Speaker 1: I guess what will what's that mango? So you know
Speaker 1: I love the World Cup, right, And one of the
Speaker 1: people I always think about when the World Cup starts
Speaker 1: now is Kim Jong Ill, like the Korean dictator? What
Speaker 1: what what's you have to do with soccer? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you remember this, but in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, North Korea sent this team to the World
Speaker 1: Cup and the coach of the team claimed that when
Speaker 1: the North Korean scored, or if they ever won games,
Speaker 1: it was only because he was getting guidance during the
Speaker 1: game from Kim Jong Il. The guy's got so many talents.
Speaker 1: So how exactly did this work? So it's in it's
Speaker 1: an amazing way he did this. The dictator was apparently
Speaker 1: sending him telepathic signals through this invisible cell phone technology
Speaker 1: that he'd invented I guess one year before, and and
Speaker 1: that's what dictators do in their spare time. But before
Speaker 1: you laugh at how ludicrous that sounds, you do have
Speaker 1: to remember that this is the same man who the
Speaker 1: first time he played golf supposedly scored five holes in one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it might sound just like borderline ridiculou list,
Speaker 1: but anyway, but it was the North Korean team any good?
Speaker 1: I mean, they did get to the World Cup, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, a huge heat, but it's hard to compete
Speaker 1: against superstar nations and they ended up losing seven zero
Speaker 1: to Portugal. And supposedly when they arrived back in pyong Young,
Speaker 1: they were put on a stage and humiliated for six
Speaker 1: hours and from these elite government officials and which just
Speaker 1: sounds miserable, like it's a no win situation. But that's
Speaker 1: actually the first of nine World Cup facts we've got
Speaker 1: for you today. So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners,
Speaker 1: welcome the part time genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend Mangues Ticket and
Speaker 1: sitting behind that soundproof glass, he's cross stitching again, Mango.
Speaker 1: He is cross stitching a tribute, this time to pull
Speaker 1: the World Cup predicting octopus. He's so good at needle point,
Speaker 1: he really is. Well, that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: All right, Mago. It's obviously World Cup season and we're
Speaker 1: talking about soccer today. But I'm curious before we dive in,
Speaker 1: why do you love the tournament so much? So part
Speaker 1: of it is that I grew up in the States
Speaker 1: and I only got to visit my relatives in India
Speaker 1: every I don't know, three or four years, and it
Speaker 1: was always doing the monsoons. But when it was a
Speaker 1: World Cup year, it was just so exciting. And I remember,
Speaker 1: particularly like when I was in fifth grade, my grandparents
Speaker 1: had one of the few color TVs around, and this
Speaker 1: was obviously a long time ago, but we'd all stay
Speaker 1: up to watch the games live and you play cards,
Speaker 1: you chat to just be so much anticipation for these games.
Speaker 1: And then my cousins friends would come over and so
Speaker 1: we'd all huddle around this tiny TV and just root
Speaker 1: for underdogs and and you know, you'd be watching like
Speaker 1: Roger Mila, who was I don't know, like thirty eight
Speaker 1: or thirty nine score goals, and you'd be so excited
Speaker 1: for him or or you know, you see these colonial
Speaker 1: rivalries play out on the pitch, and and it was
Speaker 1: just really fun, partially because soccer is so much a
Speaker 1: game of upsets, like more upsets happened in soccer than
Speaker 1: other sports. But I had this amazing experience in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six when I wanted to watch this Ivory
Speaker 1: Coast game in Brooklyn, and this was before soccer seemed
Speaker 1: to be that big in New York. I was in
Speaker 1: Clinton Hill. I was I was walking to a bar
Speaker 1: and they didn't have the game on. And then I
Speaker 1: walked to this other bar and they didn't have this
Speaker 1: game on, and I was like increasingly irritated that I
Speaker 1: couldn't watch this game. And then I walked by this
Speaker 1: empty African barbershop and I heard these cheers in the back.
Speaker 1: So I just kind of looked in and there was
Speaker 1: this guy standing in the back. He kind of just
Speaker 1: pointed at me and he said, you want to watch
Speaker 1: the game? And I was like nodding, and he pulled
Speaker 1: this curtain open and in the back of the barbershop
Speaker 1: there was this room full of people just huddled around
Speaker 1: this tiny TV. And he motioned me to come in
Speaker 1: and and so I just watched the game on the floor,
Speaker 1: surrounded by people, and it just reminded me of India
Speaker 1: and and it was just so wonderful. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that story. That's pretty great. And you know,
Speaker 1: I obviously love international soccer. I love men's soccer, women's soccer,
Speaker 1: but uh, I'm excited that you actually had to research
Speaker 1: soccer for this episode, right right, I'm curious what story
Speaker 1: you're gonna lead off with. Yeah, you know it actually
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun researching for this this episode,
Speaker 1: and I think though that I'm going to stick with
Speaker 1: your dictator's team. And this is a story that involves Mussolini.
Speaker 1: So I think we both know that FIFA is a
Speaker 1: pretty corrupt organization, but it's hard to imagine anything is
Speaker 1: brazen as when Italy held the World Cup. This was
Speaker 1: back in nineteen thirty four. Now, according to a book
Speaker 1: by the BBC's Chris Hunt, Mussolini started things off by
Speaker 1: making the trophy way more ostentatious, which is not surprising.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the dictator's thing to do. He built
Speaker 1: his own trophy for the Cup that was six times
Speaker 1: the size, six times the size of the traditional World
Speaker 1: Cup trophy. Then he proceeded it to rig the matches,
Speaker 1: at least that's what people think. So there's this rumor
Speaker 1: that he hand picked every ref in the tournament, and
Speaker 1: when Italy beat Austria in the semifinals, it really showed,
Speaker 1: I mean apparently not only were their penalties and bad
Speaker 1: calls against Austria that shouldn't have been called. But during
Speaker 1: one play in Austrian kicked the ball to go out
Speaker 1: of bounds and the ref actually headed the ball back
Speaker 1: in and passed it to an Italian player. That's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: But I mean, I guess if you're going to the
Speaker 1: trouble of creating a trophy that six times that big,
Speaker 1: like you might as well ring the tournament. It's true,
Speaker 1: it's true, And like you said, soccer is a game
Speaker 1: of upsets, so it's possible that they could have won
Speaker 1: on their own. And apparently Mussolini didn't even like soccer,
Speaker 1: and he often described the sport as unmanly, but he
Speaker 1: knew that it was important to be seen as victorious
Speaker 1: on this huge world stage. And they're actually academic papers
Speaker 1: about this that speculate it would have been hard for
Speaker 1: Italy to have gotten those results without at least some
Speaker 1: help from the refs. That's really crazy. So one of
Speaker 1: the things I've enjoyed doing is seeing what the World
Speaker 1: Cup teams demand at hotels. And for some reason, this
Speaker 1: was leaked in two thousand ten, and some of the
Speaker 1: things makes sense, right, Like Portugal wanted the hotel to
Speaker 1: provide these four bodyguards for Cristiano Ronaldo, who's obviously a
Speaker 1: massive superstar. Um Algeria wanted Karen's in every room, and
Speaker 1: and Ecuador wanted a daily banana basket delivered to each player.
Speaker 1: Has just fun banana basket. I think that should just
Speaker 1: be a thing everywhere, right, But perhaps one of the
Speaker 1: strangest request was that France had this outright ban on
Speaker 1: bar soap for their players. And they demand that the
Speaker 1: hotel only provide liquid soaps. So I honestly get all
Speaker 1: of the others, but but why the bar soap thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not sure about this entirely. I do
Speaker 1: know the French manager is a little cookie, or was
Speaker 1: a little cookie, and and at the time he was
Speaker 1: really into astrology, so he wouldn't like let Aleo be
Speaker 1: a defender on the team or whatever. But I think
Speaker 1: this was just a way to prevent any chance of
Speaker 1: slipping on bar so open in the shower or or
Speaker 1: in the bathroom. I don't know. It's kind of crazy, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, I guess I can see where
Speaker 1: he's coming from on that. But all right, Well, here's
Speaker 1: a quick one about the World Cup trophy. So for starters,
Speaker 1: it's strange that it's called the World Cup when the
Speaker 1: trophy isn't really shaped like a cup anymore. But one
Speaker 1: of the facts I saw about this, did you know
Speaker 1: that the trophy is actually running out of room? So
Speaker 1: how do you mean? Well, currently there's only space to
Speaker 1: etch in maybe three or four more winning teams onto
Speaker 1: the trophies. So if you look ahead to the twenty
Speaker 1: thirty World Cup, they'll either need to extend the trophy
Speaker 1: with a bigger basse or they'll just have to make
Speaker 1: a new trophy. That's pretty funny. So one thing I've
Speaker 1: heard repeated over and over since I was a kid
Speaker 1: was that India made the nine World Cup, but then
Speaker 1: they had to withdraw. And I've heard different variations of
Speaker 1: the story, right, Like I've heard that the team refused
Speaker 1: to play in shoes, or or because they wanted to
Speaker 1: play barefoot, or like the Indian government refused to buy
Speaker 1: them shoes, or they did wear shoes but they couldn't
Speaker 1: play in them, and and I was curious if there
Speaker 1: was any truth to this. Right, it turns out in
Speaker 1: the Summer Olympics, the Indian national team competed against France
Speaker 1: and it was actually a close game. It was two
Speaker 1: to one, but they did it playing barefoot, which actually
Speaker 1: shocked the world community. But then nine fifty when they
Speaker 1: made the World Cup, they actually backed out for a
Speaker 1: different reason. So according to historians, while the team might
Speaker 1: have been annoyed that they had to play in soccer shoes,
Speaker 1: it had more to do with the fact that the
Speaker 1: World Cup was announced late and they had this super
Speaker 1: short practice schedule, and the fact that the newly independent
Speaker 1: Indian government didn't think that the World Cup was that
Speaker 1: big a tournament, so like they didn't want to fund
Speaker 1: the team to go halfway around the world of Brazil.
Speaker 1: You know, if it had been another Olympics, they would
Speaker 1: have happily ponied up for that, but they didn't see
Speaker 1: this as that big a world event. And the strange
Speaker 1: part is that soccer isn't that big an Indian now,
Speaker 1: like everyone is cricket crazy. But if they had sent
Speaker 1: that team to the World Cup, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of historians who think that India would have been more
Speaker 1: ested in soccer over the years and and had a
Speaker 1: much stronger team today. Yeah, and I mean that makes
Speaker 1: sense when you think about the impact of of this
Speaker 1: worldwide tournament. But well, here's a funny little tradition. So
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty two World Cup, Chile's team ate
Speaker 1: Swiss cheese before defeating the Swiss. Then they ate spaghetti
Speaker 1: before playing Italy and beat them. Then they drank vodka
Speaker 1: shots to prepare for the USSR match, which they also won.
Speaker 1: And then they drank coffee before a brazil match. But
Speaker 1: apparently it was really the wrong stereotypical food to ingest
Speaker 1: because their luck ran out in that game. Unfortunately. I
Speaker 1: don't know what Brazilian food you should have eaten to
Speaker 1: make sure you beat the Brazilian team, but the tough one.
Speaker 1: Here's another weird one about superstitions, and this comes from
Speaker 1: an argentinean goldie named Sergio Goccia, and he used to
Speaker 1: leave it all out on the field before penalty shootouts.
Speaker 1: And actually I'm going to let him describe it. This
Speaker 1: is from an interview with The Guardian, So quote reporter,
Speaker 1: didn't you you used to prepare for shootouts by urinating
Speaker 1: on the pitch? You know, by the rules of the
Speaker 1: game until the match finishes, you cannot abandoned the field,
Speaker 1: and if you have any necessary human urges, you have
Speaker 1: to go on the field. So That's what happened against
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia in the ninety World Cup quarterfinals. At the end
Speaker 1: of the game, I really had to go, so I
Speaker 1: had no choice, but we won. So then when the
Speaker 1: semifinal against Italy went to penalties, I did it again
Speaker 1: and it worked. So from that moment on, I did
Speaker 1: it before every shootout. It was my lucky charm. That
Speaker 1: is so strange, but you know, you do hear about
Speaker 1: so many of these athletes being superstitious, and there's so
Speaker 1: much on the line that you know, it's not surprising
Speaker 1: they developed superstitions, But that one is a little weird.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I know many that are weirder
Speaker 1: than that. But all right, we've got two more facts
Speaker 1: before we declare a winner. But before we get to those,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part time Genius.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the World Cup. So before we get
Speaker 1: to our last couple of facts, Mango, I'm curious, are
Speaker 1: you enjoying the tournament this year? Yeah? I am. I
Speaker 1: I love all the upsets, I love following different nations
Speaker 1: and stuff, but I haven't watched as much as i'd
Speaker 1: like because you know, the games are on during the day.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny. As we have watched though, Lizzie has
Speaker 1: had this funny theory about the managers of the teams,
Speaker 1: like she thinks they either all look like they could
Speaker 1: be French presidents or disheveled retirees. And it's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty good way to like organize the managers if if
Speaker 1: you see them, they neatly fit into those two categories.
Speaker 1: It's sometimes they're the most entertaining part of these matches.
Speaker 1: Like I've loved watching the Synegal coach. He was so animated.
Speaker 1: It's it's been pretty entertaining. And I mean he looks
Speaker 1: like he should be a French president. It's a category.
Speaker 1: You're right, it's a good theory. Here, what's your last factor?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, this isn't exact actually a World Cup fact,
Speaker 1: but there's a stadium that I wanted to talk about,
Speaker 1: and it's a Studio Milton Coorea, which is also called
Speaker 1: Big Zero or the Big Zero. And what's awesome about
Speaker 1: it is that the midfield line is located exactly on
Speaker 1: the equator. And so here's what I think is fun
Speaker 1: about that. So when you're playing there, each team is
Speaker 1: actually playing for and defending an entire hemisphere. So I
Speaker 1: don't know why I find that so amusing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it feels like that's where the World Cup finals should
Speaker 1: be held every year, you know, if this perfect sense?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, what's your last fact, Mago. Well, if
Speaker 1: you've been watching the World Cup, there's been a little
Speaker 1: speculation about whether Russia should be winning as much as
Speaker 1: they have, and it is actually a good team. I mean,
Speaker 1: they came in sort of mediocre, but they've played smart.
Speaker 1: But there are questions about Vladimir Putin and Russian corruption.
Speaker 1: But the Russians are actually responsible for one of the
Speaker 1: most honest moments in World Cup history. And there's this
Speaker 1: player named Igornetto. Uh. This was in the nineteen two
Speaker 1: World Cup. His his team was tied up with Uruguay
Speaker 1: and he scored a goal, but it actually went through
Speaker 1: the net on the side of the goal. So Netto
Speaker 1: went to the ref and he urged him not to
Speaker 1: count it because it wouldn't be fair to win that way.
Speaker 1: And and I can't even imagine a player being that
Speaker 1: honest today, you know, I mean, people fake injuries to
Speaker 1: get penalties, people do all these things. But you know,
Speaker 1: he asked for a goal to be retracted, and luckily
Speaker 1: the team scored and won in the nine minute of
Speaker 1: the game. But years later he recalled why he did that,
Speaker 1: and he said, quote, we should win without relying on
Speaker 1: the referee's mistakes, and when it was changed, I finally
Speaker 1: felt a sense of relief. Yeah wow, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it is so rare in sports to see that level
Speaker 1: of of honesty. So you know, I kind of want
Speaker 1: to give you the trophy for that one. And then
Speaker 1: of course, thinking back about the goal, Coachia, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: urinating on the pitch and all of that, like that
Speaker 1: is just so strange. But I gotta be honest, I'm
Speaker 1: super impressed with Lizzie's theory of organizing the managers. I
Speaker 1: feel like she's kind of swooped in and stolen the
Speaker 1: trophy this week. Or are you good with that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm fine with that. All right. Well, thank you guys
Speaker 1: for listening. We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow.