, agogo, electronic snare, floor tom, timbales, and acoustic kit, pumping straight out of the PA.
"This style?" Leite Ang hadn't expected a pivot like that. The Chinese guy had switched lanes again, straight into Latin.
Madden locked on the screen. This time, those legs weren't going weak.
Are you listening or hunting your father's killer, Dimitro thought. He noticed the whole band was laser focused, forcing their spirits up.
Congas and agogo are classic Latin American percussion. Anyone with basic ears could taste the Latin vibe.
🎵 "Go, go, go, ole ole ole…" 🎵
The whistle rode the groove. The crowd's claps snapped in on two and four like they'd been rehearsing. The floor started to thrum as eighty thousand bodies moved.
Chu Zhi didn't waste a breath. He took the center like he owned the grass. The verse hit, tight syncopation, clean consonants, vowels like bells, the kind of forward placement that slices through stadium air. His heel-toe steps marked out a samba sway, then he kicked a half turn that pulled the cameras in without begging.
The hook detonated.
🎵 "The cup of life, this is the one, now is the time, don't ever stop." 🎵
The congas rolled, agogo ticked like bright steel, the bass sat fat but springy. He shouted the call, the stands gave the response, and the wave traveled a full circle before the line ended. The sound engineer's meters kissed the limiter and held.
Hulk's smile curdled. Bell stopped leaning on the rail.
Leite Ang's grin froze. Dimitro lifted his eyes, then chuckled like a man watching a hurricane hit the shore he just left.
The bridge dropped to a drum break, just percussion and voice. Chu Zhi let the delay hang, then snapped the crowd back with a sharp hand hit and a chesty shout that rode the slapback like a surfboard. He pointed left, the east stand roared. He pointed right, the west roar answered. He punched both hands up, the north and south stands slammed together like thunder.
The last chorus wasn't sung so much as carried. He didn't push. He didn't need to. He let fifty thousand bodies sing it for him and rode the crest, a conductor with no baton and all the power in the world.
When the cutoff hit, it was clean, like a guillotine. Three heartbeats of silence, then the stadium blew.
Bell laughed and clapped without thinking. Hulk stared at his shoes. Leite Ang bowed on autopilot. Madden checked his knees out of habit, found them steady, then nodded once, hard.
The limestone stage crews began to swarm again, but for a full minute, nobody looked at them. They looked at the guy in black at center, breathing easy like he'd just jogged down for groceries.
He smiled, waved, and walked off. The roar followed him into the tunnel.
The percussion locked in with the brass, trumpets sparking a charge while whistles rose and fell and lit the fight.
Charge, charge, charge!
The intro hit way too hard for Chu Zhi to just stand there and sing. With two passives stacked, he couldn't keep still anyway.
He held the mic in his right hand and raised his left high.
🎵 "La vida es pura pasión, hay que llenar, copa de amor. Para vivir hay que luchar, un corazón para ganar. Como Caín y Abel, es un partido cruel…" 🎵
Sounded hot blooded, didn't it? Not sure? Keep listening.
Out of the corner of his eye, Da Fang noticed the two girls by his seat had been hyped since Chu Zhi walked out. They were waving and clawing at the air, and if they weren't worried about making a scene, they'd probably be jumping.
He kept listening. He didn't say a word, and he couldn't understand the lyrics anyway.
If you translate "The Cup of Life" into Chinese, it's simple enough. It's a cruel match, you've got to fight for your dream, hold on to your honor. Most of it's Spanish with a little English mixed in, so the crowd mostly didn't get the words.
What they got was melody and feeling.
Lucky break, because those two were top tier tonight.
🎵 "Tú y yo, ole, ole, ole…" 🎵Chu Zhi swung into the chorus, that world conquering earworm line.
🎵 "Go, go, go, ole ole ole." 🎵
Brass and nylon string guitar set the bed. Half a listen and it was like a steel spike driven into eighty thousand heads.
Folks always say passion burns like fire. His voice burned hotter than passion, hotter than fire.
He started windmilling the raised arm. The crowd copied him right away.
🎵 "El mundo está de pie, go, go, go, ale, ale, ale." 🎵
Two lines later the next "go, go, go" hit the same hook, and a ton of people just had to sing with it.
There are lots of catchy songs, but almost none that make a stadium want to sing along before the first chorus ends. In the brainworm league, "The Cup of Life" sits top three.
No one knew who started it, but waving wasn't enough anymore. One by one people stood, flags flapping, vuvuzelas blaring, thunder sticks banging. Da Fang stood too. Mostly, he didn't want to be the weird one sitting.
The song slid into the B section, and the crowd was fully lit by his voice.
Of course there were drones for the opening at Lusail. From the air, he was a small black dot on the stage, but that dot pulled tens of thousands into motion, a black sea. Hands rose and fell with the rhythm like waves rolling.
Did Leite Ang really understand how busted level that fifth tier of Crowd Freak was?
It was like black clouds pressing a city to its knees.
🎵 "Luchar por ella, luchar por ella, luchar por ella." 🎵
When the groove snapped back in, more than sixty percent of the stadium shouted, "Go go go, ole ole ole." Everyone's accent was different, and mashed together it sounded even more massive.
Lusail felt like it was on fire.
Dimitro took a long breath. The stadium wide unison hit his ears and he felt the same shock all over again. This Chinese guy didn't seem human. He felt like a god of the stage, same cloth as Jehovah, wrecking any stage he stepped on.
How were the bandmates doing? Dimitro glanced back at the four of them.
What could he say, Reyes and Madden weren't singing, but they were nodding and swaying. The emotional contagion was unreal. Even he was bouncing a knee.
Near the end, Chu Zhi stretched his arm and offered the mic to the crowd.
The next second the fans didn't let him down. The stadium roared it back.
🎵 "Go! Go! Go!" 🎵
🎵 "Ole! Ole! Ole!" 🎵
What beats an eighty thousand voice chorus for proof?
Then the screams and applause came like a tidal wave.
"I wanna go run a marathon right now."
"Go go go."
"I swung so hard my shoulder tweaked."
"We haven't even started the match and I'm this pumped. That was a good opening show."
"This song was born for the World Cup. No, wait, 'We Will Rock You' too. My God, both are by that Chinese singer. He's too talented."
The chatter was all praise. Da Fang realized he'd been yelling and dialed it back, then muttered to himself, "Chu Zhi's crazy good. That was an all spark and lightning flex."
Up in VIP, the royals clapped till their palms went red. Liason chief Ghazi kept going. He felt proud. He'd been the one who pushed for brother Jiu.
"Oh man, I feel like I'm about to combust," Chu Zhi drew a deep breath and forced down the urge to rip into "The Internationale." If the fifth tier of Crowd Freak was this scary, what would the final tier be at a hundred thousand?
He walked back down the players' tunnel to thunder and brushed shoulders with his "fan," Seven Men Band's frontman.
This wasn't a solo concert, and this was a new song.
Bell's brows were locked tight. He could feel the pressure from the man sitting on his head.
"If he weren't a person of color, he'd already be a pop king," Bell thought, feeling the squeeze.
"No wonder that Leite Ang guy worships him. His stage presence is ridiculous," Hulk admitted. Even if you handed him the same track, he couldn't have pulled that off.
Then Hulk swiveled to cursing again. "One show and a Chinese singer's the brightest light."
The program had to go on. All thirty two teams rolled out.
Netherlands, France, Ecuador, Senegal…
Say what you want, the opening ceremony pulls insane attention. Chu Zhi just blew up.
Here's a weird truth. By reach and eyeballs, the World Cup outruns the Olympics. You can straight up call it the number one sports event on Earth.
So that god tier stage blew him up worldwide.
He'd planned to fly out the night of the opening, but Ghazi and Princess Mayassa invited him to watch Qatar vs. Ecuador, so he stayed half a day.
Then it was 2 to 1. Ecuador knocked in two in the first half and iced it.
What could he say. He thought of that meme, "What is this show you made me watch?"
Ghazi and Princess Mayassa sat on either side of Chu Zhi. Their faces were hard to describe.
It's fine. Scoring one is still great. My national team didn't even qualify. Do I need to comfort you?
Probably not. That's like telling an author, it's fine, two thousand words is amazing. Sounds a lot like shade.
He realized silence was gold, and silence was tonight's 2 to 1. He had no idea what kind of drills Qatar would be running after this.
The next day he and Xiao Zhuzi flew home. Ghazi and Princess Mayassa didn't push them to stay.
At Hamad International, the most photographed thing after the five or six meter yellow teddy in the center was Chu Zhi himself.
A Qatari fan recognized him, then a flood of Japanese and Korean fans came over. To avoid clogging the terminal, he bought out the terminal café, arg.tea, for a while, treated everyone there to a drink, and signed as much as he could.
"Professor, seumnida."
"I can't believe I also saw the Ragdoll."
"I saw Twitter say Professor was at the opening, I missed it."
Japan and South Korea had group games in two and three days, so their fans showing up made sense. Why were there so many fans from Annam, though? Annam didn't even qualify.
He signed at least a hundred autographs in that little café. He hadn't expected that many fans inside the terminal.
And the Emperor Beast's World Cup stage, it blew up worldwide.