Kevin Hart Called a National Embarrassment After He Bombs at the World Cup Draw

The last 11 months of American foreign policy may have sullied our country’s international reputation, but, with the eyes of the world upon us, our best and brightest are finally asking the big question: is it called soccer or football?

On Friday, Washington, D.C. hosted the FIFA 2026 World Cup draw ceremony in a prolonged exercise in public humiliation that featured reviled FIFA president Gianni Infantino awarding Donald Trump the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize,” a performance by The Village People and ample screentime for the American comedy giant who is basically the living embodiment of Walmart. 

Co-hosts Kevin Hart and Heidi Klum kicked off the bizarre, tasteless ceremony announcing the seeding for next year’s global soccer at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. During his performance, Hart completely failed to drum up any amount of enthusiasm from the attendees, prompting many international soccer fans to ask us Americans why we're treating the biggest sporting event in the world like it's a corporate retreat for a timeshare company:

As Klum pointed out, between 500 million and one billion soccer fans across the world tuned in to watch her and Hart have absolutely zero chemistry as they shuffled through their remarks about the name of the sport, all of Hart's favorite NBA players and his totally-not-made-up story about falling in love with “football” during the 1994 FIFA World Cup, the last tournament that America hosted.

Non-soccer-related celebrity guests such as NBA hall-of-famer Shaquille O'Neal and former NFL quarterbacks Eli Manning and Tom Brady also headlined the global embarrassment of the evening, but soccer fans saved most of their ire over the sloppy, sycophantic handling of such a high-profile international event for Hart, whose ability to gravitate towards wherever the most attention is and deliver a phony, half-assed performance has never been more indicative of the state of American culture.

In one particularly excoriating review of the World Cup draw, SB Nation writer James Dator speculated that Hart “was chosen because he will accept any job that pays him money,” noting that, while Klum attempted to maintain some level of dignity and decorum as co-host, Hart “quipped about not reading the script, forcing sad jokes, and plugging his Netflix special in the middle of the damn draw.”

In a Reddit thread about Hart's performance, viewers trashed the comedian for coming off as insincere and greedy during the ceremony, with the top commenter writing of Hart, “My man...you can say no to things...”

“I honestly don't get his appeal at all... he always seems so forced and like he's trying so hard...” another user weighed in on the A-list comic and actor, “I've never laughed at his appearances.”

One former Hart-head lamented, “I used to be a big Kevin Hart fan and stand by the quality of his first two specials. That said… dude’s just sad now.”

Ultimately, the FIFA president openly kissing Trump's ass with a fake prize for Trump's supposed achievements in international peacekeeping probably should have been the headlining embarrassment of the entire shitshow, but, then again, the majority of the billion viewers watching it likely expected for Trump, Infantino and FIFA to be brazenly corrupt and self-congratulatory – meanwhile, they were probably hoping that Hart would at least be funny.