Episode 11: AFCON Insanity, England Deep Dive, and Daniel Plays an Epic Football Game at a Peruvian Prison

00:00:06
Speaker 1: Welcome to the away and I'm then Alercon, I'm John green Don.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: We have a lot to talk about today.

00:00:12
Speaker 1: I think none of us wanted to have to talk about this, but we should probably we have to, And of course I'm talking about AFCON Farce. Take two, Morocco, the Karens of African Football.

00:00:23
Speaker 2: Do you want to.

00:00:24
Speaker 1: Just sort of like fill our listeners in on what is happening.

00:00:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Senegal won the Afcon tournament according to the referee on the field and also according to getting to have a parade in your home country with the trophy, which I think is the definition of winning the tournament. Actually, I think whoever gets to have the parade won the tournament pretty much. But Morocco filed a protest and said, actually, since the Senegalese team tried to leave the field to protest the penalty decision and interrupted the game, we should actually be the champions of AFCON. And that is apparently what is now going to happen Forever after Morocco will be remembered as the champions of AFCON.

00:01:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, okay, so they filed a complaint that the African Football Confederation could have just you know, knocked down. But there's been allegations of corruption, allegations of of you know, just mishandling of the situation, which seems self evident.

00:01:30
Speaker 2: If the ref had called.

00:01:32
Speaker 1: The game over in that moment, I think that would have been you know, controversial but acceptable, but you know, sort of following the rules of the game. Because the senategolsee players did leave the bitch right, but he didn't call it then, and so then it's done. It's done. So I heard on the Guardian they called it the longest bar review in history, seven days and it's just kind of appalling. I mean, you know, I was thinking about actually in terms of club soccer and club football. So you know, those who follow English Premier League know that Man City, for example, has one hundred and seventeen pending charges for.

00:02:16
Speaker 2: For financially regularities.

00:02:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, financially regulators is cheating basically, you know, financial doping, you could call it. And and since you know Arsenal was second place for a couple of those those seasons, theoretically, whenever the FA gets around to adjudicating and deciding what happened, Arsenal could win retroactively be declared champions for two of those years. I don't feel like any Arsenal fan is going to really celebrate those and so I'm wondering even like for Morocco, like what is that? Do you really feel proud of your I mean, I think you should feel proud of your team to make it the finals. I think that you should feel proud, pride for your country and you know and love for your team no matter what happens. But are you gonna feel pride as if you won at this point? Is that really something gonna that's gonna happen?

00:03:06
Speaker 2: I don't think so. Right, Well, I gotta tell you, as a Liverpool fan, if those titles get revoked by Manchester City, I will one hundred percent celebrate our new titles really well. In this sense at least, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna insist upon a retroactive parade where we where we hold up like three English Premier League titles or whatever.

00:03:28
Speaker 1: Sure from Brazil and bring them back for.

00:03:34
Speaker 2: It's your turn, buddy. Uh you did you did it? Fella? Get uh get saudio money back on the bus? Uh No? But I I would say I would take those titles and I would I would lord them over our rivals. So I would say to Manchester United supporters, we have twenty three titles and you have twenty. I would one hundred percent do.

00:03:57
Speaker 1: That right, right right, and this you know, I respect that level of pettiness because I also have that. I just feel like, you know, this is not a case of financial regularities. This is not a case of cheating. This is a case of a situation that may have been we could argue if it was adjudicated incorrectly on the field, but it was uh. And then in you know, there was still extra time to play. I mean, you know Braman Diaz still took that dumb Panenka and then uh, Senegal still went out and scored a goal in an extra time and are deserving champions of Africa, absolutely times Africa. When I went in such a hostile situation, you know, environment is a real accomplishment and no one can take that away from them, not even calf.

00:04:43
Speaker 2: Well, that's what I think is the central thing. I mean, I think afterwards one of the Senegohese players posted a picture of himself holding the trophy and was like, what are you gonna do? I'm with my trophy and my winner's medal, like I'm not giving them back. No, nor should they, And so I think ultimately what will probably happen is that twenty years from now will remember both Morocco and Senegal as different kinds of champions of that tournament. No, I disagree. Morocco will always make a case that won the tournament as a result of this decision. Yeah, and the.

00:05:19
Speaker 1: Rest of the world will know. The rest of the world will know that they didn't. So I think in twenty years will will It'll be like I remember that time that Brahman Diaz tried to Penenka and then went on to lose the the in.

00:05:32
Speaker 2: Their own countries. Listening, by the way, this is a brutal listen for I know he's a fan of the pod, so maybe should be a little kinder to him.

00:05:39
Speaker 1: Yes, well, you know I'm waiting for his his email, you know, in our inbox after this.

00:05:45
Speaker 2: Look.

00:05:46
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it also demonstrates the power and prestige of Morocco within the African Federation, right because they're you know, there were some finalists there probably the strongest team or the team best place to do really well in this upcoming tournament. So I think there's every reason to think that. Oh and they're also co hosting the World Cup with Spain, you know, in four years, I believe. So it just seems to me that there's influence happening.

00:06:21
Speaker 2: You know, something's happening there. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, you can only feel like the results on the pitch are the results because there's so much corruption in international football federations that you know, like if I don't believe that Donald Trump really won the FIFA Peace Prize either, you know, look, I mean I think that's that's he had a peace prize. He didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize. That's an it's still it's an illegitimate peace prize, is my point. It is not a legitimate peace prize, right right, right right now.

00:06:53
Speaker 1: More than ever, I just hope the benzwel And baseball team doesn't give him the World Baseball Classic Trophy because he doesn't deserve that. What a great game that was.

00:07:04
Speaker 2: Anyway, Sorry, that's a different sport, different sport. Was a great game. That was a great game, though, And you know, I to see the tier in the eye, not to get Looston Baseball, but just for a moment, we're talking about international sports in general. To see the tear in the eye of the Venezuelan relief pitcher as he pitched the final pitch was so moving, Like you forget, Like I remember seeing Louis Suarez cry once in the middle of a game, I think, like Uruguay were losing, uh and going to be out of the World Cup, and he started to cry like before the game was over. And you forget that these are human beings and that the even even on the pitch, in the in the heat of the moment, they are feeling profound things. Yeah.

00:07:46
Speaker 1: No, and I know you're totally right. I will say that Latin Americans we cry a lot, and there was kind of there's a lot of pride and the overwhelming feeling of of sort of representing your country really often manifests as tears. I was very moved by that. I was very moved by the joy of the Venezuelans and very proud of them and very happy for them. And many of my Venezuelan friends, even who don't watch baseball or follow baseball, we're absolutely floored. And I want to say this, John, I think football in sport is about these moments of joy, right, These moments of transcendence. International football national teams is about these moments when the kind of difficult, complicated, polarized ways that we all interpret the countries we belong to kind of fade away and we all feel something, feel united, feel like we can get behind a team, and everyone is always sort of like cheering for a representation of the country that they imagine that they want to live in, whatever imperfect version of that they're currently residing in right or even connected to. And because football and because sport is about those moments of joy, the Senegalese one because they experienced that moment of joy, and the Moroccans did not. The Moroccans experienced another kind of transcendence, moment of heartbreak and desperation and sadness and positive recrimination and you know, all kinds of other emotions that they're also valid, and you know we all learn from them and blah blah blah. But the Senegalese experienced the joy which is at the very lifeblood of international sport and of international football. And for that, twenty years from now, forty years from now, I will always think of them as the winners of Afghan Well Daniel.

00:09:37
Speaker 2: Before we dive deep into the English national team and all of that. I just want to say that recently on our high school's Instagram page, there was a photograph published of you playing football. We can put it on the screen now for YouTube viewers, but for everyone else, I'll just describe the photograph. Imagine the most beautiful man in the world. Okay, all right? I think transcend transcendent as both a physical specimen and as an intellect leaning slightly askance, as if perfectly balanced upon the side of one foot, absolutely attacking a football. And that is this moment that was captured by an Indian Springs photographer in nineteen ninety five. Sean, can you come on real quick and we can talk about this photograph because there's no way Daniel is going to embrace it as much as I have. Am I not? Am? I? Am?

00:10:40
Speaker 3: I right?

00:10:40
Speaker 2: That he looks incredible?

00:10:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. Uh, it's art and motion. I think you know that that picture. It's just a great reminder of how long I mean we've talked about Daniel playing in high school and how good he was, and you know how how like it was such a big like our team was actually like good, right, like we made it to a really good final say. Yeah, I will say, just away from the sort of a Donnis like picture of Daniel playing soccer on the pitch from the my beef with this montage that the school used was out of what seemed like thirty to forty pictures in a montage. I didn't see you, John or myself in any It.

00:11:32
Speaker 2: Couldn't seem to dig up a single picture of Sean or John. Wow, they had the entire class. I mean it's only fifty two kids, right, So they show forty pictures and you're like, wow, I was really left out.

00:11:45
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's the curator's I you know, I mean, I can't argue with that. It's Look, this is the most mortifying segment of our podcast so far. And I'm just wondering if if and I'm not saying I was, but if at age seventeen I was with a soccer ball art in motion, then now it's like, you know, garage sale to Tritus in motion, because now I'm forty nine years old and it's really really you know, it's not pretty. It's not pretty. It's a fair store painting in motion these days. Yeah, basically, it basically is it is anyway, I appreciate that, you know, pick me up that you guys just gave me, And maybe.

00:12:30
Speaker 2: We'll come back here after the break and talk about England. Yeah, great, all right, we'll go back.

00:12:48
Speaker 1: All right, So we're back on the away end and John is going to tell us and me about the Three Lions, the English national team, So let's go.

00:12:57
Speaker 2: So, Daniel, I think it's important to remember that England is about one third of a small island. You know, we lose track of that sometimes because it's such an important nation in global history and has muscled its way into so many conversations and had an empire that stretched around the world or whatever. But it is also the home of football. It is where football came to be, and I think talking about the English national team, we need to go back to the beginning of this silly little sport that we love, because, as the English are always happy to explain, it did get its start in England, and like, sometimes I wonder why football exists at all, like why it came to exist, like why there are eleven players instead of thirty, and why the off sides rule that baffls shan exists and all that stuff, like why have there been two hundred and forty seven Merseyside Darby's instead of eighty six or six hundred and seventeen. We've been playing games with balls for like thousands of years, right, So, like, why did the current sport we know as football come to be? Where and when it did? And I think the answer is, at least in part coal coal, Daniel, coal like the carbon fuel, the fuel. Yes, the fuel, the fuel, because that's what fueled the Industrial Revolution. And it was about a generation after the start of the Industrial Revolution that we start to see football happening. Now. The Industrial Revolution happened in England for a bunch of reasons, but one is that there was coal pretty close to the ground, which made it relatively easy to mine. And then there were coal powered steam engines that were used to get water out of those mines, so you could mine more coal more effectively, and the steam engines got more effective and et cetera, until eventually we had lots of people moving to cities and blueberries in January and all the stuff that we have now as a result of the Industrial Revolution. We see a generation later, people start to stand the rules of football, people start to play football as at least vaguely as we would recognize it today. And I really think that farmers were never going to invent that game. They were never going to be able to build out the structure and the rule books and everything else to standardize the game the way like work hours and so much else was standardized during the Industrial Revolution. But factory workers could do that standardization. And so I think that's part of why we see football emerge where and when we do, not because England is special, but because of coal.

00:15:37
Speaker 1: I think that's really fascinating. And you know, there's lots that's been written about how the Industrial Revolution transformed like everything, and even like the invention of time and the mention of of I mean not time, because youple sort of knew the morning, the afternoon, the evening the next day, the minutes, minutes, minutes became a big deal. Yeah, that that changes every thing, you know, and sort of settling at ninety minutes for a game, you know, settling all these things. It's like it is sort of this kind of imposing order on a kind of play that maybe in a previous incarnation of human society is like a rural you know, agrarian society just doesn't make much sense. Like I feel like Agraarian people play baseball, you know.

00:16:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, or they played or they played versions of football that didn't have all the same rules across all the same places, right, So you don't see the emergence of like international football. Interestingly, you don't see the emergence of international football till like forty or fifty years after you first see standardization of football because like it took a while to spread. The first international soccer game was actually played between England and Scotland. Now, I know some people might argue that is not in fact an international soccer game because those are not separate sovereign nations. But I am not one of those people because I am deeply afraid of the wrath of Scottish people. So I'm going to I'm going to say that was the first international game of football. Can I just interrupt?

00:17:05
Speaker 1: There one thing that I think you made me think of, like how many of the current teams in England and how many the teams I'm thinking of, like in around the world really started out as kind of like of workers that were like especially teams a lot of affiliated with like with actual factors. I mean, the gunners, the Arsenal. The team that I support was a was an armory basically, yeah, and then were workers from that factory. And that's the case in you know, in teams in as far as you know, Peru and Uruguay and and you know, all over the world. Like all these teams are are originally sort of come out of workplaces.

00:17:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think about the team that I think has been playing since the nineteenth century called met Police in England, which no longer comprises actual police officers, but is still called met Police. They play like down in the six or seventh division. But there's all kinds of teams like that that merged from workplaces or factories or kinds of factories, right like, and a lot of times these these teams still identify with their their local industries or with their you know, Grimsby town and fish for instance.

00:18:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, Like in Peru and Lima, there's a costad you know, which is the beer company and you know, yeah, and so yeah, I mean I don't know, it's it's like who sponsors them also, but like there is sort of an identification with these you know, their their sort of industrial roots.

00:18:36
Speaker 2: I remember that Jersey do Deck, the Great Liverpool goalkeeper got his start playing for his Polish mines team, like he was a minor in Poland. I mean both a child and a actual person who worked in mines at the same time, of course, And he was a minor in Poland and also the goalkeeper on the local mines football team and then eventually got discovered by Polish professional team and then made his way to Liverpool and saved two penalties against AC Milanda win US the Champions League back in two thousand and five. So yeah, I think that's still relatively common. Yeah. So England is the home of football. They make a big deal out of that. They've also won the World Cup. They won it once in nineteen sixty six. That team is still lauded in English soccer songs and every time one of them dies it's like a national holiday. It's a huge deal that nineteen sixty six football team. And look, only eight nations have ever won the World Cup. Right, So obviously England is a very successful footballing nation, especially given its size. It's a relatively small country both geographically and doesn't have that many people, you know, And yet I think that you could argue that England has underachieved on the international stage. They've They've never won a tournament other than the nineteen sixty six World Cup, they made it to the finals of a major tournament. They made it to the finals of the European Tournament in both twenty twenty and twenty twenty four, but lost both those finals. They finished fourth I think in twenty fourteen was it, and then bombed out or twenty eighteen and then bombed out in twenty twenty two in the quarterfinals. So they have struggled, even though I think right now they have a golden age. I mean since that twenty twenty tournament, they've really had a golden age of players. Like the current England squad is so good that the starting midfielder, the full back, the starting fullback for probably the best club team in the world. As much as it pains me to admit it, Real Madrid, their starting fullback Trent Alexander Arnold, isn't even on the team for England. He can't even make the bench. Now we can debate why that is, but it speaks to the depth that England have as a national football team. They have arguably the best striker in the world, at least this year in Harry Kane. They have a midfield that includes Declan Rice, who I know is near and dear to your heart and who is a great player. They have amazing defensive players. They have a goalie with exceptionally short arms who nonetheless manages to save the vast majority of shots that come his way in Jordan Pickford. So they've got the players. They have the players to win the World Cup. What I question is whether they have the ability to win the World Cup. And I don't mean like on the pitch, I mean off the pitch, whether they have the psychological ability, whether they have the coaching, whether they have whether they actually can do it. Like this Golden Generation, to borrow a phrase from the English, has one fuck all right, And I mean I look at their bracket this year, like, at least according to my bracket, they're probably going to face Germany or Brazil in the quarterfinals and that's going to be pretty challenging. I mean, there's that great Gary Lineker quote. I don't know if you've ever heard this. This is one of my favorite football quotes of all time. Football is a simple game. Twenty two men chase a ball around for ninety minutes and at the end, the Germans always win, and I fear that will be the case this year for England. I fear that they may go out in the round, in the quarterfinal round to Germany or Brazil, because I think that's a tough Those are tough matchups for them, and I just I know that every footballing nation like is under tremendous amounts of pressure. Like I can't even imagine the amount of pressure that these kids are under. We're talking about people who are mostly in their twenties, often in their early twenties, you know, holding together a nation. It's it's an insane amount of pressure. But there's something about the English press and something about the kind of international attention that that English football gets that I just think is makes that pressure even worse. You know, the only thing I can compare it to is probably Brazil. I think the pressure in Brazil is unbelievably difficult to deal with. But I just I wonder, with that amount of pressure, whether this group of players can win a World Cup. I would love to see it personally, but I just I don't know if they can.

00:23:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. What I remember is that final where Jayden Sancho, Marcus Rashford and Bukayosaka miss penalty kicks, yes Italy. And the you know, the racial abuse they got online, the right the vitriol that they had to experience as very young men. Buka Isaka I think was like seventeen or something, maybe eighteen years old. And so there is also that dark side of English fan culture that you know, is with this kind of you know, racist, nativist ideology that's pretty gross. Uh. But I I gotta say I as much as I just like England's impact in history and its empire and you know, and it's kind of like the kind of smugness, I really like the English team and they have some some fantastic players. They have some really likable characters. And it's not just because I'm an Arsenal fan, but I think I think Bayosaka is.

00:24:26
Speaker 2: Like, oh soccer, is one of the most likable people in all of football.

00:24:29
Speaker 1: Such a lovely young man. And and Deklan Rice you mentioned is a hard, hard worker, uh and incredibly talented and just has this engine won't stop. And and you know, Pickford is kind of clownish but also just you know, remarkable talent.

00:24:44
Speaker 2: I mean, I.

00:24:45
Speaker 1: I you know, we could go back to my hierarchy of loyalties. I had them pretty low, just be for you know, because I obviously I want Latin American teams to win before I want English teams.

00:24:57
Speaker 2: The English team to win.

00:24:58
Speaker 1: But if we're down to England versus any other European team, I would be cheering for England because I just know all the players, you know, And I do think that part of the pressure comes from the fact that their league is the most watched league in the world, you know, and is the most powerful and richest league in the world, and we all follow it.

00:25:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's definitely true. But that's also part of the reason why English players are so good right now is because they you know, have well funded academies, because they have lots of opportunities to you know, have players playing alongside world class international talent. You don't have that in MLS or you do, but the world class international talent is in their forties. Yeah.

00:25:38
Speaker 1: It's it's like James, you know, coming on to the last twenty minutes at age thirty two, trying to you know, get in fitness shape good for the World Cup. You know, it's not the same, right, right, It's not the same. So I think that that's part of why England are so good right now. I think they have a very bright future. They have a lot of really good young players. But you know, as much as I am inclined to dislike Harry Kane because he's a Tottenham player, even though he now plays in Germany and he's famously a bit of a mouth breather both literally and figuratively, I know how much it would mean to him to win a World Cup. I know how much it would mean to Jordan Pickford, and like, of course it means it would mean everything to every one of those players. But to your point, I know the England players. I feel I've seen them in interviews. They speak the language that I speak, and so inevitably I feel connected to them. I want to say one more thing before we take a break, that nobody can win until they win, right, there's always you know, Spain had never won, and then they won, and now and then you know, France had never won, and then they won, and then they want another, you know, and it's like you know, I think now in terms of my club team, Arsenal, they haven't won in twenty two years, and when they do it, I feel like the something breaks and then the mentality changes and then you can win. And you know, there's so much talent on the English team. I feel like, one of these days they're going to win. And when they do, then of this all this losing and all this coming up short and all this fuck all that you've mentioned kind of fades away and you're like, oh, true, remember that back then when we thought we couldn't win, we actually can.

00:27:27
Speaker 2: You know, right, That's very true. And one of the things that people say about England to your point about the penalty shootout with SOCCA and Rashford, is that they are choke artists somehow, But actually they've won one of their four penalty shootouts in the World Cups and four of their eleven penalty shootouts and tournaments overall. Like, that's just not a big enough sample size to have any data. Really. You know, if one penalty kick had gone differently in one of those penalty shootouts, they would have won half of their penalty shootouts and then nobody would have that narrative. So I agree with you. I think the narrative that you can't win is only true until you Win. I remember. Not to make this about me, but I remember I was a bowler. I got dumped in college. I mean I got dumped repeatedly, but I got dumped once in college, devastatingly. And I took up bowling after that. I went and bowled every day by myself or with my friend Levin, and I could never break two hundred until I did break two hundred, and then it was easy to break two hundred. Yeah.

00:28:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's the thing. Once you do it, you can't not do it. Similarly, here in Bodda, I you know that there's this hill, this mountain called Bothios is basically like the top of the mountain, and I wanted to bike to the top because I see like old guys biking to the top.

00:28:45
Speaker 2: And I couldn't do it.

00:28:46
Speaker 1: And then I just kept at it, and then I did it, and now I.

00:28:49
Speaker 2: Can do it. You know, it just happened. May it happen for Arsenal? I hope?

00:28:53
Speaker 1: So all right, let's take a quick break and I'll be back with a story and some mail. We're right, okay, So we're back on the away end. John, I have a story for you, and this one starts when my first book was published in two thousand and five, a story collection called.

00:29:24
Speaker 2: War by Candlelight. Great book, Thank you.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to have it translated and publishing lots of different places, including Peru, where I'm from. And so for this very brief moment, I was kind of well known in Lima, and as a consequence, I got invited to lots of places to do readings and whatnot. In the course of these readings, I met a guy named Carlos who had this interesting job. He was kind of like a liaison between inmates in proven prisons and the state to try to help them advocate for.

00:29:55
Speaker 2: What they needed.

00:29:56
Speaker 1: He built and kind of organized and funded or you know, fundraised to create lots of workshops where they teach them, you know, skills and whatnot. Anyway, so for his job, he traveled all over the country and went to all the different prisons, and as a result, he knew a lot of people that I.

00:30:15
Speaker 2: Was interested in getting to know.

00:30:16
Speaker 1: And the reason is that my book had a lot to do with politics, and specifically with the armed conflict in Peru in the nineteen eighties, and he thought, and I agreed, that it would be a good idea to meet some of the protagonists of that conflict, many of whom were in prison, and like maybe just fact check my stories with them or sort of get their testimonies. And since I was working on a novel that was kind of also based on that period, I thought this was just a fantastic idea. Now I went to one of the prisons, and I went to another one, and I just became kind of fascinated by this place and obsessed with the different correctional institutions of Peru, mostly because they were just like this world apart from everything, and one thing you should know, improven prisons like the police, they basically can control who gets in and gets out, but they don't really control anything else that goes on in the prison. And one of the prisons I visited, Lurigancho, like the police actually couldn't go into the blocks themselves, like they weren't allowed by the inmates. So this is kind of like really alternate universe, and I was totally fascinated by it. I met with lots of former guerrillas, some of whom had known my uncle Haviert, who disappeared in nineteen eighty nine, and that was a loss that was like really formative for me and in some ways like shaped my kind of adolescent brain and identity and met me want to be a writer and a journalist. I met people who had suffered tremendous losses and had learned to appreciate them for the lessons they'd learn. I met people who'd done some really awful things and worked their whole lives to try to understand why. And so basically every chance I got, I'd go to either to one of two prisons, either Lurigancho, which is the largest prison in Peru, which really looked like something out of Dante when I first started visiting, or another nearby institution, which by comparison, was almost provincial and relaxed, a place called Casteo Castro. And in Costal Costro, I met another guy, a young man named Manchitas. I don't actually know his real name, a Manchez a kind of stain. And he earned his nickname because he had this kind of light brown, wavy hair, but he had a little wisp of gray at the top, almost like like Leo Troussard, you know, like just like and he'd had that since he was a boy, so everyone called him Manchita's. He was from the jungle. He was about my age, and what I liked about him was he was so zen about the prison sentence he was serving, which, if I recall correctly, he was just serving because he'd driven a truck that you know, it had cocaine in it and it wasn't like a big time gangster or anything. He was just kind of like, well, that was bad. And we talked a lot about soccer. We talked about local soccer, We talked about international football, the national team. You know, which clubs we liked, who played well, who did in tactics. And it was Anchitas who decided, at this point i'd become kind of a fixture at Costa Castro, or at least like a semi regular visitor, that he wanted to see me play. So he spoke to the boss of the block, the Taita, and then one day on one of these visits, he informed me that the following week there was going to be a game in my honor and that I should come ready to play. It was going to be an inter block match, so it was like his block versus another block, and the Narcos block, which was Manchita's block would be hosting the terrorists lost Rucos he called them, which is mostly like members of Shining Path, and I would be playing with the narcos. So a couple things here, John, Yes, Costell Costro was pretty chill compared to Rrigancho, And yes, I'd been visiting this place by that point for more than a year. And yes, lats OFO knew me and were pretty nice to me. But you're wondering was I intimidated to play there? And the answer is absolutely, I was intimidated to play there. This is not like trying out for like the Indian Springs High school soccer tea. Don you know me, I'm not a big guy. I'm not strong. I have heard about gyms and I know they exist, but I don't frequent them. And so the whole thing seemed like a level up from what I was able to do. But such as it is, you gotta go, you gotta play. And the day of the game, I went nervous, and all the whole block was out to watch. They'd set up benches along the side, and I remember it was super hot, like it was one of those like summer days in them. It's just blazing hot. There's it's all. There's no trees, there's no shade, there's no nothing. And the field was a cement prison yard in the Narcos block, and it was not strictly speaking a rectangle. It was kind of like one sideline was the wall of the of the block, and it was interrupted at these regular intervals by these kind of beams that jutted out into the field of play, so that when you're running downfield you had to be really careful, like weaving around them so you didn't run into them. And then the end lines right, so like one end of the pitch, if you were to take the length from corner flag to corner flag, although there were no corner flags, obviously was about two thirds of length of the other end. So it kind of like went down into a cone, right, trapezoidal, trapezoidal, yes, yes, thank you for that geometry. Now, I know what you're thinking, and you, like me, probably would assume that most goals would be scored on the wider end, yeah, because there'd be space, And in fact that was actually totally wrong. We started playing and the narrow end of the pitch was this like frantic like pinball machine of like legs and knees such that like every time the ball went down there, one way or another, it seemed to end up in the back of the net. Again, there's an asterisk on the word net because the net, the goal itself, was just like three lines drawn like painted onto the back of the prison wall.

00:35:49
Speaker 2: Right.

00:35:50
Speaker 1: So, anyway, first half, blazing hot. We the Narcos are playing really well and we're winning, scoring a bunch of really sloppy, weird you know goal on the narrow end of the pitch.

00:36:03
Speaker 2: I didn't.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: I don't remember really doing much with the ball except like trying to get rid of it as soon as it came to me because I really wanted to not get tackled and not have someone break my legs. I remember at halftime I was talking to Machita's and he introduced my teammates to me, and I don't remember them all, but I recalled that one of the defenders looked kind of like a soldier. He was like tall and strong, he was a defender, he had a buzz cut, and it turns out that he had been a soldier and he told me that he'd been a helicopter pilot in the Proven Army. And then started using his flights over the jungle to move cocaine. And then now he found himself at Costa Costello playing a game of soccer with me as his teammate, and he told me all this without really smiling. We switched sides at the half and we started survived.

00:36:46
Speaker 2: The real onslaught.

00:36:48
Speaker 1: They played with a lot of passion, the tarucos. And this is kind of when I realized that I was the guest of honor. And so there was this like war happening around me. This is really violent and really rough game. And then I had this little force field of privilege protecting me. So there was like nobody, you know, people were pulling out of tackles. You know, they were like giving me an extra you know, like like when you were playing with a child and you don't want to like, you know, go intrevate it on them. So this was like at the same time like very welcome because I didn't really want to get hurt and also like a little bit condescending, you know, like like come on, you know, And so I had this kind of like real push pull between like self preservation and like you know, kind of like this the little tiny inklings of macho nes of like, come on, I can handle this. It's not clear that I actually could have handled it. But anyway, the game's winding down and we're winning comfortably, and despite the terrorist's best efforts, they can't seem to get close to us. And I noticed this thing. The ref, who was also an inmate, is about to blow his whistle because it was full time, right, and Manchita's and the tight that like like.

00:37:57
Speaker 2: Ran over him. We're like no, no, no, no, no, no no.

00:38:00
Speaker 1: And at that point I realized that the game was not going to be over until I scored. Oh, of course, because it was in your honor, it was in my honor. And of course, at the moment that I realized this, I proceeded to miss one sitter after another, you know, like tap ins that I just somehow put wide of the painted bar. You know, it was so mortifying because at this point there's two squads of players looking at me, the terrorists and the narcos, and they're all like, dude, come on.

00:38:28
Speaker 2: You know.

00:38:30
Speaker 1: I want to say in my defense that it was very hot. I was very tired, and I think the stress and anxiety of playing in that environment which is not my normal playing environment was very much sort of like acting.

00:38:42
Speaker 2: On my nerves.

00:38:43
Speaker 1: Anyway, When I finally finally scored, the ref looked over to Manchita's, Manchita's nodded, and then the whistle blew. This is the part I remember, because I kind of remember like collapsing on the floor and looking straight up at the sky and just being like dead. At some point I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Mantitas was pulling me up and he said this thing to me that really sort of stuck with me, and he said, you got to go tell a terrorist they played a good game. They really hate to lose.

00:39:13
Speaker 2: And what a two sentence couplet that is.

00:39:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, because if you understand anything about Proven politics, like they'd lost it all. Yeah, you know, they'd lost this you know, stupid maniacal homicidal war that had started. They'd lost whatever shred of public support they might have had in any sort of reaches of the Proven territory. They had lost their leaders who were all imprisoned, and you know, these guys had lost their lives because they were going to be in prison for the next you know, fifteen to twenty years. And I went over and tricked all their hands in the same way that you know, the same ritual that kids all over the world enact after each game, where they're like good game, or if you know it's now kids go g g gg gg. Yeah, they didn't even say the whole thing. So I did my version of gg g g gg with the with the members of the Shining Path who happened to be good at soccer, and and that was my one of the most memorable games I've ever played, and probably one of the worst games I've ever played also, But just the end, I want to say, because Mantita's was such a kind young man. He's, like I said, he's about our age. Now he's out of prison, he's living back in his hometown. He's a father and a husband, and last I heard he was doing really great. And so yeah, that's my that's my story, man.

00:40:39
Speaker 2: What a story. I mean. I am often reminded that you have lived a thousand lives, but that story really brings it home for me. Uh, that is an absolute banger of a tale. My friend. You should uh, you should start every dinner party with that one before we serve the turkey. Can tell you about the time.

00:41:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I spent a lot of years going to the prisons in Peru, and I learned so much there and learned from the people there, and I am super grateful that I had that experience. Another time, I'll tell you about the time I slept a night in Luiganto.

00:41:18
Speaker 2: I'll tell you that's there another day. Oh, that sounds like a good one too. It's also a really interesting exploration as a story of how power works. That the state has the power to imprison people but not the power to define necessarily how they are in prison. That the referee has the whistle, but not necessarily the power to decide when and how the game ends. It's a really interesting exploration of who really has the power in different situations.

00:41:45
Speaker 1: Well, you know, Ludigunchul. Every Ludigancho is like I said, it's the other prison, it's the crazier one. And Ryguncho's BA basically set up is like a map of criminal life in Lima. So every block belongs to a district of the city, except the two blocks for international and national drug trafficking. Because those guys they're either from the jungle, so they don't have any relationship to Lima. Really or they're you know, Polish, Israeli, Nigerian, Colombian, Mexican, you know, Spanish, Italian, whatever, and they don't could care less what's happening in Lima. They're like, you know, it's irrelevant to them. And those two are the blocks that have the most money. And so what they do is that they find players who are good from other blocks and they bring them to their blocks, to Block seven and Block nine, so that they can play for their team. And I literally had a guy tell me, he's like, no, no, we're like the real Madrid and Barcelona of this prison. When it comes to sameon, we're the semi pro team. Yeah, because we can we have you know, the transfer market after each tournament is like, oh, who played well on Block eighteen, come live with us, and they give them like a cell and a bed and food and then that player.

00:42:54
Speaker 2: Plays for them. Wow. It was crazy, Wow, totally crazy as wild. Right, let's get to some of our mail, which will feel a little disappointing after that incredible story, but we want to begin with this email from John, who writes, Dear John and Daniel, I've only gotten int a Premier League fandom in the last couple of years, and I'm wondering how you have handled this situation. I'm a Chelsea fan and in the first leg of our Champions League round with PSG, we lost five to two. Then we came home and lost one nail to Newcastle. And I am listening currently to the second leg of the Champions League on my phone and PSG just scored a second goal in the first fourteen minutes. Should I smash my phone, tear off the Chelsea jersey my son got me for Christmas and rip it to shreds, swear loudly, or all of the above. Best John in an arbor, John, I recommend that you take the Daniel Aracone approach to this issue, which is that you somehow enjoy the joy of soccer without not feeling too much of the pain of soccer.

00:43:56
Speaker 1: I have a chat with some friends. They're parents of my son's friends in New York, and we're all Arsenal fans. And there's one, you know, one guy' zen like me, and one guy is like always about to blows top, you know, like third minute of the game and he's like, why are we not scoring yet?

00:44:16
Speaker 2: You know?

00:44:17
Speaker 1: I love them both. They're great guys, Joe and I bey and they I always worry about Joe's heart, you know. Yeah, so I think the option there could be an option E. So yeah, the fifth option, which is like go to therapy.

00:44:40
Speaker 2: I have just I decided a few years ago, and this has worked surprisingly well for me to just be less invested in losing than I am in winning, to just enjoy winning more than I don't enjoy losing. Instead of hating losing, I love winning. And I have found this to be not just helpful for my football fandom, but kind of helpful in real life.

00:45:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I did realize at a certain point, if Arsenal lost, like on a Saturday morning like my it would take me to like noon or like two in the afternoon to recover. And that wasn't really fair to my kids and my wife, you know, my life in general. So John in ann Arbor, good luck surviving the rest of Chelsea's season, and I'm sure you're gonna be okay. I got another question for you, this one I think you'll like, Dear John, Daniel and Sean. I'm interested if you think the Champions League's success of Bodo Glimpt might have implications for the Norwegian World Cup run.

00:45:40
Speaker 2: Huh wow. So Bodo Glimped is this relatively small team from Norway that unfortunately just got kicked out of the Champions League. They went into their second game with the three zero lead and lost five nil, and so on aggregator was five to three and they got knocked out of the Champions League. But they still had a great run. And I think a number of the Norwegian players play at Boto Glimpt and I've always felt like if you have that club team chemistry and you can bring it to the national team, it helps, especially if you have Erling Holland as your new striker. Yeah. Yeah, I think.

00:46:21
Speaker 1: The Boto glim story was one that I think that if you love sport in its purest form, you had to support them, You had to be happy for them because the very small club. It's in a very small town. I think the stadium is like ten thousand people.

00:46:34
Speaker 2: You know.

00:46:34
Speaker 1: They play above the Arctic Circle, with my understanding, and they were these kind of like incongruously bright yellow jerseys in a place where you know, it's like winter for eight months of the year.

00:46:46
Speaker 2: There is no color.

00:46:47
Speaker 1: They play on a plastic pitch and they played some really great counterteching football. I think they're always going to do well. I mean, I think it does depend a little bit on the form of Earling Holland and the fitness of Martinodoguard.

00:47:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, who has been in and.

00:47:04
Speaker 1: Out of the Arsenal side this season because he keeps you injuring his shoulder in some like freak accidents, and early Hollins kind of dropped off a little bit. But I don't know if that's just because Pep just decided he wants to play that a striker.

00:47:18
Speaker 2: Now or something. But we'll see.

00:47:20
Speaker 1: I'm excited to see what Norway does.

00:47:22
Speaker 2: Yah me too. I think they're gonna at least make it to the UH knockouts, and then anything is possible. We also have an email from Tanell in Estonia. I apologize if I'm mispronouncing your name, who writes High Grade podcast. Now that you have educated lots of people about the off side rule, feel free to explain to us that it doesn't always apply. Because the offside rule does not apply in a throw in situation or in the team's own half. This is very true and very important for Sean. So Sean, when there is an off side. It's not off sides if it's in the team's half, if it's in the defending half, and it's not off sides if it's on a throw. And in fact, just recently AFC Wimbledon scored off a throw in off an offside throw what would have been an off side throw in, and it was the throw of my life. My guy Marcus Brown scored one of the guys I helped pay for. Wonderful you got all that done.

00:48:13
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm just you know, I'm further confused. But but what what Tanell is saying makes sense to me.

00:48:22
Speaker 2: So all right, maybe we need to have tell explained the offside role to you.

00:48:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got I got in a bit of a of a fight, or rather I was I was yelled at by a parent at west Side Soccer when I was the kind of ref because I didn't call a player offside because he started his run in his own half. And then uh, and so this parent is berating me, and I'm trying to explain to him that the offside rule, what the offside rule is, and he could didn't believe me, and it was it was unpleasant for everybody. There's also these great moments. I don't know if you've seen this, John, where like there's this great clip of Luis Suarez like uh, signaling to the ref for a handball when it's the goalie the oppos and goalies touching the ball. Or there was one where Arsenal scored a goal because there was a throw in to a player who was in what would be an offside position and they went on to score, and because the team which was.

00:49:16
Speaker 2: Just kind of had a.

00:49:17
Speaker 1: Collective defending brain freeze, just stopped the play because they were off side, and they all raised their hand for off sides and you're like, dude, this is a throw in. What a you're doing? And then we basically walked it in.

00:49:28
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened to a Wimbledon.

00:49:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sean, I mentioned this because it's not just you who doesn't know the rules. Sometimes the players themselves don't know the rules in the heat of the moment.

00:49:37
Speaker 2: So don't feel bad, makes.

00:49:39
Speaker 3: Me feel makes me feel a little better.

00:49:43
Speaker 2: Well, thanks to everybody for writing us. We love hearing from you away ndpod at gmail dot com. Thanks as always to Daniel and Sean, and also to our editor Kurt for being here with us. We love making this podcast for you and hope you enjoy it half as much as we like making it.

00:49:59
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we'll see you next week, guys. Thanks mm hmm