9 Soccer-ish Facts about the World Cup

Can a daily banana basket help players feel less homesick? Should goalies be given more bathroom breaks? And did Kim Jung-Il invent a top secret technology to guarantee more wins? Will and Mango share some strange facts about soccer's biggest tournament.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I guess what will what's that mango? So you know

(00:03):
I love the World Cup, right, And one of the
people I always think about when the World Cup starts
now is Kim Jong Ill, like the Korean dictator? What
what what's you have to do with soccer? Yeah, so
I'm not sure if you remember this, but in two
thousand ten, North Korea sent this team to the World
Cup and the coach of the team claimed that when
the North Korean scored, or if they ever won games,

(00:25):
it was only because he was getting guidance during the
game from Kim Jong Il. The guy's got so many talents.
So how exactly did this work? So it's in it's
an amazing way he did this. The dictator was apparently
sending him telepathic signals through this invisible cell phone technology
that he'd invented I guess one year before, and and
that's what dictators do in their spare time. But before

(00:46):
you laugh at how ludicrous that sounds, you do have
to remember that this is the same man who the
first time he played golf supposedly scored five holes in one.
I mean, it might sound just like borderline ridiculou list,
but anyway, but it was the North Korean team any good?
I mean, they did get to the World Cup, which is,
you know, a huge heat, but it's hard to compete

(01:09):
against superstar nations and they ended up losing seven zero
to Portugal. And supposedly when they arrived back in pyong Young,
they were put on a stage and humiliated for six
hours and from these elite government officials and which just
sounds miserable, like it's a no win situation. But that's
actually the first of nine World Cup facts we've got
for you today. So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners,

(01:51):
welcome the part time genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend Mangues Ticket and
sitting behind that soundproof glass, he's cross stitching again, Mango.
He is cross stitching a tribute, this time to pull
the World Cup predicting octopus. He's so good at needle point,
he really is. Well, that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil.

(02:12):
All right, Mago. It's obviously World Cup season and we're
talking about soccer today. But I'm curious before we dive in,
why do you love the tournament so much? So part
of it is that I grew up in the States
and I only got to visit my relatives in India
every I don't know, three or four years, and it
was always doing the monsoons. But when it was a
World Cup year, it was just so exciting. And I remember,

(02:34):
particularly like when I was in fifth grade, my grandparents
had one of the few color TVs around, and this
was obviously a long time ago, but we'd all stay
up to watch the games live and you play cards,
you chat to just be so much anticipation for these games.
And then my cousins friends would come over and so
we'd all huddle around this tiny TV and just root
for underdogs and and you know, you'd be watching like

(02:56):
Roger Mila, who was I don't know, like thirty eight
or thirty nine score goals, and you'd be so excited
for him or or you know, you see these colonial
rivalries play out on the pitch, and and it was
just really fun, partially because soccer is so much a
game of upsets, like more upsets happened in soccer than
other sports. But I had this amazing experience in two
thousand and six when I wanted to watch this Ivory

(03:18):
Coast game in Brooklyn, and this was before soccer seemed
to be that big in New York. I was in
Clinton Hill. I was I was walking to a bar
and they didn't have the game on. And then I
walked to this other bar and they didn't have this
game on, and I was like increasingly irritated that I
couldn't watch this game. And then I walked by this
empty African barbershop and I heard these cheers in the back.

(03:38):
So I just kind of looked in and there was
this guy standing in the back. He kind of just
pointed at me and he said, you want to watch
the game? And I was like nodding, and he pulled
this curtain open and in the back of the barbershop
there was this room full of people just huddled around
this tiny TV. And he motioned me to come in
and and so I just watched the game on the floor,
surrounded by people, and it just reminded me of India

(04:01):
and and it was just so wonderful. I love that.
I love that story. That's pretty great. And you know,
I obviously love international soccer. I love men's soccer, women's soccer,
but uh, I'm excited that you actually had to research
soccer for this episode, right right, I'm curious what story
you're gonna lead off with. Yeah, you know it actually
had a lot of fun researching for this this episode,

(04:22):
and I think though that I'm going to stick with
your dictator's team. And this is a story that involves Mussolini.
So I think we both know that FIFA is a
pretty corrupt organization, but it's hard to imagine anything is
brazen as when Italy held the World Cup. This was
back in nineteen thirty four. Now, according to a book
by the BBC's Chris Hunt, Mussolini started things off by

(04:44):
making the trophy way more ostentatious, which is not surprising.
That's kind of the dictator's thing to do. He built
his own trophy for the Cup that was six times
the size, six times the size of the traditional World
Cup trophy. Then he proceeded it to rig the matches,
at least that's what people think. So there's this rumor

(05:04):
that he hand picked every ref in the tournament, and
when Italy beat Austria in the semifinals, it really showed,
I mean apparently not only were their penalties and bad
calls against Austria that shouldn't have been called. But during
one play in Austrian kicked the ball to go out
of bounds and the ref actually headed the ball back
in and passed it to an Italian player. That's ridiculous,

(05:25):
But I mean, I guess if you're going to the
trouble of creating a trophy that six times that big,
like you might as well ring the tournament. It's true,
it's true, And like you said, soccer is a game
of upsets, so it's possible that they could have won
on their own. And apparently Mussolini didn't even like soccer,
and he often described the sport as unmanly, but he
knew that it was important to be seen as victorious

(05:47):
on this huge world stage. And they're actually academic papers
about this that speculate it would have been hard for
Italy to have gotten those results without at least some
help from the refs. That's really crazy. So one of
the things I've enjoyed doing is seeing what the World
Cup teams demand at hotels. And for some reason, this
was leaked in two thousand ten, and some of the

(06:08):
things makes sense, right, Like Portugal wanted the hotel to
provide these four bodyguards for Cristiano Ronaldo, who's obviously a
massive superstar. Um Algeria wanted Karen's in every room, and
and Ecuador wanted a daily banana basket delivered to each player.
Has just fun banana basket. I think that should just
be a thing everywhere, right, But perhaps one of the

(06:30):
strangest request was that France had this outright ban on
bar soap for their players. And they demand that the
hotel only provide liquid soaps. So I honestly get all
of the others, but but why the bar soap thing.
You know, I'm not sure about this entirely. I do
know the French manager is a little cookie, or was
a little cookie, and and at the time he was

(06:52):
really into astrology, so he wouldn't like let Aleo be
a defender on the team or whatever. But I think
this was just a way to prevent any chance of
slipping on bar so open in the shower or or
in the bathroom. I don't know. It's kind of crazy, okay,
I mean, I guess, I guess I can see where
he's coming from on that. But all right, Well, here's
a quick one about the World Cup trophy. So for starters,

(07:14):
it's strange that it's called the World Cup when the
trophy isn't really shaped like a cup anymore. But one
of the facts I saw about this, did you know
that the trophy is actually running out of room? So
how do you mean? Well, currently there's only space to
etch in maybe three or four more winning teams onto
the trophies. So if you look ahead to the twenty
thirty World Cup, they'll either need to extend the trophy

(07:36):
with a bigger basse or they'll just have to make
a new trophy. That's pretty funny. So one thing I've
heard repeated over and over since I was a kid
was that India made the nine World Cup, but then
they had to withdraw. And I've heard different variations of
the story, right, Like I've heard that the team refused
to play in shoes, or or because they wanted to
play barefoot, or like the Indian government refused to buy

(07:59):
them shoes, or they did wear shoes but they couldn't
play in them, and and I was curious if there
was any truth to this. Right, it turns out in
the Summer Olympics, the Indian national team competed against France
and it was actually a close game. It was two
to one, but they did it playing barefoot, which actually
shocked the world community. But then nine fifty when they

(08:19):
made the World Cup, they actually backed out for a
different reason. So according to historians, while the team might
have been annoyed that they had to play in soccer shoes,
it had more to do with the fact that the
World Cup was announced late and they had this super
short practice schedule, and the fact that the newly independent
Indian government didn't think that the World Cup was that
big a tournament, so like they didn't want to fund

(08:39):
the team to go halfway around the world of Brazil.
You know, if it had been another Olympics, they would
have happily ponied up for that, but they didn't see
this as that big a world event. And the strange
part is that soccer isn't that big an Indian now,
like everyone is cricket crazy. But if they had sent
that team to the World Cup, there are a lot
of historians who think that India would have been more

(09:00):
ested in soccer over the years and and had a
much stronger team today. Yeah, and I mean that makes
sense when you think about the impact of of this
worldwide tournament. But well, here's a funny little tradition. So
in the nineteen sixty two World Cup, Chile's team ate
Swiss cheese before defeating the Swiss. Then they ate spaghetti
before playing Italy and beat them. Then they drank vodka

(09:21):
shots to prepare for the USSR match, which they also won.
And then they drank coffee before a brazil match. But
apparently it was really the wrong stereotypical food to ingest
because their luck ran out in that game. Unfortunately. I
don't know what Brazilian food you should have eaten to
make sure you beat the Brazilian team, but the tough one.

(09:43):
Here's another weird one about superstitions, and this comes from
an argentinean goldie named Sergio Goccia, and he used to
leave it all out on the field before penalty shootouts.
And actually I'm going to let him describe it. This
is from an interview with The Guardian, So quote reporter,
didn't you you used to prepare for shootouts by urinating
on the pitch? You know, by the rules of the

(10:06):
game until the match finishes, you cannot abandoned the field,
and if you have any necessary human urges, you have
to go on the field. So That's what happened against
Yugoslavia in the ninety World Cup quarterfinals. At the end
of the game, I really had to go, so I
had no choice, but we won. So then when the
semifinal against Italy went to penalties, I did it again
and it worked. So from that moment on, I did

(10:27):
it before every shootout. It was my lucky charm. That
is so strange, but you know, you do hear about
so many of these athletes being superstitious, and there's so
much on the line that you know, it's not surprising
they developed superstitions, But that one is a little weird.
I don't know that I know many that are weirder
than that. But all right, we've got two more facts
before we declare a winner. But before we get to those,

(10:49):
let's take a quick break. Welcome back to Part time Genius.
We're talking about the World Cup. So before we get

(11:09):
to our last couple of facts, Mango, I'm curious, are
you enjoying the tournament this year? Yeah? I am. I
I love all the upsets, I love following different nations
and stuff, but I haven't watched as much as i'd
like because you know, the games are on during the day.
It's it's funny. As we have watched though, Lizzie has
had this funny theory about the managers of the teams,
like she thinks they either all look like they could

(11:31):
be French presidents or disheveled retirees. And it's actually a
pretty good way to like organize the managers if if
you see them, they neatly fit into those two categories.
It's sometimes they're the most entertaining part of these matches.
Like I've loved watching the Synegal coach. He was so animated.
It's it's been pretty entertaining. And I mean he looks

(11:51):
like he should be a French president. It's a category.
You're right, it's a good theory. Here, what's your last factor?
All right, Well, this isn't exact actually a World Cup fact,
but there's a stadium that I wanted to talk about,
and it's a Studio Milton Coorea, which is also called
Big Zero or the Big Zero. And what's awesome about
it is that the midfield line is located exactly on

(12:14):
the equator. And so here's what I think is fun
about that. So when you're playing there, each team is
actually playing for and defending an entire hemisphere. So I
don't know why I find that so amusing. I mean,
it feels like that's where the World Cup finals should
be held every year, you know, if this perfect sense?
All right, Well, what's your last fact, Mago. Well, if

(12:35):
you've been watching the World Cup, there's been a little
speculation about whether Russia should be winning as much as
they have, and it is actually a good team. I mean,
they came in sort of mediocre, but they've played smart.
But there are questions about Vladimir Putin and Russian corruption.
But the Russians are actually responsible for one of the
most honest moments in World Cup history. And there's this
player named Igornetto. Uh. This was in the nineteen two

(12:58):
World Cup. His his team was tied up with Uruguay
and he scored a goal, but it actually went through
the net on the side of the goal. So Netto
went to the ref and he urged him not to
count it because it wouldn't be fair to win that way.
And and I can't even imagine a player being that
honest today, you know, I mean, people fake injuries to
get penalties, people do all these things. But you know,

(13:19):
he asked for a goal to be retracted, and luckily
the team scored and won in the nine minute of
the game. But years later he recalled why he did that,
and he said, quote, we should win without relying on
the referee's mistakes, and when it was changed, I finally
felt a sense of relief. Yeah wow, I mean, you know,
it is so rare in sports to see that level

(13:41):
of of honesty. So you know, I kind of want
to give you the trophy for that one. And then
of course, thinking back about the goal, Coachia, you know, uh,
urinating on the pitch and all of that, like that
is just so strange. But I gotta be honest, I'm
super impressed with Lizzie's theory of organizing the managers. I
feel like she's kind of swooped in and stolen the

(14:03):
trophy this week. Or are you good with that? Yeah,
I'm fine with that. All right. Well, thank you guys
for listening. We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow.