The World Cup is healing us

0:00No one could blame you if you thought this Men's World Cup was going to be a disaster. The President of the United States isn't exactly a welcome mat for the world, and there have been plenty of embarrassing stories for the country. There was the mom of Cape Verde's goalkeeper who wasn't let into the United States to watch her son play until the team started doing well and people clamored for her entry. The team from Dr. Congo hadn't made a Men's World Cup in 52 years and hardly made this one because the United States was supposedly worried about Ebola even though no one on the team had Ebola.

0:31If you were watching Senegal Norway last week and were wondering where all the Senegalese fans were, they weren't let into the country. But you probably noticed we let in like a million Vikings. I wonder what's different about their fan bases. Oh, and who could forget we're literally bombing one of the countries that up until Friday was playing here. Missiles aren't the problem. But, but somehow the vibes at this World Cup are mostly positive. The World Cup might just be healing us on today's Explain from Vox. Support for this show today comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough.

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2:27Explain! My name's Constance Grady, and I'm a senior correspondent on the culture team at Vox. Constance, are you a big fan of the footy? Oh, man. I would not say I am a sports knower per se. I would say I am an appreciator of like things that make people all get together and be like really happy and excited and bond in a big group. But this is why you ended up writing a piece for Vox titled The World Cup is Showing What Trump Can't Destroy About America. I think that the World Cup has been such an unmissable story in the culture for the past few weeks, even for non-sports knowers like me. And trying to figure out why and how is really, really exciting and interesting to me.

3:25And what are you seeing that has piqued your interest? Because from what I'm getting, it isn't like Messi's hat trick.

3:37Or Messi breaking the all-time World Cup scoring goal.

3:45Or Messi, you know, like staking his claim for a second consecutive World Cup for Argentina.

3:58Sean, are you a Messi fan?

4:04No, for me, what has really taken over my social media feeds for the past little while has been all these videos of World Cup tourists from overseas coming to America and just, like, loving it. Like, they're so excited about, like, the red fire trucks.

4:28I've just gone to Walgreens, but there's a fire station right outside. I'm going to go ask if I can go have a look at the fire engines. And they've let me in. And like endless soda refills at restaurants and really big grocery stores. OK, I'm here in Florida. This is West Palm, I think. And that is Publix. I love Buggies. It's so cute. I love this cookie. And it's just, it's so charming and delightful to watch. And I kind of wanted to feel like, well, why am I so delighted by these things? What I ended up deciding is I think that these videos are really exciting because they show how deeply embedded the idea of America is across the world.

5:16Right. People around the globe grow up watching American TV and movies like they look at a yellow school bus and they say, well, I've seen that on The Simpsons. Like this is like walking into a fictional universe. Hey, Dad, how come you never taken us to see a soccer game? I don't know. And I think that's a real reminder of something that America has kind of struggled with under this presidential administration, which is people from other countries liking us. That's something that we used to actually be really good at. What a lot of people see and like about this World Cup right now, not just in the United States, but Canada and Mexico, is the cultural exchange.

5:57It's like Mexicans dancing with Koreans. It's a Japanese guy giving an interview to, like, an American broadcaster in Dallas. Okay. USA. USA. Amen. Japan. And USA. I love it. Okay. We love you, too. But you write about soft power specifically and how it relates to the president and how this World Cup is offsetting that relationship. Tell us about that, I guess, starting with El Presidente. So soft power is this idea that one of the ways a country can get other countries to do what it wants to do is not just through economic force. It's not just through the military, but it's through powers of persuasion and attraction.

6:48And that's something that the U.S. has historically been really good at. We're kind of the case study for soft power in political science. That's because of a few different assets we have, most of which Trump has been attacking pretty aggressively, especially over the course of his second administration. We have the most powerful technology on Earth. We have the greatest culture on Earth. And above all, we have the greatest people on Earth. Greatest. We have this university system that people come to from all over the world. They're some of the most prestigious colleges around the world here. And that has been something that Trump has really pushed against with lawsuits and defunding.

7:37We also do a lot of humanitarian work. You know, in the days before Doge, U.S. foreign aid saved around 3.3 million lives per year. Obviously, Doge dismantled U.S. aid. So these are all reasons that the rest of the world has had to like us. And they are reasons that Trump has really been like, this is not a thing we're prioritizing. This is not something that America is doing anymore.

8:09And the World Cup is intentionally or unintentionally offsetting what we've lost in American soft power during the two or six or 10 years of Donald Trump. Yeah, I don't think this is something that Trump is doing intentionally. Trump has been quite vocal about not particularly being interested in the idea of soft power. Trump said to Bob Woodward at one point, Real power is, I hate to use the word, but the word is fear. He very much is most interested in hard power. Soft power, he seems to consider, like, not very masculine enough. I don't think that he's thinking of the World Cup as, like, a thing that's going to make the rest of the world like America more.

8:59That's just not a priority for him. But it's kind of serving that purpose in spite of him. I think in large part because despite the xenophobia of Trump's base, a lot of people in America have been very welcoming to these tourists from around the world and excited to show them the country.

9:31I want to say thank you to Team Algeria for choosing our hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, to come here. And so welcome. If you were in Texas right now for the World Cup, we want to host you. We want to show you all the real Texas experience we got.

9:52It's worth noting that a lot of the really excited videos we're seeing from World Cup tourists are from European tourists who are more able to get over here right now. But I think it's also worth noting that these people do still have the desire to explore America, even when we're really doing the most to alienate other countries. And I think that speaks to the incredibly outsized role of importance the U.S. has played in popular culture around the world. Everyone grows up knowing what America looks like on their screens and in their living room, and now they want to see it in person. Do you think it's a sign that America can get back to the place it held in terms of soft power around the world in spite of all these cuts to humanitarian aid, in spite of all the bullying, in spite of telling everyone else to deal with the Strait of Hormuz being shut down?

10:58I think it shows that we still have a fighting chance. But you know, so much depends on what directions we move in after the end of what's going to be Trump's final term in office. Trump is part of the story of America, whether we like it or not, and so are the impulses he's harnessed of xenophobia and isolationism and fear of others. What gives me hope about the World Cup is how much it shows that a genuine interest in and respect for people from other countries and a desire to share with them and socialize with them and be hospitable is also still part of the story of America and maybe can continue to be so.

11:50Wow, Constance, I feel so warm and fuzzy, but how do we feel about the hydration breaks? The consensus on that is that it's partially dark evidence of global warming and partially capitalism in action, adding more ad breaks, right? And it's bad. It's bad. I'll take your word for it, Sean. Okay, we're going to do that next on Today Explained.

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16:07Okay, so the vibes of the Men's World Cup are mostly positive, but if you're lucky enough to catch some World Cup in person, or if you just watch it on Telemundo, where they don't cut to commercials as much, you'll notice some serious negativity twice in every match.

16:26We're talking about the hydration breaks, which have done something that I thought was almost impossible in the football world, which is to unite the entire planet in anger against its very existence. We asked Roger Bennett from the Men in Blazers cinematic universe to explain how hydration breaks did the almost impossible. I'm not exactly sure what is going on, to be candid, but what has occurred is that football is just at its heart a very simple game. It is two halves of 45 minutes. That is the way it is. It's the way it's always been. Crucially, it's the way it is at the elite professional level, and it is the way it is at an under-7 game in Alaska.

17:13It's pretty critical and fundamental to football that a game at all levels is exactly the same. That is until the World Cup came to North America this summer, where this is one of the hottest in global football history. And so Gianni Infantino, who your listeners may have seen, He's the head of FIFA. He just imposed a new rule where they would have hydration breaks, which he said was part of a focused attempt to ensure the best possible condition for players during the experiences of previous tournaments. And he said they're purely a sporting matter. And I want to stress this because I hear as well it's about money or things like it.

17:56It is not. We don't make one dollar more revenues in FIFA with these hydration breaks. So it's boiled down to every half, the 45 minutes, it breaks in the middle now for an extended period, four minutes and 20 seconds per game, which runs to about seven hours, 30 minutes, 40 seconds. But who's counting across my lifetime that I have to watch these in the tournament? And what it does on Fox in America, in that moment, as the players amble to the side, they now just talk about it as if it's a routine part of the game. They say, oh, we've hit the water break. And then, boom, we're in commercials.

18:33And that will take us to our match break sponsored by Lenovo. Now, the football fans, the American football fans, I should say, the NBA fans out there, the WNBA fans out there, they might be saying, what's the big deal? There's constant commercials when I'm watching a game or a match or whatever it might be. But this has really triggered the football purists out there. Yeah, look, football is a working class game. Football is a game of fan devotion, connection. Football is deeply historic and there's an authenticity to it. The heat is terrible in the United States, but many of these stadia are indoors or air conditioned.

19:18until you have this kind of ridiculous, surreal situation where footballers are taking a break in an air-conditioned stadium, ambling over to the side. And what it's done is give coaches essentially a timeout in the middle of the game, reset. You have players having a break, exhausted players who are being run down by a superior opponent have a chance to catch their breath. We've seen game after game be utterly transformed by the momentum shift. You know, it's a weird, surreal kind of purgatory world where this thing, which was meant to be because of the heat in Miami, meant to be because of the heat in MetLife.

20:02And when you see the figures that the broadcasters are making, said to be 250 million in terms of the commercials that they're running in those slots, it's a very odd moment in time where people are wondering, what is this? Why is this? And is this just for this World Cup? Or in dismal England in rainy November, will the Premier League start to take water breaks? And we'll cut to Coca-Cola commercials. Right. I mean, you're saying it's without a doubt having an impact on the actual play. Teams might be winning now because they got a little timeout. timeout they had some counsel from their coaches and now they're playing a stronger game after a hydration break does that mean that coaches and players like them or are they complaining too yeah there's a couple of uh different opinions almost everybody hates them you know a lot of the players talk about how hard it is to find a rhythm in a game and then you're stopping and going over to the sideline and just from an ex-player's perspective we know what it's like when you're in that mode when you're fighting for your life and trying to not to concede a goal or when you've got a team under so much pressure that you know you're going to get a goal and a water break happens?

21:18If it's really hot, obviously it would be good to put them in, but I think you have to look at it in every game separately, in my opinion. The opponent is going to try to take advantage of the... to fix or to encourage or to do maybe things that you cannot do when you are in the touchline and the game is running. By the way, at the beginning, the water break was just a water break and they would come back and often Fox at the beginning was courting commercial and they'd come back to the game and it would be on and people would lose their mind and so what they've done it made it even more American it's almost like a TV timeout in the NFL now where the official keeps the players on the sideline until they know the commercials are run and then they let them on Anthony Robinson the US player said he wanted to walk back onto the field and get back into his position.

22:11And one of the officials was like, no, sorry, the commercials are still playing. Stay where you are. So this is the kind of surreal reality we're in. Most of the coaches detest it. Most of the players, the European players, have spoken out about it. A couple of the coaches have admitted that they won games because they were able to take complicated tactical changes and communicate that Germany were playing Curacao, Tiny Curacao, who just tied the game up 1-1, one of the most delirious moments of this World Cup. And there's a goal for Curacao. Can you believe this? And the young German coach admitted afterwards that he was able to adjust to playing against the diamond midfield shape that he didn't expect.

22:55And Germany ended up winning 7-1. And it was just, if you watch the game, it was like it flicking over radio stations the before the water break and the after the water break. Do you think they'll keep them around? Have they already pledged to keep them around in future World Cups? This is the greatest full line in football, Sean. And I'm not, I do not have prophetic powers, but ultimately the whole game of football is currently in a battle between its roots and its authentic essence and just the commercial imperative that comes from being as big as it is. you know, the Super Bowl and American sports in general are brazenly commercial.

23:38I mean, I found it, it's not funny because it's been a bit dark, but the whole brouhaha about the ticket prices for this World Cup was really global football. Again, finding American sports culture and seeing that you have floating ticket differential on, you know, supply and demand and falling in love with that, being like, wow, what? We can charge different prices for our tickets let's go um and you know the working class cultures of european football being like hang on we've traveled everywhere of our team for generations how are you charging this and then american fans caught on to it was like wow those tickets are expensive same americans who were paying twenty thousand dollars to sit in the nosebleed seat to the knicks game in the finals but five billion people watch the world cup 200 million people watch the super bowl um it is so big.

24:27It is the last megaphone which is faintly audible around the world. It is. And when you have something that big, it becomes deeply desirous to make as much money as you can out of it. And that's the tension. So this is kind of about capitalism and the American version, contra perhaps the European version. This is a question about European vacation policies. And you sound like you may have been a European in a previous life. So I'm born to be an American, insurance. I don't know if I can answer what you're going to ask me, but go on. Here it is. I've been noticing, you know, the Scottish fans, the Norwegian fans, the Dutch fans, especially just traveling from city to city to city.

25:06And I've wondered like how much vacation exactly do these people have? And then I saw someone online put it even better. They said, do Europeans get issued eight weeks of vacation, unlimited airline miles, and a trust fund at birth? Because every match I turn on, there are 40 ,000 fans following their team to a different state or country on a Tuesday afternoon while Americans are hiding in a work bathroom, checking scores. Whoever's hiding in the work bathroom is a liar. They're pulling this up and hiding it behind spreadsheets. Look, we've always joked that part of the reason that football has taken off in this nation is because Americans love an excuse to daytime drink and cut work.