> the crowds are not made of die hard football fans, the majority of people there are normies that don't give a hoot about football during the 47 other months of a WC loop

I think you heavily underestimate how much normie men care about football here. Most coffee chats with my co-workers devolve into football if they last long enough, and around three out of five of my coworkers under 30 play football with friends every now and then. I'm the only man at my extended family which doesn't care about football, and I need to look amongst my most geek friends to find some men that don't either.

Now, most won't be die hard football fans, but they are definitely into football.

Most popular sports have world cups every four years. Basketball, cricket, rugby, volleyball, field hockey WCs are all held every four years. Some others like handball are held every two years.

Cricket gets the same level of crazy support in South Asia as football does in most of the world. But the reason football gets such support in most of the world is simply because most people consider it the best sport, or the "beautiful game". It is one of the most well designed sports, having the fewest number of unnatural rules - only one in fact (offside). It can also be played with basically any number of players from 2-20 in fields of any size, so it's really popular for normal people. The skills floor is reasonably low, but the skill ceiling is very very high.

So, then it flows naturally into social actions like blocking streets.