Today, Explained - Mo Salah will make you care about soccer

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

The World Cup kicks off today. Looking for a country to cheer for? Consider Egypt. The team might not be the most storied or stacked, but it’s got Mohamed Salah. The New York Times’ chief soccer correspondent Rory Smith explains how the Muslim player who prays after every goal (and there are many) has the potential to transcend xenophobia, Islamophobia, and run-of-the-mill racism on the road to Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today Explained is supported by Mattress Firm today. Mattress Firm fancies itself America's neighborhood mattress store because they've got locations all over the country. They're also online at mattressfirm.com. And if you go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast, you can use the coupon code podcast10 to save 10% off your next mattress. I don't really mess with soccer, football, the beautiful game, but I find it pretty hard to resist the World Cup every four years. The narratives, the whole planet getting together to play one really long and often uneventful game.

But this year, none of the teams I've even got a remote connection to or feelings about made it. Chile failed, the United States failed, Canada doesn't even come close to competing. But everyone I talk to is into Egypt because of one guy. I'm suspecting that it's probably Mo Salah.

Roy Smith, chief soccer correspondent at the New York Times. Who is Mo Salah? Mo Salah is Egypt's best player soccer correspondent at the New York Times. Who is Mo Salah? Mo Salah is Egypt's best player. He is a forward for Liverpool. He set the record for most goals scored in a single Premier League goals in a 38-game season. That is a new Premier League record for the player of the year, Mohamed Salah. He is the shooting star of European soccer.

What is he like? He's quite smiley, he's quite happy, he seems really down-to-earth, really humble, that all helps. He's not kind of a polished superstar. He doesn't look like Cristiano Ronaldo, who's, along with Lionel Messi, the two most famous players in the world. Ronaldo is a marketing man's dream. He's primped and preened to within an inch of his life.

Mo Salah kind of looks a bit like he just got out of bed. He's got kind of a boy next door quality about him almost. When we had the chance to score, we scored. Yes, you did. What do you remember about the goal? It's a great feeling. And it's taken him Yes, you did. What do you remember about the goal? It's a great feeling. And it's taken him to people's hearts. How do you rate yourself?

Are you the third best player in the world? I think that for the people, they can say what they see or what they want. So how does it compare to the biggest stars in soccer, Messi, Ronaldo? Do people talk about him in those same conversations? Not quite, not yet, because the season he's had has broken all sorts of records in England, but Messi and Ronaldo have been having those seasons for 10 years. So he's not quite Jordan,

but he's on the road to being Jordan, which is not a bad place to be on. Where did Mo Salah come from? What's his story? So he is from a village called Nagrib in Egypt, which I think is north of Cairo. He started out as a kid playing on the streets and was spotted by a club called Arab Contractors, then went to Switzerland. From there, he was signed by Chelsea. Didn't work out for him there. He went to Italy to kind of rebuild his career. And Liverpool bought him last summer for about $45 million. Took Liverpool to the Champions League final,

which is the most glamorous fixture in the biggest club competition in the world. Liverpool lost. Salah hurt his shoulder. He seems to have recovered. Hopefully fit for the first game. They're not quite sure. But very much the man that everybody is watching. How rare is it for an Egyptian soccer player to get this kind of attention, to get a

$45 million contract? The fact that an Egyptian player is being talked about in those terms is incredibly rare. From a national point of view, Salah is a hero beyond all compare, really. His face is everywhere in Cairo. There's murals of him. He's on billboards. He's on bed linen. He's on Ramadan lanterns. He's on everything you can imagine. There was a story that in the presidential election a couple of months ago, both candidates were considered so unpopular

that as many as a million people wrote in Mohamed Salah's name in the presidential election. A million people? I don't believe that's true. Okay, fair. It's got bigger and bigger with each retelling. But I can believe that quite't believe that's true. Okay, fair. It's got bitter and bitter with each retelling. But I can believe that quite a lot of people maybe wrote in his name.

Amazing. He is the biggest thing to come out of Egypt for some time, I would say. So how big a deal is it that this Egyptian now plays for the English Premier League? I would say it's quite a big deal. Obviously, I'm biased. I'm a lifelong soccer fan. But it is watched by millions of people each week across the planet. I would say it is the most popular league in the most popular sports in the world. It has a reach that even the NBA can't quite match. You'll have conversations with Nigerian Chelsea fans or Indian Arsenal fans, and they feel it as intensely as someone who lived next door to the stadium. There is no shortage of passion, no matter where you're from. If you went around the world and you said Egypt to people,

the first word that would come out of most people's mouths at the moment would probably be Salah. And he's not just this great Egyptian soccer player. He's also this great Egyptian Muslim soccer player, right? Yeah, and that's really significant. So there's no shortage of Muslim players, but Salah is different, I think, in three ways. One is what he's done.

And the winner, Player of the Year 2018, is Mohamed Salah of Liverpool and Egypt. To have the sort of season he's had is incredibly rare for anyone. The other is that he is a kind of visible Muslim. So after every goal, and there have been a lot of goals, he performs sujood and takes a moment to kneel on the pitch in prayer. He points to the sky. He washes himself before every game. He's Muslim and he is doing all the sky, he washes himself before every game.

He's Muslim and he is doing all the things what Muslims are doing before a game, washing procedures and stuff like that. So we come a minute or two minutes earlier in the dressing room that he can be ready for the game. And the other thing that's really important is that he is Arab. Best Arab player of the year. Muhammad Saleh. Muhammad Saleh. And I think that is really important at this point in time where there is so much cultural tension about Islamophobia. The fact that he's not just accepted, not just tolerated, but actively adored by a significant proportion of the population, I think is really significant. And those three things combined give him a power that seems quite rare to me at a time when it's not easy necessarily to be a Muslim in Britain.

So you've got this constantly goal scoring Muslim player in England. What's it like to not be Mosalla in England? What's it like for a regular Muslim there right now. There is a rising rate of Islamophobia. We've seen Islamophobic attacks. Telmama, who are a charity who monitor Islamophobia, they suggested that there was a 47% rise in Islamophobic incidents in 2016. I think Merseyside Police, it was 75% between 2012 and 2016.

And that's something that is mirrored across the country, that there is a rising trend of Islamophobia. How does that stuff translate onto the field? Is Mosalla feeling any racial hatred or any sort of xenophobia, Islamophobia while playing? Not that has been reported on, not that has been picked up. If anything, it's the opposite. There are several songs that have kind of done the rounds on social media, invented by Liverpool fans,

that actively celebrate the fact that Salah is a Muslim. There's one to say that if he straws another few, then I'll be Muslim too. If he straws enough for you, he straws enough for me. If he straws another few, then I'll be Muslim too. Sitting in a mosque. There's one about sitting in a mosque. There's one about sitting in a mosque. Yeah. He's sitting in the mosque, that's where I want to be.

There's one that says, Mo Salah, a gift from Allah, which obviously helps because it rhymes. He's nicknamed the Egyptian king by Liverpool fans. There's a song that you hear endlessly at Anfield where Liverpool play their home games. Mo Salah, the Egyptian king. Mo Salah, running down the wing.

But the fact that it's not being brushed aside is significant. The fact that they feel comfortable singing about it in the context, I think it's meant positively rather than negatively, and that, I think, is encouraging. He has changed the perception of some of the negative belief that people have about the Islamic faith. This is the model that we're looking forward for whole of Britain really. People like him who can bring us all together. I think Mo has given us a gift that we will not forget.

Mo Salah is treasured in the United Kingdom, in Egypt. He has fans all over the Middle East, all over the world. But now he's heading to Russia, where soccer fans are racist in a sort of legendary way. That's next on Today Explained. Mattress Firm sells a lot of mattresses, queen, king, soft, firm, medium, but they don't make the mattresses themselves. They sell other people's brands, which makes them uniquely positioned to tell you the truth about the mattress you might be interested in.

You can go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to find out more about mattresses and use the discount code podcast10 to get 10% off your next mattress. You can also go to a mattress from a store near you. Another thing, if you've got room for another daily news podcast, check out the Daily Zeitgeist. It's a daily comedy news podcast from the HowStuffWorks crew and Jack O'Brien. You might know Jack from Cracked.com or the Cracked podcast, which he used to host. Anyway, every weekday, Jack and his

co-host Miles Gray and another guest comedian will take you through the most important events and ideas in the news, and they'll make you laugh while they're doing it. You can find the Daily Zeitgeist wherever you find this podcast and all your other podcasts. Roy Smith, Russia isn't the most popular kid on the block right now. How did they end up with the World Cup? Isn't that a big responsibility? It is an enormous responsibility. It's one that they were given eight years ago in 2010, kind of unexpectedly. Developing news story. Let's take you there now, listening to what PM Putin's got to say.

We are honoured by your decision. From bottom of my heart, thank you. And as FIFA, the body who awards it, conducted its research into each of the bids, I think Russia's had the highest risk factor in terms of things like terrorism. 2018 World Cup in Russia will be up to the highest standards. They won it anyway. And I think it's probably fair to assume that that process was not entirely clean. There's allegations that Russia was engaged in vote trading, which was against the rules. There may have been attempts to solicit votes with illicit rewards. During the investigation, Russia refused to cooperate and said that, really unfortunately, very sorry, we've accidentally destroyed all of the computers we used during the bid. Couldn't be helped. That sounds familiar.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a Kremlin version of the dog ate my homework, I suppose. There's also this tremendous doping scandal in Russia. Yeah, I mean, they were basically banned from the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Yeah, they were banned from the Winter Olympics. I think they've been stripped of loads and loads of medals from Sochi, which was held in 2014. It does seem strange to be hosting a tournament in a country that stands accused of compromising the integrity of sport as a whole, I guess. FIFA have decreed that Russians will not be allowed in the drug testing areas. Is there just a fear that Russia might dope its players in the World Cup, its Russian team? Russia would really have to dope really,

really well to become quite good at football. The Russian team is pretty bad. Russia could be pumped full of all sorts of substances and they would not win the World Cup. So does Russia even have a chance to contend here in the World Cup? Russia's victory in the World Cup is hosting the World Cup, the biggest sporting event on the planet. How the team does is kind of secondary. They've not really thought about that. So they've spent billions and billions and billions of rubles on stadiums and infrastructure. And most of it or some of it has gone to the stadiums and infrastructure and not disappeared into various pockets. They've not really spent any time trying

to build a decent football team. Russia wins because Russia hosts. So if the name of the game is hosting the World Cup, how might Russia fare now that it has the spotlight? Because they've had plenty of racism of their own in soccer, right? There is a long and shameful list of incidents of black players being abused. There have been incidents of bananas being thrown at players, of fans performing monkey dances is the only way I can describe it, to racially abused players. Their clubs have been punished by UEFA, which organises competitions within Europe. They've had to play games without

fans. They've had fines. None of the fines are heavy enough. A football stadium, a sports stadium is a mirror of society. Nothing is happening in that stadium that does not exist outside. That suggests, I think fairly, that racism is still a problem within Russian society. It's a problem that has been around for a long time and doesn't seem particularly to be getting better. There's one quite powerful example from England in the last couple of weeks, and that's Danny Rose. Danny Rose is an English left-back, he's black, and he revealed a couple of weeks ago that he told his family not to come to Russia. Danny's had experiences that go beyond just obviously this World Cup.

Back in 2012, he was part of the England under-21 squad that was racially abused and targeted out in 2012. He was part of the England under-21 squad that was, you know, racially abused and targeted out in Serbia. He was so worried about the racial abuse they might get, not him, they might get in their kind of day-to-day walking around Russian cities at stadiums, at games, that he didn't want to be worrying about them. I can understand him not wanting his family out there, wanting to focus on his football and not worrying that maybe somewhere, yeah, you know, there's an issue and there's a problem. He said that was really hard for his dad in particular

because his dad had always dreamed about seeing his son play in a World Cup. He's been denied that because Danny Rose doesn't feel that his parents would be safe and that is a shameful thing to have to think about in 1818, but it's an even more shameful thing to have to think about in 2018. I don't think he's alone in that. I think there are other players who've probably thought,

do you know what, maybe sit this one out, maybe don't come, don't put yourself through it. And that is kind of the scale of the problem, I guess, that not all the players feel their families are safe at a World Cup, which is meant to be for everybody, not just a certain type of person. One of the most interesting things about this tournament is how Russia reacts to the world descending on it. It would be interesting seeing how Russia, in terms of the fans, reacts to those teams, to those players, but also to those fans, because there will be lots more people of colour who come to Russia over the next four weeks than would normally come to Russia. I think that's something

that everyone who is here is watching out for, is to see how the players and the fans who don't look like Russians are treated by their hosts. I watch a lot of hockey myself, and there's precious few black hockey players, but the NHL is trying to present them in a way to say that this is a sport for everyone. You can tell when a commentator's out during the finals, you've got P.K. Subban presenting along with other commentators because he's a black player from Canada and represents the game. It seems like one way to sort of stymie this racism we see in professional sports. What's being done in soccer? What's Russia?

Is Russia taking any measures for this World Cup, saying this is an issue we care about, this is an issue we're doing something to address? In all honesty, not really. It did appoint a former player as a kind of anti-racism commissioner. I think he said at some point that racism didn't exist in Russia anymore, so it wasn't a problem. Yikes.

The one thing I would say, and this isn't apologism for them, racism is not a soccer issue just as it's not a hockey issue. Racism is an issue that has roots in society, but the problem itself doesn't come from sport. So asking FIFA to solve racism is, I mean, FIFA are not good for much, and that is certainly a job that's beyond them. That said, of course they could do more to the countries where it is a sort of systemic problem that they have to take it

seriously. Maybe once or twice a year a team from Eastern Europe will have an incident of racial abuse at a game and the punishment is usually a fine. What would be nice would be to see teams being thrown out of competitions, teams themselves volunteering to punish their fans if they find evidence of racist abuse. It would be nice to see a genuine zero tolerance approach to it rather than a kind of cursory tick box. We're trying to do something about it, but hey, it's not really our problem. And do you think to that end, having this World Cup in Russia will be a good thing or a bad thing? It's really hard to be at a World Cup and not get swept away in the celebration of it all. You know, you've got massive groups of Peruvians

wandering around Red Square. People from Panama, there's Costa Ricans, I assume there's nobody left in Argentina. And it's really hard to think that that doesn't have some sort of effect to expose Russians to things that maybe they haven't seen before or things they're not used to. It can have a positive effect, but that's sadly not the same as saying it will have a positive effect. And Russia is a real test for it because of the relationship between Russia and the rest of the world

at this point in time. It's a real test to see how powerful that effect, that party atmosphere can be. That's the thing I guess that will define whether this is a successful World Cup is what effect can it have on us and what effect can it have on Russia. And just like we can't expect soccer or football or FIFA to solve racism, I imagine we can't expect Mo Salah to go over to Russia and solve racism. But what does his playing in this tournament that begins today mean? It means everything to Egypt, mean a lot to Liverpool fans. And I guess as a Muslim, he will come in as the most high profile

Muslim player here. And that I think probably means a lot to people across the Middle East, across North Africa, knowing that a player who looks like them, who believes the same things as them, that he is here as a global star. I think that is quite important. I'm maybe a hopeful, naive optimist. I always think that these occasions can have a positive influence in the other direction. They can help to start to change and shift opinions and views. You know, for a lot of Russians,

maybe not in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but in some of the smaller cities where games are being held, it will be the first time they've come into contact with 10,000 Peruvians or, you know, 5,000 fans from Nigeria or from Japan. You'd like to think that within that, maybe some people change their minds about things.

Rory Smith writes about soccer for the New York Times. I'm Sean Rammesferm. This is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Bridget McCarthy is our editor. Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vander Ploeg produce. Afim Shapiro is our engineer most of the time, but Katie McMurrin is our engineer producer. Bridget McCarthy is our editor. Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vanderplug produce. Afim Shapiro is our engineer

most of the time, but Katie McMurrin is our engineer this week. We have interns now. They're Breeze Seeley and Catherine Wheeler, and the incorruptible Breakmaster Cylinder

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