Pitch and Power: How Soccer Shapes Everything

A chartered jet, $3 million in cash, and a player kissing a stack of bills on the tarmac in Brazil. Ghana’s 2014 World Cup bonus crisis wasn’t an isolated fiasco; it was a flashpoint in a larger story about how empire, economics and harmful stereotypes have shaped the arc of African soccer on the world stage. This episode traces the history of African nations at World Cups, from Zaire’s traumatic 1974 campaign und...

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s England was a country under strain, marked by industrial decline, social unrest and sharp political divides. In that climate, English soccer became a national problem rather than a point of pride. Stadiums crumbled, hooliganism spread and tragedy struck at the Bradford, Heysel, and Hillsborough stadiums. The game felt like a relic: toxic, unsafe, unloved. Then, in the summer of 1990, somethin...

In 1978, Argentina staged a World Cup beneath the shadow of a military dictatorship. Just beyond the cameras and ticker tape, the regime was disappearing thousands of dissenters, and the spectacle of the tournament was engineered to launder power: a triumphant nation on TV, a silenced nation offscreen. 

On this episode of Pitch and Power, we unpack how the 1978 World Cup became the junta’s stage. We hear from reporters, ...

In the summer of 1998, the French national team became a symbol of a diverse, confident nation—only for that dream to curdle twelve years later with the public shame of the Knysna mutiny in South Africa. Few teams have carried more complicated meaning: triumph sparked celebrations of a more expansive French identity, while failure unleashed arguments about loyalty, national character, and who gets to be called ‘French.&...

In the heat of USA ’94, Roberto Baggio carried the nation of Italy on his shoulders— and then saw it all slip away from twelve yards. This episode explores one of soccer’s most spellbinding talents and the penalty kick that turned his decorated legacy into a lingering question mark.

But this isn’t only about one miss. Host Eoin O’Callaghan and guests John Foot, Ben Lyttleton and Kevin Kilbane explore t...

It’s been forty years since a ragtag Canadian team made its unlikely World Cup debut. On this episode of Pitch and Power, host Eoin O’Callaghan and guests Jay Baruchel and 1986 team member Colin Miller unpack the public indifference and skepticism that greeted Canada’s soccer pioneers, who briefly stood on the world stage before vanishing from public memory. 

How have self-doubt, underfunding, and a series of...

In the summer of 1974, a bright-orange revolution swept the soccer pitch and the world. The first episode of Pitch and Power: How Soccer Shapes Everything tells the story of Dutch football star Johan Cruyff and the Netherlands’ Total Football movement—the dazzling skill, sex appeal and cultural swagger that defined it—and the heartbreak of a World Cup final that turned genius into myth.

More than 50 years on, we e...

Behind every World Cup is a larger story — about national identity and the historical moment in which the games unfold. Eoin O’Callaghan hosts Pitch and Power: How Soccer Shapes Everything, a Globe and Mail series that rewinds the World Cup to eight moments when the game crossed into politics, culture, and the public consciousness. These are stories about ambition, rivalry, grief, and triumph. About the highest highs an...