Guerrilla History - Intelligence Briefing: The Beautiful Game w/ Alexander Aviña

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

Guerrilla History- Intelligence Briefings will be roughly a twice monthly series of shorter, more informal discussions between the hosts about topics of their choice.  Patrons at the Comrade tier and above will have access to all Intelligence Briefings. We have a fun intelligence briefing this time, with a special guest!  For this conversation about football (soccer to some of you) and the politics surrounding it, we bring on fan favorite Professor Alexander Aviña.  You can find Alex's website at alexanderavina.com, and you can follow him on twitter @Alexander_Avina. Your hosts are immunobiologist Henry Hakamaki, Professor Adnan Husain, historian and Director of the School of Religion at Queens University, and Revolutionary Left Radio's Breht O'Shea. Follow us on social media!  Our podcast can be found on twitter @guerrilla_pod.  Your contributions make the show possible to continue and succeed!  Please encourage your comrades to join us, which will help our show grow. To follow the hosts, Henry can be found on twitter @huck1995, and also has a patreon to help support himself through the pandemic where he breaks down science and public health research and news at https://www.patreon.com/huck1995.  Adnan can be followed on twitter at @adnanahusain, and also runs The Majlis Podcast, which can be found at https://anchor.fm/the-majlis and the Muslim Societies-Global Perspectives group at Queens University, https://www.facebook.com/MSGPQU/.   Breht is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio, which can be followed on twitter @RevLeftRadio cohost of The Red Menace Podcast, which can be followed on twitter at @Red_Menace_Pod.  You can find and support these shows by visiting https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/. Thanks to Ryan Hakamaki, who designed and created the podcast's artwork, and Kevin MacLeod, who creates royalty-free music.

You don't remember Den Van Booh? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to a guerrilla history intelligence briefing. Gorilla History is the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. Reminder for listeners that intelligence briefings are our Patreon episodes, half of which come out on early release, like this episode, and half of which are Patreon exclusives. Today's intelligence briefing is a little bit different than usual because I'm not just joined by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan, Usain, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? Oh, I'm doing great.

It's very exciting. And Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Excited to learn in this conversation. Absolutely. And today, like I said, it's a little bit different than usual.

We have another guest on our intelligence briefing, fan favorite, Professor Alexander Avina. Hello, Alex. How are you doing today? Great, Henry. Thank you. Good morning to you guys. It's a pleasure to be on again. It's always nice to see you. And we've got a very fun conversation coming up today. Actually, one that you suggested to us on Twitter. So thanks for the suggestion. We're going to be talking about the beautiful game. So I guess a way of getting into this conversation, and I'm taking a cue from Brett here where sometimes in Revolutionary Left Radio, he'll have his guests announce what their ideological tendencies are,

to kind of ground the conversation before they get into it. So let's do something similar here. How long each of us have been interested in football as well as what club we support? Adnan, why don't we start with you? How long have you been into football and who do you support? Well, I grew up in California, idolizing the San Jose earthquakes and in the old NASL league and following the Cosmos and, of course, Pelle. had come and we were all very excited about these great stars coming over from europe these global

stars as well as latin american stars and the n asl was really fun and we had a local team so i started paying attention to soccer as we called it then but football as we often know it and at that time i played a little youth uh soccer to a very low standard um but then subsequently got interested in club soccer globally and have become an Arsenal fan. And I'm very glad that you mentioned that this was akin to an ideological tendency, because regardless of the orientation of the club, one definitely feels and perceives your identification, at least as strongly as many of our political positions is the position of your club that you follow.

So that is all that is good and every other team is pretty much evil and needs to be opposed. So anyway, I love that perspective and I love the club culture of following football globally. I just love that kind of intense identification. So that's my story with it. So I follow a team in the English Premier League Arsenal from London. Alex, why don't we turn to you next? How long have you been involved with football and who do you support? So, you know, I had the, at this point, I think it's the fortune of being raised by a Mexican migrant father who still to this day is completely obsessed with football.

So I've probably been playing, I started playing, you know, in the streets in Mexico where I lived when I was younger, when I was six or seven. and when we came to the U.S., I've been playing from the age of eight up until I officially retired after I messed up my knee in the early 30s. Like, I played way too long. But I grew up playing club soccer in California. I ended up playing college soccer in the Bay Area in Northern California and then would play on the summers on like the U.S. S.L League, which is kind of like a semi-pro. So actually, I got to play in the U.S. Open, I got to play one summer against San Jose. clash. So that was pretty cool. So that's one of the, the, the, the, the teams that came out

of the, the original ASL, uh, San Jose earthquake. So that's pretty cool. Um, I, as I mentioned to you guys before, like the teams that I support, I support and I blame my father for this. And then once you feel a team, you feel it with your heart, right? And all your emotions and it's difficult to switch. So in the, I, I, I follow the Mexican league most, most closely. And, and we support a club America, which a lot of my Mexican, Mexican, Mexican American comrades give me so shit about that all the time. And then we also grew up watching the great Mexican forward Hugo Sanchez in the 80s and early 90s and he played for Real Madrid. So yeah, the two teams that I support are awful in so many different ways. But, you know, when they're on the pitch, my heart goes to

these clubs and that's who I end up supporting. And really knowing and fully aware these horrible contradictions. And Brett, what about you? How long have you been involved in football? and who do you support? Yeah, so as you know, a Midwesterner, football is huge here, and I was into it my whole life. I played Little League the first moment that I could. And so, you know, I'm a lifelong Nebraska Cornhuskers fan and Green Bay Packers fan, baby.

Let's go. Yeah. Everybody's laughing, but Henry told me we're doing a whole hour-long episode on football. I got all my stats out, all my old playing cards. I'm ready to talk about football, and then I don't even know these teams anymore. It's okay, Brad. I come from a Green Bay Packers supporting family as well. I mean, my entire region is Green Bay Packers supporters. So, I mean, that conversation is something else that we could talk about some other time, maybe.

I mean, a publicly owned professional sports team, that does fit within the ideological tendency of this show, but not quite the conversation that we're going to have today. Also named after workers, but I digress. Yes, absolutely. The Acme Packers. That's right. You know, though, that we called it the beautiful game. known it wasn't about it should iron i mean it should have been obvious right my bad my bad uh yeah so just briefly for myself uh i played uh soccer as we call it where i come from since i was pretty young i was terrible from a technical standpoint but i had a high engine and i i saw the field well but from a technical standpoint absolutely abysmal um yeah i also coached

wrote articles. Actually, the first podcast I ever appeared on was when I was about 18 or 19 years old. It was the Finnish football show. And now I am the English language social media manager for the club that I support, which is Rubin Kazan, two-time Russian Premier League winner, one-time Russian Cup winner famously beat Barcelona in, yeah, in Barcelona. So as well as, you know, some other. That was a great day. It was a great day. And we have some other pretty famous victories in Europe too, but I digress. I don't think that the listeners care that much. But if you want to follow that account at FCRK underscore E.N on Twitter, that's me.

Anyway, away from me, let's get into the conversation about football itself. So we're recording this on July 8th. So just before the finals of both the European championships, where Italy will be playing England and right before the final of the Copa America where Brazil will be playing Argentina. So some very big games coming up and we're not going to know how they come out, but listeners, you'll be hearing this, unless you're on our Patreon, you'll be hearing this after these games took place. So you'll know the results.

Alex, why don't I pitch it over to you? Basically, just go wherever you want with this conversation. You were the one who brought up the subject. There's a lot that we can talk about. so let's just see where you want to go with it. Man, Brett's comments took me back to, like, middle school and all the football players just talking mad shit to those of us who decided to play soccer.

So it's, thanks, Brett, you took me back. And that type of rivalry. It was a different, it was a special challenge to play, growing up to play and playing football, the real football in the U.S. But anyway, we could, that's another conversation. Look, I think Adnan and Henry, I think you guys are downplaying your, your soccer ability, right? So like the great Uruguayan, like one of my favorite writers of all

time, I think this is the guy who started in a certain way radicalizing me when I first read his books in college is Eduardo Galliano, right? The great, he died maybe seven, eight years ago. He has a wonderful book called Soccer and Sun and Shadow as it's translated into English. And in his, in his preface, he says, you know, I used to go to sleep dreaming that I was like the best player in Uruguay, which Uruguay is an amazing football. country. It's a country of a couple million, but they've won the World Cup a couple of times. They produced an amazing amount of talent. And they really took football to a global stage in the early 20th century. He said, but when I actually stepped onto the field, that was the worst little

wooden leg that the fields had ever seen. Right. So, but that didn't stop, right. So his ability on the pitch didn't stop his ability to write and to love and to support a game that he really portrayed in its best form as a radical form of democracy, particularly when you look at different types of contexts in Latin America, especially where, you know, soccer starts in the 19th century because of the British, right? So, which is really, so if you look at Latin America in the 19th century and you see the countries where soccer took off as opposed to where baseball took off, you really get to see like who was the prime imperial influence in those countries, right? So in those countries where baseball is popular to this day, usually those were the countries

that suffered a lot of American imperial influence. Same versus the countries, particularly in the Southern Cone, they suffered, you know, that the impact and the influence of British Capital and Empire during the 19th century. And in the Mexican case, it's kind of interesting because northern Mexico is really baseball, right? The part that's closer to the U.S. is baseball crazy. But in the center and in the south, you had soccer that was brought over by Cornish miners in the case of Pachuca, which was an old mining town.

And then on the Caribbean, on the Gulf of Mexico coast, you had a. a Scottish steel plant owner who brought soccer to the state of Rakhuz. So it's really, and then, you know, for the longest time, up until maybe the mid to late 1920s, in places like Brazil, black players or people who are visibly identifiable as black weren't really allowed to play, which is kind of crazy now that we think about Brazil, right? When you think about Brazil as a footballing power, you think about black players, you think about mixed-race players as being the best, right?

Pele was one of the best when I'm around. my Argentine friends, I say he's second best, but we can talk about that later. But really, you had players in Brazil in the 1920s who, there's stories of them having to cover their face and rice powder or having to spend hours and hours before games straightening out their hair so they could just get on the pitch and play. Why was an exception to that? They did allow black players pretty early on, but a place like Brazil did not. So for me, the way I think about soccer is it provides a really interesting vantage point

into these different societies and their histories, beyond just this beautiful game that I thoroughly enjoy that I'm obsessed about. And unfortunately for my two kids, they're also now obsessed with and they've been playing for a while now. But at its best, someone like Eduardo Galliano would say this is a radical democratic exercise.

At its worst, and if you read that book, Soccer in Sun and Sun and Shadow, it gets really pessimistic toward the end as he talks about a game that has become corporatized, commodified, and behold into transnational corporate interests. And we really see that on display, I think, with the Copa America, right, the South American Footballing Championship going on right now,

the final this weekend, Brazil, versus Argentina, and the Euro Cup, the European Championship that's also been going on, and you see England this weekend will take on Italy. And you have these weird tensions, at least from my perspective, where those of us who love the game, love watching the game. And honestly, like last summer, what got me through, and I feel super guilty about this, But what got me through the worst part of being locked up, essentially, to not get sick,

was the restarting of soccer, right? Like, fully aware that these players were being forced to play and that they were placing their lives in danger. But being able to watch this game that I love, like really got me and my sons through this really difficult moment for our family. So there's the actual game on the pitch that we love and enjoy, and then there's this broader context in which, like everything else, right, this game doesn't escape the power and the interests of global capital.

It's a really good point, and I guess just to keep that flow going. It's not just the corporate interests that get involved in football. It's politics as well. And I know that there's intentional attempts to keep politics separated from football. That's why we have some institutions banning things like the rainbow flags from being displayed by stadiums, which we can bring up in just a bit. But this is a long tradition of politics being inextricably tied with football. Famously, since we've brought up Italy, who is going to be playing in the finals of the European championships and who I'm supporting in that match because I'm 50% Italian, just to put my allegiances out there for the listeners to know.

But famously, Italy back in the 1930s won back-to-back World Cups and the lead up to the Second World War. and that team was really a propaganda arm of the fascist Mussolini government. They were touring all over the world and were used as just a sheer propaganda tool. There's no other way to put it to really launder the image of that regime. And similar things are happening today, including Hungary, where Victor Orban is, of course, a kind of neo-fascist leader of the kind of country, and Hungary at this point, they had almost a miraculous escape from their group in the European championships, but at the same time, Hungary as a country is also hosting a bunch

of these matches in major tournaments, both at the club level and the national level. And this is, again, as a propaganda piece, to try to make the regime more palatable to people who perhaps don't ideologically believe in them. I don't know if there's anybody that anybody wants to jump in and none. Well, just, I mean, I think it is interesting. There is the propaganda value of success, and we could talk a little bit more about some of the research that has shown that hosting a major one of these international tournaments or having success in them tends to redound to the benefit of the current government, almost as if they get the credit for that what the team on the pitch does. That's both domestically. And then, of course, there is this

kind of international propaganda value. But it's very interesting that there's been such a close connection. I mean, you know, in relation to Eduardo Galliano's great kind of Marxist philosopher, you know, talking about a radical democratic kind of experience when, you know, football at its best. But in the history of soccer or football, there's so many overlaps between success and dictatorships. Like if you look at the early success of a team like Real Madrid that established its global reputation because of its success in the European club championship, you know, that all happened really under Franco, you know, under dictatorship. And similarly, Benfica, Portuguese team also did. very very well that we're talking about 1950s early 60s also did very very well during the period of the Portuguese dictatorship and these were extensions in some ways of you know kind of the

geopolitical washing of of these regimes because they were having success in a very popular sport that was becoming much more globally you know people globally were interested in it and so different phases and different connections between politics and, you know, this game are quite interesting to observe, a game that in some ways its early history, as Alex was talking about in England, you know, comes from industrial workers in the north. Most of these clubs were founded as working people's kind of associations for sport and, you know, entertainment and just a kind of part of their culture, in contrast with things like rugby and cricket, which also were important sports and the global importance of cricket is because of the British Empire.

So it's also kind of interesting to see why some countries ended up becoming more oriented towards football. And part of it might have to do with that popular kind of character of the game. You don't need a lot of equipment. The ball is round. You know, you need a field. You need a ball. That's it. And maybe you can make your own ball.

And, you know, people can play it. It's a demotic sport because it doesn't have a lot of, you know, technical rules. It doesn't have a lot of equipment. It can be played almost anywhere. And that's really, you know, one of the reasons why I was always attracted by it is because it seemed to me a third world sport. A sport that third world players could just through the. their skill rise to a high level without it having to be so professionalized, which is maybe partly why Galliano is pointing to changes in the game that are turning it much more into,

you know, something that's corporate controlled and promoted, and these confederations make all these dirty deals with the sponsors, and also even with holding, you know, holding major tournaments in countries that have terrible records for human rights or, you know, suppression of democracy. And as long as they can get the sponsors, you know, not to have any problems with it, then everybody's happy, except, of course, the people who enjoy this game and who care about its real roots in, you know, social kind of equality and justice, that ethos. So it's very interesting that that contrast between the dictatorship success with soccer. and, you know, kind of the global popularity of the game

that has its roots much more in this egalitarian spirit. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think Antonio Gramsci referred to soccer as an open-air kingdom of human loyalty, right? And I think that's like, that's one of the coolest ways to describe it. I think Albert Camus, right, like he also was a, he's a goalkeeper, right? So he has this thing where he says something like, everything I know about morals I learned from soccer. Right. So that's like the good stuff.

The dictatorship part's really interesting, right? I think that's the sun in the shadow, right? That's like the two models that Agalliano focuses on. I think that frame his history of soccer through his trademark vignette style. That Italian team of the 1930s, right? Like, they're two best players that were naturalized Argentine. So that's really interesting to think about like nationalism. And then they had to bring in two dudes from Italy, I mean from Argentina, who helped them win.

And I think one of them scored, Orsia, I think is the one who scored the goal in the 38 final, but I can't remember. And then the famous example, two of the Brazilian national team that won the World Cups in 1958, 1962, and 1970, and people like Pele became really useful tools for the Brazilian military dictatorship that was in power from 64 up until 1985.

But even within that example, you had the famous, one of my heroes, footballing and political heroes, the Brazilian number eight midfielder assault, Socrates, right, who led a democracy movement from the Brazilian club that he played at, Corinthians in the early 80s. And that, you know, they went out to the pitch and they wear jerseys that said democracy now on the bat, right, democracy on the back of their jerseys. And they structured their club and their team along these radical democratic

horizontal principles. Like, everyone had an equal voice from like the water guy to, to the person technically in charge of like the finances of the club, right? They wanted, it was a form of prefigrative politics for Brazilian society as a way to get out of the military dictatorship, which is really cool. Another really cool example that provides a son, as opposed to the dictatorship's appropriation of football, is the FLN in Algeria. They had their own national team. Most of the players were Algerians who had been born in France, and they traveled back,

and the way that they participated in the liberation struggle was to play on this subversive band national team that would go around playing wherever anyone would have them, wearing a green jersey. So taking the message of the FLN and Algerian liberation beyond just like the battlefields, but also to the sporting field and to attract popular support internationally for their cause, which I think is a really cool, it's a really cool story as well. And Fanon also famously was another footballer. See, so everyone cool as a footballer, Brett.

You really should start. It's never too late. So again, it's that it's the, there's totally that aspect of it, right? The dictatorships using particularly popular club and national teams to enhance their reputation. There's a horrific story of, there's testimonies of Argentine political prisoners who could hear people cheering for Argentina in the 1978 World Cup from the clandestine houses where they were being tortured and some killed and disappeared, right? They could hear this amazing national team that was, you know, a spectacle to watch on the pitch while they were being prison and then tortured and, in some cases, disappeared by the military dictatorship that greatly benefited from the World Cup in 1978. And then also actually winning the World Cup, though there's a lot of supershadiness around that World Cup. Unsurprisingly, Henry Kissinger is involved, but we can talk about that another time.

He's always involved in these things. And then, so it's, it's, again, it's the sun and the shadow. And I think one of the coolest things, I think Anna, and I'm sorry, I have to go back to this because I'm a historian, to think about how many of these clubs were formed, they were mostly working class clubs, right? So a club in Argentina, like, called Argentina Juniors that famously produced Diego Armando Maradona, they began as an anarchist club, essentially paying homage to the Chicago Martyrs. Chicaritas Jr., another Argentine club began, was formed and began. began in an anarchist book club library in Buenos Aires in the early 1900s as well. The other famous Argentine club, Boca Juniors, also has a very strong working class history and roots based in the Boca neighborhood in Buenos Aires, right?

It's what's happened since then that gives a lot of us pause. And even as we, like, and like Aliano, even as we continue to enjoy this game. Alex, I'm going to butt in for a second because you've, mentioned both Gramsci and Socrates, but you didn't tell the story about Socrates's journey to Italy. Why don't I have you just briefly do that for the listeners who don't know that story? So this is a critical story because Andrew Downey is a British journalist who has written the biography on Socrates. And it's a great biography. I highly recommend it. And he doesn't cover it in the biography. But there is a story that in

after Socrates, who was a, just look him up on YouTube. He was this tall, lanky, like physically he's very awkward. He was a doctor, like he was trained as a doctor, but he wanted to play football. That other famous doctor, Ernesto Che Guevara, also played a little bit as a goalkeeper, but whatever. So once he left Corinthians in the early 80s, 84, 85 maybe, he gets a big offer from an Italian club, Fiorentina, to go play in Europe. And when he arrives in Italy, the story goes. Journalists ask him, like, who was he looking forward to play against? Like, who did he think were the best Italian players that he would be facing?

He said, I don't know. He's like, the only reason I came here is to learn Italian so I could study Gramsci in its original language and learn a little bit about workers' history. That's the type of guy that Socrates was. He did horribly in Italy. Like, he could not deal with the rigid, professionalized world of the Sediah in Italy. and he lasted maybe one or two years before he was back in Brazil because this guy was like Bohemian, he was just in a,

he just wasn't a good fit. Politically, he's also super left. He wasn't a good fit with the world that that professional soccer was becoming in the 1980s. And that's really like a jump off point for global football. I think the late 70s and especially in the 80s where you start to see the branding and the marketing and the introduction of of these transnational corporations really starting to dictate terms in this game but yeah socrates is a fascinating guy and uh yeah that's one of definitely one of

my favorite stories of of any a football story i'll jump in again then because i this will get us to meredana which i think is a conversation that's worth having um since you mentioned your favorites one of your favorite stories of all time being that socrates story which certainly it's also one of mine i'll pitch out the meridana and the pope's story for the for the listeners which, again, is a very, very entertaining story. And then we can talk about Maradonna for a little bit, who I, yeah, I think he's the greatest of all time. That's a conversation may be worth having.

But Maradonna, who, as I said, is generally considered one of the best of all time, if not the best of all time. Very famously had a very left-wing ideology, was friends with Fidel Castro, you know, would frequently call himself a socialist or a communist. he called George W. Bush, human garbage, just quite, quite the character. He had a meeting with Pope John Paul II in the Vatican. And I'm assuming that it was supposed to be some sort of friendly

meeting like, I, you're this big star. Of course, a religious guy. And they have this meeting. And Maradonna brings up the issue of wealth inequality. And Pope John Paul the second says, well, you know, we here at the Catholic Church are very concerned with the welfare and well-being of children in all people. And Maradonna looks up and sees that the ceiling is made of gold. He says, well, if you care about the welfare of children, sell your ceiling then, Amigo, do something, which I, just the acuity of that story. And the fact that Maradonna, who at that point was just this global superstar would still have the temerity to stand up to the Pope in an instant like that is very, I find that to be a very incredible

story and it's somewhat apocryphal as well. I personally hope that it's true. And knowing Maradona, I wouldn't doubt it. I really wouldn't. All right, Maradona, why don't I just pitch it over to you guys. Well, I'm glad you raised, you know, Maradonna. That was, we had a conversation, actually, on the David Feldman show about... We did right after he died. We did right after he died. ...and it is because I think, you know, maybe he's the guerrilla history official greatest

player ever, because you and I both agree, and I have a feeling Alex is going to agree that he was the greatest, and it's both because of what he achieved. on the pitch for Argentina, the hand of God in that World Cup, unbelievable. So the two goals that he scored absolutely encapsulate. What's so amazing about this figure is on the one hand, a spicy bit of craft, you know, of craft, you know, willing to do anything, whatever it took, you know, this kind of scrappy kind of approach to the game, on the one hand, with the hand of God goal, and then with the other just absolutely dizzying brilliance with the ball, the solo goal that stands as the greatest

goal, you know, really in the history of the game. Both were part of, you know, his flamboyant character and also that left-wing audacity and his love and care of, like, the poor people globally. I mean, so he was kind of like a Muhammad Ali in the soccer world, I think. And so that's one reason why I just absolutely love him and think he's the best. And, you know, people can pull out the stats and the goals and, you know, claim that Pele is the greatest. But, you know, if you want to look at the total package of an athlete who was supremely skilled and, you know, had the fierce determination as a competitor, but also had something besides in their personality, something besides just what they did on the pitch. You can't look further than Maradona for his

greatness. And so when we say who's the greatest, I mean, we have to take the whole figure. And we're unfortunately now, you know, used to the Michael Jordan era where, you know, okay, well, you know, he's a global superstar, amazing competitor, but, you know, he was concerned that Republicans also buy shoes, you know, and that would never have entered Maradana's mind. It just wasn't a part of his personality, and we're poorer in sporting cultures globally for the fact that corporate interests have made them pitchmen. And this started really with Pele. I mean, you could see Pele is like constantly, you know, having commercial opportunities and willing to a seed to the dictatorship in Brazil, as Alex already mentioned, but also just corporate,

you know, corporate pitching of products and so on. And so there's a freshness about Maradona that cannot be matched by any modern athlete, I think. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's always good to bring up Maradona a couple of days before England plays in a final, right? Because they still are a little pissed at Marlona. But, yeah, I think I totally agree with Adnan. I think he's also probably like the most tragically flawed, like character in the, I mean, he's up there with like another famous, brilliant, as they would call him in South America, Krak, like when someone says you're a Krak in soccer, you're like the best, you're amazing.

Garincha, who was a Brazilian who, because of Garincha's exploits, Brazil won the 1962 World Cup. But the guy really liked to drink. and he liked a party and he basically drank himself to death, which Socrates also essentially did, right? And Maradona, in a way, was on that level in that he encapsulates like all these like, like a Greek tragic tragedy type of thing, right? But, right, I think you're right, Anon, is that what makes him fresh is that he was from a thoroughly working class background and he never, and from an early age he was

responsible for the welfare of his family, right? he signed his first professional contract when he was 14 or 15 years old. He debuted, I think, at 15 or 16, and he was already paying for his family. And he never forgot where he was from. And that was always, you know, that's why I believe the Pope's story. Like, there's another story where when he was signed to play for Barcelona in the early 80s, the king of Spain took him out on a boat ride. And they're like hanging out.

And all my Alona could do was talk about his father who was a fisherman at one. point of his life, right? Like he's telling the king of Spain, like, whatever, I don't care what you say. I'm going to talk to you about my father who was a humble fisherman and a worker from Argentina. So he had this, like, sensibility that then this working class sensibility that would shape and influence the type of politics that he articulated. And he always spoke his mind. I mean, he was always the rebel against FIFA, right? He was always the rebel against, you know other other players who he felt were just completely subservient to FIFA or corporate interests he's just to speak just to start with his skill i mean like there's no one else like him right

they're undoubtedly like the if you that goal that he scored against england the second goal where he dribbles through their entire well most of their team if you watch that goal on YouTube with the original like Argentine commentator like it's it just the guy like it starts crying at the end like he's like asking on air like what planet are you from uh thank you god for blessing us with this type of foot like the guy is losing it right and and three years after the Falkland war in which England um attacked Argentina right there's a lot there's they they killed a bunch of Argentine soldiers who had had taken over these these islands that Argentina claims as their own, but the British being the empire that they were, and they are,

had taken for themselves in the 19th century, right? And on the one hand, this war did bring down this horrific odious military dictatorship in Argentina. But people like Maradona did not forget that most of these people, these soldiers who were massacred in the Marlinas were conscripted, and they were working class kids like the ones that played in the 1986 World Cup. And this team and the 86th Rock, I would talk about that after that game and say, look, we, you know, before the game they were behaved, they didn't talk about anything about the Malvinas, the Falcons War, and after the game, when they beat England, they're like, yeah, of course, we did it as a way to get back at these people.

The great Larry Linnaker, this British forward English striker, told this story right after Maradona died that they were all getting together on this, like, some sort of like a global aid game when they brought out all these celebrity soccer players, and they're all warming up. So the best of the best are out there. And Maradona gets out there. His shoes aren't tied. His cleats aren't tied.

And he starts juggling the soccer ball. And then he's just, he's juggling it. And then he kicks it straight up into the air as hard as he could. And when the ball was coming down, instead of like trapping and controlling it, he kicked it right back up. And Linnaker said that he did that about 13 to 14 times. He's like, this is unbelievable. No one but Maralona could have done something like that. I know I'm probably not describing this in the best way.

but it's kind of amazing that this guy could have that level of control with the ball. And which is unsurprising since the age of 10, he was like the halftime show for professional soccer games in Argentina. It's his life after the game also that gave him that really took him, I think, to a new level, right? He emerged as this political figure during the pink tide in Latin America, as a big supporter of Hugo Chavez, of Kishner in Argentina, of Eva Morales. he emerged as this guy who hated George W. Bush, right?

So politically, the fact that he emerges in a very public way during the pink tide, during this left of center shift in Latin America also did a lot to his reputation. In Argentina and in a place like Naples in Italy where he played for that club team, it's hard to understand or even describe the level of worship. I don't know how else to describe it, but these people worship him. There's churches in our, there's a church, at least one church, in Argentina, it's like the Church of Maradona, you know, when he died, the way that people mourned him and celebrated him in Naples was pretty amazing to watch. My earliest soccer

memory was the 1986 World Cup, and it's very hazy. I don't remember specifics. I just remember my father talking about that Maradona goal. And then I was lucky enough to watch him in the 90 World Cup where he was different. And then I remember watching him in the 94 World Cup where he completely got jacked by FIFA, and he was kicked out of that tournament. So, yeah, I don't know. He is, I agree with Anand to go back to your original point, Anan, I'll start blabbering because I could talk about my other than all day. But I think he's the greatest holistically,

and what he means to people, and to people around the world, especially in Argentina and in southern Italy, but throughout the world, I think there's no contest between him and any other player who's on that level for their ability on the pitch. I definitely want to make sure that we get to club culture before the end as well as ethnicity for these national teams. Those are two things that we talked about before we hit record that I want to make sure we get on the record.

But before we turn to either of those, I'm going to let Brett have his say because Brett, I'm very sorry that this topic is like very far afield from things that you're usually immersed in. But I do want to make sure that you're able to kind of get in here on the conversation. as well. Yeah, no, this is, this is all incredibly fascinating to me. The closest relationship I really, you know, we joked around earlier, but that I have to, to soccer is my, my wife is Mexican American, her father, first generation from Mexico, from Monterey, and so they're big Tigrace fans. So my son has, Alex has given me the thumbs down, but my son has a bunch of that stuff,

and it's sort of ubiquitous in, in that realm. So that's kind of, that's like my, my family connections, but then I'm also just kind of curious. We're talking about like the working class politics, you know, these political sort of aspects you cannot separate from the game. One aspect of soccer that's always interested me and not really in the American context as much, but is this like explicitly anti-fascist element to it. I don't know if that's a European thing or like where they have these huge banners and like, you know, the red smoke and make a whole thing in the audience about being anti-fascist specifically. And then there's that one iconic image of like the guy given the Sieghale salute

and then the soccer player running over and kicking him in the face. So I was wondering if you guys could talk about that because I'm interested, but I don't know much. I'll hop in first and both Adnan and Alex, feel free to, you know, fill in whatever. But in terms of anti-fascist clubs, and this does transition us to the club culture conversation, there are certainly clubs that have very strong anti-fascist tendencies, anti-fascist histories, anti-fascist ideologies, and are very explicit about it. Alex is wearing a St. Pauli sweatshirt right now.

I've got a St. Pauli scarf just behind me. I've spent quite a bit of time living in St. Pauli personally, which is very famous for having a very left-wing fan base, anti-fascist, anarchist, communist, pro-LGBT, on the top of their stadium, they have two flags. One is a black flag with a skull and crossbones on it, and the other one is a rainbow pride flag. It's the two flags that are flying over their stadium. All of their iconography that's painted on their stadium is all explicitly anti-fascist. You got a pin on one of my hats from the club.

It's a fist smashing a swastika, says St. Pauli fans against the right in German, of course. But that's not the only club, although I'll just briefly mention, there's a book that came out relatively recently from Pluto Press called St. Pauli, like another football as possible or something along those lines. It's a kind of a biography of the club. But there are other clubs, Rayao Vallacano in Spain is a very strongly anti-fascist club and has been for a very, very long time. Livorno in Italy is like explicitly a communist club. essentially. LaVorno is basically the hub of the communist movement in Italy. They celebrate like Stalin's birthday. They've got, you know, posters of Lenin around the stadium and whatnot. Very interesting how that came to be Livorno. Like I said, not only is the communist movement

kind of hub in Italy, but it was mostly dock workers in that area that really brought in that anti-fascist culture. Same thing is in St. Pauly. It's where the docks are in Hamburg. So, yeah, those dock workers are really the radical left-wing soccer supporters, football supporters. And you mentioned this salute, and this will be the last thing I say before I look, the other guys hop in. There's a very famous moment of where Livorno, this very left-wing communist football club in Italy, was playing Lazio, which is almost explicitly a fascist football club based in Rome. There's two big clubs based in Rome, Roma and Lazio. Roma would be kind of your center-leftish club, and Lazio is pretty explicitly far, far-right,

verging on fascistic, just as a club ideology. And they had a player who was playing for them, who literally calls himself a fascist. I don't mean that like tongue-and-cheek. He comes out and says, yes, my ideology is a fascist, but I'm not a racist. And this, of course, is Pablo DeCanio, who a very famous Italian player. When he would score goals playing for Lazio, he would do the Roman salute or fascist salute at the fans of the team. And he did this during one of the games that was Livorno versus Lazio. And as you could imagine, all hell broke loose in the stadium.

So that was very fun. And just very last thing, since we're talking about clashes, since I brought up clashes between supporters, We mentioned St. Pauli. Currently, I am in Rostock at Germany, which overall is a fairly left-wing city. DeLinka has by far the most seats in the city council, but historically there's a very, very large neo-Nazi movement in this city. And the football club here, Hansa Rostock, has a very large contingent, again, historically, of neo-Nazi supporters. So when St. Pauli and Hansa Rostock play one another, there's flares that get fired at one another inside the stadium, usually coming from the neo-Nazis that are supporting Hansa against the St. Pauli supporters. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of clubs all across Europe as well as Alex, I'm sure I'll bring up some of the ones in Latin America that have these left-wing anti-fascist ideologies.

but that's that's just my 10 cents um adnan alex feel free to jump in whoever has something that they want to add Alex uh I guess sure um I think the dock workers is a is a is a really interesting connecting point right because a lot of these ultras or like organized fan groups that they do identify as anti-fascist and on the left um that dock worker or that port city uh identity like links them right it's really interesting to think about. So you have Livorno and it's really cool to like again to hop on YouTube and you can hear the fans singing Bella Chau. It's like really powerful. Right. So you have Livorno, Marseille, Marseille in the French League. Also their ultras are tend to be on

the left. Again, that dock worker identity, that Port City identity. And then Celtic, right, in Scotland as well. In Celtic, their ultras and I cannot for, I cannot remember the specific name of their ultras is that they've been one of the most steadious. fast and consistent supporter for Palestinian freedom and liberation. And that's actually been one of the few recent examples of political activism by professional soccer players that I've seen, particularly by black players in Europe, that during the Gaza, during the latest Israeli bombardment of Gaza, you had professional soccer players in England like Paul Polkva, Wesley Fofana, who after their matches would like walk around

the field like waving the Palestinian flag and that was pretty cool to see um so that the dock worker this stevedore that working class at port city connection is really interesting what complicates is that is that within these clubs you have different organized fan groups right so one club could have like a leftist group and they could also have like a right wing group and it's really it complicates the issue and they usually have to sit in like different parts in the stadium um the the thing about latio that that henry mentioned. Actually, Mussolini's great grandson is playing for Lazio right now. I don't think he's on the first team yet, but he's

coming up. Yeah, he's in their youth team right now. Yikes. Yeah, I mean, of course he's playing on Lazio, which is yeah, I mean, you look at their symbol. It's pretty, it's fascistic to say the least. Let me just in one second, just because you mentioned Mussolini, there was

famously a year or two ago, one of Mussolini's granddaughters, who also is a Lazio supporter, was complaining that some of these left-wing ultras in Italy were very anti-Musilinian, that they needed to respect the name a bit more. And yeah, the Livorno supporters primarily, but as well as some of the other clubs that have left-wing ultra-groups, basically just came outside and started chanting. You can join your leader at her when she was. going to one of the games or something, which of course, you know, could be red as a veiled

threat of sorts, but I think online what people did is they turned her picture upside down. Yes, they did. Yes, they did. So, yeah, anyway. Yeah, it's really fascinating. I mean, you know, these club cultures can be so different. I'm kind of reminded in this moment also of the degradation of a proud club image. And I'm thinking here, really, of FC Barcelona that just announced that it's going to have a pre-season-friendly match with Betar Jerusalem in East Jerusalem. And this is a well-known club that has explicitly anti-Arab policies and caters, it seems, to extreme right-wing Zionist anti-Arab racism. And this is such a betrayal in some ways of,

at least the image of Barcelona that has this motto, Meske an club, more than a club. We are in the community and we represent something more than just football. And what this was often held to meant was, held to mean, was that they had this anti-fascist history and tradition because they were the rivals of Real Madrid that was the club of Franco.

And so they kind of, you know, brought out that kind of Spanish Civil War history in some ways. But it was all really kind of connected to Catalan nationalism. And I think that's also a very interesting thing to remark upon in this context is the way in which both the national teams and certain clubs can play into a kind of nationalism that is exclusive. It may seem like it's a progressive and the Catalan nationalism always presented itself because of that history. of, you know, opposing Franco and fascism of actually being progressive, but it can also easily be recovered into just a different form of extreme nationalism and, you know, paying

less and less attention to that popular roots of workers that we've been just speaking about. And it's also really unfortunate because Barcelona, you know, used to have as a shirt sponsor, they used to donate the front of their shirt. Instead of getting money for it, they would have UNESCO on their shirts. And they also were one of the early adopters of the say no to racism and made a big deal about opposing racism. So the fact that over time they have increasingly abandoned any of those sorts of policies in their club culture, and here are embracing an explicitly anti-Arab club in Israel that is in occupied territory. It has been condemned by the Palestinian Football Association, and there has been a call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions to make sure that FC Barcelona

knows that this is a real violation of the rights of Palestinians. So, you know, it cuts both ways. This corporatization has clearly had an inimical influence on club culture. And it reminds me that we should talk maybe a little bit about like nationalism and that a lot of these national teams are composed of people who are recent immigrants and you know when there's success on the pitch they're held up as what an image of a multi-racial multi-ethnic multi-religious France for example and yet you know who are the you know players who are marked out for criticism particularly when things go wrong, who was made into a scapegoat, how soon is that image of unity, you know, abandoned, you know? It is really quite interesting the national politics with recent immigrations, especially from colonial, you know, former colonies, that whose, you know, best players in some ways are, you know, are these, these diasporic populations, they're not being fully accepted in the countries that they've immigrated.

to and yet when they perform, you know, countries take the credit, you know, for Algerians and West Africans playing in Europe. I'll hop in for a sec. Yeah, Adnan, as you mentioned, France very famously has much of their team represented from individuals from North African as well as West African diaspora populations, many of their best players, many of their best players all time, it's worth saying. But that's certainly not just France that that's happening with. Very interestingly, Romalo Lukaku recently had a just brilliant tournament for Belgium despite the fact that they lost to Italy. He's of Congolese origin and was lighting up the tournament for Belgium. I'll just let that sink in for a second for listeners. But we,

we have many other examples of where you mentioned these individuals are representing their national team for their country and you would expect these individuals to be accepted by their fans and when things are going good they are but when things start to go bad the fans turn on them very quickly and there's two examples that jump to mind pretty quickly on that front from here in Germany there's mezzaduzl of course who is of Turkish origin represented the German national team for years, has a lot of appearances for them, generally played quite well for the German national team. And the Germans accepted him wholeheartedly when things were going well. And then things started to not go so well. And he found himself completely locked out

of the team. Then the media here in Germany started to demonize him for some of his personal opinions, which some of them, yeah, I mean, he's friends with Erdogan, for example, a very iffy position, but this was something that was not really paid attention to when things were going good. But as soon as things started to go bad, he was branded as a, you know, as a Turk rather than as a German. And they use this friendship with Erdogan as a way of saying, hey, this guy is not really German. And another example, as I mentioned before we hit record, Mario Balotelli, who is Italian, who came. to Italy when he was like two months old as a refugee from Africa, was brought up by

these, you know, an older Italian family and wasn't allowed to be considered Italian until he was 18 years old, was bullied all through his younger days because he was black living in Italy. And then when he first broke through on the national team, he was playing very well, playing for some very big clubs and was scoring for Italy quite frequently. It was playing really, really well for the national team. And Italians kind of accepted him at that point. But he very famously has a very bad attitude about the worst attitude of any player in the world. I would just put it out there.

I mean, he has just this atrocious temperament. And his career kind of spiraled out of control. But as soon as things started to go bad, you know, when it could have still been redeemable at that point, the Italian populace really turned on him. There was monkey chance, bananas being thrown at him left and right, both from fans of opposing teams, but as well as the Italian fans. I mean, this is a guy who's playing for the Italian national team, scoring for the Italian national team, scored big goals for them at the Euros in 2012. But again, when things start to go bad, he was otherwise. by them. And I have a theory about why he has this really poor mentality and I'm attributing at least some of it to how rough his upbringing was, having to be a refugee from a very

young age and then being continuously otherized in this country that he felt was his home all the way through up until, you know, he was an adult playing for the country's national team. And then even after that, he was still being otherized despite, I mean, you almost could not be more Italian than Mario Balateli at that point. But yeah, I digress. The ethnicity issue is a very interesting one. Alex, I'm curious, and this is something that we had mentioned earlier before we hit record, any of your thoughts on France or Italy or Germany, but then also how ethnicity

works within the Latin American context as well, because this is something that I'm not as versed and as obviously you would be. Yeah, I think these national teams have been and can be used to exemplify the aspirational ideal of these national societies, right? So that French team that won the World Cup in 1998 famously was a post-colonial team, right? You had their best player, one of my favorite players of all times, and Adinzadon, right, Algerian. You had a Yuri Dorkai, who I think might have been Moroccan or Algerian, I can't remember. you had a variety of players whose families came from these different French colonies in Africa. And because they won, because they emerged as champions, they were seen as, look, this is the,

this is like what French society actually is. Look how great we are. We have somehow put our legate, well, they don't even talk about usually the legacies of colonialism, but they jump straight into the post-colonialism and said, look, we're like, we made it. And the historian, and one of the best people to read about soccer, Laurent Dubois, has a great book about, that 1998 French team. Fast forward four years later and this team just for a variety of regions just crashed out and then the Lepens came out and then all these French right wingers came out and people in the center and even on the left said, look, this is what happens when you allow

immigrants in or this is what happens when when people who say they're French but they're not truly French get on the national team, right? So their loss is attributed to they're not truly French. They don't care about Frenchness. something similar has happened historically in a country like Brazil, right, which for decades has propagated this myth that it's a multiracial democracy. And they would say, look at our national team. That national team shows that we are a multiracial democracy.

And they would contrast themselves to the United States and say, look at the United States versus us. And our national team from the 1950s on, they would point to and say, look, that's what we are. We're a multiracial democracy when, you know, once you dive down beyond that into like statistics and power and you see it's one of them, to this day, one of the most unequal class societies in the world, largely along racial lines, right? So again, these national teams, in the good moments, they serve as, they serve the purpose for these countries to say that's what we are. That's the best that we are. And our national teams exemplify that.

But when things go wrong, then they have these erstwhile scapegoats that they could then use and place the blame on. I think another interesting dynamic, and this is something closer to home, is this idea that really started to come out in the U.S. in the 90s and 2000s when the Mexican national team would come to the U.S. and play, particularly when they would play against a U.S. national team. And they'd go into a stadium, I went there in the late 90s, like the Rose Bowl, the Rose Bowl in Southern California. and it was like 95,000 Mexican fans and 5,000 American fans. And you even had like commentators like Samuel Huntington, infamous author of The Clash of Civilization, one of his pieces of evidence that he cites for what he called the Hispanic challenge that Mexican immigrants were going to bring about the downfall of the United States,

he would cite these games as an example of how Mexicans were not assimilating and becoming Americanized enough because they were still rooting for the Mexican national team. And when they would come, when the national team would come to the U.S. and play against the U.S. national team, these supposed Americans were showing their true Mexican colors and they were supporting the Mexican national team. That, I think, has prompted a series of really interesting discussions in the United States. It's just that Americans, by, I mean, I think it's changing, but by Americans by and large, really don't care that much about soccer, at least on the level of like, you know, NFL, NBA, et cetera, baseball. but it gives us a really interesting insight into some of the racial and class divisions that exist within U.S. society. Something else that we haven't brought up, and this is the other part of the beautiful game

and that's been around practically as long as the men have been playing, is the women that play the game, right? And I think that also there's a really interesting gender dynamics, both in terms of what soccer does in relation to creating masculinities and then also creating feminities throughout the 20th century and 21st century. And particularly when it comes to the most recent issue is fair compensation, right, and the U.S. women's national team, which is one of the most dominant, probably the most dominant in the history of women's football, not getting paid at the same level that the men's team is getting paid, a team that infamously is not very good and failed to qualify for the last World Cup, right? And there's been this ongoing, really interesting debate led by the women's national team that despite them losing court cases and suffering a lot of horrific misogynistic blowback for their demand. for parent compensation, they're still out there protesting.

And you had players like Megan Rapino, who was out there also taking the knee, right? She was one of the first to come out in solidarity with Kaepernick, and that really pissed off this U.S. Soccer Federation as well. So, you know, so in Latin American countries, right, it's been interesting to see the slow emergence of, like, professional women's soccer league or even just the question of female referees and kind of how one Steve's thing, happen, they expose these gender inequalities. For anyone who's interested in reading more about the history of the women's game,

Brenda Elsie and Joshua Nato have a great book called Footballer as a history of women's soccer. Brenda Elsie also has a great book on Chilean soccer in the early 20th century in terms of class, masculinity and its working class origins, which I highly recommend. But anyway, like I said at the beginning, right, like this game allows us like a vantage point into these different social formations and we get to see how these societies operate in a way by looking at the beautiful game. And I think it's a really interesting way to think about this game beyond just enjoying the actual game as it's being played on the field.

I'll just throw out something very quickly and then, yeah, Brett Adnan, feel free to add whatever you want. But when you mention the women, of course, this is a very important point of this discussion. I just want to dispel one thing that many listeners, I'm sure have heard those that are interested in football, that is, which is in regards to pay equity between male and female athletes playing for the national team, a lot of the time you have these sexist bigots say, well, you know, if the women took in the money that the men did, then they could be paid the same. But there's just no money in the women's game. Again, we're looking specifically at the pay associate with playing with the national team. We're not talking about

you know, somebody who plays for Manchester City's men's team versus somebody who plays for the Portland Thorns in the NWSL, which is the women's professional soccer league in the United States. We're talking about somebody who plays for the U.S. men's national team, their compensation for playing for the men's national team, and somebody who plays for the women's national team, their compensation for playing for the women's national team. The women's national team takes in more revenue than the men's national team does. not only are they more successful on the pitch in terms of the women's national team has won numerous World Cups, Olympic gold medals. They're the most successful team in the history of

women's football, whereas as Alex, you just mentioned, the men's team is just in a perpetual state of underperforming. I mean, kind of like embarrassingly so for the past few years, at least. But not only are the women performing better, they take in more money and they still get paid less than the men, which is a very interesting point of that argument and something that the listener should be aware of because, of course, that'll be one of the first things that you hear is an argument against pay equity between the male and female athletes playing for the national team. Well, if the women took in the money that the men did, they'd get paid the same. No, they don't because they actually take in more money and they still get paid less.

So it's an important thing to keep in mind. Yeah, and it goes, and you're totally right, Henry, And it goes beyond the pay, the compensation. It also goes to training facilities, to transportation, right? Like really pushing for equity on all these levels, right? Both at the club level and at the national team level. And so it's, yeah, like I said, it provides us a really interesting vantage point into gender in these different societies and countries. And I'm knocking stuff over now.

Just one other quick point, as you mentioned, the facilities, artificial pitch is a big topic. So in the last Women's World Cup, they were using artificial pitch throughout, which the athletes hate. It's really, really tough on the joints. None of them like to play on it. And it's something that no men's national team

would ever accept playing on, other than maybe some of the Nordic countries which have artificial pitch at their national stadiums for fairly obvious reasons. We're talking for a major tournament, it would never be accepted by any, of the men's national teams to play on artificial pitch, and yet it was being mandated upon the women's players, despite their protests, because that was what, you know, was deemed acceptable for them.

They have a completely different standard placed upon them than the male athletes do, despite, again, playing at the same equivalent level, at the international level, just totally different and very, very infuriating. Brett, Adnan? well those are all really amazing points i think also one topic that i'm interested in just as a last sort of issue to be thinking about is that we are in the midst of two big national tournaments international tournaments of national teams in conmibal the copa america and also the euros and I was thinking a little bit about rooting interests. Like if it's not your country or you're not very nationalistically oriented,

it's interesting to approach these tournaments. Who do you root for and on what basis? And I guess I'm thinking a little bit of the fact that England is in the final. And English fans do have a certain reputation. So we haven't talked much about fans and fan cups. But I read a wonderful book Among the Thugs by Bill Buford, kind of this ethnographic study of soccer fans were known as hoodlums and during Thatcher's kind of period were sometimes demonized as a source of all kinds of social problems. And sometimes they were characterized as being

susceptible or engaged and involved with far-right kind of politics. And that's the certainly one element of the English fandom for their national team that I find remarkably distasteful. It's a little bit like what we were talking about when Le Pen comes out or the Le Penists come out and criticize the French national team that they scapegoat the racialized players and so on. But I was, you know, hoping, I'm hoping that I will be able to say at the end of the final with Italy, like Björga Lillelian, the Norwegian commentator after a victory by Norway over England. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana, Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me? Your boys took a hell

of a beating. So that's how I root. One of the greatest calls of all time, by the way, listeners, just look up, your boys took a hell of a beating and it'll come up on YouTube. And it's just, it's fantastic. Your boys took a hell of a beating and the Norwegian accent. It makes it. It's so fantastic. And Alex, actually, I believe I sent you a little video that a football podcast put together using that commentary that I thought was pretty humorous. It would, my explanation of it would not be conducive for the listeners having any idea of what I'm talking about.

So I'm not going to bother. But it's just a great call. And so everybody should look up. Just go to YouTube and Google or YouTube. Your boys took a hell of a beating and you'll find it. Brett, what are your final thoughts? We'll go around the horn one more time on the way out the door. Yeah, I just find this whole thing very fascinating.

I'll have to get more into it myself. I'm sort of curious as to why it doesn't take off in the U.S. like it seems to take off everywhere else. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that closing. I always thought, though, I remember, I don't know if it was a guest on Rev Left that mentioned this or something, but there's this deep sense of community in these clubs and these cultures that develop over time.

And I always like this idea that somebody mentioned to me of like having a United States, like left-wing soccer club. you know, sort of league where like, you know, people on the left, we form our own, like, regional teams or something and we go around and play with one another to build community, to get to know each other across state lines, et cetera. I always like that idea. But yeah, those are some of my closing thoughts. And the intertwinedness and the deep connection between these sports and politics

and class is something that is perpetually fascinating to me. And we have one of your children. and Brett saying hi to us, which is very cute. And I'm sorry that the listeners can't see this. They can only hear it. But yeah, very cute. Left-wing politics in American football soccer. I don't know if you guys have anything that you want to chime in.

I'll just throw out that Portland and Seattle in terms of MLS teams. Both have fairly progressive fan bases. I mean, we're not talking like Livorno or St. Pauli, but they do have fairly progressive fan bases. And if you're looking at below the MLS level, so in more of like a semi-professional kind of tier, there are more clubs that would fit into that. And FC Detroit is one that is pretty well known for having a pretty left-wing fan base with, you know, all of the flares and the banners, the anti-fascist banners that you would typically associate that with.

And they're a fairly new club, like I said, kind of at that semi-professional level, but worth checking out for anybody in the Great Lakes region, FC Detroit, you know, give them some of your support. Alex Adnan, any additional thoughts on that? I think here in Phoenix, we have a second division team, Phoenix Rising, and the Ultra as a fan group, Los Bandidos, have been great in terms of trying to foster that anti-fascist, more left identity. This club, one of the co-owners of the club is Didier Drogba,

and he actually played here. a couple years ago. He was like in his 40s and... For a couple of years, though, I think. Yeah, yeah, he did. At least two. You know, he didn't run much, but when he wanted to do something, it was amazing. He would like do something amazing.

But, you know, he, there was a scene a couple years ago where the Los Banditos ultras were holding up. They would always hold up like anti-fascist symbols or the refugees welcome signs. And after the game, Drogba went and grabbed, you know, the sign and started running with it and showing it, right? which is here in a place like Phoenix and in Arizona with our history of anti-immigrant politics, that was a really meaningful thing for him to do. And I think this fan group, like many others, right, particularly in the northwest and the northeast,

they have both at the MLS, but especially at the second and third division levels, have tried to foster that, that anti-fascist identity that they see in Europe and in Latin America. I love what Brett said about community. I think one of the interesting things about football in the U.S. is that since early 20th century, it has allowed for the formation of community amongst migrant communities who have come to the United States.

Whether it's European migrants coming in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, or Mexican migrants who's, you know, following the railways, made it up to Detroit in the 40s, and then forming their own teams based on identity and then playing on a Sunday adult league, it's been really, it's been historically and currently an important way of forming community at the very local level.

My father, when I was growing up in the U.S., my father played on a team that was all like relatives from his own little hamlet, rural hamlet in Mishuacan, from Mishuacan, Mexico. The cool thing was we formed our own community in a largely white space in central California. The bad thing is they were in a league

where they were really the only Mexican team and they would fight a lot. So for a variety of reasons, right? So I had this really interesting upbringing of watching them play really good football and then watching them beat the crap out of other teams physically. weird. But, but it, and you see it in a place like Los Angeles where there's multiple adult

Sunday leagues where teams are organized based on national origin, on states, on communities, and it's just a way of forming communities, especially for migrant peoples who come to a country that they don't know necessarily and are trying to find a place. They're trying to get a foothold. And in that regard, football becomes a really important way of forming that community. And it's beautiful to see. Obviously, there's a shadow site to it, but the sun is really, I think, for my family, at least, really allowed us to form a community as migrants coming to California in the mid to late 1980s. And then these micro-localities then will come together when the Mexican national team comes to play in the U.S. or Mexican professional teams come to play the U.S.

and you get to see that play out in the stadium. It's not perfect, right? If you followed what's been going on with the Mexican national team, they've been sanctioned a bunch because some of their fans have made the chanting of homophobic slurs a thing. And there's been a, which is horrific, there's been a sustained effort on various levels to push back against it. But at the very local level, what Brett said is right. It is allowed historically and currently, it allows migrant communities in the U.S. from wherever they are. As long as they play football, and that allows them to kind of create community in a place that they often identify as hostile. Adnan, your final thoughts on the conversation?

I just think that was a great conclusion, you know, from Alex, you know, from the very, very local. We've talked also about the global game, but also it comes back to community and belonging in a way for people to connect with one another. And it's got a powerful role to play in, you know, the grassroots culture of any country. where people can come together and play because it's such a democratic game and could be played anywhere. It doesn't take much equipment.

It's really just about connecting with other people, forming a team, and enjoying yourselves together and having that social support that comes with getting to know one another. That's maybe why it's the beautiful game. Yeah, great thoughts. And I'll just tell one brief story that I think might be a little bit entertaining

for folks to talk about that community aspect So the team that I do the English language social media for, Rubin Kazan is a, like I said, a professional team in Russia based in the Republic of Taristan, which is just over 50% Muslim and about 30% Orthodox Christians. So a very not quite evenly split, but a very religiously diverse republic within Russia. And so this community within the city, football is not the biggest sport in the city. The hockey is, of course. But whether the people are Muslim or Christian, they're able to come together and support both the hockey team as well as the football club. You know, the stadium is right in front of the grand mosque of the city. It's very beautiful.

One of the stadiums is right in front of the grand mosque of the city. But this is the amusing part of the story. is that, again, it comes down to this kind of community that's there. Our Russian language, social media manager, is leaving the club. So they're trying to fill the position. And when they put out the flyer for qualifications of what you needed to have, you had to be willing to move to the city. You had to speak Russian.

You had to like horse meat, which is one of the delicacies of the city. So trying to, you know, make sure that the people kind of fit the ethos. And when they do the celebrations, the manager is dressed up in traditional Tudder regalia. It's a very fun culture, but yeah, that's just my little personal shout out there for the club that I, that I do stuff for. Any other final thoughts before we wrap this up? Go Brazil. I mean, there's a thing in Latin America where you can't root for Argentina. You have to root for anyone playing against Argentina.

It's kind of unfair, but it has to do with Argentina's national image and, you know, how they sometimes identify more with, you know, euro than with Latin America. But Brazil is always usually everyone's second favorite team. You have your own unless you're Brazilian and then if I have Mexico, I will root for Brazil. And the Euro Cup. Sorry, go ahead, Donna. No, no, I was just going to say on that, I think also relevant here is that Messi has never won anything with his national team. And as far as I'm concerned, Marodana's legacy should be protected. So go Brazil. If he goes through, he may be the greatest club player,

but his image and standing will always be second in Argentina to Maradona as a result of that. And that would be great to be able to maintain the church of Maradona. Yeah, I totally agree. And then I think for the Euro Cup, I'll end with. with Galliano how I began. In that one, I'm just going to be a beggar for good football. I figure out a way that we can wrap this up. Last note, then.

We're going to make due predictions since we're recording just before the finals, and I'm going to include Brett in the predictions. So, I mean, we'll see how close any of us is on either of these guests. So Adnan, Italy, England, and Brazil, Argentina. Who are your two winners? Italy wins on penalties. That would be stereotypically English for the listeners or not the big football fans. That's right, to lose on penalties.

That's how it is. And then in the Copa America, Brazil 2-1, Namar scores, the winner. Alex? I think the Euro Cup, I think Italy will win, I will say, 2-0. And in the Cop America, I think Brazil will win. I like Adnan's like 2-1. I'll go with 2-1. I think Neymar will score

and Lucas Paquetta will score the other. Brett, you want to take a shot? I will confidently say Italy 3-0, Brazil 3-1, mark my words. And, you know, the funny thing is, is Brett's going to be right. I'm quite sure of it. Just from my side,

I'm going to say Italy 2-1 with England's 1 being an undeserved penalty. just shout out to the Denmark game and for the Brazil Argentina game I would have went with Brazil like pretty confidently but Gabriel Jesus was just ruled out for the game they extended his suspension so he's not going to be playing in it but I'll still I'll say it'll go to extra time

but Brazil will pull through 1-0 in a pretty boring game that's that's my guess there all right and that's it from us for this entire intelligence briefing on the beautiful game. Briefly, Adnan, how can the listeners find you and all of your work that you're doing? Well, listeners can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. And you can also catch my other podcasts that I host and sometimes co-host called The Mudgellis. It's on all the platforms, M-A-J-L-I-S, and it's about the Middle East Islamic World, Muslim diaspora, Islamophobia, topics like that.

So if you're interested in those, look for the much list. Brett, how can the listeners find you in your work? You can find everything I do at Revolutionary LeftRadio.com. And shout out to Alex for coming on. This has been a really interesting episode. Bye. And yeah, definitely thanks to Alex. Alex, how can the listeners find you and your work?

Thank you, guys. This was great. It's always great to converse with all three of you. You can find me on Twitter web, I think because I think, that pandemic i've been spending way too much time so i'm at alexander underscore avina um and then on there you'll be able to find the my website which has stuff that i've written recorded all the episodes that i've done with you guys previously so um yeah thank you guys so much this was a lot of fun yeah and always a pleasure talking to you alex definitely you know one of my favorite people to have conversations with because

i learned so much every time as well as just you have a very fun personality which also So that brings out, you know, the best in all of the conversations that we have. Listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck1995. You can support me on Patreon where I write about public health, Patreon.com forward slash Huck1995. And you can find Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, Instagram, Gorilla underscore History. And if you're just listening to this on the general feed,

you can help support the show by joining us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash Gorilla History. Until next time, listeners, Solidarity. Thank you.