Speaker 1: Welcome to the Way End.
Speaker 2: I'm Danielle Alarcon, I'm John Green and John today we're
Speaker 2: to do something a little different. We're lucky to be
Speaker 2: joined by author and journalist Simon Cooper, who has written
Speaker 2: a really wonderful new book called World Cup Fever, a
Speaker 2: Soccer Journey in nine Tournaments.
Speaker 1: Yeah so. Simon is the co author of the best
Speaker 1: selling book Soccer Nomics, one of my favorite soccer books.
Speaker 1: He also wrote an excellent deep dive into the chaotic
Speaker 1: workings of FC Barcelona called The Barcelona Complex. And I
Speaker 1: just don't think we could ask for a more knowledgeable
Speaker 1: guest to help us understand the origins of the World Cup,
Speaker 1: but also why it continues to have such a strange
Speaker 1: and fascinating hold on us. So welcome Simon. It is
Speaker 1: a great pleasure to have you here on the Oa End,
Speaker 1: A pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Simon. What's your first World Cup memory?
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventy eight. We'd moved to the Netherlands, where my
Speaker 3: dad had a job. I'm not Dutch on source of British,
Speaker 3: but I became a Holland fan. I was eight years
Speaker 3: old in nineteen seventy eight and Holland reached the World
Speaker 3: Cup final, and of course when you're eight, this feels
Speaker 3: completely normal. Of course they were in the World Cup final.
Speaker 3: A minute from time, Rob Brenson Wing hits the Argentinian
Speaker 3: post scores level one all and so I could have
Speaker 3: been World champion my very first time. So that is
Speaker 3: a memory that hasn't gone away. But then I say
Speaker 3: in the book, everyone remembers their first World Cup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mine was nineteen ninety four. I actually saw the
Speaker 1: Netherlands play as well in Orlando, Florida, Netherlands versus Morocco.
Speaker 1: And you do remember your first World Cup on a
Speaker 1: different level. I think Daniels was eighty six. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a wonderful tournament. But I want to ask you about
Speaker 1: the heart of the book. I really loved this book.
Speaker 1: It's an extraordinary work of nonfiction. It's personal, it's global,
Speaker 1: it's really a remarkable accomplishment. And the heart of it
Speaker 1: is the twenty ten World Cup in South Africa, where
Speaker 1: you were born. You know, you later whipped in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands and in the UK. I wonder if you can
Speaker 1: talk about that and about the complexity of national identity,
Speaker 1: which is sort of been a theme on the away end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think twenty ten in South Africa was the
Speaker 3: World Cup that meant most to me. My parents had
Speaker 3: left South Africa before I was born, partly because of apartheid,
Speaker 3: partly because unhappy family is the province of the world,
Speaker 3: and they moved around. I was born in Uganda, and
Speaker 3: we used to go back to South Africa during apartheid.
Speaker 3: We'd go and visit my grandparents from the Netherlands, and
Speaker 3: then later I'd go to visit family, but also as
Speaker 3: a journalist. And so to have this World Cup sort
Speaker 3: of in my parents' backyard, you know, in these places
Speaker 3: that I knew from childhood was very weird. And it
Speaker 3: was also part of South Africa becoming or trying to
Speaker 3: become a nation because you had all these different colors
Speaker 3: and until ninety four under apartheid, only white South Africa
Speaker 3: counted as the nation. And then Nelson Mandela tries to
Speaker 3: make an partly through sport, you know, George Washington makes
Speaker 3: a nation through other means in the United States. In
Speaker 3: South Africa happens partly through sports. And so the World
Speaker 3: Cup twenty ten in parts is nation building. It's in
Speaker 3: part to tell all South Africans of all colors, you're
Speaker 3: all one country. It's not so much we have one
Speaker 3: team because the South African team wasn't good, but we
Speaker 3: can put on a World Cup and show that in
Speaker 3: the South African phrase where a world class nation. We
Speaker 3: don't have to feel inferior to the European nations. And
Speaker 3: so it was tremendously important to South Africans in a
Speaker 3: way that I think most other World Cups are not
Speaker 3: quite that meaningful to the hosts.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, there's something about the about what you
Speaker 2: read about So Africa that I didn't really realize, which
Speaker 2: I think is something we've talked a lot about on
Speaker 2: the show, which is the national identity of a footballing nation,
Speaker 2: the stylistic way they play, and you talk about the
Speaker 2: tension of this tiki tiki kind of showbody style of
Speaker 2: soccer that is played in Soweto, in the town that
Speaker 2: kind of has to get almost tamp down in order
Speaker 2: for South Africa to become a kind of competitive soccer nation.
Speaker 2: And even so they're still the first country to host
Speaker 2: country to go out in the first round, but there's
Speaker 2: a tension there, and I wonder if you could talk
Speaker 2: about that because you know, you said you support the
Speaker 2: Dutch who have this kind of very specific style. Let's
Speaker 2: just talk about how globalizition has kind of erased those styles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think a lot of countries they don't just
Speaker 3: want to win at a World Cup, they want to
Speaker 3: show their soccer to the world. And that's I think
Speaker 3: pre eminentlyu ture of Brazil, where there's still this fantasy
Speaker 3: of playing like in nineteen seventy, this kind of beautiful,
Speaker 3: soloistic football of dribbles played at very low pace Palais football,
Speaker 3: which doesn't exist anymore in the twenty first century. You
Speaker 3: can't play it. Defenders are tougher, harder, faster, And in
Speaker 3: South Africa there was a version of us now South Africa,
Speaker 3: it didn't have to compete with other countries because under
Speaker 3: a part side it was banned from international soccer and
Speaker 3: black South Africans had no chance of engaging with the world.
Speaker 3: So in Soto, in the townships, they developed this kind
Speaker 3: of style of soccer that's maybe analogous to jazz. It's
Speaker 3: about beauty and display and showing your individuality, and it
Speaker 3: just doesn't work in international soccer. You can't kind of
Speaker 3: stand on the ball and do tricks, but that's what
Speaker 3: they wanted to show to the world. And I grew
Speaker 3: up in the Netherlands, which invented modern soccer. So the
Speaker 3: soccer you see today of teams like Buying Munich or
Speaker 3: Palis Saint Germain or Barcelona is the soccer that was
Speaker 3: invented in Amsterdam East by Johan Crow from the Venis
Speaker 3: Mihals in the nineteen sixties. And it's the soccer that
Speaker 3: Holland played when I was a kid, and it was
Speaker 3: beautiful and we didn't have to win. You know, if
Speaker 3: you're a small country like Holland, you don't have to
Speaker 3: win the World Cup. You just have to be the
Speaker 3: most beautiful and we were sometimes. And now that soccer
Speaker 3: has become, as I say, the kind of orthodoxy at
Speaker 3: the very top, and there's a globalization of style. So
Speaker 3: when I went back to South Africa in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four and watched some soccer, they play like the Europeans
Speaker 3: now fast one to football players running into space. Tiki
Speaker 3: ticket is gone, and so yeah, there's something lost when
Speaker 3: each all the best countries anyway play the same way
Speaker 3: and the others try to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like on the world stage today, the
Speaker 1: Dutch maybe maintain that sense of national identity of football.
Speaker 1: Brazil does a little bit. But you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: on the podcast before about how different German football looks
Speaker 1: from the sort of ideal or potonic ideal of German
Speaker 1: football from the seventies or eighties. And then there's the
Speaker 1: group of nations that are you know, the United States
Speaker 1: and below, who just have to try to play very practically.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I thought, you know, twenty years ago when
Speaker 3: we wrote the first editions of Soconomics, that countries like
Speaker 3: the US and Japan and China would copy the European style.
Speaker 3: They have bigger populations, larger talent pools, and they would
Speaker 3: be like US but better. But it turns out that
Speaker 3: playing like Europeans is kind of sense of where should
Speaker 3: I be at any given moment? Should I move up
Speaker 3: ten yards? Should I change positions? It's something you have
Speaker 3: to learn from the edge of five or six in
Speaker 3: quite a spontaneous way. You suck it up from the
Speaker 3: culture around you. And just like you know, basketball was
Speaker 3: made in American inn as cities, and it was very
Speaker 3: hard for people from outside there to be as good.
Speaker 3: That I think has been true of soccer and Europe
Speaker 3: and adding on bits of Argentina, Brazil.
Speaker 2: I mean, you talked to in your book early in
Speaker 2: the book about your childhood in the Netherlands, and I
Speaker 2: think it's really interesting because what you described is very
Speaker 2: different from the kind of suburban American sort of soccer
Speaker 2: club with orange slized at halftime culture that John and
Speaker 2: I grew up in. You said you had this remarkable
Speaker 2: stat about how there was there were there was no
Speaker 2: other like one in eight, if I remember correctly, one
Speaker 2: in eight Dutch folks were members of a club like played.
Speaker 3: It's it's a bit lower than that. I mean, when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, it was only boy. Girls were
Speaker 3: not really thought to play soccer, and so among boys
Speaker 3: it was something like one in seven, one in eight.
Speaker 3: I heard a stat this week that the average Dutch
Speaker 3: person now has a well kept soccer field within one
Speaker 3: mile of their home.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So just naturally the culture is going to be one
Speaker 2: of that that's you describe it as. Just that's at
Speaker 2: what everyone did. And so obviously the talent pool is
Speaker 2: the entire nation, even if it's a small country. It
Speaker 2: just means that you're you're sort of inhaling the culture
Speaker 2: of spacing and technique and touch and movement from the
Speaker 2: time that you're able to walk.
Speaker 3: I think there's two things. One is social democracy is
Speaker 3: the best underlying system for soccer, because this is not
Speaker 3: basketball or rowing, where you just pick the biggest kids
Speaker 3: of the kids with the biggest parents age five and
Speaker 3: you give them special coaching. In soccer, you don't know
Speaker 3: who's going to become good. I mean, who would have
Speaker 3: thought that one point seventy one meters five foot seven
Speaker 3: inch Argentinian would be the best player of the contemporary
Speaker 3: You would never pick messy based on body type age six.
Speaker 3: So the way to have a good soccer team is
Speaker 3: you let everyone play. You let millions and millions of
Speaker 3: kids play. You don't even know at seventeen who's going
Speaker 3: to be the best. At nineteen you start to have
Speaker 3: an idea. And that's what Western European countries do. There's
Speaker 3: soccer every where. I live in Paris now the biggest
Speaker 3: talent pool in soccer, partly because every suburb of Paris,
Speaker 3: no matter how poor, is a well kept sports complex
Speaker 3: with coaches with diplomas. So that's one and the other
Speaker 3: thing is you're on krav the great Dutchman said, soccer
Speaker 3: is a game you play with your head. Soccer is
Speaker 3: about thinking all the time, and the main question you
Speaker 3: have to ask is where should I be? Because for
Speaker 3: eighty nine minutes on average, you do not have the
Speaker 3: ball as individual player, So your job is a position yourself.
Speaker 3: And in the Netherlands when I grew up, everyone understood
Speaker 3: it's a game that's about space. You open space when
Speaker 3: you have the ball, you close space when you don't
Speaker 3: have it, and so it's an intellectual pursuit as much
Speaker 3: as anything else. And so you have to learn how
Speaker 3: that works, not just from your coach, but from your
Speaker 3: t he makes, from the kids in the school, from
Speaker 3: the soccer highlights on Sunday evening. That's how you learn
Speaker 3: and what I actually had a soccer suburban soccer experience
Speaker 3: in the US when I was ten eleven. My dad,
Speaker 3: who's an academic, was touched to Stamford. We lived in
Speaker 3: Palo Alto. I played ayso soccer in California, and I
Speaker 3: saw that these kids were less good than the kids
Speaker 3: I played with in Holland because they didn't understand how
Speaker 3: to play right.
Speaker 1: Daniel and I went to high school together and so
Speaker 1: I saw Daniel play and he understood space and I didn't,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the differences. The other difference
Speaker 1: was that it was a difference of coordination. Co Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're both important. I had neither. I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you a little bit about something that surprised me
Speaker 1: in your book, which is that you talked about how
Speaker 1: at the highest level many pro footballers described the World
Speaker 1: Cup as a kind of torture, which I found counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: I think many of our listeners will you know that
Speaker 1: this is something you look forward to for your entire
Speaker 1: childhood and hope that will be part of your life,
Speaker 1: and yet the tournament itself can be a misery.
Speaker 3: I visited the Argentinian team or a friend of mine
Speaker 3: who was an assistant coach there in twenty twenty two
Speaker 3: and Qatar. They were living in these kind of barracks.
Speaker 3: It was a women's hostel at the university that had
Speaker 3: been given to them. It was guarded by security guards.
Speaker 3: It was almost impossible for them to come out. You know,
Speaker 3: it's boiling hot outside. So there you are for a month.
Speaker 3: You're stuck with about forty men. Players get bullied by teammates,
Speaker 3: players are on the bench and fear they're missing what
Speaker 3: should be the peak of their careers. Players are under
Speaker 3: an enormous stress. You know, you play badly and the
Speaker 3: whole nation is talking about it, much more than for
Speaker 3: a club. Anxiety is extreme and a lot of players,
Speaker 3: I say in the book, they don't really like soccer,
Speaker 3: you know, they're like the money. They gives you a
Speaker 3: good life. You train a couple in the morning, you're done,
Speaker 3: and you do your other things. And in a World
Speaker 3: Cup there was only soccer your lotop all day. You're training,
Speaker 3: you're watching your eat, drinking and injury drinks, and some
Speaker 3: players just can't take it. It's the cabin fever is terrible
Speaker 3: and interpersonal relations are often terrible. They just wish for
Speaker 3: it to be over, very very often.
Speaker 2: That's so surprising because from the outside, you know, as fans.
Speaker 2: You know, my first World Cup, I was nine years old.
Speaker 2: All I used to dream that I would take Peru
Speaker 2: to a World Cup. It's like the pinnacle. It's it's
Speaker 2: like everyone's childhood dream. And then you get there and
Speaker 2: it's and it's just awful. You know, how do players
Speaker 2: manage their emotions and how do players, you know, manage
Speaker 2: team dynamics in order to win. I mean, it's always like,
Speaker 2: you know, someone's got to win. But what separates those
Speaker 2: teams that are able to actually do it? I mean
Speaker 2: in a kind of social way.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think even in the teams that do it,
Speaker 3: there are guys who avail tims. So England were doing
Speaker 3: well in twenty twenty two in another concatenation might have won,
Speaker 3: but Ben White just can't handle it and he flees
Speaker 3: the camp. Nineteen seventy four, Holland, one of the great teams, Ruthreel's,
Speaker 3: the reserve striker, is bullied every single day at the
Speaker 3: lunch and dinner table by two of his teammates and
Speaker 3: always remembers it as the worst experience of his life.
Speaker 3: How do teams do it? You see people say, oh,
Speaker 3: they won because they have team spirit. No, they have
Speaker 3: team spirit because they win. In sport, in soccer, team
Speaker 3: spirit follows winning. It doesn't cause winning almost always, and
Speaker 3: so of course you're happy with your teammates when you win.
Speaker 3: So I think even the winning teams they come away
Speaker 3: with a few scars. But you know, then you're fifty
Speaker 3: five and you look back and you think those are
Speaker 3: the best days. Of my life, etc. And it's a
Speaker 3: thing that is attached to your name for the rest
Speaker 3: of your lives. So it's like Neil Armstrong. Nobody ever
Speaker 3: said to Neil Armstrong, you know, tell me what you
Speaker 3: did on Earth. There was one thing about Neil Armstrong
Speaker 3: that people cared about, and that's true of most guys
Speaker 3: who win a World Cup. It's also your meal ticket.
Speaker 3: So when I interviewed Jeff Hurst, the England strike Goo
Speaker 3: scored a hat trick in the sixty six World Cup final.
Speaker 3: He was twenty four then he'd wanted to spend the
Speaker 3: rest of his life looking forward. He found the only
Speaker 3: way he could make a living was to endlessly recount
Speaker 3: stories of that day for money.
Speaker 1: I think that's also true of a lot of celebrities,
Speaker 1: in addition to professional athletes, and also some novelists if
Speaker 1: we're not careful. So I was going to.
Speaker 3: Should draw that analogy myself. All novelists are all successful
Speaker 3: novelists happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's true, we're always happy. I do want
Speaker 1: to ask you though about on the on the subject
Speaker 1: of novelists being unhappy and sometimes disliking their career. I
Speaker 1: was very interested when you said that many elite soccer
Speaker 1: players don't like soccer. That reminds me of the first
Speaker 1: line of Andre Agassi's memoir where he said I hate tennis.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 1: I think it's common but also a little counterintuitive that
Speaker 1: someone who is very, very good at something would also
Speaker 1: dislike it or not be particularly invested in it. But
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can say a little more about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the analogy in soccer for Agassy is
Speaker 3: Tierryli the brilliant French striker twenty years ago, possibly the
Speaker 3: best player of his generation. Like Agassy, a very bullying,
Speaker 3: domineering father who made him do it, and he happens
Speaker 3: to have the talent and only said Lacy spend a
Speaker 3: lot of his career to press. And he was asked, well,
Speaker 3: didn't you know scoring these goals and winning these trophies
Speaker 3: make you happy? And he said happy was never a consideration.
Speaker 3: That was not a question I asked myself. And it's
Speaker 3: true for a lot of players. You know you've often
Speaker 3: sacrificed your school career and there you are. Often you
Speaker 3: know you're making money not just for your family, for
Speaker 3: your parents, but for all everyone. You know. You know,
Speaker 3: your cousins, your cousin's friends, the kid in your hometown
Speaker 3: who has cancer, that kind of thing. You have to
Speaker 3: do it. Do you like it? Not really a question?
Speaker 3: And only in Agacie are these kind of you know,
Speaker 3: generational geniuses you can they do get despite everything, immense
Speaker 3: pleasure from doing these amazing things, from expressing themselves in
Speaker 3: some degree. While playing a lot of soccer players you
Speaker 3: don't express yourself. You're just marking a guy, you're kicking
Speaker 3: a guy, you're running up and down, you're delivering the ball.
Speaker 3: A lot of soccer is a bit like American football.
Speaker 3: You're kind of servicing the whole. It's not a hugely
Speaker 3: enjoyable or creative suit. And we actually we latch onto
Speaker 3: the very few players who express their creativity on the field,
Speaker 3: someone like Neymar because usually only one guy in a
Speaker 3: team is allowed to do that. MM.
Speaker 2: Only one guy on this podcast is allowed to do that,
Speaker 2: and that's that's John.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's me. There's there's no one on AFC Wimbledon
Speaker 1: who's allowed to express their creativity immediately bench if they try.
Speaker 2: Exactly Before we go to a quick break, I wanted
Speaker 2: to ask you about this moment in twenty ten. Sorry,
Speaker 2: we're jumping around a lot here in the final, you
Speaker 2: describe this moment of kind of letting go of your
Speaker 2: support of the Dutch because the football is so kind
Speaker 2: of violent and aggressive and kind of anti all these
Speaker 2: ideals that Johann Crouch gave Dutch football and gave world football.
Speaker 2: Just describe that moment of transition from a kind of
Speaker 2: a journalist slash fan to just kind of this stepping back,
Speaker 2: like no, no, no, this is not who we want
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure it was the violence that put me off,
Speaker 3: because Dutch football is meant to be violent. You know,
Speaker 3: there's always some clogging going on, if you want to
Speaker 3: use that phrase. And Krag himself was quite violent when
Speaker 3: he needed to be. It was the ugliness and this stupidity.
Speaker 3: Well it wasn't even stupid. It was this ugly, canny
Speaker 3: defending and I thought, look, when I want us to
Speaker 3: win the World Cup, I wanted to be the defining
Speaker 3: transcendental moments of my life as a fan, maybe as
Speaker 3: my life. It has to be perfect and beautiful, it
Speaker 3: has to be nineteen seventy four, but you win in
Speaker 3: the end. And in twenty ten, I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: we could actually win this and in fact, I'd help
Speaker 3: prepare a penalty report on Spain which the Dutch camp
Speaker 3: were using, so for the garandce of penalties, I could
Speaker 3: have helped win it. But I thought, I don't want
Speaker 3: to win it like this, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: at the time, I thought this is a bit peculiar.
Speaker 3: And I was sitting extra to English colleagues who's only
Speaker 3: wish for their whole lives so that England should win
Speaker 3: the World Cup. Didn't care how if it happened, that
Speaker 3: would be enough and they would go straight to heaven
Speaker 3: and they couldn't. They thought I was bad and wrong,
Speaker 3: but actually it turned out that not just a lot
Speaker 3: of my Dutch friends also felt this way. Just thought,
Speaker 3: you know, they deserve to lose, but Crow felt that way.
Speaker 3: So Crew then gives an interview the night of the
Speaker 3: final and he said I was supporting Spain because Holland
Speaker 3: were not playing the right way. And you know, Dutch
Speaker 3: football is not about winning, because, as I say, small
Speaker 3: countries don't have to win. It's a moral mission. It's
Speaker 3: a thing of beauty.
Speaker 1: I mean that.
Speaker 2: My abiding image of that final, aside from from Iniesta's goal,
Speaker 2: is Nigel the young studs in Tabulonzo's chest somehow wasn't
Speaker 2: wasn't called as a foul, you know. But what you're
Speaker 2: saying is that it wasn't that so much as the
Speaker 2: like the small fouls, the kind of rotational fouls, the
Speaker 2: like interrupting Spain's passing, the almost anti football football that
Speaker 2: they were playing to nullify a team that was playing
Speaker 2: kind of Croix style total football.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, it was the lack of interest in attacking
Speaker 3: and being beautiful. I mean, the young actually was committed
Speaker 3: only that foul the whole match. Of course, he shouldn't
Speaker 3: have just had a red card. He should have been
Speaker 3: jailed for it, which is I think he broke the
Speaker 3: guy's ribs. But he was he was by no means
Speaker 3: the worst. But you know, I think back to oh
Speaker 3: Niskan's kicking people in the seven. That's that's how Holland play.
Speaker 3: That's good, that's that's part of it. That's also the
Speaker 3: thing about Dutch football is often there's a lack of passion.
Speaker 3: It becomes a little bit like a chess game between
Speaker 3: you know, where everyone is angry and disappointed, and I
Speaker 3: like that. Fans like that when there's a guy who
Speaker 3: is flying in and showing that he cares. But it's
Speaker 3: not enough. You also have to seek beauty, which they
Speaker 3: just didn't even try. In fact, the whole thing was
Speaker 3: about preventing Spain being useful.
Speaker 1: Reminds me of that great last line of Odon and
Speaker 1: Grecian Earn, the controversial last line, Beauty is truth and
Speaker 1: truth beauty. That's all you know and all you need
Speaker 1: to know. Lots of people think Keith was kidding when
Speaker 1: he wrote that, but I think he was serious. I
Speaker 1: think he was twenty three and serious.
Speaker 2: No one's more serious than a twenty three year old,
Speaker 2: that's true.
Speaker 3: He would have supported Holland Nol singlely nothing, I think.
Speaker 2: So let's take a quick break and believe that with
Speaker 2: more with Samber, all right, we're back on their way.
Speaker 2: And so Simon, you live in Paris. You basically moved
Speaker 2: there shortly after the ninety eight World Cup. Now, for
Speaker 2: a lot of people paying attention to World soccer, France
Speaker 2: is one of these, you know, world powers. You know,
Speaker 2: they're always in the mix for a World Cup. They
Speaker 2: produce some of the greatest players, they have, you know,
Speaker 2: the most successful currently the most successful club team in
Speaker 2: the world. The wealth of talent they could fill you know,
Speaker 2: three four five national teams and they do actually so
Speaker 2: but you you talk about how ninety eight the culture
Speaker 2: around the World Cup was, you know this kind of
Speaker 2: like French indifference towards the World Cup until kind of
Speaker 2: the end. And I was totally kind of like, I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that. I always thought of France as this
Speaker 2: kind of passionate footballing nation and Platini in eighty six
Speaker 2: and you know, all these these these great French players
Speaker 2: that I that I just said that was the culture.
Speaker 2: Could you talk about what I didn't tell me why
Speaker 2: I was wrong? I didn't I didn't realize that was
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 3: I mean, France has always had pockets of football, mostly
Speaker 3: in the industrial city, so like in Britain, it was
Speaker 3: a working class, predatarian game. But France is a mostly
Speaker 3: agricultural nation with the capital Paris, you know, which creates
Speaker 3: intellectual snobbery. So none of these places particularly conducive. So
Speaker 3: it places like Nancia and eastern France where Platini grew up,
Speaker 3: mining towns like Lance de Santechier and then the harbor
Speaker 3: port town of Marseille. That's kind of where people care
Speaker 3: about football, and so you know, the elite that makes
Speaker 3: the cultural that sets the dominant culture in Paris very
Speaker 3: strongly still didn't see football, didn't care. So in one
Speaker 3: of Torfau's films, The four Hundred Blows, you know, football
Speaker 3: is presented as this terrible thing that adults fource on children,
Speaker 3: is kind of military style punishment. Lemonde, which is the
Speaker 3: you know, neighborhood gauzette of the Paris elite, did not
Speaker 3: have a sports page daily until nineteen ninety five, and
Speaker 3: so in ninety eight when they get to the World
Speaker 3: Cup final, most French people going into the final have
Speaker 3: probably never watched an entire football match on TV, and
Speaker 3: so that final becomes the most watched TV program in
Speaker 3: French history. It's also, I think the happiest moment in
Speaker 3: the French have as a communal moment since nineteen forty four,
Speaker 3: the Liberation. The difference in ninety eight is that all
Speaker 3: the French are on the same side, and so that
Speaker 3: really starts to create a football culture. And the other
Speaker 3: thing that happens is that Paris is spreading, It's becoming
Speaker 3: a city that is dwarfed by its suburbs. These new suburbs,
Speaker 3: new buildings, often high rises, where a lot of immigrant people,
Speaker 3: people of immigrant origin live, and that's where the soccer
Speaker 3: starts to come from. So the last thirsty years or so,
Speaker 3: the great French players have mostly come from the suburbs
Speaker 3: of Paris, like Glean and Babe or bold Bombard. That's
Speaker 3: where the culture is created. That's why France becomes the
Speaker 3: best soccer country of this century. It's been in four
Speaker 3: of the last seven World Cup finals, one two and
Speaker 3: lost two onion penalties. So it's this amazing thing in
Speaker 3: this city that had always had a dominant culture that
Speaker 3: was against football. And when I arrived in Paris in
Speaker 3: two thousand and two, there wasn't even a proper football team.
Speaker 3: Patty Sounderman was horrible. And now they're the best team
Speaker 3: in the world. So my twin sons who are seventeen
Speaker 3: to them, it's normal. You know, they won the World
Speaker 3: Cup age nine. As France fans, they won the Champions
Speaker 3: League last year. They don't know that this is just
Speaker 3: so out of kills her.
Speaker 1: They will in time. I suspect that's the great thing
Speaker 1: about soccer, right, is that eventually you get bad again.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about the actual football at
Speaker 1: the World Cup. You point out that the football can
Speaker 1: be quite dreary, and that's true. I always have to
Speaker 1: explain to my American friends who don't watch soccer throughout
Speaker 1: the year that the quality of soccer in the World
Speaker 1: Cup is actually lower than you expect. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if you can talk about why that is and whether
Speaker 1: that's something that could change.
Speaker 3: Well, it will get worse, it will be lower even
Speaker 3: this time. So when I was a kid in the seventies,
Speaker 3: you had only sixteen teams, and so you had really
Speaker 3: the best countries. And because not all good players played
Speaker 3: for clubs in Western Europe, you would discover great players
Speaker 3: at a World Cup. You know who played for Argentina
Speaker 3: or Brazil or later Cameroon. You think, wow, who is
Speaker 3: that guy? And now you know Western European clubs have
Speaker 3: hoovered up all the best players. The World Cup was
Speaker 3: thirty two teams until recently, so you have a lot
Speaker 3: of teams who are worse than not good enough to
Speaker 3: play Premier League football in England, and they just go there,
Speaker 3: try to play nil nil, spend the whole match defending
Speaker 3: because they don't want to be humiliated. This summer we've
Speaker 3: gone up to forty eight teams. FIFA. I think had
Speaker 3: hoped that you'd have big countries, big markets like China, India, Indonesia.
Speaker 3: Qualifying didn't happen in said Cape verdie Kurosau Jordan are here.
Speaker 3: They will already be desperate to draw nil nil. So
Speaker 3: it's not just that it's worse than the Premier League.
Speaker 3: It's probably most many teams will be worse than the
Speaker 3: Championship in England, the second tier of English football. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be quite shocking, but with more defensive football
Speaker 3: than in the Championship.
Speaker 1: Well as somebody who watches a League One game every Saturday,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be absolutely delighted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it will be like Wimbledon, but less fun.
Speaker 3: I would think, okay, let me.
Speaker 2: Play, let me, let me, let me argue against you. Simon,
Speaker 2: my family comes from Peru, was once one of these
Speaker 2: South America teams with real flair in style. Seventy eight.
Speaker 1: We did well, we.
Speaker 3: Will really we all remember him. He was a player
Speaker 3: we discovered in seventy eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, eighty two Spain we were there, and then
Speaker 2: then we weren't there until twenty eighteen. Expanding the World Cup,
Speaker 2: isn't you could argue to more teams is also about
Speaker 2: creating opportunities to expand the footballing family. Of course, ow
Speaker 2: maybe isn't a great example, but there are small and
Speaker 2: middle sized countries with great footballing legacies, where football is
Speaker 2: the sport of the nation and the national passion, who
Speaker 2: are never going to get better unless they measure themselves
Speaker 2: against the truly good teams of the world. Right, isn't
Speaker 2: that the argument for expanding the World Cup?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I have some sympathy with that. I mean, I've
Speaker 3: spent the last week interviewing some curis out players and
Speaker 3: the coach and the head of the football association on
Speaker 3: the phone. And these are guys. They're really Dutch. They
Speaker 3: play and they've born and raised in the Netherlands of
Speaker 3: curse our origin curse, how is the Dutch territory in
Speaker 3: the Caribbean. They're kind of journeyman soccer players. The goalkeeper
Speaker 3: plays for FC Miami, which is the second team in Miami.
Speaker 3: They play, you know, tier below Leo Messi's into Miami.
Speaker 1: So these are.
Speaker 3: People and suddenly you're playing in the biggest tournament in
Speaker 3: the world and the whole Island. You know, they're gonna
Speaker 3: watch every game, and it's gonna be like that in Iraq,
Speaker 3: which is qualified I think once in Jordan. It's gonna
Speaker 3: be fantastic for those countries. I just wish we didn't
Speaker 3: all have to watch the whole thing. And if they win,
Speaker 3: it's still you know, even cynics like me. Did you
Speaker 3: see if we're at Quana World Cup match, isn't that wonderful?
Speaker 3: So yeah, there is some joy, but as a way
Speaker 3: to lower the quality, it's almost guaranteed to succeed.
Speaker 1: On the topic of FIFA, I understood, I think before
Speaker 1: reading your book that FIFA was always a politicized organization.
Speaker 1: It was never neutral. You know, no large non governmental
Speaker 1: organization can be. But I did not know much about
Speaker 1: those early days and about Jules Remy, and I wonder
Speaker 1: if you can introduce our listeners to the dream that
Speaker 1: Remy had for FIFA's place beyond sport.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I think most people who love socculd know
Speaker 3: the name Julie May, the guy who founded the World Cup,
Speaker 3: but only because his name was on the original trophy,
Speaker 3: which was given to Brazil in nineteen seventy and stolen
Speaker 3: from Rioderjanaira in nineteen eighty three and never seen again.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows anything about the guy. So I thought, look,
Speaker 3: I live in Paris, I speak French. The few sources
Speaker 3: about him are in French. I'm going to find out
Speaker 3: who he is. I cycled out to his grave in
Speaker 3: the suburbs of Paris, completely forgotten, and Graver probably was
Speaker 3: the first person to be there in many years. And
Speaker 3: so he was in World War One. He was a
Speaker 3: soldier at the front for four years. He won three
Speaker 3: military crosses. It's a miracle he survived. And he came home,
Speaker 3: like many people, thinking soccer brings peace, that we need
Speaker 3: peace between above all France and Germany, you know, constant
Speaker 3: wars between them, and soccer. The World Cup, which already
Speaker 3: was FIFA's dream, that's going to bring peace between nations.
Speaker 3: And so they launched in nineteen thirty and already by
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty four it's being hosted by Benito mos Mussolini
Speaker 3: in fascist Sicily, and the email is fine with that.
Speaker 3: He's fine with the fascists. He's later fine with the
Speaker 3: Nazis because he thinks, you know, it's not about politics,
Speaker 3: it's beyond politics. It's about love between nations. It's about
Speaker 3: bringing peace. And when he just before he died in
Speaker 3: fifty six, FIFA was about to nominate him for the
Speaker 3: Nobel Peace Prize, which has been an obsession of FIFA
Speaker 3: president since and also sudden people close to FIFA presidents
Speaker 3: and that kind of naive belief in soccer. I don't
Speaker 3: if you saw this terrible moment a week or so
Speaker 3: ago when Infantino tried to get the Palestinian head of
Speaker 3: the Palestinian Soccer Federation to shake hands with an Israeli official,
Speaker 3: as if you know the war there is like a
Speaker 3: football match and shake hands. So this very naive belief
Speaker 3: was there from the start, and so part of that
Speaker 3: is we allow any regime. Anyone can play football, anyone
Speaker 3: can host the World Cup, doesn't matter if you're a fascist,
Speaker 3: and that has kind of remained FIFA's ethos from the start,
Speaker 3: in both well meaning and cynical ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I kind of thought. I guess that Infantino,
Speaker 2: the current president of FIFA was kind of more political
Speaker 2: and weirdly like more engaged than he was at the
Speaker 2: original Guys of peace talks, and he invents this peace prize. Yes,
Speaker 2: I guess I thought that was a new thing or
Speaker 2: a kind of step beyond the original purview of the organization,
Speaker 2: and it was. It was really interesting to learn that
Speaker 2: that was actually the plan all along, to create this
Speaker 2: kind of supernational organization that is kind of above politics.
Speaker 2: And you described it a very Swiss kind of this
Speaker 2: concierge style, like we're just here to help powerful people
Speaker 2: help the game, you know, and the kind of the
Speaker 2: previous president sept letter is the one that you described
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 3: I believe. Yeah, I don't know if the aim has
Speaker 3: helped powerful people help the game, but to let powerful
Speaker 3: and which people put money into the game. So a
Speaker 3: Swiss friend of mine explained to me the kind of
Speaker 3: Swiss prototype of the hotel conciers deportier in Swiss, German
Speaker 3: and Derportier. The concierge is this guy. He's very helpful
Speaker 3: to all the guests because they must have money, because
Speaker 3: I'm staying at his hotel, and he always sends who
Speaker 3: has money? So he used to be the British, and
Speaker 3: later the Americans, and then it's the Russians, and now
Speaker 3: it's the golf Arabs. Whoever has money is at the
Speaker 3: front of the Concierra's desk, and he's very friendly to you,
Speaker 3: doesn't care about your politics. He doesn't care where you
Speaker 3: got your money, as long as you give it to
Speaker 3: his hotel or in the FIFA analogy, you put it
Speaker 3: into FIFA, you put it into football. So NBS of
Speaker 3: the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince is getting a World Cup
Speaker 3: in twenty thirty four because Saudi Arabia, like Gatar, puts
Speaker 3: a lot of money into soccer. So it's a very
Speaker 3: kind of cynical and almost a political way to think.
Speaker 3: It's not about the benefit of soccer. It's about putting
Speaker 3: money into FIFA recycles it to the national federation presidents.
Speaker 3: The presidents might stick it in their own pocket or
Speaker 3: some of them use it to build a soccer field
Speaker 3: in their country, and then they vote for the FIFA president.
Speaker 2: So depressing.
Speaker 3: At least it's only soccer, you know, I mean, the
Speaker 3: world kind of thrives despite FIFA. So every time in
Speaker 3: the Rhymes World Cup, and I've been here, you know,
Speaker 3: I've done this rodio before, people talk about FIFA and
Speaker 3: how horrible it is. It's the only time in four
Speaker 3: year cycle that most people think about FIFA. The moment
Speaker 3: the soccer starts, we think about the soccer, which is right,
Speaker 3: because the soccer is be useful and we shouldn't. FIFA
Speaker 3: isn't important enough for to spoil it.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about your experience of the
Speaker 1: World Cup and what you're looking forward to this time around,
Speaker 1: because you write in the book about how you know
Speaker 1: you experienced this as a journalist, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: long days, and it's endlessly filing copy, and there's some
Speaker 1: forgettable games along the way that you have to write about.
Speaker 1: I guess the two part question one do you ever
Speaker 1: wish you could experience the World Cup as a fan
Speaker 1: the way that you know regular people get to experience it?
Speaker 1: And two are you looking forward to this World Cup
Speaker 1: or is there a measure of like, boy, here we
Speaker 1: go again.
Speaker 3: I will finally get to experience the World Cup for
Speaker 3: a few days like normal people do. Because my sons
Speaker 3: are doing their French end of school exams, the Buck
Speaker 3: school finishing, and so I'm staying home for the first week,
Speaker 3: and I'm already arranging with friends. You know, should we
Speaker 3: watch Germany Crusaud together? Share we watch Holland Japan together,
Speaker 3: And it's much more fun. That's how you're supposed to
Speaker 3: watch football. You're supposed to watch it with friends, possibly
Speaker 3: in the stadium, usually just in front of the TV
Speaker 3: and a bar, or at home. And that's gonna be great.
Speaker 3: That's gonna be really fun. In terms of here we
Speaker 3: go again, yes, I always feel here we go again
Speaker 3: because I'm in you know, aged cynic and journalism takes
Speaker 3: you to games that where you don't care who wins,
Speaker 3: like Paraguay Japan, and then the football was bad, and
Speaker 3: then you know, you get to sleep at five in
Speaker 3: the morning. And so yeah, I mean we wine and
Speaker 3: wine and wine. Journalists like to whine, and journalists at
Speaker 3: World Cups wine even more. But I you know, I've
Speaker 3: also reached an age of semi maturity where I'm going
Speaker 3: to tell myself enjoy some stuff. Often the best things
Speaker 3: are away from the soccer. So for example, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: be in Philadelphia, I've never been them before. I'm curious.
Speaker 3: I'm going to Mexico City, I've never been there before.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be great. So there's things like that. And
Speaker 3: then you know, holand be Germany five to four in
Speaker 3: the World Cup final. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: Is that a prediction. Can we put you on record there?
Speaker 3: All my predictions about World Cups are wrong. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to predict that the Germany, you know, Welch is
Speaker 3: thrower and beats everyone and wins the World Cup easy.
Speaker 1: That I do think that is unlikely to be fair.
Speaker 3: I just want to say it's to be absolutely sure
Speaker 3: it won't happen.
Speaker 1: I don't know that Daniel and I have them getting
Speaker 1: out of the group.
Speaker 3: It's impossible not to get out of a group.
Speaker 4: That's true, true, get out of the group. Yeah, everybody
Speaker 4: gets out of the group. I want to get to this.
Speaker 4: This is the most kind of the question that I've
Speaker 4: been trying to explain to myself.
Speaker 2: And I think you do a good job of it
Speaker 2: in the book. The World Cup, as you say, is
Speaker 2: kind of bloated. It's too commercialized like that. You know,
Speaker 2: FIFA adds new layers of almost trolling into every tournament
Speaker 2: just to get money out of our pockets and make
Speaker 2: the game worse. And yet it's so special. And yet
Speaker 2: every year, every four years, I turn into this little
Speaker 2: boy again, and I am trading Panini's you know, with
Speaker 2: my kids, and you know, and and it's I just
Speaker 2: feel like a little child, just excited. And I'm just
Speaker 2: wondering why you think after nine tournaments and on the
Speaker 2: cusp of the tenth term that you're going to attend,
Speaker 2: you know, you're probably better place than most of us
Speaker 2: that just say, why is it that this tournament has
Speaker 2: such a hold on us?
Speaker 3: Well, I think one thing is what you say. It
Speaker 3: turns you into a kid again. So you're the same
Speaker 3: person suddenly who watched that World Cup when you were
Speaker 3: nine years old. At a World Cup. There isn't really
Speaker 3: a big distance between this World Cup and nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: eight when I was eight years old and I watched
Speaker 3: the final with my parents and my long dead grandparents.
Speaker 3: My mother's dead and I can see us all sitting there.
Speaker 3: So it's like this madeleine that takes you push muddle lean,
Speaker 3: that takes you back through your life, and there's something
Speaker 3: beautiful about that. And then you pass it on to
Speaker 3: your children and you watch the World Cup with others.
Speaker 3: That's the points of a World Cup. It's a communit
Speaker 3: all experience. You watch it with the people around you.
Speaker 3: So it's very important and if you have kids, to
Speaker 3: choose who so watch it with because they'll remember their
Speaker 3: first World Cup and then you watch it with your nation.
Speaker 3: So everyone at the bus stop at school, on social
Speaker 3: media is talking about the same TV program, which never
Speaker 3: happens nowadays except when it's something terrible involving Trump. And
Speaker 3: so the World Cup is this kind of communal moment
Speaker 3: for the nation and for the world. So we're all
Speaker 3: watching the same thing. So if a New Zealander puts
Speaker 3: the ball in the top corner in the first game,
Speaker 3: everyone in the world is going to experience that. Everyone
Speaker 3: in the world, but more people than ever experience a
Speaker 3: human event, is going to experience that together. And so
Speaker 3: it's unity of nation, unity of world, and unity of
Speaker 3: your life. There's all these things come together and nothing
Speaker 3: else can do that. So it's the magic of sport.
Speaker 3: Despite despite FIFA, despite having an ie called Coca Cola,
Speaker 3: all the all the all the advertisements, there is that
Speaker 3: feeling that you are connected to people you will never meet.
Speaker 3: I was just in here Leone and was talking to
Speaker 3: a tuberculosis survivor about tuberculosis and then immediately transferred over
Speaker 3: to football and he looked at me and said North
Speaker 3: London forever, and I was like, oh God, I hope
Speaker 3: they win the league for you, not for Daniel, but
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 4: Really, No, that's my co host, but thanks for listening.
Speaker 4: We should say the name of your book. By the way,
Speaker 4: it's called World Cup Fever.
Speaker 1: It is. It is brilliant and if you like football
Speaker 1: as much as Daniel and I do, you'll love this book.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I'll say it again just to be sure, World Cup Fever.
Speaker 2: There you go, Sidon, thanks so much for joining us. Man,
Speaker 2: it was real pleasure and enjoy the tournament.
Speaker 3: Thanks very much. Guys really enjoyed it. Nice to me.
Speaker 2: Thank you all right, take care for you care bye you.
Speaker 1: It's back at the away end. Daniel, hey, man, I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed that conversation. I didn't believe in my heart
Speaker 1: of hearts that Simon Cooper was going to squeeze in
Speaker 1: Proust's mat aligned, but I was wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, he's clearly been studying the pod, so he knows
Speaker 2: the tone, the tone of our conversations. Man, it really
Speaker 2: is a tremendous book. It was super fun to read.
Speaker 2: My son Eliseo, whom you know, has been bugging me
Speaker 2: to finish so that I could so that he can
Speaker 2: read it. And I really love the I don't know
Speaker 2: if you had a favorite section, but his we didn't
Speaker 2: talk too much about the Brazil World Cup. I thought
Speaker 2: that section was great and kind of like everything leads
Speaker 2: up to the cataclysm of the seven to one in Germany.
Speaker 2: He has all these really really lovely anecdotes. It's a
Speaker 2: it's a fun and fast read.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, yeah, my favorite was the South Africa
Speaker 1: World Cup section, just because the because I'm so interested
Speaker 1: in how we come to identify with the nation, you know,
Speaker 1: how we come to identify, like how national identity works
Speaker 1: in complicated cases. You know where you're You may be
Speaker 1: born in Uganda to South African parents and moved to
Speaker 1: the Netherlands and moved to England and moved to the
Speaker 1: United States, and you know what is what is your
Speaker 1: identity then? Or if you're you know, a curs How
Speaker 1: player of who grew up in the Netherlands but of
Speaker 1: you know, curse Ou descent, what is your connection to
Speaker 1: Cursow and what does it mean to represent that country? Right?
Speaker 1: Like I think I always think back to that line
Speaker 1: from the nineteen thirty World Cup where the Uruguayan coach
Speaker 1: said you are the motherland.
Speaker 3: HM hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the other thing that he talks a lot about.
Speaker 2: In the South African World Cup, the use of the
Speaker 2: tournament as nation building for this brand new mortiracial country
Speaker 2: they were they were trying to to solidify. And then
Speaker 2: even in France, you know, the political use of the
Speaker 2: multi racial French team to kind of create this vision
Speaker 2: of a of a multiethnic France that previously hadn't existed
Speaker 2: around a sport that was, as he was describing, kind
Speaker 2: of ignored by the Parisian elites until they win. You know,
Speaker 2: I find all that's super fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's really it's interesting to think about also,
Speaker 1: the idea that winning breeds closeness and positivity rather than
Speaker 1: the other way around. I don't know is that your
Speaker 1: experience of I mean, I know that you've never played
Speaker 1: it at an elite level. I don't want to pretend otherwise,
Speaker 1: but is that your experience that like part of what
Speaker 1: builds the team? Is it success? Does success come from
Speaker 1: the team being closer? Does the team being close come
Speaker 1: from success? You know?
Speaker 3: You know what?
Speaker 2: It reminded me of that thing about how you know,
Speaker 2: old people fall and break their hips and then and
Speaker 2: a doctor told me that actually they break their hip
Speaker 2: and then they fall because at a certain age, your
Speaker 2: hips are just like the are just very brittle, and
Speaker 2: you they just you know. So it's actually the other
Speaker 2: way around. It's not that you trip and break your hip.
Speaker 1: It's that your hit so you break your hip and
Speaker 1: then you fall over because it hurts.
Speaker 2: So that's why I was thinking of and I got
Speaker 2: distracted by the image of being old and following and
Speaker 2: breaking my hip.
Speaker 1: It's coming for us, man.
Speaker 2: I think he's probably right. I think it's probably right.
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, nothing succeeds like success, and
Speaker 2: you know, in some ways, winning is a collective delusion.
Speaker 2: You know, you start to believe, and then your team
Speaker 2: starts to believe, and then something either pierces the bubble
Speaker 2: or you know, var intervenes and talks off a goal,
Speaker 2: and then you start to believe you could you could
Speaker 2: actually win the thing, you know, and that that creates
Speaker 2: team spirit. It is funny that way. I mean, it's not.
Speaker 1: That's not just true for sports. That's true of all
Speaker 1: forms of confidence, right, Like it's true of writerly confidence
Speaker 1: as well, which you have to have in order to
Speaker 1: write well. You have to you have to buy into
Speaker 1: the delusion that you're not the worst writer in the world.
Speaker 1: And confidence is so fragile and weird because when you
Speaker 1: have it, it feels natural and inevitable, and when you
Speaker 1: don't have it, it also feels natural and inevitable that you
Speaker 1: would never have it again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, totally yeah. And it's also funny how how
Speaker 2: many times you can do something and still not believe
Speaker 2: that you could actually do it again.
Speaker 1: You know, that's certainly true for writing books. I mean,
Speaker 1: every time I write a book, I'm like, there's no
Speaker 1: way I can do this.
Speaker 2: No, no, for sure. And I've given this kind of
Speaker 2: glib line before, which I sort of believe in that
Speaker 2: if a book doesn't feel impossible, like what's the point
Speaker 2: of writing it, what's the point of trying? You know,
Speaker 2: it's supposed to feel impossible, you know. I do think
Speaker 2: that's a debilitating way to, you know, earn a living,
Speaker 2: like psychologically debilitating, Like I don't feel like other jobs.
Speaker 1: You go to work and.
Speaker 2: You're like, it's impossible, this is impossible.
Speaker 1: I'm going to die.
Speaker 2: I'll never be able to do this.
Speaker 3: Ye know.
Speaker 2: Other people sort of like enter their workplaces with a
Speaker 2: sense of their own competence that allows them to, like,
Speaker 2: you know, go through the work day without multiple emotional crises.
Speaker 2: But writers, I think good ones at least are crippled
Speaker 2: by self doubt to the point that you know, it's
Speaker 2: a miracle they're able to clock out at the end
Speaker 2: of the day.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to be crippled by self doubt.
Speaker 1: I think that's an important part of it to be good.
Speaker 1: That's why I found my way into writing rather than
Speaker 1: professional football, because there, if you're crippled by self doubt,
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: That was the main thing standing between me and a
Speaker 1: life a life in football. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you were like, I'm going to embrace this crippling
Speaker 2: self doubt and make a career out of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to turn it into a job.
Speaker 1: And it's worked out well for me. I've I've managed
Speaker 1: to be able to hold onto that crippling self doubt
Speaker 1: well into my forties. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's good.
Speaker 2: You can put that at the top of your resume
Speaker 2: and sort of the skills crippling self doubt monetizable crippling
Speaker 2: self doubt.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great thing. Yeah, go for YouTubers too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, as usual, we veered away from football in this episode. Uh,
Speaker 2: I just want to say how funny it was to
Speaker 2: speak with Simon. We're down, we're getting close to the
Speaker 2: World Cup now very close, like it's it's happening. And
Speaker 2: I just want to briefly tell you one thing that
Speaker 2: it's not a story. This is we're outside of the regular.
Speaker 2: But yesterday we went to a family friend's house to
Speaker 2: trade paninie stickers. And it was remarkable because his family friend,
Speaker 2: he's a little bit older. He walked with a cane
Speaker 2: and it was me and my wife and my mother
Speaker 2: in law and another uncle of Carolina's and and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we're all there drinking coffee and we sit
Speaker 2: around the table and to watch this man sort of
Speaker 2: become a kid, like speaking the same language as a
Speaker 2: e sale, the same words, the same the same sort
Speaker 2: of like, oh I got an imbappe, I got this,
Speaker 2: you know, like I'll trade you this for that, you know,
Speaker 2: and then you know, kind of going through the book
Speaker 2: and it was exactly what Simon was talking about. It
Speaker 2: was this this kind of child childish wonder and for
Speaker 2: this entirely and absurdly pointless exercise of collecting stickers of players.
Speaker 2: In fact, there's many stickers of players who are definitely
Speaker 2: not going to be at the World Cup, either because
Speaker 2: they won't be selected or because they're injured and won't
Speaker 2: even be there, you know, right. But you know, I
Speaker 2: got a Rodrigo sticker and I was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: he's good, you know, or he.
Speaker 1: Was yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool because he's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was a beautiful It was really.
Speaker 1: Beautiful, and you feel like a kid collecting baseball cards again.
Speaker 1: And it goes across all the divides, right, all the
Speaker 1: divides of age and gender and any other divide that
Speaker 1: you can imagine, and you're all just collecting stickers. It's
Speaker 1: magic that this, this, this wonderful thing about the World Cup,
Speaker 1: these Panini stickers that have been around for decades. That
Speaker 1: Panini has lost the battle to hold on to this
Speaker 1: and FIFA has given the sticker license to another company
Speaker 1: starting in twenty thirty. So, you know, thanks FIFA. That's
Speaker 1: awful news. John.
Speaker 2: You could have just held that until the end of
Speaker 2: the tournament.
Speaker 1: That's brutal.
Speaker 2: Let me say this, you know, here in Colombia, in
Speaker 2: Boda like Eliso school has a club just for like
Speaker 2: after school club meetup for stickiers for trades. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: goes to a chess club on Saturday mornings and after
Speaker 2: chess club there's a pennini meetup to trade. There are
Speaker 2: plazas all over town where people gather just to trade panninis.
Speaker 2: It's a it's it's it's It's one of those rituals
Speaker 2: that I think it might be my favorite, almost my
Speaker 2: favorite part of the tournament because it's really sort of
Speaker 2: making that you said that, I talk a lot about
Speaker 2: the tournament, get excited about it, and and it reminds
Speaker 2: me one thing that Simon said that I think is
Speaker 2: worth ending on, which is FIFA is a terrible organization,
Speaker 2: but even they can't ruin the sport. Even FIFA can't
Speaker 2: ruin the World Cup, although they seem to be trying
Speaker 2: really hard, they can't.
Speaker 1: Nobody can. Nobody can because ultimately it's ours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don fun to talk to you as always.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next week, and of course, if you
Speaker 2: have any emails, we're planning another mailbag episode, so please
Speaker 2: drop us a line at away nPOD at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: See next week. I see you next week,