March 18, 2026 • 50 mins
On Episode 9, Daniel and John break down the latest news with Iran's national team, Daniel points and laughs gleefully at the misery of Arsenal’s crosstown rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, John does a deep dive into the Netherlands, and Daniel tells the powerful story of Chilean legend Carlos Caszely, whose greatest achievement may have come off the pitch, and the infamous 1973 match against the Phantom Team.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to the Away End and Danielle Alercon.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm John Green.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hey man, Hey, okay, so high energy here John, stay
with me. So for the first segment of our show today,
we're going to talk about the dark and the light,
the troublesome and the hilarious, the complicated and the silly.
So we should start with the hard stuff, I think, right, yeah,
And I think we can't. We can't get away from it.
(00:32):
And although neither of us are really necessarily enthused or
even particularly knowledgeable, perhaps I think we can't not talk
about Iran, the war that's currently happening, and I guess
just in the context of the away and what it
might mean for the World Cup. So just to give
a little bit of background, currently, because of the bombing
(00:59):
the United States and Israel are doing, there's been a
bunch of back and forth, right so, you know, on
the one hand, there was a statement from Iran saying
we're not going to participate. Then Gianni Infantino came out
and said they definitely were and even thanked the US
President Donald Trump for making them welcome. And then later
(01:21):
in the day Trump tweeted or truth whatever, I really
don't believe it's appropriate that they be here for their
own life and safety. And then apparently Iraq, the Iraqi
players can't even leave Bagdad to go play their their
you know, intercontinental playoff Wich should be happening later this month,
(01:43):
and there's reports that the United airb Emirates, a close
ally of the United States, is kind of lobbying FIFA
to be given Iran's space should have become available. So
this is all kind of a weird thing and not
fun to think about, but also kind of an unprecedented situation.
That is, I think a you know, the kind of
(02:07):
almost natural conclusion of a haphazard, bellicose bullying foreign policy
that the United States has embarked upon in the last
year or so. So I don't know, John thoughts.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, it's really heartbreaking anytime. I mean, look, that's obviously
a very difficult situation. I mean, we've been talking on
the away and from the very beginning about how you
can't separate politics and nationalism from contemporary global football, and
that you never really could. This is incredibly difficult. I mean,
Iraq is supposed to play a playoff game in like
(02:40):
two weeks, and it's not clear that the Iraqi team
can travel at all safely, And so what do you
do if your FIFA Iran has said that they won't
participate in the World Cup. The Iranian women's team, some
of them have been offered asylum in Australia, I believe
because were playing in the Asian Cup. It's you know,
(03:04):
obviously sport is one tiny fraction of all of what's happening.
But I'm reminded of something a Major League Baseball player
said once during the Black Lives Matters, like when the
Black Lives Matters protests were first really growing. He said,
(03:24):
sports is the reward for a functioning society. And I'd
never thought of that before, but it really is true.
Like when society collapses, sports collapses. We saw that at
the beginning of the COVID pandemic. I've seen it in
impoverished countries where my family and I have tried to
(03:47):
make investments in the healthcare system. That like, you know,
when Sierra Leone is doing well and healthy, there is
a Sierra Leonian Premier League. And when sier Leone is
in a state of collapse because of Ebola, or because
of civil war, because of what ever else, there isn't
a seer Leonian Premier League. Sports is the reward for
a functioning society, and you know, I'm questioning how well
(04:09):
our society is functioning, and as a result, I think
that it is going to impact the World Cup. There's
no getting around it.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, I just can't. I mean, I agree with all
of that. And I love that statement by that unnamed
baseball player who.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, I wish I could remember his name so I
can credit him, but somebody will write in and tell us, please, please,
please do But no, it's a pretty powerful.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Statement and it seems to be one of those things
that it strikes me as very true just on the
face of it. But I can't stop thinking about the
discrepancy between the what FIFA probably wanted when they awarded
the World Cup to the United States, Mexico and Canada
and what they're getting, which is, you know, a fracture,
(04:54):
not just North America, you know, because of the the
way Donald Trump has been, you know, trying to annex
Canada and bob Mexico, but then also just a kind
of broader sense of global fracture that probably began with
the Ukraine War and and and you know has and
(05:14):
said it's even before that, but that feels particularly fraught
right now, you know, with the United States doing what
it's doing everywhere, and with with you know, this most
recent conflict just sort of taking over the news and
really sort of troubling so many people around the world,
including me. So yeah, it's it's not an ideal situation
(05:38):
for sport. I was noticing just yes, just today actually
I saw the news that saor Mom, Donnie and Infantino met,
and I was just thinking, I was like, what are
they talking about? You know, like, we know that the
mayor of New York City is a huge football fan,
a huge Arsenal fan like me. But I don't think
that's what they were talking about. I'm pretty sure you're
(05:59):
talking about security. You know, what happens if Veron comes,
what happens Ron doesn't come, you know, what kind of
threats there might be. I mean, there were two kids
arrested with you know, improvised explosive devices in front of
his Gracie mansion like last week. So there's a real
sense that the World Cup isn't happening in this kind
(06:22):
of at this at a perfect moment of global harmony
by any stretch.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, and it's important to remember that the people who
are obviously most affected by this are the people who
bombs are raining down upon, not people in the US.
But it just to go back to a story we
covered earlier. It really lays bare the importance of security funding.
And it looks like in Foxborough, mass that has reached
(06:48):
a conclusion and there will be games in Boston and
the Foxborough government won't be paying for security. As somebody
stepped up and made that call, probably the Craft family.
We don't know exactly, but some kind of conclusion has
been reached.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
There, probably after listening to the way End.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Actually probably yeah, I'm sure that they once they were like,
oh my god, it's being covered by hit soccer podcast
The Away, and we better get this dealt with.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
But it is.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
It's a reminder that the global fabric is really tearing
at the moment, and the United States is a big
part of that. And that's often been the case throughout history.
I mean, the US has often had a lot of
global political muscle. But it's all just a reminder that
(07:41):
a lot of what I thought of in our youth
as being stable was in fact fairly fragile when it
comes to American political institutions when it comes to American
foreign policy. That's not to say that like in the past,
the US covered itself in glory when it came to
its foreign policy or anything, but it is to say
(08:02):
that right now is an incredibly I was gonna say unprecedentedly,
but unfortunately I think there are precedents. It's just the
precedents should scare us. It is a precedentedly difficult moment.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Definitely. So Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle Shawn Dolittle. Yeah,
what a great name for what a great quote.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah. Absolutely, And you have to say that you don't
think of Major League Baseball players as being necessarily fonceive wisdom.
But I have been completely proven wrong by Sean Doolittle.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I remember a New Yorker profile of Many Ramirez where
they asked a teammate of his if many Amirs felt
pressure in these, like, you know, intense playoff situations, and
his teammates said, Many Ramiirs is too dumb to feel pressure.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Something. There was a memoir by a Liverpool player I
can't remember which, which he said that when de Va
Karigi scored a critical last second, he only scored it
because he didn't know he was in the last minute
of the game.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Okay, all right, that's a good transition to the very silly,
uh next.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Silly for you. I mean, you're having a great time
with this, Daniel, because you're an Arsenal fan. You're having
a good old You're having a good old time. But
there are Tottenham fans out there who are really suffering
and whose lives are as real as yours, and whose
griefs are are as real as yours. And you know
they're going through a hard time right now.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
They are. They are. I want to propose to you
a children's book. Okay, So I just want to say,
this is very petty and uh and I own petty.
It's very petty, and we sh maybe.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We should bring on Sean real quick as somebody who
doesn't know about Arsenal and Tottenham, just so we can
explain to Sean the Arsenal and Tottenham situation. Sewan, do
you know anything about Tottenham Hotspur?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
I do not, I mean outside of them being a team.
But great, yeah, great, So I'll just give you a
little bit of background. You can respond to this while
Daniel just giggles in delight. So Arsenal and Tottenham are
big London rivals. Okay, they both are big teams in London.
They both have huge stadiums, huge followings around the world,
they're both big global football clubs. And Arsenal almost always
(10:16):
finish ahead of Tottenham. In fact, the day that they
guarantee that they finish above Tottenham is called Saint Tottenham's
Day by Arsenal fans. Totteringham's Yes, Totteringham, Sorry, thank you, Daniel.
He really wants me to get all this right.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
It's important, it's important, and this year that day has
come very early because Arsenal are winning the Premier League
right now, and Tottenham, for the first time in like
living memory, are in real danger of relegation and being
kicked out of the Premier League entirely and being moved
(10:53):
down to the Championship, at which point there is a small,
small possibility that they will actually play the team that
I sponsor, AFC Wimbledon, So like next year, they could
potentially be playing a team that has MY logo on
their butts. That's how bad this.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Is or how beautiful it is actually, depending on how
you how you take it. So is that enough background?
Can I jump in here, so because you know, there's
all this nonsense talk about Arsenal winning the quadruple, which
is absurd. And I was actually talking with a friend
mine who said, if if we were to win the
(11:30):
quadruple and Tottenham go down, it would be the quintuple. Yeah,
it would just feel so because they're not just London rivals, Becau,
there's lots of teams in London. Obviously they're North London rivals,
so they actually are in the same sector of London,
I suppose. So anyways, I was imagining, I was talking
with a friend and I just sort of it hit
me this children's book. So imagine Spurs Stadium and there's
(11:55):
a you know, a free kick, and the Spurs defense
sets up there and Sean, you know what a draft
excluder is? Do you know this terminology?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
No?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
No, I didn't know until today that this is what
it's called. The guy who lies down behind the wall
to make sure no one kicks it beneath the wall
kicks it. Often kicks it low because often the wall
will jump because ninety eight percent of the time if
people are shooting directly, they shoot over the wall on
(12:26):
very select occasions, and it has worked and it's always incredible.
Someone will sort of trick the wall in the jumping
and they'll shoot low and catching the goalkeeper off card.
So what some times then they lie this guy down
and then they lie this guy down behind the wall
and that guy has to literally cover his groin, close
his eyes and hope for the best, right, which is
(12:47):
an app metaphor. So I was imagining this opening scene
of this children's book. Tottenham set up a wall. You know,
some defender call him, you know, Mickey vandabn whatever lies
down and he's like, god, this is a nightmare. This
is a nightmare. He just closed his eyes, and when
he wakes up, the stadium's empty, the game is over
(13:09):
and Tottenham's been relegated. It's like it was like the
whole thing was a dream. And then we have this
children's book that is just like what he was imagining
what was going to happen, and then the rest of
the actual what ended up happening. And then at a
certain point it's almost like good you know, good night moon,
but it's like good bye Spurs, and it's just like
(13:30):
him walking around the stadium like turning out the lights
and uh, and then he you know, he walks off
into the sad, misty rain of North London and that's it.
So what do you think. I could probably get a
huge book deal for this. And I just think, John,
you know a lot about sewing books.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Goodbye Spurs. Yeah, I think you could. You could find
an audience for it. It's it would it would you'd
You'd have to lean heavily into the arsenal side of
North London. But I think you could find an audience
for it.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I feel I feel that you are being a little petty,
a little overly cruel to tie them fans.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I completely embraced that at the beginning. I said that
no one would sit here and deny this isn't petty.
I have good friends who are sports fans. I just
think that part of being a fan is also laughing
at the misery of the other team, you know, Like
I don't do that in real I don't do that
(14:29):
in real life. I try to live my life in
a way that is carrying compassionate, you know, to my
fellow man, to my friends, to my family, to my
loved ones. But in this one sort of aspect of
my life, I feel like it's okay for me to
be the immature boy that I was at age eleven, Like,
(14:50):
what's wrong with that? I'm not hurting anybody. I'm not gonna,
you know, punch someone in the face at a bar
fight over this. I just think it's hilarious. I just
think it's so funny and I think it probably will incredible.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It will probably won't happen, but it is incredible that
this huge club with an eighty thousand person stadium or
whatever they have, the greatest in England. Yeah, the greatest
stadium in England, has fallen so far that they are
at real risk of next season playing me, essentially playing
(15:27):
players I bought, you know what I mean, Like, Yeah,
it's incredible, it is. It's InCred amazing, it's astonishing. It
is such a failure of leadership on such a profound
scale to have that big of a football club, that
much revenue and not be able to find a way
(15:49):
to squeak out forty one points in a thirty eight
game season. It is truly astonishing. And so we don't
usually talk about English club football, but we needed to
on this occase.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, I just just thank you, and I thank you
for that. I think you for allowing me to bring
out this aspect, this very immature, petty childish uh you know,
source of joy for you, source of joy, Yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. And I just want to say to my
friends who are Spurs fans, like, in all, honestly, I
don't think it'll happen. You know, you need like two
(16:21):
more wins to stay up, just as I don't think
the quadruple will happen, or maybe nothing will happen and
it will just be a regular season where our someone
did better than Spurs.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
That's all so like, because of all that is Tottenham
cleaning house. Like, if this is as dire as you
guys are making it seem, well, they keep they keep
firing managers and it keeps not working. They keep having
to bring in new coaches who do an equally bad
or even worse job. And they can't really fire a
(16:51):
bunch of players, not least because all of their players
are currently injured. So they have this incredible injury crisis.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And in their last I mean, I don't mean to laugh,
I'm sorry, but in their last game, in the last
thirty seconds, two of their players collided with each other
injuring each other, ensuring that neither of them can play
in the next game. So that's the level of like
just incredibly bad luck they're experiencing, but it is it
(17:18):
is a difficult moment for them.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Well I was, yeah, they're there. Their manager, the current
manager is this Croatian guy named de or Tutor, who
you know has all He said it in one of
his first reviews that like time's got three problems with
no defense, no midfield and no attack. And so he
just seems like a like a real uh like like
(17:40):
it was a real roll of the dice from the
board of Spurs to hire this guy. He had no
experience in English football, no experience, uh, no connection to
the club itself. Uh. They bring him on and uh
and all he does is talk shit about his players
and how bad they are and and it's you know, uh,
(18:01):
it just doesn't seem to be like the best psychological
approach to managing the crisis. You know, he's just not
the guy that you would want. It doesn't seem to me.
But you know, all those players if they do get relegated,
Sean And will say this, two thirds of their players
will leave because they have buyout clauses. I'm sure they're
not gonna play in the championship. These are people who
these are great players. They play on you know, their
(18:22):
international you know, they're they're they're national teams. You know,
these are wonderful footballers who never imagined they would be
in a in a relegation battle.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
And yeah, when is the last like how long has
it been since that team has been relegated or like
have they ever?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
They have been relegated before, but I can't remember when
it was, you know, like a long, a long time, long,
like decades ago. Yeah, and when will we find out?
I mean, we're recording this on Friday, March thirteenth, so
by the time you listen to this, you will have
seen Tottenham lose to Liverpool probably.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Maybe if if that's what happens. The last time they
were relegated, Jean, was nineteen seventy seven, so right around
the time that you and I and Daniel were coming
into the world. In fact, just two months before I
was born. Woow wow, what a gift. And I'm not young,
that's gonna get neither of all.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah, so we'll see, we'll see very exciting times to
be an Arsenal event.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
All right, On that note, we're going to take a
break before Daniel continues to wax poetic for the next
hour and a half about how much he loves Arsenal.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
All right, we're back on the away and John, you
have a deep dive for us today. Tell us all
about it.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
We're going to talk about the net. This is the
first time we've talked about a team that I think
has an actual chance to win the World Cup. According
to the bookies, the Dutch are the eighth favorite to
win the World Cup, so certainly not a favorite, but
also not a favorite. According to the bookies, it's about
(20:19):
ten times more likely that the Dutch will win the
World Cup than the United States. This is a nation,
as I'm sure you're aware, Daniel, of tremendous footballing passion.
It's also a nation where I once lived for a
few months in twenty eleven while I was finishing my
book The Fault Inner Stars. I lived in Amsterdam and
I got to see the passion of Dutch football fans
(20:40):
up close. It is a nation that truly loves its sports,
whether that is speed skating or football. They love to
wear orange. They wear a lot of orange wigs. There
is a lot of passion it is an incredible experience.
I remember actually that year the National League came down
(21:02):
to one last game and one of the teams in
it were IAX, who play in Amsterdam, and so we
saw all the IAX fans like marching to the train
station and singing their songs. And my son was one
at the time, and I said, Henry, we should go
to a bar and watch the game. And Henry didn't
(21:23):
really speak, so he didn't really have a choice. And Daniel,
for those of you who are just listening, Daniel is
making a face right now, and it's a good face.
He's making a face of dubiousness.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, that's a face of like did someone call child
Protective Services? Like what were you thinking? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
So I took my one year old to a bar
to watch the IAX game where IAX had to win
the game in order to win the league. And it
was a bar just outside where we lived, just across
the street actually, and I got myself a pint of
beer and settled in to watch the game. And then
by the time the game actually started, there were about
four hundred people behind me, all wearing Iye ex Jersey's,
(22:01):
all singing in unison. Henry was having a great old time.
He loves to sing along, and everything was great until
the fans took over the bar, kicked out the bartender
and began pouring their own pints of beer. And then
a person was standing on a chair singing behind me
and became so drunk that he fell off the chair,
hitting his head and there was a lot of blood
(22:22):
pouring around, pouring off of his head. And at that point, Henry,
who again was one, was having a little less fun.
So I was like, oh, we should probably make our
way out of here, which proved to be pretty difficult
because no longer was the bartender in control of the bar,
and there were like four hundred people pouring their own drinks,
and we sort of weaseled our way out of there,
and by the time he got out of there, Henry
(22:43):
was in a right state. And I think that's why
he still doesn't like football very much.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Wow. Yeah, yeah he Anyway, i AX won the game
that he's the boxer. It was his first bar bral Yeah, yeah, yeah,
he witnessed his first bar ball and fell in love
with boxing instead of with Sadly, but IAX did win
the game and the league. It was their thirtieth league title,
as I recall the third star on their uniform, but
(23:08):
so congratulations to them. I went to the big gathering
after that of tens of thousands of IAX fans just
to be a fly on the wall in a big
park in Amsterdam and it was an incredible experience.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
But point being Peter Henry for that. No, by that
time I had learned my lasson good parenting decision their time,
Thank you, Bud. People in the Netherlands love football. The
Dutch pioneered so called total football with Johann Croif in
the nineteen seventies. They reached the World Cup final twice
(23:41):
in the seventies and once in twenty ten, but have
never won a major trophy and are widely seen as
the best national team never to have won one. That
game in twenty ten was really indicative of something that
we've talked about before on the Away and which is
that the old notions of like Nctional football DNA have
(24:02):
sort of gone away. Like the Netherlands has been known
over the years for its free flowing total football. The
fullbacks get forward and everybody's playing an attack and everybody's
playing in defense, and that has kind of become global
football now. But in that twenty ten final, the Netherlands
were actually very physical, very defensive, very tactical, and if
(24:25):
we're being honest, probably did not deserve to win, and
indeed did not win.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
What I remember from that game, John, apart from the
Anderseniesta goal that won it in extra time, was Nigel
Leyong planting his cleats directly in Tabulonso's chest. Yeah, and
getting go away with it without it so much as
a yellow card. Yeah, in a different era, in the
video assistant referee era, that would have been a definite red.
(24:53):
But that was sort of the approach that the Dutch
took to the game overall, was very very very physical,
and you know, it didn't work. It was probably their
best chance. I mean, Spain were so much.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Better on the ball, quicker, all that stuff, but yeah,
it was one of those games that could have gone
either way. And then and he has to scored an
extra time and now we remember it as inevitable, the
way that history gets written down as inevitable, when of course,
while it's happening, nobody knows what it means as we
(25:29):
are currently observing, well say, at any rate these days,
the Dutch national team is absolutely stacked. Maybe not as
stacked as France or Spain, or Germany or England, but
we're talking about players like Cody Gakpo, Ryan Gravenburg, the
aging Virgil van Dijk, all of whom play at Liverpool FC. Arguably, certainly,
(25:53):
I would argue it the best football club in the
history of the world. You've got Barcelona's Frankie Deyong, You've
got Arsenals, you're in Timber. That said, the Dutch national
team is always good. The question for me is whether
they're better than the best teams, and I just don't
think they are. If they couldn't win in those golden
(26:13):
generations in the seventies and in twenty ten, it's hard
to see for me how they win with this group
of players. It's always possible, but I think a good outcome.
In talking to my Dutch friends about this before recording this,
you know they were saying, a good outcome is the quarterfinals.
A great outcome as the semifinals, but of course we
(26:34):
expect to win, and I just think that's such a
beautiful notion that like a great outcome would be the semifinals,
but we still want to win. We still think we
can win, because that's the nature of football, right Like
you always are dreaming of winning. So that's what I
think would be a good outcome for them, is a
semifinals run, which would not be too far off what
(26:54):
happened in the last World Cup. But I just think
eventually they're going to run into a team like France, Spain,
maybe like Brazil or Argentina that's going to be too
good for them.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
I have a question for you, John, do you think
that a version of that kind of deluded sense of
possibility that you just described among fans is necessary for
the players too when they enter a tournament like this.
Do they have to believe that the impossible can happen
in order to make it possible.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well, we've talked about this before. The professional football players,
professional athletes in general, have a level of self belief
that most of us don't have. I certainly don't have
that level of self belief about anything, including my writing
or my podcasting, right Like, I don't wake up in
the morning and think I am one of the greatest
players in the history of the world in soccer podcasting,
(27:49):
and I don't have to in order to do what
I do. I think that really good athletes have to.
I remember once I participated in Sydney Green's basketball camp.
My mother's name is Sidney Green, but there was also
an Orlando Magic player named Sidney Green. Spelled it differently,
but same pronunciation. And Sydney Green came and spoke to
(28:10):
us one of the days of his basketball camp, and
he was like, I am the best player in the world.
And I may not have made the All Star team,
I may not have won the MVP, but I believe
I am the best or one of the best players
in the world. And this was a very middling player
on the Orlando Magic, who at the time were not
a particularly good team. But he had to believe that
(28:32):
in order to get where he got, and so I
took the middle. He had to believe in his own
greatness to rise to the middle.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Good for him. I love it.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
You love it, yeah, and I think you have. I
mean when you said that when you would watch the
New York Red Bulls, you could squint and imagine yourself
playing there, if only you'd worked harder. I don't think
you were entirely kidding, man.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
I wasn't, no, and I wonder if that says more
about my deluded sense of like what I was at
my athletic peak versus sort of my cold and possibly
harsh assessment of what I was seeing on the pitch.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I think it might. I think it might without without
trying to bring you down too many notches. I think
it might so fair. I do think that you have
to believe that you can win. I do think that
you've got to go to the tournament and think we
could be the team that the miracle happens too. This
could be the year, And I think believing this could
(29:41):
be the year is a valuable thing. Like I tell
myself that before every book, I tell myself, like, this
could be the book that really has a big impact,
that really, you know, it has a life different from
what I could imagine for it and bigger than what
I could imagine for it. I've told myself that before.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like you're being hard on yourself.
I mean in the sense I mean all your books
have had a huge impact. You've had millions of readers,
and you've changed people's lives, and and you know, young
people and middle aged people and old people talk about
your books. I mean, I come across fans of yours
in Latin America all the time.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yeah, but the next one could be really huge.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
But the next one could be really huge. You're right,
there's probably some people who haven't read your book, like
the lawyer for the deposition last week. You know, you
still haven't reached everyone.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, you haven't reached everyone. So there's there's you know,
reaching as many people. That would be a good outcome.
Reaching every human being alive is.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
What you know, that would be a great outcome.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, the Lebron James of authors, that's the goal where
you're like Clive Cussler and you died in twenty twenty,
but you've still got two books coming out this year.
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Wow. All right, let's take a break.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Thank you for that, and we'll come back with a story.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
All right, Daniel, we're back at the away end, and
I believe it is time for you to make your
peace with the fans of the nation of Chile.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yes, I'll give a little context. A couple of weeks ago,
when we did our sort of hierarchy of loyalties, I
placed Chile at the bottom because of sort of nationalism
and again pettiness, and I was thinking about I have
a lot of wonderful Chilean friends, and so I wanted
to sort of tell a really great and admirable and
(31:43):
inspiring Chilean soccer story. The first person to tell his
story was a Chilean friend of mine named Dennis Dennis Maxwell,
who actually reported this for the Spanish language podcast that
I run called rad and if you speak Spanish, you
should go listen to it. So the story basically starts
on September eleventh, nineteen seventy three. That's the date that
(32:04):
Chilean General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup against the
civilian government. He actually bombed the equivalent of the Chilean
White House, which is called the Palace La Monea in
Central Santiago, and the democratically elected president Sarva do Royende
ended up taking his own life, and so began, I
guess one of the most violent and brutal dictatorships in
(32:24):
Latin America. There's a lot of competition for that title.
Believe me, I'll give you the broad outline because this
is a soccer podcast and not politics or history of
Latin America podcast. But there were thousands killed and disappeared.
Nearly thirty thousand Chileans were forced into exile and its
pertains to soccer. The national stadium in Santiago Anal was
turning to a jail and a torture center. So the
(32:48):
national team. Remember the years nineteen seventy three, the national
team is known as La Roja, and they were preparing
it for an intercontinental playoff with the Soviet Union, one
of those home and away games, and the stakes are
super high because the winner on aggregate goes on to
the nineteen seventy four World Cup that was gonna be
played in West Germany. So the team was on a
(33:08):
brief tour. They're playing friendly matches before the trip to Moscow,
and one of the stars of that team was a
guy named Carlos Casselli. Carlos was a much loved player
and actually Dennis interviewed him and he said that it
was surprising for him that after the games, you know,
Chilean fans or people who come up to him, and
no one wanted to talk about soccer. Everyone wanted to
ask what was happening in Chile, and sometimes they had
(33:30):
more news than what people in Chile had back home
because it was so much censorship. This was like in
the immediate weeks after the coup. Eventually the team flies
to the USSR, which had that point had broken diplomatic
relationships with the new military dictatorship in charge of Chile,
and so Carlos and the rest of the team they're
treated as if they're like emissaries and supporters of this coup.
(33:52):
They're booed for the entire ninety minutes in Moscow, but
somehow they come away with a scoreless draw to take
back home to Diago. So now we're up to the
second game. It's zero zero. The second game is going
to take place on November twenty first, nineteen seventy three.
But there's a problem, which is the Chilean military, as
I mentioned, are using the National Stadium as a place
(34:14):
to keep dissidents and students or people that might be
perceived as a thread, and they have them in kind
of in jail basically, and they're torturing them and stuff.
That story is leaked out by that point, and the
Soviet Union says it refuses to play in a stadium
that's quote soaked in blood. The Chilean military obviously denies
that there's any detainees in the stadium, and so to
(34:36):
kind of adjudicate this question. FIFA sends an inspector. So
Dennis actually interviewed a few people who were detainees in
the stadium. We know that this is true. One of
them was this guy in Jorgemental and he says, on
the day of the FIFA was inspecting the grounds of
the National Stadium. They were basically forced into the bowels
of the stadium and at the point of a gun
(34:57):
are told don't make a sound. FIFA comes in, takes
a look at is like, oh, everything's fine. There were
probably like seven thousand detainees in the stadium at the time,
but FIFA, what do you know, They didn't see anything,
and so they declared the stadium fit and the game
has to go forward. The thing is that it's not
clear at that point that the Soviet Union is going
to send its team or not. No one really knows.
The game is scheduled, and Carlos Casselli told Dennis that
(35:19):
even on that day until the whistle blew, the players
really didn't even know if another team was going to
come out of the tunnel and into the stadium. If
this was a normal match, you know, a game between
two countries that were literally playing for a place at
the World Cup, the biggest sporting event on Earth. You
would imagine a packed stadium with like fifty sixty thousand
fans chanting, singing for the national team. But this was
not that these were not normal times. There were like
(35:41):
seventeen thousand fans, which is really like a smattering of people,
and the game itself bizarrely lasted like a minute less
than a minute. Actually, the seven thousand detainees, in case
you're wondering, they'd been moved to a separate attention facility
for this game, so the USSR didn't send their team.
So the Chileans are lined up against nobody, against literally
against nobody, but just to kind of go through the
(36:03):
protocol of it, they have to kick off and they
have to score. So they kick off and they just
basically kind of look around, walk the ball down the field,
and then kick the ball into an open net. The ref,
who incidentally was a land ref not a FIFA ref,
blows the whistle. The game is over. Chile wins one
nothing and goes on to the nineteen seventy four World Cup.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
So crazy.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Imagine the stadium and you're playing against nobody, so At
the actual World Cup, CHILEA does pretty miserably, a couple
of draws and a loss. They have one goal to
show for their troubles. But probably the most important part
of this World Cup campaign comes before the team even
leaves Chile, when they're invited to the Palazio to meet
the dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and he's going to wish them
(36:47):
good luck, kind of this protocol thing that they do.
And here's where Carlos Casselli does something really remarkable. Pinochet
is going down the line shaking everyone's hand in Cardos
Casselli just puts his hands behind his back and refuses
to shake Pinochet his hand. This is an act of
extraordinary courage in this moment. There were many people in prison,
(37:07):
you know, as thousands at that point, people heading in exile,
people being forcibly disappeared, tons of fear, and I just
can't say enough about the dignity and the bravery of
someone like that in that moment to take that decision
that you know could easily cost you your life. But
he does it. And what's kind of beautiful about the story,
(37:28):
and one reasons I love it is it kind of
comes full circle, right so about ten years later, Casselli
retires from professional football. It's nineteen eighty five and there's
kind of a testimonial farewell match organized and it's being
held at the Stadi naa Jorgementalegre, who we talk to
in this episode. He was seventeen eighteen at the time
he was detained in the stadium. He told us that
(37:49):
when he was a kid, he used to go to
games at that stadium with his family, and then after
he was detained there, he could never go back until
Casselli's farewell game. Cassetti had become famous and kind of
beloved among people opposed to the dictatorship because he took
that kind of brave decision not to shake hands with Pinochet.
RK says that he was at that game and it
(38:10):
was cathartic and it was healing, in particular for one reason,
the same reason that no television channels chose to broadcast
that game. Because of Casselli's unique position within the culture
and within soccer. His testimonial became one of the first
mass displays of defiance, so people singing his name, but
(38:32):
also singing ebach guy head, ebach guyhead, ebach ay. He
back guy Ebach guyed, which is one of the famous
chants against the dictatorship. It's gonna fall, It's gonna fall,
the dictatorship will fall. No channels showed on TV because
this is still in the middle of the Pinochet regime,
(38:53):
but one radio station did rather Copatia, and people all
over the country heard it. And this is just one
of those moments I think about a lot, and I
think about what it means to be brave, what it
means to show courage, what it means to show dignity
in moments when maybe it would be easier just to
reach out and shake the dictator's hand. So within three years,
(39:15):
in nineteen eighty eight, when the continuation of the dictatorship
was put up to a vote, the very famous Pletiscite
of Chile, to many people surprise, the country stood up
and voted no. So anyway, I just want to give
a shout out to Carlos Casselli, one of the greats,
and of course my friend Dennis and everyone I fine
will want to help produce that story. But yeah, it's
one of those stories that I just love.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, it's a really beautiful story, and I think one
that has many resonances for our moment, one that resonates
across the globe right now, but especially in my own
life as an American, it resonates as well. So thank
you for that story, Daniel. And it's really really beautifully
told worthy of Dare I say at a MacArthur Genius
(39:56):
Grant winner.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
You'd hear it in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
By the way, I will stop talking about you're a
MacArthur Genius Grant when never. Okay, let's get to the mail.
We're gonna cover some recent emails we got, beginning with
this one from Rachel, who writes, Hi, John and Daniel.
This is not a question, but I just wanted to
say I was inspired by this podcast to actually watch soccer,
and I went to my first game tonight, specifically DC
(40:21):
United versus inter Miami, held at M and T. Banks
Stadium in Baltimore. I had a wonderful time and would
definitely go to another match if given the chance. Rachel, Rachel,
that makes me so happy to know that you went
to a actual football game as a result of this podcast.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I remember the first time I took to my oldest
son to a actual live soccer game in a stadium
and we brought him up the stairs. We'd watched a
ton of soccer on TV and he loved played it
in the park with his friends, and we walked up
the stadium steps and when you step out through the
concourse and you can see the field, he did like that,
like a sharp intake of breath, and he said, this
is so unusual for my eyes.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I do love that. It's one of those phrases that
your kids say that you remember forever and and it's
true because the experience of being in stadium is so different.
You really have, you know, this kind of vantage point
that you that you otherwise would never get. You know,
you don't see it on TV. You don't see the
whole field. You don't see where the players are moving.
(41:21):
You don't feel the way an entire stadium holds its
breath right before a goal, you know, right for a chance.
You know, it's it's it's a really remarkable experience. I think, uh,
the MLS, Hancho's should give us free tickets because we're
inspiring people to go to the games, just putting it
out there.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Absolutely, I'll drive to Cincinnati to watch Cincinnati FC.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Sure, why not? In the same way that we helped
tilt the balance for the Foxborough City Council. I think, uh, yeah,
we might. We might really be what's gonna get them
MLS numbers up where they need.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
To be well. England Revolution owner Robert Kraft is a
fan of the pod. I think we know that. We
don't know it for a fact, but I think we
know it by inference, you know. So yeah, it makes
sense that we were able to kind of settle that
Foxboro mass issue with our coverage.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I'm really proud of us, John, really proud of us.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Me too, Man, me too.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Okay, I want to read this email mostly because I
want to. I want to. I love it, but I
also want to recommend a documentary that Lucas will love.
So Lucas writes, Hello, everyone, thank you for producing such
a wonderful show which helps me discover new ways to
think about my favorite sport. My wife's family is from
El Salvador, and mine is from Italy and Ireland. Both
of us and our families take both great joy and
(42:41):
more often experience a good deal of pain because of
the respective results of our country's national teams. My question
comes out of your conversations about relative expectations of our
teams and what counts of success. So which of these
scenarios will most likely happen? Soonest One El Salvador qualifies
for the World Cup, Two Ireland progresses further than England
in a major tournament, and three Italy wins a World Cup.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Hmmm, that's tough. None of those are super likely. None
of those are super likely. I mean I could see
Italy winning a World Cup before I could see Ireland
progressing further than England in a major tournament. El Salvador
is the wild card for me.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, honestly, if El Salvador had it, this was the year.
You know, the heavy hitters of CONCACAF were not in
the qualifying matches, so this was the time for.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Asalm made it for God's sakes.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry to Lucas's wife, but this was
really a big bissed opportunity here. But I used to
play in Oakland, California. I think I've mentioned a dozen times,
and so we played a league with my wonderful club team,
Left WINGFC, and the ref was Salvadoran And one day,
(43:56):
you know, after the game, we were chatting up the
referee as one and it turned out that he had
been on the World Cup team, you KNOWL Salvador in
nineteen eighty two when they went to Spain. Yeah wow,
and he was living in the Bay Area and refing games.
He's probably in his fifties. I don't know. I mean,
you know, hard to tell. And it was kind of
(44:17):
remarkable to have this. I mean, it was like for
me a brush with fame. Oh my god, someone who
played in the World Cup. Now El Salvador. That World Cup,
you know, was just brutalized. Basically, they lost all three
matches and they played a game and I can't remember
right now off the top of my head because it
was against Hungary. It might have been against the Hungary,
but they lost ten to one, which is one of
the worst results ever in the history of World Cup. However,
(44:41):
there is on YouTube you can find it Lucas and anybody,
really wonderful documentary called Uno Lestoria ion The History of
a Goal that is the story of the one goal
that El Salvador scored in that World Cup. And it's
a lovely documentary and it sort of actually gets at
this this thing we've been talking about, which is like,
(45:02):
what would it mean to different countries, you know, and
you get the sense from watching that documentary that what
really matters was being there and then having this moment
to celebrate, because the players celebrate that one goal as
if as if they'd won the entire thing. You know,
it's beautiful. So yeah, guess Lucas go check out that
(45:25):
documentary and we have one last question.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah, we'll read this email from Robert, who says a
longtime fan of John's work and newfound fan of Daniels,
I just wanted to write into thank you guys for
helping me, helping fuel my love of footy. A decade ago,
I dated a wonderful woman from Australia who hated the
Australian Football League and together we became longtime timbers, AFC
Fiorn Tina and Liverpool fans. Since he're passing in twenty sixteen,
as well as a number of other factors, I only
allow my love of the beautiful game to exist and
(45:49):
pop ups on my sports apps and occasionally scarf wearing
when patronizing my local German food place. But I saw
a real on Facebook of you two and knew I
had to immediately binge all seven episodes and I've already
ordered another kid and a fresh Fiorentina Battistuta jersey, as
my old one seems to have vanished from the closet.
The passion was always there, but it took two great
writers and hilarious podcasters to rekindle the embers. Thank you
(46:11):
both and Sean so so much much love and pray
that Fiorentina rebounds and avoids relegation. Robert, Wow, that's such
a great email. I'm so pleased to Robert. I'm so
happy that we could have been a part of that.
I also want to commend you the Battistuta, great player obviously,
and Fiorentina lovely jerseys man, the Purple, the Purple, some
(46:35):
of the best jerseys in the game. They avoid relegation
just so that they can stay. I mean, in general,
syria A jerseys are the best, like Benitzia has incredible jerseys,
Parma has great jerseys. But man, those Fiorentina jerseys are gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Not absolutely and quite a lovely coincidence that you did
Netherlands for Robert today on Today's Yeah, it was a gift. Yeah,
wonderful man. That warms my heart and my only question
is what is German food, which I don't know if
the answer to, but oh, it's all.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Like sausages, brought some sour kraut. We used to have
a German when I was in my internet dating phase Daniel,
before Sarah and I rekindled our high school acquaintanceship and
fell in love and everything. I'd had this internet dating
phase and there was a German restaurant just down the
block from where I lived, and that's where I would
take all of my internet dates. It was called the
(47:31):
Browhouse and they served they served beer in glass boots
in Chicago. And I remember taking a Hannah, a rent scholar,
to the Browhouse and she was like, what.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
The hell is this place?
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Hmm? But it was great, man, it was you know,
a whole lot.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
I'm taking up my headphone because I need to show
you something.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Okay, well, Daniel's gone. I'll just say that, like, I
was not a genius it came to internet dating. It'll
surprise you to learn.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Look at you look at that glass boot. Was it
like this was this where you? It was than that,
but it was that it is a dainty little This
is a dainty little Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
These were proper glass boots of beer, you know, like
you wouldn't feel great after you drank one. But yeah,
I looking back, I mean I often look back at
my twenties and think what the hell was I doing?
But I look back in that and I just think,
what the hell was I doing? Why didn't I? You know,
I could have I could have taken them anywhere. I
took them to the brown House and no wonder. I
had so a few second dates, no wonder.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, well, uh, I yeah, I'm not going to tee.
I was. I only went on one Internet dating. It
was terrible, and I'm so glad to be married that
I missed that, so glad.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yes, yeah, I would not be good at it. I
mean I wasn't good at it when I had to
do it. It's kind of a miracle. And I know
that we need to end the podcast, but I'll just
say here at the end, when no one's listening anyway,
that it's kind of a miracle that Sarah fell for me,
like we all thought somebody recently, I know, I remember,
(49:14):
actually I remember when my first book came out. Sarah
was at the book launch party in Birmingham and doctor Cooper,
our high school history teacher said, what are you doing here?
And she said, I'm dating John And he said why a.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Wow, doctor Cooper. You know you study history, you really
don't have time for sort of social niceties. You just
say it, like.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
God, What a great teacher he was. He's a great teacher.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Is still is is? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Yeah? All right, Well, thanks to everybody for listening and
allowing us to wax poetic abount our our earlier days.
We appreciate you being here so much, and we'll see
you next week.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah, thanks to Brusus, Sean Titane and Kirk, and remember
to send your emails away endpod at gmail dot com.
Thanks so much. I'll see you next week. John. All
right m hm
Welcome to the Away End and Danielle Alercon.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm John Green.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hey man, Hey, okay, so high energy here John, stay
with me. So for the first segment of our show today,
we're going to talk about the dark and the light,
the troublesome and the hilarious, the complicated and the silly.
So we should start with the hard stuff, I think, right, yeah,
And I think we can't. We can't get away from it.
(00:32):
And although neither of us are really necessarily enthused or
even particularly knowledgeable, perhaps I think we can't not talk
about Iran, the war that's currently happening, and I guess
just in the context of the away and what it
might mean for the World Cup. So just to give
a little bit of background, currently, because of the bombing
(00:59):
the United States and Israel are doing, there's been a
bunch of back and forth, right so, you know, on
the one hand, there was a statement from Iran saying
we're not going to participate. Then Gianni Infantino came out
and said they definitely were and even thanked the US
President Donald Trump for making them welcome. And then later
(01:21):
in the day Trump tweeted or truth whatever, I really
don't believe it's appropriate that they be here for their
own life and safety. And then apparently Iraq, the Iraqi
players can't even leave Bagdad to go play their their
you know, intercontinental playoff Wich should be happening later this month,
(01:43):
and there's reports that the United airb Emirates, a close
ally of the United States, is kind of lobbying FIFA
to be given Iran's space should have become available. So
this is all kind of a weird thing and not
fun to think about, but also kind of an unprecedented situation.
That is, I think a you know, the kind of
(02:07):
almost natural conclusion of a haphazard, bellicose bullying foreign policy
that the United States has embarked upon in the last
year or so. So I don't know, John thoughts.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, it's really heartbreaking anytime. I mean, look, that's obviously
a very difficult situation. I mean, we've been talking on
the away and from the very beginning about how you
can't separate politics and nationalism from contemporary global football, and
that you never really could. This is incredibly difficult. I mean,
Iraq is supposed to play a playoff game in like
(02:40):
two weeks, and it's not clear that the Iraqi team
can travel at all safely, And so what do you
do if your FIFA Iran has said that they won't
participate in the World Cup. The Iranian women's team, some
of them have been offered asylum in Australia, I believe
because were playing in the Asian Cup. It's you know,
(03:04):
obviously sport is one tiny fraction of all of what's happening.
But I'm reminded of something a Major League Baseball player
said once during the Black Lives Matters, like when the
Black Lives Matters protests were first really growing. He said,
(03:24):
sports is the reward for a functioning society. And I'd
never thought of that before, but it really is true.
Like when society collapses, sports collapses. We saw that at
the beginning of the COVID pandemic. I've seen it in
impoverished countries where my family and I have tried to
(03:47):
make investments in the healthcare system. That like, you know,
when Sierra Leone is doing well and healthy, there is
a Sierra Leonian Premier League. And when sier Leone is
in a state of collapse because of Ebola, or because
of civil war, because of what ever else, there isn't
a seer Leonian Premier League. Sports is the reward for
a functioning society, and you know, I'm questioning how well
(04:09):
our society is functioning, and as a result, I think
that it is going to impact the World Cup. There's
no getting around it.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, I just can't. I mean, I agree with all
of that. And I love that statement by that unnamed
baseball player who.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, I wish I could remember his name so I
can credit him, but somebody will write in and tell us, please, please,
please do But no, it's a pretty powerful.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Statement and it seems to be one of those things
that it strikes me as very true just on the
face of it. But I can't stop thinking about the
discrepancy between the what FIFA probably wanted when they awarded
the World Cup to the United States, Mexico and Canada
and what they're getting, which is, you know, a fracture,
(04:54):
not just North America, you know, because of the the
way Donald Trump has been, you know, trying to annex
Canada and bob Mexico, but then also just a kind
of broader sense of global fracture that probably began with
the Ukraine War and and and you know has and
(05:14):
said it's even before that, but that feels particularly fraught
right now, you know, with the United States doing what
it's doing everywhere, and with with you know, this most
recent conflict just sort of taking over the news and
really sort of troubling so many people around the world,
including me. So yeah, it's it's not an ideal situation
(05:38):
for sport. I was noticing just yes, just today actually
I saw the news that saor Mom, Donnie and Infantino met,
and I was just thinking, I was like, what are
they talking about? You know, like, we know that the
mayor of New York City is a huge football fan,
a huge Arsenal fan like me. But I don't think
that's what they were talking about. I'm pretty sure you're
(05:59):
talking about security. You know, what happens if Veron comes,
what happens Ron doesn't come, you know, what kind of
threats there might be. I mean, there were two kids
arrested with you know, improvised explosive devices in front of
his Gracie mansion like last week. So there's a real
sense that the World Cup isn't happening in this kind
(06:22):
of at this at a perfect moment of global harmony
by any stretch.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, and it's important to remember that the people who
are obviously most affected by this are the people who
bombs are raining down upon, not people in the US.
But it just to go back to a story we
covered earlier. It really lays bare the importance of security funding.
And it looks like in Foxborough, mass that has reached
(06:48):
a conclusion and there will be games in Boston and
the Foxborough government won't be paying for security. As somebody
stepped up and made that call, probably the Craft family.
We don't know exactly, but some kind of conclusion has
been reached.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
There, probably after listening to the way End.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Actually probably yeah, I'm sure that they once they were like,
oh my god, it's being covered by hit soccer podcast
The Away, and we better get this dealt with.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
But it is.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
It's a reminder that the global fabric is really tearing
at the moment, and the United States is a big
part of that. And that's often been the case throughout history.
I mean, the US has often had a lot of
global political muscle. But it's all just a reminder that
(07:41):
a lot of what I thought of in our youth
as being stable was in fact fairly fragile when it
comes to American political institutions when it comes to American
foreign policy. That's not to say that like in the past,
the US covered itself in glory when it came to
its foreign policy or anything, but it is to say
(08:02):
that right now is an incredibly I was gonna say unprecedentedly,
but unfortunately I think there are precedents. It's just the
precedents should scare us. It is a precedentedly difficult moment.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Definitely. So Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle Shawn Dolittle. Yeah,
what a great name for what a great quote.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah. Absolutely, And you have to say that you don't
think of Major League Baseball players as being necessarily fonceive wisdom.
But I have been completely proven wrong by Sean Doolittle.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I remember a New Yorker profile of Many Ramirez where
they asked a teammate of his if many Amirs felt
pressure in these, like, you know, intense playoff situations, and
his teammates said, Many Ramiirs is too dumb to feel pressure.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Something. There was a memoir by a Liverpool player I
can't remember which, which he said that when de Va
Karigi scored a critical last second, he only scored it
because he didn't know he was in the last minute
of the game.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Okay, all right, that's a good transition to the very silly,
uh next.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Silly for you. I mean, you're having a great time
with this, Daniel, because you're an Arsenal fan. You're having
a good old You're having a good old time. But
there are Tottenham fans out there who are really suffering
and whose lives are as real as yours, and whose
griefs are are as real as yours. And you know
they're going through a hard time right now.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
They are. They are. I want to propose to you
a children's book. Okay, So I just want to say,
this is very petty and uh and I own petty.
It's very petty, and we sh maybe.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We should bring on Sean real quick as somebody who
doesn't know about Arsenal and Tottenham, just so we can
explain to Sean the Arsenal and Tottenham situation. Sewan, do
you know anything about Tottenham Hotspur?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
I do not, I mean outside of them being a team.
But great, yeah, great, So I'll just give you a
little bit of background. You can respond to this while
Daniel just giggles in delight. So Arsenal and Tottenham are
big London rivals. Okay, they both are big teams in London.
They both have huge stadiums, huge followings around the world,
they're both big global football clubs. And Arsenal almost always
(10:16):
finish ahead of Tottenham. In fact, the day that they
guarantee that they finish above Tottenham is called Saint Tottenham's
Day by Arsenal fans. Totteringham's Yes, Totteringham, Sorry, thank you, Daniel.
He really wants me to get all this right.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
It's important, it's important, and this year that day has
come very early because Arsenal are winning the Premier League
right now, and Tottenham, for the first time in like
living memory, are in real danger of relegation and being
kicked out of the Premier League entirely and being moved
(10:53):
down to the Championship, at which point there is a small,
small possibility that they will actually play the team that
I sponsor, AFC Wimbledon, So like next year, they could
potentially be playing a team that has MY logo on
their butts. That's how bad this.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Is or how beautiful it is actually, depending on how
you how you take it. So is that enough background?
Can I jump in here, so because you know, there's
all this nonsense talk about Arsenal winning the quadruple, which
is absurd. And I was actually talking with a friend
mine who said, if if we were to win the
(11:30):
quadruple and Tottenham go down, it would be the quintuple. Yeah,
it would just feel so because they're not just London rivals, Becau,
there's lots of teams in London. Obviously they're North London rivals,
so they actually are in the same sector of London,
I suppose. So anyways, I was imagining, I was talking
with a friend and I just sort of it hit
me this children's book. So imagine Spurs Stadium and there's
(11:55):
a you know, a free kick, and the Spurs defense
sets up there and Sean, you know what a draft
excluder is? Do you know this terminology?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
No?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
No, I didn't know until today that this is what
it's called. The guy who lies down behind the wall
to make sure no one kicks it beneath the wall
kicks it. Often kicks it low because often the wall
will jump because ninety eight percent of the time if
people are shooting directly, they shoot over the wall on
(12:26):
very select occasions, and it has worked and it's always incredible.
Someone will sort of trick the wall in the jumping
and they'll shoot low and catching the goalkeeper off card.
So what some times then they lie this guy down
and then they lie this guy down behind the wall
and that guy has to literally cover his groin, close
his eyes and hope for the best, right, which is
(12:47):
an app metaphor. So I was imagining this opening scene
of this children's book. Tottenham set up a wall. You know,
some defender call him, you know, Mickey vandabn whatever lies
down and he's like, god, this is a nightmare. This
is a nightmare. He just closed his eyes, and when
he wakes up, the stadium's empty, the game is over
(13:09):
and Tottenham's been relegated. It's like it was like the
whole thing was a dream. And then we have this
children's book that is just like what he was imagining
what was going to happen, and then the rest of
the actual what ended up happening. And then at a
certain point it's almost like good you know, good night moon,
but it's like good bye Spurs, and it's just like
(13:30):
him walking around the stadium like turning out the lights
and uh, and then he you know, he walks off
into the sad, misty rain of North London and that's it.
So what do you think. I could probably get a
huge book deal for this. And I just think, John,
you know a lot about sewing books.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Goodbye Spurs. Yeah, I think you could. You could find
an audience for it. It's it would it would you'd
You'd have to lean heavily into the arsenal side of
North London. But I think you could find an audience
for it.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I feel I feel that you are being a little petty,
a little overly cruel to tie them fans.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I completely embraced that at the beginning. I said that
no one would sit here and deny this isn't petty.
I have good friends who are sports fans. I just
think that part of being a fan is also laughing
at the misery of the other team, you know, Like
I don't do that in real I don't do that
(14:29):
in real life. I try to live my life in
a way that is carrying compassionate, you know, to my
fellow man, to my friends, to my family, to my
loved ones. But in this one sort of aspect of
my life, I feel like it's okay for me to
be the immature boy that I was at age eleven, Like,
(14:50):
what's wrong with that? I'm not hurting anybody. I'm not gonna,
you know, punch someone in the face at a bar
fight over this. I just think it's hilarious. I just
think it's so funny and I think it probably will incredible.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It will probably won't happen, but it is incredible that
this huge club with an eighty thousand person stadium or
whatever they have, the greatest in England. Yeah, the greatest
stadium in England, has fallen so far that they are
at real risk of next season playing me, essentially playing
(15:27):
players I bought, you know what I mean, Like, Yeah,
it's incredible, it is. It's InCred amazing, it's astonishing. It
is such a failure of leadership on such a profound
scale to have that big of a football club, that
much revenue and not be able to find a way
(15:49):
to squeak out forty one points in a thirty eight
game season. It is truly astonishing. And so we don't
usually talk about English club football, but we needed to
on this occase.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, I just just thank you, and I thank you
for that. I think you for allowing me to bring
out this aspect, this very immature, petty childish uh you know,
source of joy for you, source of joy, Yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. And I just want to say to my
friends who are Spurs fans, like, in all, honestly, I
don't think it'll happen. You know, you need like two
(16:21):
more wins to stay up, just as I don't think
the quadruple will happen, or maybe nothing will happen and
it will just be a regular season where our someone
did better than Spurs.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
That's all so like, because of all that is Tottenham
cleaning house. Like, if this is as dire as you
guys are making it seem, well, they keep they keep
firing managers and it keeps not working. They keep having
to bring in new coaches who do an equally bad
or even worse job. And they can't really fire a
(16:51):
bunch of players, not least because all of their players
are currently injured. So they have this incredible injury crisis.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
And in their last I mean, I don't mean to laugh,
I'm sorry, but in their last game, in the last
thirty seconds, two of their players collided with each other
injuring each other, ensuring that neither of them can play
in the next game. So that's the level of like
just incredibly bad luck they're experiencing, but it is it
(17:18):
is a difficult moment for them.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Well I was, yeah, they're there. Their manager, the current
manager is this Croatian guy named de or Tutor, who
you know has all He said it in one of
his first reviews that like time's got three problems with
no defense, no midfield and no attack. And so he
just seems like a like a real uh like like
(17:40):
it was a real roll of the dice from the
board of Spurs to hire this guy. He had no
experience in English football, no experience, uh, no connection to
the club itself. Uh. They bring him on and uh
and all he does is talk shit about his players
and how bad they are and and it's you know, uh,
(18:01):
it just doesn't seem to be like the best psychological
approach to managing the crisis. You know, he's just not
the guy that you would want. It doesn't seem to me.
But you know, all those players if they do get relegated,
Sean And will say this, two thirds of their players
will leave because they have buyout clauses. I'm sure they're
not gonna play in the championship. These are people who
these are great players. They play on you know, their
(18:22):
international you know, they're they're they're national teams. You know,
these are wonderful footballers who never imagined they would be
in a in a relegation battle.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
And yeah, when is the last like how long has
it been since that team has been relegated or like
have they ever?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
They have been relegated before, but I can't remember when
it was, you know, like a long, a long time, long,
like decades ago. Yeah, and when will we find out?
I mean, we're recording this on Friday, March thirteenth, so
by the time you listen to this, you will have
seen Tottenham lose to Liverpool probably.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Maybe if if that's what happens. The last time they
were relegated, Jean, was nineteen seventy seven, so right around
the time that you and I and Daniel were coming
into the world. In fact, just two months before I
was born. Woow wow, what a gift. And I'm not young,
that's gonna get neither of all.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah, so we'll see, we'll see very exciting times to
be an Arsenal event.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
All right, On that note, we're going to take a
break before Daniel continues to wax poetic for the next
hour and a half about how much he loves Arsenal.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
All right, we're back on the away and John, you
have a deep dive for us today. Tell us all
about it.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
We're going to talk about the net. This is the
first time we've talked about a team that I think
has an actual chance to win the World Cup. According
to the bookies, the Dutch are the eighth favorite to
win the World Cup, so certainly not a favorite, but
also not a favorite. According to the bookies, it's about
(20:19):
ten times more likely that the Dutch will win the
World Cup than the United States. This is a nation,
as I'm sure you're aware, Daniel, of tremendous footballing passion.
It's also a nation where I once lived for a
few months in twenty eleven while I was finishing my
book The Fault Inner Stars. I lived in Amsterdam and
I got to see the passion of Dutch football fans
(20:40):
up close. It is a nation that truly loves its sports,
whether that is speed skating or football. They love to
wear orange. They wear a lot of orange wigs. There
is a lot of passion it is an incredible experience.
I remember actually that year the National League came down
(21:02):
to one last game and one of the teams in
it were IAX, who play in Amsterdam, and so we
saw all the IAX fans like marching to the train
station and singing their songs. And my son was one
at the time, and I said, Henry, we should go
to a bar and watch the game. And Henry didn't
(21:23):
really speak, so he didn't really have a choice. And Daniel,
for those of you who are just listening, Daniel is
making a face right now, and it's a good face.
He's making a face of dubiousness.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, that's a face of like did someone call child
Protective Services? Like what were you thinking? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
So I took my one year old to a bar
to watch the IAX game where IAX had to win
the game in order to win the league. And it
was a bar just outside where we lived, just across
the street actually, and I got myself a pint of
beer and settled in to watch the game. And then
by the time the game actually started, there were about
four hundred people behind me, all wearing Iye ex Jersey's,
(22:01):
all singing in unison. Henry was having a great old time.
He loves to sing along, and everything was great until
the fans took over the bar, kicked out the bartender
and began pouring their own pints of beer. And then
a person was standing on a chair singing behind me
and became so drunk that he fell off the chair,
hitting his head and there was a lot of blood
(22:22):
pouring around, pouring off of his head. And at that point, Henry,
who again was one, was having a little less fun.
So I was like, oh, we should probably make our
way out of here, which proved to be pretty difficult
because no longer was the bartender in control of the bar,
and there were like four hundred people pouring their own drinks,
and we sort of weaseled our way out of there,
and by the time he got out of there, Henry
(22:43):
was in a right state. And I think that's why
he still doesn't like football very much.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Wow. Yeah, yeah he Anyway, i AX won the game
that he's the boxer. It was his first bar bral Yeah, yeah, yeah,
he witnessed his first bar ball and fell in love
with boxing instead of with Sadly, but IAX did win
the game and the league. It was their thirtieth league title,
as I recall the third star on their uniform, but
(23:08):
so congratulations to them. I went to the big gathering
after that of tens of thousands of IAX fans just
to be a fly on the wall in a big
park in Amsterdam and it was an incredible experience.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
But point being Peter Henry for that. No, by that
time I had learned my lasson good parenting decision their time,
Thank you, Bud. People in the Netherlands love football. The
Dutch pioneered so called total football with Johann Croif in
the nineteen seventies. They reached the World Cup final twice
(23:41):
in the seventies and once in twenty ten, but have
never won a major trophy and are widely seen as
the best national team never to have won one. That
game in twenty ten was really indicative of something that
we've talked about before on the Away and which is
that the old notions of like Nctional football DNA have
(24:02):
sort of gone away. Like the Netherlands has been known
over the years for its free flowing total football. The
fullbacks get forward and everybody's playing an attack and everybody's
playing in defense, and that has kind of become global
football now. But in that twenty ten final, the Netherlands
were actually very physical, very defensive, very tactical, and if
(24:25):
we're being honest, probably did not deserve to win, and
indeed did not win.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
What I remember from that game, John, apart from the
Anderseniesta goal that won it in extra time, was Nigel
Leyong planting his cleats directly in Tabulonso's chest. Yeah, and
getting go away with it without it so much as
a yellow card. Yeah, in a different era, in the
video assistant referee era, that would have been a definite red.
(24:53):
But that was sort of the approach that the Dutch
took to the game overall, was very very very physical,
and you know, it didn't work. It was probably their
best chance. I mean, Spain were so much.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Better on the ball, quicker, all that stuff, but yeah,
it was one of those games that could have gone
either way. And then and he has to scored an
extra time and now we remember it as inevitable, the
way that history gets written down as inevitable, when of course,
while it's happening, nobody knows what it means as we
(25:29):
are currently observing, well say, at any rate these days,
the Dutch national team is absolutely stacked. Maybe not as
stacked as France or Spain, or Germany or England, but
we're talking about players like Cody Gakpo, Ryan Gravenburg, the
aging Virgil van Dijk, all of whom play at Liverpool FC. Arguably, certainly,
(25:53):
I would argue it the best football club in the
history of the world. You've got Barcelona's Frankie Deyong, You've
got Arsenals, you're in Timber. That said, the Dutch national
team is always good. The question for me is whether
they're better than the best teams, and I just don't
think they are. If they couldn't win in those golden
(26:13):
generations in the seventies and in twenty ten, it's hard
to see for me how they win with this group
of players. It's always possible, but I think a good outcome.
In talking to my Dutch friends about this before recording this,
you know they were saying, a good outcome is the quarterfinals.
A great outcome as the semifinals, but of course we
(26:34):
expect to win, and I just think that's such a
beautiful notion that like a great outcome would be the semifinals,
but we still want to win. We still think we
can win, because that's the nature of football, right Like
you always are dreaming of winning. So that's what I
think would be a good outcome for them, is a
semifinals run, which would not be too far off what
(26:54):
happened in the last World Cup. But I just think
eventually they're going to run into a team like France, Spain,
maybe like Brazil or Argentina that's going to be too
good for them.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
I have a question for you, John, do you think
that a version of that kind of deluded sense of
possibility that you just described among fans is necessary for
the players too when they enter a tournament like this.
Do they have to believe that the impossible can happen
in order to make it possible.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well, we've talked about this before. The professional football players,
professional athletes in general, have a level of self belief
that most of us don't have. I certainly don't have
that level of self belief about anything, including my writing
or my podcasting, right Like, I don't wake up in
the morning and think I am one of the greatest
players in the history of the world in soccer podcasting,
(27:49):
and I don't have to in order to do what
I do. I think that really good athletes have to.
I remember once I participated in Sydney Green's basketball camp.
My mother's name is Sidney Green, but there was also
an Orlando Magic player named Sidney Green. Spelled it differently,
but same pronunciation. And Sydney Green came and spoke to
(28:10):
us one of the days of his basketball camp, and
he was like, I am the best player in the world.
And I may not have made the All Star team,
I may not have won the MVP, but I believe
I am the best or one of the best players
in the world. And this was a very middling player
on the Orlando Magic, who at the time were not
a particularly good team. But he had to believe that
(28:32):
in order to get where he got, and so I
took the middle. He had to believe in his own
greatness to rise to the middle.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Good for him. I love it.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
You love it, yeah, and I think you have. I
mean when you said that when you would watch the
New York Red Bulls, you could squint and imagine yourself
playing there, if only you'd worked harder. I don't think
you were entirely kidding, man.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
I wasn't, no, and I wonder if that says more
about my deluded sense of like what I was at
my athletic peak versus sort of my cold and possibly
harsh assessment of what I was seeing on the pitch.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I think it might. I think it might without without
trying to bring you down too many notches. I think
it might so fair. I do think that you have
to believe that you can win. I do think that
you've got to go to the tournament and think we
could be the team that the miracle happens too. This
could be the year, And I think believing this could
(29:41):
be the year is a valuable thing. Like I tell
myself that before every book, I tell myself, like, this
could be the book that really has a big impact,
that really, you know, it has a life different from
what I could imagine for it and bigger than what
I could imagine for it. I've told myself that before.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like you're being hard on yourself.
I mean in the sense I mean all your books
have had a huge impact. You've had millions of readers,
and you've changed people's lives, and and you know, young
people and middle aged people and old people talk about
your books. I mean, I come across fans of yours
in Latin America all the time.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yeah, but the next one could be really huge.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
But the next one could be really huge. You're right,
there's probably some people who haven't read your book, like
the lawyer for the deposition last week. You know, you
still haven't reached everyone.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, you haven't reached everyone. So there's there's you know,
reaching as many people. That would be a good outcome.
Reaching every human being alive is.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
What you know, that would be a great outcome.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, the Lebron James of authors, that's the goal where
you're like Clive Cussler and you died in twenty twenty,
but you've still got two books coming out this year.
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Wow. All right, let's take a break.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Thank you for that, and we'll come back with a story.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
All right, Daniel, we're back at the away end, and
I believe it is time for you to make your
peace with the fans of the nation of Chile.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yes, I'll give a little context. A couple of weeks ago,
when we did our sort of hierarchy of loyalties, I
placed Chile at the bottom because of sort of nationalism
and again pettiness, and I was thinking about I have
a lot of wonderful Chilean friends, and so I wanted
to sort of tell a really great and admirable and
(31:43):
inspiring Chilean soccer story. The first person to tell his
story was a Chilean friend of mine named Dennis Dennis Maxwell,
who actually reported this for the Spanish language podcast that
I run called rad and if you speak Spanish, you
should go listen to it. So the story basically starts
on September eleventh, nineteen seventy three. That's the date that
(32:04):
Chilean General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup against the
civilian government. He actually bombed the equivalent of the Chilean
White House, which is called the Palace La Monea in
Central Santiago, and the democratically elected president Sarva do Royende
ended up taking his own life, and so began, I
guess one of the most violent and brutal dictatorships in
(32:24):
Latin America. There's a lot of competition for that title.
Believe me, I'll give you the broad outline because this
is a soccer podcast and not politics or history of
Latin America podcast. But there were thousands killed and disappeared.
Nearly thirty thousand Chileans were forced into exile and its
pertains to soccer. The national stadium in Santiago Anal was
turning to a jail and a torture center. So the
(32:48):
national team. Remember the years nineteen seventy three, the national
team is known as La Roja, and they were preparing
it for an intercontinental playoff with the Soviet Union, one
of those home and away games, and the stakes are
super high because the winner on aggregate goes on to
the nineteen seventy four World Cup that was gonna be
played in West Germany. So the team was on a
(33:08):
brief tour. They're playing friendly matches before the trip to Moscow,
and one of the stars of that team was a
guy named Carlos Casselli. Carlos was a much loved player
and actually Dennis interviewed him and he said that it
was surprising for him that after the games, you know,
Chilean fans or people who come up to him, and
no one wanted to talk about soccer. Everyone wanted to
ask what was happening in Chile, and sometimes they had
(33:30):
more news than what people in Chile had back home
because it was so much censorship. This was like in
the immediate weeks after the coup. Eventually the team flies
to the USSR, which had that point had broken diplomatic
relationships with the new military dictatorship in charge of Chile,
and so Carlos and the rest of the team they're
treated as if they're like emissaries and supporters of this coup.
(33:52):
They're booed for the entire ninety minutes in Moscow, but
somehow they come away with a scoreless draw to take
back home to Diago. So now we're up to the
second game. It's zero zero. The second game is going
to take place on November twenty first, nineteen seventy three.
But there's a problem, which is the Chilean military, as
I mentioned, are using the National Stadium as a place
(34:14):
to keep dissidents and students or people that might be
perceived as a thread, and they have them in kind
of in jail basically, and they're torturing them and stuff.
That story is leaked out by that point, and the
Soviet Union says it refuses to play in a stadium
that's quote soaked in blood. The Chilean military obviously denies
that there's any detainees in the stadium, and so to
(34:36):
kind of adjudicate this question. FIFA sends an inspector. So
Dennis actually interviewed a few people who were detainees in
the stadium. We know that this is true. One of
them was this guy in Jorgemental and he says, on
the day of the FIFA was inspecting the grounds of
the National Stadium. They were basically forced into the bowels
of the stadium and at the point of a gun
(34:57):
are told don't make a sound. FIFA comes in, takes
a look at is like, oh, everything's fine. There were
probably like seven thousand detainees in the stadium at the time,
but FIFA, what do you know, They didn't see anything,
and so they declared the stadium fit and the game
has to go forward. The thing is that it's not
clear at that point that the Soviet Union is going
to send its team or not. No one really knows.
The game is scheduled, and Carlos Casselli told Dennis that
(35:19):
even on that day until the whistle blew, the players
really didn't even know if another team was going to
come out of the tunnel and into the stadium. If
this was a normal match, you know, a game between
two countries that were literally playing for a place at
the World Cup, the biggest sporting event on Earth. You
would imagine a packed stadium with like fifty sixty thousand
fans chanting, singing for the national team. But this was
not that these were not normal times. There were like
(35:41):
seventeen thousand fans, which is really like a smattering of people,
and the game itself bizarrely lasted like a minute less
than a minute. Actually, the seven thousand detainees, in case
you're wondering, they'd been moved to a separate attention facility
for this game, so the USSR didn't send their team.
So the Chileans are lined up against nobody, against literally
against nobody, but just to kind of go through the
(36:03):
protocol of it, they have to kick off and they
have to score. So they kick off and they just
basically kind of look around, walk the ball down the field,
and then kick the ball into an open net. The ref,
who incidentally was a land ref not a FIFA ref,
blows the whistle. The game is over. Chile wins one
nothing and goes on to the nineteen seventy four World Cup.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
So crazy.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Imagine the stadium and you're playing against nobody, so At
the actual World Cup, CHILEA does pretty miserably, a couple
of draws and a loss. They have one goal to
show for their troubles. But probably the most important part
of this World Cup campaign comes before the team even
leaves Chile, when they're invited to the Palazio to meet
the dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and he's going to wish them
(36:47):
good luck, kind of this protocol thing that they do.
And here's where Carlos Casselli does something really remarkable. Pinochet
is going down the line shaking everyone's hand in Cardos
Casselli just puts his hands behind his back and refuses
to shake Pinochet his hand. This is an act of
extraordinary courage in this moment. There were many people in prison,
(37:07):
you know, as thousands at that point, people heading in exile,
people being forcibly disappeared, tons of fear, and I just
can't say enough about the dignity and the bravery of
someone like that in that moment to take that decision
that you know could easily cost you your life. But
he does it. And what's kind of beautiful about the story,
(37:28):
and one reasons I love it is it kind of
comes full circle, right so about ten years later, Casselli
retires from professional football. It's nineteen eighty five and there's
kind of a testimonial farewell match organized and it's being
held at the Stadi naa Jorgementalegre, who we talk to
in this episode. He was seventeen eighteen at the time
he was detained in the stadium. He told us that
(37:49):
when he was a kid, he used to go to
games at that stadium with his family, and then after
he was detained there, he could never go back until
Casselli's farewell game. Cassetti had become famous and kind of
beloved among people opposed to the dictatorship because he took
that kind of brave decision not to shake hands with Pinochet.
RK says that he was at that game and it
(38:10):
was cathartic and it was healing, in particular for one reason,
the same reason that no television channels chose to broadcast
that game. Because of Casselli's unique position within the culture
and within soccer. His testimonial became one of the first
mass displays of defiance, so people singing his name, but
(38:32):
also singing ebach guy head, ebach guyhead, ebach ay. He
back guy Ebach guyed, which is one of the famous
chants against the dictatorship. It's gonna fall, It's gonna fall,
the dictatorship will fall. No channels showed on TV because
this is still in the middle of the Pinochet regime,
(38:53):
but one radio station did rather Copatia, and people all
over the country heard it. And this is just one
of those moments I think about a lot, and I
think about what it means to be brave, what it
means to show courage, what it means to show dignity
in moments when maybe it would be easier just to
reach out and shake the dictator's hand. So within three years,
(39:15):
in nineteen eighty eight, when the continuation of the dictatorship
was put up to a vote, the very famous Pletiscite
of Chile, to many people surprise, the country stood up
and voted no. So anyway, I just want to give
a shout out to Carlos Casselli, one of the greats,
and of course my friend Dennis and everyone I fine
will want to help produce that story. But yeah, it's
one of those stories that I just love.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Yeah, it's a really beautiful story, and I think one
that has many resonances for our moment, one that resonates
across the globe right now, but especially in my own
life as an American, it resonates as well. So thank
you for that story, Daniel. And it's really really beautifully
told worthy of Dare I say at a MacArthur Genius
(39:56):
Grant winner.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
You'd hear it in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
By the way, I will stop talking about you're a
MacArthur Genius Grant when never. Okay, let's get to the mail.
We're gonna cover some recent emails we got, beginning with
this one from Rachel, who writes, Hi, John and Daniel.
This is not a question, but I just wanted to
say I was inspired by this podcast to actually watch soccer,
and I went to my first game tonight, specifically DC
(40:21):
United versus inter Miami, held at M and T. Banks
Stadium in Baltimore. I had a wonderful time and would
definitely go to another match if given the chance. Rachel, Rachel,
that makes me so happy to know that you went
to a actual football game as a result of this podcast.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
I remember the first time I took to my oldest
son to a actual live soccer game in a stadium
and we brought him up the stairs. We'd watched a
ton of soccer on TV and he loved played it
in the park with his friends, and we walked up
the stadium steps and when you step out through the
concourse and you can see the field, he did like that,
like a sharp intake of breath, and he said, this
is so unusual for my eyes.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Oh, I love that.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I do love that. It's one of those phrases that
your kids say that you remember forever and and it's
true because the experience of being in stadium is so different.
You really have, you know, this kind of vantage point
that you that you otherwise would never get. You know,
you don't see it on TV. You don't see the
whole field. You don't see where the players are moving.
(41:21):
You don't feel the way an entire stadium holds its
breath right before a goal, you know, right for a chance.
You know, it's it's it's a really remarkable experience. I think, uh,
the MLS, Hancho's should give us free tickets because we're
inspiring people to go to the games, just putting it
out there.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Absolutely, I'll drive to Cincinnati to watch Cincinnati FC.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Sure, why not? In the same way that we helped
tilt the balance for the Foxborough City Council. I think, uh, yeah,
we might. We might really be what's gonna get them
MLS numbers up where they need.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
To be well. England Revolution owner Robert Kraft is a
fan of the pod. I think we know that. We
don't know it for a fact, but I think we
know it by inference, you know. So yeah, it makes
sense that we were able to kind of settle that
Foxboro mass issue with our coverage.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
I'm really proud of us, John, really proud of us.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Me too, Man, me too.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Okay, I want to read this email mostly because I
want to. I want to. I love it, but I
also want to recommend a documentary that Lucas will love.
So Lucas writes, Hello, everyone, thank you for producing such
a wonderful show which helps me discover new ways to
think about my favorite sport. My wife's family is from
El Salvador, and mine is from Italy and Ireland. Both
of us and our families take both great joy and
(42:41):
more often experience a good deal of pain because of
the respective results of our country's national teams. My question
comes out of your conversations about relative expectations of our
teams and what counts of success. So which of these
scenarios will most likely happen? Soonest One El Salvador qualifies
for the World Cup, Two Ireland progresses further than England
in a major tournament, and three Italy wins a World Cup.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Hmmm, that's tough. None of those are super likely. None
of those are super likely. I mean I could see
Italy winning a World Cup before I could see Ireland
progressing further than England in a major tournament. El Salvador
is the wild card for me.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, honestly, if El Salvador had it, this was the year.
You know, the heavy hitters of CONCACAF were not in
the qualifying matches, so this was the time for.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Asalm made it for God's sakes.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry to Lucas's wife, but this was
really a big bissed opportunity here. But I used to
play in Oakland, California. I think I've mentioned a dozen times,
and so we played a league with my wonderful club team,
Left WINGFC, and the ref was Salvadoran And one day,
(43:56):
you know, after the game, we were chatting up the
referee as one and it turned out that he had
been on the World Cup team, you KNOWL Salvador in
nineteen eighty two when they went to Spain. Yeah wow,
and he was living in the Bay Area and refing games.
He's probably in his fifties. I don't know. I mean,
you know, hard to tell. And it was kind of
(44:17):
remarkable to have this. I mean, it was like for
me a brush with fame. Oh my god, someone who
played in the World Cup. Now El Salvador. That World Cup,
you know, was just brutalized. Basically, they lost all three
matches and they played a game and I can't remember
right now off the top of my head because it
was against Hungary. It might have been against the Hungary,
but they lost ten to one, which is one of
the worst results ever in the history of World Cup. However,
(44:41):
there is on YouTube you can find it Lucas and anybody,
really wonderful documentary called Uno Lestoria ion The History of
a Goal that is the story of the one goal
that El Salvador scored in that World Cup. And it's
a lovely documentary and it sort of actually gets at
this this thing we've been talking about, which is like,
(45:02):
what would it mean to different countries, you know, and
you get the sense from watching that documentary that what
really matters was being there and then having this moment
to celebrate, because the players celebrate that one goal as
if as if they'd won the entire thing. You know,
it's beautiful. So yeah, guess Lucas go check out that
(45:25):
documentary and we have one last question.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Yeah, we'll read this email from Robert, who says a
longtime fan of John's work and newfound fan of Daniels,
I just wanted to write into thank you guys for
helping me, helping fuel my love of footy. A decade ago,
I dated a wonderful woman from Australia who hated the
Australian Football League and together we became longtime timbers, AFC
Fiorn Tina and Liverpool fans. Since he're passing in twenty sixteen,
as well as a number of other factors, I only
allow my love of the beautiful game to exist and
(45:49):
pop ups on my sports apps and occasionally scarf wearing
when patronizing my local German food place. But I saw
a real on Facebook of you two and knew I
had to immediately binge all seven episodes and I've already
ordered another kid and a fresh Fiorentina Battistuta jersey, as
my old one seems to have vanished from the closet.
The passion was always there, but it took two great
writers and hilarious podcasters to rekindle the embers. Thank you
(46:11):
both and Sean so so much much love and pray
that Fiorentina rebounds and avoids relegation. Robert, Wow, that's such
a great email. I'm so pleased to Robert. I'm so
happy that we could have been a part of that.
I also want to commend you the Battistuta, great player obviously,
and Fiorentina lovely jerseys man, the Purple, the Purple, some
(46:35):
of the best jerseys in the game. They avoid relegation
just so that they can stay. I mean, in general,
syria A jerseys are the best, like Benitzia has incredible jerseys,
Parma has great jerseys. But man, those Fiorentina jerseys are gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Not absolutely and quite a lovely coincidence that you did
Netherlands for Robert today on Today's Yeah, it was a gift. Yeah,
wonderful man. That warms my heart and my only question
is what is German food, which I don't know if
the answer to, but oh, it's all.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Like sausages, brought some sour kraut. We used to have
a German when I was in my internet dating phase Daniel,
before Sarah and I rekindled our high school acquaintanceship and
fell in love and everything. I'd had this internet dating
phase and there was a German restaurant just down the
block from where I lived, and that's where I would
take all of my internet dates. It was called the
(47:31):
Browhouse and they served they served beer in glass boots
in Chicago. And I remember taking a Hannah, a rent scholar,
to the Browhouse and she was like, what.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
The hell is this place?
Speaker 2 (47:46):
Hmm? But it was great, man, it was you know,
a whole lot.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
I'm taking up my headphone because I need to show
you something.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Okay, well, Daniel's gone. I'll just say that, like, I
was not a genius it came to internet dating. It'll
surprise you to learn.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Look at you look at that glass boot. Was it
like this was this where you? It was than that,
but it was that it is a dainty little This
is a dainty little Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
These were proper glass boots of beer, you know, like
you wouldn't feel great after you drank one. But yeah,
I looking back, I mean I often look back at
my twenties and think what the hell was I doing?
But I look back in that and I just think,
what the hell was I doing? Why didn't I? You know,
I could have I could have taken them anywhere. I
took them to the brown House and no wonder. I
had so a few second dates, no wonder.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yeah, well, uh, I yeah, I'm not going to tee.
I was. I only went on one Internet dating. It
was terrible, and I'm so glad to be married that
I missed that, so glad.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yes, yeah, I would not be good at it. I
mean I wasn't good at it when I had to
do it. It's kind of a miracle. And I know
that we need to end the podcast, but I'll just
say here at the end, when no one's listening anyway,
that it's kind of a miracle that Sarah fell for me,
like we all thought somebody recently, I know, I remember,
(49:14):
actually I remember when my first book came out. Sarah
was at the book launch party in Birmingham and doctor Cooper,
our high school history teacher said, what are you doing here?
And she said, I'm dating John And he said why a.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Wow, doctor Cooper. You know you study history, you really
don't have time for sort of social niceties. You just
say it, like.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
God, What a great teacher he was. He's a great teacher.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Is still is is? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:45):
Yeah? All right, Well, thanks to everybody for listening and
allowing us to wax poetic abount our our earlier days.
We appreciate you being here so much, and we'll see
you next week.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah, thanks to Brusus, Sean Titane and Kirk, and remember
to send your emails away endpod at gmail dot com.
Thanks so much. I'll see you next week. John. All
right m hm
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