Cursing for Clicks - The Mystics Who Turned World Cup Prophecies Into Paying Customers
Harry Kane wasn't cursed and aliens didn't kidnap Neymar and Vinicius Jr. The World Cup's mystics got every prediction wrong but still cashed in big.
It was close to midnight in Lima, and on the set of a late-night World Cup show a life-size cardboard cut-out of Harry Kane was being cleansed of black magic. The curanderos worked methodically. Branches of rosemary and rue swept across the printed image of the England captain. Holy water followed.
The diagnosis, delivered to camera, was that Kane was suffering from magia negra (black magic), mal de ojo (the evil eye) and mala energía (black energy).
The segment went viral in late June, shortly after the World Cup began.
But the ritual had not originated in Peru. It was intended to reverse a curse supposedly placed on Kane some 4,000 miles away, in a shrine town in Ghana’s Ashanti Region.
Spain are world champions. But the 2026 World Cup was shadowed by a different game: traditional priests, curanderos, seers, shamans, witch doctors, tarotists and self-styled prophets attaching curses, blessings and predictions to almost every match. This article is Part One of a new Sports and Crime Briefing investigative series diving deep into these fraud schemes, how they are monetised, and how social media clicks are turned into paying customers.
