WEBVTT - Episode 17: Seeking Beauty with Author Simon Kuper 0:00:06.519 --> 0:00:07.360 Welcome to the Way End. 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:11.080 I'm Danielle Alarcon, I'm John Green and John today we're 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.240 to do something a little different. We're lucky to be 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:16.400 joined by author and journalist Simon Cooper, who has written 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:18.959 a really wonderful new book called World Cup Fever, a 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:21.279 Soccer Journey in nine Tournaments. 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:23.480 Yeah so. Simon is the co author of the best 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:25.880 selling book Soccer Nomics, one of my favorite soccer books. 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:28.520 He also wrote an excellent deep dive into the chaotic 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.239 workings of FC Barcelona called The Barcelona Complex. And I 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:34.680 just don't think we could ask for a more knowledgeable 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.360 guest to help us understand the origins of the World Cup, 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:42.040 but also why it continues to have such a strange 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.000 and fascinating hold on us. So welcome Simon. It is 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.040 a great pleasure to have you here on the Oa End, 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:48.320 A pleasure to be here. 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:52.479 Thank you, Simon. What's your first World Cup memory? 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:55.920 Nineteen seventy eight. We'd moved to the Netherlands, where my 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:58.520 dad had a job. I'm not Dutch on source of British, 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:01.200 but I became a Holland fan. I was eight years 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:04.080 old in nineteen seventy eight and Holland reached the World 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:06.000 Cup final, and of course when you're eight, this feels 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:08.279 completely normal. Of course they were in the World Cup final. 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:12.360 A minute from time, Rob Brenson Wing hits the Argentinian 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:16.480 post scores level one all and so I could have 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.320 been World champion my very first time. So that is 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:22.440 a memory that hasn't gone away. But then I say 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:24.720 in the book, everyone remembers their first World Cup. 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:28.240 Yeah, mine was nineteen ninety four. I actually saw the 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.759 Netherlands play as well in Orlando, Florida, Netherlands versus Morocco. 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:34.880 And you do remember your first World Cup on a 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:39.440 different level. I think Daniels was eighty six. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.800 a wonderful tournament. But I want to ask you about 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:45.240 the heart of the book. I really loved this book. 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:50.600 It's an extraordinary work of nonfiction. It's personal, it's global, 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:55.720 it's really a remarkable accomplishment. And the heart of it 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:58.160 is the twenty ten World Cup in South Africa, where 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:00.840 you were born. You know, you later whipped in the 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:04.600 Netherlands and in the UK. I wonder if you can 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.120 talk about that and about the complexity of national identity, 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:09.840 which is sort of been a theme on the away end. 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:13.200 Yeah, I think twenty ten in South Africa was the 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.240 World Cup that meant most to me. My parents had 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.760 left South Africa before I was born, partly because of apartheid, 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.919 partly because unhappy family is the province of the world, 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.840 and they moved around. I was born in Uganda, and 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.040 we used to go back to South Africa during apartheid. 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.720 We'd go and visit my grandparents from the Netherlands, and 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.440 then later I'd go to visit family, but also as 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.960 a journalist. And so to have this World Cup sort 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:41.480 of in my parents' backyard, you know, in these places 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:45.200 that I knew from childhood was very weird. And it 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:47.920 was also part of South Africa becoming or trying to 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:51.680 become a nation because you had all these different colors 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:56.440 and until ninety four under apartheid, only white South Africa 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.640 counted as the nation. And then Nelson Mandela tries to 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:02.919 make an partly through sport, you know, George Washington makes 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:05.200 a nation through other means in the United States. In 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:07.600 South Africa happens partly through sports. And so the World 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.840 Cup twenty ten in parts is nation building. It's in 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:13.839 part to tell all South Africans of all colors, you're 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:16.720 all one country. It's not so much we have one 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:18.880 team because the South African team wasn't good, but we 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:21.240 can put on a World Cup and show that in 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:23.840 the South African phrase where a world class nation. We 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:28.280 don't have to feel inferior to the European nations. And 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.000 so it was tremendously important to South Africans in a 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.399 way that I think most other World Cups are not 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:35.240 quite that meaningful to the hosts. 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:38.360 So, I mean, there's something about the about what you 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:42.960 read about So Africa that I didn't really realize, which 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:44.400 I think is something we've talked a lot about on 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:47.480 the show, which is the national identity of a footballing nation, 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:49.680 the stylistic way they play, and you talk about the 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:55.440 tension of this tiki tiki kind of showbody style of 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:00.760 soccer that is played in Soweto, in the town that 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:03.920 kind of has to get almost tamp down in order 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:07.600 for South Africa to become a kind of competitive soccer nation. 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:10.600 And even so they're still the first country to host 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:12.640 country to go out in the first round, but there's 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:14.000 a tension there, and I wonder if you could talk 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:18.360 about that because you know, you said you support the 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:22.320 Dutch who have this kind of very specific style. Let's 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:26.120 just talk about how globalizition has kind of erased those styles. 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:29.880 Yeah, I think a lot of countries they don't just 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.039 want to win at a World Cup, they want to 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.159 show their soccer to the world. And that's I think 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:39.040 pre eminentlyu ture of Brazil, where there's still this fantasy 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:42.080 of playing like in nineteen seventy, this kind of beautiful, 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:46.920 soloistic football of dribbles played at very low pace Palais football, 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:50.000 which doesn't exist anymore in the twenty first century. You 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.719 can't play it. Defenders are tougher, harder, faster, And in 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:55.800 South Africa there was a version of us now South Africa, 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:57.880 it didn't have to compete with other countries because under 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:00.279 a part side it was banned from international soccer and 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.400 black South Africans had no chance of engaging with the world. 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:06.120 So in Soto, in the townships, they developed this kind 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.159 of style of soccer that's maybe analogous to jazz. It's 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:16.159 about beauty and display and showing your individuality, and it 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:18.800 just doesn't work in international soccer. You can't kind of 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:21.359 stand on the ball and do tricks, but that's what 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.440 they wanted to show to the world. And I grew 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:26.760 up in the Netherlands, which invented modern soccer. So the 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:29.599 soccer you see today of teams like Buying Munich or 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.440 Palis Saint Germain or Barcelona is the soccer that was 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:34.840 invented in Amsterdam East by Johan Crow from the Venis 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.200 Mihals in the nineteen sixties. And it's the soccer that 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.080 Holland played when I was a kid, and it was 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.520 beautiful and we didn't have to win. You know, if 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:43.599 you're a small country like Holland, you don't have to 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:44.920 win the World Cup. You just have to be the 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:48.520 most beautiful and we were sometimes. And now that soccer 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:50.560 has become, as I say, the kind of orthodoxy at 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.919 the very top, and there's a globalization of style. So 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:56.040 when I went back to South Africa in twenty twenty 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:58.720 four and watched some soccer, they play like the Europeans 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:03.200 now fast one to football players running into space. Tiki 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:06.400 ticket is gone, and so yeah, there's something lost when 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:09.040 each all the best countries anyway play the same way 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:09.919 and the others try to. 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.640 Yeah, it seems like on the world stage today, the 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:18.560 Dutch maybe maintain that sense of national identity of football. 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:21.640 Brazil does a little bit. But you know, we've talked 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.599 on the podcast before about how different German football looks 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.920 from the sort of ideal or potonic ideal of German 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:33.560 football from the seventies or eighties. And then there's the 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:37.680 group of nations that are you know, the United States 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.960 and below, who just have to try to play very practically. 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:45.080 Yeah. And I thought, you know, twenty years ago when 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.800 we wrote the first editions of Soconomics, that countries like 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:51.719 the US and Japan and China would copy the European style. 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:55.080 They have bigger populations, larger talent pools, and they would 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.000 be like US but better. But it turns out that 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:01.719 playing like Europeans is kind of sense of where should 0:07:01.760 --> 0:07:03.920 I be at any given moment? Should I move up 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:06.640 ten yards? Should I change positions? It's something you have 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:08.400 to learn from the edge of five or six in 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.040 quite a spontaneous way. You suck it up from the 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:14.280 culture around you. And just like you know, basketball was 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.600 made in American inn as cities, and it was very 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:18.800 hard for people from outside there to be as good. 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:21.920 That I think has been true of soccer and Europe 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.520 and adding on bits of Argentina, Brazil. 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:29.400 I mean, you talked to in your book early in 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:32.080 the book about your childhood in the Netherlands, and I 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:34.400 think it's really interesting because what you described is very 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:39.280 different from the kind of suburban American sort of soccer 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:42.280 club with orange slized at halftime culture that John and 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:46.200 I grew up in. You said you had this remarkable 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:48.480 stat about how there was there were there was no 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.520 other like one in eight, if I remember correctly, one 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:56.360 in eight Dutch folks were members of a club like played. 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:58.600 It's it's a bit lower than that. I mean, when 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:00.920 I was a kid, it was only boy. Girls were 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.640 not really thought to play soccer, and so among boys 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:06.680 it was something like one in seven, one in eight. 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:09.160 I heard a stat this week that the average Dutch 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:13.000 person now has a well kept soccer field within one 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:14.600 mile of their home. 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:15.640 Wow. 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:15.920 Wow. 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:19.040 So just naturally the culture is going to be one 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:22.160 of that that's you describe it as. Just that's at 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:25.320 what everyone did. And so obviously the talent pool is 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.800 the entire nation, even if it's a small country. It 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:30.960 just means that you're you're sort of inhaling the culture 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.760 of spacing and technique and touch and movement from the 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:37.079 time that you're able to walk. 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:40.880 I think there's two things. One is social democracy is 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.240 the best underlying system for soccer, because this is not 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:46.960 basketball or rowing, where you just pick the biggest kids 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:48.840 of the kids with the biggest parents age five and 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.280 you give them special coaching. In soccer, you don't know 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:53.120 who's going to become good. I mean, who would have 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:56.680 thought that one point seventy one meters five foot seven 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.520 inch Argentinian would be the best player of the contemporary 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:03.040 You would never pick messy based on body type age six. 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:05.520 So the way to have a good soccer team is 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:07.839 you let everyone play. You let millions and millions of 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:10.320 kids play. You don't even know at seventeen who's going 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:12.120 to be the best. At nineteen you start to have 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.000 an idea. And that's what Western European countries do. There's 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:17.400 soccer every where. I live in Paris now the biggest 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:21.240 talent pool in soccer, partly because every suburb of Paris, 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:23.800 no matter how poor, is a well kept sports complex 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:26.800 with coaches with diplomas. So that's one and the other 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:30.280 thing is you're on krav the great Dutchman said, soccer 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:33.200 is a game you play with your head. Soccer is 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:35.880 about thinking all the time, and the main question you 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:38.080 have to ask is where should I be? Because for 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:40.360 eighty nine minutes on average, you do not have the 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:43.960 ball as individual player, So your job is a position yourself. 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.520 And in the Netherlands when I grew up, everyone understood 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.120 it's a game that's about space. You open space when 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.120 you have the ball, you close space when you don't 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.800 have it, and so it's an intellectual pursuit as much 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:56.800 as anything else. And so you have to learn how 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.800 that works, not just from your coach, but from your 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.160 t he makes, from the kids in the school, from 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:04.880 the soccer highlights on Sunday evening. That's how you learn 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:07.960 and what I actually had a soccer suburban soccer experience 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:10.160 in the US when I was ten eleven. My dad, 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.880 who's an academic, was touched to Stamford. We lived in 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:17.160 Palo Alto. I played ayso soccer in California, and I 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:19.199 saw that these kids were less good than the kids 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:21.559 I played with in Holland because they didn't understand how 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:23.320 to play right. 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:27.840 Daniel and I went to high school together and so 0:10:28.240 --> 0:10:30.960 I saw Daniel play and he understood space and I didn't, 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.199 and that was one of the differences. The other difference 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:40.320 was that it was a difference of coordination. Co Yeah, yeah, 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:44.040 they're both important. I had neither. I want to talk 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:47.960 to you a little bit about something that surprised me 0:10:48.200 --> 0:10:50.920 in your book, which is that you talked about how 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.360 at the highest level many pro footballers described the World 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:01.360 Cup as a kind of torture, which I found counterintuitive. 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:03.840 I think many of our listeners will you know that 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:07.600 this is something you look forward to for your entire 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:09.680 childhood and hope that will be part of your life, 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.720 and yet the tournament itself can be a misery. 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:19.440 I visited the Argentinian team or a friend of mine 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:21.640 who was an assistant coach there in twenty twenty two 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.720 and Qatar. They were living in these kind of barracks. 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.120 It was a women's hostel at the university that had 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:29.319 been given to them. It was guarded by security guards. 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:31.880 It was almost impossible for them to come out. You know, 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:34.600 it's boiling hot outside. So there you are for a month. 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:39.680 You're stuck with about forty men. Players get bullied by teammates, 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.240 players are on the bench and fear they're missing what 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:45.480 should be the peak of their careers. Players are under 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:48.360 an enormous stress. You know, you play badly and the 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:50.600 whole nation is talking about it, much more than for 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:54.200 a club. Anxiety is extreme and a lot of players, 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:56.199 I say in the book, they don't really like soccer, 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:58.839 you know, they're like the money. They gives you a 0:11:58.880 --> 0:12:00.959 good life. You train a couple in the morning, you're done, 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:04.439 and you do your other things. And in a World 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:07.360 Cup there was only soccer your lotop all day. You're training, 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:10.880 you're watching your eat, drinking and injury drinks, and some 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:13.840 players just can't take it. It's the cabin fever is terrible 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:17.040 and interpersonal relations are often terrible. They just wish for 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:18.680 it to be over, very very often. 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:22.600 That's so surprising because from the outside, you know, as fans. 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.000 You know, my first World Cup, I was nine years old. 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:29.000 All I used to dream that I would take Peru 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:31.920 to a World Cup. It's like the pinnacle. It's it's 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:33.920 like everyone's childhood dream. And then you get there and 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:38.800 it's and it's just awful. You know, how do players 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:44.800 manage their emotions and how do players, you know, manage 0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:47.760 team dynamics in order to win. I mean, it's always like, 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:50.439 you know, someone's got to win. But what separates those 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.840 teams that are able to actually do it? I mean 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:55.240 in a kind of social way. 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:57.880 I mean, I think even in the teams that do it, 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.760 there are guys who avail tims. So England were doing 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:04.880 well in twenty twenty two in another concatenation might have won, 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:07.640 but Ben White just can't handle it and he flees 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.640 the camp. Nineteen seventy four, Holland, one of the great teams, Ruthreel's, 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.480 the reserve striker, is bullied every single day at the 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:18.439 lunch and dinner table by two of his teammates and 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.240 always remembers it as the worst experience of his life. 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.439 How do teams do it? You see people say, oh, 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:26.880 they won because they have team spirit. No, they have 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:32.160 team spirit because they win. In sport, in soccer, team 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:35.719 spirit follows winning. It doesn't cause winning almost always, and 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:37.760 so of course you're happy with your teammates when you win. 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:41.720 So I think even the winning teams they come away 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.080 with a few scars. But you know, then you're fifty 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:46.400 five and you look back and you think those are 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:48.400 the best days. Of my life, etc. And it's a 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:50.679 thing that is attached to your name for the rest 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:53.280 of your lives. So it's like Neil Armstrong. Nobody ever 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:55.760 said to Neil Armstrong, you know, tell me what you 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:58.400 did on Earth. There was one thing about Neil Armstrong 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:00.520 that people cared about, and that's true of most guys 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:02.720 who win a World Cup. It's also your meal ticket. 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.760 So when I interviewed Jeff Hurst, the England strike Goo 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:07.960 scored a hat trick in the sixty six World Cup final. 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:10.000 He was twenty four then he'd wanted to spend the 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:12.400 rest of his life looking forward. He found the only 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:15.720 way he could make a living was to endlessly recount 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:17.280 stories of that day for money. 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:21.080 I think that's also true of a lot of celebrities, 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:25.120 in addition to professional athletes, and also some novelists if 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:28.400 we're not careful. So I was going to. 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:32.320 Should draw that analogy myself. All novelists are all successful 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:33.160 novelists happy. 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:40.440 Yeah, no, it's true, we're always happy. I do want 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.440 to ask you though about on the on the subject 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:48.760 of novelists being unhappy and sometimes disliking their career. I 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:51.160 was very interested when you said that many elite soccer 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:56.000 players don't like soccer. That reminds me of the first 0:14:56.000 --> 0:15:01.080 line of Andre Agassi's memoir where he said I hate tennis. 0:14:59.640 --> 0:14:59.720 Ye. 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:04.760 I think it's common but also a little counterintuitive that 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:08.320 someone who is very, very good at something would also 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.680 dislike it or not be particularly invested in it. But 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:14.920 I wonder if you can say a little more about that. 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:18.600 Yeah, I think the analogy in soccer for Agassy is 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:22.480 Tierryli the brilliant French striker twenty years ago, possibly the 0:15:22.520 --> 0:15:26.080 best player of his generation. Like Agassy, a very bullying, 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:28.800 domineering father who made him do it, and he happens 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.560 to have the talent and only said Lacy spend a 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.360 lot of his career to press. And he was asked, well, 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:36.880 didn't you know scoring these goals and winning these trophies 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:40.760 make you happy? And he said happy was never a consideration. 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.680 That was not a question I asked myself. And it's 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.040 true for a lot of players. You know you've often 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.960 sacrificed your school career and there you are. Often you 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:52.880 know you're making money not just for your family, for 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:56.040 your parents, but for all everyone. You know. You know, 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:58.800 your cousins, your cousin's friends, the kid in your hometown 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:01.320 who has cancer, that kind of thing. You have to 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:04.160 do it. Do you like it? Not really a question? 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:07.640 And only in Agacie are these kind of you know, 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:11.800 generational geniuses you can they do get despite everything, immense 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:15.200 pleasure from doing these amazing things, from expressing themselves in 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.320 some degree. While playing a lot of soccer players you 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.640 don't express yourself. You're just marking a guy, you're kicking 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.320 a guy, you're running up and down, you're delivering the ball. 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:26.520 A lot of soccer is a bit like American football. 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:30.440 You're kind of servicing the whole. It's not a hugely 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:34.160 enjoyable or creative suit. And we actually we latch onto 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:37.360 the very few players who express their creativity on the field, 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.680 someone like Neymar because usually only one guy in a 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:42.360 team is allowed to do that. MM. 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:45.280 Only one guy on this podcast is allowed to do that, 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:46.520 and that's that's John. 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:50.960 Yeah, that's me. There's there's no one on AFC Wimbledon 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:58.680 who's allowed to express their creativity immediately bench if they try. 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.600 Exactly Before we go to a quick break, I wanted 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.920 to ask you about this moment in twenty ten. Sorry, 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:12.000 we're jumping around a lot here in the final, you 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:16.600 describe this moment of kind of letting go of your 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:20.400 support of the Dutch because the football is so kind 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.280 of violent and aggressive and kind of anti all these 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:27.919 ideals that Johann Crouch gave Dutch football and gave world football. 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:30.600 Just describe that moment of transition from a kind of 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:34.880 a journalist slash fan to just kind of this stepping back, 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:36.760 like no, no, no, this is not who we want 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:36.960 to be. 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:39.720 I'm not sure it was the violence that put me off, 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:41.720 because Dutch football is meant to be violent. You know, 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.680 there's always some clogging going on, if you want to 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.320 use that phrase. And Krag himself was quite violent when 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.000 he needed to be. It was the ugliness and this stupidity. 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.000 Well it wasn't even stupid. It was this ugly, canny 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:58.119 defending and I thought, look, when I want us to 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:00.600 win the World Cup, I wanted to be the defining 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.399 transcendental moments of my life as a fan, maybe as 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:05.840 my life. It has to be perfect and beautiful, it 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:08.639 has to be nineteen seventy four, but you win in 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.159 the end. And in twenty ten, I thought, you know, 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:13.720 we could actually win this and in fact, I'd help 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:17.040 prepare a penalty report on Spain which the Dutch camp 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:19.160 were using, so for the garandce of penalties, I could 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:20.959 have helped win it. But I thought, I don't want 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:22.520 to win it like this, and I thought, you know, 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:24.240 at the time, I thought this is a bit peculiar. 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:26.920 And I was sitting extra to English colleagues who's only 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:29.280 wish for their whole lives so that England should win 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.000 the World Cup. Didn't care how if it happened, that 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:34.520 would be enough and they would go straight to heaven 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.480 and they couldn't. They thought I was bad and wrong, 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:39.919 but actually it turned out that not just a lot 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.040 of my Dutch friends also felt this way. Just thought, 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:46.280 you know, they deserve to lose, but Crow felt that way. 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:48.720 So Crew then gives an interview the night of the 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.000 final and he said I was supporting Spain because Holland 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:54.800 were not playing the right way. And you know, Dutch 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:57.160 football is not about winning, because, as I say, small 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.720 countries don't have to win. It's a moral mission. It's 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:01.520 a thing of beauty. 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:03.280 I mean that. 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:08.440 My abiding image of that final, aside from from Iniesta's goal, 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:14.040 is Nigel the young studs in Tabulonzo's chest somehow wasn't 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:18.040 wasn't called as a foul, you know. But what you're 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:20.960 saying is that it wasn't that so much as the 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:23.919 like the small fouls, the kind of rotational fouls, the 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:30.320 like interrupting Spain's passing, the almost anti football football that 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:32.959 they were playing to nullify a team that was playing 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:35.160 kind of Croix style total football. 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:40.600 Yeah. Absolutely, it was the lack of interest in attacking 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:45.159 and being beautiful. I mean, the young actually was committed 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.120 only that foul the whole match. Of course, he shouldn't 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:49.760 have just had a red card. He should have been 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:51.480 jailed for it, which is I think he broke the 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:55.240 guy's ribs. But he was he was by no means 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:58.480 the worst. But you know, I think back to oh 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:01.720 Niskan's kicking people in the seven. That's that's how Holland play. 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.440 That's good, that's that's part of it. That's also the 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:06.920 thing about Dutch football is often there's a lack of passion. 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:09.320 It becomes a little bit like a chess game between 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:12.959 you know, where everyone is angry and disappointed, and I 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.480 like that. Fans like that when there's a guy who 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:20.520 is flying in and showing that he cares. But it's 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:22.760 not enough. You also have to seek beauty, which they 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:24.520 just didn't even try. In fact, the whole thing was 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:26.080 about preventing Spain being useful. 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.680 Reminds me of that great last line of Odon and 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:33.119