Football Daily - Introducing... Sports Strangest Crimes Presents: Shadows On The Pitch

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

We'd like to introduce you to the first episode of 'Sports Strangest Crimes Presents: Shadows On The Pitch'. Throughout the series, James Montague investigates a startling conspiracy theory put forward by the Iraqi football federation in the 90s - that America influenced a World Cup qualifying tournament to save USA '94 from its so-called enemies. In this opening episode, a former referee with a cryptic message may hold the key to unraveling the mystery. Can he help James uncover the truth behind the alleged conspiracy surrounding the build-up to the 1994 World Cup? James travels to Bucharest in search of answers.If you enjoyed 'Sports Strangest Crimes Presents: Shadows on the Pitch' and want to hear more, head to the Sports Strangest Crimes feed on BBC Sounds, where you can listen to the rest of the series.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Throughout this World Cup, David Beckham has been everywhere, in the stands, in commercials during ad breaks, sorry, hydration breaks, which is wild when you consider he was once the most hated man in Britain. I turned around to a fan and he was screaming about my wife and about Brooklyn, right to my face, and wouldn't even look away. How do you go from that to being a billionaire? That's next time on Big Lives.

Listen to Big Lives wherever you get your podcasts. Hi Football Daily listeners. I'm Football Writer James Montague. And in Sports Strangers Crimes Presents, Shadows on the pitch, I'm digging into a World Cup conspiracy theory that refuses to fade. Did the US influence a qualifying tournament to keep its enemies from playing at USA 94? It's a conspiracy theory put forward by the Iraqi football. Football Federation over 30 years ago, and one that's obsessed me for over a decade.

Here is just a taste, but for the full series, search Sports Strangers Crimes on BBC Sounds. This is episode one. No terrorists in America. Have you ever heard a rumor so tantalising you just can't stop thinking about it? A twist to reality so potent, it makes you question everything. and makes you see the world completely differently. Well, I'm about to share with you one of the best. A rumour, a conspiracy theory really, that's lived rent-free in my head for over a decade.

A World Cup Whopper to give Burger King a run for its money. And I came across it while doing my day job. My name's James Montague and I'm a football writer. Though I don't really write about football. I mean, football's always in there. somewhere. But my stories are more about the world of football and how crime, power, politics, identity and civil unrest interweave with the game we all love. Over the past few decades, I've been on my fair share of budget airlines and stayed in hostels barely fit for human

habitation, all while chasing stories around the world. And I've been called some pretty weird things as a result. I spent months in revolutionary Cairo hanging out with a group of Egyptian ultras, who were absolutely convinced I was from MI6, which was quite flattering because the Palestinian men's national team nicknamed me face like Rooney, which is maybe why you're hearing my voice rather than seeing me on TV. And when I reported from Zambia for the New York Times, the late great American soccer writer Grant Wall called me the Indiana Jones of soccer writing. And I've been shamelessly dining out on that ever since.

and apologies to Wayne, I'll take the comparison with a 30-year-old Harrison Ford over that any day of the week. I've had some pretty incredible experiences on my journeys too, like touching the sweat-soaked sleeve of Diego Maradonna after watching him nutmeg children on a five-a-side pitch in Doha. I've sat with monks in Bhutan, struggling to breathe at 8,000 feet as we watched the Himalayan Kingdom's first ever World Cup qualification match. But sometimes my football stories can go off the rails. Like when I was bussed across Indonesia with a group of fans,

only to be confronted in Java by a large gang of machete-wielding ultras. Rivals who'd taken exception to us driving through their territory. That was a close shave. Then there was the time I went to North Korea to watch their national team play Lebanon. Just at the time North Korea decided it was going to test a new hydrogen bomb. For nearly three days, me and the Lebanese players didn't know if our visit would also mark the start of a global nuclear war and whether or not this was in fact the end of the world. Thankfully, it wasn't.

And even better, the game finished 2-2 in a packed Kim Il-sung Stadium in Pyongyang. But one of my favourite memories is from 2007. When I danced bare-chested with the Iraqi National Men's team in their team bus in Jordan. They survived years playing under Saddam's sadistic son Ude Hussein, who controlled football with an iron fist. Ude was long gone, killed by American forces four years earlier. But Iraq at the time was on fire. And so back then, even a brief escape from Baghdad was worth celebrating. Players from Shia, Sunni, Kurdish and Christian communities, and me with my belly out,

all dancing on the team bus, all while Palestinian, pop music crackled out through the speakers. Freedom. Amazingly, a few weeks later, they lifted the Asian Cup. It's got to be one of the greatest underdog stories in the history of sport. Even these energetic scenes captured by CGTN didn't do the victory justice. In 2025, when I hear a jubilant report that Iraq has just quite, qualified for the 2026 World Cup, all those memories come flooding back to me.

Iraq, a nation that has waited four long decades and is finally back on football's bigger stage. Iraq beat Bolivia to one in the playoffs, but this is not just about football. It's about a team that fought battles far away from the pitch. And yet, they stood tall. So how did Iraq script one of the most emotional qualifications in recent times? And I reached out to Hussain, the former Iraqi F.A. President to congratulate him. Only, I find him a bit underwhelmed. I think not interesting World Cup.

Best World Cup do it in Tatar, 20. And more interested in talking about the last World Cup. Yeah, it was great World Cup. Pretty much staying in same hotels, same training fields, same transport is easy from the hot years. Hussain actually played in a World Cup finals at Mexico 86, the last time Iraq qualified. So you might expect a little smile at least. But Hussein tells me he's skeptical about America holding the tournament.

And he's still seething about Iraq missing out the last time the US hosted the World Cup back in 1994. Billy Clinton was the president of American in this period. Yeah. He spoke that we don't welcome. The country is Iran and Iraq and North Korea. And we have a very strong team in this period. Do you know the Trimton spoke this? I think make pressure on the teams and on the federation and the referee or something like this.

We'll be affected when the President of America spoke. Hussein is talking about the qualifiers held in Dohaar in 1993, where despite being among the favourites, Iraq failed to bag a place at USA 94. At the time, the Iraqi press ran stories, claiming the American president himself was getting daily reports on the progress of the enemy Iraqi national team. It's a tournament I've written about before, where Iraq-Iran and North Korea, three teams designated state sponsors of terrorism and under strict economic sanction by the White House at the time, all failed to qualify, while two allies of America progressed instead. To be clear, I haven't found any record of Clinton actually saying Iraq or anyone else, for that matter, wasn't welcome in the US.

But the perception has remained with Hussein and many Iraqis ever since. We have a very, very good team, very, very good team, very good professional players, I remember. Diyah Umari was the BBC Bureau Chief in Baghdad and is now a senior international reporter for Dubai TV. He vividly remembers watching his national team on TV back in 1993. Yeah, with a friend of mine, he was watching the match. And there is like, he said to me, we scored two. Iraq missed out on USA in 94, thanks to a draw in their final qualifying game against Japan.

The Iraqi Football Federation was so furious with how things had gone down, it released a statement, accusing the American government of sinking to a new low by pressurizing FIFA to keep Iraq out of the World Cup. A conspiracy theory that America had somehow fixed the results. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there is. There is, Iraqi widely believed that America, the United States of American government will stop Iraq from going to the final. They wrote it in the newspaper, whatever, I think there's a newspaper called Al-Bath-Riyadhiyadh, that the FIFA is a toy in the hand of imperialism and the United States. Okay, and we said from the beginning, 100% the US government and some administrations behind it

that play this role to stop Iraqi from playing the World Cup. There was something against the Iraqi team. They will not leave Iraqi team to rise the Iraqi flag in the stadium of the United States of America. That's what they said. It's a pretty wild accusation. The kind of story that sounds ridiculous when you first hear it. But Dia told me it's whispered all over Iraq that somehow, somewhere, the US government made sure Iraq never reached the 94 World Cup. Most conspiracy theories die at the moment that you say them out loud.

But this one's been hanging around for more than 30 years. I've heard similar claims from Iranian players and journalists, blaming America for their failure to qualify too. I can't really vouch for what the North Koreans thought, though. I don't think anyone can. It would be easy to dismiss all of this as the bitterness of defeat. After all, every losing team has a story about why they should have won. And honestly, that's what I thought too.

except the deeper I dug into this tournament, the stranger it looked. There were unusually high political stakes in Doha, power and politics, security moves happening in the shadows. Suddenly, this story didn't seem so simple. And once you start seeing those shadows, you notice that other people have seen them too. Journalist Charles P. Pierce was one of the few Americans to report on the Doha qualifiers. And he remembers joking about exactly that possibility. Guy from Iraq gets a red card for a, you know, a dubious tackle. And it was like, up, CIA.

Yep. Sitting in the stadium in the Qatari heat, it became a bit of an inside gag. Every time a decision went against Iraq, he turned to his mate and jokingly blame American intelligence agents. Ah yes, the CIA. The hidden hand behind all my favourite conspiracy theories. Secret alien technologies. JFK's assassination. And organising a coup against Iran's democratically elected government in 1953.

Oh no, hang on. That one turned out to be true. But would the United States government really try to nobble an obscure World Cup qualification tournament to save the USA 94 finals? It's a pretty far out conspiracy theory, but it's one which refuses to die. I mean, it's over 30 years since it all went down. We all know that even the most out-there conspiracies have a grain of believability about them. There's usually a plausible motivation.

The moon landing faked to distract from the Vietnam War. The Illuminate assassinating JFK to avoid exposure. And I guess here, we've got America doing what it can to keep a new. enemy state, or an enemy state's football team at least, away. But conspiracy theories don't survive on imagination alone. For a theory to spread, to flourish, to endure, believers need something they can point to. The flag that appears to flutter in the vacuum of space,

a classified file with whole paragraphs redacted, the grainy frames of the Zapruder film capturing JFK's death, None of it proves anything by itself, but that's not the point. Every conspiracy theory needs a loose thread, something that people can pull at, something that leaves just enough room for doubt. Because once doubt infects the official narrative, agreeing on an objective truth becomes very hard indeed. I've become obsessed with this particular conspiracy theory,

and to get to the bottom of it all, will require another adventure. So here we go. This goes beyond what KGB did back in the days. I will tell you anytime you have an international venue that is an opportunity for intelligence officers to have a presence. All the conspiracy theories that we all were discussing about, arguing about, was confirmed in that investigation

in exactly the comical, ridiculous way you would exist. No terrorists in America. It's dangerous. It's a little bit dangerous. I stop here. I'm James Montague, and from BBC 5 Live, this is Sports Strangers Crimes Presents. Shadows on the pitch.

Episode 1. No Terrorists in America. Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, Ladies and gentlemen, and citizens of the world. It's June, 1994. I'm 14 and growing up in Essex. John Major's government is mired in sex scandals. The British economy is trying to bounce back from the recession

and there's war in the Middle East and Yugoslavia. And Kurt Cobain is dead. There is some good news. My team West Ham has just avoided relegation from the newly launched English Premier League and Poland is entering its first ever Eurovision song contest, which for my Polish mum is a pretty big deal. Also, now that communism has collapsed in Eastern Europe, my hard-drinking Polish uncle Yatsk is visiting for the summer.

He's smoking endless Moldber Red Tops and hogging the TV. But when I finally get hold of the remote, there's only one thing I want to watch. The World Cup. The United States is honored to play host to this magnificent celebration. The World Cup has captured the imagination of our country, as has the game itself. in the last few years. The love of soccer is now a universal language. President Bill Clinton is making history.

America is hosting its first ever World Cup finals, and this ignites something within me that burns bright to this day. It binds us all together. So I welcome all who have come from all countries and all continents. Welcome to the United States. Thank you. I know. say 94 might sound like a weird World Cup to obsess over, given all the others of my childhood.

Remember England's quarterfinal with Argentina and Mexico 86? Diego Maradonna's hand of God? That was my first proper football in memory. I'm seven years old, crying into my dad's arms at the unfairness of it all. At Italia 90, I'm crying like Gaza, as England lose that penalty shootout against West Germany. But Graham Taylor's England haven't even qualified. for USA 94. A two-nil defeat to the Netherlands leaves England needing to beat San Marino by seven clear goals

to get to America, as well as needing Poland to beat the Dutch too. Cup of tea in hand, I watched the San Marino game at my nan's house. A cup that's nearly thrown through the window when David Goltieri, a part-time computer salesman, no less, scores for San Marino after just eight seconds. My nan just laughs. I mean, what else was there to do? England do end up winning 7-1. But despite that, my Polish brothers couldn't do us a favour

and they end up losing the qualifiers and England missed the party altogether. But it's exactly this reason the kickoff for USA-94 changes my life. Without England, I'm looking for other teams and underdogs to root for. So I flick through a sea of unfamiliar faces in my almost complete Panini sticker album. the bald head of Jordan Lechkov Roberto Baggio's rats tail hairstyle and who can forget Alexei Lallas and his ginger goatee and so my love of world football begins

to add to the anticipation no one's quite sure what a US hosted soccer World Cup will be like maybe somewhere between a Super Bowl and a trip to McDonald's with new unfamiliar rules I've been quite a few changes made for these World Cup finals and here they are players injured will be taken off on electric carts and players jumping off the carts will be cautioned remember this is America match of the day's desk linem seems a little skeptical about America's understanding of football

in fact to my mind everyone in England seems to be laughing at America take this mocking skit from the Mary White House experience sets three drives for goal with two scores at the spearhead of the offensive line Barry spinnaker Wow, look at that. That's what this great game of Sotcher is all about. Chris is into all cheerleaders. Others may be worried about how the World Cup will fare in the hands of a nation

more famous for baseball and gridiron, but not me. Soon I'm watching all the early evening games. Dinner on my lap in front of the TV transfixed. Me, my dad, my nan, my uncle Yatsk, my sister, my mum, all of us, watching Boggart. Bulgaria's Ciristo-Stochok, Nigeria's Daniel Amicatchi, and Syed Al-Awerian's amazing solo goal for Saudi Arabia. And what about Andre Escobar's own goal? Babetto's rocking baby goal celebration.

John Aldridge blowing a gasket pitchside. I'm falling in love with the world of football. Without USA-94, I wouldn't have become a football writer. Maybe wouldn't have even got out of Essex. and soccer wouldn't have finally found success in the US or perhaps even returned in 2026. In 1994, there were a lot of people who depended on this tournament going exactly to plan. Is it possible that some people worked from the shadows to actually guarantee it?

20 years after USA-94, I was travelling the world researching a book about World Cup underdogs. That's how I discovered the tale of a qualifying tournament that took a tournament to took place in Doha, the capital of Qatar, in October 1993. The winners, well two winners, would earn a place at USA-94. That World Cup that made me fall in love with world football. The Asian qualifiers, which included teams from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean, featured six teams. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, South Korea and Japan.

possibly the most politically explosive qualification tournament in history. As Suzanne Kiyampur, a former BBC foreign correspondent, reminds me, every team had some kind of major political beef with at least one of the others, maybe even more. South Korea was still officially at war with North Korea. Japan had committed war crimes against South Korea, North Korea, that it would later acknowledge and apologize for. Saudi Arabia, I'd finance Iraq and the Iran-Iraq war. Saudi Arabia had been hit by Iraqi scud missiles in 1991.

Scud missiles fired by Iraq in the first Gulf War, which pitted Iraq against the U.S.-led coalition. And Iraq's long war with Iran had only ended in 1988, a conflict that claimed an estimated one million lives. I mean, those scars from the war were very much still open wounds, the trench warfare, in which essentially bodies were sacrificed, enormous casualties. You had a generation that was scarred by this war, and you still had prisoners of war that had to be exchanged. I'm not a big believer in the fiction of football builds bridges and what have you.

It didn't build any bridges. Few journalists are better place to understand the forces shaping Middle Eastern football than James Dorsey. Author of the turbulent world of Middle East Soccer, he reported across the region for the Wall Street Journal and witnessed firsthand how Iraq instilled a particular kind of fear in Washington. The Iranian Revolution was a major threat to Middle Eastern States. Iran's revolutionary zeal was real.

You weren't that long after the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the beginning, of Iran's cultivation of relationships with non-state actors, particularly Hezbollah. But Iraq was the greater threat. It set an example, set in precedent, one country occupying another. So in that sense, Iraq was still perceived as a threat. I mean, it almost, like, you couldn't make this up, right? It's like a Hollywood script waiting to happen where you have all of these enemies in one place. But it wasn't just regional geopolitical rivalries that threatened to overshadow the tournament.

Of the six teams, all in with a chance of qualifying for the finals on American soil, three were considered official enemies of the USA. North Korea was designated a state sponsor of terrorism and put on the sanctions list, as were Iran and Iraq. Iraq was on the sanctions list. It had attempted to assassinate the former president a few months earlier in Kuwait. Just months before the tournament in Doha, Iraqi intelligence orchestrated a failed car bomb plot to kill U.S. President George Bush Sr.

The Los Angeles Times reported that World Cup security officials explicitly viewed Iran and Iraq as potential problems because of the U.S. policy and visa issues and each country's association with terrorism or state hostility towards Washington. At the time, the U.S. State Department had a blanket ban on issuing visas to Iraqi citizens due to post-Golf War national security concerns, no big surprise there. You may have noticed similar visa issues affecting a Somali referee and the Iran national team at this current World Cup. 15 of Iran's support staff were initially denied entry to the US. Back in 1993, the LA Times reported that no assurances were given that the ban would be lifted even if Iraq qualified, and that World Cup organisers had expressed concerns about possible terrorist activities.

if Iraq qualified. The article went on to say, for similar reasons, qualification by Iran, an avowed enemy of the United States and North Korea, whose feuding with the United States over nuclear arms continues, would not have been received favourably by the World Cup Organising Committee. So, like I said, it's hard to imagine a qualification more politically explosive. This mix of rivalry, geopolitics and the World Cup,

Cup was like catnip to me. I loved this kind of story then, and I still do now. For my article, I interviewed players, coaches, journalists, anyone who was on the ground in Doha in October 1993. I even interviewed Alan Rothenberg, the CEO of USA 94, and the man across all the big decisions and security concerns of America's First World Cup. This is my rather scratchy recording of that interview. You were holding our bread because there was chill. that three countries that are going to be a good at the United States. At the time, Iran and Iraq and Korea, it's been an excellent chance of qualifying.

And I was holding by breath because the security challenge had been enormous, obviously. Alan said he was holding his breath due to Iraq, Iran and North Korea having excellent chances of qualifying. He believed these teams would have created an enormous security challenge for America. So, had there been any discussion at government level, I wondered? Was there any discussion at the government level about these teams? Because, I mean, these are all under sanction these countries. So, I mean, were they even allowed? Alan confirmed that according to FIFA's own rules,

any qualified team had to be allowed in. Background checks were being used. In the same interview, he also told me a guy from the State Department had been seconded to work on the ground in Doha, a sign of just how seriously the US were taking these potential security threats. And according to Alan, FIFA was taking things seriously too.

I had talked to, I said before that, he was a secretary, that you're talking about making sure they had the best referees and line officials. Alan had told me that FIFA General Secretary said Blatter was going to make sure the best referees and line officials were in Doha, men that I wanted to speak to. At the time, I was living in Bukhraest, the capital of Romania, and by chance I noticed that one of the six European referees flown into Doha

by FIFA was a Romanian. Yon Crouchon Escu officiated. three of the games. Back then, Yon was one of Europe's top refs, and the Doha Tournament was like an audition for the World Cup proper. A shot at his lifetime's dream. I reached out to him, knowing that he'd long since hung up his whistle

to work as a pundit on Romanian TV. We agreed to speak at an upmarket cafe in Bucharest. Did you have to take any special precautions? Maybe take some diplomacy classes. Because this is politically very explosive games that could have far-reaching... It had to do some measures special in there, the course of diplomacy or not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, nothing of these things...

It was very funny when they got the... Even Blatter was there and they told them you can expect like a horror tournament pretty much. Because if the country's... World War with each other, you could expect the same thing to be translated on the ground. This is to transpunner. According to Yon, Seb Blatter had warned the referees of a potential horror at the Doha qualifiers. The mix of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, South Korea and Japan was expected to be tricky. A bigger challenge than usual.

Did you feel that there was something going on around that perhaps was bigger than football? Well, thank you very much. We're going to be establishing a task force, a very important task force, White House, and that's on the FIFA World Cup of 2026, which, as you know, is a big event. It's going to be the biggest event, I think. And Johnny, I think you're going to say a few words. Everybody knows this man in the right. He's sort of the king of soccer, I guess, in a certain way.

In early 2025, U.S. President Donald J. Trump is holding a press conference to mark the next stage of preparations for the World Cup finals. And by his side is an excited FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Thank you, President. Well, it is a great achievement to bring the World Cup next year, the FIFA World Cup in the United States, together with Mexico and Canada. The best players in the world, the best teams in the world. America will welcome the world.

There will be millions of people coming. Just like in 1993, the white. House is preparing for another World Cup. History is repeating. Okay, I'll sign this and that makes it official, right? That makes it official, yes. That's good. Here we are. Then we have to start working. Gianni's right. It's time to get working. So, I'm sending a voice message. Hello, mate. How you doing? It's James. In case you didn't recognize my Dulcet, Essex Homes. Yes. So, want to speak to you about something. I've got a story.

I need to talk to you about it so I don't have you got 10 minutes but like when he wake up and I think it's something that we should have a look at so give me a call all right mate, ta-da-bye. This message is from my mate Ben an Englishman living in New Jersey

we go back quite a long way Ben and I he was one of my first commissioners back in the day when we worked at CNN and I was just getting started more recently we've been making football documentaries together for the BBC now I want to get him in interested in the Iraqi conspiracy theory. Because if I'm going to get anywhere, I'm going to

need some help. Clearly, no host nation wants their sporting events become a security nightmare. With terrorism, a constant concern, it's no surprise that American intelligence agencies were paying attention to what was going on in Doha. But how far would they go to achieve their security goals? Where does the boundary lie? What if? They weren't just watching the qualification process. What if they were shaping it? I want Ben on board to help me investigate. So to try and hook him in,

I've sent him my old article to read, the one with the interview with Alan Rothenberg and the Romanian ref. Hey, how are going? All right. All right. How are things over in the US? I was going to say in New York,

but you're not in New York. Yeah, just ticking over. So everything's good. Everything's good. All right. Well, look. What do you reckon? I mean, let's get into it.

I mean, I've sent you that story. What do you think? I mean, the article's really interesting. Yeah, definitely politically charged group. Interesting. It's got everything. It's got drama. It's got...

Do you still have the recordings of the interviews? I do. I do. Look, I've got... Let me play you. Yeah. Let me play you this. I've got the original.

This is from 10 years ago. when I met Yon in a cafe in Bucharest. Oh, okay. I tell Ben, I've been going through the interviews I conducted for my article all those years ago because there's another reason I'm so obsessed by this conspiracy theory. It's not just a seemingly widespread Iraqi belief that America decided their team's fate. It's also because of something the Romanian referee told me, something that could help me get to the truth.

Players I saw in the Iraq. I think it was one of the best team. Did you feel that there was something going on around that perhaps was bigger than football? Around, all the... I was the... A force, a sound, repeat. You could feel something.

A current, there was a current. A duvince, there was. You know, I mean, you listen to the earth that some countries were not obliged. You know, I mean, you listen to that, he seems pretty uncomfortable, and he says there was a rumor floating around that certain countries were undesirable or not wanted. And then off mic, I pushed him on it,

and that's when he said, No terrorists in America. And that's this phrase that's been, that's been rattling around in my head ever since. A single phrase said after I turned off my recorder, but one it seemed like Yon wanted me to hear. No terrorists in America. What did he mean with those words?

And how did it relate to USA in 94? I tell Ben, I'd track down the phone number for the main guy from the US State Department back then too. The guy Alan Rothenberg confirmed had been on the ground in Doha. and who had seemingly been stationed at the US embassy in Islamabad in charge of narcotics and law enforcement. And when I'd called him up, he said, what, how did you get my name? How did you get my number?

I said, well, I read it in the New York Times. And he said, oh, like, call me back. And I called, what did he say? The phone was disconnected and it was never connected again. That's when I thought, why would that happen? Now, the most plausible reason he put the phone down on me It's probably because he isn't allowed to discuss any aspect of his security work with anyone, not least a nosy foreign journalist.

And with someone like me bothering him, it would make sense to kill the number maybe. The truth is, I've got no idea what happened. But the thing is about conspiracy theories, when you start looking for evidence, everything can start to look suspicious. It's the flag fluttering in the vacuum of space. He didn't want to talk about it. So he killed, but he's not. embassy can get in contact? Unless the US embassy a concert in Islamabad didn't pay their phone bill. Right. And just got cut off at that moment. It's a possibility. Okay. All right. Well, you know,

I think first, poor of call, you know, I think you've got to go back to Yon. It's been a long time since you've spoken to him. So I think you need to go back to him and try and find out who told him what he told you. Yeah. No terrorists in America. You think you've got a way back to Yon? Oh yeah. I mean, look, Yon's,

Yon was, you know, on TV as a kind of pundit on like the version of a match of the day that they've got in Romania. So he's pretty high profile. So I think he's still going to be around. I would have heard if he wasn't around anymore. And my mate, Emmy is still, I mean, I've worked with Emmy on loads of stories. He knows everyone in Romanian football. Yeah. All right, well, let's start there.

Right, all right, I'll make some calls and I'll let you know how we get on. Let's do it. All right. See you later. See you later. Bye, right. And just like that, Ben's on board. And I'm booking a trip to chase shadows in Romania. Ten days later, it's Sunday morning, and I'm in Bucharest.

Church bells are calling the faithful to prayer, and I meet in my friend and local journalist, Emmy. Sir, I need a lot. It has been a while. You're not getting any shorter, I can tell you that. Hello, Charlie, James. All right, nice to me. Oh, you're English? Yeah.

When I lived in Bucharest, Emmy and I worked on a load of stories together, so he knows everyone. And more importantly, knows where to find Yon. So Emmie's mate Charlie here will be driving us two hours away to Yon's apartment. I always do good care of you. You always did take care of good care of me.

Okay. Right, we're off. Driving towards Yon's house, I realise it's been over 10 years since we last met. A lot has changed since then. I'm hoping Yon's memory is sharp. I'm hoping he'll give me some answers. But what happened in Doha is now 30 years ago. How much does anyone remember from that far back?

This is his place, is it? This block. Oh, that's him? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's outside. Yon is waiting for us outside of his communist-era apartment block. Back in 2013, he was on TV most nights. He was confident, a little brash even.

I didn't recognize him. Now he looks his age. Maybe he'd say the same about me. I mean, I shaved my head since the last time I saw him. But as we get closer, I noticed he has prayer beads in his hand. Yon? What do you watch? Yon Jahn, you'll watch it.

Okay, okay, let's go inside. Yon leads us into his building, into the lift that will take us up to his home. Hey, take my shoes off? No, no, no. Okay. Yon's apartment is cluttered with piles of newspapers and old trinkets covering everything. trinkets covering every surface. Okay, nice place.

He clearly lives alone. He isn't on TV much these days. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. He does remember the last time we spoke, though. He knows what we want to talk about. I feel nervous, and I sense he feels nervous too. I sip a little water.

Then I finally build up the courage to ask the question I've traveled hundreds of miles to ask. You said to me that you were told we don't want any terrorists in America. When you said you felt the pressure, was it from the US government or the observers? Where did the pressure come from? Coming up in the next episode of Shadows on the pitch. The glaciers only for you. Because it's dangerous. Why is it dangerous?

This is... Listen to the latest episode now on BBC Sounds. Shadows on the pitch is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 5 Live. It's presented by me, James Montague, written by Emma Wetherall and Ben Wyatt, and the mix and sound design is by Melvin Rickaby. Archive clips, courtesy of CGTN sports scene, first post-America, spitting image productions, and C-SPAN. Episodes of Sports Strangers Crimes Presents, Shadows on the pitch, are released weekly, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

But if you can't wait, you can listen to the latest episodes a whole week before anyone else, first on BBC Sounds. Throughout this World Cup, David Beckham has been everywhere, in the stands, in commercials during ad breaks, sorry, hydration breaks, which is wild when you consider he was once the most hated man in Britain. I turned around to a fan and he was screaming about my wife and about Brooklyn, right to my face and wouldn't even look away. How do you go from that to being a billionaire?

That's next time on Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives wherever you get your podcasts.