January 28, 2026 • 44 mins
John and Daniel are back with the second episode of The Away End. They dive into the aftermath of the AFCON Final and its repercussions for the World Cup and talk about the importance of hope, both in life and football. John also regales us with the extraordinary story of Jimmy Glass and Carlisle United.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the away, And I'mmanielle Alarconne and I'm John
green Don. If we live to be seventy eight years old,
which is the average length of an American man's life,
that means that we don't have eight World Cups left. Wow,
I think I sent you that and you expressed some dismay.
Do you want to talk through your feelings? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It did send me into a bit of a spiral,
to be fully honest with you. It reminded me a
little bit of when I was doing physical therapy for
some pain in my back, which is another evidence of
the fact that I'm getting older. And I made the
joke that I've been making for the last ten or
fifteen years when someone asks how old I am, I said,
I'm forty eight. Halfway home And the physical therapist I
(00:48):
made the joke to looked at me and said, well,
but probably more than.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
That love their bedside manner. Yeah, yeah, so that's how
it makes me feel. It makes me feel like I'm
more than halfway home. Yeah, I mean, you know, eight
World Cups is a lot is a lot of World Cups.
You know, It's not like it's one World Cup, right,
And I I, you know, I have a feeling like
(01:14):
I feel like that means eight more shots at something
truly unexpected happening, you know, eight more opportunities for you know,
the surprise winner, for a new team to emerge, for
for a you know, a generational talent to show up
and sort of transform review of the game. So I
don't know, I feel sort of weirdly optimistic, maybe because
(01:35):
it's eight and not like three, you know, yeah, but
it's just the fact that it's accountable number as a
bummer to me, Like we can count it on our hands,
you mean, yeah, And just the thought that I only
have a finite number of World Cups in general is
a little depressing. It reminds me my friend Amy Cross Rosenthal,
toward the end of her life, wrote about how many
times she had left to look at a tree, and
(01:56):
that she knew she only had so many times left
to look at a tree, and how discouraging that was
in some ways, but also how poignant. So I guess
that's what I feel. I feel the poignancy of time passing,
which is a start contrast to how I usually feel
when I think about the World Cup, which is exactly
what you described. For me, which is that I feel
like I'm twelve years old again, right right, But maybe
(02:17):
I'll feel that way when i'm old. Yeah, I think
maybe I'll just appreciate it more. And I want to
apologize to our listeners for the downbeat way of beginning
our second episode, but I do want to just mention
how excited I am to be back with you and
hopefully with a bunch of listeners too, because we are
talking about something really beautiful. We're not talking about death
and dying and our limited time here on this swirling planet.
We're talking about the World Cup, about global football, and
(02:40):
maybe we should start with Afcon, which I realized by
the time you listen to this will have been a
few days. But I also feel like it's the kind
of thing that needed a few days or you know,
ten days or so to process because of the final
that was so crazy. We should get to that in
a second, but I want to start with you, and
I know everyone knows you're a Liverpool fan, and everyone
(03:03):
knows how seriously you take it, and I wanted to
ask you, as a fan a couple of questions about
the semifinal two Liverpool legends. Sadiomane and Mosala battling it out,
not for the first time, And I'm just kind of
interested in the conflicting loyalties that you might have as
a fan. So how did you experience that?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, I mean I didn't have a preferred team to
win that game. It feels weird to root for one
Liverpool legend over another, even if Mosaala is still with
the team and Money isn't. But I did feel like
Senegal deserved to win the game. I thought they played
a much more aggressive, attacking forward style game. They brought
(03:45):
the game to Egypt. I was confused actually by Egypt's tactics.
And so I always want players to do well right,
like in my dream Afcon or my dream World Cup,
everybody has a great tournament, and it just turns out
that like somebody has a better tournament than had somebody else,
(04:07):
you know, Like I never even with players I actively dislike,
I don't root for them to have a bad tournament
because the World Cup means so much, you know, it's
so devastating to a player if they make a mistake,
as we'll talk about in the final. It's so permanent,
you know, Like I have a few regrets in my
(04:27):
life that there's just no way to walk back. And
that's what it is to miss a penalty in a
World Cup final or in an Afcon final. That's what
it is to make a mistake that leads to a goal.
I think about when I was the ultra for our
high school soccer team. There was a player he'll remain nameless,
because I think he probably still thinks about it, who
(04:48):
lost in the state tournament, like we lost in the
state tournament, because he basically got he was basically gassed.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
An extra time.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I don't know if you even remember this, Daniel, but
you know a player ran past him and he couldn't
do anything about it and didn't take him down. And
that player went and scored a goal, and that was
the goal that sent Indian Springs home from the tournament.
And if I were him, I would still think about that.
And that was just high school soccer.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Wow, I was I was probably playing that game, and
I don't remember unless that was me, in which case
it was, I don't think about it anymore. What I
remember was from that I've completely forgotten. I didn't play
in the final because I got injured in the semifinal.
Oh really, yeah, yeah, I got taken out, and I
was like, it was almost immediately after I'd scored a goal,
(05:34):
which was like one of the I was at midfield.
I rarely ever scored, but I do remember Alan O'Neill
put me through and I scored a one touch, great goal,
great player, and then my defender like cleaned me out
the next play and I woke up the next morning
I couldn't walk. Yeah, So anyway, but I guess I
do understand that feeling. I'm sort of like, oh, I
(05:57):
do sometimes weirdly because I'm forty eight years old. Who cares.
Wish I'd played that game? You know, Yeah, I wish
he'd played it too. But if I played the final,
you know, like I might have like permanently damaged my
ability to run, you know something like you know, uh,
And so I'm kind of glad that the doctor that
I saw that morning was like, absolutely not, you can't play. Yeah,
(06:17):
in the scheme of things, it's more important. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
But to take it back to AFCON, I mean, I
root for the same thing. I root for everybody to
have a good game, and I root for nobody to
get hurt. And I was very impressed with Saudiomane. I
mean he is an elderly gentleman.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Let's be honest. I mean he is. He plays in
Saudi Arabia. He hasn't lost a step, he's lost four
or five steps. And he's an attacking player who you know,
was never that dependent upon pace, but like needs his
pace to really perform at the highest level, and yet
still basically carried that team to an African Cup of
(06:54):
Nations trophy. I have many questions with that one. When
when it was that I'm Verrid of Sala and Mane
and Bobby Formino. Am I correct saying that your favorite
was Bobby Formino.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
By a country mile. Yeah, I'm a big Bobby Formino
fan because I always felt I mean, he wasn't underappreciated
by Liverpool fans, but I feel like he was underappreciated
in world football because he didn't score that many goals,
but what he did was much more interesting. Yeah, you know,
he opened up space. He had that genius for for
finding players in space, for finding space where it seemed tight,
(07:28):
and I've just always loved him.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I also felt like he was the kind of the
most zen of the two and the one who balanced
them to keep them from from fighting.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, they would often argue, and he was the I
remember once they had a fight. And then in the
in the tunnel on the way home from the game,
there was a there was a meme of Bobby for
Meino smiling nervously, like looking at the camera like what
are you going to do about these guys?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Totally, So that was one thing. And then and then
the other thing I wanted to ask you was about
the final because money played a huge role in avoiding
what would have been a complete embarrassment for African football
by bringing the Senegalese team back onto the pitch. Did
he ever show that kind of maturity at Liverpool? Like
(08:19):
would you have guessed that it would have been him
to show that kind of leadership and maturity in that moment?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I would not necessarily have guessed it would have been him.
I will say, I think the context here is really important.
So the Senegalese team felt very hard done by throughout
that game and then the lead up to that game,
in terms of ticket allocations, in terms of security, in
terms of all kinds of things. And then during the
(08:44):
game there was towel gate. I don't know how closely
you followed towel gate. Oh yes, yeah, the goalkeeper's towel
was stolen by initially by the captain of Morocco, the
Senegalese goalkeeper's towel stolen, and then by the ball boys.
The ball boys kept stealing the towel until eventually a
(09:05):
substitute was sent just to watch over the towel. A
Senegalese substitute was sent just to watch over the towel,
and I think by the time the actual penalty was
called in the ninety eighth minute, So it's the ninety
eighth minute, there is a very normal amount of contact
on a Moroccan cornerkick, and the video assistant referee calls
(09:29):
the referee over and says it's this a penalty, and
the referee decides it is a penalty against Senegal for
Morocco in the ninety eighth minute on what was a
very I mean, it was not a foul at least
if it was a foul, then there would have been
thirty penalties that game, and so I think the Senegalese
team felt very hard done by. But Moni was absolutely
(09:53):
right that the response to a poor refereeing decision is
not to remove yourself from the playing field and refuse
to finish the game. The response is and has to be, well,
you know, that's the nature of the game. We play
like we all want football to be totally fair, but
it isn't fair, right, Like, That's part of what we
(10:15):
love about the game is that it is like life.
Sometimes it doesn't break your way and for reasons that
aren't good reasons. And so I thought he was he
really was the hero of that moment to call the
players back and say over the coach's head basically say no,
we're going to finish this game. They're going to take
this penalty and we're going to see how it goes.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah. When I was a kid, my dad would, you know,
whenever I would say something isn't fair, he would he
would say, I see, he said football, that's soccer, which
I always loved because it's basically saying that's life, except
you replace life with football, which is how many people
actually exist in terms of their you know, emotional hierarchy
of of of importance. And I think it is a
(11:01):
lesson and I think it's like one of the reasons
we love sport, I think is because there are rules
and life there aren't you know, And the game lasts
this long and you can't use your hands and off sides,
which producer Sean explained to us in great detail last episode.
And all those things are sort of like, you know,
(11:21):
you hold onto them tight and they feel like certainties
that you can you could build an understanding of events around.
But the truth is that there are bad referees, there
are bad pitches, There are difficult context in which to
play where things feel unfair. There are you know, insane
ball boys who go around stealing towels, and all kinds
of other things that give texture to our idea that
(11:42):
sport is this kind of level playing field, because it
isn't obviously. And yeah, I think Mani did a great
service not just to his team but to Afkhan and
African football and too world football, because I think it
would have been just a huge embarrassment if the team
had just walked off. To have a final abandoned is terrible, Yes.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It would have been terrible, but not only that. Of course,
the game is eventually restarted and then the penalty is
taken and it is a pananka do.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
You do you want to do this? Now? Should we wait?
Let's do it now. Let's do it now, Sean, do
you want to come on? Hey Sean?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
What's up?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Guys? How's it going? Man? We had a question for you. Okay,
what is a pananka?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I have never heard that term before in my life.
I thought it was the name of a player.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So it is a player, that is that's great, that's great,
you nailed it. Yeah, but okay, yes and no, Yes
and no, it's the name of a player. I mean,
strictly speaking, you are not incorrect. All right, how about that?
All right, that's a good story. Should I explain what
pananca means in this context? Yeah, Panenka is a is
(12:49):
a specifically is yes, named after a player, but it's
also a type of penalty kick, and it was pioneered
in nineteen seventy six by a fella named Pananka who
in the European Final, in the most important game of
his career, ran up to take the penalty kick, which
is a spot kick from like twelve yards away. Ran
(13:13):
up to take the penalty kick, and instead of kicking
it hard into a corner like you always do, he
kicked it very softly and slowly in a high arc
straight down the middle. And he did this because he
knew the goalkeeper would dive to the left or the
right and then the ball would just sort of trickle
into the net, thereby humiliating the goalkeeper, winning the European Cup,
(13:35):
becoming the hero, and having the penanka forever after named
for you.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Just one problem. If you try a penanka and it
doesn't work, it's the most humiliating thing in football, because
the goalie stands still and the ball essentially falls kindly
into his arms, which is what happened in this game.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
That's exactly what happens. Exactly what happened, and it was humiliating.
I don't think I would ever try panenka unless I was, like,
you know, in the rec room with a bunch of children,
like playing around. This whole thing reminded me actually of
a Chilean player, Alexis Sanchez, who did a panenka in
a Copamerica game penalty kicks against Argentina. It takes an
(14:15):
incredible amount of self confidence, and one of the things
that I find interesting about elite athletes is how you know,
it's almost a sense of delusion. You have to have
a level of self belief that borders on delusion to
play at that level anyway, and then to attempt something
like that, you know, like in many of the soccer
(14:36):
chats I meant, everyone was saying, you know, he's crazy,
he's crazy. He's crazy. Yes he is. That's a crazy
mistake to make. But I feel like it's something that
you do when you have such formidable self belief. And
he attempted something that if it had worked, he would
be a legend. And it didn't work, and he looks
like an.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Ass sean before we let you go? Is there any
field in which you have that level of confidence to
do a panenka? Yeah, like or or a pananka style
thing like? I feel like I don't have that level
of confidence in young adult fiction writing. And I am
a pretty good well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I do my best. I can't even say that I'm
a good writer. I stop myself in the middle of
the sentence.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Yeah, does does cooking count cooking? Cooking?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
What would a panenka in cooking be? What would that
even be? Oh? When you're just like a bold cook
who needs no recipe.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Right, like, you know exactly what you're doing. You've made
this dish a thousand times.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
No, but it's more than that because it's like everyone's
expecting bay a ya and you make mashed potatoes instead
and it turns out to be delicious. Like that's what
it is, because it's not that you can do something
incredible without a recipe, it's that you make something simple
so good that it's shocking and stuns the audience. Because
the essential element of the panica is the misdirect. It's
(15:53):
like throwing the change up instead of the fastball, you know,
So it wouldn't just be cooking without a recipe. Would
be someone expecting calamari and you give French fries but
they're incredible. Yeah, I think Sean could do that. I could.
I can't wait to come to you.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Before I hop I do have one quick question, like,
is there a precedent to what happened in this game
where in a final the team stages a protest or
a walk off? Because I've never heard of that happening
before in any sport, but especially football.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I have also never heard of it happening. And while
it was happening, I felt sick to my stomach because
I was like, this just confirms what everybody says about football, right,
Like this confirms what everybody says about African and North
American football especially, but about you know, FIFA in general,
that it's corrupt to the core and that there's no
(16:47):
way to respond to the corruption except not playing the game.
And whether or not that's true, I think that's certainly
how the Senegalese team felt, and listen, I don't think
there was anything corrupt in the referees decision. I think
it was just a bad decision, and referees make bad
decisions all the time because they're human beings.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Can I offer a contrary take? Yeah, because I watched
the game, and the more I watched the replays, I
was like, that's a penalty. Wow, that wasn't a It
wasn't a bad call. It was a defender had his
arms on Brian Diaz's neck right in the ninety eight
minute of an Afcon final as the corn cakes coming in.
(17:26):
He pulls them down. Brian Diaz makes a meal of it, obviously,
but that's not a terrible call. That's that you've seen them,
as they say, you've seen them given so I thought
that the response was terrible and it was embarrassing, but
it's also also placing it in context. You know, the
Copaminica final in Miami last summer was also chaotic. There
(17:49):
was a couple of years ago in Peru the two
rivals improving soccer against A Lima and when you were
decided that port this were playing basically what amounted to
the final. They were playing the final game at Alansas
Stadium in Matute in Lima. And as soon as the
game ended and when we started hood one and it
was going to celebrate their championship on their rivals field,
(18:11):
Alansa just turned off the lights, which was so that's class.
That's great. Yeah, I'm all for that. That's that's it was.
It was a huge scandal, but and also like I'm
an Aliansa fan, and pretty embarrassing but also kind of hilarious.
And I do feel like, you know, everyone was saying like, oh,
(18:31):
you hate to see it and wringing their hands, but
you know, like it was pretty riveting spectacle. You can't
say it was uninteresting, even if it was embarrassing. Uh,
you know, you know you don't want your kids to
follow this kind of example. I will say the only
time that I've seen or I can imagine people storming
off in the final would be in high school sports,
(18:52):
you know, like you just don't see it at this
level because you know, I mean there's millions of people watching,
you know, and it's just and they're grown ups. They're
supposed to be grown ups. I mean, I still think
of Brandy as his twenty six and I still think
of him as a kid. You know. I felt bad.
I felt so bad for him. He's just shattered. He
could tell he was just a mess. He's not going
(19:13):
to recover from that for years years of therapy, which
he probably won't get. You know. My first thought was,
like his mental health. Honestly, Yeah, no, I agree. All right,
let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
about politics. Great.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Thanks John, guys, welcome back to the Away End on
Danielle Alergonne.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
John. I don't want to do this, but we have to.
I have to talk abut a little bit about politics.
Last week, President Trump abruptly announced that he was canceling
visas indefinitely from seventy five countries. I want to list
off some of his countries, just the ones that are
in the World Cup or in the playoffs of the
World Cup. Okay, Verdie Columbia, Ivory Coast DRC. This Democratic Republic, Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kosovo, Morocco, Nigeria,
(20:09):
Sene golsbeck Say and Uruguay. You may have noticed that
all four Afcon semifinalists are on this list. You may
have noticed how many of these countries are important soccer nations.
I think you can also notice which countries aren't on
the list. I think that's also interesting. But anyway, it's
really troubling, and there's talk that there might be an
(20:29):
exemption for the World Cup. I know the mayor of
New York's Armamdani has been talking about he's going to
call Trump and try to get this sorted since the
finals being played in just outside New York at MetLife
Stadium in Jersey. What was your reaction when you saw
this list?
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Well, I have to say that I wasn't tremendously surprised
because escalation has been the name of the game for
the administration throughout the first year, and I do a
lot of work as you know, in Sierra Leone, which
has been on the visa ban list almost from the
beginning of the administration. It was one of the first
countries where visas were suspended indefinitely, and that means that
(21:06):
essentially no one from Sierra Leone, with very few exceptions,
can visit the United States, and that you know, if
for instance, Sierra Leone had qualified for the World Cup,
which unfortunately they didn't, but if they had, that means
that they would have no fans from Sierra Leone. Potentially,
you know, Sierra Leonian Americans could still visit the tournament
(21:30):
and everything, but it's just to me, yet another punitive
move by the administration, and it has big impacts for
the World Cup. I don't know what the World Cup
is going to look like. If there will be no
Uzbek people at the Uzbekistan Games, you know, or at
(21:51):
least like people who only have an Uzbek passport, It's
going to be a very weird World Cup as it is.
You know, the argument was always, oh, the World Cup
is corrupt because it's here. The World Cup is corrupt
because it's there. So I'm really disappointed by this decision.
I mean, obviously, the way it impacts football is a
footnote in the story. I wonder how you're feeling about it.
(22:13):
It's hard to separate. You're right, how it affects the
World Cup is a footnote, is very much of a
piece with everything else the Trump administration is doing with
regards to immigration and its violent implementation of immigration enforcement
tactics across American cities. It's hugely disappointing. I think it's
something that I've been keeping my eye on for you know,
since the Trump administration began. The idea of the three countries,
(22:38):
you know, Canada, United States, and Mexico coming together to
host a World Cup was built on this notion of
integration and friendliness between these the three countries, the three
large countries that share in North America that no longer exists.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
You know. The Trump administration has blown that up, you know,
threatening to go into Mexico, go to attack the cartels,
something the Mexican government obviously is like, look, you know,
you can't just bomb us across the border. He started off,
you know, kind of taunting Canada with this fifty first
state stuff. So you know this that's not exactly the
(23:16):
kind of I imagine, It's not the political environment in which
FIFA wanted to stage it's showpiece event. Now, I wonder
because like, you know, these these kinds of ammoral apart
chicks of big giant organizations like FIFA fascinate me. Like,
I wonder what Gianni Infantino was thinking, you know that
(23:39):
the FIFA Peace Prize was going to buy him, you
know what kind of you know, He's like, okay, good,
we make up this prize, we give it to Trump.
Then he won't mess with us on visas. He'll stop
saying that he's going to take games away from you know,
cities and blue states, and we can finally just go
on to our business of making money off of rabid
soccer fans from all over the world. Now they seem
(24:02):
to speak the same language, Inventino and Trump. So it
surprises me that this wasn't something that Inventino was able
to head off at the past, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, I think he's used to dealing with a different
kind of strong man. I think he's used to dealing
with different sorts of totalitarian leaders. And part of this
is because Trump isn't an elected dictator, despite whatever ambitions
people around him may have, and so, you know, instituting
(24:32):
some of these changes is difficult. The places where Trump
does have a lot of power also places where he
tends to exercise a lot of power In immigration in
you know, handing out visas, etc. I am reminded that
football has always been political, you know. And I think
it was before the nineteen thirty World Cup that somebody
(24:53):
said to the Uruguay national team, you are the motherland.
Like for those weeks, you are the motherland. And it's
never not political. It's just that it would have been,
as you say, nice to have a World Cup hosted
by three countries that are getting along and coming closer
(25:13):
together over time, deepening their relationship through the magic of sport.
That was the narrative, and it's very clear that's not
going to be what happens. And what I'm hearing from
a lot of my friends in Europe in Africa is
that they don't want to come to the World Cup,
even if they have the means to do so. They're
nervous about coming to the United States. They're nervous about
(25:34):
having their social media checked, They're worried about you all
kinds of not just the absurd cost of going to
the World Cup in twenty twenty six, but also the
risks of going to the World Cup, which feel very
palpable to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Absolutely absolutely, I mean, I'm an American citizen, and I'm
nervous about going back to the United States right now.
I'm nervous that I'll be outside somewhere speaking Spanish to
my wife and someone will come try to detain me,
you know. So yeah, I completely understand that, and that's
part of why I'm tentatively but probably going to spend
(26:09):
the World Cup here in Columbia. Parenthetically, I should say
that my son made his first bracket and I don't
know if I sent this to you, John, but somehow
he ended up with a final that was Columbia versus
the United States. Via hell of a moment, it sure
would be. I think that would be remarkable. You know,
(26:33):
if you put a dollar on that, he's going to
get a lot of money back for the college fund.
So yeah, I think soccer's always been political and also
always geopolitical, and also the space in which scores get
settled between nations, right just in ways that are controversial,
in ways that are riveting to watch. I mean, I
grew up and I should mention I think I've said
(26:55):
ten times now in two episodes that I'm Provian, but
I remember growing up and hearing about the glory days
of proving soccer, which essentially came to an end, at
least in the telling that I was given as a
boy in the nineteen seventy eight World Cup when Argentina
had to win a game by six goals against Peru,
and apparently it was a range And this is the
story that I've heard, and I believe it because it
(27:16):
was told to me by my father. And you know,
why wouldn't I Kissinger arranged for Peru to lose that
game and they did exactly six nothing and Argentina won,
moved onto the knockout phase and ended up winning the
World Cup. And they say that winning that World Cup
sort of gave the kind of dictatorship that was running
(27:36):
the military junta I was running Argentina at the time,
an extra few years of oxygen to survive because of
just changed the national mood. And winning a World Cup
can do that. I wouldn't know, not, nor would I,
So yeah, I wonder, I wonder. You know, it's always
been this way. It's a way for nations to settle scores.
(27:57):
You know, there's a famous Argentina England game and that
he's six post Falkland or there was an incident when
the Swiss team played Serbia in the last World Cup.
Do you remember, Oh yeah, it wasn't Grant Shackay, it
was the other guy, Jared and Shakiri. Yes, yes, short
little bulldog of a man, incredibly talented technical player. Yeah,
but one of those teas play's best games with his
(28:20):
national team, scores and then does the Albanian symbol and
gets fined for it, you know, because he's of Albanian descent.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Or I think about the games between the US and
Iran and the World Cup, or the games between France
and Senegal, France and Algeria. These are charged, yeah, geopolitical relationships,
and football is one of the ways that we express
power among nations. It's one of the ways that nations
become nations, right. I mean, part of being a nation
(28:52):
is convincing yourself that you're a nation, but part of
being a nation is convincing other people that you're a
nation and having a football federation and being able to
feel the team that can compete in FIFA sanctioned competitions
as part of what being a country is.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yea. And so I think that there's no separating this
stuff out, which means there is no leaving politics out
of football that simply doesn't exist. It's like leaving money
out of football. It's like it's already there. Yeah, I
wouldn't mention one thing because you said something really interesting, John,
This idea of like convincing yourself that you are a nation,
(29:28):
I think it's particularly true. I think this is one
of the things that's going to make a World Cup
in the United States is very interesting. Despite attempts to
change this, the United States is a country of immigrants,
and I think as an immigrant, I can say that
latching on to the Peruvian national team was always a
way of asserting my identity and understanding where I fit.
You know, and I've written about this before, but there
(29:49):
are times when you're growing up in the United States
where you don't feel like you fit in anywhere, and
then you want to be closer to the country of
your birth or the country of your parents' birth, but
you don't quite know. You don't understand the politics, maybe
you don't speak the language perfectly, and so you're sort
of wandering through adolescence in this way where you're trying
(30:10):
to figure out where you where you fit in, and
who you are. But for the ninety minutes in which
you can you know, stand in the stadium cheering, singing
the songs, or watching the TV and you know, wearing
the jersey. It's very simple. It's very simple, and it
feels really good, you know. Unfortunately it also feels really bad,
(30:33):
especially if you're proving, because mostly we lose. However, so
much suffering. Yeah, but even that suffering is like this this. Uh,
you know, you're joining a community of sufferers and of
people who suffer along with you. You always have when
you get into a taxi and lima something to talk
about with the driver or with you know, with whoever
(30:55):
you might come across, and there is this kind of
shared sense that in other situations you might not have.
And I think that's something that's super interesting to me,
and I can speak from personal experience. It has been
fundamental to sort of shaping who I am or who
have become. Reminds me of a line from Ulysses where
Bloom has asked what a nation is, and Bloom says
a nation is the same people in the same place,
(31:15):
and then he pauses and says, there are also other places. Yeah, exactly.
Come for the discussion on world football, Stay for the
Ulysses quotes. Should we take a quick break and come back,
let's do it.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I want to tell you a story, Daniel, about club football,
about a little team that could called Carlisle United. So
Carlisle United have a long proud history, not currently, but
at the time had a long proud history of being
in the Football League, which is the top four divisions
of English soccer. Okay, so in English football, the top
(32:06):
four divisions are considered full time professional divisions, and then
below that you up what's called non league football, which
is ostensibly amateur, although some of the teams are professional,
and Carlile United had been continually in the Football League
for I believe over one hundred years by nineteen ninety nine,
when they were one game away from being relegated out
(32:27):
of being a full time professional team. Of course, the
other thing that being a full time professional team in
England means for you is that you're part of the
video game FIFA or now EAFC, and so if you're
not in the top four divisions, then you're not part
of that video game, which does hurt your revenue a
lot and your reputation, and generally it just means that
people can't play as you you know, so like people
can't live the dream of taking Carlile United all the
way to the Champions League. So Carlile United has this long,
(32:51):
proud history of being a professional team in England. It's
the only team in their town and they're one game
away from being relegated out and they have a brand
new goalkeeper who's only played two games for them. He's
on loan from Swindon Town because their regular goalkeeper got hurt.
His name is Jimmy Glass. Today Jimmy Glass sells insurance.
(33:11):
It's not like you make a lot of money being
a fourth tier English goalkeeper, but that that's the story.
This is the story, this is the setup.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
The game is incredibly intense because when your whole, the
whole future of your football club is riding on one game,
it also feels like on some level, the whole future
of your community is riding on one game, right. I mean,
there are so many little towns in England that have
these teams in the third or fourth division and it's
a huge part of the identity of the town that
(33:43):
they have a team in England's professional leagues. A lot
of these towns, you know, it's common to say these
days that outside of London, England is poorer than Mississippi.
And it's true. I mean a lot of these towns
are part on their luck and have been through a lot,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
And so Jimmy Glass is playing this game for Carlile United.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
The game ends one to one. Okay, are you still there, Daniel, Yeah, yeah,
I'm riveted. I can't wait to see what happens to Jimmy.
All Right, they're playing Plymouth Argyle. It's one to one.
They have to win. There are only ten seconds left
in the game. Carlyle United win a corner kick. Okay,
So Jimmy Glass looks over to the coach and the
(34:26):
coaches like, just go up there, Just go up there.
You see this all the time in football, in the
last second in a must win match, where it doesn't
matter if you lose the goalkeeper or how many goals
you lose, buy or whatever, the goalkeeper will come up.
It never works, like it works one time out of
ten thousand. Maybe it certainly never works in like fourth
(34:47):
tier English football, where frankly the quality of the goalkeepers
is not great. So Jimmy Glass comes up, Carlile United
kick the corner kick. It sort of bounces around in
the box for a second and then the ball falls
at the half volley to Jimmy Glass, a man not
known for his footwork. He is a professional goalkeeper, and
(35:10):
he kicks the ball straight into the back of the
Plymouth Argyle net and instantly becomes a hero in Carlisle
United lore, such that he will never have to buy
a drink again. He will never He saved this football
club after three games with them with a kick with
a goal, the one thing the goalkeepers aren't supposed to do.
(35:33):
And I just I love this story because it reminds
me that at any moment, all things are possible, Like
in that moment with ten seconds left, like when there
was no hope, there was still hope, and that hope
isn't always rewarded, but hope is always justified. Hope is
always the correct response to the moment. The reason Saudiomane
was right to tell the players let's get back on
(35:55):
the pitch wasn't just because it was the right thing
to do and the sportsman like thing to do. It
was also because there was still hope. And then in fact,
in that case, the hope was rewarded in Senegal went
on to win the African Cup of Nations. In this case,
the hope was rewarded and Jimmy Glass went on to
become a hero for Carlisle United. And this is what
I love about football in the end, is that it
(36:17):
reminds me over and over again that hope is correct.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I love that. I love that I have a counterpoint though,
all right, give it to me, give me the proving
counterpoint where hope is never just no, no, no no.
I was just thinking about relegation, which I should say.
You know, the United States, we don't have relegation right
in our professional leagues, and I think we should. Oh yeah,
(36:43):
I think it adds another level of intrigue that it's
just so exciting. But so there's a story that I
reported many years ago. River Plate, one of the biggest
clubs in South America, team from Buenos Aires, had to
play you know, they had a few miserable years and
they were going to be relegated. The Argentine legue actually
changed the rules to make it harder for him be relegated,
(37:05):
but they still ended up being in a playoff where
they had to be relegated. They had to sort of
win to be to avoid relegation, and they went down
and they were they were losing, and something happened that
was really extraordinary, which was that the announcer for the team,
a guy named that Tilio Costa Febre on national radio
Radiomitre in Buenos Aires, was calling the game. And then
(37:26):
when it was clear that Riverplay was going to lose,
the Riverplay was going to be relegated, something which had
never happened. Imagine the New York Yankees having to play
in a you know, in a in a in a
farm league or minor league baseball or something. Stopped narrating
the game and started basically ranting. And we interviewed him
about it later because it was such a remarkable rant.
(37:48):
He basically started talking about the directors of the club,
how they'd screwed everyone over. He kept calling them ratstas wow,
and he's like, no, you know, like ker seeing on
national radio for the last ten twelve minutes of the game,
it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful piece of found
poetry and an expression of rage, of love for the club,
(38:13):
of the desire to succeed, the club succeed, and of
this enchantment. We talked to him about it later and
he said that he was only saying what he imagined
every fan wanted to say, but they didn't have the
mic and he did, and so there was no Jimmy
Glass to save them. Then river Plate got back up
to first division. Actually interesting side note. You remember Theresa Gez,
(38:37):
the French player. Yeah, of course he had Argentine roots.
He actually went back to play with river Plate to
help them come back up, which is a really remarkable
coda to his career. Anyway, they made it back up.
You can still hear coast Or on the radio, I
believe in Argentina calling riverplayed games. But he says something
(38:58):
that stuck with me, which I think historians would quibble with.
But just so you understand how important club soccer is,
or you know, can be, not just an Artina, but
all over the world. He said. He told us in
the interview that the relegation of river Plate to the
second division was one of the fifteen most important events
in Argentine history. And he said it like stone cold straight,
(39:26):
like he wasn't There's no irony in his voice. He
wasn't kidding. He meant it, and I kind of love
him for that, you know, I love him for that.
So anyway, that's my counterpoint, No Jimmy Glass to save
River Plate at that time.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
It's true, it's not always. It's that's the thing about hope, right,
is that usually it doesn't work out, and in fact,
like somebody has to be relegated, right, Carlisle United's amazing
day with somebody else's disastrous day. Yeah, And that reminds
you that whether or not something is good news always
depends on where you're situated. But yeah, I like the
(39:59):
story be kaind is. For Carlo United fans, it was
as close to a miracle as they're ever likely to
see in their lives.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah. No, it's beautiful. It's beautiful those moments of sport.
And it's also exciting to think what those moments might
be that we're going to see this summer. That's the world. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I hope we see some I hope we see some
last minute goals. I hope we see Landon Donovan breaking away,
scoring on the rebound. I mean that this is good.
That's as good as I've ever felt as as an America.
Now I have to tell you that I feel very
distant from that feeling at the moment.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
You know. My favorite, both my favorite and the most
heartbreaking was the Belgium goal against Japan. Japan they were drawing,
they were going to go to extra time, and Japan
had a corner kick, and the reasonable sensible thing to do,
taking into account the state of play in the game
(41:00):
in the ninety something minute of extra time, was to
kick it short and just run out the clock and
just sort of live to fight another day and go
to extra time. Instead, they whipped it into the center
of the park and center of the of the goal.
The Belgian goalkeeper caught it and there was a fast
break on and uh it ended up with the with
(41:22):
Lukaku scoring and that was it and Japan was knocked out.
And I always admired the bravery of the Japanese players, like, okay, sure,
let's just you know, put this ball in the center,
and these giant Belgian defenders were definitely going to score
aheader here and win and then getting punished for that. Hope.
So I guess I've I've kind of given two examples
(41:43):
of the opposite of hope. But I believe, and I
love the phrase, and I want to just sort of
like rescue that phrase from my own grim defeatism, that
hope is is what was it again? Hope is always justify.
Hope is always justified, even if it's not always rewarded exactly.
That's nice. That's nice. We should leave our listeners with
(42:03):
that before I say something else depressing, or if you
have another quote from Ulysses, we can end there.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
No, I think I think I'll save my other Ulysses
quotes for future episodes. We should say before we go,
Daniel and I have decided upon stakes for our bet,
and Sean, you might want to come back on because
this involves you. We are laying out who we think
will win the tournament, who we think the semi finalists
will be, who we think the Golden Boot winner will be,
(42:34):
et cetera. And then all of that will be scored
one point per correct answer, and the loser has to
put the other person's name in their next book, unless
Sean wins, in which case both Daniel and I have
to put Shawn's name in our next book.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Can I tell you that I think Sean is the
favorite here? Sean is absolutely the favorite, Because you know,
you can sometimes be hampered by knowledge Sean, you can
be you know, you know too much. Yeah, be like
Daniel's son who thinks that the final is going to
between Columbia and the US. You know what, He's going
to prove us all. We're gonna look like crazy ones. Sean,
what do you think.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
I should warn you guys that I'm writing some momentum
right now of just winning my work fantasy football league.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Oh wow, congratulations? Would you win? Thank you? Novel in
your name.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
A financial amount that I won't disclose here. But yeah,
I hadn't even thought that I will be doing a
bracket as well, But now I'm very excited to work
on my bracket.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Sounds good. Sounds good. I'm excited too.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
I'm excited to have to find a way to put
Shawn's name in my next book. There are a lot
of characters. Usually I write books with like four characters.
This book has a lot of named characters, so I
feel like I could do it. I could make you
like the head of the studio, Sean. It's a Hollywood novel,
so I could make you like the head of the
(43:57):
movie studio.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
I love it. I love it. That's perfect. I'm glad
you're writing another novel. John. I thought last time we
spoke you were going to become a full time tuberculosis reporter.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Well, I definitely am still a full time tuberculosis guy.
It's just that now I write novels for fun.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Good, good for you. That's the only reason to write novels.
I will say that we're going to work on the
details of this. There will be a bracket, there's we
also have had it. I created two categories which are
very subjective, Biggest Flop and Biggest Surprise, which I think
might be too subjective to include, but I want to
keep them anyway, because you know, we can always go
to Var on that one. Yeah, if we have to
(44:31):
go to Var, we'll go to Kurt. Yeah sounds good. Yeah,
all right, Well that's it. Thanks Sean for joining us.
Thanks also to our producer Kurt Garren. Thanks to everyone
at iHeart John, Thank you so much. Been fun to
see you next episode. Thanks for listening. Everybody, Take care,
Welcome to the away, And I'mmanielle Alarconne and I'm John
green Don. If we live to be seventy eight years old,
which is the average length of an American man's life,
that means that we don't have eight World Cups left. Wow,
I think I sent you that and you expressed some dismay.
Do you want to talk through your feelings? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It did send me into a bit of a spiral,
to be fully honest with you. It reminded me a
little bit of when I was doing physical therapy for
some pain in my back, which is another evidence of
the fact that I'm getting older. And I made the
joke that I've been making for the last ten or
fifteen years when someone asks how old I am, I said,
I'm forty eight. Halfway home And the physical therapist I
(00:48):
made the joke to looked at me and said, well,
but probably more than.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
That love their bedside manner. Yeah, yeah, so that's how
it makes me feel. It makes me feel like I'm
more than halfway home. Yeah, I mean, you know, eight
World Cups is a lot is a lot of World Cups.
You know, It's not like it's one World Cup, right,
And I I, you know, I have a feeling like
(01:14):
I feel like that means eight more shots at something
truly unexpected happening, you know, eight more opportunities for you know,
the surprise winner, for a new team to emerge, for
for a you know, a generational talent to show up
and sort of transform review of the game. So I
don't know, I feel sort of weirdly optimistic, maybe because
(01:35):
it's eight and not like three, you know, yeah, but
it's just the fact that it's accountable number as a
bummer to me, Like we can count it on our hands,
you mean, yeah, And just the thought that I only
have a finite number of World Cups in general is
a little depressing. It reminds me my friend Amy Cross Rosenthal,
toward the end of her life, wrote about how many
times she had left to look at a tree, and
(01:56):
that she knew she only had so many times left
to look at a tree, and how discouraging that was
in some ways, but also how poignant. So I guess
that's what I feel. I feel the poignancy of time passing,
which is a start contrast to how I usually feel
when I think about the World Cup, which is exactly
what you described. For me, which is that I feel
like I'm twelve years old again, right right, But maybe
(02:17):
I'll feel that way when i'm old. Yeah, I think
maybe I'll just appreciate it more. And I want to
apologize to our listeners for the downbeat way of beginning
our second episode, but I do want to just mention
how excited I am to be back with you and
hopefully with a bunch of listeners too, because we are
talking about something really beautiful. We're not talking about death
and dying and our limited time here on this swirling planet.
We're talking about the World Cup, about global football, and
(02:40):
maybe we should start with Afcon, which I realized by
the time you listen to this will have been a
few days. But I also feel like it's the kind
of thing that needed a few days or you know,
ten days or so to process because of the final
that was so crazy. We should get to that in
a second, but I want to start with you, and
I know everyone knows you're a Liverpool fan, and everyone
(03:03):
knows how seriously you take it, and I wanted to
ask you, as a fan a couple of questions about
the semifinal two Liverpool legends. Sadiomane and Mosala battling it out,
not for the first time, And I'm just kind of
interested in the conflicting loyalties that you might have as
a fan. So how did you experience that?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, I mean I didn't have a preferred team to
win that game. It feels weird to root for one
Liverpool legend over another, even if Mosaala is still with
the team and Money isn't. But I did feel like
Senegal deserved to win the game. I thought they played
a much more aggressive, attacking forward style game. They brought
(03:45):
the game to Egypt. I was confused actually by Egypt's tactics.
And so I always want players to do well right,
like in my dream Afcon or my dream World Cup,
everybody has a great tournament, and it just turns out
that like somebody has a better tournament than had somebody else,
(04:07):
you know, Like I never even with players I actively dislike,
I don't root for them to have a bad tournament
because the World Cup means so much, you know, it's
so devastating to a player if they make a mistake,
as we'll talk about in the final. It's so permanent,
you know, Like I have a few regrets in my
(04:27):
life that there's just no way to walk back. And
that's what it is to miss a penalty in a
World Cup final or in an Afcon final. That's what
it is to make a mistake that leads to a goal.
I think about when I was the ultra for our
high school soccer team. There was a player he'll remain nameless,
because I think he probably still thinks about it, who
(04:48):
lost in the state tournament, like we lost in the
state tournament, because he basically got he was basically gassed.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
An extra time.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I don't know if you even remember this, Daniel, but
you know a player ran past him and he couldn't
do anything about it and didn't take him down. And
that player went and scored a goal, and that was
the goal that sent Indian Springs home from the tournament.
And if I were him, I would still think about that.
And that was just high school soccer.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Wow, I was I was probably playing that game, and
I don't remember unless that was me, in which case
it was, I don't think about it anymore. What I
remember was from that I've completely forgotten. I didn't play
in the final because I got injured in the semifinal.
Oh really, yeah, yeah, I got taken out, and I
was like, it was almost immediately after I'd scored a goal,
(05:34):
which was like one of the I was at midfield.
I rarely ever scored, but I do remember Alan O'Neill
put me through and I scored a one touch, great goal,
great player, and then my defender like cleaned me out
the next play and I woke up the next morning
I couldn't walk. Yeah, So anyway, but I guess I
do understand that feeling. I'm sort of like, oh, I
(05:57):
do sometimes weirdly because I'm forty eight years old. Who cares.
Wish I'd played that game? You know, Yeah, I wish
he'd played it too. But if I played the final,
you know, like I might have like permanently damaged my
ability to run, you know something like you know, uh,
And so I'm kind of glad that the doctor that
I saw that morning was like, absolutely not, you can't play. Yeah,
(06:17):
in the scheme of things, it's more important. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
But to take it back to AFCON, I mean, I
root for the same thing. I root for everybody to
have a good game, and I root for nobody to
get hurt. And I was very impressed with Saudiomane. I
mean he is an elderly gentleman.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Let's be honest. I mean he is. He plays in
Saudi Arabia. He hasn't lost a step, he's lost four
or five steps. And he's an attacking player who you know,
was never that dependent upon pace, but like needs his
pace to really perform at the highest level, and yet
still basically carried that team to an African Cup of
(06:54):
Nations trophy. I have many questions with that one. When
when it was that I'm Verrid of Sala and Mane
and Bobby Formino. Am I correct saying that your favorite
was Bobby Formino.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
By a country mile. Yeah, I'm a big Bobby Formino
fan because I always felt I mean, he wasn't underappreciated
by Liverpool fans, but I feel like he was underappreciated
in world football because he didn't score that many goals,
but what he did was much more interesting. Yeah, you know,
he opened up space. He had that genius for for
finding players in space, for finding space where it seemed tight,
(07:28):
and I've just always loved him.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I also felt like he was the kind of the
most zen of the two and the one who balanced
them to keep them from from fighting.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, they would often argue, and he was the I
remember once they had a fight. And then in the
in the tunnel on the way home from the game,
there was a there was a meme of Bobby for
Meino smiling nervously, like looking at the camera like what
are you going to do about these guys?
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Totally, So that was one thing. And then and then
the other thing I wanted to ask you was about
the final because money played a huge role in avoiding
what would have been a complete embarrassment for African football
by bringing the Senegalese team back onto the pitch. Did
he ever show that kind of maturity at Liverpool? Like
(08:19):
would you have guessed that it would have been him
to show that kind of leadership and maturity in that moment?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I would not necessarily have guessed it would have been him.
I will say, I think the context here is really important.
So the Senegalese team felt very hard done by throughout
that game and then the lead up to that game,
in terms of ticket allocations, in terms of security, in
terms of all kinds of things. And then during the
(08:44):
game there was towel gate. I don't know how closely
you followed towel gate. Oh yes, yeah, the goalkeeper's towel
was stolen by initially by the captain of Morocco, the
Senegalese goalkeeper's towel stolen, and then by the ball boys.
The ball boys kept stealing the towel until eventually a
(09:05):
substitute was sent just to watch over the towel. A
Senegalese substitute was sent just to watch over the towel,
and I think by the time the actual penalty was
called in the ninety eighth minute, So it's the ninety
eighth minute, there is a very normal amount of contact
on a Moroccan cornerkick, and the video assistant referee calls
(09:29):
the referee over and says it's this a penalty, and
the referee decides it is a penalty against Senegal for
Morocco in the ninety eighth minute on what was a
very I mean, it was not a foul at least
if it was a foul, then there would have been
thirty penalties that game, and so I think the Senegalese
team felt very hard done by. But Moni was absolutely
(09:53):
right that the response to a poor refereeing decision is
not to remove yourself from the playing field and refuse
to finish the game. The response is and has to be, well,
you know, that's the nature of the game. We play
like we all want football to be totally fair, but
it isn't fair, right, Like, That's part of what we
(10:15):
love about the game is that it is like life.
Sometimes it doesn't break your way and for reasons that
aren't good reasons. And so I thought he was he
really was the hero of that moment to call the
players back and say over the coach's head basically say no,
we're going to finish this game. They're going to take
this penalty and we're going to see how it goes.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah. When I was a kid, my dad would, you know,
whenever I would say something isn't fair, he would he
would say, I see, he said football, that's soccer, which
I always loved because it's basically saying that's life, except
you replace life with football, which is how many people
actually exist in terms of their you know, emotional hierarchy
of of of importance. And I think it is a
(11:01):
lesson and I think it's like one of the reasons
we love sport, I think is because there are rules
and life there aren't you know, And the game lasts
this long and you can't use your hands and off sides,
which producer Sean explained to us in great detail last episode.
And all those things are sort of like, you know,
(11:21):
you hold onto them tight and they feel like certainties
that you can you could build an understanding of events around.
But the truth is that there are bad referees, there
are bad pitches, There are difficult context in which to
play where things feel unfair. There are you know, insane
ball boys who go around stealing towels, and all kinds
of other things that give texture to our idea that
(11:42):
sport is this kind of level playing field, because it
isn't obviously. And yeah, I think Mani did a great
service not just to his team but to Afkhan and
African football and too world football, because I think it
would have been just a huge embarrassment if the team
had just walked off. To have a final abandoned is terrible, Yes.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It would have been terrible, but not only that. Of course,
the game is eventually restarted and then the penalty is
taken and it is a pananka do.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
You do you want to do this? Now? Should we wait?
Let's do it now. Let's do it now, Sean, do
you want to come on? Hey Sean?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
What's up?
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Guys? How's it going? Man? We had a question for you. Okay,
what is a pananka?
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I have never heard that term before in my life.
I thought it was the name of a player.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So it is a player, that is that's great, that's great,
you nailed it. Yeah, but okay, yes and no, Yes
and no, it's the name of a player. I mean,
strictly speaking, you are not incorrect. All right, how about that?
All right, that's a good story. Should I explain what
pananca means in this context? Yeah, Panenka is a is
(12:49):
a specifically is yes, named after a player, but it's
also a type of penalty kick, and it was pioneered
in nineteen seventy six by a fella named Pananka who
in the European Final, in the most important game of
his career, ran up to take the penalty kick, which
is a spot kick from like twelve yards away. Ran
(13:13):
up to take the penalty kick, and instead of kicking
it hard into a corner like you always do, he
kicked it very softly and slowly in a high arc
straight down the middle. And he did this because he
knew the goalkeeper would dive to the left or the
right and then the ball would just sort of trickle
into the net, thereby humiliating the goalkeeper, winning the European Cup,
(13:35):
becoming the hero, and having the penanka forever after named
for you.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Just one problem. If you try a penanka and it
doesn't work, it's the most humiliating thing in football, because
the goalie stands still and the ball essentially falls kindly
into his arms, which is what happened in this game.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
That's exactly what happens. Exactly what happened, and it was humiliating.
I don't think I would ever try panenka unless I was, like,
you know, in the rec room with a bunch of children,
like playing around. This whole thing reminded me actually of
a Chilean player, Alexis Sanchez, who did a panenka in
a Copamerica game penalty kicks against Argentina. It takes an
(14:15):
incredible amount of self confidence, and one of the things
that I find interesting about elite athletes is how you know,
it's almost a sense of delusion. You have to have
a level of self belief that borders on delusion to
play at that level anyway, and then to attempt something
like that, you know, like in many of the soccer
(14:36):
chats I meant, everyone was saying, you know, he's crazy,
he's crazy. He's crazy. Yes he is. That's a crazy
mistake to make. But I feel like it's something that
you do when you have such formidable self belief. And
he attempted something that if it had worked, he would
be a legend. And it didn't work, and he looks
like an.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Ass sean before we let you go? Is there any
field in which you have that level of confidence to
do a panenka? Yeah, like or or a pananka style
thing like? I feel like I don't have that level
of confidence in young adult fiction writing. And I am
a pretty good well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I do my best. I can't even say that I'm
a good writer. I stop myself in the middle of
the sentence.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Yeah, does does cooking count cooking? Cooking?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
What would a panenka in cooking be? What would that
even be? Oh? When you're just like a bold cook
who needs no recipe.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Right, like, you know exactly what you're doing. You've made
this dish a thousand times.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
No, but it's more than that because it's like everyone's
expecting bay a ya and you make mashed potatoes instead
and it turns out to be delicious. Like that's what
it is, because it's not that you can do something
incredible without a recipe, it's that you make something simple
so good that it's shocking and stuns the audience. Because
the essential element of the panica is the misdirect. It's
(15:53):
like throwing the change up instead of the fastball, you know,
So it wouldn't just be cooking without a recipe. Would
be someone expecting calamari and you give French fries but
they're incredible. Yeah, I think Sean could do that. I could.
I can't wait to come to you.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Before I hop I do have one quick question, like,
is there a precedent to what happened in this game
where in a final the team stages a protest or
a walk off? Because I've never heard of that happening
before in any sport, but especially football.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I have also never heard of it happening. And while
it was happening, I felt sick to my stomach because
I was like, this just confirms what everybody says about football, right,
Like this confirms what everybody says about African and North
American football especially, but about you know, FIFA in general,
that it's corrupt to the core and that there's no
(16:47):
way to respond to the corruption except not playing the game.
And whether or not that's true, I think that's certainly
how the Senegalese team felt, and listen, I don't think
there was anything corrupt in the referees decision. I think
it was just a bad decision, and referees make bad
decisions all the time because they're human beings.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Can I offer a contrary take? Yeah, because I watched
the game, and the more I watched the replays, I
was like, that's a penalty. Wow, that wasn't a It
wasn't a bad call. It was a defender had his
arms on Brian Diaz's neck right in the ninety eight
minute of an Afcon final as the corn cakes coming in.
(17:26):
He pulls them down. Brian Diaz makes a meal of it, obviously,
but that's not a terrible call. That's that you've seen them,
as they say, you've seen them given so I thought
that the response was terrible and it was embarrassing, but
it's also also placing it in context. You know, the
Copaminica final in Miami last summer was also chaotic. There
(17:49):
was a couple of years ago in Peru the two
rivals improving soccer against A Lima and when you were
decided that port this were playing basically what amounted to
the final. They were playing the final game at Alansas
Stadium in Matute in Lima. And as soon as the
game ended and when we started hood one and it
was going to celebrate their championship on their rivals field,
(18:11):
Alansa just turned off the lights, which was so that's class.
That's great. Yeah, I'm all for that. That's that's it was.
It was a huge scandal, but and also like I'm
an Aliansa fan, and pretty embarrassing but also kind of hilarious.
And I do feel like, you know, everyone was saying like, oh,
(18:31):
you hate to see it and wringing their hands, but
you know, like it was pretty riveting spectacle. You can't
say it was uninteresting, even if it was embarrassing. Uh,
you know, you know you don't want your kids to
follow this kind of example. I will say the only
time that I've seen or I can imagine people storming
off in the final would be in high school sports,
(18:52):
you know, like you just don't see it at this
level because you know, I mean there's millions of people watching,
you know, and it's just and they're grown ups. They're
supposed to be grown ups. I mean, I still think
of Brandy as his twenty six and I still think
of him as a kid. You know. I felt bad.
I felt so bad for him. He's just shattered. He
could tell he was just a mess. He's not going
(19:13):
to recover from that for years years of therapy, which
he probably won't get. You know. My first thought was,
like his mental health. Honestly, Yeah, no, I agree. All right,
let's take a break and we'll come back and talk
about politics. Great.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Thanks John, guys, welcome back to the Away End on
Danielle Alergonne.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
John. I don't want to do this, but we have to.
I have to talk abut a little bit about politics.
Last week, President Trump abruptly announced that he was canceling
visas indefinitely from seventy five countries. I want to list
off some of his countries, just the ones that are
in the World Cup or in the playoffs of the
World Cup. Okay, Verdie Columbia, Ivory Coast DRC. This Democratic Republic, Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kosovo, Morocco, Nigeria,
(20:09):
Sene golsbeck Say and Uruguay. You may have noticed that
all four Afcon semifinalists are on this list. You may
have noticed how many of these countries are important soccer nations.
I think you can also notice which countries aren't on
the list. I think that's also interesting. But anyway, it's
really troubling, and there's talk that there might be an
(20:29):
exemption for the World Cup. I know the mayor of
New York's Armamdani has been talking about he's going to
call Trump and try to get this sorted since the
finals being played in just outside New York at MetLife
Stadium in Jersey. What was your reaction when you saw
this list?
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Well, I have to say that I wasn't tremendously surprised
because escalation has been the name of the game for
the administration throughout the first year, and I do a
lot of work as you know, in Sierra Leone, which
has been on the visa ban list almost from the
beginning of the administration. It was one of the first
countries where visas were suspended indefinitely, and that means that
(21:06):
essentially no one from Sierra Leone, with very few exceptions,
can visit the United States, and that you know, if
for instance, Sierra Leone had qualified for the World Cup,
which unfortunately they didn't, but if they had, that means
that they would have no fans from Sierra Leone. Potentially,
you know, Sierra Leonian Americans could still visit the tournament
(21:30):
and everything, but it's just to me, yet another punitive
move by the administration, and it has big impacts for
the World Cup. I don't know what the World Cup
is going to look like. If there will be no
Uzbek people at the Uzbekistan Games, you know, or at
(21:51):
least like people who only have an Uzbek passport, It's
going to be a very weird World Cup as it is.
You know, the argument was always, oh, the World Cup
is corrupt because it's here. The World Cup is corrupt
because it's there. So I'm really disappointed by this decision.
I mean, obviously, the way it impacts football is a
footnote in the story. I wonder how you're feeling about it.
(22:13):
It's hard to separate. You're right, how it affects the
World Cup is a footnote, is very much of a
piece with everything else the Trump administration is doing with
regards to immigration and its violent implementation of immigration enforcement
tactics across American cities. It's hugely disappointing. I think it's
something that I've been keeping my eye on for you know,
since the Trump administration began. The idea of the three countries,
(22:38):
you know, Canada, United States, and Mexico coming together to
host a World Cup was built on this notion of
integration and friendliness between these the three countries, the three
large countries that share in North America that no longer exists.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
You know. The Trump administration has blown that up, you know,
threatening to go into Mexico, go to attack the cartels,
something the Mexican government obviously is like, look, you know,
you can't just bomb us across the border. He started off,
you know, kind of taunting Canada with this fifty first
state stuff. So you know this that's not exactly the
(23:16):
kind of I imagine, It's not the political environment in which
FIFA wanted to stage it's showpiece event. Now, I wonder
because like, you know, these these kinds of ammoral apart
chicks of big giant organizations like FIFA fascinate me. Like,
I wonder what Gianni Infantino was thinking, you know that
(23:39):
the FIFA Peace Prize was going to buy him, you
know what kind of you know, He's like, okay, good,
we make up this prize, we give it to Trump.
Then he won't mess with us on visas. He'll stop
saying that he's going to take games away from you know,
cities and blue states, and we can finally just go
on to our business of making money off of rabid
soccer fans from all over the world. Now they seem
(24:02):
to speak the same language, Inventino and Trump. So it
surprises me that this wasn't something that Inventino was able
to head off at the past, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, I think he's used to dealing with a different
kind of strong man. I think he's used to dealing
with different sorts of totalitarian leaders. And part of this
is because Trump isn't an elected dictator, despite whatever ambitions
people around him may have, and so, you know, instituting
(24:32):
some of these changes is difficult. The places where Trump
does have a lot of power also places where he
tends to exercise a lot of power In immigration in
you know, handing out visas, etc. I am reminded that
football has always been political, you know. And I think
it was before the nineteen thirty World Cup that somebody
(24:53):
said to the Uruguay national team, you are the motherland.
Like for those weeks, you are the motherland. And it's
never not political. It's just that it would have been,
as you say, nice to have a World Cup hosted
by three countries that are getting along and coming closer
(25:13):
together over time, deepening their relationship through the magic of sport.
That was the narrative, and it's very clear that's not
going to be what happens. And what I'm hearing from
a lot of my friends in Europe in Africa is
that they don't want to come to the World Cup,
even if they have the means to do so. They're
nervous about coming to the United States. They're nervous about
(25:34):
having their social media checked, They're worried about you all
kinds of not just the absurd cost of going to
the World Cup in twenty twenty six, but also the
risks of going to the World Cup, which feel very
palpable to a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Absolutely absolutely, I mean, I'm an American citizen, and I'm
nervous about going back to the United States right now.
I'm nervous that I'll be outside somewhere speaking Spanish to
my wife and someone will come try to detain me,
you know. So yeah, I completely understand that, and that's
part of why I'm tentatively but probably going to spend
(26:09):
the World Cup here in Columbia. Parenthetically, I should say
that my son made his first bracket and I don't
know if I sent this to you, John, but somehow
he ended up with a final that was Columbia versus
the United States. Via hell of a moment, it sure
would be. I think that would be remarkable. You know,
(26:33):
if you put a dollar on that, he's going to
get a lot of money back for the college fund.
So yeah, I think soccer's always been political and also
always geopolitical, and also the space in which scores get
settled between nations, right just in ways that are controversial,
in ways that are riveting to watch. I mean, I
grew up and I should mention I think I've said
(26:55):
ten times now in two episodes that I'm Provian, but
I remember growing up and hearing about the glory days
of proving soccer, which essentially came to an end, at
least in the telling that I was given as a
boy in the nineteen seventy eight World Cup when Argentina
had to win a game by six goals against Peru,
and apparently it was a range And this is the
story that I've heard, and I believe it because it
(27:16):
was told to me by my father. And you know,
why wouldn't I Kissinger arranged for Peru to lose that
game and they did exactly six nothing and Argentina won,
moved onto the knockout phase and ended up winning the
World Cup. And they say that winning that World Cup
sort of gave the kind of dictatorship that was running
(27:36):
the military junta I was running Argentina at the time,
an extra few years of oxygen to survive because of
just changed the national mood. And winning a World Cup
can do that. I wouldn't know, not, nor would I,
So yeah, I wonder, I wonder. You know, it's always
been this way. It's a way for nations to settle scores.
(27:57):
You know, there's a famous Argentina England game and that
he's six post Falkland or there was an incident when
the Swiss team played Serbia in the last World Cup.
Do you remember, Oh yeah, it wasn't Grant Shackay, it
was the other guy, Jared and Shakiri. Yes, yes, short
little bulldog of a man, incredibly talented technical player. Yeah,
but one of those teas play's best games with his
(28:20):
national team, scores and then does the Albanian symbol and
gets fined for it, you know, because he's of Albanian descent.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Or I think about the games between the US and
Iran and the World Cup, or the games between France
and Senegal, France and Algeria. These are charged, yeah, geopolitical relationships,
and football is one of the ways that we express
power among nations. It's one of the ways that nations
become nations, right. I mean, part of being a nation
(28:52):
is convincing yourself that you're a nation, but part of
being a nation is convincing other people that you're a
nation and having a football federation and being able to
feel the team that can compete in FIFA sanctioned competitions
as part of what being a country is.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yea. And so I think that there's no separating this
stuff out, which means there is no leaving politics out
of football that simply doesn't exist. It's like leaving money
out of football. It's like it's already there. Yeah, I
wouldn't mention one thing because you said something really interesting, John,
This idea of like convincing yourself that you are a nation,
(29:28):
I think it's particularly true. I think this is one
of the things that's going to make a World Cup
in the United States is very interesting. Despite attempts to
change this, the United States is a country of immigrants,
and I think as an immigrant, I can say that
latching on to the Peruvian national team was always a
way of asserting my identity and understanding where I fit.
You know, and I've written about this before, but there
(29:49):
are times when you're growing up in the United States
where you don't feel like you fit in anywhere, and
then you want to be closer to the country of
your birth or the country of your parents' birth, but
you don't quite know. You don't understand the politics, maybe
you don't speak the language perfectly, and so you're sort
of wandering through adolescence in this way where you're trying
(30:10):
to figure out where you where you fit in, and
who you are. But for the ninety minutes in which
you can you know, stand in the stadium cheering, singing
the songs, or watching the TV and you know, wearing
the jersey. It's very simple. It's very simple, and it
feels really good, you know. Unfortunately it also feels really bad,
(30:33):
especially if you're proving, because mostly we lose. However, so
much suffering. Yeah, but even that suffering is like this this. Uh,
you know, you're joining a community of sufferers and of
people who suffer along with you. You always have when
you get into a taxi and lima something to talk
about with the driver or with you know, with whoever
(30:55):
you might come across, and there is this kind of
shared sense that in other situations you might not have.
And I think that's something that's super interesting to me,
and I can speak from personal experience. It has been
fundamental to sort of shaping who I am or who
have become. Reminds me of a line from Ulysses where
Bloom has asked what a nation is, and Bloom says
a nation is the same people in the same place,
(31:15):
and then he pauses and says, there are also other places. Yeah, exactly.
Come for the discussion on world football, Stay for the
Ulysses quotes. Should we take a quick break and come back,
let's do it.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I want to tell you a story, Daniel, about club football,
about a little team that could called Carlisle United. So
Carlisle United have a long proud history, not currently, but
at the time had a long proud history of being
in the Football League, which is the top four divisions
of English soccer. Okay, so in English football, the top
(32:06):
four divisions are considered full time professional divisions, and then
below that you up what's called non league football, which
is ostensibly amateur, although some of the teams are professional,
and Carlile United had been continually in the Football League
for I believe over one hundred years by nineteen ninety nine,
when they were one game away from being relegated out
(32:27):
of being a full time professional team. Of course, the
other thing that being a full time professional team in
England means for you is that you're part of the
video game FIFA or now EAFC, and so if you're
not in the top four divisions, then you're not part
of that video game, which does hurt your revenue a
lot and your reputation, and generally it just means that
people can't play as you you know, so like people
can't live the dream of taking Carlile United all the
way to the Champions League. So Carlile United has this long,
(32:51):
proud history of being a professional team in England. It's
the only team in their town and they're one game
away from being relegated out and they have a brand
new goalkeeper who's only played two games for them. He's
on loan from Swindon Town because their regular goalkeeper got hurt.
His name is Jimmy Glass. Today Jimmy Glass sells insurance.
(33:11):
It's not like you make a lot of money being
a fourth tier English goalkeeper, but that that's the story.
This is the story, this is the setup.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
The game is incredibly intense because when your whole, the
whole future of your football club is riding on one game,
it also feels like on some level, the whole future
of your community is riding on one game, right. I mean,
there are so many little towns in England that have
these teams in the third or fourth division and it's
a huge part of the identity of the town that
(33:43):
they have a team in England's professional leagues. A lot
of these towns, you know, it's common to say these
days that outside of London, England is poorer than Mississippi.
And it's true. I mean a lot of these towns
are part on their luck and have been through a lot,
et cetera.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
And so Jimmy Glass is playing this game for Carlile United.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
The game ends one to one. Okay, are you still there, Daniel, Yeah, yeah,
I'm riveted. I can't wait to see what happens to Jimmy.
All Right, they're playing Plymouth Argyle. It's one to one.
They have to win. There are only ten seconds left
in the game. Carlyle United win a corner kick. Okay,
So Jimmy Glass looks over to the coach and the
(34:26):
coaches like, just go up there, Just go up there.
You see this all the time in football, in the
last second in a must win match, where it doesn't
matter if you lose the goalkeeper or how many goals
you lose, buy or whatever, the goalkeeper will come up.
It never works, like it works one time out of
ten thousand. Maybe it certainly never works in like fourth
(34:47):
tier English football, where frankly the quality of the goalkeepers
is not great. So Jimmy Glass comes up, Carlile United
kick the corner kick. It sort of bounces around in
the box for a second and then the ball falls
at the half volley to Jimmy Glass, a man not
known for his footwork. He is a professional goalkeeper, and
(35:10):
he kicks the ball straight into the back of the
Plymouth Argyle net and instantly becomes a hero in Carlisle
United lore, such that he will never have to buy
a drink again. He will never He saved this football
club after three games with them with a kick with
a goal, the one thing the goalkeepers aren't supposed to do.
(35:33):
And I just I love this story because it reminds
me that at any moment, all things are possible, Like
in that moment with ten seconds left, like when there
was no hope, there was still hope, and that hope
isn't always rewarded, but hope is always justified. Hope is
always the correct response to the moment. The reason Saudiomane
was right to tell the players let's get back on
(35:55):
the pitch wasn't just because it was the right thing
to do and the sportsman like thing to do. It
was also because there was still hope. And then in fact,
in that case, the hope was rewarded in Senegal went
on to win the African Cup of Nations. In this case,
the hope was rewarded and Jimmy Glass went on to
become a hero for Carlisle United. And this is what
I love about football in the end, is that it
(36:17):
reminds me over and over again that hope is correct.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I love that. I love that I have a counterpoint though,
all right, give it to me, give me the proving
counterpoint where hope is never just no, no, no no.
I was just thinking about relegation, which I should say.
You know, the United States, we don't have relegation right
in our professional leagues, and I think we should. Oh yeah,
(36:43):
I think it adds another level of intrigue that it's
just so exciting. But so there's a story that I
reported many years ago. River Plate, one of the biggest
clubs in South America, team from Buenos Aires, had to
play you know, they had a few miserable years and
they were going to be relegated. The Argentine legue actually
changed the rules to make it harder for him be relegated,
(37:05):
but they still ended up being in a playoff where
they had to be relegated. They had to sort of
win to be to avoid relegation, and they went down
and they were they were losing, and something happened that
was really extraordinary, which was that the announcer for the team,
a guy named that Tilio Costa Febre on national radio
Radiomitre in Buenos Aires, was calling the game. And then
(37:26):
when it was clear that Riverplay was going to lose,
the Riverplay was going to be relegated, something which had
never happened. Imagine the New York Yankees having to play
in a you know, in a in a in a
farm league or minor league baseball or something. Stopped narrating
the game and started basically ranting. And we interviewed him
about it later because it was such a remarkable rant.
(37:48):
He basically started talking about the directors of the club,
how they'd screwed everyone over. He kept calling them ratstas wow,
and he's like, no, you know, like ker seeing on
national radio for the last ten twelve minutes of the game,
it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful piece of found
poetry and an expression of rage, of love for the club,
(38:13):
of the desire to succeed, the club succeed, and of
this enchantment. We talked to him about it later and
he said that he was only saying what he imagined
every fan wanted to say, but they didn't have the
mic and he did, and so there was no Jimmy
Glass to save them. Then river Plate got back up
to first division. Actually interesting side note. You remember Theresa Gez,
(38:37):
the French player. Yeah, of course he had Argentine roots.
He actually went back to play with river Plate to
help them come back up, which is a really remarkable
coda to his career. Anyway, they made it back up.
You can still hear coast Or on the radio, I
believe in Argentina calling riverplayed games. But he says something
(38:58):
that stuck with me, which I think historians would quibble with.
But just so you understand how important club soccer is,
or you know, can be, not just an Artina, but
all over the world. He said. He told us in
the interview that the relegation of river Plate to the
second division was one of the fifteen most important events
in Argentine history. And he said it like stone cold straight,
(39:26):
like he wasn't There's no irony in his voice. He
wasn't kidding. He meant it, and I kind of love
him for that, you know, I love him for that.
So anyway, that's my counterpoint, No Jimmy Glass to save
River Plate at that time.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
It's true, it's not always. It's that's the thing about hope, right,
is that usually it doesn't work out, and in fact,
like somebody has to be relegated, right, Carlisle United's amazing
day with somebody else's disastrous day. Yeah, And that reminds
you that whether or not something is good news always
depends on where you're situated. But yeah, I like the
(39:59):
story be kaind is. For Carlo United fans, it was
as close to a miracle as they're ever likely to
see in their lives.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Yeah. No, it's beautiful. It's beautiful those moments of sport.
And it's also exciting to think what those moments might
be that we're going to see this summer. That's the world. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
I hope we see some I hope we see some
last minute goals. I hope we see Landon Donovan breaking away,
scoring on the rebound. I mean that this is good.
That's as good as I've ever felt as as an America.
Now I have to tell you that I feel very
distant from that feeling at the moment.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
You know. My favorite, both my favorite and the most
heartbreaking was the Belgium goal against Japan. Japan they were drawing,
they were going to go to extra time, and Japan
had a corner kick, and the reasonable sensible thing to do,
taking into account the state of play in the game
(41:00):
in the ninety something minute of extra time, was to
kick it short and just run out the clock and
just sort of live to fight another day and go
to extra time. Instead, they whipped it into the center
of the park and center of the of the goal.
The Belgian goalkeeper caught it and there was a fast
break on and uh it ended up with the with
(41:22):
Lukaku scoring and that was it and Japan was knocked out.
And I always admired the bravery of the Japanese players, like, okay, sure,
let's just you know, put this ball in the center,
and these giant Belgian defenders were definitely going to score
aheader here and win and then getting punished for that. Hope.
So I guess I've I've kind of given two examples
(41:43):
of the opposite of hope. But I believe, and I
love the phrase, and I want to just sort of
like rescue that phrase from my own grim defeatism, that
hope is is what was it again? Hope is always justify.
Hope is always justified, even if it's not always rewarded exactly.
That's nice. That's nice. We should leave our listeners with
(42:03):
that before I say something else depressing, or if you
have another quote from Ulysses, we can end there.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
No, I think I think I'll save my other Ulysses
quotes for future episodes. We should say before we go,
Daniel and I have decided upon stakes for our bet,
and Sean, you might want to come back on because
this involves you. We are laying out who we think
will win the tournament, who we think the semi finalists
will be, who we think the Golden Boot winner will be,
(42:34):
et cetera. And then all of that will be scored
one point per correct answer, and the loser has to
put the other person's name in their next book, unless
Sean wins, in which case both Daniel and I have
to put Shawn's name in our next book.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Can I tell you that I think Sean is the
favorite here? Sean is absolutely the favorite, Because you know,
you can sometimes be hampered by knowledge Sean, you can
be you know, you know too much. Yeah, be like
Daniel's son who thinks that the final is going to
between Columbia and the US. You know what, He's going
to prove us all. We're gonna look like crazy ones. Sean,
what do you think.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
I should warn you guys that I'm writing some momentum
right now of just winning my work fantasy football league.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Oh wow, congratulations? Would you win? Thank you? Novel in
your name.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
A financial amount that I won't disclose here. But yeah,
I hadn't even thought that I will be doing a
bracket as well, But now I'm very excited to work
on my bracket.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
Sounds good. Sounds good. I'm excited too.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
I'm excited to have to find a way to put
Shawn's name in my next book. There are a lot
of characters. Usually I write books with like four characters.
This book has a lot of named characters, so I
feel like I could do it. I could make you
like the head of the studio, Sean. It's a Hollywood novel,
so I could make you like the head of the
(43:57):
movie studio.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
I love it. I love it. That's perfect. I'm glad
you're writing another novel. John. I thought last time we
spoke you were going to become a full time tuberculosis reporter.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Well, I definitely am still a full time tuberculosis guy.
It's just that now I write novels for fun.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Good, good for you. That's the only reason to write novels.
I will say that we're going to work on the
details of this. There will be a bracket, there's we
also have had it. I created two categories which are
very subjective, Biggest Flop and Biggest Surprise, which I think
might be too subjective to include, but I want to
keep them anyway, because you know, we can always go
to Var on that one. Yeah, if we have to
(44:31):
go to Var, we'll go to Kurt. Yeah sounds good. Yeah,
all right, Well that's it. Thanks Sean for joining us.
Thanks also to our producer Kurt Garren. Thanks to everyone
at iHeart John, Thank you so much. Been fun to
see you next episode. Thanks for listening. Everybody, Take care,
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