Tournament-style sporting events, like the Men’s World Cup, derive much of their enjoyment from imagining possibilities and witnessing the unpredictable. Indeed, one of the most memorable matches of the tournament was a nil-nil draw between the eventually tournament champions, Spain, and tournament newcomer Cape Verde. Prior to the game, Cape Verde were 12 to 1 underdogs but thanks in large part to the heroics of their 40 year-old goalkeeper Vozinha, they secured a draw, a point in the group stage, and an indelible memory for the island nation. In sports, particularly in tournament play, anything can happen.

During the 2026 World Cup, this spirit of possibility extended to the relationships between the players, as many fans latched on to the chemistry between two of the tournament’s biggest stars, Norway’s Erling Haaland and England’s Jude Bellingham. Haaland and Bellingham were former teammates at the German football club, Borussia Dortmund. In classic slash fashion, industrious fans combed through old footage of the former teammates, of which there is plenty, and highlighted moments of tenderness, care, and physical closeness (see clip above). Constance Penley reminds us that fan fiction which collect these moments of erotic subtext between male characters are less about wish fulfillment but rather fan insistence on recognizing a reality in which “a renovated masculinity” can and does exist even in the spaces of the most traditionally aggressive and policed heteronormative masculinities. Haaland and Bellingham are dominant on the pitch and sensitive and caring to each other, the “future men” promised by Kirk and Spock slash fiction.

The ability to see this relationship in sports, became much more accessible, thanks to the success of the book series and wildly popular Canadian romance television series, Heated Rivalry (2025). Speaking with my colleague, Associate Professor Jade Petermon, about her upcoming Romance Media graduate seminar, I was reminded that one of the major pleasures of romance fiction is the joy of the possible. Heated Rivalry tells the story of hockey rivals that maintain a clandestine sexual and then romantic relationship throughout their playing careers while maintaining their competitiveness on the ice. Uttamchandani, et al. have demonstrated how the series systematically presents moments in which men’s hockey culture and homosexual relationships are judged compatible and incompatible. The show’s overall thesis, as defined by Mark Joseph O’Connell is that “queer people have always lived, loved, fought and built lives together, often in spite of the stories told about (them).” In short, queer relationships in traditionally heteronormative spaces like sport, are possible and always have been. 

The series does this by reframing familiar moments from the sports world, physical play, aggressive banter, locker-room texting, antics at photo shoots and award shows, and competitive obsession, as yearning. The show delivers on the desire to show the possible within sports, like when the character of Scott Hunter beckons his paramour Kip Grady to join him on the ice to celebrate the winning of the Stanley Cup alongside his teammates and their loved ones. Just as the show takes familiar moments from sports (on field championship celebrations with loved ones) and expands who can participate, fans of football look to Haaland and Bellingham and see possibility in their comfortable social dynamic. Fans make the connection between Haaland and Bellingham and Heated Rivalry explicit in their fan vids, even maintaining consistent casting of Haaland as Illya Rozanoz and Bellingham as Shane Hollander across multiple videos including AI renderings that place the footballers in popular scenes from the series. As with hockey before it, the men’s World Cup benefited from the ways that Heated Rivalry materialized the possibilities that have always been a part of sports culture but have rarely been broadcast. This joyful frame for watching sports is likely to expand and become more commercially embraced (see the Heated Rivalry theme nights and jersey sales) as sports leagues cater to the variety of ways that fans want to consume their products. The audience that is making these videos and showing up to track the relationships between the players may serve as a corrective for the cancelling of Pride Nights across major sports leagues. Let’s hope it also expands the possibility of “renovated masculinity.”