Why Social Democracies Win World Cups

0:00David McWilliams: This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Count of its Gerald Ireland, proud sponsors of my own festival, the Dawki Book Festival, which is on the 18th and 21st of June. Now, in Dawki, you're going to expect four days of ideas, of literature, of politics, of economics, comedy and culture, with over 100 writers, including Salman Rushdie, Tim Berners-Lee, the man who founded the internet, and of course, Booker Prize winner Anne Enright. Join us this summer in Dalky. Thanks again to Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland, helping people plan with clarity, invest with confidence, and build lasting wealth.

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1:30David McWilliams: With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply. To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by ACAST. How are you doing there? It is Tuesday. it is the beginning of the world's greatest sporting event which is the World Cup something that we have watched religiously in this country a-religiously but also slightly trepidatiously because we have only qualified World Cups which is kind of pathetic but that is the problem with the Republic of Ireland we tend to fall at not even the last hurdle but usually the first hurdle unfortunately But we're going to use the World Cup as a template to talk about the economies of the teams that we'll be featuring in the World Cup.

2:51David McWilliams: Now, not, of course, all the teams, but maybe the top six. We're going to look at the hosts. We're going to look at the favorites. And we're going to look at one or two wild cards. So we are bringing you a series of economic podcasts using the World Cup as our leverage or our crutch into examining the economies, the politics, the economic history of certain of the main players. I hope you enjoy the series. We're going to kick off this series with a general World Cup, what it means, history, politics, economics, with the brilliant Simon Cooper of the Financial Times. We're going to talk to Simon, who is in Holland, which is, again, the country that has punched furthest above its weight in the World Cup, with the exception, I would say, of a country that's very dear to my heart.

3:45David McWilliams: Croatia, the Croatians, since the collapse of Yugoslavia, have been unambiguously the most successful small country when it comes to World Cup positioning and performances in the world. Oh, right. Didn't know that. Yeah, the Croats, John. The Croats have been, without a shadow of a doubt, Croatia. That's Modric, isn't it? Well, it's Modric is now their slightly soon-to-be over-the-hill 40-year-old superstar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he is an amazing footballer. He's an amazing footballer. He's an amazing footballer. But all the way going back to Boban, who was the captain of the Croatian national team, who was also the proximate reason, many would say, for the flare-up of tensions between Croatia and Serbia when Boban, Google it on YouTube, drop-kicked a copper in Serbia when Red Star Belgrade were playing against Dinamo Zagreb which was the great animosity the great derby in the former Yugoslavia but we can go into that later on John but I think Croatia have been the best team per player in the last 30 years in World Cups and in European Championships but it's funny you're football mad and you know a fair bit about football whereas me as you know like I was a terrible football player on the road growing up, but I loved playing.

5:17Football was one of those things that I had a passing interest in. But I'm more into football. The older I get, the more into football I get. I can't quite explain that, but it's true. And I've been looking forward to the World Cup. But actually, with this World Cup, I'm a little bit apprehensive about, purely because of Trump. And Trump making it all about him. It also spread out over, you know, three countries, which is kind of a bizarre thing anyway, for the fans. So it feels like this World Cup with Trump, with Infantino, spread out over three countries, that this is more about the business of football and politics rather than for the fans.

6:04This is not for the fans.

6:07David McWilliams: I think it will be for the fans, and I think it's always the case. And this is why we're doing this series, because the World Cup is bigger than any other sporting event. There is the nationalism of your national team, but there's the symbolism of the host. The fact that, you know, when you talk about the United States, I was in the United States for the 1986 World Cup. Yeah. When I was on a J1. And there I watched Argentina win the World Cup in a Mexican World Cup. Mexico was then run by a military dictatorship. So Argentina had been run by a military dictatorship when they won it. So there's always been sort of unusual, let's say, unusual hosts.

6:52David McWilliams: Lots of fellas with dark glasses and lapels and lots of braid and all that sort of good stuff. I also was at the 1994 World Cup when the Republic played in the World Cup. and that was the one that when we beat Italy and then gradually the whole thing came away from us but then in 1994 in 86 there was no sense of the World Cup being played anywhere you just had to go to Latin American bars to see it the Americans didn't give a damn it was in Mexico in 94 it was again they didn't really give a damn about it but now that has changed a wee bit but you're right I mean it will be a Trump fest but nonetheless it gives us John the lens through which to look at some economies.

7:36David McWilliams: So that's what we're going to do. We're going to look at the runners and riders. We're going to look at the great teams. We're going to look at the economics of the country. We're going to see, is there a political and economic and social dynamic which creates good football teams? If so, can it be replicated? Is there corruption? Yes, there is. Is it going to be like a Roman emperor at the Circus Maximus with Caesar sitting in the middle? Of course it's going to be. and Trump is going to be that emperor. But that's part of the background noise of the World Cup. So let us kick off by putting context on the whole thing by going to talk to Simon Cooper about his book, World Cup Fever.

8:15David McWilliams: Now, I can think of no better man to kick off this series on economics, politics, geopolitics, corruption, money, status, significant implication of the World Cup, then the brilliant, brilliant Simon Cooper, who has been on this show. You will know him as the FT colonist of many years. But on this area, in terms of football, you will know him as the man who, although we knew about Dutch football and we quite liked Dutch football, we never really understood what was going on. Simon wrote about Dutch football in the 90s. He has written books about football. He's written soccer-nomics. so he's genuflected to economics.

8:57David McWilliams: His latest book, and he's written loads. He's written about Barca. He's written about chums, the upper class in England. But his latest book is called World Cup Fever, perfectly timed, a footballing journey into nine tournaments. Simon, lovely to see you. How are you? Very well. In the Netherlands, all good. Yeah. And tell me, when are you, you are heading to your 10th World Cup final? Yes. So my twin sons are doing their final school exams in Paris, and it was felt that I should be around for at least bits of that. So I'm going a week after the World Cup starts, which is fine because the first week this time will be meaningless.

9:38David McWilliams: Meaningless. This is when we kick off. Don't say we're going to be meaningless to kick off. Okay, Simon, your latest book, World Cup Fever, a journey in nine tournaments. It's a lovely book. It's a lot of its memoir, which is lovely. And it's a sort of a very, very gentle reminder of what happens largely to the male of the species, but sometimes to the female of our species, this relationship with this mad game called football. You're starting, you're a student in Oxford. You blag a ticket because somebody's dad got a bucket of tickets free to the 1990 World Cup and we take it from there. Explain to me, Simon, your love affair brought up in Netherlands with the game of football first.

10:25I arrived in Holland 50 years ago from London with my family. And it turned out we'd landed in the middle of the golden age of Dutch football, in fact of global football. It's the 70s, Holland are between, reaching two World Cup finals. So my first World Cup, I'm eight years old. And the country I live in, the team I've come to support, is playing its second straight World Cup final against Argentina. 78th minute, Dick Nonningka, Dutch substitute center forward, who is a flower seller in daily life because several of the Dutch players are semi-pros. So he has a flower stall in a small town. He heads the equalizer.

11:00Last minute of extra time, Rob Rensenbrink, brilliant, the snake, they called him, the snake man, hits the outside of the post. So the Netherlands could have won World Cup final my first time of asking. So I grew up in Dutch football, which is obviously the highest form of football, which later became the world's form of football, played by teams like Klopp's Liverpool or Pep's Manchester City. So yeah, I have the origin story.

11:26David McWilliams: Now, I just want to talk to you about Dutch football, because in the book, you make this very interesting observation that Franz Beckenbauer, who is the Kaiser, for those of us of a certain vintage, the man who defined how centre-halves should play, man who defined the He played it out from the back, a whole series of subsequent center halves played by Beckenbauer. Obviously, a huge man in German football. He said he understood how brilliant the Dutch were when he flew over Holland in a helicopter and realized that an enormous amount of public space was devoted to municipal football grounds. Explain that to us.

12:04David McWilliams: I mean, again, this is quite nerdy. We'll get on to the economics in a minute, but this is economics. This is the culture of football, where it comes from. Explain that to me. so the netherlands is a social democracy which is the best way to produce a good national football team and that's true of course in most of western europe france germany spain with football you can't see at age six who's going to be good it's not like basketball rowing where you pick the biggest kids with the biggest parents and you put top coaches on them football obviously physical build doesn't really signify much look at messy so the way to produce a really good football team is to get all the six-year-olds in your country playing football.

12:41And then when they're 18, you find out who's good. And that means that football has to be available to everyone. It has to be cheap and you have to have trained coaches. So that's what my children in France have the same experience. France is now the leading football country in the world. And that's why Western Europe has dominated World Cups for the last 20 years. Only one country on earth. So Western Europe is 5 % of the world's population. The whole rest of humanity has produced one team in the last 20 years. it's reached the top three of World Cups, Leo Messi's Argentina. So you need Messi to be as good as Croatia, Portugal, Holland, Belgium.

13:15So social democracy is crucial. I grew up like most Dutch boys at the time, girls didn't play then, they do now, playing on a field that was kept by the local council, you know, watered and mown. Membership was very cheap. Our coaches all had diplomas from, you know, national coaching courses. And that's why this tiny country was better and still is better than, you know, the US, China, Japan, and so on.

13:40David McWilliams: So it is, let's look, so it's a social democratic product of municipal support for the game that produces sufficient amount of good kids in order to produce the national team. Yeah, absolutely. It's about that. And it's about understanding how to play football. Johan Kroef, who's the father of Dutch football, said football is a game you play with your head, which is exactly right, because the average player doesn't have the ball for 88 or 89 minutes of the game. So the average player is asking himself all the time, where should I be? That's the basic question of football. So it's a thinking game.

14:18It's about increasing space when the team has the ball, diminishing space when you don't. So football is geometry. And so you have to learn it as a kind of mental discipline. And that works in countries like Holland or Germany, now Spain and France, where everyone around you understands the game. It's probably similar for, it was probably similar for basketball in US inner cities 40 years ago. The level's really high. Everyone knows what they should be doing. And so you're kind of laughed out of class if you don't understand those basic things. And I saw this as a kid. I lived in the US when I was 11.

14:53And I realized these kids, they don't understand how to play football, played in a soccer team there. And when I moved back to England at 16, I was a midfielder. And in England, I never had the ball because the ball would just fly over your head both ways and I realized yes every country really is raised with a completely different way of playing football and it turned out that the Dutch way was the winning way it later spread to Spain and Germany in particular now to England and those countries have bigger talent pools so now they beat the Dutch.

15:22David McWilliams: Yeah well you'll find that football in Ireland like in England is a form of artillery so the great one I think Irish listeners will understand and will respond to the great shout from the line on the under nines and under tens in Ireland is, get rid of it. So the kid, right, the young fella gets the ball and he is told to hoof the ball up the line, right? Up the line is the great one. And in actual fact, last week I was watching a great Irish movie called Fram the Man. If you want to understand Irish amateur football. There is a great movie called Fram the Man, a whole host of lots of comedians we know.

16:01David McWilliams: Lots of people actually, Simon, you know, who down at Kilconomics star in it. But it's basically, it's a very, very gentle, very soft, very loving evocation of Irish amateur football and what happens. But in contrast to your idea, there is no Irish football manager, and I've played over many of them, who's ever said to me that football is geometry. I can tell you that for nothing. Now, let's start at the World Cup. What I like about your book, and I think it's very brilliant again, listeners, the book is World Cup Fever. It's our anchor book for this series. You start with this really interesting analysis of who the guy Gilles Remy is.

16:44David McWilliams: The man, or Gilles Remy, the man who actually his name was on the World Cup. Tell me about him and tell me the origin of the World Cup. Yeah, so Jules Rimet, people will know the name, and it's in the English football song, Three Lions, Football's Coming Home. Jules Rimet's still gleaming. That refers to that first World Cup trophy. It was named after him, stolen in Brazil in 1983, never seen again. And now the World Cup is a kind of less glamorous, less pretty object. So who was Jules Rimet? Nobody knew. Nobody I ever spoke to had any sense of him. I didn't see them when I started the book. And I thought, I looked for the sources.

17:19They're all in French. Okay, I live in France, speak French. So I thought, I'm going to figure out who this bloke was. And I go out and I cycle out an hour out of Paris to his grave. He's in a municipal cemetery, family grave. I go there. It took me half an hour to find it. Obviously, nobody had been there in many years. And there's a little gold plaque on the grave. Jules LeMay gives his dates, doesn't say what he did in his life. He's really forgotten. So if you find his memoir, which had to go to the French national libraries to read, et cetera, who was this guy? He's from a poor peasant family.

17:51The parents move to Paris. They become grocers. And he joins them in Paris. And so he lives among poor people. His family's low middle class. He's a bright boy. He studies law. So he rises in the world, but he lives among poor people. And he thinks if poor men are going to play football seriously, they have to be paid. He was never really interested in playing football himself. He just wanted to be a football administrator. And very important part of his life story is in World War I for four years. It's amazing he survived. He's in the trenches for four years. He wins the French military cross, the Cuer de Guerre, three times.

18:24And he comes home from war with the idea we have to make peace between peoples. We have to reconcile, especially the French and Germans. And football is the way to do that. And he becomes president of the French FA. And then in 1921, just after the war, he becomes president of FIFA. He stays president for 30 years. And during his era, they create this World Cup in 1930. So it's the idea of football brings peace. Everyone is welcome. It doesn't matter if your ruler is a fascist or a Democrat. We don't care. He was sort of open to everyone. He gives Mussolini the World Cup of 1934. In World War II, he collaborates a bit too much with Vichy.

19:01He gets in trouble for meeting German football officials just before France is invaded, et cetera. So he was very much a guy who every regime is welcome, which has remained the FIFA principle.

19:12David McWilliams: Now, the fascinating thing is he gets this thing up off the ground and again, because this is an economics podcast, what interests me, and we're going to talk about the economics and politics of football now, and the World Cup in particular, is the first, and it always surprises people, the first World Cup is in a little known for most Europeans, South American country called Uruguay. But Uruguay in 1930 was known as the Switzerland of Latin America. It had the first universal suffrage, it had the first welfare state, it had the first free education and health system. we are talking about a country that was unbelievably wealthy in the context of the world and it's interesting that the world cup's location always suggests something interesting about what's happening in that country is it a symbol for the future is it a power play and uruguay the fact that the world cup kicked off in uruguay tells us something about the nature of the host country can you maybe elucidate in that a wee bit simon yeah i mean like you i've been to uruguay and It struck me that, you know, the central part of the city is these 1920 skyscrapers.

20:19It looks a bit like New York, but dilapidated. So obviously there hadn't been kind of economic advance since then. But when they get the World Cup, I get it because they're the one country that's willing to pay for the whole thing. Very expensive. The European teams, plus Rimei, have to cross the ocean on a steamship paid by the Uruguayans. The Uruguayans have to put up all the players. The Uruguayans say, we'll build stadiums. They're still building the stadiums when the World Cup kicks off. i think one of them is only really completed sometime after the world cup and so it's it's immensely costly and the principle of world cup has always remained the host pays now why was this so important there was no money in football then so fifa was a penniless organization and then you'll remember something quite significant happening economically in the autumn of 1929 which is the great crash yes crash now the treasurer of fifa was this dutch stockbroker Carl Hirschman.

21:09And he was holding what few funds FIFA had. And his colleagues thought Hirschman's obviously putting it in a bank account, obviously. It turned out he was investing it all in the stock market. So with the crash in 1929, Hirschman goes bankrupt and then admits that all FIFA's funds have also been lost. So when they do this first World Cup, FIFA has 47 pence. So Uruguay has to fund the whole thing. And it's still the way every host country has to pay for the whole thing.

21:36David McWilliams: So FIFA has 47 pence in 1930-odd. Before we go into various different World Cups now, we'll go back and forth. Today, FIFA is sort of a shorthand for corruption. On a scale of one to Putin, how corrupt is FIFA? I'm not sure that corrupt is the right word anymore. So in the Blatter era, yeah, I mean, you would be bribed with brown envelopes. So, you know, FIFA delegates would be given a brown envelope or money would go to their personal bank account and you would vote for Saplatta and you would photograph yourself voting for him. And people, the barons within FIFA would take kickback from television rights.

22:15So we sell the TV rights to this tournament to a TV station for a 10th of its value. But I personally get a few million into my bank account. I think under Infantino, it's been slightly professionalized. So it's what I call legalized corruption, sort of the David Cameron way, where you make sure you're totally observing the law and then you take money from ugly regimes and you spread it around your mates, but in a legal way. So where has the money been coming into football the last decade or so from the Gulf? Because Qatar had the bright idea, we want to host the World Cup. It seems that some FIFA delegates who voted for Qatar were nicely recompensed for this, as were some who voted for Russia to host the World Cup in 2018.

22:56But Gulf countries are the ones who want to put money into football. And then Saudi Arabia sees Qatar. Saudi Arabia, less bright royal family. MBS, the crown prince, thinks. I would also like to buy status and world fame through football. But these damn Qataris, that's the only country that got there ahead of me. So now Saudi is getting a World Cup. And Saudi also more or less paid for the whole World Cup, this ridiculous tournament last year, won by Chelsea. So all this money is pouring in from these ugly regimes. And FIFA says, yes, thank you. let's have some more. But then so do Western governments.

23:31They all do business with those regimes. And so do Western companies. So it's sort of hard to pinpoint FIFA as uniquely villainous. Let's go back to the history of the World Cup, because my first World Cup that I remember,

23:44David McWilliams: and John, you probably remember very vaguely, 1974 World Cup. It was in West Germany. Netherlands got to the final. But also, talking to German friends of mine, Simon, I didn't realise that, and it was interesting reading Katja Hoyer's book about growing up in East Germany, how significant the World Cup was for East Germans at the time because their team was pitted against West Germany, possibly for the first time on the global stage. Yeah. Now, you say that East Germany was their team, but of course a lot of East Germans were supporting West Germany because, as you know, they got West German TV, so a lot of people would sit around watching West German football as their kind of comfort life.

24:26You go home, you turn off communism, and then you were watching Bayern Munich. So in 1954, when West Germany won the World Cup, there were celebrations in East Germany. In 1974, as you say, it's the only time the two Germanys played each other, I think in any match. And it's a very nervous event for the East German regime. So they send party comrades as the kind of official fan group. They hope not to be embarrassed by a very good West German team. As it is, East Germany win 1-0. Jürgen Sparwasser, who later defects to the West, I believe. So it's a very complex story in the psychodrome of East and West Germany.

25:01And this is also just after Chancellor Willy Brandt, I think, had resigned by that point because his chief aide, Gunther Guillaume, had been exposed as an East German spy, which was unfortunate. So it was a very complex moment in East-West relationship. East Germany win the biggest prestige battle of the two Germanys, but then West Germany win the World Cup, which I think is the kind of story of the Cold War prefigured.

25:27David McWilliams: And I remember our estate, John, had suddenly became devotees of a country I'd never heard of before called Holland. And this was because that was the great Dutch team. That was the team that should have won. That was the Cruyff team. That was the Johnny Rep team. That was the Rensenbring team. That was, I mean, you say in your book that Dutch don't mind losing World Cups. This is a fascinating insight into the Dutch mentality. How could you possibly have not minded losing to Germany, where the sense of the Second World War and the grudge between Holland and Germany was still incredibly strong?

26:02I'm doing this theatre tour of the Netherlands now. I go around Dutch theatres. I give this talk on the World Cup and geopolitics and everything. And we show this picture of the Dutch team arriving back home in 74, having lost the final, welcomed by enormous cheering crowds. They then go to the prime minister's residence where we have a photograph of the players and members of the royal family and the prime minister dancing the conga. So there was no mourning in the Netherlands at all. There was this immense pride, you know, this small country finishing second in the world. That's great. And they were right to feel immense pride.

26:34Imagine if you can suspend disbelief, Ireland finishing second in the world. You lose the final to Germany. Would you feel crushed? I don't think so.

26:42David McWilliams: No, the only small country I know that feels crushed by losing finals is the Croats. The Croats actually, and I've been in Croatia when they've lost finals, right? They lost one to France not that long ago. What was it, about six or eight years ago? And the Croats believe that they should have won. They believe there was a dodgy penalty, which there was, which was a dodgy handball. They believe, but I mean, I go on to the Croat mentality about football in a second, but I want to ask you, so you're touring doing geopolitics. What are the two or three big themes geopolitical that you actually take out of the World Cup, Simon?

27:17One is everyone is welcome. FIFA doesn't discriminate against brutal regimes. So Argentina hosted in 1978, Putin in 2018, the Qataris. FIFA is totally fine with that. Secondly, people talk about the leader using the World Cup. So that's the big story now people have. Oh, Trump is going to turn the World Cup into a propaganda show. Of course, the leader tries that. but you also have dissent in a stadium. You have opposition in a stadium. So Trump goes to an NFL game a year ago, is booed by the crowd in Washington. And that is exactly what would happen if he goes to a World Cup stadium now. All the stadiums are currently in blue America and his popularity is a record low.

27:58So a stadium is also a place of anonymity, even in a dictatorship like Iran, where people have some opportunity to express opposition to the leader. And then in a country like the US, you have politicians like Zora Mamdani, big football fan, totally fluent in the language of football, and in the kind of fans view of football, who's using the affordability story of the World Cup against Trump. So those are two key themes, dictatorships, but also the stadium as a place of opposition. And then the third thing I say is football provides this alternative global hierarchy. It's a hierarchy where China doesn't exist, where the US is also ran, and where Argentina is currently number one in the world.

28:36You know, where else do you get that? What other global hierarchy could give you that outcome? Do you think the World Cup, this World Cup,

28:44David McWilliams: so you've got it between Mexico, America, and Canada. The Canadians where we've just come back from are very, very much, this is part of Canadian pride. We're going to be better than the Americans at this because of the relationship between Carney and Trump, et cetera. The Mexicans, again, want to showcase Mexico, but also want to play properly. What impact do you think this might have on the United States itself? Because of course, the United States is the main, the absolutely main host. Yeah, I mean, the US has three quarters of the games, has all the good games. I would say this is a US World Cup with kind of small franchises in Canada and Mexico.

29:23It's the Canadians and Mexicans are understandably very excited about because they're never in the spotlights of the world. And now they briefly will be. The US doesn't really care because it's always in the spotlights of the world. But because it's such an isolated country, geographically, emotionally, it doesn't really care about being in the spotlights of the world. So I think this has almost no impact on the American story. You have the fastest moving news cycle in modern history. So 47 minutes after the World Cup ends, there will be a new news cycle story that everyone's grasping over. This World Cup, almost all World Cups will fade like a dream, leaving no impact on the host country.

29:59but of course Trump is going to make it into a Trump show where he comments on the action not from the stadiums but from the White House non-stop.

30:08David McWilliams: So let's go back to favorite moments in the World Cup because I think everybody listening will have their favorite World Cup. Every Irish person of course it's Italia 90. All of us you know and then you've got the Saipan, the Roy Keane, the actual team in 2002 that was actually pretty good. It wasn't a bad football team at all you know and then we faded away we haven't qualified and for your own sense like what is your standout memories of world cup and maybe not stand-up memories of just the football but the politics and the and the story behind it i mean i'd cite two moments one is not at the world cup it's when december 2nd 2010 they vote on the host of two world cups the same day to 2018 and 2022.

30:53And everyone, including me in a long piece in the FT, is predicting Russia will get 2018, the US will get 2022. But for 2022, Qatar is pulled out of the envelope by Sepp Latter. So the two World Cups are given to Russia and a country that most people, many people hadn't heard of. And this moment exemplifies what my colleague Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times calls easternization, the movement of power, the draining of it away from the West towards the Gulf, Russia, China. And this is visible then. And it's a shock to many people in the hall, including Bill Clinton, who had fronted the US bid, who was in the hall because he expected the US to win.

31:28And this is an, oh my God, we've lost control moment for the West. And the other moment is the first match of the 2018 World Cup. Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Petro Derby. And before the game, Vladimir Putin, the host of the World Cup, stands up and he makes this speech about football spreading love, so very much in the Julie May spirit. And the crowd gets bored. And after a couple of minutes, people start to chat amongst themselves and watch videos on their phones. When he's down, people are delighted and they clap. And then Putin sits in a box with Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, and MBS, the Saudi crown prince, and they laugh and joke while Russia wins 5-0.

32:09And it's a vision of the world where the West is just not present. And on the advertising boards, you have Gazprom, you have, I think, Saudi Aramco, you have KIA Motors from Korea, you have this new economy where our people don't exist. So the story of the World Cup, to some degree, is the loss of control by Western Europe, where FIFA was always based, over this thing that was created here.

32:33David McWilliams: So taking that analogy before we go, we have the kind of Monroe Doctrine World Cup there. This is very, very much, if you take that geopolitical idea, this is very, very much consistent with the United States hosting the World Cup, with the North America and South America and Mesoamerica to give the Mexicans their due location, being part of Donny J's world. I mean, this could be seen again as another moment where again, Western Europe, even though hopefully we will provide the winners of the World Cup, I hope we will, is kind of ignored, or is kind of, as you say, symbolically somewhere else.

33:12Yeah. So until 2006, the majority of World Cups had been in Western Europe. And then we haven't had any in 20 years. It hasn't been one in our part of the world in 20 years. Now, you say this is the Monroe, the Donro Doctrine World Cup. That is how it's turned out. But the original plan for a US, Canada, Mexico World Cup is conceived under Obama, where it's to showcase the country's cooperation and friendship. You know, we're going to do it together. We might even have, you know, one visa where fans can go from country to country and so on. We're going to show how great we get on, but then something happens in American politics.

33:49David McWilliams: Finally, the romantic in me always wants Argentina to win. I've always wanted Argentina to win. I don't know why that is, but it's just a sort of a weakness. It could be, as you said, Simon, men of a certain age with memories of Maradona, memories of Mario Campes, all that sort of stuff, right? Who are you going for? Well, I obviously don't want Argentina to win. I want Holland to win. The thing is that you can't actually predict a league. You can predict a league with reasonable confidence, usually the team with the highest salaries. And over 38 games in a league, the best team generally wins.

34:24World Cup is just a random war. So most games in the knockout runs by one goal or penalty shootouts. So there's an enormous amount of fluke involved. So I've learned from my folly of making predictions, e.g. predicting that Brazil would win in 2014, never to make predictions. So who is the strongest team? Probably Spain. They're the strongest in men's and women's football. Amazing for a country of 46 million. Does that mean they'll win? No, most likely not.

34:50David McWilliams: And for Irish fans, I mean, the big imponderable in this part of the world is England. The team that on paper has as many good players, it seems to me, as anybody else. The team that if they could get the sum of the parts working as a team should be contenders. What do you make? Yeah, well, in our news economics, we say that for the first time since 1966, if England win, it would not be a surprise. All the last 60 years, it would have been, oh my God, England won. That's insane. But now, they're consistently in FIFA's top five. for nearly a decade now. They've always been in the top five. And then, yeah, you have a very good chance if fluke lands your way of winning it.

35:33And you see, England are now a competent passing team. They're so good that they've left out Trent Alexander and Phil Foden and Cole Palmer. This is astonishing. This is unthinkable in previous years when even a drunken, fat talent like Paul Gascoigne was just essential and always had to go even if he only had one leg.

35:55David McWilliams: and now there's a lot of quality that was that that was the great english midfield team of fatty platty and batty do you remember that one uh yes right and so you have england have learned the continental virtues i would call them the dutch virtues but they've kept this one english quality of they're the strongest team in the world in the air so other teams are terrified of conceding free kicks and corners against england especially now you're not allowed to arm wrestle during corner kicks anymore. So you have somebody like Harry Kane, and not this time Harry McGuire, coming in for high balls.

36:30England are just astonishingly good in that department. Still the old English mergers.

36:36David McWilliams: And finally, if England were to win, we're talking about the psychology, the politics, the emotion. Does this have an impact on perceptions of England in the world, given the way they have actually decided to go on this sort of nostalgic trip. Does an England World Cup win change English politics at all? I don't think it changes British politics. Because if you live in Britain, then you're very aware of, you know, why is there no train? Why does nothing work, etc? Why are my wages lower than in 2007? whereas if you don't then yes your image of today's britain is very largely shaped by the premier league and then by the england team so it's enormous positive in the appreciation of england people see for example you saw african celebrating arsenal's league win people in kenya people in nigeria people see a country that is very happy with foreign stars with black stars where people from Argentina or Nigeria arrive and seem to be welcomed and become heroes of their community.

37:46The quality is very good. And England, English football has always had this unique mix of two very important English qualities, which is tradition. So these clubs are 150 years old, some of them, and youth culture. And these are things that you don't see in quite that profusion in other countries. English football teams have some aspects of kind of 1970s pop culture, and then the kind of ancient working class tradition, maybe even a little bit of Downton Abbey. All those things that people like, foreigners like about England.

38:16David McWilliams: Simon, we will leave it there. Listen, enjoy your odyssey. We might even get you around, let's say, semi-final, final time to see where we've actually evolved. But again, the book, guys, is World Cup Fever by Simon Cooper. It's an amazing read. All sorts of mad little details in it and things that we've forgotten about and things you do. There was a whole chapter in South Africa that I forgot to ask you about, but we can come back to that again, the significance of the South African World Cup. But Simon, listen, as always, an absolute pleasure. Thank you guys very much. Enjoy.

38:51This episode of the David McWilliams podcast is brought to you by Long Angle. Mark, have you ever come across Long Angle?

38:58David McWilliams: Do you know what, John? I have heard of them. It's a private vetted community for people who've built serious wealth and are navigating what comes next. You know what strikes me about doing this show is every big economic story eventually lands on someone's kitchen table somewhere. A recession isn't an abstract thing if you're deciding whether to sell an asset. A housing crisis isn't academic if you're trying to figure out what to do with capital. The macro becomes very personal very quickly. And most people are navigating that without anyone who's actually been in the same position. You're absolutely right, John.

39:32David McWilliams: And that's what long angle is. It's a vetted peer community, 8 ,000 members, no membership fee, where people at that level of financial complexity just help each other out, help each other to think clearly. Someone who's made the call you're about to make. You do need to qualify to get in. Which is the point. Longangle.com slash David. Longangle.com slash David. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, You keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high-quality motors, sensors, belts, and hard-to-find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place, so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done.

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41:30For all the stuff I was kind of complained about Trump, I'm still really looking forward to the World Cup. It's going to be brilliant. But just to pick up on one of the things that Simon said there, you know, apart from football, it's geometry. But the fact...

41:44David McWilliams: Exactly. Not something you ever hear on the sideline of a Dublin football thing. Yeah, exactly. Imagine my dad managing Doki United under 12s. Imagine Desi McWilliams saying, Lads, football is geometry. Or trigonometry. Yeah, exactly. But interestingly, on the, you know, you talk about standing on the side of a football pitch as a young fella. I thought it was really interesting what he was talking about, the local Dutch governments and councils providing all these fantastic facilities, just football pitches for people to play and getting people, young kids, into football. you know, that kind of investment, what that does to the society, but also, you know, the payback is huge at the end of the day.

42:35David McWilliams: Yeah, I think one of the interesting things about football is that we feel that the Latin Americans are the inheritors of the beautiful game. We feel Argentina, Brazil, this is where the romance is, this is where the amazing players come from, etc. But I think what Simon reiterates there is that Europeans, West Europeans, have absolutely dominated this global game at the national team level. And what he's making the point is that there is a connection between social democracy, municipal investment in sports and clubs, and the production of a a conveyor belt of talent, which leads to a prominence of Western European social democratic countries in the area of football.

43:27David McWilliams: And again, I think that is a fascinating observation. But perhaps Ireland should be taking a leaf out of the Dutch book, you know, when we complain about our poor performance, you know, maybe that's where our focus should be. John, football is like anything. It has to be managed. Management is how you measure things. And if you have no way of measuring, you've no way of managing. So if you're youth football and if your institutions are not there, what you will be is completely haphazard. and what the Dutch have proven is that in actual fact, it takes something so interwoven into the fabric of society to create these wonderful, wonderful football clubs.

44:15David McWilliams: But let's not get all Dutch on us. They've never won anything. You know what I mean? Johnny Giles once said, when a fellow was going at him, Johnny Giles just said, show us your medals. So let's not get all too fucking, you know, Volkstad and the Dutch about this, right? Okay, anyway, we're going to kick off this series, John, by looking at the anti-Dutch team, which is Mexico. We're going to look at the hosts, Mexico. We're going to look at their economic history, their political history. We're going to look, in actual fact, at their parallel economy, half normal economy, half narco economy, and we're going to explain what is going on in Mexico, one of the hosts, and we're going to do that on Thursday.

44:58David McWilliams: We will talk to you then. Thank you.

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