This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Marnie Stockman and Nick Coniglio (Ted Lasso)

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

As has been established on the podcast before, Mike was briefly in high school with Ted Lasso actor Jason Sudeikis, and also knew the coach who inspired the character.  Marnie and Nick are writing a book on the show, and Mike was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to share what he knows on the subject - and so much more. We also bring back for reference parts of our famous #KroenkeOut episode and our interview with Jeff Polaschek.

Hi, I'm Mike Chernivsky, and your listen to this podcast is Un Called For. Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to the podcast. So for today, once again, a shout-outs to the podcast guest connection group on Facebook. Scored another good one with this one, and it was tons of fun. So today, we're actually talking Ted Lassau. for contacts once again I was

a freshman at China Mission West High School while Jason Sadecas was a senior at said high school and you've heard us talk a number of times about Donnie Campbell

the geometry teacher and basketball coach at the time well once again thanks to the podcast guest connection group on

Facebook I got in touch with Marnie and Nick who are podcasters in their own rights I think and more importantly they are

writing a book on the subject of all things Ted Lasso and what told them about my connection with the property they decided yeah let's have you on

and we'll talk about we do have plenty of shoutouts to some of our previous work and I will actually close our episode today with revisiting a couple of those clips like

Jeff Plachek telling his story about Siddakus because he does a better job of telling it than I could and probably a little bit about the European and Super League as well from the

Crocky Out episode which as of the time of recording it has hit the 300 download goal so thank you and thank everyone else for helping us reach that goal

and now we're going to turn over to Marnie and Nick and again I had a blast with this particular talk and you're going to hear why. So enjoy. Yeah, let's get started. So, you know what we're all about? And Ted Lasso, have you seen the show?

I have not, but my connection with Ted Lasso is I was actually in the same high school as Jason Sadekis. And I actually know the man, he inspired most of that character behind. Okay. Is that Donnie Campbell? Donnie Campbell, exactly. Okay. Yeah. Do you tell.

Yeah, I'd love to hear about it. So, so Jason was a senior at Johnny Mission West during my freshman year at said high school. And in addition to being the basketball coach, at West. Donnie Campbell was a math teacher, specifically geometry. Right?

Right? I was a geometry teacher, so I'm a fan already. All right. So, so even though I'm a tall guy myself, I didn't play basketball, but at least not for, at least

not competitively for West. But Campbell, I was, so not because I had running him as a coach in football in particular as well. But as a teacher, this is Campbell, yeah. You walk in, hey, what's going on? Nothing. Staying out of trouble?

Yeah. Who is she? Or who is he? Yeah. We be in galley. That's another, that's another one. My favorites, though, is a, quit cheating. Gone stretch smacking.

So, yeah, Donnie Campbell is a very quotable individual and obviously had an impact on me and on Mr. Sadecas as well. Okay. All right. And I don't know the answer to this question. Is he, he's still with us, right? Is he still teaching? Campbell, yeah, from why I understand he's still here in the Kansas City area and still teaching. I think he's. in the Lee's Summit School District now. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I wonder how it's... So do you...

Do you, like, going to the same school, like I went to the same school as Craig Vizio, right? Not the biggest name, but he was... He's a Hall of Fame baseball player, right? I've seen Craig Bichio play a person, so... Yeah, yeah, he's not a big guy. In fact, since you mentioned Craig Bizio, the last baseball game I went to,

prior to the player strike in 94. Rockies at Astros at the Astrodome. Okay. And Bissio was a catcher. Yeah, yeah, yeah, before they moved in second base and all over the place. Right. But anyway, I think about it, you know, I always kind of relate to the fact that, you know, I went to school with, he's probably the most famous person I went to school with.

I mean, do the people that you went to school with? I don't know if you still keep in touch with him. with them and Craig Vigio was a couple years older and I was, so I didn't really know my, my sister and brother did, but do you kind of feel like our connection to Jason Sadekis going to that same school? Was he well thought of? What's, what's your perspective on that? Well, I actually have a example of this on my podcast. I interviewed my very old friend, Jeff Belichick. Jeff, I've known since I was eight years old. And, uh, He is kind of a celebrity around here.

He was the drummer in a band called, initially it was called Thulian. Later became Anything But Joey. Okay. And tying this back to Campbell's class, their singer, Matt Groby, was also in that class. Oh, wow. All roads lead to Mr. Campbell. Right. Right.

But Jeff, when I had him on, he relayed a story about meeting Jason. At the spring show, I want to say, he told us, he was telling a joke. So along the lines, I'm going by memory right now. So it was, I said on a golf course today, got stung by a bee, and went to the doctor. He asked, where was I stung? I told him it was between hole number one, hole number two. And the doctor said, well, you need to. widen your stance

I've heard that one before that's fun yeah that's a pretty funny I also just for good measure this is my freshman year year book so Jason's a senior year I currently have it open

to the basketball page and has a quote from Jason okay that says a senior varsity guard Jason Siddakis believe to the Vikings defense Shrine Mission West Vikings. Okay.

What's the key to their successes? Sadecas said, quote, our defense is usually pretty strong. We really emphasize it in practices. There you go. Deep thoughts from Jason Sadekis back in high school. He's a lot more quotable as Ted Lassow. Right.

And I should also point out, Shy Mission West, Paul Red is also a, west grad he was like class of 87 i want to say okay so he was way before me yeah wow that's that's pumping out in fact the first time i ever heard of paul rudd i was in our school newspaper the movie clueless had just come out yeah and they were talking all about him and and that's the first time i remember seeing paul rut though was on friends so yeah i don't remember we're on friends i I always think of them as the,

is he the, the ant man. The ant man. Yeah, I guess that's more, more recent than anything else. Right. So,

so tell me, tell us about your podcast, right? I mean, what kind of, what kind of content you normally cover? And what do you, what do you do? Yeah,

no problem. So my podcast is called, this podcast is uncalled for. Yeah. Saw that. Yeah. It is, the best way I can describe it

It's a life exploration where I talk with my friends and share my thoughts on certain subjects. Most of the friends I've had on the podcast are Kansas City-based actors and filmmakers. I also talk with chess people because my day job is a chess instructor. We delve in a little bit of politics and a little bit of sport. and of course I got old high school buddies coming on like Jeff Pallacek, for example. Yeah, that's crazy. That's good. And you've been doing it for a couple years now?

This will be year number five, five year anniversary in May. Okay. Has it become a, is it just a passion for you? Is it a hassle? I mean, doing that for a long time. It's sometimes that really feels starts to feel like it's a job, you know? almost almost i'm not making any money off of it it's just a pure passion project for me and all that's um but i'm still having fun with it and as long as i'm continuing to have

fun with it that that's all that matters i would say so you have a most memorable most memorable episode yeah um quite a few uh given the the uh the uh subject nature of Ted Lassow. I will go on to one of my favorite interviews the episode titles hashtag Cronky out. I saw, I actually saw

that. It was an interview I did with an Arsenal fan based in Amsterdam in which we talk about our shared hatred of Juanina Stanley Cronkey. For those

I was fortunate enough to not know who I'm talking about. He bought the St. Louis Rams and successfully lied to them back to Los Angeles. Yeah. He also owns Arsenal Football Club, and they've been not up to par since he's owned the team. In fact, they've quite regressed. And my guest in particular was really upset with the whole European Super League nonsense from a couple of years ago. So they were really, really not happy about that, almost as not happy as we as St. Louis fans were towards having our team taking away for us for no good reason. Yeah.

Seems like that's happened to St. Louis. times yeah yeah um the rams departure was a lot more egregious than the cardinal departure because the cardinals the city did kind of mess up from my understanding but yeah uh with the rams uh the nfl broke their own rules yeah yeah yeah and then they go and well you probably don't want to talk about it and then they go and win super bowl and yeah it's yeah i'm going to pretend that that in the super bowl never happened. Yeah, okay. I can do that. I'm a Jets fan, so I can pretend Super Bowl's never happen because they haven't in my lifetime. And Sam Ryan can bring up the Cardinals because that's my team now. Yeah, Arizona Cardinals. Gotcha. Yeah. Even though I live in Kansas City

and it's all Chiefs all the time. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, especially right now, you know, the Chiefs are now internationally famous because of one particular go to romance. Yes. By the way, one of my chess co-workers is neighbors with Travis Kelsey. So he got to see, especially early on, what was going on with the relationship with Taylor, with black vans and paparazzi all over the neighborhood. Then he buys the new house out here in Leewood and all those promises magically.

disappearing in the six degrees of separation part of the world i feel like you are like you want two steps from darn near anybody it seems like that yeah it seems like that uh i could go even further my father rich from pittsburg went to this famous central catholic high school which graduated dan marino and uh i think uh zeggri quinto the actor went there and the founder of Costco who gave us the $1.50 hot dog combo. Okay, from that high school. I might have visited that combo just earlier this week. There's nothing wrong with that.

No, no. You mentioned you talk about sports and you mentioned the EPL, the European Premier League. Are you a big European Premier League fan or are you just kind of aware? Yes, I'm an English football fan. And primarily my team is Asson Villa. Secondarily, Arsenal. I can't be a full Arsenal fan because it's a little cranky thing.

Yeah, I get that. It's weird. It's kind of like Man City is just kind of taken over the world. And they're like the Yankees. It feels like a year's past, right? Well, that New York City FC, that's a partnership of both Man City, the City Group, and the Yankees. Yeah.

yeah no doubt so you're you're a fan of i just got to i got to state this right at the gate you're a fan of european football you went to the same high school as jason sadacus and you still haven't watched ted lasso is it the apple tv subscription that's holding it is it is i'm not it is i'm already paying for paramounts for something else so i'm not well this for uh apple but i did see uh one clip the uh sheffield wednesday clip that's pretty funny wait a minute we're playing sheffield wednesday yeah yeah we're playing sherfield saturday yeah yeah that's that's fantastic yeah we've rewatched it like i don't know dozens of times now in the making of our book so uh we're always like wait we found one that hasn't read it you hit all the qualifications but the apple

TV is the last hurdle. I get it. So you get a seven-day free trial. You can easily binge watch the whole first season. All right. Good to know. Good to know. Yeah. I'll think about that. When I told my daughter we were going to write a book, you know, called Lead It Like Lasso, she said, about a TV show mom? And I said, she's 22. I said, before you start, you have to watch the first three episodes. And then you can tell me whether or not, This is a good idea. And after the third, so there's one character, Roy Kent, and everybody in the European football world has chance and cheers.

I came in after she watched three episodes, and I kid you not, she's jumping around my kitchen, yelling, Roy Kent, Roy Kent. He's here. He's everywhere, right? So, yeah, three was all it took, and she was in. She's like, I think that's a good idea, Mom. Do it. We love it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's something else I've noticed about English football culture is the chance. And there's some interesting ones. I can think of a couple of a really good Arsenal chants that I really like. For a Villa, since I did mention, I'm a Villa fan. My favorite was simply a Villa, Villa, Villa, Villa. Villa, Villa. Villa.

Villa. Or another one that's like Birmingham. Am I listening to the song we've been singing, walking along, singing our song, shitting on the city as we go. Love it. Have you embraced all MLS here in the States? I've been to a couple of sporting Kansas City games, and I really wish we had to promotion and relegation in our soccer. and even more so than sporting, I'm more into the local amateur football scene.

I support a local, I can't see team. They're called Santa Fe Wanderers. Okay. And they're just awesome, a bunch of guys to support. Are they like USL or are they just not even now? They are, they played the last couple of years in the UPSL, the Midwest Premier League. and

don't get me start on USL others as well as the KCKM adult soccer league as well

so three seven leagues for them so okay all right it's funny you bring out

the promotion and relegation rules that's that was one of the first topics we started

talking about with the book and that was literally one of my favorite rules of all time you know

even encompassing more than sports, right? I think it, if I don't understand, well, I understand exactly why they do that. They don't do that here in the States, but it just makes things so much more interesting. It really does. It really does. But, yeah. So, I'm curious how you got into chess. Oh, how I got into chess is I got into board gaming, thanks to one Will Wheaton, and going to game nights and

one of the guys I normally game with turned out he was a chess instructor and they were hiring. So that was December, 2016 was my interview. I've been teaching since January 2017.

Mostly like after school programs and so I am I licensed to United States Chess Federation tournament director. And here we go with Celebrity. Again, I been grateful enough and thankful enough to be in the same room as some grandmasters. You may have her name's Magnus Carlson, Icaro Nakamura, Bishianand.

And most recently, I kid you not, Gary Kasparov. Really? Yeah. I just read the book Hidden Potential. and they talk about there's one whole section of the book that talks about the students from Harlem that created a club that didn't know

a thing about chess and what they did to become international champions type of things that's interesting because a lot of those names were mentioned in that book. Yep. You have Netflix?

Have you ever watched Queens Gambit? I did watch the Queens Gambit. I did watch the Queens Gambit. What are your thoughts from your expertise perspective with that one? Well, it was my introduction to the idea of adjournments in Jess. That doesn't happen anymore. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, that's when it's late in a day.

You're both tired. They're calling adjournments. Whoever's turn it is, they'll write down the next move. and then the very net and then put in an envelope that they'll write it in the envelope and then the next day they open that envelope and that's in the first move the next day makes sense so they can they're not thinking overnight of what what oh they're still thinking they're still going to be thinking overnight about what the next move is yeah but yeah interesting So, yeah.

Okay. Yeah, most tournaments nowadays, they'll finish on the day, so there's really no need for adjournments. Yeah. That's true. Yeah, no doubt. Yep. All right.

Anything else to cover? Mike, when we, morning? I was curious about all the background. and I have been intrigued. So I'm glad we got to chat. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. This is fun.

All right. Awesome. Appreciate you having us. Yeah. And likewise. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

We went to West with a certain famous. actor who was a senior our freshman year. Tlasso? Yeah, Cidacus, yeah. I saw my yearbooks all four of them, and I opened to the freshman year book. And yeah, they're right there in the basketball page. It says Cidacus.

And then the team photo, he's standing next to Steve. Right, right. And most Campbell was the coach. and Matt was actually in my geometry class with Campbell. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, he, like, said, like, right behind me or something like that. That's funny.

Yeah, I mean, small world, but, man, what a great career, Jason has ended up having. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't actually remember him from West. Maybe you did, but. I did I did remember him from West I remember our freshman year he was a senior and he was hosting the spring show which you know they would be the some skips and some dances for the dance team and in all the things like that and he told one of the funniest jokes I've ever heard in my life to this day on that show and this remember this is him being a senior in high school. And he said, he was still the joke. He said, I was out on the golf course over the weekend and I got stung by a bee. And he went to the doctor. And doctor says, where did you

get stung? And he says, between whole number one and whole number two. And the doctor said, well, maybe you need to widen your stance. That is pretty funny. I mean, for a high school kid, I thought that was pretty great. It was pretty funny. And I'd seen him a, you know, I'd done a couple of forensics classes and things like that as well, speech and whatnot. And he was obviously huge in that.

He was like a legend in that already. So I got to see him perform and do a couple, you know, of those like improvised sketches or whatever. And it was just clear to me that he was like on a different level than everybody else. Okay, that kind of actually sounds similar to how, like, the Premier League was founded, because that actually was founded out of the remains of the old Division I. So the Division I was part of the Football League, and that was administered by the FA and the EFL, right?

So they distributed the money across the football and pyramid. So you go from the Division I, some of the money will go to Division 2, Division 3, Division 4, conference and then you get to non-league as well and then but what the premier league clubs did there were five main breakaway clubs actually at the time i think it was arsenal everton tottenham hotspur Manchester United and liverpool so a lot of the familiar faces for the super league as well right they decided to create this sort of breakaway league they encouraged the other 14 clubs to buy into buy into it at the time so not the not all of the 14 numbers that were there are currently there now because you have promotion and relegation

people can come in and out of the league so you never got rid of that aspect of it but they managed to you know did their own sort of marketing brand tv rights deals things like that so they can get extra money pumped into the top of the league and they can keep a bit distributed more eagerly amongst the teams in the league but then the little teams lower down the league kind of suffered as a result and that's kind of allowed the primary league to grow into this sort of giant that it is today amongst, you know, the soccer leagues of Europe, you'd say. Sure, sure. All right.

Cool. By the other, parenthesis, I wish we had promotion and relegation, at least in our soccer in the U.S. I feel like, because you saw like with the European Super League, they tried to take that away. And that was the thing that was most sort of rabidly fought for by fans of all the teams, even teams of the big sticks were like, no, we want to keep our promotion and relegation. We want to keep our history and culture.

And because our teams kind of started off as sort of like working class teams built out from the ground. You know, like for example, I'll give you Arsenal's history, for example. They were built, they were the factory team for the people who worked at the Royal Arsenal. So the people would make munitions for the army, you know, so make explosives and cannonballs and things like that for the government, right? And so these top workers, they'd play their football team on the weekend. and you know they'd get the get the local dock workers local people together and they used to be based in actually the southeast of london where the east india docks currently are it used to be called woolwich arsenal and then it became royal arsenal once they moved to north

london right but the but at the time there was still part of the the same workers who basically moved the club because they moved the factory from willich to nfield which is not and then The club, Arsenal, was just down the road, basically, on the seven sisters. So you go past Tottenham, and then you end up an Arsenal. It's all very close by. So they set up their kit there, and then we wear red and white, because Notting and Forest were the biggest club in England at the time. This is way back in 1886, 1890, so very early on.

They got lone red and white shirts by Lottongingham Forest, and then that's been our colours ever since. and then we've been the only clubs I think one of three clubs have never been relegated from Division I since we've been in it since 1911 and it's people have had grown up like it's generational

you know my dad grew up watching Arsenal and I know people whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers grew up watching Arsenal and it's just it's a community vibe it's a it's not just a football it's not necessarily just a sports team it's an extension of the community itself uh i feel like uh football is a lot more localized because england is a lot smaller country than um the united states you have a lot greater distances to travel you don't really get

necessarily you don't see everybody in your local area that often that's right i guess you're mostly in cars it's quite suburbanized i've been there a few times i kind of get the idea um whereas in Because England is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, actually. If you look at just from land area compared by population, everyone's kind of grouped together. Everyone kind of knows each other. It's a bit, but it used to be like that. Now, because London and places like that have exploded, become mega cities. It's not quite the same as it used to be.

And I feel that's kind of part of how the culture shifted. But still, there's a lot of ties to the local community you'd expect from football clubs. and they just, that's kind of what's been lost over the years by the Premier League, but they've been selling us the illusion that this community vibe still exists and that's how they've been making themselves profitable, which is kind of perverse in a way, you know. Stan Cronky's been a big part of that,

where he, let me get into a bit of how he came into Arsenal. So he bought, so he bought Minority Shaz, 9% state from ITV, we used to be one of the main broadcasters in the UK for football games, but then when the Premier League came about and then they lost a lot of their rights and stuff, the valuation of the company went down so they wanted to sell their shares in Arsenal to recoup some losses so they sold them to stand cranky. So that's how he initially got involved with Arsenal.

Then you started slowly buying up shares between the period of like 2007, 2008, so he got to about a 29.9% stake in the company, which is crucial because anything above 30 he has to make a bid for all the shares under English football club by the bylaws. I'm not exactly know what the legal term is for it, but they had a first refusal for sale. And there was other stakeholders as well

who had, you had fans who'd had minor stakeholders in the club before. Some of these shares have been in the club for generations, you know. So in these people's families, families for generations. And then you have other people who are involved with, say, the House of Lords at the time. So we had Lord, Lord, Provostwell, Lord and Lady Nina Harris and all of these sorts of upper class tops, you know, who have like old money and old investments in the club. They were on the board at the time. And then David Dean, the man who'd brought Arsend vanguard to a club, the man, the myth, the legend himself.

the guy who's basically made Arsenal into the powerhouse club that they are today but he had he he saw kind of where the Premier League was heading when after Chelsea had been taken over by Roman Abramovich

in 2002, 2003 and then they started buying their way to the title after 2004 they kind of saw which way the wind was blowing and he decided oh I've better get a rich investor on board so then he looked at Stan Crunkey because he thought, oh, this guy has a lot of sports holding in the US.

You must know about something about investing in a sports company. So he brought him on board, right? And then there was another, but I think David Dean and Crunkie had a falling out pretty quickly. And it looked like the deal was going to stall for a long time. But then, and then he actually, David Dean brought another invested into the club, Alishir Usmanov, who's now, who's, who's, who's an, I think he's Kazakh or Uzbeki, I'm not exactly sure where he's from in the former Soviet Union, but he has holdings in like mineral wealth and things like that. And now he's, well, he also bought up like a 29% stake in Arsenal as well.

So it was basically there was no gridlock. You got to gridlock at this point because he had these two owners who wanted diametrically opposed thing. And neither of them was willing to sell. And then Usmanov came in with a bid to buy out the whole five shares from Kronki. Kronki refused. And then eventually

Usmanov just lost patience, sold his steak to Kronky. Then that took him over the limit. So then you forcibly bought the rest of the shares, including the shares that were in like fans' hands that were in hands for generations. So that left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths. And throughout the entire time,

we'd been paying off this new stadium we built as well. So, we'd moved from our ground, which was high bridge, which we had since before World War I, we had this ground. And that's where our history is tied up to. We had great marble walls, and it was part of the heritage. But they decided that they needed to take Arsenal in a new direction. They sold us this dream that would be competing with the European judges. that we'd be able to go toe-to-toe with Bayern Munich.

That was the line they sold us, you know. So they built, they took us out of the stadium, they built a whole new one, about not very far, like around the corner. It wasn't necessary about the distance relocated, it was more about the heritage behind it. And then they built this new big stadium, there was a big, there was a big issues with like the planning commission, with London governments and things like that,

and that's installed, and the price scale. and the price costs kept going up. And then, so the idea with the owner was to help finance this take over, to help, you know, read some of the debts, but he, cronkey didn't send, live up to his end of the bargain, basically. He ended up just taking consultancy fees and dividend payments and things like that until he was able to buy up the entire club and that, and now he doesn't even have to report his financial figures,

so we don't even know how much he's taking out. But throughout that entire period, we've been basically under austerity. So we haven't had enough money for transfers. He's had to sell best players pretty much every season. We've had been sold lies and dreams. And football's been getting more and more mediocre every season. He even threw Arsendanga under the bus to try and save his own reputation. They've got the fans turning against each other.

There were arguments amongst fan base. People were just getting vicious. Then once Fassan Wenger left, then he tried to bring Unai Emory in. That didn't work out because Unai Emory started to point out that he wasn't being given the proper tools for the job. He was only allowed loan signing, and he wasn't allowed to, you know, invest in a proper team. And he wasn't, the players were based, were bought based on marketability and not footballing reasons. So it was turning into a basically kind of a comedy club, you know, where sort of people could come on on, on holidays, you know, these older established players with marketable names, but not real

work, can come in and get huge contracts to sit around and basically underperform. And then we could kind of see the trend sliding, the winning mentality got lost out of the team. And then eventually we got on to the point now where we're almost out of Europe completely. We're 10th this season in the league. So this is our lowest ever finished in 25 years. we we're on the verge of getting knocked out of the Europa League semi-final which is our only route back to the Champions League we have a completely inexperienced manager in charge a squad that is totally dysfunctional over years of neglect

and an ownership that is whose only aim is to actually divorce the results from the profitability and we've gone into this situation where it's turned into this entire poisonous atmosphere which is dragging the whole club down and while the commercial revenues have gone up the success has gone down

and relative to our competitors and our peers we've actually regretted because before Kronky took over the club Arsenal were the most profitable club in Europe now we're maybe eighth or ninth most profitable. Wow. so it's just

it's just a case of pure neglect and he fed lies to the fans of the years and then when he tries to do this European Super League behind our doors that was just the last straw for a lot of people he literally tried to stab the entire

footballing pyramid in the back and for a lot of us the footballing pyramid is sacred because we all participate in it at some point in our lives you know when you're a kid growing up playing kick about with your school team or your or your local club team in the park or on your local five precise pitch that's part of the football league pyramid you get you get resources from

that and they wanted to destroy basically an entire culture and way of life in not just England but Europe yeah with this whole super league because what eventually would happen is um the less less money would go to those teams this those teams would stop folding they'd have to settle all their best players to all these Super League. None of these teams can drop out so they can continue being mediocre. So none of the fans who have been following the club will like watching what they're seeing. Then you have eventually they'll start having exhibition games where you'll have Arsenal playing a home game in LA or Manchester United playing a home game in the Fenway stadium or you have Abu Dhabi, Manchester City in Abu Dhabi playing PSG and things like that.

You know, so that's where you feel like that was where it was going, you know? Yeah. It was... It sounded to be like they were trying to Americanize European. They were totally trying to Americanize it. And the main push, the main forces behind is were the glazers, the guys who were behind Tampa Bay and Manchester United. Right.

Dronkey and John Henry, the guy behind the Red Sox and Liverpool. Right. So those are the three main driving forces behind this Europeans, Super League. Florentino Perez was the face they put on it because he's got the most sort of credibility in the footballing world. Well, he used to.

Now he's a total laughing stock. Right. But he was the face of it. And Real Madrid wanted to buy into this because they had basically been making the most money out of every club in Europe, but they'd been mismanaging their funds so spectacularly that they managed to put

themselves over a billion euros in debt. Wow. So that's what they want. Yeah. Yeah. They spend ridiculous money on ridiculous players that have not paid off whatsoever, basically. And they just feel entitled to keep robbing the rest of the Spanish League and robbing the other clubs in Europe to basically fund their gaudy monstrosity of a club. And they, so they're the ones kind of who allowed them, Juventus, Arsenal, Manxor.

Manchester United and Liverpool, they were the ones who kind of wanted this thing to happen because they were the big established clubs and they were afraid of the new big new boys on the block, the Chelsea, the Mancities, the PSGs, the Leicesters even, the I-Xs, you have teams like that who come up, who can punch above their weights because you don't, I don't know if you get, I feel like the kind of the charm of almost the Premier League is that any team can beat any team at any time. But that one day like, um, like, um, like, I'll, Arsenal can lose to Burnley or Manchester City can get humiliated by Aston, like Liverpool could get humiliated by Aston Villa or, you know, something like that can happen, you know.

It's just the, that's part of the charm of why a lot of local fans sort of watch this game. And I feel like I kind of needed to sort of express sort of the entire picture just because I don't know how much connected or disconnected this kind of is for American sports perspective. but from a European sports perspective you can't really kind of understand almost like if you try, like for example moving a team, there was one case of it and that caused so much uproar that no one's ever tried it ever again.

And then the European Super League, I feel like that was the first time I've ever seen unity across like partisan lines, footballing lines, racial lines, whatever lines. Everyone was unanimously against this thing from all over all over Europe, pretty much. The only people who wanted it were the 12 greedy bastards

you were trying to pull this into place, you know? Right. So that was a fun interview to conduct. So once again, thanks to Marnie and Nick for the opportunity. They have access this. audio as well, the raw forms, so I look forward to hearing what you guys do with that. And once again, thanks to Carrad and Jeff for your previous contributions. I felt it was necessary to revisit them, consider the subject nature of the interview.

And, yeah, I shared a villa chance earlier on, so let's share my favorite original chance, And I just have one question for all you all, y'all, and that is, what do you think of Tottenham? Shit! What do you think of shit? Tottenham! Thank you! That's all right! We're at Tottenham!

We're at Tottenham! We had Tottenham! We had Tottenham, we had Tottenham, we had Tottenham, we had Tottenham, we had Tottenham. We had Tottenham. We had Tottenham. All right. And on the off chance that Jason Stigate is listening to this. You're always welcome on the podcast. I'd love to talk West and Campbell with you at some points.

And I need to get off my ass and contact the business like already. For the opportunity, the offer is open. And this is a great time to wrap up this particular episode. So, this podcast is uncalled for is hosted, produce, and edited by myself Mike Chernivsky. The opening music is Iron Bacon by Kevin McLeod at Incompetect.com, licensed undergrative Commons by attribution, 4.0 license.

And in keeping with the soccer tradition here, we're going to outro with Weipa by Kevin McLeodagh at Accompteck.com, licensed undercreative comments, bad truition, 4.0 license. And we're playing in Sheffield, Wednesday? No, we're playing in Sheffield, Saturday, right? We got to play it twice in the same week?

This Saturday? No, I got plans. Come home. Quit cheating. We'll have to start smacking. If you are in the United States or Canada, you can call us at 816-832-5160. Leave your message or question for us, and if we like it, we will play it on the podcast. Please support the podcast and purchase our exclusive uncalled-for

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