The Real History of Football - Jonathan Wilson

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Real History of Football – Jonathan Wilson

TRIGGERnometry with Konstantin Kisin & Francis Foster
Date: December 28, 2025
Guest: Jonathan Wilson, football historian and author

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster delve into the origins, growth, and global impact of football (soccer) with renowned football historian Jonathan Wilson. Their rich discussion spans the sport’s emergence in 19th-century England, its global proliferation via British imperialism, the social forces shaping its culture and violence, the evolution toward the modern, money-driven game, and football’s enduring role as a mirror and amplifier of political and cultural identity worldwide.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Did Football Become the World's Game?

• Simplicity and Accessibility ([02:37]):
  • Football’s minimal requirements—“you can use a stone or some rags you tie together”—make it universally playable.
  • Unlike cricket or rugby, “you don’t really need any kind of pitch.”
  • The game's simplicity “made it so popular as to why it’s spread in the way it did.”
• British Empire’s Role ([03:28], [05:44]):
  • Spread primarily through British public school alumni, missionaries, railway workers, engineers, and businesspeople abroad.
  • Football was promoted as a means of instilling “manliness,” making it socially and politically useful for the British elite.
  • Early football clubs across the world often began in British communities, subsequently adopted by locals.

2. Football vs. Other Former Colonies’ Sports

• Why Not the US or Canada? ([07:33]-[13:30]):
  • Geographic size hindered creation of a national league; the sport remained regionally isolated.
  • US universities prioritized rugby (which later evolved into American football).
  • Cultural resistance: Football perceived as “alien”; ethnic associations limited its mainstream penetration.
  • “It’s seen as, oh, that’s an Irish game, it's not an American game,” impacting its assimilation.
  • Other cases: Harsh winters, established dominance of baseball, and absence of consistent investment further limited football’s spread.

3. Working-Class Adoption and the Game's 'Explosion'

• Transition to Mass Popularity ([13:56]):
  • The FA Cup (est. 1872) drove mass engagement.
  • Working-class adoption in the 1880s and onward: Factory workers, miners, and shipyard laborers filled the stands.
  • Saturday afternoons off (thanks to the Factories Act): “You finish work at the shipyard or in the mine… let’s go and watch the football.”
  • Business owners swiftly recognized football’s commercial potential—early powerhouse clubs like Sunderland and Everton were “working class clubs” heavily supported by local industries.

4. The Culture of Violence and Fandom

• Early Violence Was Always Part of Football ([19:16]):
  • “Anywhere where you get a big mass of people who are all emotionally invested… there is the potential for violence.”
  • Notable example: Newcastle–Sunderland, 1905, where “a police horse got stabbed amidst rioting.”
• Modern Hooliganism—A New Development ([21:03]):
  • Organized, often youth-driven hooliganism took root in the 1960s, peaking in the 1980s.
  • Recent decline attributed more to “older crowds” and rising ticket prices than policing or CCTV.
• Football as Identity ([24:55]):
  • Clubs provide powerful identities, especially in “post-industrial northern British cities.”
    • Quote: “The football club provides an identity for people who otherwise lack one. And I would include myself in that.” (Jonathan Wilson, [24:55])
  • Clubs became flags for both destructive and constructive group actions: “How many people doing the rioting wore football shirts? How many doing the cleanup wore football shirts?”
• Political and Criminal Co-opting of Fan Groups ([27:02]):
  • In South America and the Balkans, football ‘ultras’ became tools for organized crime and political movements.
  • E.g., Yugoslav fan groups became actual militias during the civil war.

5. Race, Politics, and Fan Behavior

• Racism on the Terraces ([29:13]):
  • The 1980s saw organized racist groups—the National Front at clubs like Millwall, West Ham, and Chelsea.
  • Modern incidents tend to be “more ad hoc”—spontaneous abuse rather than orchestrated political campaigns.
• Ultras' Influence in Italy and Argentina ([31:24], [32:34]):
  • Italian clubs’ ultras openly express far-right (Lazio) or far-left (Livorno) politics.
  • Ultras wield direct influence over clubs, sometimes demanding meetings with players/captains.
  • Example: Marcelo Bielsa threatened visiting ultras with a hand grenade to keep them away from his house! ([33:21])

6. Money, Inequality, and Modernity

• From Working-Class Wage to Millionaire Players ([35:00]):
  • The maximum player wage ended in 1963 (£20/week).
  • TV deals, especially since the 1990s, multiplied the money in the game.
  • Big-money club owners (e.g., oligarchs, state investment) have revolutionized and distorted club economics.
• American Sports’ Model vs. European Football ([41:04]):
  • American sports (drafts, salary caps) promote parity: “You do not get these decade long periods of domination by one or two teams.”
  • Football’s open pyramid system creates unique stories and “explosions of emotion”—where underdogs can beat giants.
  • Quote: “The explosion of emotion when you score is way greater then if it’s finishing 110–108. …If it finishes 1-0, that’s an incredibly exciting moment.” (Jonathan Wilson, [41:04])
• The ‘Soap Opera’ of the Premier League ([49:10], [52:01]):
  • Footballers (Messi, Ronaldo) are among the world’s most recognizable figures.
  • The Premier League is “the world’s soap opera,” especially in Africa and Asia where it dominates TV screens and social life.

7. National Styles and Stereotypes—Why Are Argentinians “Dirty”?

• Culture of the Street Footballer (El Pibe, [55:55]):
  • Argentinian football identity is shaped by romanticized figures like the pibe (street urchin) and the gaucho—virtuoso but fiercely self-reliant.
  • Physicality and “cynicism” arise in response to defeats and national crises, producing extremes of beauty (“Menottismo”) and ruthlessness (“Bilardismo”).
  • Maradona’s goals against England in 1986 symbolized “the gaucho’s revenge” for the loss of traditional Argentine identity to British modernity.

8. Football and Politics—World Cup as Soft/Hard Power

• World Cup as Geopolitics ([67:18] onward):
  • From Uruguay (1930) to Mussolini (Italy 1934) to Qatar and Russia, football is leveraged for national prestige and propaganda.
  • Mussolini’s Coppa del Duce and staging/merchandise strategies are early templates for sportswashing.
  • The true benefit for Qatar and Russia was “hosting the tournament, putting on a good show, showing they're part of this sort of international community.”
  • FIFA leaders wield global influence, “always there” in proximity to the world’s most powerful politicians.

9. Corruption—On and Off the Field

• On-Field Integrity ([74:25]):
  • High-level match-fixing is rare: “Players are paid so much… It’s in nobody’s interests for it to be fixed at the top level because the betting companies make huge amounts of money...”
  • Lower-league and obscure international fixtures are more vulnerable, due to smaller payouts and lower scrutiny.
  • There have been recent suspicions around some international fixtures, e.g., a “last 16 game in 2006…” (Jonathan refuses to specify.)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Jonathan Wilson (on Identity):
  “The football club provides an identity for people who otherwise lack one. And I would include myself in that.” ([24:55])

• On Premier League as cultural glue:
  “The Premier League is now the world soap opera.” ([52:01])

• On why football is more emotional than other sports:
  “The explosion of emotion when you score is way greater then if it's finishing 110–108… If it finishes 1-0, that's an incredibly exciting moment.” ([41:04])

• On Argentinian football:
  “Argentinian football identity is shaped by romanticized figures like the pibe (street urchin) and the gaucho—virtuoso but fiercely self-reliant.” ([55:55])

• On corruption and betting:
  “If they get the slightest hint of unusual betting patterns, they raise a red flag… four bets worth a total of £1,200 was enough to trigger an investigation.” ([74:25])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:37] – Why football is so accessible
• [05:44] – The British Empire spreads football
• [07:33] – Why football didn’t take in USA/Canada
• [13:56] – The working-class football boom & FA Cup
• [19:16] – Early football violence & hooliganism
• [21:03] – Rise and fall of organized hooliganism
• [24:55] – Football as identity for cities
• [29:13] – Discussion of racism, politicization of fan groups
• [31:24] – Ultras and politics in Italy and Argentina
• [35:00] – The money revolution: maximum wage to today
• [41:04] – Football vs. American sports, meaning of fewer goals
• [46:27] – English fan culture vs. American fan culture
• [49:10] – Global celebrity: footballers surpass rock stars & actors
• [52:01] – Premier League as “the world’s soap opera”
• [53:51] – The World Cup as ritualized international combat
• [55:55] – Argentinian football culture and Maradona
• [61:55] – Why top players are South American
• [67:18] – Sportswashing, FIFA, and the World Cup
• [74:25] – Can top-level football matches be fixed?
• [79:14] – Jonathan’s unexpected topic: British detective dramas!

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Noteworthy Anecdotes

• The Hand Grenade Coach:

  • Marcelo Bielsa, threatened by angry ultras, “picked up a hand grenade, put his teeth around the pins and sort of said, go away or else I'm pulling this out and we'll all die.” ([33:21])

• The Premier League in Ethiopia:

  • In a rural village, “something like 40% of the adult male population… are watching the Premier League on any given Saturday.” ([51:46])

• Argentinian Football and the Gaucho:

  • The heroism of Maradona was foretold decades before his rise: “49 years before Maradona makes his international debut, his coming is foretold.” ([55:55])

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Final Thoughts

Jonathan Wilson’s breadth and depth as a football historian shine throughout the episode. The discussion elevates football from a mere pastime to a cultural, political, and economic phenomenon reflective of the societies that nurture and play it.
Whether analyzing the spread from empire, the nuances of fan violence, the roots of footballing identity in Argentina, or the power of the modern game as politics and soft power, Wilson demonstrates football is always more than 22 men kicking a ball—it’s the story of the world itself.

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Further Resources

• Jonathan Wilson’s latest book: The Power and the Glory
• For more exclusive content: triggerpod.co.uk

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This summary covers the full content of the episode, skipping ads and focusing on the detailed, lively, and informative conversation between the hosts and their guest.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I think it's the simplicity that has made it so popular as to why it's spread in the way it did that is probably a story of Empire. Football gets taken around the world by British teachers, by the church, by businessmen, pretty much everywhere where you have a British community, the big early clubs, successful early clubs, they are working class clubs and so people start to pay to watch the football and suddenly you get people thinking, hang on, we can make money here.

[A]

I go to American football games in America. I go to NBA games, I've been to cricket, rugby. You never see anything like it. Is there something particular about football that attracts this?

[B]

Yes, and the answer is complicated.

[A]

Today's episode is supported by Hillsdale College. Explore history, politics, literature and more, all for free at at Hillsdale. Edu Trigger. Jonathan Wilson. Welcome to Trigonometry.

[B]

Oh, thank you very much. Good to be here.

[A]

It's great to have you on. You are one of the world's leading experts on football. I don't know if you're formally a football historian, but you know your history of football extremely well. In addition to the contemporary side of the game. You look like you're about to interrupt. So you've got something to say against that?

[B]

I'm just intrigued by the notion of being a formal football historian. I mean, I don't know, is it certificated? I've written books of football history. If that makes me a football historian. I am a football historian.

[A]

I would think so. I would think so. So. But you genuinely are someone who's incredibly, incredibly knowledgeable and fascinating in the way you talk about it. So it's great to have you on the question, actually, to start with, by the way, football for American fans, soccer is what we're talking about. How did it get as big as it's got? Because it is the world's number one sport by far and away, right?

[B]

Oh, yeah, by a huge margin. I think it's a number of things. I think it's very simple that you basically can play it with. Didn't even need a ball, really. You can use a stone or some rags you tie together. You don't really need any kind of pitch cricket, you have to prepare the pitch. Football, you can play it anywhere. So it's a very easy game to pick up and play. I think it's a very easy game for people to watch. It doesn't. Personally, I find the tactics incredibly interesting. And you can go down huge rabbit holes with that. But fundamentally you can watch it in. If they kick the ball from there into there, that's one point to them. Okay, we know what's going on. So I think it's a simplicity that has made it so popular as to why it's spread in the way it did. That is probably a story of empire.

[A]

Oh, story of empire. So when does football start?

[B]

So it depends what you mean by football. So there have been ball games where people kick it about played for thousands of years. There's evidence of it being played in China, Japan, 5,000 years ago. There's evidence. When Columbus goes to the Caribbean, he finds people kicking around a rubber ball. But in terms of what we call football, it starts in 1863, in December. And what has happened is all the public schools in England, they play their variant of a game and it will be different according to which school you go to and according to the conditions in which you play that will condition what sort of game it is. So if you have a big grassy pitch, it'll be about running and about chasing and about sort of great bond laws and everybody sort of falling on top of each other. If you play on cloisters, if you play like that, you're going to break limbs. Nobody wants that. So it becomes much more about passing the ball to each other. Much more technical, much less physical. So you have all these people from different schools get to university. Right, let's play football. Oh, we all love football. That's a great idea. Oh, hang on, that isn't fun.

[A]

Then someone rudely tackles someone to the.

[B]

Floor and then you have to come up with unified laws. There's various attempts to do that. The first sort of Serious attempt happens at Cambridge, 1841. So we just post some laws on Parker's Peace, the grassy area centre of Cambridge. But what we call football starts December 1863. There's a meeting at the Freemasons Tavern near Covent Garden and it's representatives of some people from schools, some are from sort of trades or companies set up by people who've been in public schools. And that is the formation of Football association, which still exists today. And they draw up the first 12 laws of a game, which form a basis of what we understand in football today. That is the accepted and official history. However, there is also the working class history of it, about which we know far less. You see clubs being set up in the 1850s in Yorkshire, particularly around Sheffield. The Sheffield rules are quite significant. We can go into huge amounts of detail as to how the Sheffield rules and the FA rules sort of interact, but by the 1870s you have a unified set of laws. The FA cup, the oldest tournament in the world, begins 1872.

[A]

And talk to him about the empire and how that kind of spreads around the world.

[B]

So very early people who've come through the public schools started, just to interrupt.

[A]

You very briefly, sorry. Public schools, again, for our foreign viewers, are the elite schools in Britain. Fee paying schools that the elite of the country send their kids to.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Carry on.

[B]

And this is a time where muscular Christianity is the presiding doctrine. So there is a belief in the schools that playing sport is good because it imbues kids with manliness, which will make them equipped to run the empire to fight in wars. And you see an equivalent thing happening in Germany with what they call Tronen, which is a sort of militarized gymnastics. I don't know if you come across.

[A]

That sounds very German.

[B]

Yeah. And I think people accept that kicking the ball about is more fun than doing aerobics while a sergeant major shouts at you. So, yeah, football gets taken around the world by British teachers, by the church, by railway workers, by engineers, by businessmen, that pretty much everywhere where you have a British community, they will set up sports clubs. Those sports clubs will play cricket and they will play football. But it's much easier to play football because you don't need intricate pitch preparation. And in terms of the local populations, they watch cricket and stuff. This is complicated to understand. This footballer. Oh, yeah, we could do that. That looks like something that we can. We can find something. Looks like a ball and we could do that in our space. And so you see in Argentina, the first game is played in 1867. The using is 1869. It spreads incredibly quickly and is adopted by local populations. And then sort of the first decade or two of the 20th century, you start to see in Argentina, for instance, you have Argentinian champions of an Argentinian league that was founded by the British in the 1890s.

[C]

And Jonathan, you say it was spread by the empire, then what? But then why was it that the United States and Canada took former colonies of ours didn't take it. And yet you look at South America, with the exceptions of a couple of countries and which are Portuguese and Spanish empires, and yet they all love football.

[A]

That's a good question. I actually also think about South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, also compared to how good they are other sports in football. Massive underperformers. Right.

[B]

And India would say as well.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So, I mean, there are exceptions. I think there's different reasons for each of those. North America, I think, is a really interesting example, because they actually do set up, tried to set up a professional league in the 1880s, and it just doesn't work. And I think there's a couple of reasons for that. One is, if you look at England, why does England get the league? It gets. I mean, the league is set up in 1888, and that has remained the league through to today with minor sort of little tweaks. And actually Britain or England is the right size. And so it's exactly the same as our newspaper industry. Why do we have 13 competing national newspapers? It's because to get from London to Glasgow or to the Highlands or to Cornwall, you can put newspapers on the train. They'll be there in six hours. So you can print them at 10pm on a Saturday night, they'll be there on a Sunday morning. It's fairly simple. And that leads to competition, which leads to sensationalism. It raises the level in football. You can have a national league and you can have a team from the far north playing a team from the far south. They take a train, maybe take six hours, seven hours, they can play the game, they can't be tired when they get there. You look at results in the 1890s, away teams tend to do quite badly because they're knackered. But you can have a league. Whereas you try and do that in the US and it's just too big. So what happens is you get games in the Northeast and New York State, Philadelphia, New Jersey, football's quite big there, but they can't really spread it to the rest of the country and you get little pockets swinging up. But they're never integrated. And that Means you can never get the sort of crowds you get in England and therefore you never make money. And so you never get that it's much harder to develop that professional game. Also you have an issue with the US Universities that Harvard and Yale sort of lead the way. They very much prefer rugby, which actually is not untrue in the UK in the 1870s. So you look at when the FA cup begins in 1872. One of the reasons for that is for football to try and strike back against rugby, which the Rugby Football Union just found in 1871, which is an offshoot from football, it has more clubs affiliated to it in the 1870s than football does. The FA cup helps to spread the game in the US. Harvard, Yale very much prefer rugby. It seems to be that they see it as being more manly, more masculine, more sort of fitting to their ideal of what an athlete should be. And then what they do. And this is something that just happens in American sport throughout time. They start to change it. And so they take the laws of rugby and they turn them into American football. And you see that when the various tend to set up a soccer league, there's another attempt to set up a professional league in the 1920s. And then you get the NASL from 1966 onwards. And they can't help themselves, they just tinker with it. Oh, we don't like draws. We'll have penalty shootouts or we'll have sudden death overtime or offside. Seems a bit complicated. So we'll change that or you can't be offside from a free kick. And FIFA, the governing body of football, says you can't do that. The Americans do do that. FIFA take action against them. They go off and off. And I don't know why Americans do that. And Canada is obviously, it's always North American sport rather than just US sport. So I think they're sort of two of the reasons. I think there was a problem trying to start professional league there because baseball already had sort of colonized the summer. And the winter in Northeast. The northeast of the US is much harsher than the winter in Britain. So you can't really play games when you've got six feet of snow. A hostility to what's perceived as being an alien game. That American football, I think even if it has American entitled people trying to prove their Americanness, will play that rather than a game. For instance, there's a lot of Scottish immigrants. Kearney in New Jersey is sort of the real early hotbed because two Scottish textile companies set up factories there and The Scottish workers, they bring in playing football in St. Louis, you get the Irish church, which is bizarre because in Ireland they weren't playing football, they're playing Gaelic games. But the Irish church, Catholic church, introduces football to try and raise the. I mean, the poplar of the 13th, 1890s encyclical, De Vel Noarum, which tries to raise the level of the working classes. One of the things it says is we should get them playing sport so in a physically better condition. Which is a huge inspiration to Giul Remay, probably the best president FIFA ever had, the man who sets up the World cup in 1930. I think it's a similar motivation to introduce sport, introduce football in St. Louis from the church. But it's seen as, oh, that's an Irish game, it's not an American game. And this is a problem in America all the way through. So the first professional league, well, the first professional how to get scoring. The second one in the 1920s collapses post Wall Street Crash, 1933. And when it starts up again, what you notice is all the teams are ethnic teams. It's Philadelphia Ukrainians, it's German Americans, it's Irish Americans. So they're sort of circumscribed to small immigrant groups. This is something the nasl, which is the attempt to serve a national league in the late 60s and 70s, they actually outlaw ethnic names for teens until the moment which the team from Toronto goes bankrupt and Toronto Croatia go, well, we'll buy them, but we're calling them Toronto Croatia and they end up winning NASLE in, I think, 1976.

[C]

Wow. I mean, that's so interesting because when you look at the global game, I think one of the things that we kind of forget as football fans is we look at football and we don't realize how it must have started as a very small game. So when did it explode in popularity? When did it go from just being a pastime or a game that people played with their mates to actually becoming a national obsession in the UK?

[B]

So in the UK, I think you can say the FA Cup 872, which is the first knockout tournament that there is, that is a massive driver. And then over the two decades that follow, it really takes off. And it takes off because of working class adoption of it. So there were working class clubs, they just weren't particularly organised on a national level. You'd have local tournaments and to be honest, they're not very well documented. It's very quite hard to find out what happened in those games. But you get from the 1880s, working class clubs from the north starting to enter the FA cup and starting to win the FA cup, playing in quite a different way. They're much more direct, they're much more aggressive, they're much more physical, they're much more focused on winning rather than playing the right way, which is still part of that sort of university public school ideal. And then because of the Factories act, because from 1850 onwards in England or in the UK, you have Saturday afternoon as well as Sunday off. What do you do on the Saturday afternoon? You finish work at the shipyard or in the mine or in the factory, pick up your pay packet. Well, let's go and have a couple of pints. Oh, let's go and watch the football. And so people start to pay to watch the football. And suddenly you get people thinking, hang on, we can make money here. And then you get local business owners, particularly in the north, well, almost exclusively in the north, to an extent in the Midlands, saying, well, A, I can make money from this, but B, this is a great way to make my workers happy. If they go to the club that I own, that I'm funding and that club is winning things, that enhances my status. And that's why you see the big early clubs, successful early clubs are Sunderland, Aston Villa, Everton, Newcastle, Liverpool, the Sheffield clubs. They are working class clubs. And, you know, Sunderland's a great example. It's owned by a mine owner and a shipyard owner and they are going scouting in Scotland. They're using someone's geographical proximity to Scotland to go and basically steal players from Scottish teams where the professional game is not as established, and then go offer them more money, bring them down to Sunderland. And so Sunderland win the league in 1894. Five, they go and play Hearts, who are the Scottish champions, in the first sort of championship of the world. And all 22 players on the pitch in that game are Scottish, really. And Sondland also had two players injured who would have played who were also Scottish. The Sunland team is entirely Scottish imports. So this idea of sort of importing players is there right from the start. The league starts 1888 and the league really starts because it's a way of getting guaranteed fixtures, and guaranteed fixtures guarantee you the money from the crowds. So by the 1890s, you're getting regular crowds of 15, 20,000 for games. And then it spreads pretty quickly, especially in Denmark. Denmark is sort of the first foreign adopters. Austria, Hungary, again, it's spread by. The oldest team in Vienna is called First Vienna, and it was founded by Scottish gardeners on the Rothschild estate. There's a guy called Edward Shires, who was a clerk at a typewriter factory in Manchester, who, aged 17, this is in the 1890s. He thinks, I'm going to go and seek my fortune in Europe. He goes to Paris, ends up, he becomes a rep selling. He's in tennis equipment in Vienna, and he sort of becomes the bloke who really introduces football on a big scale to Vienna, then moves to Budapest, and it takes it with him there. What you see after the First World War, there's four countries where it really takes off, which are Austria, Hungary, Uruguay, Argentina. And what's interesting is all four are urbanizing rapidly. They're all, well, industrializing rapidly, but they're all urbanizing around one center. Essentially, it's Budapest, Vienna, Montevideo, Buenos Aires. And it turns out that provides the perfect conditions for the development of players, that the vacant lots of a growing city is, if you want to give kids the best in those days, before you have proper coaching, the best chance of becoming good footballers. That's where you put them. And in central Europe, these spaces become. Well, in both, they become very romanticized. In central Europe, they're called grunts. In South America, they're called Potreros. And players from a grunt player from the Potrero are the sort of celebrated players of both those cultures.

[A]

And what was the culture around football like in the early days? Because it was interesting for me that my first encounter with football in this country, coming from a kind of Soviet Union background, where football was kind of almost as much of a religion as I think it is here, in a way. But there was a very different culture as I experienced, because I think my first memory was England getting knocked out in the semi final of the 1996 Euros, which, you know, sad. Your country gets knocked out. But. But then they were like people smashing German cars up in the streets of London, which to me, I was just like, I don't understand why they would do that. But then as I learned more about the culture of football in this country, was actually kind of on brand, right?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

In fact, there was a Russian student was stabbed somewhere, somewhere on the south coast because they thought he was German.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Why? Why did that happen? Is that a question?

[A]

Well, no, what I'm asking is the. The fact that by the 90s, the England Football scene in particular has a reputation for ligonism. Etc. Was that the case from the beginning or was that a more modern development?

[B]

I mean, football violence was definitely there from the start. I think anywhere where you get a big mass of people who are all emotionally invested in, in something there is the potential for violence.

[C]

Men, especially with large groups.

[B]

Yeah, men.

[C]

So.

[B]

Yeah, it's true. Yeah. So 1905 son of Newcastle Derby, for instance, is a police horse. Got stabbed amidst rioting.

[A]

Police horse?

[B]

Yeah, was a police horse. Got punched by a Newcastle fan.

[A]

Why would you punch a horse?

[B]

Well, he's, he's disappointed.

[C]

Yeah, he's a Sunderland fan.

[B]

The horse one.

[C]

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[B]

But in terms of the more organized sort of what we call hooliganism now, that's sort of a phenomenon of the 60s. I mean, it's the sort of real moral panic around that begins. You can actually date very precisely. It happens in November 1964. There's a game between Evan and Leeds. Sandy Brown, an Evan defender, is sent off in the fourth minute of a game. By the 10th minute, the referees had to take both teams off to kind of to cool everybody down. But the real trigger for the sort of postponement of the game for they take him off like 20 minutes or something. There's an Everton player goes down, concussed, the Leeds physio is helping him out and the Leeds physio is getting pelted with coins and missiles by Everton fans. And so that's when the referees are like, come on, let's go off, let's calm this down. And you see the, the papers over that weekend and following week in this huge mobile panic about both on field and off Field behavior. I think it's partly related to the youth culture of the 60s. Partly related to people kicking against the establishment, partly related to youth culture. I mean, you talk about 96. 96 is really the tail end of the worst of English violence. I mean there's some flare ups in the World cup in 98. There's been isolated things since, but really it's the 80s. The 85 is when it reaches its head. And I think partly it's just to do with the. The reason it's slowed down is people going to games are much older and you know all this sort of talk about, oh, it's cctv, it's better policing. Yeah, I'm sure they play their part, but actually it's just the tickets are really expensive. So the people who go are old and they don't have. That's the wildness that teenagers have.

[A]

Is it really fair to say? I mean, you said the violence comes with large groups of people who really care about something. I was going to rugby Games in the 1990s and it was a totally different atmosphere. What's interesting to me as well is you look at Russia today and other countries today actually that football violence and who has become extremely common like the Russian ultras and the Italian ultras and all the others are pretty hardcore. It's almost like they've outdone the master.

[B]

Oh, they have, absolutely. And there's a self conscious aping of. I know some of the clashes in year 2016 between Russian fans and England fans. Some of it I think probably was to an extent state sponsored. I mean, there's no proof of that. But the indication is that the Russian fan groups were incredibly well organized. And the fact they were taking videos of everything and posting them delightedly. I think there's a real suggestion of this is very organized in a way that to be honest, signature was never that organized. It was always quite organic. But. But there was also some just sort of complete sort of category errors. Russian fans beating up England fans to steal their flag. Well, that's what he did in the 70s. Stealing the flag was in the same way that a Roman legion would try and steal the banner of another legion. When the people you're stealing the flag from are just sort of 245 odd accountants of Norwich. It seems a bit. They'd probably given it to you if you'd asked.

[A]

I guess what I'm getting at is is there something particular about football? Because I'll be honest with you, I remember Even in the 2000s going to Chelsea Games. I lived in London at the time and there were times when I felt like I was not. Sounds like a really kind of Gen Z, A millennial thing to say. But I was genuinely uncomfortable being there. The level of vitriol, particularly if the team was losing or. You know, I remember one game against Everton. I was an Everton supporter in the Chelsea stands. And I was not going to let anybody know that I was happy about what was happening on the pitch remotely because it felt like that. I go to American football games in America. I go to NBA games. I've been to cricket, rugby, all sorts of. You never see anything like it. So I guess what I'm getting at. Is there something particular about football that attracts this?

[B]

Yes. And the answer is complicated. So I think, and this is almost a slightly romanticized answer, I'm slightly cautious about saying this, but there is an extent to which, well, in fact, no, this isn't over. This is actually what I think. It's where it's the link to violence that I think is over romanticized. So I think the football club provides an identity for people who otherwise lack one. And I would include myself in that. I'm from Sunderland. When do we see Sunderland on the national news? When do we see when there's a riot? When there's a riot. And the fascinating thing there, I mean, this is another stage of mood. How many people doing the rioting wore football shirts? How many people doing the cleanup wore football shirts? And both trying to say no, this is actually the real sort of we are expressing our Sunderland ness and we're consciously adopting the uniform of Sunderland to say that I am somehow representative of Sunderland, whether I'm rioting or whether I'm cleaning up. Either way, you come to the same conclusion that the football club is the way that the city projects itself. And I think actually Sunderland Football Club is pretty conscious of that and pretty good at it. I think some clubs find it very awkward. I guess it kind of depends what the people who are projecting the club as the identity, what they believe in, as to whether the club can sort of go along with that or not. But I think particularly, I mean, this is very much a British answer, but from post industrial northern British cities, particularly the one club cities, the football club is the most representative element of that city. So you see, when Sunderland, Newcastle, Leeds play at Wembley, their fans will take over Trafalgar Square or Covent Garden. And that's a gesture of we are still here, don't forget us. And so I think that sense of fighting for an identity however misguided the violent aspect may be, I think that is very real and very true. There's also. I think this is particularly true in South America. I think it's true in Italy. I honestly don't know the case in Russia. It's often co opted by organized crime.

[A]

So it does big in Russia.

[B]

Right. So in South America particularly, certainly in Argentina, the various barras, as they call the ultra groups, the hooligan groups, they will be organized crime and they will can be as simple as sort of charging the parking around the stadium. It could be gambling on the game, it could be merchandise or it can be much more sinister stuff. Yeah. To do with running drugs. And you saw it in Yugoslavia and again this is slightly over romanticized. But equally, if you want muscle on the street, who are the people who are used to taking over the street, used to fighting with police who are disciplined? It's the ultra groups. And so Arcan, the warlord Zobodan Lossevic puts him in charge of the Zena Zvezda ultras, the Red Star Ultras, the Deliya. I mean essentially to kind of calm them down and discipline them. But then they become a fighting force and they are at least complicit and probably guilty of many of the atrocities during the civil war. Equally, the Bad Blue boys, they use the English name, the Dinama Zagreb fans were a very organized force. If you go to the Maksimir stadium in Zagreb, there's a statue of them and what do you call it? The inscription underneath says something about our fans marching off to wall. And there are people from both the Dallier and the Baddelu boys who would see a riot at the Maximir at a Dharma Zagreb svezda game in 1990 as the first battle of the war. I think they're massively over romanticizing that. But equally it is true that those two sides did go off and they did fight.

[C]

And Jonathan, I want to explore a little bit the relationship between hooliganism politics, but also racism because. So I'm from South London and I grew up, I was born in 82 and when I was a little boy, you know, if you there were. There were certain fans who had a notorious reputation, Millwall was one and particularly at Millwall and West Ham and Chelsea to a certain extent you would get people handing out NF leaflets and that's the National Front, that's a far right organization in the UK at the time, which no longer exists. But that was open, wasn't it? And then they were associated with hooligans as well.

[B]

Yeah, I mean that was very much, I think an 80s thing. I think it's actually. There have been odd elements of it, but it's actually, I think it's striking how little traction the racist far right has made in football. So the Football Lads alliance was a thing four or five years ago, disappeared. I don't know what's going on with it now. So I think there were attempts to harness that. You absolutely see racist, abusive players after games. But I think that's, I mean it's not to downplay its significance, but I think it's a more ad hoc thing. I don't think it's like the National Front. So. Yeah, I mean this I guess is another one. What you're asking about the violence. Certain clubs and certain fan groups at certain clubs attract a reputation for violence or for racist beliefs. And so people rally to them who have no connection with the club. But they think actually I quite enjoy fighting. I mean that's the thing that a lot of people don't get about hooliganism. A lot of people just enjoy it. Why do they do it? Because for them that's fun. They enjoy the rush of it. Or if you feel a particular affinity to a far right politics and you think, yeah, actually I want to join this group that's going to take a more sort of direct action, as it were. But that would draw you to particular clubs and particular fan groups. I mean the Northeast is the area I know much better. And you had a very bizarre situation that on New Year's Day 1985, Sondland played Newcastle in a derby madness about New Year's Day. Don't know why they thought that was a good idea. Newcastle win 31 and Sunderland's two black players are both sent off having been horrifically racially abused through the game. And overnight Sunderland became an anti racist club. And that wasn't to do with people suddenly kind of thinking, oh you know what, we should be more tolerant. Oh yeah. Actually I was wrong. What I thought yesterday it was, hang on, Newcastle are racist, therefore we're anti racist. And Sutherland then had Gary Bennett, who was a black captain, who remains one of the club's most popular players. And I'm sure it was because they'd seen two of their black players sent off and it was an Anthony Newcastle gesture rather than a pro sort of tolerance, all races together gesture.

[C]

Yeah, because you see within the Italian ultras, which I find fascinating, number one, the fact that a lot of footballers talk about this, if the team is going through A particularly rough patch. The head ultra then demands a meeting with the captain and that's just seen as acceptable. So that, number one is mind boggling. And number two, particularly in Italy, you see the links between certain fascist groups and ultras and they have a. They're kind of open about their fascism, really.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And it depends club by club. So I mean Lazio have a reputation of being very far right. Livorno have a reputation of being very far left. I'm not saying all Lazio fans are massively far right or all Livorno fans are massively far left, but their ultra groups identify in that way. And that's absolutely true. And I guess that has its roots probably in Mussolini and street violence and street gangs. That that sort of culture permeates through and football is now where it finds.

[A]

Its expression and they are very powerful in Italy. I remember going to see Palermo play with Dinese in Palermo and the moment the game was over you could see the captain of Palermo immediately ran over to the ultra, specifically clapped along almost like he kind of had to and probably did.

[B]

Yeah. And it's a, I think from, from the outside it's a very odd phenomenon. And you have it in Argentina as well. I think Argentina has changed. In the 80s it was very much about we want our team to win football matches. And now it's about making money from the drug sideline. But you have instances of when Maradona went back to boca in the 90s and the Ultras invaded Boca's training base after a series of bad results to sort of, I guess logic is, will intimidate the players into playing better, which I'm not sure sports psychology would suggest it's the best way of doing it. But you have like Maradona Liffey having to talk down the Ultra's going, yeah, no, hang on, this is not helping. Kind of our 17 year old left back who's terrified just to play a match in front of fans is not going to play better because you've threatened to cut his throat. We don't win next, next Wednesday, you know, it's.

[C]

Yeah, because there's that very famous clip of Gascoigne scoring. I think it may have been his. Paul Gascoigne. He was a legendary England footballer, hero of mine, scoring in the Rome derby for Lazio. It was one nil to Roma. He scored and then he went absolutely mental when he scored and so did the players and they went, that must have been joy, Paul. And he said something along his own. No, that was relief because he was him and the rest of the players were genuinely worried that if they lost in the Rome derby at home that they were going to get lynched before they left the stadium.

[B]

Yeah, I know it's. It's a very, very strange thing. I mean, and also, you know, it's. Especially in South America, the fan groups get involved in transfers. So there's a story of Marcelo Bielsa. Yeah, Legendary coach, great Argentinian coach. People in England probably know him best from his time at Leeds. But when he was at Newell's, one of the two big Rosario clubs with a particularly sort of hardcore support, a fan group delegation went round, sort of berate him about some tactical decision he made in the game. And he had a live hand grenade by his door that as soon as he opened his door to them, he picked up a hand grenade, put his teeth around the pins and sort of said, go away or else I'm pulling this out and we'll all die. And they were like, okay, you're madder than us. Bye.

[C]

Sorry.

[A]

That's an incredible story. And you mentioned you keep referring to the money side of it. That's obviously changed dramatically, even within our lifetimes. But I mean, obviously before, you know, in the 60s, people weren't being paid really much more than normal person. Right.

[B]

Well, 963 was when the maximum wage ends. Maximum wage is £20 a week for an English footballer right.

[A]

Now, £20 was a bit more than it is now, but still it wasn't. They were not getting paid loads.

[B]

No, it was sort of a. A normal working class wage, maybe. Maybe a slightly better than average working class wage.

[A]

Right to the point now where the top players are making tens of millions a year. They're making more in a week, many of them, than the ordinary person will make in a year. How does that happen?

[B]

Well, I mean, that's quite a complicated question as well. But maximum wage, when it was introduced in 1901, is actually, I think it comes from exactly the right motives. So the Victorians are very smart about this. The Victorians realize if you set up a league, if a team wins, it will get more fans. If it gets more fans, it gets more money. If it gets more money, it buys better players. If it gets better players, you're going to win again. So you're creating a monopoly situation. And they think this is terrible. The league, what we're selling, if you think of this as a product, we're selling competition between teams. So it's not like a normal business. And this is one of the mistakes people made One of the mistakes I think pretty much every country has made in British law makes is treating sport as if it's a normal business. It's not, because what you're selling is competition between two clubs and once that becomes imbalanced, the product becomes less attractive. So you have to maintain that balance. So the idea of the maximum wage is if we cap the amount players can make, that means that me, the big club, can't go to you, the little club, and say, we'll take your centre forward because we're going to pay him what you're paying plus 50%. So I think it comes from the right motives. Very quickly it becomes a tool of oppression for the players who were sort of thinking, hang on, there's 50,000 people here and I'm getting four quid a week. How does that work? And so that's why eventually, after a series of court cases lifted in 1963.

[A]

And I imagine television's a big part of it as well, because now it's not 50,000, it's a million people that are.

[B]

Yeah. And so there's basically two big changes happen post that. So one is the coming of television. So in England, you can say Match for day starts 1964. So just after the maximum wage is lifted, which doesn't bring in very much money. But by the time you're getting regular live coverage, by the 90s, broadcast rights are enormous and then foreign rights on top of that, I think 7.6 billion, the rights deal for the Premier League. And that pertains up to 2003, when Roman Abramovic arrives at Chelsea and suddenly you've got somebody who's taking over a club who is not interested in profit and is not interested in just doing what's right for Blackburn Rovers or Wolverenden Wanderers or whatever his local team happens to be, but has motives that are, to be honest, pretty hard to discern. But money doesn't matter to him. He can pump in whatever money he wants. Whether that's just because he likes football or whether there is some sort of soft power directive behind that. And I mean, Arsenal, I think the great example of a club who get caught up in that, that Arsenal have been challenging Manchester United through the 90s. They're the big two teams in England. Arsenal Stadium, Highbury had a capacity of 38,000. Manchester United 70 odd there. So roughly Arsenal's capacity is half of Manchester United's. So even if they're getting roughly the same TV money, United have a huge advantage in terms of gate receipts, in terms of corporate possibilities. So Arsenal then blow the bank on building a new stadium. It's an amazing new stadium. Well, it's not new now, but an amazing stadium. It's exactly the right economic logic. Except by the time it's built, suddenly those economics don't work anymore and you have to have this billionaire owner, be he an oligarch, estate or private equity. And that has radically changed the economics of football.

[A]

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[B]

Well, there's two different issues there, so let's deal the second one first. And I think that depends entirely what your personal preference is. I like the fact there aren't many goals in football and I like it for two reasons. One is the explosion of emotion when you score is way greater then if it's finishing 110, 108, then how do you get that excited about any one point? Whereas if it finishes one nil, that's an incredibly exciting moment. And also what if it finishes nil nil? Well that can also be, that can also be exciting.

[A]

I'm kidding.

[B]

But you also have the opportunity in football for the weaker team to set out to stop the better team. And I would say maybe in 20% of the games the weaker team is able to stop the stronger team. There's obviously a limit that, and that is one of the beauties of football that it's not just about the best team winning, it's about strategizing. Give yourself the best chance of getting the best possible result and you can be. Well, the day we're recording this is the day after Grimsby beat Manchester United. I suppose you can make a case that Manchester United are no longer better than Grimsby, but still a fourth flight team beating a top flight team. I'm not sure any other sport in which that can happen and that is a very good thing. The first point I think is more interesting and I don't know what my answer would be if I hadn't grown up within a British model. But the British model is you play sport at your local club and your local club caters to its local community and it can enter competitions and it can grow. And if it keeps growing and if it keeps getting more popular and keeps getting more members and keeps getting more money and maybe can start to pay people to play for them, it can enter the pyramid and it can go all the way up in theory can go all the way up to the top. And so that club is very representative of its local community. And that is a tiny fraction of clubs who can do that. But the clubs are all joined in this mass pyramid and you have social support for people who want it. And you can pick your level, you can play at any level, from being the highest level professional to being the level club cricketer that I was. That, you know, you can be hopeless out, but if you want to do it, you can do it in the us Professional sport is not based on that pyramid. It's not based on clubs that are very much rooted in their community. It's based on franchises and it's based on making money from the off. And if you look at the history of the nasl, franchises are changing all the time. Oh, hang on. The La Gatos have become a Miami Toros overnight. And they move from. How do you support that team when Suddenly they're playing 3,000 miles away with an entirely different cast of players? So, sure, if you want a closed system with no promotion, relegation, then, yeah, you can put in place all these controls, all these caps. It's designed to make money for the owners, which maybe that's. Maybe you see sport purely as a product to be sold. If you see it as having a community value and as representing its community and of providing facilities at some level for the most hopeless players, then I would prefer the European model. So they're just two different models. The other problem, that closed model is you have no relegation. So if you have a bad start to the season, that's it, it's over. Whereas at least in European leagues or South American leagues, you're fighting against relegation, there's still something to play for.

[A]

Well, in fact. Sorry, Francis, just to. In fact, in a closed system like the US one, you're actually heavily incentivized to perform badly once it's clear you're not going anywhere. Because then you will probably get. You'll get the best chance of having the best players from next year's draft.

[B]

And the draft has a major problem for U.S. soccer, because if their players finish their university education, great, they got a degree, brilliant. They're 21. If you're an English player in the same position you've been playing since you're 16, 17, you've got four or five years of high level experience, that's not.

[A]

Going to work for football, because there's a global market for football, whereas for the NBA and the NFL, that's not really an issue.

[B]

Exactly. I mean, it can only work. And maybe that's why the tweaks of the laws introduced to whatever games they took up in the 19th century, made sense on a local level, but it makes it very hard to integrate. And I think you see with women's soccer, I think you're seeing the US approaching a crisis point because they were dominant for a long time. So you have legislation in 1971, I think early 70s anyway, that says you have to have equal opportunity in all things in universities for men and women. In practice, what that means is because there are no women's American football teams and because they're incredibly costly, the American football team takes almost all the funding for men's sport. The women's sport have this funding. They can distribute much more freely. They invest in soccer, their soccer programs become very good. And so by the mid-70s they're producing high numbers of highly accomplished women's soccer players. And so America becomes the dominant power. Now that Europe is beginning to catch up, it's benefiting from the fact that you have an English league, a Spanish league, a Dutch league, an Italian league, a Swedish league, a Danish league also competing with each other. You're getting best practice. And they are now catching the US and the US has got this problem that they're not developing teenage players, they're developing 21 year old players who are already four or five years behind their development by the time they hit professional level.

[C]

I also think as well, fan culture in European leagues, particularly in the English league, is just far superior to American. They've got no banter is what I'm saying.

[A]

But that's a cultural thing. It's nothing to do with football.

[C]

No, it's terrible. You go, there you go. Let's go Dodgers, let's go. I went to an LA Dodgers game and I looked at my friend because I went to the game with him. I went, is this the best you can do in West Ham we stand up and we sing to the Liverpool fans. Stand up. If you've got a job. You know, it's. But there's a genuine thing there that I love about it, which is the humor element, the fan culture. It's something very unique to English football and I think is what makes English football so special.

[B]

Yeah, I would agree with that up to a point. I think again.

[A]

We just spent about 40 minutes talking about hooliganism, which is the flip side of this coin.

[B]

Yeah, but one other thing, and I'm very conscious again, this is the environment I grew up in. When I go to say Germany or Italy, you see the ultras and it's great. They make noise, they keep going and it's all pre programmed. They're not reacting to the game at all. And that when you, when you see it for 30 seconds, God, that's amazing. And then 10 minutes later, hang on. But you haven't. There's a really bad foul there. You should have been brewing that. The referee's never going to be intimidated unless. And English fans or British fans react to the game. And I think the humor of it, I think is a big thing that. Okay, a lot of it's quite formulaic, but within the formula sometimes you get very good jokes that relate to things that have happened in the game or things have happened in the past week. And that spontaneity I think is something. Look, it's not that common but when it happens it's a great thing. And it's that more organic feel to it that this is not pre scripted. It's not everybody sets up for flares after 43 minutes or whatever. It's. You allow the game. There's a sort of a symbiotic relationship between the game and the fans, even to the point where there was a. It must be what, 10, 11 years ago now when an evidence surge against relegation begins with a bad challenge by Phil Neville because suddenly everybody gets up because he's put in a huge challenge and that atmosphere changes the nature of that game and they end up getting a point or getting a win that they weren't going to get and they then get points in the next half dozen games and they stay up. And I think maybe it's just what I'm used to, but I think that is a good thing.

[C]

Yeah. And what's really interesting, particularly football across our lifetime, look, you can say the first celebrity footballer was a Manchester United player, George Best, who was dubbed the fifth Beatle. And you know, he was cool, he had a rock star good looks and he was an incredible footballer, arguably one of the best of all time. But then you've just seen footballers just ascend to the point where they now arguably some of the most famous people in the world, like I would say Lionel Messi is what top 10 famous people or Cristiano Ronaldo.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Oh, I mean, even scale it down a bit, go out in the street, pick a random person, say name 20 Brazilians and you're getting 19 footballers minimum. I mean, all due, respected. Nobody's saying Clarice Lispector.

[C]

And why is that? Why has suddenly football become footballers? Certain footballers transcended the sport and become celebrities.

[B]

I don't think it's certain footballers. I Think all footballers, I think all footballers are famous. So I mean, I'll give you a concrete example of this. In 2015, I was in Ethiopia, I was in Lalibela, where the rock churches are. And it was when Mourinho was falling apart at Chelsea. Chelsea were playing Liverpool that day in the lunchtime kickoff, I went for lunch and the owner of the restaurant I went to, she was a Scottish woman, she's a Motherwell fan, she distributed Motherwell kits to local kids, which actually was a little bit weird seeing local kids walking around in Motherwell shirts. And I got talking to her and I said, where can I watch this Chelsea Liverpool game today? And she went, oh look, the restaurant manager will be going, so just wait for him. When he's finished his shift, he'll take you to this cafe where they've got a screen. Okay, great. So we go to this Cafe, paid the 10B or whatever to get in and there's 200 people in this room watching this TV, massively engaged, know what they're talking about, Very educated audience. They clearly watch a lot of football. And then the rest of them just says, do you want to come watch Swansea Arsenal later this afternoon? Yeah, okay, well we'll go to a proper locals place. And it's this sort of. It's like a muddy bank. They've hammered benches into the bank, there's screens at the front, there's a tarpaulin over the top. It's five beer, it's half the price of the cafe. And everybody is watching. There's 500 people there watching this game. And you say, oh yeah, there's five places like this plus a couple more cafes. And I worked it out, it's something like 40% of the adult male population of that village in rural Ethiopia are watching the Premier League on any given Saturday. I don't think you come across David Goldblatt, great football historian. So he wrote a book called the Age of Football and he tells the story of a village in Uganda, remote village, where nobody really bothered with time. You know, they get up when the sun comes up, they go to bed when the sun goes down, they move their cattle about according to the seasons. That's it, that's, that's their lifestyle. And then suddenly everybody starts getting watches. And the reason is they know the football kicks off at 4pm or whatever, and so we need to know when it's 4pM so then go back to watch it. It's the, the cultural phenomenon of the Premier League. I mean, you know, the very bold question of why does football matter? It matters now because it is the most popular cultural phenomenon there has ever been, that the number of people who watch the Premier League is extraordinary.

[C]

I push back on that. I don't think it's football, I think the World cup. And we're going to talk about the World cup because you wrote a great book about it, but I think it's the Premier League. I don't see people doing the same for, I don't know, Getafe versus Sevilla or Livorno versus Udine.

[B]

Yeah, that's true. The Premier League is definitely the world. I mean, I think in South America or Spanish speaking, South America, maybe La Liga does still dominate. But yeah, the Premier League has been marketed exceptionally well, exceptionally cleverly. I think you've got to give Richard Scudamore, the first CEO of the Premier League, huge credit that initially he effectively gave away the foreign rights because he wanted it to be. If you go into a bar or a cafe, whether you're in China or Nigeria or Canada, it'll be on. And then people start watching it, people become engaged in it. And David Goldblatt's most recent book, Injury Time, he makes the point that football is now or the Premier League is now the world soap opera. And he points out that in 2001 it's Liverpool, Barcelona game. It was the day that EastEnders, BBC soap opera revealed who had shot Phil Mitchell, one of the biggest characters, and they persuaded UEFA to delay kickoff in this game by 10 minutes so we could have a 10 minutes extended Eastenders so we could find out who shot Phil Mitchell. And UEFA agreed. And yet in, I think it was 2019, there was. East Ends was cancelled entirely to show an ethical fifth round game. Because football has now become bigger than the soap operas. In the old days, soap stars were on the front page of the tabloids all the time. Now it's footballers, football, the Premier League is. Is the world soap opera.

[A]

And Francis mentioned the World Cup. You've obviously got a great book out about it, remind everybody of the title so they can go and grab a copy.

[B]

It's called the Power and the Glory.

[A]

And one of the things that many, many people I think will say very often is I'm not really a football fan, but I watch. I watch it when the World cup is on. And if sport is ritualized combat, which I've always thought it is, especially team sport, then the World cup really is the epitome of that, isn't it? Teams from countries coming together and fighting it out for who's top dog.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And you see that right from the start, right from 1930 when it begins. That is true. Gillespie, who is the FIFA president who sets up the World cup, he thinks football will encourage fraternity among nations. I would say by 1934, Mussolini's got his hands on it. It's already true. That's not going to happen. But, yeah, if you look at, say, the England, Argentina relationship in football.

[A]

Even.

[B]

Before the Falcons, there's a sort of Oedipal relationship there that, okay, Argentina was never part of the empire. It was part of the informal empire that Britain essentially ran the economy there from 1870 through to 1910. For sake of easy numbers, there's a sense when they first started playing friendlies in the 1950s, of being people against Master by 66, when they play in a very violent World cup quarter final, a hugely controversial game that's full on sort of we have to beat the quasi colonial power. Or look at when Senegal played France in the opening game, the 2002 World Cup. How can you see that as anything other than the colonise against the coloniser?

[C]

Yeah, and that's what I love about the World cup, is that you watch the teams and the teams actually sort of embody the stereotypes that you give their countries. You know, you look at the Japanese fans, who I would argue are the most beautiful fans in terms of behavior. They literally clean up after themselves and they show Japanese players after they leave the dressing room. The dressing room looks immaculate.

[B]

Yeah. Is that a bit performative?

[A]

I don't know, Maybe. Well, switch it the other way. I mean, the Argentine, Sue Francis, his mother's from Venezuela, so he knows Latin America pretty well. He always says the Argentinians are the English of South America. That is universally hated. And one of the things, I don't know if this is a stereotype, but they do have a reputation for being kind of, you know, dirty and dirty as players, dirty as a team. Is that a fair assessment?

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah. Even that's, you know, that's a fascinating question and I could talk for an hour on this if you give me two minutes. Yes. So the British retreat from Argentina and there's a big question. In Argentina, this immigrant nation, the indigenous people have essentially been driven off or killed. And so you have this country that's a mix of Spanish, Italians, Arabs, Jews, British, Germans, Irish, French, and they all come from very different places, very different ideas of how you do things. And it's suddenly faced with this question, once the British get out of. Hang on, who are we? Achaea, what is it to Be Argentinian. And so there's a series of lectures, 1912, in the Odeon Theater, attended by the president and all his cabinet and all the great and good of Argentina. And Leopoldo Lagoones, the great poet of the age, he gives these lectures on chaos, Agan Dindinderad. And he concludes that the spirit of Argentina is to be found in the gaucho, in the lone horseman of a pampas, that that combination of virtuosity but also self reliance that is characteristically Argentinian. It's romanticized image. But yeah, fair enough. The great Argentinian epic poem Martin Hiero is about a gaucho. But you then have this issue of Buenos Aires is growing rapidly. Argentina's become a much more urban society. And so by the 1920s, people are starting to say, well, it's all very well to have these big asados and everybody comes dressed as gauchos, but you are in a city and you do kind of look ridiculous. So Borges is very funny on this. In El Grafico, the great sports magazine selling over 100,000 copies a week at its peak, based in Buenos Aires, they start to say, well, how do you express this gaucho spirit in the city? And they say, well, the true spirit is actually the pibe, the urchin, the kid from the street. He's playing on the potrelos, on the vacant lots. And he also has to have virtuosity because he's playing in his games of 15, 20, 25 a side in a small space on a hard and even pitch. He's got to have great ball control, great technique, but he's also got to have that self reliance. He's got to be street wise. He's got to be able to look after himself. He's got to be able to use his elbows. And they realize this is in complete contradistinction to the British who've taught them the game, because they're playing on big grassy pitches in schools. So their game's all about stamina and running. They've got a teacher with a whistle if things get out of hand. There's no teachers with a whistle on the Potreros. You've got to be able to handle yourself. And so Boracotto, who's actually Uruguayan, but he's a sort of honorary Argentinian, he's the editor of el Grafico in 1928, he writes this incredible piece where he says, right, if we were to erect a statue to the spirit of Argentinian football, it would depict a pibe with a shock of dark hair. With his teeth worn down by eating yesterday's bread. And he goes on about how he's got holes in his shirt, he's playing with a rag ball, he's not rich enough to have a proper ball, and he's all about the dribble. And the Argentinian word for dribble is gambetta, which is the. It's a gaucho word meaning the running motion of an ostrich. And the thing is, if he took that description and gave it to somebody without context, said, who is that? 100% of people would say it's Maradona. So 49 years before Maradona makes his international debut, his coming is foretold. And that's why when Maradona gets there, when he turns up, when they see him in youth competitions, it's like, this is him, this is El Pibe d', Oro, the gold merchant, the Argentinian hero who's coming has been prophesied. And then why does the gaucho culture come to an end? It comes to an end because the British introduced barbed wire. Once you have barbed wire, you don't need a cowboy. You just put a fence up around your cows. If you look at Argentine newspapers from the 1870s, one of the biggest celebrities is a bull, British bull, called Tarquin. And the reason Tarquin is so prized is if your cows mate with Tarquin, then they're going to give good meat yield, because you can do selective breeding if you've got a fence, if you've just got a cow, where you can't stop the bulls going with whichever cows they want. So even if you want to do things the traditional way, if you're a farmer, if you're even estanciaro, and you're trying to do it with the gauchos, you're going to make less money than your neighbour who's put a barbed wire. So the British have killed the gaucho. And that's why when Maradona scores his two goals against England in his greatest single performance, 1986 World cup quarter final, four years after the Falklands. That's why that is the gaucho's revenge on England. And look at his two goals. The first one, the cunning of the street kid. The second one, the virtuosity of a street kid, it's the perfect game for Maradona. And it is this sense of the gaucho finally getting his own back on the British.

[A]

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[C]

I know this is quite a leading question, but I firmly believe it to be true. Why is it the majority of the best players are South American?

[B]

Well, I think it probably is that culture of playing on the streets. I think certainly in terms of forwards, I think that's really valuable to have that. I realize I didn't fully answer your question, so I'll come back to it, that there is something of a street footballer which is anarchic, it's individualistic, it's hard to predict. I think players who've grown up in academies can become quite predictable. I think you've seen for instance Germany in the Last sort of 15, 20 years since they overhauled our academy system. They produce loads of great midfielders. They don't produce centre forwards anymore. So I think that learning your own way of playing I think is quite important. And Arsenal for instance. Now, although they've got incredible facilities, they have at least one session a week where they just let the kids play. They don't coach them. I mean they're doing it on beautiful Astroturf pitches with balls that have been properly blown up. So maybe they're not going to develop in the same way. But I think that is why I think there's also a sense of if you grew up in poverty and football is your way out, then possibly you are more committed, more ruthless. I mean I remember speaking to Philippe, to a French coach who coached a lot in Africa. He was Japan coach in 2000 when I spoke to him and him saying that he found Japanese football incredibly frustrating because it's technically very good. The players are very disciplined, very obedient, they look after themselves, they're very fit, but they don't have the hunger and the edge that he'd found in African players. So your question about why there's a.

[A]

Saying in the NBA, I can't remember which coach used to say, but you never recruit a player from a two car garage. From a home with a two car garage.

[B]

Yeah. So.

[A]

Why Argentinians? Dirty Jonathan.

[B]

So partly it's that self reliance, but what you see is this technical skill is really privileged and Argentinian football turns professional. 1931, the Argentinian league in the 30s is incredibly, it's incredibly well followed. Huge crowds. The football's very beautiful, very individualistic. There's all kinds of myths and stories about it. La Machina, the great River Plate side of the 40s, massively celebrated their famous five man forward line. You look at it, they hardly win anything. I think two of the five championships when they play together, but they play this beautiful football and that's what's privileged. Argentina go to the first World Cup 1930, they lose in the final. In 34 they send the amateur team and lose to Sweden in the first game. They don't go in 38, they fall out with the Brazilians in 950 and they don't go. And they try to say it's because of Perennis isolation. They just fell out with the Brazilians. Brazil hosted 950, they can't afford to send a team to Switzerland in 54. They finally go to the World cup again in 58. So the first time they send a proper professional team for 28 years. And their football has been incredibly beautiful through this 25, 28 year period. And they think they're the best in the world. As you suggested, there is a self confidence about Argentinian culture.

[A]

I don't think that's remotely what I suggested, but well done.

[B]

957 they win the South American championship with this great forward line. The Karasukius for dirty faces. Forward line. So again the dirty faces are this urchin ideal. Problem is three of those players are sold to Italy before the World cup and they won't pick them when they're playing in Italy, but they get there. They brought in Adolfo Pednero, he's been this great player. He's 39, so he's old, he's overweight. But they still say, oh, he's so skillful, that'll be enough. And they get beaten 6:1 by Czechoslovakia, and immediately they think, hang on. This technical, beautiful world, this doesn't work. We've got to be physical. And this, I think, is something you see repeatedly in Argentinian culture, not just in football, but in everything. Because it's this tabula rasa, because it attracts these sort of dreamers. You get this utopianism. But the flip side of that is cynicism. So you try to build utopia. Oh, it's gone wrong. Let's be really cynical. And you can even say the history of coups is like that. Oh, Peron, it's great work as Utah. It's gone wrong. Off you go. And that cycle keeps going. And I think you see it in the football. You get this very sort of bifurcated vision of either the incredible attacking beauty or the incredible cynicism. And those are manifested in two great coaches in Cesar Luis Menotti, who wins the World cup with them in 78. He plays the beautiful football, a former Communist who wins it under the hunter, which is very complicated. And Carlos Bilardo, who is this cynical coach who has Maradona in this team when they win it in 86. It's even the sort of intellectual culture of Argentina. It loves a theory, so it loves to say everybody falls on one of these two theories. And of course it's not true. I don't even think Menotti is Menottiste. I think he's much more mixed. But it suits them to come up with these ideals. So it's a whole mixture of where their football culture comes from, the fact it's created in contradiction to the British, the intellectual culture of the time, the defeat to Czechoslovakia In Helsingborg in 1958, the violence is legitimized there in a way that it wouldn't be elsewhere.

[A]

That's really interesting. And speaking of cynicism, one of the things that I would argue we've seen, particularly in recent decades, is a lot of countries that have a desire to impact their image on the world stage have cottoned onto the fact that actually the World cup is probably the biggest thing that you can possibly do to affect your image. And so you see Russia and Qatar, I mean, I don't know the details, but I wonder whether Those two countries got the World cup through entirely above board methods.

[B]

Yeah, I think you're not the only one who wonders that.

[A]

Yeah, I really do wonder that and it wouldn't surprise me if it was the case.

[B]

Well, I mean look at the exco who voted on the 24 person EXCO and Executive Committee. Executive people, Executive Committee in those days voted on who got the World Cup. Yeah, and I think it's 15 of the 24 have been convicted of corruption, others have died before trial. They, they are not a. They're not the most upstanding group of people.

[A]

No, no, clearly not. And so I guess what I was going to ask is it in, in inevitably anything with power, it's like the ring of power. It corrupts and it becomes used by corrupt people. And polit. What do you make of the inevitable infusion of politics and geopolitics into the World Cup?

[B]

Well, I think it's always been there. So why do Uruguay want to host the 1930? In part it's because they've won the Olympics in 24 and 28. They know they're really good at it and they think this is, you know, they recognize that suddenly people recognize Uruguay as a country in its own right, not just a province of Argentina. Uruguay winning the Olympic football in 24 and 28 is a big thing for Uruguay's self projection into the world. So how do you magnify that you host the first World Cup? It happens to be 100 years the centenary of Uruguay's declaration of independence in 1830 which is why the big stadium where the finals played is the Centenario, this bit of a centenary stadium. Juan Hanbyistogee, the president of Uruguay, he's Batlista Batli Donas has been in 1901 he comes to power and I think pretty enlightened. He reinvests the profits from the meat industry, in education, in health, in. He promotes physical education in school. He sees that as really important, as one of the reasons why Ukraine are so good at football. And this is supposed to be a celebration of baclismo. And so when Gilimo, the president of FIFA gets there and who is Gilima? He's just a French bureaucrat, he's not important. On his first day there he's going to a barbecue with the president. So straight away politics is trying to co opt football. By 1934 Mussolini is much more overt. I mean Kabistichi didn't do any good. He was toppled in the queue the following year because of the Wall street crash and Lack of money. But yeah, Mussolini in 34, he takes hold of the World cup in a way that even Qatar and Russia haven't. That he introduced his own trophy, a Coppa del Duce, which is three times bigger than the official World cup trophy. But he's also, he's quite smart about it. So he subsidises travel for fans which try and get into. Because part of the point is not just we want Italy to win the World cup and prove with this muscular, athletic, modern nation. And if you think of Mussolini, he's constantly projecting himself as a sportsman. He's riding horses, I guess a bit like Putin riding horses bareback. He's always been pictured skiing. When Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrian Chancellor, goes to see him at Riccione in. Was that 33, I think. And it's sort of emergency talks. Will Mussolini provide the troops just in case Hitler decides to go in? And Mussolini makes sure that when Dollfuss arrives, he's out in the sea swimming. And so Dollfuss is there, he's an Austrian diplomat. He's dressed in this ridiculous three piece suit. It's 30 degrees or whatever. Dollfuss is tiny. He's 4 foot $11. The Milli Metternich, as they called him. And so you then get these, these pictures because Dollfuss saying, oh, now I better go and get a skiff and row out to him. He's terrible at rowing. He's his little 4 foot 11 diplomat. Why would he be able to row? Get these pictures of him walking up the beach. And Mussolini's. What was Mussolini? Five, seven. He's not tall, but he's much taller than Dolphus. He's wearing these trunks. He's sort of big muscular bloke. And there's Dolphus, his little man in a three piece suit with his. He's taking his jacket off, but he's obviously hot and sweating. And the iconography of that, there's powerful, muscular, modern Italy and old, fussy, impotent Austria. It's incredibly powerful. So muscle in these. Trying to put that into a World cup context. But it's also about showing Italy is not the disorganized, ramshackle country of myth. It's a modern country that can host this big tournament. The trains run on time. So Mussolini is one of the first people to think of sports merchandising. He has all this quite cheap but well produced merchandise, all with the fasquez with the fascist logo on the matte sticker TIAs printed on lovely cardboard. They're very well designed, so people will keep them as souvenirs. Again with fascist detailing. And. And so from personally's point of view, the World Cup's a great success because Italy win it and Italy hosts it really, really well. And all. Every foreign journalist who goes sort of has to write, yeah, this, this was actually a really great tournament that, you know, the stadiums are great. There's been this sort of great wave of stadium building in the late 20s, early 30s, a lot of it with loans from the government or local municipalities. There's been a. From 1926, there's been a conscious movement to make Italy better at football. They've banned foreign players. In a lot of cities, they would amalgamate smaller clubs to make one big club per city to make it a proper national league. It's a lot of very sort of forward thinking, sort of clever planning comes together in 34. So whatever's happened recently, Mussolini got there first. But, yeah, I think the difference in 2018, 2022, is that Russian, Qatar, the benefit for them was to host the tournament. They didn't think they had any chance of winning it, but hosting the tournament, putting on a good show, showing they're part of this sort of international community. And you have that the opening game, 2018, when Russia beat Saudi Arabia 5 nil. And you have those images in the VIP box where you have Putin, Gianni Infantino and Mohammed bin Salman sitting next to each other, engaging what looks like the most awful stilted banter. But the three of them are pictured there together. And the weird thing is, what's that ball bloke in the middle doing? Why is Gianni Infantino, this Swiss diplomat, why is he there? What's he got to do with this? But somehow the president of FIFA operates on a level where he's dealing with the most important people in the world.

[A]

Look, he has the power, right? So actually, objectively, he's entirely merited in being in that box because he has the power that these other two people want.

[B]

Yeah, he has something that he can give them. How often has he been in the Oval Office? He's always there. He's always giving Trump something. I think for the first time, actually, last week, you saw a flicker of doubt on Infantino's face as Trump was talking about moving the draw from Las Vegas to the Kennedy center in Washington. You can see Jani's face. Hang on, I'm gonna show you. I agree to that, but obviously he can't do anything. So, yeah, he's become a facilitator for the soft power ambitions of mbs, of Trump or Putin.

[C]

So Jonathan, we've been talking about corruption off the field and FIFA notoriously have had numerous scandals. What about corruption on the field? How much can we trust that the results on the field are actually organic and fair and haven't been manipulated by the players or referees?

[B]

I think at the highest level, I think we can be almost 100% confident. And the reason I say that is gambling. So I'll give you the Premier League as the example because it's the one I know best. But the betting companies are very strictly regulated that if they get the slightest hint of unusual betting patterns, they raise a red flag. And so you had an instance. Oxford drcup game was the last season or season before when there was an unusual number of bets being placed on a particular player to get booked. And it turned out I think the player was actually acquitted. But the amount they were talking about was four bets worth a total of £1,200. So next to nothing. And that was enough to trigger an investigation.

[A]

That could be like four blokes in a pub, one of them spreads a rumor and they, they go and put a bet on. Basically it could be that. But even at that level, your point is even at that level, they're going to.

[B]

So it's in nobody's interests for it to be fixed at the top level because the betting companies make huge amounts of money because they have margins. The margins operate if a game is fair, because they have their very complex, very sophisticated algorithms that work out the odds. And okay, maybe one in a thousand times there's a very strange result that costs them money. But nine in 99 out of a thousand times they're making money. Look at the profits of gambling companies on football. They're enormous. They have absolutely no incentive to allow the game not to be fair. Also, look at how much players are paid. How much money would you have to offer a player for them to risk their career? So we got an example of this. There was a Singaporean match fixer called Wilson Large paramount, who in 1995, mid-90s. Anyway, he doesn't really know what he's doing. He flies to, to, to the uk, Birmingham playing Liverpool in a League cup game. He's been fixing games in Singapore because it's pretty easy because nobody's got any money. So you bonk some hundred dollars, he'll, they'll fix it for you. So he thinks, right, I'll, I can do this in England and the returns will be much greater because it's much greater interest. So he goes to Birmingham City and he says, oh yeah, I'm a journalist from Singapore. And they're like, oh, okay, well, welcome. And it's not like now where you'd have to show a press card and you have to book three weeks in advance or whatever to get an interview. And he goes in the car park and he goes over to the Birmingham goalkeeper, Ian Bennett and he says, I want you to fix the game against Liverpool. You're probably going to lose anyway. Just make sure you do. And Ian Bennett said, no, what are you going to offer me? He went, oh, 20 grand? No, no, I get more than that a week. Like why would I. Why do they take that? To risk being banned for life. That was 30 years ago. Now they're getting paid way, way more than that. So the top level, I think you can be pretty confident. I think lower down there's much bigger problems because players earn less, the scrutiny is less. I think you've got to ask why the bookmakers offer odds on. You've seen football where three people are watching. It makes no sense. Why do they offer odds on really easy manipulable markets like the first throw in? So there was a state in the 90s where you could put spread bets on when this first throw in going to be. So obviously players think, well hang on, if I take the cake off and kick it out of play and I've sold on the spread, I'm going to make a profit. So they start doing that and that's sort of an open secret but pretty soon that people crack down on that. It doesn't happen anymore. So the modern game at the highest level, I think you'd be pretty safe. I think the World cup there's a couple of games recent Ishly I think there were question marks over really? Really?

[C]

Like which games?

[B]

I can't say that but There's a last 16 game in 2006 I think looks pretty suspicious.

[A]

Oh, I remember this.

[B]

Which world.

[A]

It's a World Cup.

[C]

Yeah, It's World Cup 2006 and won.

[B]

The Italy one in.

[A]

Where is it? Korea, Japan? Is that.

[B]

No, it was in Germany.

[A]

In Germany.

[B]

But it's the games that are vulnerable are when you have a team of players with less money in a game, they're expected to lose.

[A]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[B]

And they sort of think, well I'm.

[A]

Gonna lose either 3 or 4 nil. Might as well be 4 for an extra X amount. Yeah, see, I'm very good at thinking like a corrupt.

[B]

And also I think in Countries where maybe they can't guarantee they get the bonus they've been promised. And so there's an element of bitterness, I think, that also may sort of help break down the moral boundaries.

[A]

Jonathan, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. We're going to ask you a bunch of questions from our supporters in a second before we head on over to triggerpod.co.uk, where everyone can follow that conversation. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

[B]

Middlebrow detective drama. So middlebrow detective drama on TV is phenomenally popular, not just on the. On the mainstream channels. You've got.

[A]

Define at first, because I don't know.

[B]

Okay, so Inspector Morse, that type of thing? Yeah, Morse and its followers. Morse is probably the first of that real sort of hour and a half plus ads, or two hours in total. And so you've now got things like Karen Piri, or you've got the Chelsea Detective, or you've got Midsummer Murders, all the Marple and Poirot adaptations. Why is that so popular? Why is this one of Britain's biggest cultural exports? Why is it proliferating? Why do I watch so much of it? Why is that the way. Why is murder the way that I relax and I understand sort of the logic of the golden age of detective fiction in the 1930s. And Martin Edwards has written a very good book on it. And it's sort of supposed to be in the turbulence of the interwar years. This is sort of a. Yes, violence happens, but then order prevails. But why are we obsessed by it now? Why is there so much middle ground? Detective drama do other countries do it? And why can the Americans not do it?

[A]

Well, now, we got lots of questions for you. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk, where we ask Jonathan your questions.

[C]

Please inform me who is winning the upcoming World cup, so I can bet my life savings. Thanks in advance.

[D]

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