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World Cup Cleaning Staff After Japan Elimination Meme Featuring Messi

This meme consists of a top text caption above a screenshot of professional football player Lionel Messi. The caption reads 'The World Cup cleaning staff after Japan got eliminated'. The image of Messi shows him sitting, covering his entire face with both hands, looking visibly stressed, overwhelmed, and defeated. The background of the screenshot is a 2024 Copa America final broadcast from Fox Sports, showing a score banner indicating a 0-0 draw between Argentina (ARG) and Colombia (COL) at 66 minutes and 53 seconds of match time. The joke plays on the widely documented trend of Japanese national team fans and players thoroughly cleaning their seating areas and locker rooms after World Cup matches, meaning that once Japan is eliminated from the tournament, the official cleaning staff have a far larger amount of work to handle, hence the overburdened reaction depicted by Messi.
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The World Cup cleaning staff after Japan got eliminated

Overview

This meme consists of a top text caption above a screenshot of professional football player Lionel Messi. The caption reads 'The World Cup cleaning staff after Japan got eliminated'. The image of Messi shows him sitting, covering his entire face with both hands, looking visibly stressed, overwhelmed, and defeated. The background of the screenshot is a 2024 Copa America final broadcast from Fox Sports, showing a score banner indicating a 0-0 draw between Argentina (ARG) and Colombia (COL) at 66 minutes and 53 seconds of match time. The joke plays on the widely documented trend of Japanese national team fans and players thoroughly cleaning their seating areas and locker rooms after World Cup matches, meaning that once Japan is eliminated from the tournament, the official cleaning staff have a far larger amount of work to handle, hence the overburdened reaction depicted by Messi.

Origin notes

This meme was sourced from the Reddit r/Meme subreddit via an RSS feed, as specified in the provided source information. The underlying image of Messi is a clip taken from the official Fox Sports live broadcast of the 2024 Copa America final match between Argentina and Colombia, which went viral as a reaction image shortly after the match aired. The creator of this meme added the custom caption to tie the viral reaction image to the long-running internet trope of Japanese World Cup attendees cleaning stadiums, creating a new humorous sports-related meme.

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