Emotional edits of Argentina’s victory set to Swift’s music are flooding TikTok. Sentimental, symbolic and reflecting on past struggles, the collaboration makes more sense than you might think

In a last minute challenge for the title of unexpected collaboration of the year, Taylor Swift has brought the World Cup (Messi’s version) to America to spread the message of the beautiful game, helping the uninitiated understand football – not soccer – in the wake of Argentina’s victory last night. All it took was the greatest player of all time lifting the trophy at the end of the greatest final in history.

Since the match Swifties have been flooding TikTok with edits of Lionel Messi set to her music, namely “You’re On Your Own Kid” from her album Midnights, with many being served up the Messi/Swift mash-up content despite having no interest in football. Lots of users are commenting that their ‘For You’ page page is now exclusively football fancams on Swift’s music. One woman from Columbus, Ohio, tweeted: “Don’t follow soccer closely at all but TikTok is serving me Messi montages set to Taylor Swift songs and now I’m about to cry???”

Welcome to ‘Messi SwiftTok’ or ‘Messi (Taylor’s version)’, where Taylor Swift football edits have now become an entry point for some users into football TikTok, a crossover that few could have anticipated but might make more sense than first appears.

The videos use the same sound, often starting Taylor’s lyric “From sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes, I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this, I hosted parties and starved my body”, overlaying clips of Messi throughout his career. The comments are a mix of people crying at the heavy emotion and football fans utterly bemused as to why Messi’s career edits have been set to her music.

But even for existing football fans, Swift’s music appears to have struck a chord when set to these kind of montages about the long journey to the top and the troubles along the way. One user who made an edit of Neymar with her music wrote: “how can a white American woman write a song that fits perfectly with the struggles of a Brazilian football player trying to fit in and live in a European country…”

As an artist who regularly mines her interiority and has long drawn on the struggles of her past in her music, it’s unsurprising that Taylor’s songs are a natural choice to soundtrack a moment of intense emotional reflection.

Though the nature of their fandoms might be seen as being at odds with one another, Swifties and football fans are suckers for stirring symbolism and sentimentality during the big moments. The final last night, which many saw as the completion of Messi’s career as he ticked off the crowning achievement of winning the World Cup, has seen football fans trade in sentimentality by going back to the start of his career and reflect on his mythic journey.

It’s not totally dissimilar to the way to Swifties recalled the many stages of her music career in the wake of her record-breaking album Midnights, seeing the highs and lows along the way as a necessary part of the journey. We might be a way off from seeing PSG fans crashing Ticketmaster to get their hands on Era tour tickets, but the faraway worlds of Swifties and Messi stans just got a little bit closer.

imagine going to a taylor swift night and they start playing a messi edit pic.twitter.com/h1z29ta4Ye

— the fall scorpio 💌 (@girlbosskenroy) December 12, 2022