Madonna and The Muppets: All the hits and misses from the World Cup half-time show

The regulations say that football players are only allowed a 15-minute break between the first and second half of a match, but the Americans – and FIFA – have ever been great about rules and norms.

So it was that the World Cup final found itself hosting its first ever half-time show more akin to a Super Bowl spectacle. Although, considering some of the reactions so far, maybe it was half a Super Bowl half-time show.

The whole thing seemed very American, an ethos of more is more is more.

The display lasted just under 12 minutes and started in what seemed to be the bowels of the stadium in New Jersey (but looked as if it was filmed earlier) where Madonna, along with Brazilian football legends Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, boogeyed to the pop maven’s Music while riding in an open four-wheel drive with the licence plate MAESTRO.

The festivities transitioned onto the stadium floor as the gang handed over to Gustavo Dudamel, famed Venezuelan conductor and the music director of the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, who led musicians into a rendition of The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army.

They had a little assist from The Muppets, one of the more unexpected additions to the halftime show.

That performance then threw over to BTS, the South Korean pop group who is arguably the most famous band in the world, taking a time-out from its global tour to be part of the celebrations.

Clad in red and black, the septet performed Dynamite, an up-tempo ditty released in 2020, and was the first song BTS recorded fully in English.

Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt followed BTS, or more specifically, it was Ted Lasso and Coach Beard, the characters the two play on football-is-life TV comedy Ted Lasso, which will return with its fourth season next month.

In character, the two bantered with the familiar rhythms and quirks of their fictional on-screen personas to introduce the next act by subbing him in: Justin Bieber.

An extra touch was the yellow poster taped to the back of the substitution board held up by Beard, which read “Beliebe”, a nod to the TV show’s famous saying, “Believe”.

Bieber shifted the vibe to a more mellow one with an acoustic version of Everything Hallelujah, before the tone changed again with Shakira and Burna Boy launching into a rousing performance of Dai Dai.

Shakira knows how to engage a stadium-level crowd, but it seems like a missed opportunity to not have performed the Colombian artist’s Spanish-language version of Dai Dai considering it was a final between two Spanish-speaking countries Argentina and Spain, and football is supposedly the world’s game (there are more native Spanish speakers globally than native English speakers). Mexico was also one of the host nations.

Still, Shakira was able to shout out “Mas fuerte!” during the chorus, which is an imploration for the crowd to get louder and stronger.

The whole thing wrapped up with the most of the performers returning to share the floor with the PS22 Chorus, a choir of public school kids from a primary school in Staten Island, Chris Martin and now with Sesame Street faves Cookie Monster, Elmo and the Count, all bopping along to We Dance.

Prior to the start of the game, the more muted pre-match festivities included Tom Cruise, Jennifer Hudson, Robbie Williams and Post Malone.

There were fireworks and colour, and it was all pretty crowd-pleasing, with social media reactions singling out The Muppets as a highlight but split on whether the entertainment experiment should be repeated at future tournaments.

But not everyone was impressed, with former footballer and now commentator Wayne Rooney calling it “crap” on the BBC broadcast. Rooney had pre-empted his verdict with “I like a lot of them artists”.

Oasis’s Liam Gallagher, never one for airs, posted on social media, “It’s a good job I’ve got my spiritual socks on or that halftime entertainment could have tipped me over the edge”.

For others, the highlight might have been the chorus of boos that greeted Donald Trump and FIFA president Gianni Infantino when they appeared to present the World Cup trophy to the Spanish team.