UP539 Spin Class: PR lessons from Kirsty Coventry, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Igor Tudor

32:27So, which again, yeah, you don't hear a lot on this side of the world, but it is a pressing concern when you talk to people in California. Okay.

32:36Richard:Right. Henry Chappell. I want you to just introduce us to our second story, which is Jim Ratcliffe, everyone's favorite football billionaire owner. If you really want to deal with the major issues of immigration, with people opting to take benefits rather than working for a living. If you want to deal with that, then you're going to have to do some things which are unpopular and show some courage. And has this government done that? No, I think they... I don't know whether... I don't know whether it's just the apparatus that hasn't allowed Keir to do it or he's maybe too nice. I mean, I know Keir, he's a nice man, I like him.

33:21but it's a tough job and I think you have to do some difficult things with the UK to get it back on track because at the moment I don't think the economy is in a good you can't afford it you can't have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in I mean the UK is being colonized it's costing too much money it will cause it'll cause The UK has been colonised by immigrants really, isn't it? I mean, the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020. Now it's 70 million. That's 12 million people.

33:59Richard:You met recently with Nigel Farage, didn't you? I did. Do you think that they would be a good government if they were to win the next election? I think Nigel is an intelligent man and I think he's got good intentions but in a way you could say exactly the same about Keir when Keir came in. We had just a minute ago been talking about people being media trained and what happened. He's probably one of the least media trained people in the sports industry. And of course, he's the boss of INEOS, the petrochemicals giant that's obviously got a minority stake in Manchester United. And since they've taken ownership of United, have taken it upon themselves to be more communicative, which is often a criticism, isn't it?

34:47You know, definitely the Glazer family before them, but also elsewhere in football that you never hear anything from anyone. And that's an issue at Tottenham right now. But, you know, from Abramovich to Kroenke to you name it, you know, normally the owners of these franchises, clubs, you know, never going to never do your media interviews and probably for good reason when we get on to talking about this. but just over a year or so ago you might remember Ratcliffe did it his first sort of set piece sit down interviews I think it was with a one-year anniversary of becoming owners of the club he sat down with Danny Rowan and Gary Neville maybe one or two others and and that didn't go well because there was a huge number of live issues that were in play at the time from all the redundancies they were making through to uh the issues around not paying the the retired players foundation to various other things and again you know it was awkward wasn't it if you recall particularly both dan and gary had a lot to go on and you know it was awkward but maybe rac had some credit for coming out and facing the cameras and he was obviously able to have some contrition for the mistakes that have been made and what have you so it it wasn't great but you know he did it and it and it maybe it was like i say a positive thing that he was prepared to sit and be interviewed like like that but then you know we then enter this latest situation everyone members between then and now we've also had a big unveiling of this incredible new partly publicly funded redevelopment of old trafford in the surrounding area with a very ambitious plan for a the world's biggest circus tent on land, which you don't currently own, you know, with a design that is now not going to happen and with funding that isn't in place.

36:39But that was all, you know, launched with much hurrah and Fandango and very little, if any, follow through. But obviously on the field of play, things are a bit better suddenly, you know, with Carrick studying the ship. United are doing okay. But then a few weeks ago, just over a month ago, So Jim was at the European Industry Summit in Antwerp, unlike John telling his story of the Kirsty Coventry. I wasn't there. I don't think anyone in the sports industry was at a petrochemicals conference in Antwerp. But Sky News' Ed Conway, who's their economics and data editor, was there. And he got a sit-down with Jim.

37:22And it was a three-minute sit-down that was broadcast. and as I'm sure everyone recalls, he came out with this very incendiary remark that the UK has been colonised by immigrants, really, hasn't it? He was questioned on that and repeated this sentiment so it couldn't be a misspeak. And he supported his claim with some factual information that wasn't entirely correct, getting either the dates or the numbers mixed up, which doesn't help when you're saying something quite as eye-catching as that and and he was obviously using that because he's he's pleading poverty for inios and and saying that things are terrible and this that the other and this this is one of the reasons why but obviously he's sitting there as the boss of inios but he's also he may not have been thinking with his manchester united hat on but obviously manchester is an organization that has you know incredible broad fan base and has had you know uh incredible track record of success going right the way back to the Neve days.

38:24It was, you know, obviously largely thanks to a huge number of former players and managers who are immigrants and to mention the staff base at United as well. So obviously it's comments like that which are without foundation, which are sort of factually erroneous and really misrepresentative of what Manchester United as a football club stands for. and so it clearly what Jim Ratcliffe believes and it's and he would go well that's because when offered the chance to apologize and correct he partly apologized but didn't correct so he clearly does that is his point of view and he feels entitled that he should be saying that he obviously is saying that in relation to you know some of his own you know objectives from an INEOS point of view.

39:19And indeed, United themselves didn't apologise and didn't reference in their statement, obviously, which was probably carefully worded and went through INEOS's approvals in a way that meant that they were not going to make Sir Jim look or undermine what Sir Jim had said. So they just made it clear United's views on DE &I and other such matters but it was a it was it was a half-hearted statement really that that was just hoping that the whole issue would move move on obviously it then you know quite rightly and understandably definitely understandably produced a huge pile on from across the industry and across social media and then obviously into the fan base at match day and has just left a stain i think that is It's still there.

40:09And yeah, it's obviously representative of the divisive nature of the British political system at the moment and people's point of views. And it is tricky. I would also have to say that it is a huge number of comments on social media around the clip of this and various other news reports of it. and you have to say that there are if you look at them as i urge you to do at least 50 of the comments on that are very supportive of what jim lackliffe has said and i'm not saying that's representative of public opinion i'm just saying if you you know preparing for this i did look at that to see what that was case and it was that that was the case so or what is the case and from what i saw from the sky news piece that had been posted and from various other social media and news news clippings of what Jim had said so yeah I think that's the summary of where we're at with

41:04Richard:it yeah thank you and and there's a few things in here that I just want to sort of pick out as you say I want to talk to you about apologies as well but it's interesting that he felt you know he was emboldened to say it and repeat it and you know that the apology was sort of not apologizing for his views it was apologizing for you know I'm sorry if you if you're offended that type of type of thing so neil let's bring you in you said at the beginning about context is being important because the context just changes you can take that quote and it will go and to henry's point there'll be a load of people who say yeah brilliant you know i'm glad someone has written famous as jim rackliff has said these things that i've always thought and i'm now emboldened to say them as well so there's that whole thing which i'm sure a lot of the commenters on the uh which Henry was referring to is that's it's it sort of opens the door in that way but what is it just give me your sort of first response really well I mean one important part of context here is actually one thing that John and I both have in common is that we were both fired by Man United after Jim Ratcliffe came in so um you know I think it's worth worth noting that he's not a man who is known for listening to external advice should we say so and I think is this where I call for Ratcliffe to media training camp?

42:20No, I think there's something fundamental here, which is, you know, if you are, and this is partly why there is a reaction to it, is the sort of fairness agenda here. So he's got tax Excel status. He lives in Monaco. You know, here he is lecturing Man United fans, how they should feel about living in the UK. And, you know, they should feel about having a diverse population. And actually it's just, you know, he is a Mancunian, but he's been away for a long time and the view looks very different from Monaco and it looks very different from the director's box looking out than it would be on the Stretford end looking into the director's box and I thought it was really important what Henry actually said there United fans put a banner in the Crystal Palace home game saying MUFC proudly colonised by immigrants because Manchester is a very liberal and diverse city so I think therefore there is something around perspective around context, around groupthink, particularly if you are in that super elite and you think you are used to saying what you like, what you want to say, and you don't have people around you to challenge your opinions.

43:24And frankly, as you said, Henry, he didn't need to do that interview on that platform at a petrochemicals conference in Antwerp. What was the point of that interview other than ego? Jim Ratcliffe's view on the world. And it doesn't even make him look very smart as a billionaire when he can't tell the difference between 58 million people in 2020 and 67 million in 2020 as the population of the UK. And yeah, it was not positive for Jim Ratcliffe. It was not positive for United. I think United did ultimately come out and said that they didn't stand by those views. They fell in line with the likes of Kick It Out, etc.

44:02But it was entirely a crisis of their own making. And I think it entirely came from that point of just losing perspective, taking a view of who your audience was. And actually, the right thing to do would have been just to apologise rather than double down on the comment. But I suspect that that's not a person who is very used to being challenged or finding themselves in a situation where they need to apologise or feel they need to apologise for anything. John? Well, you know, as Neil said, we have not necessarily a conflict of interest, but I worked with Manchester United for 12 and a half years, working mainly on the PR in relation to the owners, the Glazer family.

44:43So I'm particularly interested to see or to at least try and imagine how they would have reacted to what Sir Jim said and the machinations that went on behind the scenes in terms of trying to get the club to communicate as fast as possible and put its position across. And I'm absolutely convinced that the Glazer family, who in fact, they never do interviews. They've only ever done one interview with, I think it was in-house, Man United in-house TV. I think they probably, all their instincts were that this was a really bad situation and that they needed to get involved. And I'm sure that they would have swung into action behind the scenes.

45:33Can I just ask a question about that, John?

45:36Richard:So if you're the PR guy for the Glazers, that sounds like quite an easy job. They don't do any PR, do they? What do you do with the PR? You hope that like in the early days that the team is winning trophies and performing well on the pitch. And the PR takes care of itself to a certain extent. Although, obviously, the Glazer family never had good PR. but the degrees of badness on their PR were determined by the performance on the pitch. But they had a good intuition. When I worked with them, they had a good intuition in terms of PR up to a certain point, and they definitely would never have allowed their views.

46:20And I believe they are, you know, some of them are Republican supporters. I don't know whether they are Trump supporters or not, but I don't think they would ever have allowed themselves to have been caught out like that on an unrelated interview, say, for example, on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or on their property investments or something like that, if they'd been interviewed on that, I don't believe they would have allowed themselves to have made that kind of mistake. And then the second question to ask is how much of a story this would have been had he not been a minority shareholder of Manchester United?

46:56Would he even have been interviewed? No. I agree. That's the point. he's sort of i'm jim ratcliffe i'll say what i want but it's like well people there's only newsworthy and it's only of interest because you are an owner of manchester united football club and then i think as an owner you have a duty of care you have a responsibility to to you know if you're doing public interviews or speaking in public to to represent the interests of manchester united football club as any employee would you know if an employee came out and said that they'd probably have their contract terminated so either and so you can't have it both ways you know you're only being interviewed by sky in the youth panel because you managed to buy your way in with some borrowed money as well to get a minority stake in united so i think that that's i suspect by the fact he's fired both of my fellow panelists on this show which is he probably doesn't want to listen to what people have to say and i suspect anyone who works for him so bloody terrified of getting getting the boot for telling him what he doesn't want to hear but he's he just does what he wants and he you know i think ed conway did a good piece about how he got the interview which was i think he just sort of asked him and he said yeah and they had a quick sit down so i don't think there was any none of this was premeditated he just be our consultant's worst nightmare clients who agree to do interviews off the cuff yeah and then you get that i mean i guess the

48:31Richard:again you're expecting to say this but actually someone saying what they mean is quite refreshing you know without it being filtered by the sort of uh the pr class the comms association do you think do you think those comments are refreshing richard no i don't but it's really important that we know that that's what he actually thinks so i think there's a it hasn't been filtered and so fair you know that's one bit of this of course i don't agree you know you wouldn't expect me to agree with his comments although it's quite interesting i don't i'm never quite sure about the politics of the sports industry per se i think that sort of there's quite a lot a significant proportion of people that would say yeah I'm up for this good on Jim so there's a whole bit of it which is to do with dog whistling he sounded a bit like a sort of someone who was quite keen to be a reform MP at the next election you know it was that sort of it's not a dog whistle Richard if everybody else can hear it I think would you have said that if you were Ahmad Diallo sat in that dressing room or Kobe Maynou sat in that dressing room at the Crystal Palace game, you were more or less motivated to play for that minority shareholder as a result of that.

49:48And the same with the fan base around the world, by the way. And funnily enough, as Henry alludes to, people do care more about the best supported club football team in the world more passionately so than they do about whether you could turn around a failing petrochemicals plant in the Ruhr Valley. So they are different things and people care about them a lot more and they're more emotional, which is frankly why three of us are on this podcast talking to you right now, I guess. Absolutely. But the other point is just that even some respect to sort of Michael Carrick and Co, he finally had a period where United were out of the news.

50:23It's still, the season was in the balance. And then you just go...

50:27Richard:And that might be why he did it. He just likes that he's a drama queen. I'm sure that's why he, not quite at the interview, I'm sure his motivation, you would ask, what's the Ennial strategy for getting involved in sport in such a way and for doing what they're doing and i'm sure a part of it is because he's a chap who's been in the industry as we say that no one cares about and it's not particularly glamorous or interesting and he wants you know to be in front of camera he definitely does which is sort of against his when i look at i've got a photo of him in front of me on my screen and he's sort of the embodiment of a sort of you know you know northern sort of mill owning sort of you know exactly and it's so this idea that he's a sort of star fucker you know owner that it is sort of so weird but it probably is true you know he would he would hate the idea that that's why he's doing it he would put forward all sorts of sort of you know mckinsey-esque clever ruses to say why he's Sportman United and what the plan is and why he's a billionaire and all these things.

51:35Richard:But it's sort of interesting that he did behave in that way, isn't it? But I mean, what it does show is that when very wealthy owners from outside the sports sector come in and take over, that their values, their background, their culture, their background is going to be potentially in direct, and their beliefs are going to be potentially in direct conflict to the massive asset that they bought. And I think there's got to be a long, hard look at due diligence when you take on shareholders for major sporting assets. Yeah. But I think the sad point about it, it would be good if owners of sporting organisations, people who are at the top end of the sports industry did do more interviews and spoke more and we heard from them and then you have a situation like this and it just only is going to lead to one result that you will hear less from them because this will be less is about how not to do it but I think there it's a shame because there is a middle ground where he could still try and speak for what their plan for Manchester United is as an ownership group which people would really want to hear and understand.

52:50And he could still purport to be, you know, talk about his right-wing agenda if he wanted to. But I think it's just the nature in which these comments came out, the language that was used, the misrepresentation of the facts, the, you know, which again, it just creates a dangerous agenda to be perpetuated on social media and so on. And I think there is a very important but subtle difference there. And I think it should not be used as an example of that's why owners of football clubs shouldn't talk to the media, because that is a great shame. But it's also lack of preparation, isn't it? And thinking through what the impact of that is on your stakeholders.

53:32Do we think that interview makes it easier to access public money in the current context? the Labour-controlled mayoralty in Greater Manchester to get Old Trafford redeveloped. Probably not. There's a lot of stakeholders that's basically made it harder for United to do what they want to do as a club, and they'll have to repair a lot of bridges because of a three-minute interview that didn't need to happen. And on a technical level, a technical PR level, It also shows the real importance of the communications teams of the owner and their industry that they built their wealth on being absolutely joined at the hip with the communications team of the club, of the sporting asset that they've purchased.

54:23And you wonder on this occasion whether there was even remotely any connection there. well there are some very smart good people working on communications and marketing at the club still and i'm pretty sure that the first they would have seen of it would be when ed conway's interview went live so yeah which again is another thing we're all control freaks right as well that's the worst thing that could happen to us so i think there's a bridge i'm going to

54:50Richard:build a podcasting bridge here from this story about owners to neil's story we're going to finish off with a story which I'm sort of I've begrudgingly allowed on to the podcast but it's about Tottenham and it's about Tottenham's manager Neil why don't you set us up because we're going we're going down a level here and I've got you know I think it's quite interesting football community we're still in football but there's a a particular angle in right give us a give us a set up can we agree Richard that Spurs are going down a level well I I was on a train I was on a very long train to Cheltenham with Sean, yes, you know, and he says 70 % that we're going down and Opta, who I think are smarter than Sean, say 20%.

55:32Richard:So I'm with Opta, but we'll see. I think it'd be quite a laugh to go down. One of life's optimists. Very good. Give us the two penneth on Igor. Spurs are away at Athletic Madrid. So Igor Tudor has been brought in as an interim manager to the end of the season. Spurs, I'm sorry to lay this on thick, Richard. It is a helpful context. Spurs have not won since the 28th of December, domestically. Won a couple of games in the Champions League. He decides to pick Antonin Kinski, 23-year-old Czech goalkeeper who's made three appearances in the Carabao Cup in two years. Poor guy makes two goalkeeping ricks in the first 13 minutes.

56:13Mickey Mandven also falls over because he's not got the right studs on. So they're 3-0 down after 13 minutes. at which point Igor Tudor decides that he's going to substitute Antonin Kinski. And then as the young goalkeeper walks off, he blanks him. So he doesn't even shake his hand, acknowledge him or anything. And I think when you look at the reaction from the goalkeepers union of other former goalkeepers, Joe Hart said he was flabbergasted. Peter Schmeichel said to CBS that he'd killed his career. And even Igor Tudor, and bear in mind, English is not Igor Tudor's first language, and she's Croatian and he speaks very good Italian, he speaks pretty good English.

56:54But again, he came out subsequently and said that he'd killed the guy. And I think, I look back and I don't think if there's anything comparable, maybe it's Loris Karius in the 2018 Champions League final for Liverpool, when he similarly made two goalkeeping ricks and never really played for Liverpool again. He's now playing his trade in the Bundesliga B for Schalke. And I think this is more just about how you create a culture and whether you should be, we will say praise in public and bollock in private. It's more in the realm of on-pitch performance, which the people on this call sadly can't control for.

57:34But I think there is something around how if you're trying to build a team or any esprit de corps within a business, you always make sure that you support your people in public.

57:45Richard:He hasn't got long. He can't build a culture in nine games, can he, or whatever. So I think it's quite interesting his sort of whole persona is of the sort of bastard deputy head at school, you know, the one that, you know, he's the one to come in and give the bollockings to. Henry, what do you think about Igor? Let's talk about management, managers, because we used to talk about managers a lot, and now they are just sort of things to be kicked when they lose and celebrated when they win. And there's a book in this, by the way. But there is a whole thing about the devaluation of football managers, I think.

58:22Richard:And from a comms perspective, they are the ones that have to go out and have to go and talk to the press, which, again, are some of the worst bits of media of the week is the sort of post-match managers and players interviews. But what do you think about that sort of taking Igor and broadening him? I don't know about Igor I'm not a close follower of Tottenham Hotspur so um forgive me on that but I can I can it is we're talking about communications in sports and being a football manager there's a crisis every time you lose a football match isn't that yeah and you know as a football manager you're the one who has to go and face the media every time but so as a as a obviously United fan and And I think it's quite interesting to talk about it in the context of, say, Ruben Amarine, who was, he came to the club and was, you know, touted as being a fantastic communicator.

59:20And I think Ronaldo called him the poet or something. And in fact, the media loved him because he gave some tremendous soundbites and did communicate very well. But he was shocked at the extent of interviews he had to do as Manchester United manager when he came. And I suspect there's still quite a few interviews you have to give a total hotspot. and and that's quite interesting because he was he was you know he vocalized that didn't he that the the amount of interviews to do was you know the first week was more like it in the whole season overseas so yeah the communication parts of it is vital and the other point is that i think ultimately his over communication and the the points he chose to communicate about him got him a sack ultimately um whether he wanted wanted out and wanted to be written get out of that but it It wasn't actually his performances ultimately and his shocking results that got in the sack is what he said in an interview in a pro-spersed press conference.

1:00:13Richard:Do you think these jobs are impossible jobs? I know it's a cliche about the England manager, but I just think you get to the point where I don't think that... No, we're not. We're not. I mean, going back to the way Tuchel's handling things. It'd be interesting to see the pressure in America, whether he can continue to be. But I think, and again, he's been involved in a communication for Rory around what he said about Jeep bullying. But he has dealt with that well subsequently. And people sort of, you know, understood it was it was the wrong choice of words from a language point of view. But I think generally speaking, I think some of the I think some ultimately some of these managers are probably underqualified to be in the role.

1:00:54and you know and therefore they get found out that might be in one of a number of departments it might be tactically it might be in management of the players or also it might be they're not good enough at the communication aspect of the game and I think if your if your tactics and your management of the players are so good then you can probably get away with that but if it's going wrong on the pitch and then off the pitch is Ruben Amaro's case you decide to have a shot at your ownership, your owners, you know, you're not going to last much longer than the end of that press conference. And I think from a Spurs and Tudor point of view, I think the last of your issues is his communication.

1:01:34You know, I mean, he's been brought in to try and somehow get some results to keep them in the Premier League. I don't think it really matters what he says to the media at the moment. It matters whether he can somehow, you know, get the players to get some results. But, you know, but I think it does matter if you're, you know, in the role on a permanent basis or you're looking to build, you know, build some momentum for what you're trying to do, which is obviously what Tuchel would like to do at England and what Ameren supposedly was trying to do at United until he decided to sort of use the press conferences to really get himself fired.

1:02:10But should they be media trained? Well, yeah, they probably should. They should have help with it, definitely. And obviously the commons professionals who work in football clubs, that's what they do. And it's a very intense job. You're travelling with the team. You've got endless press conferences, a lot of very good people. But whether they really have the chance to sit down and help the managers as they probably could if they had the chance might not be the case. Because some managers probably, well, many of them probably just wouldn't have the time or the inclination to do that. Maybe that's not insisted upon at an executive level within clubs.

1:02:45You know, it just happens, you know, and it should be, because, again, this is your number one employee who's speaking on behalf of your entire organisation. So, you know, it should be more prioritised now. But it's very difficult when you're parachuting in a manager at the end of the season like this with seven games to go and they're trying to stay up. It isn't the priority, but it does make the whole situation even worse, doesn't it? John? Yeah, I mean, so many different aspects and threads to put on there. But I've got a question for you guys and for you, Richard, as a Spurs fan. Is Tudor being castigated more for pulling the keeper off after an unprecedented short amount of time or for the fact he didn't put his arms around him and give him a cuddle as he came off?

1:03:34My personal view is that he ain't going to win whatever he does

1:03:39Richard:unless they start winning and you know this is the thing if they unless they have a win out of the last few games and if they stay up we will be talking about him differently because it's so it's the way we talk about football managers is sort of idiotic you know it's so results led it's so much about last saturday and it just is so short term as to be you know absurd and so yeah you Neil's point about the culture question, I think I went on a Spurs podcast and it just felt like, Jesus Christ, there's no talking to some of them. They are just moaning, just moaning all the time. And they were smart people and it's really hard to have a sensible conversation about it.

1:04:23Richard:That's why I think it's probably an impossible job. I don't think that you can sustain that level of public scrutiny and social media comment and the rest of it for any period of time, really. Yeah, but I think the goes back to the first story that we were talking about is that leadership. I think there's this assumption that in leadership, you've almost got intuitive understanding of good communications. And that doesn't mean just verbal communications. It means nonverbal comms as well. And I don't, I'm not a big, you know, there's a lot of people on our big WhatsApp group who said, yeah, yeah, a leader will instinctively know what to do.

1:05:06Well, I'm not sure that's true. I think leaders can learn communications and they can get better at it. It's not always intuitive for all good leaders. And I think in Judah's case, his nonverbal communications were appalling. And I think, you know, had he thought about it, he would have realised that the optics looked terrible for what he'd done. But it would be even worse if he didn't at least put his arm around him and give him a cuddle and so on. And I think in that case, there was a leader there who clearly good communications, verbal and nonverbal, doesn't come naturally to him. And his instincts let him down very badly.

1:05:47Richard:I think it sort of, it also talks, and we'll sort of finish off in a bit, but Spurs fans have lost Daniel Levy as the thing to aim for when they want someone to blame. And Vinay is now in charge. He's getting a bit of the flack. There is the sort of ownership level never speaks to our point earlier. Joe Lewis would never, you know, hasn't said anything in donkey's years, barely goes to a game. so who do you blame and so you start to and the manager is the obvious one but people i think the i think owners have become the new managers in some ways in terms of you know people want to just go after the where's they sense where the power is and you've got direction of football you've got levels of sort of hierarchy and then you get to culture and that's where we are with spurs so i think culture becomes this thing that you try and attack without really defining what it means and what it is but we know it when we see it and we say okay well you know Brentford and Brighton Man City different types of stories but there's a culture there and Liverpool when they won the championship no one's talking about Liverpool's culture this year but when they win it's all about John Henry and the cleverness of the the group so all of that I think there's a just a desire to blame someone and the football manager is the obvious place to go Neil finish us off and we will call it a halt.

1:07:09I think it's good that we finish on culture and leadership and then come back to this point of football is the most important of all the unimportant things. Is it the most overriding important thing that you win football matches in Spurs' case that you stay in the Premier League and don't lose £250 million revenue a season or do you have a duty of care to those young men who play for you or young women who play for you as well you know the the guy's career has most likely been ruined because he has become an internet meme the other internet meme when you john said the non-verbal communication is you know what was Igor Tudor's reaction directly after that not only did he blank Kinski but then he tapped his tempo and told everybody else to calm down having clearly lost his head in the moment so there is a broader question is like you know does the business of sport and does business football just sort of sweep all before it or is there a broader purpose of these clubs as institutions to you know sit at the heart of communities and be culture setters so um there

1:08:15Richard:is a there is another podcast and also a phd to be written if you want to get cracking on that subject we won't we won't get to that at the end of this one but listen thank you so much i really enjoyed that it was exactly what i was anticipating i think we'll do this again i've got to say i sense a i like it when um you have an idea on a monday morning and it comes together by monday afternoon and you you publish on tuesdays is like a sort of how it should be and it's also i yeah i think more of this but anyway thank you very much for your time so neil john henry