John Oliver on Arne Slot, the Mo Salah rollercoaster, and the joys and sorrows of Liverpool football: Men in Blazers 12/26/25

0:00You're listening to the Men in Blazers Media Network Suboptimal Radio. The fact he learned Spanish on the sly, that just felt like the final slap in the face. You know, when you see them get off the bus with their big headphones and you're thinking, oh, what a music have they listened to. You didn't think that Trent was there going, Buenas Dias, de nada, muchos gracias.

0:28My guest today is the unrivaled greatest friend of the pod, a magical and empathetic gent whom I adore and appreciate even more than Erling Haaland loves raw milk. You may know him as the host of HBO's Last Week Tonight, show that's got more Emmys than Liverpool have points this season and that's fully the most painful compliment he'll ever receive and I say that with no joy in my voice whatsoever but it is a delight to welcome back my friend and moral compass Mr John Oliver. Rog, it is once again an absolute honour to be on the receiving end of your linguistic pyrotechnics. Lighting up the sky.

1:06Genuinely, that's such an amazing phrase, my linguistic pyrotechnics. Yes. I'm going to have that on my grave. Lad had linguistic pyrotechnics at times. Ooze and arse for the neighbourhood scallies. Look at this, John. I'm firing it right on my ass cheeks. That's how I'll be remembered. John, I've got to say, before we dive in. I have spoken to you at times in which Liverpool have been a disaster, but the world felt like it was experiencing stability and on the cusp of a golden age. We've spoken at times when Liverpool have soared and the world has felt chaotically challenged. I do think, in my long relationship with you, this is the very first time you and I have talked when Liverpool are flailing and the world itself feels like it's living in, well, the obscurity of mid-table.

1:58How are you feeling? Big picture, you beautiful human being. This year has been the best of times and the worst of times, if you forget what the worst of times actually once were. If you recalibrate, you realise that we haven't sunk as low as we've been. This ain't the worst of Brendan Rodgers' ball yet. Yet. This ain't Roy Hodgson ball yet. Yet. It has been a discombobulating year, this, and you can't let the lows affect your ability to enjoy the highs, and you can't ever expect those highs to be anything other than ephemeral. Life is pain. Football will always reflect that. Here we are. There you go.

2:37It's why I love it. We're born to suffer. Why else do we do anything? You can hear us talk more about it on our other podcast, Doskoyeski, today. But I will say... I think that's true, Rog. I think you and I, deep down, might be 18th century Russians, somewhere in our soul. Geographically, no. So emotionally, you can make a pretty good case for it. Yeah, I think there's no might in my case. But I do want to say as a caveat before we dive in, we're going to relive that year because it has been one of the strangest. And when you gave your last answer at the beginning, I know I won't be alone. Many listeners, I thought you were talking about the world itself, but you were talking about Liverpool.

3:14But they are also mirrors of each other. And I'm going to relive with you these beats of Liverpool Football Club. I do want to say, and I said this when you came on, John, I take no pleasure in any of this. This is all just objective for me. You know that, right? I mean, I don't know that. I don't believe that. I think you're doing your best at retaining the smart. The giveaway is, you know, the slight dimples in your cheeks. You say, that's right, you can cover up with your hand all you want. You can say, I take no place with it, but your eyes are dancing, Rog. Your eyes suggest otherwise. It's true.

3:48The only time, genuinely, that's a little bit of Englishness left in me. Other people's failure is the only thing that's keeping me going at this point. It's the only delight I have in my life. Although I did promise Brene Brown, no lesser expert in it than her, that I will not practice Schadenfreude. I'm going to celebrate other people's glory. So let's start in your happy place. Well, you don't get to say, Rog. You don't get to say, I don't experience any joy, as someone who has Jack Grealish in his team. That is a meaningful change this year. It is. Jack Grealish was a kind of human hand grenade that others could enjoy.

4:22Now he's yours. I don't like to be hyperbolic, but it's like a little angel has fallen from heaven with broken wings and we've healed him. He can't fly away from us. He's trapped with us. Maybe it was his enormous calves that weighed down the wings. But we will talk about Jack in depth because I want to know how you're processing it. And it's like it is an unfathomable little miracle that even we get flickering little crests of joy in our life. And I do believe football and life is about making the moments matter when you have them. and as you say, dance when you can. So let's go back in time to the happy place last May when Mo Salah was taking mid-match selfies of himself and a jubilant cop going full Google Pixel, which is a dangerous game.

5:05Yeah, I mean, everything felt amazing. On the slot still had the new manager smell, but he denounced himself as a genius, a transformational manager. He'd won a title when no one expected it. That last photograph of the whole team in front of the cop with the trophy, Everyone was there. Trent last to arrive. It was like a movie. It wasn't. The camera flashed. You told me back then about the ecstatic feelings you experienced watching your team win with the crowd there in a way that they couldn't be during the pandemic. And even though I am an awful person, I felt so happy for you, John. Thanks.

5:38Well, yeah, the caveat on all of it was the thing with a new car smell is right. You know, that's not what the car actually smells like. you know it's going to fade eventually and be replaced by an aroma that's earned by the stuff that's been inside that car so new car smells aren't real that is something that passes that kind of was the case with this it felt like to a certain extent that championship was won against i think most expectations on fumes right which is not to say that it was not incredibly skillful to take over from Jurgen Klopp and have anything other than an impending disaster felt improbable to me.

6:16So the fact that Arnazlott managed to not coast, but move the team along on those fumes to a championship that few were expecting was absolutely incredible. It also felt like at some point the rubbery is going to meet the road. At the time, did it? I mean, they were, I mean, yesterday went off to Ibiza and the players went off to Dubai in the middle of the season. Did you see an end or did you think this is who we are now? We win things? I don't think so because one, partly because of how I'm made up as a human being, but also what you were looking at in front of you was a team that was getting older, that was reaching an inflection point of sorts and I think had achieved beyond what was likely that year.

6:58So to a certain extent, I think they'd overachieved last year and this year they are underachieving where the truth was probably somewhere in the middle. I think there were cracks all being well papered over, but they were going to get exposed at some point. That's very rational amidst the emotion. And when I was researching this out and reliving it, that photo now, that moment where they beckon Trent, we'll get to Trent in a minute. And, you know, he slides in at last and everybody's there. It does feel like pretty well every single foreign language, like German war film I've ever seen about like 1937.

7:32the friends in the bar before they all go off to the front, all of them toasting each other. Nothing can go wrong now. It was incredibly beautiful. And we now know retrospectively it was an apex because in a move that was quite surprising and very, very unlivable, it should be said, the club proceeded to spend an enormous amount of money over the summer, dropping money as if they were essentially bidding on a Bob Ross painting. Over half a billion dollars brought in for reinforcements. It was Chelsea-esque more than Liverpool-esque. They broke the British transfer record, not once, but twice. Germany's player of the season, Florian Wurtz, Willkommen.

8:06Then again, Newcastle's Alexander Isaac, along with the left-back, Milos Kerkes. Right-back, Jeremy Frimpong, French striker Hugo Eketike. You're living this almost fantasy land. What was it like for you every day? Another signer. Were you like, we are dynastic. Nothing can stop us now. Or did part of you feel like Augustus Gloop, seconds before being drowned in the chocolate river? I mean, it was definitely gloop-esque. Because it was head-spinning. Because it's not, as you point out, historically who Liverpool have been. It's not who the club insisted it was during the entire Jurgen Klopp era.

8:43It must have been very, very odd for him to suddenly see this fountain of money erupting. Hold on. I know we built a new training facility. I get that. But I didn't think this was on offer. In fact, it seemed like it actively wasn't while I was there. It must have been strange. It's like seeing, you know, the ex-husband's new girlfriend getting a lot of jewellery. Like, oh, wow, that's not what I thought our bank account could facilitate. So, yeah, it was very strange. Are you saying it was like Bezos' second wife treatment? It was a real, but it really was a Venice wedding. And just like a Venice wedding, you're thinking, ah, this can't end well.

9:27this is normally how revolutions have fostered. Anyway, the point is, it was a lot of very expensive trinkets that didn't necessarily make a hole. It was a lot at once. To a certain extent, it felt like the team was going to be in a kind of transition. This is the most luxurious kind of it, but there was no reason to believe that it was going to work quickly. None at all. At the time, you had that sage insight. I mean, I think so. Is this retrofitting logic? Well, I mean, it's hard to say, isn't it? It was very exciting to get Vert, although, again, historically you would say players coming from Germany might need a while to settle in, as is proven.

10:06I think he will settle in, but it's going to take a while. Otherwise, it was just a strange feeling to be getting more than you expect, and in practical terms, more than you necessarily needed when you got Isak after Ekiteki. too, by the way, you know, we've talked about this before, I will say, can a player be pronounced elegantly in a Scouse action? Isak and Echisaki. Scouses do unbelievably well with Palindrome. You've got a lot to work with there. We love a Palindrome in Liverpool, but there were gents exiting at the same time. Luis Diaz and his ebullient mischief strapped on the Lederhues and went to Bayern.

10:46Darwin Nunes, your god of chaos went to Saudi. But above all, Trent Alexander-Arnold, the scouser in our team, the man who hit that duolingo harder than any scouser who has ever hit it before, broke so many Anfield hearts, decamped from Madrid. It was fascinating watching his last week, John. He is a great, he'd won everything with the club. He'd been there since he was six, but it was as if the cop didn't know how to process why someone would want to leave for free. taboo because if Liverpool is a religion, and I actually do think part of football, modern football at the elite level is quasi-religious in its elements, Trent was rejecting the faith and you almost had to excommunicate him.

11:31He had to be an apostate, an outcast. For a start, I think the fact he learned Spanish on the sly, that just felt like the final slap in the face. You know, when you see them get off the bus with their big headphones and you're thinking, oh, what a music have they listened to? You didn't think that Trent was there going, Buenas Dias. De nada. Puchos, glasses. But the difficult thing is, with Liverpool as a city in particular, and that club and its relationship to the city, those ties are forged fiercer than can seem logical from the outside. So I did not like seeing personally the ugliness in terms of the reaction to Trent.

12:14I understand where it comes from, but I don't personally like it. It feels like what more do you expect this kid to give to the team than what he gave? You've got a kid who was living at home when he played his first game for Liverpool, sleeping in his childhood bedroom. He's won literally everything. He's given everything. What more does he owe you? I think for me, the answer is nothing. I think for some people, the answer is no, he owes us more than that. He owes us endless loyalty and that they've been broken somehow. That's a hard case to make. I found it very difficult to see some of the sourness getting projected at him.

12:56I know where it comes from, but I don't like it. I mean, it must have been hard and haunting. I found it difficult. I didn't. I truly understood it. I mean, it is. I'm not mocking when I think that like so many of the tenants of modern football are like those of religion in eons past and particularly Anfield with the ritual. I agree. It's almost like the Amish have to shun those that leave. You have to. Otherwise, those that stay behind, it's absolutist. So I understood both in that moment. I think I totally agree with that, especially as someone I'm not personally a religious person. I understand the comfort and the pull of the routine of religion.

13:35I understand the desire and the efficacy of being in a certain place at a certain time and communing, you know, having a communal experience. With the gods, with the gods. Exactly. Football can be that. It has been that. And it continues to be that for me. Just to a certain extent, being at a certain time on the weekend, knowing that I'm going to gather together separately with friends of mine, texting during the game, knowing they're watching their team, I'm watching my team. We're all going through something. There is a communal sense to that, which is important. And it makes the perceived or real betrayals even more painful.

14:15right if you've invested something in and especially for Trent who lived the dreams of every other inhabitant of that city who was not him it's hard it's really hard you did the thing you slept in your childhood bed and you played for Liverpool it's the thing that all of us wanted and didn't you slept in your childhood bed you played for Liverpool you won things that's right You want things. You want everything. What more could you want in life? I think that was part of what it was. It's almost like you've lived the entirety. You've conquered the entirety of the known world. What else? What else could there be?

14:53My answer to that would be that would be a good excuse. Like you've done all of it. You might want to see if there's something else that might involve Duolingo in your headphones. Buenas dias. Buenas dias, dude, Billingham. ultimately I do but I do listening to you football is a religion and I realise watching Everton on a weekly basis is like being forced into the confessional box and having to just repent repent repent for 90 minutes and I do think I'm genuinely a better person for it but there was another loss that we have to discuss which was of the more excruciating kind and that was Diogo Jota who lost his life along with his brother in a car accident in July and the shock and the trauma has been overwhelming.

15:41The club elected not to talk about it at the beginning of the season outside of, I think, one honour slot interview, which I totally understand. And ultimately the grief is theirs and can never be judged. But the emotional impact of that grief must have been devastating in that locker room. And we've only seen it in glimpses, John. We saw it in Mo Salah's eyes, which brimmed with tears as he stood in front of the Kop at the end of that first game of the season. And we saw it also in Andy Robertson's burst of emotion after Scotland qualified for the World Cup. And his first thing to do was to say he was still in mourning, even in that moment of ecstasy for his friend.

16:16And John, you know, we talked about it. Grief is so unbearably complicated, so personal. It comes in waves. It's hard to know how to talk about because we know so little about what's going on in that locker room with those players. These human beings, sorry. How have you processed it, though? I mean, it's been very difficult to watch. And I do think that I've been quite surprised by how quickly analysts of Liverpool's struggles move past the idea there is a central tragedy at the heart of what these guys are dealing with. You don't know what their individual circumstances are, how naturally they are able to get through a loss that was shocking, violent.

17:04and I think much more deeply felt to them that may have made sense from the outside. Now, looking back in the little videos that you would see of them at the training facility, at the coffee bar, you realize, oh, he was there a lot. He's around a lot in key moments, laughing, smiling. You realize he was a real heartbeat, an emotional core to that group. and to have that ripped away at a point where you're then asked and expected to perform in exactly the same way as you were doing before with him, but without this kind of emotional heart that may have just been taken away from you. And that's a lot to ask your people.

17:47I will say as well, Klopp was atypically good at navigating grief and getting the club through that time. Boy, you feel his absence at that moment. That is not to say that Slott is a robot, but it's saying that that's a big old drop off and it's a lot to expect of them to suddenly live without him let alone perform without him and i understand the instinct to want to do his celebration i understand the crowd's instinct to sing his name and to sing his song i don't know how that must feel for them to be totally honest i think that about that a lot john can you imagine into the workplace where you've lost a very close colleague and like every day everybody sings about the colleague for you, you know, it's a very powerful Liverpool way to sing on the history no club does it more than Liverpool but it must be for them still so raw and painful.

18:45I think conceptually it feels like the right thing to do it's a generous, it's a communal thing to do, everybody misses him but those players miss him, he was part of their life and was supposed to be part of their life this year. So it's not the abstract processing of grief. It is being inflicted on them to a certain extent at a certain moment of the game. I don't know how they're getting through it and I understand why everyone is doing it. I can only think that it must be a very brutal thing to go through where 20 minutes into every game you're being reminded of the guy you loved that you wish was still there then look it might be that it's more important to do it than not but i i would not want to minimize how difficult that must be as well as how beautiful it must be for them it's you know there's every chance it's a little column a little column b there cathartic as hell as as human beings immensely difficult as footballers who are trying to stay focused.

19:50It's the collision of the public morning and the private morning, of which we have no insight into. And what I agree with you, John, I think it's really important. It is hard to believe how quickly, like, pundits and fans have moved on, how quickly it's like, all right, get over, you know, we all have people die, get over it, get on with it, you get on with it. It's just like, I don't think we will know the truth about this moment and this season. It's hard to talk about everything we are going to talk about without acknowledging that. We will not know the truth. until I think autobiographies are written in years to come.

20:22Until Virgil decides to tell the story of this season, until Mo Salah tells his version of this season, until that comes out, I think it's so unbelievably hard to judge the intangible impact of this loss and trauma. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's not that it is an explanation for everything that seems like it's going wrong there, but it is definitely a key context. And I think we will find out what it is. There is such an instinct in football and such a pattern that lots of us really respond to, right? Saying, let's just move on. Next game, bad results. Okay, who have we got on Wednesday?

20:59Who have we got on Saturday? Who have we got on Sunday? Grief doesn't work like that. Everyone knows that, especially when it's a grief that you have not been prepared for at all. When it's a shock, when it's a violent loss and something has been ripped from you. then recovering from that takes even longer and it is not a straight line everybody knows this so I cannot imagine what they are going through but I know it's difficult and it feels like it's key context for the struggles they're going through it's not the reason for all of the struggles but um it would be crazy to suggest that it wasn't anything to do with it I mean You know, grief comes in waves.

21:42And this season, I mean, ultimately that's been its template. Because the crazy thing is, as we moved to the football, it did all start so well. Liverpool looked and played like they were powered entirely by a beautiful pure magic at the outset. There was that Kieze 88-minute moment of wonder to save the season opener against Bournemouth. Then 16-year-old Rio calmly scored a 100-minute winner with his first touch in his first Premier League game. I remember emailing him and being like, oh my God, you have all the joy. And then you invent new joys. That was at a frothing St. James' part. And then Dominic Sobosay released some Hungarian artillery from 25 yards out to sink Arsenal.

22:17John, I am old enough to remember when your defending champion Liverpool Football Club were five points clear after five games and we gave them the title. Oh, no. I don't know any Liverpool fan who thought that that was over, especially because those results were amazing. Those moments were amazing. But in general, the performances were not great. The crescendos, the high points of those games were amazing, but it was very clear that the results were better than the performances. And it feels like the results have then dropped to being worse than the performances as well. But it was not what everyone was screaming then, which is, wow, this is just going to go from greatness to greatness.

22:59That's not what you were looking at as a Liverpool fan. Yeah, I mean, it is football, John. We've awarded this title so far. We awarded it to Liverpool and then Arsenal and then Man City. we love awarding a title. Nothing like that than presenting a poison chalice, saying, come on. Down in one. Down in one. It's your knee-jerk trophy. Drink, you mad bastards, because after five straight league wins, something truly unbelievable happened. It was. It was unfathomable in the moment. The football didn't just fade. It was as if they'd been cursed by an Etsy witch. They went from pressing to just being depressing.

23:33They're believers to doubters. Mo Salah lost and withered. We'll get to him in a minute. Gravenberg and McAllister had just like misplaced at everything. Centre-back, Canate, God bless. I mean, suddenly started to play like Dejan Lovren, but in French. How did you explain this to yourself, John? It was a historic drop-off. I mean, again, I took no pleasure in it. Nine losses, 12 games, all comps, worst run in 70 years. What was going on inside your mind? Yeah, still no pleasure in it though, Rog. No pleasure. No pleasure. It's just those stats really spilled very comfortably off your tongue there.

24:07I was reading a tattoo that I have on my wrist now, just below the one that says breathe. Go on. Yeah, it was hard to watch. For every reason that we've been talking about, it was hard to watch something beautiful broken. Because it wasn't a game. The results weren't the problem. It was the performance that was the concern. So everyone knows how to lose. is when you're losing badly or winning with question marks afterwards of, oof, we got away with that one. That's what's hard. And in that run of losses where they just looked so lost, it's easy to forget as a Liverpool fan, it's been a while since you've seen a team look lost.

24:49You've seen a team beaten, you've seen them play badly, but you haven't seen them lost and they looked completely at sea. It was. There was those two 3-0 defeats back to back and then in the Champions League you played PSV and got battered 4-1. And suddenly that title that Liverpool won seemed to be like when Milli Vanilli won a Grammy. I mean, it was painful to witness because at the heart of it was Virgil van Dijk. I mean, this gentleman that has served you, that has led you, that has channeled so many hopes and wonders, suddenly lost all aura. It was like Freud's theories. Freud wrote about how a child recognizes their father's flaws, their humanity, their vulnerability.

25:30that's a critical and crucial painful step from what he calls childhood idealization to adult reality i don't like to be hyperbolic but is that what you experience it is isn't it i mean it was it was like dad is dad's lost it it's like i remember the first time i beat my dad at tennis i remember just how long that walk home was and realizing oh i shouldn't I shouldn't have done that. I think I should have let him win. But then even the fact, should have let him win? Oh, we're at that situation. Death comes for all of us. That's basically what it gets, it comes down to. I know, I just killed my dad.

26:10I just killed my dad with that forehand down the line. Yes, it's difficult seeing a colossus like Virg. I think all of us feel safer being around. It's difficult seeing any crack there. and to remember that, like Ozymandias, one day, you know, his football boots are just going to be all that you'll see around the penalty spot of Anfield. He was there. Look on my worky, mighty. I mean, it is that. To see him with his rear end pointed towards the ball impotently. Yeah. To see him, sometimes when Liverpool conceded, it was excruciating to see him. It wasn't just disappointing. It wasn't anger at his teammates.