Pod Save the World - The politics of the World Cup with Roger Bennett

Episode Date: July 11, 2018

Today's episode is two parts. First, Tommy talks with Politico's Nahal Toosi about North Korea, NATO and Trump's Putin meeting. Then, Roger Bennett from Men in Blazers joins to talk about the agony, ecstasy and politics of the World Cup.

Welcome back to POTSave the World. Thank you guys for continuing to get up in the morning on this horrible Supreme Court week. I have a two-part show today. First, I talk with Politico's Nahal Tusi about all the crazy things happening in foreign policy, from Pompeo's trip to North Korea, to the NATO meetings with Trump, and then to Trump's meeting with his best buddy Vladimir Putin. So that's part one.

And then part two of today's episode is a conversation with Roger Bennett from Menblazers, which is one of the funniest, smartest podcast about soccer there is. We talked about the World Cup. He is an American, but he's a huge England fan. We talked about what it means for England and the UK. We talked about the fact that the tournament is in Russia and how that host country's mere existence sort of lords over the entire tournament. And we talked about FIFA and the corruption and how Americans are truly coming to love soccer.

So it is one of the most fun conversations I've got to have on this show. I really think you're going to enjoy this episode. And thank you for tuning in. My guest today is Nahal Tusi. She's a foreign affairs correspondent at Politico and a dear friend of the show. Thank you so much for coming back on. It's great to talk with you again. It's great to be here.

This has been a weird week. I mean, even with all the Supreme Court drama and focus, there's a ton going on in foreign policy. So I'm really excited to talk with you. It's only Tuesday. How can you say it's been a weird week? I literally said this in the car on the way over. And then our producer's like, it's fucking Tuesday, man. I'm like, we're just getting started.

But so I guess I'm counting Pompeo's brutal trip to North Korea. So just to rehash me, he didn't get the meeting he wanted with Kim Jong-un. There was weird tension and back and forth in the meetings he did have. And the North Koreans slapped him around in a statement after the meetings were over and he'd left the country. I'm curious what you're hearing. out of the White House and the State Department about the prospects for actually getting something done with North Korea. I mean, my sense of this as an outsider is he has an almost impossible job.

He has to get North Korea to agree to all the hard stuff they don't want to do while not letting the talks blow up and creating a bad news story for Trump when that's the thing he seems to care about the most. But you're the one covering this day to day. Well, he also has to deal with another major factor, which is the president. and the things that the president has said and is saying, for example, saying that North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat to the U.S. It felt premature. Yeah.

I mean, you know, so Pompeo was kind of stuck in this really difficult position. He has not given up by any means, though. From what I can tell, you know, there's a sense within the White House and the State Department that, sure, this is an obstacle and it didn't go as well as they would like. But that this is kind of standard for North Korea. You know, they do occasionally do this type of thing where they lash out or they use their rhetoric as a weapon. And Pompeo, to some extent, fought back. I mean, like, on the comment that the North Koreans made saying that the U.S. was acting like a gangster or whatever, you know, Pompeo was like, look, then the whole world is a gangster because we're all putting pressure on you.

And he even returned to using the concept of maximum pressure involving sanctions. And so, you know, he's being a little more edgy with his tone, but I don't get the sense by any means that they're giving up on the diplomatic route. That's absolutely right. I mean, this is the North Korean playbook. It's a throw a monkey wrench in negotiations, drag them out, try to extract what they want. But do you get the sense from anyone that they're concerned that by making the statements that Trump has made about how there is no longer a threat? And in my opinion, seeming so eager for a deal that he may be. has given away some leverage because the North Koreans know that he wants this so much more than they do?

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a concern that, you know, that maybe Trump was perfectly fine with what he called a contract, which wasn't a contract. It was just a joint statement that he and Kim Jong-un came up with that basically said, you know, we agreed that there's going to be complete denuclearization without getting into any of the details. And so for the North Koreans, it's like, oh, well, we're going to go ahead and define denuclearization the way we will. want to, and they can do it the way they want to, and we'll just see how long we can drag this out. And the other part, though, is remember one of their key points to try to get a loosening of economic sanctions, right? The longer this drags out, the harder it's going to be for the

world to keep up these sanctions, especially for China. And I think, you know, we've already seen some modest loosening of the sanctions from China. And in a sense, like, despite what Pompeo is saying about keeping up maximum pressure or whatever, the Americans do understand that, like, over time, that's going to be really, really hard to do. And the North Koreans know that the time is on their side. And let's not forget, the North Koreans also know that, you know, Kim Jong-un is going to be their leader forever and ever. And President Trump, you know, might be gone in two and a half years or six and a half years.

Yeah. Doesn't feel like we're in a very good position on this one from my point of view. But what have we ever been? You know, I'm saying about North Korea is like, I love it when people like criticize Trump because then I'm like, well, you know, what did you do? Yeah. No, and look, you can say that directly. me. I'm glad he's making a diplomatic gambit. I just do worry about them, you know, making it harder on themselves and punting the difficult work and then either acquiescing to what Kim Jong-un wants and we sort of back into accepting them as a regime capable of hitting the United States with a nuclear

weapon or we get back to the position where Trump gets his dander up and then we're, you know, at that scary friction point again. But long way to go from that. There are countries out there with nuclear weapons that are not necessarily, you know, the ideal countries to have them. I mean, Pakistan is a good example, you know, but yet the U.S. has managed to live with that. I wouldn't be surprised if 20, 30, 50 years from now, the North Koreans still have nuclear weapons, and we've somehow managed to live with it. Yeah, I agree. The other major thing going on is Trump just arrived in Brussels today, I believe, for the NATO summit.

NATO meetings are normally about coordination among friends this year. the meeting is likely to focus on why Trump thinks the alliance is obsolete and why he seems more eager to kick around Angela Merkel of Germany than Vladimir Putin. What issues do you expect will come up? And why do you think Trump is so eager to criticize countries in NATO for not spending enough on collective defense if he doesn't seem to think that the alliance is worth anything? Well, look, Trump has always had a strong suspicion of multilateral alliances. these kind of globalist types of institutions. And his base does too. So politically, like, you know, going after like these organizations like the UN or whatever, it doesn't hurt him at all. In fact, it kind of boosts him politically, domestically. But there's also just the fact that he really,

he really, you know, doesn't care much for anything that's multilateral. He prefers kind of the one-on-one type of approach. Now, the thing about Trump that's fascinating in terms of NATO is, he just doesn't really seem to fully grasp the way the spending structure actually is. Right. Like, he acts as if countries and NATO pay dues to the United States, and that's not what it is at all. No. And he keeps, you know, saying things and tweets and others that just, I mean, part of me

is wondering if he does get it, but he doesn't want to admit that he gets it, and he's trying to rile people up by saying things that are misleading. But, you know, that's just, that's just not it. But what's happening is there's just tremendous anxiety in Europe. over the way he has treated them. And so there's a lot of concern about what Trump is going to show up this week. They're worried that he's going to just trash them, and it's going to further erode trust between the U.S. and its European allies.

And then, let's not forget, he's going to be going to see Vladimir Putin a few days later, and they're just really worried that he's going to cozy up to Putin and make Russia even more bold when it comes to its aggressive actions against Europe. Yeah. I want to get to the Putin meeting in one second, but I think you've done a lot of reporting on this. I mean, Trump tweeted, I think just today that a bunch of countries in NATO are short of their current commitment of 2% spending of GDP on defense. But he's even wrong about that, right? I mean, the 2% spending target is not a current commitment, but a goal set for 2024, which is six years away. No one is delinquent. No one owes us anything. I mean, again, to your point, he's, He's either confused or just enjoys repeating something about our closest allies that's factually wrong. Yeah. I mean, the thing, though, is actually, look, NATO is spending, it's long been the goal that countries need to spend 2% of their GDP on defense. Like, that that's not a new thing.

No. For like years and years and years, presence of complain that most of the European countries just don't do it. Including Obama. And there were commitments. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, there were commitments made in, like, 2006, I believe it was, to have everybody meet that threshold. And then back in 2014, people renewed their pledges, and they said, look, by 2024, we're going to meet this 2% threshold. And just, you know, for your listeners, you know, between 2006 and 2014, there was this terrible economic crisis in Europe.

So a lot of countries just really had a difficult time increasing spending, even if they wanted to. So now what's happening, though, and so in a way, like a lot of people say, look, Trump's criticism. of NATO, even if he doesn't really fully understand it, it's still valid. There's a disparity between how much the U.S. spends on defense and how much these other countries spend, and it's not fair. Now, that being said, there has been significant progress. Recently, it was announced that all NATO members have increased spending on defense in real terms, and I believe about half of them are on their way to meeting the 2% goal by 2024. So they're doing it. I think Trump seems to think that they can just kind of do it immediately, you know, like in a day.

But this isn't the type of thing that you can just do, you know, on a dime. So it's just going to take time. And part of it, though, could be Trump's approach to things, which is he often likes to just push, push, push, you know, and believe, and he believes that if you are harsh, that people will go further than they would have otherwise. I mean, it just seems funny. Like, at this point, he could take a victory lap instead of criticizing these countries. But, yeah, I think you're right.

I mean, I think he enjoys the fight. He enjoys ringing as much as he can out of them, I guess. Yeah, and I do think, you know, you might see him take some credit for some of the increased spending, but he's clearly not satisfied. And so I'm pretty confident we're going to see, you know, a Trump that is pretty belligerent in a lot of ways. And, I mean, honestly, I'd be really shocked if he was suddenly incredibly gracious and collegial. And that's the spending is one thing. The other question is whether he's going to reiterate the U.S. commitment to Article 5, which is the collective defense principle that's really at the heart of NATO.

And if he doesn't do that, then whoa. Yeah. That rodeo again. So he'll go to Brussels. He'll scare the shit out of our allies, probably. And then he'll go see Vladimir Putin. Do we have a sense of what's on the agenda for that meeting? And, you know, how are we still hearing Trump aides promise that he'll get tough on Putin when Trump goes

out and seems to do the opposite and even reportedly told Putin that some of his own aides were stupid people, quote unquote, for trying to keep Trump from calling Putin. Yeah. I mean, so last I checked and, you know, these things are often changing, but there's going to be at least a one-on-one session between Trump and Putin. And, you know, I would watch for a number of things on that that could kind of signal how things are going. First of all, Trump's tweets going in.

it's going to give us a sense of what's on his mind. The body language, you know, if he kind of is really, really palsy and, like, pass Putin on the back, that sort of thing, it's going to annoy a lot of European allies. Putin is, like, a KGB guy, so he's a little tough to read, except he has a – he does seem to have a hard time masking his face when he's, like, amused by something. How long the meetings last, I think, is going to be key, and that means, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean they're getting along, you know, what better, or worse or anything, it just kind of could speak to the intensity. And then we're going to want to see what any kind of joint statement afterward says and what he tweets, what Trump tweets afterward. Now, more specifically to your question about, you know, why is he taking this kind of contradictory approach when his people say, well, we're so tough on Russia? Well, first of all,

part of the reason they've been tough on Russia is because Congress has made them, right? I mean, so let's not forget that. But secondly, you know, Trump seems to be. believe that he can, it's like a good cop, bad cop thing with him. You know, like he wants to be the one to be friendly, you know, but his aides can go out and say things that he doesn't want to necessarily say to people face to face. I mean, let's not forget. I know Trump, you know, is kind of famous for like telling people you're fired or whatever, but the reality is he doesn't actually even like doing that. He doesn't necessarily like confrontation face to face. So this is one of those things where he Let's give him the benefit of out, right? Maybe he just thinks, if I'm nice to the guy,

you know, he'll be nice to me, and I'll get what I want when it comes to sanctions, Ukraine, Syria, and Iran, I would also add. And I don't know. I mean, I don't know what's exactly going to come of it. This is going to be a challenge for anyone, because Putin is really a master at this sort of thing. And he will tell Trump what Trump wants to hear, but will he give him what he wants at the end of the day? and what exactly does Trump really want? I don't know. I don't know. I would be...

Copy of the P-tip? Just kidding. I don't know. I mean, maybe. It's possible. I mean, this is, you know, this is the problem with covering this administration is, like, everything is just, like, up and down,

and you don't really know what's real and what's not, and it's this constant state of chaos. And, you know, going back to, like, NATO and Europe, I mean, they are so frustrated, partly because Trump and his people, his administration are so unpredictable, right? And so they say, look, we get it if our adversaries are unpredictable. We get it if our enemies are contradictory, but we cannot tolerate that in an ally.

And that's really at the heart of the frustrations with Trump. And even when it comes to his relationship with Russia, there are contradictions in it, and that alone drives people to nuts. Agreed. Nahal, thank you so much for this foreign policy issue, speed dating, session. Everyone should check out your work on Politico and follow you on Twitter at Nahal Tusi. You tweet a lot of funny, thoughtful, and smart stuff that has made me better at doing this job. So thanks for talking about. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. When we come back,

my interview with Roger Bennett from Men and Blazers. My guest today is Roger Bennett. He's the co-host of the wildly popular podcast, Men in Blazers. He's the co-author of Encyclopedia Blazertanica, a suboptimal guide to soccer, America's sport of the future since 1972, and his new podcast, American Fiasco, chronicles the U.S. men's team's 1998 World Cup bid and is brilliant. I am a listener. I am halfway through and loving every minute of it. He also recently returned to the U.S. from Moscow where he covered the World Cup.

Roger, thank you so much for doing this. Oh, Tommy V. You are. I have a very short list of people in my life who I haven't met, but I'm incredibly fond of. and you are near the top of that list. So it's a joy to be with you. Can't wait to disabuse you of that notion. I talk about a lot of serious shit on this show.

People get tired of hearing me to press them. But today we're going to talk about something fun, the World Cup and politics and how they all overlap. Now, you're a newly minted, proud American, but you are an England fan. What has it been like for you watching your team destroy the competition in this tournament? and was your departure the missing piece of the puzzle for the English side?

Like the Ewing theory, but for non-playing fans of a team, that the team gets better, the second and element, the best elements discarded from it. Listen, if it took me becoming an American for England to become quite good at football, which is where they are, they're quite good at football in this tournament, then it's a win-win, because I love America more than Kenny Powers, loves America. I moved here as a fulfillment of a life dream, which I harbored deep within since I was a, you know, before I was a teen watching all of the shows that you guys pumped

out around the world to draw us all to your country with soft power like sirens, singing to sailors on the rocks. You know, heart to heart, love boat, fantasy island. So is the single joy of my life to become an American, which I did a couple of weeks ago? I actually, I actually support the US team. I won't be clear. The men's and women's team are since the early 90s when I moved here to Chicago and watch the US team swagger out onto the field in their denim, stonewash denim jerseys, ginger of beard, mulleted of hair. I fell in love with that team, the men's and the women's. And the podcast American fiasco tells the story of that time, 94 to 98, this American team that did what American teams always do, which is believe.

it could win, but the American dream, sadly, doesn't work in world football, and it became a little bit more like an apocalypse now journey. But watching this England team, which I do with muscle memory, Tommy, I don't cheer for them. I am as American as they come. But I've spent hours and hours and hours of my life watching the English national team from the kid age to now. And when I thought, watch them do well in this World Cup, I realized. so few minutes of that time have actually been happy one so few memories are happy

this is a self-sabotaging team that like Charlie Brown running at a football where Lucy holding always goes off to any tournament and says, alright we're going to win it for you, the nation of England and they put on Tommy hats or bowler hats or perhaps tuck

bulldogs under their arms, wrap themselves up in our flag, appear on the back of the newspaper, the tablo newspaper and they say this time more than any other the time we're going to win it. And then they humiliate themselves in the most self-sabotaging, self-destructive, excruciating fashion. So to see them actually do well, more than that, to be candid, Tommy, to see them Englishmen

actually enjoy being together, being in each other's company, and enjoy playing football to smile while playing football, that was enough. Whatever happens, and we're on the eve of the biggest game of my generation, the semi-final of the world. Whatever happens tomorrow, and we can talk about it. They've already won the World Cup, as far as I'm concerned, just by enjoying themselves. Yeah, well, you guys are basically a nation full of pre-2004 Red Sox fans, and it is a joy to hear the enthusiasm in your voice and to root for you guys.

Don't take away our losing, Tommy. It's all we've got. Okay, let me ruin this with some politics. Hey, stick to politics, Tommy. Stick to politics. I know, I know. Just days after the Brexit vote, England was knocked out of the Euro 2016 tournament. So that was not a great week. now you guys are in the semi-finals of the World Cup and the government is falling apart. Is Boris Johnson trying to take his Brexit ball and go home

and just ruin this tournament for everyone? Or how are people reacting in the UK? You were very kind because we didn't just lose in the Euros for your listeners who don't know who beat us. We got battered by Iceland, by tiny Iceland. It was like tiny Iceland pulled down the once great empire of England shorts, gave us a wedgy and then a barebottom spank. with the whole world watching.

It was deeply humiliating. Our humiliation, for once lessons were learned and changes were made. And we are living in this kind of bipolar reality. If you're an English football fan, if you live in England, which thankfully I don't. But you've got this bipolar reality where right now on the front page of the newspaper, England is destroying itself with Theresa May, with Boris Johnson, with Brexit, with remain. It is human darkness.

And then you can flick through whatever newspaper it is, it doesn't matter. You flick from that front page towards the back. And on the back, you have stories of an England that's united. And it's been united by this football team, this young football team, this optimistic team of wonder, a deeply multi-ethnic football team, a team whose star striker, his father comes from Ireland, The parents who harkham from Nigeria, there's players who were born in Jamaica. It's an incredible kind of global face of England, a modern England,

an England that is deeply aspirational. And those two, the sports pages and the front pages, they couldn't be more different right now. One is just bifurcation and splintering of the English identity. And the other is just warm, full of wonder, unity and globalism. It's a very odd reality to live through. That's beautiful. Our front pages are Donald Trump saying something horrible, followed by Donald Trump saying something horrible. So that sounds really nice. Yeah, and the American team sadly didn't even qualify. So you didn't even get the panacea, the circus, the bred and circus of the football on the back pages, dark times. I wonder if there's a metaphor there. I mean, America looms large in so many international institutions from the UN to the WTO to tennis to name your sport. And we are just completely absent.

Is the world moving on from America in this tournament? You know, here's how I think about it. I love America and I love the sport of soccer. It's the story of my life is having watched the sport of soccer, which when I moved here in the early 90s, you know, it really was like space for Captain Kirk. It was the final frontier. Americans were not just disinterested in soccer.

They actively hated it when I moved here. And I almost thought, you know, they always hated it too much. I remember when the US were given the right to host the 1994 World Cup, which was in the late 80s. I remember one of your great learned congressman, Jack Kemp, once an esteemed quarterback in the NFL, well probably, for those of you actually watched him play, you know he was quite a mediocre quarterback.

But when the US were given the honor of hosting the World Cup, which is one of the great honors that a nation can be given, and thank God we've just been given it again for 2026. But Jack Kemp felt compelled to run to the floor of Congress and say something like, it's very important for the future generations of young Americans that we make it clear that football is something where you punt and rush and throw and catch and use your hands

and that you don't just kick it. He said the former is everything that makes America great and the latter is European socialism. So when I moved here, that was kind of the general consensus that football was kind of Jim McMahon and the Super Bowlbound Chicago Bears. They were good. And the football played in tight polyester shorts was a darkness. And one of the joys of my life has been watching that kind of year to year just evaporate. America has fallen in love with soccer, particularly the American generation under the age of 30, where it's a Gallup pole just.

discovered it's a third favorite sport in this country for Americans under the age of 30. And also, football, soccer has fallen in love with America. Many of the best teams in the world are actually now owned by American sports entrepreneurs. Our players are developing a sharpened talent. The league here, 72,000 fans regularly pack a stadium in Atlanta, Atlanta, to cheer an MLS team. for this World Cup and the Champions League and the Premier League are really off the chart. So America has become a soccer-loving nation. The world football powers which will use America in the month of August as a pre-season training ground,

Barcelona, Rail Madrid, Liverpool, Manchester United, they all adore America. And this World Cup, to be honest, as someone who's watching England have incredible hiccups, incredible embarrassment, in world football tournaments, the US missing this 2018 tournament should really be. It's not a reflection of who the US are as a soccer power. They are much better than that. It was just awful, a series of awful decisions made over an extended period of time, each one multiplying the last until they were humiliated. In world sport, how you face up to those decisions, the lessons you learn from them are the

ones that can set your football culture into winning. ways. So I'd less look at the fact that we aren't there now. I'm very glad the ratings have been so bloody good for the World Cup, without the US. But what US soccer does in the wake of its abject failure, the lessons it learns in terms of targeting Latino footballers, young Latino footballers recruiting, scouting them. Mexico right now knows where the best American Latino players are better than the US soccer powers. The way we move the sport from being a suburban sport for the elite rather than a democratic sport

that's played, scouted, coach, trained at all levels. That's really the thing we need to watch. And the good news is the World Cup is coming back here in 2006. It's an enormous catalyst. There's huge amounts of money about to pour into the sport. So I'm a very negative man because I'm not only English, I'm also Jewish,

but even I'm incredibly optimistic and really bullish about the sports future in this country. Well, you know, I went to one of those games in 94 at Foxborough. It was Italy versus Nigeria. I remember Roberto Baggio? He was the big star. The fine ponytail. Yes, at the time. And, you know, I think you're right that the sport has come an enormous way since then. It is probably not yet vaulted into the, you know, baseball, football, basketball levels, right? But do you think an American star like Christian Polisicic, it could be that catalyst? I mean, that young man is so handsome. I had to cover my fiancé's eyes while we were

watching a 60 minutes piece on him last night because I didn't want her to get any ideas. It's horrifying. Yeah, I sometimes think Michael Davis and myself at Men and Blazers, two bald men are the only things that are keeping soccer back from really going over the top in this country, Tommy. I mean, the reality is it is bigger than baseball, particularly in the demographic. You know, baseball is aging, skewing. I think the average age is 60 in the regular season. I think during the World Series, it plummets down to 55 years of age.

It really is a generational divide. And soccer, when you look at its growth in America, baseball's kind of golden days, they were in the age of the radio when everyone would sit around with candles in their lounge and listen to the St. Louis Cardinals game on the radio. And then along came television. The NFL exploded.

It's the perfect television sport, 28 camera angles, action replay, commercial breaks that allow you to go and get another bud and go the back. It was just perfect for that television age. And what's changed while I've been here? When I moved to America, early 90s, if I wanted to watch a great soccer game for my team, Everton,

mighty, mighty Everton in England, there was nothing. It was arid. It wasn't on television. My father had to hold the telephone. I had to call him. He'd hold the telephone against the television, and I'd follow along that way.

That's changed, not just the quantity of elite football that's now broadcast on America. television. But the internet allows the American fan in Los Angeles to connect to Liverpool Football Club or the fan in Montana who lives and dies for Manchester City as closely as a fan that lives in the same zip code as those teams stadia. And that internet connection has made soccer the perfect sport for the internet age. It's been an incredible driver. EA sports FIFA, that video game. Other video games just reinforce a love that you already have. I love the NFI. I play Madden. I play so much Madden.

EA Sports FIFA is the only sports video game that has taken people who don't even love the sport, have no interest in it, made them addicted to EA Sports FIFA and through that game, they've fallen in love with the teams, the players, the style of play. It's been the gateway to the actual sport itself. So the internet, FIFA, the television, the Champions League, World Cup to World Cup, the rise of the sport has been unbelievable. We're already a true soccer power in terms of the audience, in terms of the dollar, in terms of the number of jerseys that are sold here. The question of how we develop, like, where's the American Lionel Messi, Tommy? That's a complicated one.

It takes decades to develop a football culture where you can reliably produce them. We should have at least one. It's just statistics, say, we should have at least one freakish individual, like a minute ball who kind of grew up as a sheepherder, but happen to have the great characteristics to be a pro player. Why we haven't created one yet, something we're going to work on together? That's great. Russia looms large over this tournament as the host country.

They've been accused of bribing FIFA officials to get the tournament in the first place. Theresa May, Prime Minister of the UK, ordered officials, including Prince William, who is the president of the English Football Association, to boycott the World Cup over the nerve agent poisoning of a former spy in London. You were just in Moscow. What was it like for you as an American fan of the English team in Putin's Russia? And do you agree with those who say this is a big propaganda win for Putin? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it's awful. This is Rogue State 2018. We can never forget that this tournament is in Russia. We can never forget what Russia is, what Russia stands for, what's going on there geopolitically. We had Gary Kasparov, one of my chess icon heroes, as a kid come on our show right before the World Cup. He loves football, loves football. And, you know, I asked him, should we be boycotting?

Why are we not boycotting Rogue State 2018? And he was like, no, we can't boycott. Football must go on. But he said, you know, this should be a diplomatic boycott of the World Cup. And a lot of countries actually did. Iceland led the charge. And eight or nine countries refused to give Russia the photo op that they crave for, which was their prime minister.

like Macron was today, the French president, in the confines of a Russian president's box. And that's the optics that Putin was looking for in hosting this thing. It's his propaganda, an affair as the Berlin Olympics, really, in 1936 from propaganda purposes. And it has been a propaganda triumph, not like the 1980 Olympics, which was meant to show Russian might,

and Russian power. I think the odd thing having been in Moscow was that the whole ethos of this World Cup, the aim seems to have been to try and normalize Russia to kind of counter the story of the suspicion of this country, to invite the world. And there really is the world. When there's a World Cup that's going on,

you have in the 11 cities that this is going on, you have, you know, Colombians are just shuttling city to city, and then Spain will be playing your city, and suddenly thousands and thousands of Spaniards kind of paratroop in out of nowhere. Argentinians will be sending a line in the street. It is the world comes to your nation. And the goal here, and it was truly successful.

I was in Moscow a couple of years ago, and it was a fairly musty place. I mean, historically fascinating, but fairly musty, slightly shabby. I didn't recognize it when I landed two weeks ago. It had been gussied up. It was totally gilded. Everywhere felt like the high line in New York.

It felt like that. You know, the elderly, I don't know what they've done with Moscow's elderly or the homeless population of Moscow not to be seen in that town centre. It was just beautiful people that had been paratrooped in. It felt like the Truman Show in many ways. When you go to games, they had kind of model-looking women on high kind of Baywatch style, lifeguard chairs every hundred yards with loud speakers just screaming,

welcome to Russia Brazil fans it was like being in Gilead if Gilead hosted the World Cup that's what I imagine and Gilead by the way I wouldn't put it beyond FIFA to give Gilead

the World Cup but that's what it felt like it's been a massive win a massive win for Putin topped off by the fact that the Russian team who were meant to be from a footballing perspective

kind of the worst host since Seth MacFarlane hosted the Oscars they actually were bloody good I'm not saying they're doping Tommy But they ran fast, they ran far, they ran a lot more than they had the team. And they went deep, deep, deep into this one, which was another win for Putin. You mentioned doping.

I mean, there have been news reports accusing the Russian national team of doping. The world anti-doping agency says more than a thousand Russian competitors across 30 sports, including soccer, were involved in institutional conspiracy to conceal positive tests. The FIFA, the Russians have denied those reports. Are PEDs as big a problem in soccer as, say, track and field or name your American sport. You know, muscle buildup does not help you in soccer. It's not like Brady Anderson where you can like one minute hit seven home runs and then

the next suddenly Brady Anderson, how many did he hit like 57, 58 and then maybe it was drug season. So suddenly he hits three the next season. That muscle buildup does not help. What helps in soccer is just your energy levels, the sustained energy levels. And this Russian team who were terrible. They've been terrible. they are terrible.

They were predicted to be terrible. It was meant to be a humiliation. The funny thing was Putin distance himself from all the games. He went to the first one because it was the opening ceremony. And by the way, in one of the great power moves of all time, he gave an opening address where it was just kind of he muttered some words, made it seem like he couldn't really be that arse to be there. And then he had to rush off to go to, I imagine him like,

I need to go to the pork product wholesalers of Siberia conference. I've got somewhere more important to be than the World Cup. That's the kind of vibe he gave with his opening address. That is the, yeah, the ultimate power move. World Cup, no big deal. Got to go to somewhere far more important. He distanced himself from every game after that. They beat Saudi Arabia 5-0 in that game.

And they went to the elimination rounds. And they played Spain, a mighty team, a team that pass opponents to death. And I'm not saying Russia were doping. But when you speak to players who play this Spanish team, the Spanish team, for those who don't watch soccer, they kind of toss the ball around as if it's a frisbee on the greatest ultimate frisbee team of all time

and opponents spend the whole game just chasing shadows and when you speak to people who play the Spanish team they say I can't tell you how exhausting mentally and physically it is to play this team by it's like a boxer working having their kidneys work they say you know after about 60 minutes you're just so exhausted you are sucking for air

this Russian team never stopped running. And you saw the astonishment in the Spaniard's eyes. They're used to teams wilting so they can score. Russia never wilted. The game went to penalties. Penalties in Russia, Spain were never going to have a chance. And they kept going on.

And the Russian team became a symbol and a win. Another win for Putin, a great expression of Russian nationalism. There was an incredible boon. He's invited them to the Kremlin. Cynics here will say, is the White House going to invite the Russian team? to have a celebration. But they went out nobly. They really did.

They played Croatia in the KGB Derby, an incredible game. That game went to penalties again. And looking at these poor Russian footballers faces, to be penalty kicks are an incredible crucible of pressure. But my God, for a Russian who knows that Putin, and he did, called the manager before the game and after every game, those phone calls must have been phone calls of showing. sheer terror. Those poor Russians walking up to take the penalties in that quarterfinal,

knowing that they were suspended between Glory and the Gulag, the stakes in sports do not probably get much higher than that. Roger, how do you respond to your critics who say it's hypocritical for you to raise PEDs when podcasting to an American audience with a molyfluous British accent is essentially performance-enhancing drug in and of itself? Yeah, the honest truth is, I speak like I have my jaws wired together. And I think my English accent, to some degree, which is totally fake, because I was born in the northern suburbs of Chicago. I wasn't really, but I was definitely a Chicago entrapped in an Englishman's body.

But English people tell me our speakers if I've got my jaws wired together. So I don't think my English accent is too much of a asset. The only asset I have is I can remember Brady Anderson. Yeah. My producer, Michael, is an Orioles fan. and he's blown away that you had that fact at the ready. And Jack Kemp. I bet you Jack Kemp's not been mentioned on Pod Save America.

No, no, Mr. Kemp is not a hero of ours. You mentioned the Russia team. They had a great run. The Croatians defeated them. Shortly after Croatia's win, a defender shouted, glory to Ukraine and an online video message, he apparently used to play for a Ukrainian club team. They initially tried to claim that he and a coaching

assistant were just thanking their fans in the Ukraine, but by Monday, they were backpedaling and they booted the assistant coach who is in the video from the team. So two-part question, if you were Putin preparing to invade Croatia, would you go by land through Ukraine and Hungary, or would you send the fleet up through the Adriatic Sea? In second, I mean, how prevalent are these so-called political gestures in FIFA games and are they seen as a real problem? Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. The defender who shouted out, had played in Donetsch, the glory to Ukraine, a guy called Vadich.

He's a fantastic, he's got the haircut of the tournament. It really is. He's like Croatian Joe Dirt. It looks like a white walker. He actually scored against Russia and ripped his shirt off. And it was just genuinely, I've never seen a whiter man in my life. Genuinely, it was nipples I do not want to see again. Please, God, in my lifetime.

So he was the gentleman with a coach. and what's fascinating to me, Tommy, is if he'd shouted out into a camera, into that same camera, if he'd shouted out all power to Vladimir Putin, knowing FIFA as I do, that's a political statement. That's a unbelievable political statement. I imagine FIFA would have done next to nothing. And the reality is FIFA are unbelievably arbitrary. They are not well equipped. I mean, stick to sports FIFA like to do.

They're not well equipped. when sports and politics clide. And they have often in this tournament. There was one of the great scenes. I mean, this World Cup has been so bloody good, so bloody good, that like today's game, the France against Belgium, heavyweight tussle, it was the greatest game of football I've seen since the last World Cup game. So you kind of memory, you have a memory of a goldfish and you forget things.

But a couple of rounds ago, the Swiss team played Serbia and scored two late goals, fantastic goals, incredible drama to beat the Serbians. And a couple of the Swiss players had Albanian roots, incredible. Like much of that area of Europe. And upon scoring the winner, they walked right up to the camera and made the Eagle of Kosovo. In fact, one of the players had the Eagle of Kosovo, Shakiri, on his cleats to begin with. And FIFA had no idea. I mean, my God, that is a gesture.

It's a bold man that does that gesture on a football field in terms of, 20,000 Serbia fans, but FIFA had no idea how to begin to unpack this and they took very little action I have to believe that this was really a Putin-related piece

of punishment and I think Croatia tried to head it off by sending home the coach but they've kept the player. I wish the player had gone to because Croatia play England tomorrow but the geopolitics of Europe have played through in this tournament more than any other.

I mean, football ultimately, Tommy, and this is one of the reasons I love it. Football is... And Albert Camus said this. We write about this in our book, Encyclopedia Blazer Tanaka. What draws us to football is really it's just humanity expressed

for the whole world to see. Albert Camus himself wants a great goalkeeper before he, you know, realized it wasn't going to work out for him and he accepted his lesser as plan B to become a writer. He said, everything I know about the obligations of man.

He meant human. He said, ma'am, he said, I'd learned through football from watching football. And ultimately, football just traps everything, culture, history, values. And in this case, this World Cup, the geopolitical kind of fracturing of Europe. And for no team more than Germany, who are, for those of you who don't watch football, just an omnipower. They are the Walmart of global football. always win. There's an old cliche in England that football, soccer, is a simple sport,

22 men chase a ball on the field, and in the end, the Germans win, which is just a common wisdom. But in this World Cup, for the first time ever in their history, they failed, they failed to come out the group stage. They were awfully humiliated. It was like watching Darth Vader just kind of trip over his own shoelaces. That's how hilarious and shocking the spectacle of Germany failing was. Yet, even behind that failure, the geopolitical split, a number of the German players.

And Germany's strength in the past 10 years has been in engaging its hybrid identity players. First, they brought in a lot of polls to play striker who took great pleasure in scoring for Germany against Poland, like Klosser. And then they took in a wave of Turkish Germans. And two of them, before this world, Cup, Meza Ozel, just a sad-eyed artist.

And Gundewan went to met with Erdogan right before the World Cup and they gave him their own jerseys which they signed to my president. Great photo op for Turkey, great show of soft power by Erdogan. And the German public were just disgusted, absolutely disgusting, not just the German public, but within the squad, the 23 players, there was just. just an immediate fracture between the Germans who are, you know, we Germans, here's how we do things. This is the German value. This is the German way of carrying yourself and the kind of half of the squad that had a more complicated identity. And squad harmony is everything. And when

German journalists look at why Germany were just so flat, so disappointing, so human, so weak, so mortal, they point to that photo op. It's the photo op which destroyed the nation. Nothing's made me happier, but it's the photo that destroyed a nation. I mean, it's so interesting the way you talk about football just for being all-encompassing in terms of politics and culture. I mean, Mussolini tried to use the 38 World Cup as propaganda. West Germany and East Germany faced off at the height of the Cold War.

In 78, Argentina hosted the games just after a military coup. Nike can't supply the Iranian team with cleats because of U.S. sanctions. I mean, politics is inevitably part of these games. Should we all just shut up and be happy that they're battling out on the pitch and not the battlefield? The Financial Times journalist Simon Kuiper, my favorite sports writer of all time, he once wrote that when two teams take the field in the World Cup, their nation's histories take the field alongside of them. And to me, that's the joy.

That's the joy of football. It's that all of that, all of that, all of that. of the hoops and dreams of the entire nation. You know, in sports, we're doing this live tour right now during the World Cup, men and blazers, we've gone to city after city across this country. And it's true in America

as it is for other parts of the world. We're in Philadelphia this week and we mentioned New England Patriots and just the whole room went berserk and told us exactly what they thought of Tom Brady. We were in Portland. They told us how much they hate Seattle. We're in

San Francisco. They made it completely clear how much they just despise Cleveland and sports is so local. The joy of soccer in many ways is that it's power these teams to unify an entire nation. No longer are we kind of like Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal fans, but the whole of England pretty much give or take and even that's a little more complicated up north. They actually properly hate the English national team. But most of England is behind that team. And so these teams are among the most beloved a united symbol. The Italian team who didn't make this World Cup,

but the Italian team is one of the, in an incredibly local, an incredibly local regional country. It's one of the few symbols of which Italians are unified and proud that they bring out an Italian flag for. There was a big problem in the 1990s when they started to play the national anthems before games

and the Italian sports press. Well, why is everybody else singing their national anthem? And our Italian team never sing. And the captain of the team had to come out and apologise and say, the honest truth is we never sing it publicly. We never sing it in Italy. It's just never sung.

And none of us know the words. And now when you watch Italy, they're Captain Gigi Buffon. No one bellows a national anthem. Just look at it on YouTube. No one bellows an anthem with more pride than that man. And to some degree, soccer, the World Cup, is one of the few places where history, past enmity, past conflict can be played out in a largely, in a largely safe confine, joyously, wonderfully. And this World Cup has truly borne it through.

Although, to be candid, if England do make it through Miracle and Miracles and play France, I think all bets are off. Yeah, enough of the French. We're sick of them. Final question for you, because I know this has been like the craziest week of your life career. FIFA is a mess. seven FIFA officials were arrested for fraud and racketeering and money laundering in 2015. They were so brazen about their corruption that they gave the 2022 games to Qatar,

where temperatures can reach 120 degrees in the summer, and this army of migrant workers is being forced to build their infrastructure out in these horrifying conditions that people are dying. Can FIFA be fixed, and do you think fans care? I mean, does it impact the way people view the games, or did they just not really give a shit? it's a darkness it is a darkness FIFA is a darkness it's just human venality

it's everything there's awful about mankind just left to run amok and the saddest part of it is it is in full public view I mean not unlike politics right now in America some would say like there's something going on but none of us are able to really articulate it with a clear surety

football is a joy Football is, some would say, the most meaningful, the least meaningful thing in the world is the old cliche about football. It brings incredible structure, incredible meaning, incredible joy, like the NFL here to a large degree for millions and millions of people around the world. The FIFA got away with it as long as it did for a variety of different reasons. One of them is that FIFA was run like Chicago politics. under Mayor Daly, where it was a machine. And the machine was run by a gentleman called Set Blatter who knew that every single country, even tiny countries,

it has more countries in it than the United Nations does, which is incredible. They actually invented countries so they had more votes. And he knew that when it was a situation where a big country, let's say, the Germany, had as many votes as Antigua and Barbuda, then he just knew that whatever happened he had enough votes and he could siphon money to some of the more corrupt areas in South America. In our region, Conquercaf, Central America was key.

That's one of the most heartbreaking parts of the FIFA story is that the United States and many of the regions around it, particularly Trinidad and Tobago, were kingpins in this Chicago machine politics that delivered power to set blatter, this craven, awful human being. And the reason they were able to get away with it, twofold. Number one, the journalists who were really doing the deep investigation, and this is probably, there's parallels for you and your other Pod Save America work. The journalists who were doing the Lord's work, the investigative work, who were trying to bring FIFA down were from England and Germany. And when they do their investigative bombshell reporting, set Blatter, this evil, awful, cravened Swiss, used to lift up their reporting, turn around to his base, which was largely Africa, parts of Asia, Central America, and say, see, Look, they hate you. They can't get over the fact that they've lost power in those old soccer countries.

They can't stand that there's this new world order. And he actually used it to rally his base. So every investigative bombshell actually tightened his grip on power, tightened his kind of base and made him even more powerful. And the thing that took FIFA down, and I always said it would, was an American newspaper, an American journalist. In this case, a name now has taken on. a very different meaning in this modern political reality.

Loretta Lynch, it took her stepping up to bring FIFA that had to come from the United States because he couldn't pass that off as just someone who was jealous of his power in the New World Order. And also the United States has all the corporations in it that were giving FIFA money and that Koki-Cola's and those kind of organised McDonald's who gave FIFA millions were humiliated and made sure that those changes happened.

But from a fan perspective, With sports, you love sports because of the fun, you love sports because of the thrill of a goal. You love sports because of the drama of the penalty shootout. You love sports because heroes we didn't know the name of four weeks ago and now suddenly preoccupying the front of our brain. The whole world is crazy with this 19-year-old Mbapé. When I was 19, mixtapes, beers, watching football.

When he's 19, he's thinking about making a several, you know, he's thinking about the number of Lamborghinis he's going to get from his move to Railman. Madrid with sublime skill. Heroes forged, villains kind of humiliated. That's why we watch sports. And no one ultimately really wanted to give that emotional energy to see how the sausage was made at FIFA.

And that's how this darkness happens. Ultimately, we all know it's there. But people want the passion. We want the touchdown. We want the home run. We don't want to look at the lift up the stone, look at the rock and see the darkness that lies within. And it's that human impulse that allowed FIFA to get away.

with it for so long. Cep Blatter. Talk about your all-time villain name, too. What a note to end on, yeah. Everyone should subscribe to Men and Blazers. You should subscribe to American Fiasco. And if you want a fantastic gift, maybe pick up Encyclopedia Blazertanica, a wonderful book about soccer and America and all the goodness that you heard

from my fantastic guest today, Roger Bennett. Roger, thank you so much for doing the show. You're very good at this. You're a mensch, and I've had such a good time out. Number one, I want to raise a glass with you when you're next in New York. And number two, I'm going to cancel a litigation for you stealing the great friend of the pod. Now, now we're over that. We have to talk about that because we thought we stole that from Morning Joe, because Joe and Mika would always say,

oh, Donald Trump is a friend of the show. So we thought we were mocking them by saying friend of the pod. I didn't realize that we were actually plagiarist. That makes me feel bad. It doesn't make you feel that bad. Think of all those T-shirts around the world. Think of all those. Think of all that.

We can share. We can share. We're big enough to share. We will share a drink when you're in New York. You're doing the Lord's work. Godspeed and best to everyone over that. Drinks on Crooked Media. Thanks again.

Thanks, man. Rock on. Courage. That's it for my two-parter on Pottae of the World today. You know the drill. Please share this episode with your friends. If you enjoyed it, we are always hoping to get the word out about Pottae of the World. And rate and review us in the iTunes store.