Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Scuffed Vol. 129: Interview with Ken Richards (father of Chris Richards)

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Ken Richards, the father of Bayern Munich II centerback Chris Richards, joins the podcast to talk about George Floyd's death, being black in America, Chris’s choice to play soccer instead of basketball and the similarities between basketball and soccer, among other things.- 0:30 Richards on George Floyd, his fears for his own son when he's back in the U.S., and whether this moment will yield progress- 14:10 Richards on his basketball career, how his son got into soccer, and his own growing love for the game of soccer Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velasquez in Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Welcome to this episode of Scuffed. We have a great guest today. Ken Richards. He lives near Birmingham, Alabama, and he's the father of Chris Richards,

one of the top young American centerbacks who plays for Bayern Munich's reserves in Germany's third division. Ken had a bit of a basketball career himself. Ken, thanks for getting on the phone. Thanks for making time. you're welcome thank you for having absolutely so i've been wanting to speak with you for a while now about some things that we will get to but uh you know what really got me prompted me to message you was your tweet uh about chris and about in relation to the what happened to george floyd here in

minneapolis as everyone knows he was murdered by a police officer and um so i wanted you i wanted to to ask you about that, you know, um, you tweeted that sometimes you fear for Chris's life when he's home in Alabama, when he goes out at night. Can you, can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, and it's honestly, it's not just, just Alabama. I mean, it's just kind of in America in general. Um, you know, just because of the interaction that, um, people of color, you know, seem to have with the police officers sometimes and it happens, you know, more times than it should.

And so when he goes out, yeah, it's hard for me to sleep and be at peace until I know he's home, you know, because I've had to talk with him how to conduct himself if he should be pulled over by an officer. And but yet and still, as you can see with quite a few of the instances that have happened in the last year or so, that's still not enough. You can do everything that you're supposed to do, and it can still go wrong. So I always worry about him when he's home. And, you know, to me, it really upsets me

and it disappoints me the fact that it bothers me more for him to go hang out and be out when he's here, as opposed to when he's halfway across the world in another country, that it's not his home country, I'm more at ease with him being there than I am when he's here. Yeah, that's crazy. And, you know, and he's in a country that doesn't have a great history with racism, obviously. Exactly.

Exactly. I assume... Go ahead, sorry. I'm sorry. No. No, you go. Well, I was going to say, and that's, you know, to me, that is the crazy thing because, you know, who would think that I would feel more comfortable with him being in general? Germany, like you said, with their history, you know, back with Hitler and everything in the Nazis,

I just feel like it's very ironic that that that's where he's at and the fact that I feel more comfortable with them being there. And I can say that I feel more comfortable with them being there because I've been to Germany for work. I've been there a couple of times. I spent months in Germany. So I feel, honestly, sometimes I feel a lot freer there than I do at my here at home. and so that's why I feel comfortable with him being there more so than I do with him being here and going out hanging out well I'm in I'm in Minneapolis I live less than a mile from where you know Floyd was killed and so it's been a really heavy week for everybody here you know right but I wonder you know I mean one of the things I as a white man have resolved to do and I think other people are trying to be trying to do the same thing, is to listen more to black people. And I just wonder what, when you saw that video of Floyd's death, and I'm sure you saw at least part of it, how did you react?

What did you think? We go again. I was heartbroken. I was, I was angry, disappointed. I kind of went through the gamut of emotions when I saw it, and I couldn't watch the whole thing. I didn't want to sit and watch another black man die on television. So I never watched it all. And I couldn't and I refused to now.

Yeah. Here we go again, huh? Yes. How is it all sitting with you a week and a half later? I mean, it still hurts. It's still, you know, I'm still angry. I'm still upset. I mean, I still have those same feelings.

And, you know, I feel like what really bothers me is that I don't know if the people hadn't protested and it wasn't caught on film. I don't know if anything would have been done at all. Right. And, you know, the fact that it took so long for them to arrest the other three officers it speaks volumes to me. Because if I go out and commit a crime, even though they don't have all the proof

as to what they're going to charge me for the crime, they can always bring me in and gather more evidence. But the fact that it took almost a week before them to arrest the other three cops, you know, like I said, I can only imagine had it not been for the video and for the crying out and the protesting. I don't know if anything would have been done.

I mean, because what would have happened is the report would have been written up and it would have said one thing. But thank goodness we were able to see that it was something else. I mean, that's right. It's the police announced it as a medical incident. Mm-hmm. On Tuesday morning or late Monday night, I think. Right.

And, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if the knee on his neck was what caused his death or if it was. was or if it wasn't. But the one thing that I do know is even if he had an underlying condition, it exacerbated the situation. Yeah, no doubt. That I'm positive of. Yeah. You live in Hoover, Alabama now, correct? Correct. Where did you, where did you grow up? Did you grow up in Alabama? I did. I grew up in Troy, Alabama, out of Alabama. And then you play, we'll get in this a little more later, but you play basketball at Birmingham Southern. Is that right? Yes, that's where I finished up at. My last two years, I graduated from there.

Okay. Well, you know, you don't have to answer this, but maybe it's an opportunity to talk about something that matters. Have you had run-ins with the police yourself? And, like, can you talk about any of that? I mean, I've been pulled off of speeding tickets before. And, you know, it is one of those things that even though I was only speeding, It's one of those things that as a black man, you know, you tend to get nervous because you never know how these situations can, how they can go. You know, I haven't had any to where, you know, I was necessarily committing a crime, so to speak.

But, yeah, I have been pulled over a couple of times for speeding. Yeah, I didn't have crime in mind. I was thinking of like... Right, right, right. No, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. And I will say that, you know, my experience, experience for the most part, were pretty, I guess, admirable.

It's something to say. It's a better way to put it. But, you know, I was a bit nervous with them walking to the car. It's been 400 years for black Americans of injustice, you know, of one kind or another. do you think, do you get the sense that George Floyd's death and the protests and the riots and the, like, the global outcry will bring progress in this country? I can only say that Lord knows I hope so. I hope so, you know, like I said, I hope that it's not one of those things to where we're upset for a while. And, you know, then everything kind of dives down and kind of goes back to usual.

and then it happens again and we start all over again. So I'm hoping that this is a movement here, that it's going to be a sustained movement to, in order to get change in this country. Yeah, I'm hopeful I have to have hope, because without hope, we have nothing. Right. You know, I'm hoping and I'm willing to do my part

to help enact this change in this country for my kids and my grandkids. And, you know, so I have to have to keep that hope alive. Right. I imagine a lot of the people who are going to listen to this will be white people. Do you have any advice for them? Because I think, I should say, I think, you know, white people are open to advice right now. I just say, just look inside yourself.

I just can't understand how can, as much as it is about white and black, it's not about white and black, to me. It's more about right and wrong, good and evil. To kill an innocent person, I don't care if you're white, black, or whatever, it's wrong and it shouldn't be happening. And not only if you do commit the crime and you kill an innocent person to be able to get away with it and not have to, any consequences. No justice. I say to white people or anybody out there, just imagine if George Floyd, Amir Aubrey, Brianna Taylor, Tamir Rice, I could go on and on. Imagine if these are your family members, you know, how would you feel? You know, it's like they're being killed twice. Not only are they physically,

killed and they're taken away from you forever. But then the person that committed the crime gets to walk free. I mean, so I just say, just put yourself in our shoes and all, I think any of us want is what America is supposed to stand for. That's all that any of us want. And that's what we're all entitled to as American citizen. Absolutely. And to me, that's what I look at us as Americans.

We're all Americans. And I hate how it's always African-American, white American, Hispanic Americans. You know, we're one of the only countries that I've been to, and I've been to quite a few, to where you're not just a citizen of that country. There's always something else attached to uniting to what you are. And that in itself starts a division. just whether we realize it or not in our subconsciousness, it's there. Anything else you want to say about this before we go on to my sports curiosities?

No, I mean, I just hope that justice has served in Minnesota. I hope it served in the Breonna Taylor case and the Mayor Aubrey case. I hope we get justice. And I feel like when we start receiving justice for these crimes, then I think it will go a long way and stop making people think twice before they commit these types of crimes or any crime. So that's what I hope happens in this situation. Okay. Got a good prosecutor on it, Keith Ellison.

And let's hope he gets a conviction. I hope so. All right. Let's do talk about sports a little bit. Okay. Chris has mentioned your basketball, you as a basketball player, a couple of different places that I've seen and even on this podcast. Can you tell us about your basketball career? Like how far did it go and what positions you play? What kind of player were you?

So I guess it would be equated as a semi-pro level. I played in Iceland, Australia, and I played in South America. We're in South America? Actually, I played in Bolivia. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, I didn't get rich by playing, but, you know, I did play at a pretty high level, and I got a chance to see the world.

Me personally, I was about a 6-3-6-4. I was very athletic. You know, I could jump. You know, I was strong. I was a – I could play three to four positions sometimes depending on – at what level because of my athletic ability. So, you know, I was a good play. I was very versatile.

And I said I could play from the point to small forward. Sometimes, like I said, depending on the situation, even power, I could guard. I was able to guard power forwards and stuff sometimes just because of my athletic ability. Were you a threat from three point? Yeah, yeah. I was, I was streaky, a pretty streaky outside.

I shoot it from three points. I was more of a slasher and a pull-up jumper, mid-range jump shooter. But, yeah, I was a three-point shoot. I could, you know, I would get hot and I could really shoot some threes as well. Yeah. Cool, cool. I've been curious about that ever since I first heard about it. So you've gotten a real education in soccer over the past decade, I imagine.

Yes, I have. How did Chris? How did Chris get into it with the sport and choose it over basketball? You know, I can remember me and my wife. He was maybe three or four, and he was at daycare. It was the daycare that we had him in. It was at a church. And they just, you know, they had something for indoor soccer just in the gym.

And so we signed him up. And, you know, he played. Obviously, we never thought anything about it. I didn't know anything about soccer. So, you know, he did it. And we enjoyed going to watch them play. And so after that, we tried on T-ball. We did a T-ball for a year.

And he didn't like it. And my wife hated it. And she said, we're not doing that again. And so we asked him, what do you want to do? He's maybe five or six at this time. And he said, I want to do soccer. And, you know, we kind of looked at each other like soccer. And so, so needless to say, we signed him up.

and he was good because he was really fast for his age. And so skill-wise, he wasn't very good, but he was good athletically. He was able to just score a lot of goals because he could just push the ball ahead and not run people and score goals. And it just, you know, it continually grew, and I never, you know, I never pushed basketball on them or anything. And so we played soccer for maybe three years in any, I think maybe he was nine or eight or nine.

He came to me and said he wanted to do basketball as well. And, you know, that's when I kind of introduced him in the basketball. You know, but I could always kind of tell that he kind of had an affinity that he more so towards soccer than he did at basketball. Well, he told me, and I'm sure you've talked about this with him too, that being good at basketball, like I assume he's pretty good at basketball. I've never watched him play. Being good at basketball is actually quite an advantage.

in soccer. Yes. How do you see that playing out? Like what are the what are the overlaps in skills? Well honestly they're very similar you know the only difference to me

is you know one is you play with your feet and one you play with your hands a lot of the principles are very similar you know obviously one goal is up in the air and the other one is on the you know

the overlap and not necessarily overlap run but giving go-type situations, the passing and moving without the ball. Yeah. Your vision is very important disguising your passes. All those things, they play a big part. And I think for him, it kind of gave him an advantage growing up, you know, growing up, doing playing both of those.

And he was a point guard in the basketball, which kind of forced him to see the floor. and he obviously had to be very good at disguising his passes and being able to dribble the ball and think two steps ahead of your opponent. So it was a, it most definitely benefited him by playing both sports. I notice when I see him like anticipate, I do watch a lot of his footage even now,

even while he's playing for Byron too. I notice when he like when he anticipates he sees something developing and he's very he's very alert and very quick to like to step and intercept a pass or break something up. I like to imagine that that has something to do with basketball as well. I agree. I agree. It did. And I don't know if you know but the Chicago Bulls were Michael Jordan and Field Jacks. You know, they ran the triangle offense that takes winners. I guess kind of design, but he designed that from soccer principles, the fact that I've been told, and I've seen aerial views, if you're looking down on the soccer field with players playing, there's a bunch of triangles all over the field, and that's how you know where your teammates are going to be at all times.

And that's kind of what Tex Winners based that off of. Is that right? I didn't know that. Yeah. Yep. Surely is. Have you been watching that? Did you watch the Jordan documentary? I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah.

And, you know, Joe was my guy growing up. You know, that was who I kind of wanted to be like. He was my guy, and it's funny, but Chris's middle name is Jeffrey, which is Michael's middle name. Yeah. Do you like soccer now? Do you enjoy watching it? I love it. Yeah.

I love it. You know, I watch soccer now more than I do any sport. you know, probably for the last, I don't know, five or six years now. I mean, soccer is, you know, if there's a good Premier League, Bundes League, you know, La Liga game on or something, I'm watching that before I watch anything else. You know, my TV is set up to record the games if I can't be at home to watch it. You know, every Saturday morning, you know, I have my schedules. I know which stations the Bundesliga is on.

And so I'm a huge soccer fan. Yes, I love it. How about that? And, you know, it's crazy because there was, you know, before Chris came along and started playing soccer, I had no, I never even had any thoughts about soccer. And, you know, when I was in Iceland, the Icelandic national team, I wanted to say, it was like 98.

They were going to have, like, a friendly against the French national. national team with Tieri-Anri, and I even think Zadon was still playing. And one of the people on the board for the club that I played for, you know, had asked if I wanted to go see the soccer match, you know, they, you know, I could go and be in a box seat and everything. And I said, no, you know, I had no desire. But, you know, I looked back on it now and I'm like, I couldn't win in Saudi guys, you know.

And, you know, but I just, I didn't know anything about soccer. I didn't care to know anything about it at the time. Yeah, interesting. Does your extended family and your friends, do they, are they interested in soccer? Or do they kind of like tease you about it or what? No, no, I don't, I don't really get teased about it. I mean, they're not. Your son's a pro at one of the best clubs in the world.

Right. But, I mean, they, I mean, they watch it now only, like, if he's playing, you know, like when he was with the national team, you know, in Poland. Or, you know, if when he was here with the ICC with Byron Munich, like, two years ago. You know, so they're going to watch it then. But as far as just watching other games and stuff, nah, they're not doing that. So why isn't soccer more popular among black folks? First of all, here in America, you know, it's football, baseball, basketball. You know, and I think growing up, that's what the kids see.

They don't see many pro-black soccer players. Right. And they most definitely see in there along the lines of say, you know, LeBron James or Lamar Jackson, you know, they, don't see any superstars like there. So, and also, I think financially it's hard for a lot of, um, black families to afford to be at some of the better soccer clubs. Sure.

Yeah. You know, so, you know, I think it's a, so there's a number of things that go into that. But I do, I do think that it's gaining in popularity. And I think with, you know, a lot of that, I think would change if our national team can really start becoming successful. As you can see, what happened with the women's soccer in America. It's gotten huge. And with success comes popularity, notoriety and stuff.

And the more people that see you, the more kids kind of want to emulate you or they want to do what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah, I was, I mean, going back to the Jordan documentary, the last dance, it didn't escape my notice that, you know, Jordan's from kind of a small town. in the south, Wilmington, North Carolina, and Pippins from an even smaller town in Arkansas. Right. You know, so many of the great American athletes have that kind of background.

Actually, I mean, black and white, you know. Right, right, yeah. And, you know, hopefully Chris is in that tradition, you know. I hope so, and I, you know, I hope so, and I think he will. I think he will. I think he's going to do big things. So we're excited. Do you get to visit him very often?

Not very often. You know, I was just because of work and stuff. And then my other two kids, they're very active as well. So, you know, maybe about twice a year. We try to get over there, you know. What's your impression? of Byron Munich, I assume they give you the royal treatment when you show up. Oh, man. I mean, it's top-notch. I mean, there's a reason why they consider one of the top

clubs in the world, you know, everything from their academy to, you know, the senior team, stadium and where they play. I haven't been to a lot of the other bigger big clubs and stuff, but I can't imagine it being much better than what I've seen at Byron. I mean, I just think it's world class. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've been very happy, you know, with his growth and where he's at with Byron. So, yeah, I like it.

Yeah. Seems like he's in a really, a really good spot for him right now. You know, I mean, the level of a competition he's up against on the weekends and stuff. Mm-hmm. Well, anything else I'm missing here? I should be asking. I told you I wouldn't keep you too long. Right. No, I don't

I don't think so. I think you've covered it. Okay. Is there anything else that you want to ask me? I don't think so. I do, I really appreciate you making time for this. You know, scuffed is kind of on hiatus, but this is, this seemed like

had to be done. Right, right, and I appreciate you reaching out to me and giving me an opportunity to be on your show. And I thank you for you're concerned about everything that's going on. Yeah. Yeah, I can't stress enough how, like, anguish is the word that comes to mind for, like, how people are processing what's gone on up here.

Right. Right. It's really, really, really intense. Yeah. I can only imagine, you know, I just, I pray something good comes, comes from all of this and that we can, like I said, can see change in this country because it's obvious that we most definitely need change. You know, and anybody that says things are fine

and that there's not racism or any of that, then they're lying to themselves because there is. And, you know, people see color. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, you know, what do we do when we see that color? How do you, I guess the thing that bothers me the most is I don't understand how you can hate someone just because of the color of their skin. I don't know. And I can't, that to me is just, I don't know, I have no words to explain it.

And so I hope that, like I said, that we really have a deep discussion in this country. about race because we're never going to get past this until we actually deal with it. Yeah. I saw somebody up here a local person, a local activist tweet. I'm not trying to start a race war. I'm trying to end a race war. And I thought that was kind of appropriate. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much, Ken. Appreciate your time. All the best to you and Chris and your. whole family. Thank you. Thank you for your support. And like I said, you're concerned for everything that's going on because you don't have to, you don't really have to be concerned about that.

But, you know, I'm glad to see that there's people and there's a lot of, a lot of people out there that feel the way that you do. And like I said, I think we're, I think we're on to something. I think we're, we're going to see a change. Yeah, I hope so. We will. Okay. you take care take care all right all right bye bye bye