Throughline - The World Cup was supposed to bring world peace

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

World Cup tickets are going for as high as $45,000. Not in most of our budgets. How did things get so out of hand when the tournament's founder intended to bridge class divides? Today on the show, the origins of the World Cup, from World War I to Mussolini’s fascist Italy, and how it grew into the multibillion-dollar spectacle the world is gearing up to watch.Guests:Jonathan Wilson, columnist at The Guardian and author of The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World CupSimon Kuper, columnist at the Financial Times and author of World Cup FeverSupport shows like Throughline with NPR+. Sign up today at plus.npr.orgSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

In 1930, an ocean liner called the Conte Verde set sail from Genoa. The final destination, Monte Video, Uruguay. Three soccer teams are aboard the ship, one from Romania, another from Belgium, and the third from France, along with some referees. For nearly two weeks, they journey across the sea. In close quarters, everyone sort of sizing each other up. Because when they make landfall in Uruguay, they'll be competing against each other in the first ever World Cup. The French start training really early in the morning

so they don't disturb the other passengers. So running around the deck, running up and down stairs, you can sort of pull-ups on pipes. And then the Romanian see them doing this thing. Hang on, maybe we should be doing some of that as well. But they also have a lot of free time. And sometimes they just hang out. They have dance contests.

It was like a holiday camp. We're young men having fun. And there's one man on the ship, watching it all with deep satisfaction. This very dapper man with silver hair, very careful mustache. He's not a player, not a ref. He's the guy who came up with this whole idea for a World Cup. And in his suitcase is a statue 30 centimeters high weighing four kilograms, the new World Cup trophy.

His name, Jules Rameh. And for him, there's a lot more than just soccer riding on this inaugural tournament. The main thing is peace. We need peace. Soccer can bring peace. He had big dreams for the World Cup, believing it could bring together countries from around the world, people who might otherwise have nothing in common,

at least for a little while. Nearly 100 years after that ship set sail to Uruguay, here we are getting ready for the 23rd World Cup. The U.S., Mexico and Canada are hosting. and I'm just a bridge away from New Jersey where some of those games, including the final, will be held. Very exciting. But I'll be honest.

I'm also just thinking about the logistics of it all. Will I still be able to make it out to Jersey every week to see my mom? How's the traffic going to be? Will there be crazy fans everywhere? Okay, you didn't click on this episode to hear about my traffic anxiety, but I stand by it. I also thought about getting tickets to a game, but the prices are wild. We're talking as high as $45,000.

So yeah, not in the budget. The International Federation of Association Football, aka FIFA, the organization that founded and oversees the World Cup, has projected a record-breaking $13 billion in revenue for the four-year cycle leading up to this summer's tournament. The United States military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations in Iran. And on top of this being a super expensive World Cup, it's also happening while one of the host countries is waging a war against one country and is openly hostile to others. President Trump's immigration policies, including travel bans, have created concerns.

The issue is that four countries in those lists are expected to play in the FIFA World Cup and play matches here in the U.S. I'm talking about Iran and Haiti who are under the full travel ban and Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal who are under the partial ban. Meanwhile, Russia is prohibited from participating due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Who gets to host? Who gets to attend? How much do money and politics matter? That's all in the background of this World Cup. And, well, a lot of recent World Cups. 2022 was in Qatar, 2018, in Russia. That got us wondering, did Jules Romay's dream ever pan out? How did that first World Cup go? And when did things start to get messy? The main thing is peace. Sokker can bring peace.

I'm Randam del Fethe. On this episode of ThruLine from NPR, we'll trace how an idea imagined in a war bunker to promote global peace quickly became a tool for something much darker and eventually grew into a multi-billion-dollar spectacle that millions of us are gearing up to watch, complete with catchy music from some of the world's biggest stars. Hello, this is Bryce Galing from Tant, Ohio, and you're listening to Thurline by MPR. Part 1. Jules Ramei dreams of peace. Jules Rame never really liked playing soccer as a kid growing up in Paris in the 1870s. It was an English invention, slowly catching on in France, and he preferred to kick around ideas from the books he read.

He's a clever boy. They're not rich, and he grows up in this kind of working-class, low-middle-class neighborhood. This is Simon Cooper. He's a columnist at the Financial Times, an author of several books about soccer. He trains as a lawyer, so he's obviously ambitious, he's obviously bright. And this is Jonathan Wilson. He's a columnist at The Guardian, an author of The Power and the Glory, a new history of the World Cup.

So Ramey wasn't a star athlete, didn't have a strong love of the game itself, but he did have an interest in the sports clubs popular at the time, the community aspect of sports, which he saw as being aligned with his religious background. So Sheila-Rameh is a devout Catholic. Pretty much everyone in France back then was Catholic, but Rameh really took its teachings to heart. He's very taken by Pope Leo the 13th.

Pope Leo the 13th was known as the Paul. Pope of the Worker, and he wrote an influential text called... Dear Arab Nawarum, which looks at the plight of the working classes. It lays out that working people deserve the right to form unions and demand fair wages and safe workplaces in the face of rapid industrialization. Pope Leo also recommended a series of ideas for making working people's lives better. And the section of that, which enraptures Rime, is the one about sport and how physical activity can help elevate people.

And Serimei is so taken by this. He sees sports and the growing popularity of soccer is a tool that could uplift the poor and working class, help give them a sense of dignity, camaraderie, and maybe most importantly, morality. After watching players compete on a field and then have a drink with their opponents after, he thought, if only the world worked like that. So he helps found this club, Red Star. It still exists today.

And he sets up to be classless to try and have no class divisions. Once you're inside the club, you don't talk about politics. Everybody's treated the same. He tries to use as an educational tool, so he hands out poetry to the members. And they play football together. So this is him using football in the way the Pope has indirectly instructed him. do so. And he has this very idealistic vision of football as something that can help bring people together that can encourage fraternity among nations. And he's adamant that these players get paid.

You can't ask poor people to play without pay. And so he separates himself from the amateurism around the Olympics. Quick aside here about amateur versus professional soccer. In the 1900 Paris Olympics, soccer was played for the first time. And it's kind of like, like the World Cup in terms of nations facing each other, except in the Olympics, all the players had to be amateurs. In other words, they couldn't get paid for playing soccer. He thinks the Olympics is for people who've already got money, and that's not what he's about in any way. So while the French soccer team still participates in the Olympic Games, Ramei continues to push for professional soccer in France. Meanwhile, in Paris, an association of seven

European countries form FIFA. And Ramey sets his sights on rising to the top of it, a goal that seems within his reach. The future looks bright until 1914. The big kind of breaking point in his life is World War I. When World War I breaks out, Ramee is forced to leave his wife and three kids. He goes to the front immediately, August 1914. He's at the front for four years. Four years of war.

bullets whizzing by his head. You know, he's in this machine gun nest, besieged by Germans. The sound of bombs going off in the dead of night. He's in the worst of the fighting. The stench of gangrene, wet clothes, fallen friends. It's a miracle he survived. And this whole time, sitting in the trenches. He's writing letters home about soccer administration, helping create a new French soccer.

Maybe it was an escape, maybe a coping mechanism. Or maybe he was a He was just that obsessed with the idea of a World Cup. And he comes out from war like many ex-soldiers thinking, we need peace and we especially need peace between France and Germany. Peace might have seemed impossible on the battlefield. But if they could achieve peace on the soccer field, maybe it would be a test run for something more lasting.

And so he becomes president of FIFA very soon after the war. He's president of FIFA from 1921 to 1954. And he picks up the dream. that FIFA had from its very beginning when it was founded in 194, which is we're going to have a World Cup. We're going to have a world championship where professionals can play. But first, they had to figure out the logistics. Like, where was this tournament going to take place?

And how are they going to pay for it? They need a country to finance it because FIFA has no money. And what money FIFA has, they lose in the great crash of 1929, because their treasurer, this Dutchman is a stockbroker, and he's put all the money in the stock market. So they're bankrupted in 1929. They need a country that's willing to host the World Cup and pay for the whole thing. Their options were limited.

Because keep in mind, they were thinking of it as a World Cup, but really... Africa and Asia are mostly colonies. And in the minds of the white men who run FIFA, these white Europeans, colonies have no place in a World Cup. Black and brown people are not thought of as possible participants in a World Cup. Ultimately, they decided on Uruguay. Uruguay are widely recognized as being the best side in the world. At least if you ignore the British teams who are not going to play, or are being difficult about it at least.

Okay, that's kind of a whole other story. But for all you Arsenal fans, wondering where was England in all of this? Let me give you a quick recap. England opted out of FIFA and the First World Cups, in part because of the ongoing professional amateur debate. And also because there's this sense that it's an English game that they'll keep playing in England. It's kind of like, what do we have to prove? We invented this game.

Anyway, back to Uruguay, which ironically had deep ties to the UK at this time. UK firms owned a lot of Uruguay's train infrastructure and is credited with importing, you guessed it, football, soccer. So they are the best team in the world, and there's a sense where we should reward them for all of that. but also their government was prepared to fund it and were prepared to subsidize travel for teams to go to Uruguay. We'll put them up in style in Uruguay. It's a pretty good deal for FIFA and the competing nations. But it's also not a deal without motives.

Uruguay's leaders feel like hosting the World Cup in 1930, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of the country's independence, was a great way to flex its nationhood. And the reason for that is partly that football has been so successful at promoting Uruguay as a nation when they win the Olympic gold in 1924, they say thousands of dollars of investment in propaganda could not achieve what we have achieved by winning this gold medal. Everybody in Europe knows who we are now. Everybody's talking about us. They know that Uruguay is a country in its own right, that we're not just a province of Argentina.

So Uruguay had a little bit of a chip on its shoulder, sandwiched in between, between Brazil and Argentina. It was ready to shine on the global stage. Of course, the First World Cup was a small affair compared to what it's become today. In 1930, only 13 teams, which included the U.S. participated. And of that number...

There's only four European countries make the journey. Compared to today's sleek national jerseys and tight game schedule... It's enormous chaos. There were game day debates of what ball would be used. Uruguay is still building stadiums at night after the World Cup has kicked off. And there was no strict uniformity to the team's kits. Players wore different-colored shirts,

and one player even played in a colorful beret. But overall... It's considered a success. People like it. And Jules Rameh was loving every minute of it. In his diaries, he writes, All of them recognized a link, a reciprocal symbol of affinity, football. And right away, the ice was broken. Considering the speed with which friendly relationships were formed

between these people, who had never laid eyes upon each other before, you might think that they were members of a big household, scattered around the world and happy to find each other again at a family reunion. So Ramey had a pretty rosy outlook on this first World Cup. But at the end of the day, it was still a competition. There were winners and losers, not just between teams, but between countries. And that competition was fueled by national pride.

Nowhere was that tension more present than in the 1930 World Cup final between the host country, Uruguay, and their longtime rival, Argentina. Their rivals outside of football as well. I mean, all kinds of reasons. They're next door to each other. They're both exporters of meat.

There's obvious reasons why neighboring countries will be rivals. But this manifests, particularly in fact, football. Argentina was still pretty sore about having lost the Olympic gold in soccer to Uruguay in the 1920 Olympics. How did their smaller neighbors keep besting them? And Uruguay was tired of Argentina thinking of them as less than. All of that was playing out on the field.

It's taken incredibly seriously in Uruguay and Argentina. On a hot day in July 19th, The two teams took the field. In some video footage of the game, you can see the stadium is teeming with fans, mostly men, cheering. There's huge crowds. Jules Rameh was in the crowd too.

Recalling the overwhelming noise of the crowd, he wrote, The Argentinian fans' clamor, intended at times to encourage their team, at others to counter the Uruguayan cheers, combines with the latter to create a hellish din that persists throughout the entire match. Rising and falling in balanced alternation, depending on whether one team or the other, is on the verge of scoring a goal or is just missed one.

Argentina leads the game two to one at halftime. They've got the momentum. But Uruguay is not ready to admit defeat. In the second half, Uruguay scores three more goals. The fourth and final goal is scored by a forward called Ecta Castro and he only had one arm. He'd lost the lower part of his right arm

in a busso accident in his early teams. The crowd explodes. Uruguay has beat Argentina 4 to 2 in the first ever World Cup. Fans quickly start to take the field. There's a pitch invasion and so there's massive chaos in the Uruguay. Ryan players are actually running around the field, waving a cup.

But it's not the World Cup. It's a cup that they'd won in some previous tournament, maybe the Olympics, maybe something else. They already have a cup. Already have a cup. Jules Rameh is like, wait a second. He's standing there with the World Cup. He's had a special trophy made in Paris. It's a very beautiful cup with Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, with outstressed wings.

And he goes onto the field, and there's fans everywhere, cheering and celebrating. And he pushes his way to the Uruguayan Football Federation presidents, and Rimei just kind of shoves the cup into his hands. So that is the presentation of the Cup for the First World Cup. Not exactly the pomp and circumstance you might expect. But that's how it went. And while the end wasn't this huge ceremonial presentation, Jules Ramei was still happy with the final.

Perhaps the Uruguayans attach an exaggerated significance to their triumph. Yet they shout their joy with, such infectious conviction that in this moment, it seems almost to be shared by the entire mass of spectators. According to Rimei, the victory was one celebrated by all, a testament to the great good of soccer and the World Cup. The reality was a little more complicated. The sort of riots in Buenos Aires and Uruguay and targets have attacked.

Argentinian protesters throw rocks at Uruguay's embassy. The Argentinian papers are full of these anti-Euguan diatribes. Argentina breaks off diplomatic relations. So there is real consequences. And still, Rimei continues to believe in the power of soccer and the World Cup to unite instead of divide. He sees the final through a very different lens. After all, this inaugural World Cup stands as a triumph for the South American community, given that two of its teams, having both reached the very summit of the competition,

have shared the honor of contesting the final. For him, the World Cup is a success, and others agree. On the whole, people think, yeah, it's worth doing again. And so, four years later, in 1934, the World Cup was held again, this time in Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy. That's coming up. And you're listening to ThruLines from NPR. Hey, Run here.

We want to try something new on the show, and we need your help. Have you ever had a question about something in the news or culture or wondered why something is the way it is? We're talking sports, religion, science, politics, everyday quirky things. We want to hear it all. Send your questions to ThruLine at NPR.org or call 872-588-88-8-8-8-8-8-8. And if you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number two. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode. And thanks.

Part 2. Ilduchet's World Cup. On May 27, 1934, the second World Cup began in Italy. All 16 of the teams played in an eight-game simultaneous kickoff in cities across the peninsula, in an automatic knockout competition. The host nation, Italy, squares off against the United States in Rome. Thousands of fans watched from the stands, erupting in cheers. Among them, Benito Mussolini, also known as Il Duce, the leader. He'd been the dictator of Italy for nearly a decade by this point.

Italy defeated the U.S. 7 to 1. Mussolini's plan to bring the World Cup to fascist Italy had worked. Standing next to him, World Cup founder, Jules Rameh, is less than excited. There's some photographs of him and the body language is fascinating. You can almost see him sort of cringing away from Mussolini. Ramei had never expected what this second World Cup would become, a giant advertisement for fascism. Mussolini essentially invents sports marketing.

or what today we might call sports washing, leveraging sports to reshape public perception of your country, especially when human rights abuses are involved. So that meant distracting with glitzy charm. The tickets are printed on very high-quality card so that people will keep them with souvenirs. And commemorative trinkets. Tea trays, models, things like that,

branded with the logo of the World Cup and the logo of the fascist party. The World Cup stadiums are all placed. based in cities that boast fascist architecture. And Mussolini makes sure everyone who wants to get to the games can. Italy wants to show itself to the world as a welcoming, successful, modern, organized nation. So fans from the Netherlands and France and Czechoslovakia are given cheap train travel. And once in Italy...

He subsidized travel between host cities. And if they couldn't make it, no problem. He arranged live radio broadcasts of every... every game. It's the kind of first World Cup as a mass media event. I don't know how Ramei would feel about me saying this, but he and Mussolini had something in common. They both saw soccer as more than a game, as a tool to unite people. But for Mussolini, that unity was a vehicle to sell the world on a new ideology that he had pretty much invented. Fascism. That word is thrown around a lot these days. What it meant in practice was

extreme nationalism, a stifling of dissent and democracy, and a belief in social hierarchy. It's often associated with Hitler, but it started with Mussolini. He's very keen on the World Cup, because it's a moment where Italy can win, so it shows the virility and strength and glory of the nation. He's going to be there, he's going to claim credit. So at all the games that Italy play, Mussolini is kind of there watching the field obsessively. Rimey wrote that he often had... quote, the impression during the World Cup that the real president of the International Football Federation was Mussolini.

So let's backtrack here a little, to make sense of how the World Cup came to be held in Italy in 1934. In large part, it's because the growing fascist movement saw what El Ducche saw, that soccer had the power to unite and build a nation. So in 1926, there's a fascist, convene this big meeting in Villargeo, which is a Tuscan resort, of stakeholders, I guess we call them, in football. And they want to set up a national league.

And I think Italy at this point has been unified for, depending exactly when unification would have happened, 60 years. Italy wasn't a unified country until 1861. So the idea of a national Italian identity was relatively new. And the new soccer league would represent that. So if you can say, well, there is this National Italian League, and you can involve people from all over the country from the south, from the north, from both coasts, then you are helping create this idea of a nation. In some ways, this isn't so different from Rame's vision.

Soccer united people. In the case of Italy, though, the goal was to unite Italians and only Italians. So there's two other things come out of that conference. in 1926. So one is a foreign player as a band from 27-8 season onwards. Foreign managers are still allowed. So you can still have the educator, but the people being educators are going to be Italian. Okay, so only Italian men can play on the teams. No foreigners. Put that detail in your back pocket. And then the second thing is this is sort of ideal that every city should have one club. So Italians from all these different cities and even

countries are being turned into one country by football. That's what Mussolini is trying to do. They start building stadiums, and when the World Cup rolls around, they're ready to host. Everyone knew Mussolini was a dictator, including Jules Ramei. Historians tend to explain Rime's choice to go ahead with the World Cup in Italy. as apolitical. We all know, though, being a political can itself be a political statement.

And a lot of countries still participated in the World Cup, and a lot of people from around the world came to watch it. Early on in the World Cup, people started noticing something about the Italian team. The football, I think, is

Italy of a physical side. In other words, they were willing to play dirty. The Italian team, already one of the favorites to win, since Uruguay, England, and Scotland do not attend, has a win at any cost mentality. And as the tournament goes on,

more and more games turn violent. Other countries start complaining about the refs, speculating about whether they're rigging games for Italy, and really, for Mussolini. And I think there's a perception, certainly from Spain here they beat the quarterfinal and from Austria, that referees are indulging them,

that referees could be stricter. Many felt that Mussolini pressured referees to favor Italy and in some way hand them a win, a controversy that continues to surround the 1934 World Cup. Is that sour grapes? Is it true? It's really difficult to tell. I think the most neutral view we have on it is the Belgian referee from 1930, Jean-Langeun, and he certainly thinks that referees allow themselves to be intimidated

by quite hostile home crowds. It's hard to know now, exactly what happened. But we do know the atmosphere at Italian Games could be intimidating because Mussolini's project to unite Italy was working. At games, you know, the population is encouraged into a frenzy. People chant Mussolini's name and the radio commentary is extremely nationalistic and patriotic. It's all about these 11 players incarnate the greatness and the glory of Italy and they are playing for the leader. So very freshest atmosphere.

And it was working on the pitch too. Italy beat out all its competitors to make it to the final against Czechoslovakia. It's hot. And Italy is not doing well. Czechoslovakia is up one-nil. is up 1-0. And then, in the 82nd minute of game time, Ramundo Orsi, who's the outside left,

who scores the equalizer. Ramundo Orsi keeps Italy's championship dreams alive. The funny thing is, Orsi was born in Argentina. He's... An Ariundo of a turner. Meaning that Italy has gone back on who they consider Italian,

after some prodding from coaches that allowing for... Orn-born players of Italian origin will make the team better, the fascist hierarchy relents. Italy has decided that foreign players are banned unless you're from South America of Italian descent. And Orsi's last-minute goal ends up being pivotal. The game goes into extra time,

and Italy scores the final winning goal in the 95th minute, beating Czechoslovakia 2-1. Yeah, I mean, Rime is appalled by it. He really hates the fact that Mussolini has done what he's done. Turning the World Cup into blatant fascist propaganda, essentially rebranding it as Ilducci's Cup, and winning no less, putting Italy and fascism on top. Jewelry May congratulates them with the World Cup trophy from 1930,

a small gold trophy depicting the goddess Nike. But Mussolini had come prepared with his own much bigger trophy called La Copa del Duce, which is awarded to the victorious Italian team. It's more than six times the size of Rime's trophy. Message delivered. In the years after the World Cup, fascism continued to take hold all over Europe.

Civil war breaks out in Spain, and in 1936, taking a page out of Mussolini's playbook, Hitler's Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics and flexed his power. Not content with just that, Hitler also has a site set on hosting the 1938 World Cup. Mussolini had set the precedent that FIFA was willing to embrace brutal regimes. It comes down to a straight fight between Nazi Germany or France.

And that decision is taken at the FIFA Congress in Berlin in the week before the Olympics in Berlin start. It was 1936, so two years before the third World Cup was set to take place. So Rime would have been very aware walking around Berlin of what Hitler would have done to the World Cup because he was seeing what he was doing to the Olympics. A photograph shows Rimei walking with the FIFA delegation through the swastika-bedecked streets of Hitler's capital. His French Federation had opposed a press campaign

to boycott the Nazi Games. But Jonathan Wilson says Rimee himself was wary of letting Hitler do what Mussolini had done. wage a huge PR campaign. So once he knows what a authoritarian far-right leader can do, he takes steps to stop it. But according to Simon Cooper, that isn't entirely true. Nazi Germany hosting wasn't off the table, even though by this point Hitler was already violating treaties, remilitarizing, and ramping up the persecution of Jewish people.

And the decision may have been equally shaped by Ramey's longtime dream for France. to host the World Cup. In the end, France did win the bid for 1938. Rimei and FIFA hoped that the World Cup would focus less on politics and more on the love of the game. But the politics of the time still bubbled up. In France in 38, you have anti-fascist protests. And when the victorious Italian team plays against France in the quarterfinals,

the Italian team responds with their own statement. Italy's normal change kit would be white, but on this occasion they wear black. They play the fascist anthem and proudly jet their arms out in a Roman salute. And that clearly is making a fascist point. Italy beats France and is once again crowned the world champions. The 1938 World Cup would be the last one for a while. When World War II erupted the following year, violence engulfed most of Europe, and the tournament was suspended.

As a result, Italy remained the de facto champion for 12 more years. During this time, legend has it that the president of the Italian Football Federation hid the jewels Remyi trophy in his room, afraid it would be otherwise stolen. After the war, the world was radically changed. A United Nations was formed with the goal of maintaining international peace. The same dream Rime had all those years ago. And in 1950, Rimei helped revive the World Cup. He never gave up on the idea that soccer could unite people,

even though it also ran the risk of not only being shaped by politics, but shaping politics too. And today, we're still grappling with what that means. Yeah, I mean, I think you look at this World Cup coming up, and the natural instinct, the natural instinct is to say, this is the most politicized World Cup there's ever been. And I think that's only partially true.

I think the World Cup has always been politicized. I think it's useful to be reminded of that. This is nothing new. Coming up, a conversation about where this year's World Cup fits into the tournament's 100-year history. Hey, this is Travis Davenport from San Diego, California. You're listening to ThruLine on NPR. Part 3. Why We Keep Watching.

In 1950, with so many countries still reeling from the devastating impacts of World War II, Jules Rime, then president of FIFA and the founder of the World Cup, revived the tournament. It had been dormant for 12 years by that point. Brazil hosted. Fans were excited to cheer for their teams. The atmosphere was electric. And there was a lot of political drama surrounding it. Germany was barred from participating.

It's a punishment for war. And so the German players, very unfairly, were seen as more than just soccer players. They were seen as representatives of this German might. And often in football, you're not just playing against a team. You're playing against something much bigger than that. You feel you're playing against the enemy tribe, the enemy country, in an enmity or a rivalry that transcends soccer. It's almost like recreating.

war or battle on the pitch. But in a much safer, more pleasant way. Most of the countries behind the Iron Curtain, like the Soviet Union, opted not to take part. Uruguay, the first country to ever host the World Cup, wins it all. And the trophy was officially renamed the Jules Rema Trophy. And as the world turned more towards ideals of diplomacy and decolonization, the nationalism that had taken on a dark tone in those early World Cups was rebranded. In Europe in particular, after World War II,

we found ways to be nationalistic, to cheer for our country, to beat other countries that don't involve bloodshed. And so channeling those feelings into soccer was a brilliant solution. Even West Germany found a way to express national pride. In 1954, West Germany has been readmitted, after being in disgrace after the war. And in 1954, in its very first post-war World Cup in Switzerland, it wins. This Pariah Nation wins the final in the mud of Bern against the Great Hungarians.

And the West German team goes back to Germany by train. And at every station, they're greased by cheering huge crowds. Much of the nation has listened to the game on radio, watched in the very few television sets that existed in West Germany then. And even in communist East Germany, lots of people were listening on the radio and supporting the German team. And this is the moment when the Germans, for the first time since World War II, they're allowed to express nationalism, a love of country. They're allowed to, for the first time, kind of sing the anthem, which is problematic, because some of them sing the old wrong anthem with the forbidden words

to join, Daegsla, Daegsla, and to cheer for their country to feel proud of feeling German for the first time since World War II. And this is a very kind of important and difficult moments. And the phrase that Germans use about that World Cup 1954 is, we are someone again. There's indivier. I guess that makes me wonder what you see as the sort of function of nationalism is part of, you know, the representation and in the modern era. of having nations from all around the world, is that part of the point?

Even if they're never going to win the World Cup, is there something about just being able to express nationalism in this sort of safe or defanged space important? Well, I'd say two things. One is for most countries, winning the World Cup just isn't an issue. There's only about five or six countries that even really dream of winning the World Cup. So at this World Cup for a country like Jordan or Uzbekistan or Canada, you're not there to win, you're there to have a great time, to have a Cinderella experience,

maybe to be a big team, to create a moment that has people talking, to have your whole nation at work, at school, at the bus stop, on social media, obsessing about it all together to unite a nation in a way that nowadays we're all on our own devices, watching our own continent. World Cup, everyone's watching the same thing. So that's part of what a World Cup's about. Winning is, it's only relevant to a very few teams. And the other thing is that, yes, it's about nationalism in celebrating your nation, hoping your nation wins.

But I know this sounds romantic, but actually it's also an international festival where we all appreciate great football. And if a Cameroonian or a Brazilian does something amazing, the whole world will be talking about it, people actually really want to meet people from other countries and, you know, dance on the streets together and drinking bars together and swap scarves and shirts. So it's really also a very kind of cosmopolitan festival. You celebrate your own nation, but you also celebrate the kind of the globe, everyone being there. It wouldn't be the same World Cup if Cameroon and Japan and South Africa and, you know, Brazil weren't there. That's all part of it. You want them there.

And also almost everyone understands the thing about soccer is it doesn't really matter. There's something very beautiful about what you're describing, but I have to stop for a second and confront the reality of where it feels like we are right now. Because that all feels extremely optimistic. And I think the feeling around the World Cup this year is confusing, I think, for a lot of people. You have the U.S., Canada, and Mexico co-hosting the World Cup. there have been tensions between those countries. And on top of that, there's so much going on politically, wars being fought and waged by the U.S., one of the hosts. If the World Cup is this space in theory of bringing people together and kind of a united nations,

what is this year's tournament reveal? What does it represent? It's almost always true that in a World Cup, you have the ugliness of what's happening off the field, politics, repression, the potential of ice raiding, for example, Mexican Americans watching a game together in Mexican shirts, of World Cup visitors being denied visas or being locked up, of these outrageous prices which have never been charged to the World Cup before,

which are making this a World Cup only for rich people. So all that ugliness is there, and we journalists are writing about it, we should, and that's part of the story. And then when the World Cup kicks off, you get the beauty, you get the beauty on the field, these amazing moments, these heartbreaking last-minute goals, some soccer play you've never heard of going through six men and scoring, and this stuff that you remember forever, that we all saw when we were eight years old and we still have in our heads, and that will live

for decades. And the experience of sharing that with the people you're watching with. is also magical. So World Cups are this ugliness and the beauty at the same time. In his own life, the World Cup has encompassed so many feelings. Simon has actually attended the last nine World Cups. That's 36 years' worth. I caught the bug when I was eight years old in 1978 watching on TV.

Everyone remembers their first World Cup. And I was living in the Netherlands. I'm a Holland fan. Dutch, but I grew up there. That's my soccer. In 1978, the Netherlands reached the World Cup final, took Argentina the host to extra time. So for an eight-year-old, this is something you don't quickly forget. Was there a single moment when you realize that football, soccer, for our American listeners, that it was about much more than just a game? I still have in my head that when Holland scored in the 78 final, so I'm this eight-year-old kid,

they score this late equalizer. And I hear in my mind this noise of cheering coming up from the whole neighborhood, from the neighboring houses. There was this kind of communal sound. And I think looking back, I realized then that soccer is much more than a game because it can mobilize a whole country. It's something where in a country like the Netherlands or England, really the whole country is emotionally involved.

And it ties people together like nothing. nothing else. And so it becomes this force for nationalism. It becomes a force for thinking about what kind of country are we, what is our team, what is our country. Who do we hate? Who is the enemy? Who is the rival? And so since then, I think, I've been thinking about soccer as more than soccer. I mean, I love the game, but it's much more than just a game. It always has been, right, leaders have used it as an opportunity to rebrand to sportswash for a century now. So I asked Simon, what makes this World Cup the same or different in his mind? One of the oddities of Trump is that he's not really sportswashing, because sportswashing is what Russia, Qatar, the Argentinian generals in 1978 did,

where you present yourself as nicer and cuddlier, and your nation as friendlier and welcoming, more welcoming than it really is. Russia in 2018, for the first time pretty much in modern history, let people with World Cup tickets in without a visa. It was the easiest time in history to travel around Russia. Oh, fascinating. In Mussolini's Italy, they gave special discount rates to World Cup visitors. So you had a great experience. You travel around cheap. Now, Trump is not sports washing in that he's not pretending to be nicer and kinder than he really is. He's overtly, brutal and unfriendly to the world. He's not pretending anything different. So although what's happening in the U.S. of many levels is outrageous, you know, that wars they're

fighting, the use of ICE internally, they're not sports washing, and they're not trying to hide it. In fact, Trump is, it seems to me very proud of these things that he's doing. And the U.S. is not trying to say, oh, we're a country that wants lots of businesses will make it easy for you to get visas will make it cheap for you to travel around. That's a really interesting point. And actually, related to that, you mentioned ICE. immigration is obviously one of the key issues in the U.S. right now, but really around the world. And there's this kind of contradiction, right, between the policies of many countries to try and keep immigrants from coming in right now.

And when it comes to soccer, football, you have so many national teams that are shaped and reflective of their immigrant communities, France, England, the U.S., right? So many of them depend on. immigrants. What does it mean then to cheer for immigrants on the field who make up your team at the World Cup? But then how do you square that with this increased nationalism, the increased anti-immigrant sentiment worldwide? I mean, it's very double-edged for a lot of people. And so some are not happy that their team is full of people of immigrants' origin. I live in France. France is a brilliant team. They've reached four of the last seven finals of World Cups. They've won two World Cups since 98. Brilliant side, very largely black and brown players from the suburbs of the big cities, like Kudian Mbapé, the captain, whose father was an immigrant from Cameroon, whose mother is of Algerian origin born in France. And a lot of French people say, I don't like it, that our team has so many.

non-white players. And the biggest party in France, quite likely to win the presidential elections next year, is the far-right anti-immigrant Rézamblement Nacional, which has been very critical, often, of the black players in the team. So when you see on TV those 11 young men in their plastic shirts, often of different colors, representing your nation, at that moment, they're kind of the nation-made flesh. It's a very tangible symbol of who are we? What is the US or France or Argentina or Jordan? And you say that's what we are. It can be a way to debate what your country is, what your country should be. So there's all sorts of debates that a team can provoke. And this is the double-edged sword of nationalism, right? I mean, it can both be a unifying

force for a country, and it can also be weaponized, right? Yeah. These symbols, like the flag, all of these things, they become very loaded. Yeah, and it becomes a minefield. You know, given all of this, is there anything that might surprise you in this World Cup? Soccer is a place that gets used by dictators, it gets used by dissidents, it gets used for peace, it gets used for internationalism, and it gets used to excite people into nationalism. It's all those things.

And soccer is eminently political in all these ways. And people who say soccer has nothing to do with politics haven't been paying attention. I think that this World Cup will be a World Cup of protest, will be Americans against Americans, in the sense that all the host cities in the United States are democratic voting, like almost all cities in the US are. And Donald Trump is very unpopular.

and I suspect that there'll be a lot of anti-Trump singing, chanting, people wearing t-shirts. So I think the World Cup will be a very contested space much more at this World Cup than in any recent World Cup of anti-Trump America kind of making its voice heard, partly just because of which places this World Cup is taking place in the US. but I think people will be surprised by the joy because once the soccer starts it becomes joyous when the World Cup kicks off you get the beauty you get the beauty on the field these amazing moments these heartbreaking last minute goals

some soccer player you've never heard of going through six men and scoring and this stuff that you remember forever that we all saw when we were eight years old That doesn't eliminate the bad stuff, and we should be talking and writing about the bad stuff. But remember the joy, too. That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abd al-Fattah. ThruLine was created by me and Ramtin Anna Blewe.

This episode was produced by me and... Sarah Wyman. Casey Minor. Christina Kim. Devin Katayama. Kiana Mulgatem. Irene Noguchi. Liana Semström.

Julia Redpath. Skyler Swenson. Thank you to Michael Lopetron. Johanis Durgy, Cheyenne Butler, Yolanda Sangueni, and Tommy Evans. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vocal. This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvi, show Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show, please write us at ThruLine at NPR.org. And if you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number two. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode. Also, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening.