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Huibuh: The mascot La'eeb in front of the Doha skyline
Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
In 1986 Mexico had a green chili pepper with a sombrero called Pique, in France in 1998 it was the rooster Footix, in Germany in 2006 it was Goleo, the lion.
For decades, every World Cup has had a more or less bright mascot.
In Qatar it is a flying tablecloth.
It's called La'eeb and it talks like it's on an acid trip.
As he explains in a FIFA video, La'eeb lives in Mascot-Verse, a parallel world that can be entered through a blue portal.
This parallel world has existed since the beginning of time, he says, and other mascots also live in it.
We see Naranjito from Spain (1982) stumbling against a fire hydrant, Goleo talking (flirting?) with a woman, while Gauchito from Argentina (1978) leans against a fire hydrant.
Anyway, there are many hydrants in the mascot verse.
Probably for fire safety reasons.
La'eeb explains that he and his friends work at the "Mascot Accreditation, Growth and Integration Center," where they've been helping people get better for millennia.
better people.
A tablecloth and his buddies.
How much LSD was involved in developing La'eeb?
What is he trying to tell us?
At the end of the video, he's lying on the beach sucking on a cocktail straw and declaring that the mascots brought football to the world.
Not us.
The thesis is already circulating online that La'eeb is at the center of a portal-UFO-alien conspiracy.
Who knows, maybe he can help us against Costa Rica on Thursday.
The sad truth is that La'eeb is lying.
I researched where he really came from: a stuffed animal factory in Dongguan, southern China.
