Episode 8: Creators of Golden Goal Magazine join The Away End, Daniel talks Japan, and Storytime with John

00:00:05
Speaker 1: Welcome to The Away and the only soccer podcast that regularly named checks Albert Camu and Tony Morrison. I'm Danielle Alarcon.

00:00:13
Speaker 2: I'm John Green. Today we're doing something a little different, something we haven't done before on this young podcast. We have guests, not one guest, but two actual guests, a pair, a duo. Also, if you're on YouTube, you might be wondering where I am. I'm coming to you from a bay in Jamaica. Are are you there doing research for The Away and the Yeah? Yeah, oh it's work trip. Thanks for asking one hundred percent of work trip. Both research for my new novel which is set partly here, no joke, and also uh yeah, I mean the Jamaica national team, Daniel is it's all that anybody can talk about here?

00:00:50
Speaker 1: Still in the mix?

00:00:51
Speaker 2: Are they going to make the World Cup? Are they not?

00:00:53
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:00:54
Speaker 2: In the got to beat New Caledonia, but let's get to our guests.

00:00:58
Speaker 1: Got to find the New Caledonia first, and then played.

00:01:01
Speaker 2: That I would beat them. I was stunned on my research to learn that New Caledonia is in Oceania. I mean I would have bet my life on New Caledonia being off the coast of Spain.

00:01:10
Speaker 1: Okay, Miguel and Alex, welcome to the Way End. You're officially our first ever guests and we're super happy you could join us. You are, Miguel, I know you. We played soccer together. Miguel is an excellent player. Alex lovely to meet you man. So you both are here because you're starting this really crazy project. And I say crazy because it's the print magazine in twenty twenty six and it's called Golden Goal, And so I wonder if you could just start by telling us sort of the idea behind this beautiful project.

00:01:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you guys for having us on. We love the pod. Very excited to be here. Yeah, Golden Goals a magazine. Really, it's a magazine that we want to kind of capture the World Cup feel like the World Cup. We wanted to be fun, exciting, We wanted to cover countries from all over the world. We have writers from almost every continent besides Antarctica, and really we want it to feel like what it feels like to be watching the World Cup with people from around the world and with commentary from around the world. But also we want to we wanted to make something that feels like it addressed the moment up it and to feel like a serious publication but also something you want to hold in your hands, something beautiful. It's for new fans to find and team they want to support, but also seasoned supporters who just want to hold something beautiful and read good writing about soccer. So it is a bit ambitious, but we are really excited to work on it.

00:02:43
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:02:43
Speaker 5: I've noticed something in recent World Cups, in particular, especially the recently politically fraught World Cups, that there's a kind of like a myopic intensity that defines them. That in the lead up there's this sort of like manic fixation on everything that's wrong and messed up with those tournaments, and then once they start, that intensity just turns on a dime and is focused on the games themselves. And I think what you lose in a lot of that process is a sense of perspective. And I think that people get cynical and jaded and worn out or you just can't deal with any of it, but you also forget about the beauty of the World Cup itself. And I feel slightly insane making this comparison, but I think this is the podcast to do it, but I have started to talk about the World Cup the way that Quinn Coompson talks about the South and the end of Absolum Absolum when he says, no, I don't hate this out.

00:03:35
Speaker 2: I don't don't I don't hate the World cuss And I think, you know, I mean, that is a very personally moving and meaningful part of that book for me.

00:03:44
Speaker 5: But it is sort of how I feel about it that I'm like when I talk to people, especially people who say, oh, I don't watch the World Cup anymore, you know, I say, well, I don't hate the World Cup, you know, but I kind.

00:03:53
Speaker 4: Of want to figure out why. And this magazine is about that.

00:03:58
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful. There's a I know, Dan Friedman, a writer also British guy, plays soccer with him on the Brow West Side a bunch, and and he didn't watch the last World Cup, and I just I admire him. I admire that sort of like the kind of political consistency of like, no, I can't be part of this. And also I just know that I'm not able to deny myself the pleasure, you know, because joy, yeah, exactly, yeah, even though it's a corrupt form of joy. Because FIFA is what it is and the world is what it is. But you know, and maybe that's just like the sort of like the compromise one makes with oneself, you know.

00:04:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, coming to you from the edge of Orkabasa Bay, I can tell you that a lot of forms of joy are pretty corrupt.

00:04:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, for sure, Miguel and Alice, you want to talk about like some of the stories, the kinds of stories you guys are going to feature in the magazine.

00:04:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, happy to do that. We have some we have really cool writers. We have a big anchor piece we're doing is eleven writers on eleven players. Some of the names for that include Juasu, murvem Ray and novelists like Gabriela Aleman in the Brazilian Ecuadorian writer. And we are also having dispatches from different parts of the world from writers from all over the world from writing it was Beka, stan to Iran to Ecuador. But yeah, so we have a lot of pieces coming in from all over. But we also have some essays on what makes the World Cup so special, including the Panini album. I don't know if you guys ever put together one of the Panini albums with the stickers. Yeah, that's for me, like I growing up. I think I only did actually did one as a kid in two thousand and six, but that was it was like a super special part of the World Cup for me. The whole experience and and so the history of that Panini album and also kind of just how it resonates with different people in different parts of the world. That's one of our essays. Alex can speak a little more on some of the other stuff we have we have planned.

00:06:13
Speaker 1: I just want to say parenthetically before you jump in, Alex, like here in Bogota, like there's a really like intense Panini sticker trading scene and there's like spots all over town where people like in the plazas once you know what my kid is like desperately waiting to like, you know, he doesn't care about soccer, but he cares about the Panini, you know, And they're gonna be like mobs of people in different plazas around town like trading Panini's right right up through the end of the World Cup.

00:06:42
Speaker 2: And we should define what a Panini is for those who don't know, it's these stickers of players, right that that you build a sticker album.

00:06:50
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and it's kind of like, uh, like I guess the soccer coolent of like trading baseball cards, except usually stick them on and put them in the in the in the album and they'll hold The goal, uh is obviously to get as much money out of you as possible, but also to fill the album and then and then your extra as you trade with friends and see what you can get. It's it's really, you know, fun.

00:07:14
Speaker 4: I love it, Danielle.

00:07:15
Speaker 3: I don't know if this was your experience in putting together the sticker albums, but I feel like from what I've heard from family and from what I experienced in six, it was always difficult to find they. There would always be one team, one country that was for some reason the stickers were scarce impacts and you could barely find them. And then six that team happened to be Italy, which won the World Cup. And I'd heard that in O two the team whose stickers were very scarce was Brazil. So I don't know if this was your experience with the Pennie album, but it is a theory that has been floating in the Internet that Patini has denied. But I think we're going to try to get to the bottom of it. I don't know if we will, but yeah, so getting a piece of.

00:08:01
Speaker 1: That, See, that's the kind of harding reporting I can get behind.

00:08:05
Speaker 5: Yeah, Alex Oh, yeah, I mean I was just in the last twelve hours, I think I've edited pieces on Italian masculinity and the national team from two thousand and six to the president. I edited one piece about the rise of Fabrizzio Romano and what it says about the change in soccer journalism and the sort of rise of influencer culture.

00:08:23
Speaker 4: Within that and many other things.

00:08:24
Speaker 5: I'm excited about the title of that, or the working title I should say that right now, which is you know, from Aguero to Here we Go, which I think.

00:08:31
Speaker 4: I captures a lot about that.

00:08:33
Speaker 5: But one of the things I really liked about this project is that Miguel and I will just like text each other and we'll just be like, we need, you know, who's an Iraqi novelist that we know that we can pull into this, right, Who's someone in Haiti, Right, who's someone in Uzbekistan that we can get? And I think so much of this project for me has been about challenging my own assumptions. I'm a political editor at the liberal magazine The New Republic, and most of the soccer writing I do is kind of myopically fixated on Giohnny and Fentino and corruption and all these other questions. And I think that's only a part of the way that I see soccer, and that is only a minuscule part of how.

00:09:11
Speaker 4: The rest of the world sees soccer.

00:09:12
Speaker 5: So I think that the way that the thing that really excites you about this project is just getting to interact with people that experience it completely differently, and again, especially as an American, you know in New York City for this World Cup, who are excited about it, I think, and not ambivalent or something else. And I think that, you know, colliding all those different perspectives into a physical package is just like, it's really cool.

00:09:39
Speaker 2: What are you going to be watching for at the World Cup this year? I mean, what are the what are the storylines you're looking to follow?

00:09:45
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we're going to be focused, like everyone else, on the actual soccer for sure. One thing I mean we noticed from the Club World Cup, which felt like a staging ground for this World Cup, was early on just the expense of the ticket pricing I mean, Trump's going to be all over this, we'd assume. I don't know if you guys saw the celebrations when Chelsea won the Club World Cup last year, but he was front and center there and so I think we'll see a lot of him at this World Cup. But more than that, I think what interests me in particular is seeing how the immigration situation plays out, who is going to be able to attend the World Cup, what the atmosphere is going to be.

00:10:28
Speaker 5: Like.

00:10:28
Speaker 3: There's been a lot of.

00:10:30
Speaker 4: Just debate and.

00:10:34
Speaker 3: Like local kind of like disagreement over funding, how the fan fests will be funded, how whether it's the security situation, who's putting the bill essentially for the World Cup for hosting it here in the US, And I think that's going to be an ongoing question that, you know, I don't know how it will play out in a few months, but it's something that we're definitely going to keep our eyes out for, along with what's going on in the field and what's happening kind of around around it politically.

00:11:05
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean not to I guess sound like a philosine after that, But one of the things that interests me is in the last few years, especially as soccer has gotten more and more tactical. I've sort of been drawn to international soccer and it's comparative simplicity. But I am curious to see if the sort of set piecification or the rise of the meat Wall, as my friends at the Double Pivot podcast call it, will, will sort of be drawn into that. I am, obviously, both for professional and personal reasons, interested in the ways that the President inserts himself into this World Cup. But I think also, and I just wrote about this for our newsletter, I'm interested in the ways that the World Cup reveals surprising things about the world to us. I think that we can predict that, you know, it will reveal a lot of disturbing and troubling things about the way that this country is run right now. But for the newsletter I just wrote, I wrote about the US Iran game nineteen ninety eight World Cup, which Iran won. It's one of the bigger upsets and recent World Cup history. But you know, in that game, the team was booed by dissident Iranians Iranian expats in France the entire time they won, you know, and they wept with joy as they were being sort of mercilessly mocked and jeered the entire time. And I think that, you know, for all of the rightful focus on the you know, the increasing corruption and greed surrounding the World Cup, it still has the capacity to reveal unexpected and I think, complicated things about the world around us that nothing else and sports and maybe culture at large does.

00:12:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was this passage in your in the editor's note I really like I'm going to read here. It says FIFA and Donald Trump can only alter the World Cup so much because they only own part of it. The rest of it belongs to everyone else. The players, of course, but the fans too. There's miraculously still the possibility of magic, of transcendence, of floating above the inevitable scandals and abuses. No other sporting cultural event is as laden with as much meaning or baggage. I love that. I think that what I like about the project so much is is not shying away from all the complicated stuff, but also not letting the complicated stuff deprive one self of access to the joy that the game itself can bring. I wanted to ask you guys kind of a corollary John's question, which is what you definitely not want to happen at the World Cup. And this could be like like I definitely don't want, like you know, France to win, or it could be like I definitely don't want Christian Policicis to get injured, like whatever.

00:13:41
Speaker 3: You know, I definitely want Columbia to do well and I want all of our players to stay fit before I don't want any injuries. I'm still scarred from the Falcao injury in twenty fourteen that I think would have like I think he would have really helped us against Brazil when we left to Brazil to one. I would like for Argentina not to win. I think they have enough World Cups. They won the last one. But yeah, I think, I guess. I think it's hard to be hopeful. It's hard to feel hopeful given the political situation sometimes about the World Cup. But I just hope it can be like a fun celebration. I mean, I'm going to be here in New York, and I really hope to like feel like I'm a part of the tournament, even just walking around the city. I hope to be able to speak with fans and and just like enjoy the tournament. And I feel like that feels under threat because of funding, because of the funding issues, the fan fests that are being kind of broken up, and because of the political situation. But I still feel like it's possible and really hope feel hopeful for it.

00:14:59
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:15:00
Speaker 5: I mean, Miguel and I actually became friends during the twenty eighteen World Cup, I think, but we were working together at the New Republic and he had started fairly recently, and we just kind of locked ourselves in a room at work for a month and to the you know, consternation and irritation of some of our colleagues, just yelled for six hours a day while we were supposed to be working. And I think, you know, what I'm hoping for is to have interactions like that, right And I think one of the things that is alarming about this World Cup is that it's been hard to get to the last couple and I think this should be one that welcomes the rest of the world, and that's not what's happening right now. And I think my hope is that that still does happen. I have a piece going up in the our most recent print edition, the April issue of the New Republic, that is about I think one of my concerns, which is just that it's not just the possibility for geopolitical problems, but just for you know, violence and chaos at this World Cup, just if you look at you know, Minneapolis and the world around us right now, and I think the lack of preparation for that, lack of security funding at host cities is really scary to me, And so that's sort of front of mine. I hope that England doesn't win, mostly because I get a perverse sense of joy from English media reactions to meltdowns, and hope. I think what is most surprising to me, as I'd written about this during the last World Cup, but I had always been ambivalent about the US men's team growing up, and I've come to really love them in a way that surprises me.

00:16:35
Speaker 4: And I hope that they do well.

00:16:37
Speaker 5: And that feels kind of weird to say, because I think that that kind of grows more politically fraught by the week. But I think that even though they seem to have taken a step back since the last World Cup, they're still enormously talented, and I find the ways that they have retained the US M and t's core kind of brutality and sluggish identity with players of genuine technical brilliance to be fascinating, and I just am kind of excited to see how they play. The group draws very, very kind to them.

00:17:15
Speaker 1: I think it bums me out that love of country and patriotism, which is I think can be beautifully expressed at a tournament like this, can be sort of appropriated by one or the other side of a political debate such that you would feel ambivalent about like supporting your country, you know, Like I think that's a bummer. But we only have to look at the like you know what happened with the hockey gold medals for women to know that that's a reality.

00:17:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. I mean, patriotism can be a cudgel, right, And I remember over the years I've written in many scripts of YouTube videos when I'm critical of the United States that I love the United States, and my longtime producing partner, who's British and Mexican all always cuts that out of my scripts. She's like, that's a weird thing to say. It's a weird position to take, and it is a weird position to take, especially in twenty twenty six. And yet I do feel a, yeah, you know, a profound connection to the US men's national team. And I've watched them since I was a kid, and I've rooted for them since i was a kid. And you know, I've never lived with success anywhere else. I remember when I lived in the Netherlands, a Dutch friend of mindset. It seems to me that you're sort of incurably American, and that feeling of being incurably American is still with me. I want to ask you guys about the golden goal the name of the magazine. Do you think that FIFA should bring back the golden goal rule for knockout games?

00:18:45
Speaker 5: This is funny because I think it's been a long time point of that. Maybe that contention in a group chat that we have, but I am firmly against the golden goal. And the editors note that you read from earlier. I was like, Miguel, do we need to have an asterisk here where I can make it clear that I think that this produced bad soccer. I mean, you love when it goes well, but I think I still have memories. I'm just old enough to, you know, have clear memories of sitting through some really turgid extra time where you know nobody wanted to give it up.

00:19:17
Speaker 4: I think.

00:19:18
Speaker 5: I think the question of soccer rule changes is always one where you try to you try to preserve the possibility for transcendence without making people purposefully play bad. This is one of the set piece questions too, And I think that the golden goal rule is one of those things that seems great on paper but in practice it doesn't.

00:19:40
Speaker 4: But for the sake of marketing this magazine, I.

00:19:42
Speaker 5: Hope that they bring it back for this World Cup.

00:19:46
Speaker 1: As an Arsenal fan, I feel like I'm being targeted here with all this.

00:19:50
Speaker 2: Personally attacked here.

00:19:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I got to say, vitrial.

00:19:55
Speaker 2: If you hate set piece goals in walking pace football, might I recommend the third tier of English football and where every ball is long and misplaced?

00:20:05
Speaker 1: Oh man, I will say, And just parenthetically again, Alex, you were saying you love British soccer meltdowns like I have been consuming Tottenham meltdown content in the last twenty four hours. It's just been absolutely beautiful and and just a joy, just an absolute joy because I'm that petty Yes it's.

00:20:28
Speaker 4: A Liverpool fan too.

00:20:29
Speaker 5: It's been rare and you know, my whatever two plus decades where I can I can sort of go scoreboard, you know, or say, well, at you know, we just won the league, so it doesn't really matter to me what happens. So I am rooting for Arsenal to win, just just to be clear right now. But but I think it is also Liverpool's general mediocrity this year has just made given me a sense of detachment where I can just kind of enjoy everything right now, and maybe nothing as much as the crisis at Spurs.

00:21:00
Speaker 1: Because I forget if you were an Arsenal fan or not. Did I just decide that you were because I like you.

00:21:06
Speaker 3: I'm a Barcelona fan, but I feel like I've had to choose in like a Premier League team just because everyone I know in New York it watches DPL and it's hard to get everyone to watch a Barcelona against game at three am on a Saturday. So I've I've been supporting Liverpool mostly because I also chose them when Luis Diaz had joined, and now they have stabbed me in the back and let him go to Byron and he's doing great, so I'm I'm a little salty about that, but I'm still I'm going to stand firm with Liverpool. But my first team is Barcelona, of course, and I know I have a lot of experience with shot and fraud because my entire like watching watching soccer in Spain is and half watching Barcelona and half watching Madrid hoping they will lose every single game.

00:22:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, you guys, Thank you so much. I am a big fan of the magazine. I can't wait to see it and hold in my hands. I'm gonna be following you guys. You can find a supports magazine at Goldengold dot world and of course we'll put a link in the show notes so the folks can get there. And yeah, I will enjoy the World Cup and I hope all of our dreams come true.

00:22:29
Speaker 4: Thanks guys, thank you so much.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: Thank you awesome. Welcome back to the away End. Okay, I want to start with this video that I sent you. It isn't super high resolution, John, but for those of you who are listening and not watching on YouTube, I'm gonna just gonna describe it. I think you already saw it, but okay, So in the video, there's three grown men, three Japanese internationals. Their names are Hutu Yamaguchi, Hiroshiki Yotoki and Yosuki I Deguch. They were in the nationals uniform, which is beautiful dark blue uniform of Japan, the Blue Samurai, and they're playing against another team. So it's three players adults and there's one hundred school children.

00:23:23
Speaker 2: John, Yeah, one hundred Classic thirty thirty thirty ten formation.

00:23:29
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I mean it's right there in the training coaching manual, you know. So when you watch this video from a distance, it's really kind of beautiful. You see this kind of children swarming across the pitch, chasing after these three men, this kind of the morphous cloud of red. It's like it feels like the surface of a lake in a breeze, just kind of these waves of red. But when you look closer, you'd realize that these are children moving their tiny little legs at like an extraordinary pace. And so the image is both soothing and like deeply chaotic, and it also reminds you know, if you've played, you know, kiddie soccer, or if you coach your kids, you also recognize that kind of inescapable child logic of like ball centrism, where like the magnetism of the ball is such that we all must get as close to it as possible, and something that kids learn as they get older that the use of space is as important as the use of the ball. But that comes later, or you know, sometimes it never comes at all.

00:24:29
Speaker 2: Came me.

00:24:32
Speaker 1: Now, all I got is space? Do anything else like walk to the area where no one else is and wait. Okay. So it takes these three grown men like literally like half a minute to score, because the amazing.

00:24:46
Speaker 2: Thing about them scoring is that there are ten goalkeepers. There are ten goalies who can use their hands, and somehow they still manage to score.

00:24:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they also managed to not hurt a child like they do these like gentle lofting chips over these you know, clouds of little children and and control the ball well. And then you know, there's a one hundred of them, but no one thinks that I should, you know, close down the adult and so then the player chips it over and uh, you know, it's a it's a it's a beautiful header that manages to elude you know, the ten goalkeepers as a spectacle. This is obviously from a Japanese game show. Uh, and it's it's silly and joyful and totally meaningless. I would parenthetically recommend anyone who's ever feeling down about anything or uninspired just put in best Japanese game show into YouTube or something and just give into the surrealism of it. It's really a lovely way to spend an afternoon on a rainy day. Anyway, I wanted to mention this because I love it. It sort of says something about Japan and Japan's culture. It has nothing at all to do with Japan's chances of this World Cup, but the away end is about joy and this is a joyful moment for me. And when I started doing the deep dive, I went back to this and I remembered this video and looked for it and laughed, and you know, just like gave into it all all over again. So I love Japan. I loved the Japanese team because I love Japan. I was in Tokyo a couple of years ago and I was amazed by it. And I have close Japanese friends. I've played over the years with several of them, most recently played from Japan and Taku, who used to absolutely embarrass me and lots of other people every Sunday. It was so good I loved Murakami in my twenties, as I'm sure you did. I love the food. The Japanese national team. If you have no if you just strictly want like fashion, the Japanese national team jerseys are always just absolute bangers. But let's talk about the actual football, right. Japan have now qualified for eight World Cups in a row, every World Cup since ninety eight. They of course co hosted the two thousand and two World Cup Month of Football, which permanently altered my circadian rhythms.

00:27:04
Speaker 2: Never have I woken up at two am with so much joy?

00:27:07
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, the games were like at two, at four and like six am.

00:27:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I remember it was kind of great because at the time I was working at Bookless magazine, and so I would just wake up at two and then by the time I got ready for work, the last game would be wrapping up.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: And when would you sleep at work?

00:27:24
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, man, that job.

00:27:29
Speaker 1: There you go. So Japan is today a powerhouse of Asian soccer. The Japanese women are powers of global soccer. But that's a discussion for another day. And there's a bunch of milestones, right. So in twenty eighteen, Japan became the first Asian team to beat a South American team at a World Cup. It was Columbia in a group stage game. They played Belgium in the round sixteen. I don't know if you remember that game from twenty eighteen. Yeah, incredible game, and I want to mention this game because they were winning to nothing. Belgium, you know, was like one of the top teams ranked by FIFA at the time. They ended up losing three to two, but what was remarkable is that they they had a corner kick in like the ninety fourth minute and they were tying one of the top European teams, like one of the favorites to win in a knockout game. And also all the Belgian players are giants. They're absolute, you know, gigantic players, and so naturally, if you were the coach, you would say, short kick, run out the clock, you know, live to fight an extra time, right, That's what a normal sort of tactic would be. Instead, they lost the kick directly into the mixer right in the center, which is immediately caught by their gigantic goalkeeper, the Belgian goalkeeper, and quick fast break and like literally eight second later they're knocked out. Of the World Cup in Belgium scores crazy, and then of course there were these images that came after of the Japanese fans cleaning up the air of the stadium like in tears, which is also very beautiful. In twenty twenty two, Japan had a legitimate group of death like and absolutely like listeners Germany, Spain, Costa Rica, Japan.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:29:26
Speaker 1: Wow, that is a really like serious group of death Sean, do you want to come on for a second, knowing nothing as you do about I'm sorry. We actually got a letter today saying stop making fun of Sean.

00:29:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:29:42
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like I'm biting you, both of us.

00:29:46
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we're just trying to Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, let's just leave it. If you can see Sean's beard. I think the issue is that a lot of our listeners are are audio only, and so they don't get to see Sean's beard. Yeah.

00:29:59
Speaker 1: I think I mention that part of the reason that I don't like it least because they're also so handsome, and here we have like a legitimate Italian.

00:30:04
Speaker 2: Oh so good looking, so good. I was gonna say great looking for his age, but actually just great looking at any age at any age.

00:30:14
Speaker 1: All right, so sean beautiful fan, Germany, Spain, Costa Rica, Japan. Does Japan get out of the group? Only two teams can get out of the group. Does Japan get out of Germany, Spain, Costa Rica?

00:30:26
Speaker 6: Well, I know that the running idea here is that I don't know much or maybe anything at all. But I can say that this is something that I know because I remember watching these games, and I remember Japan surprising everybody by defeating Germany and by defeating Spain. So they did they did it.

00:30:53
Speaker 1: They got out, They got out of the group in first place. In fact, that is you're not doing a good job of being the guy it doesn't know anything. I mean, that's incredible.

00:31:02
Speaker 6: From time to time I think I will. It depends on the question, right whether or not I will I will know something or not. I guess my question is they I know they lost to Costa Rica. It was that a game that they on paper should have won. Yeah, and then then weirdly lost that game, but then beat Germany and Spain.

00:31:24
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Costca had a good team that year. Costa Rica actually that was one of the most surprising groups ever, probably because Germany, Spain Japan, Costa Rica. I think everyone would have said Spain and Germany get out of the group, and in fact it was it was Costa Rica and Japan. So it was one wonderful surprise that sport gave us. They went on, of course, to lose to Croatia in penalty kicks on the round of sixty.

00:31:50
Speaker 2: Very unfortunate, very unfortunate. Yeah, and then Croatia made it all the way.

00:31:56
Speaker 1: Croatia didn't make it all the way. You're thinking, twenty eight, that's what.

00:32:01
Speaker 2: That's all the that's all the way. That's all the way. Man.

00:32:04
Speaker 1: The Sebomi finals is all the way. You're right, that's fair. That's that's pretty much all the way. That's most of the way, all right. So in twenty twenty six, Japan absolutely rolled through qualifying. They were the first team outside of the three hosts to qualify, and the friendlies since then have been kind of a mixed bag. So they lost the United States, which was a little weird, but they also scored their first ever victory against Brazil, coming wow, coming back from two down to win. It was one of Machelotti's first games. He didn't look happy. They drew with Paraguay, but they beat Ghana, so it's kind of like up and down. They have a couple further warm up games this month later this month against England and Scotland, which should sort of give us a little more insight into where the team stands. Now, I want to this is this stat actually totally blew my mind. So as of September twenty twenty five, there are over one hundred and fourteen Japanese players active in European leagues in European teams. That's a ninety percent increase over the past five years. Wow, wow percent growth. It's crazy. So we in the United States have like twenty five Yeah, exactly, exactly, So Japan is a legit team. I mean, look, some of these players you'll recognize. Karu Mintoma from Brighton. Love that player, really great, takomimin Amino, late of your parish now at Monaco, Yeah, a good player. Yep, Uhar Wataru Endo who currently is on Liverpool.

00:33:30
Speaker 2: Great player. I mean yeah, both Endo and Minnemino were players you just loved rooting for.

00:33:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely absolutely. So you have a real talent and you know they have a group that I think is doable. This time, right, So their group is Netherlands, Tunisia and UEFA Playoff B, which could be either Ukraine, Sweden, Poland or Albania, and I for one am hard pressed to pick who would win there. I know I'm going to be rooting for Ukraine, but I don't actually know.

00:34:07
Speaker 2: Who's the favorite. Sweden and Poland are both also good. Albania has good players. That's That's a tough group. So who knows who that'll be, but it's probably going to be somebody that Japan can can at least draw. You think Tunisia is probably beatable. The Netherlands is an interesting challenge for Japan, but not an impossible one.

00:34:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna say that. I mean Netherlands. What I was taught as the child, Netherlands is the greatest team that's never won a World Cup, and I think you know we can agree on that they've been in the World Cup final twice in seventy eight and twenty ten, proud footballing heritage, and yet not imperious and not unbeatable. I'm gonna say John that this year Japan is going to get out of the group. Kind of does everyone's getting out of the group and the round of sixteen is no longer the rund of sixteen now the first knockout round. Of course, it's the round of thirty two. So the question is will they get past the first knockout round, because they've never gotten past that despite being a team that you know routinely wins Asian Cups, a team that has this depth of talent, that they have over one hundred players playing in the top leagues in Europe. So now will they win the round of thirty two game? Let's assume so check this out. The winner of Group F gets the runner up of Group C, and the winner of Group C gets the runner up of Group F. So you're asking John, what's Group C? Brazil, Morocco, Haiti and Scotland.

00:35:39
Speaker 2: Oh no, right, Oh, that's a disaster. You're either going to give to razila Morocco almost.

00:35:44
Speaker 1: You're going to get almost certainly going to get Brazil and Morocco with respect to our Scottish and Haitian friends. So the real thing is this, they already beat Brazil once in a friendly. It's entirely likely that Japan's gonna have to do it again for real in a World Cup if they want to break the hoodoo of getting past the round of thirty two.

00:36:04
Speaker 2: Imagine the size of the catastrophe if Brazil lost in the round of thirty two.

00:36:11
Speaker 1: Oo wow, yeah, I mean no, one.

00:36:15
Speaker 2: Hundred and fifty million people would be oh my god, I'd hate to be Carl Ancholotti.

00:36:22
Speaker 1: Then unthinkable, It's unthinkable. I mean, that's like the the you know, there are teams that are just happy to be there and teams where if they win a game or score a goal, that's enough. And then there's the pressure that teams like Brazil face, you know, or Morocco they were hosting afkon. We talked about this in the first episode, and you know, the entire weight of the nation is a lot is a lot to take, Yeah, which maybe makes them beatable. I don't know, because Japan is in that in between phase where they have real talent, really good players, and the question is, but no one actually thinks they're gonna win anything.

00:36:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, they could win a knock out.

00:36:59
Speaker 1: That yeah, I think I think they could do it. I think they could do it. We'll see. So anyway, that's that's my take on Japan. I'm really looking forward to buying a japan Jersey and enjoying those games.

00:37:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be great. All Right, we're gonna take a break and then we'll be back with a story from me about football and security funding, riveting. We'll do right back, all right, Daniel, We're back with you away in and I'm gonna tell you a story about a small town New England select board. So if you've never lived in New England, there are these town boards that can be very powerful. In this case, it's a town board of five people who are elected, but they're volunteers in a little town called Foxborough, Masachusetts, which happens to be home to a very large stadium where I believe the New England Patriots play their football games.

00:38:08
Speaker 1: I've heard of it. Yes, it's called Foxborough Stadium, or it used to be.

00:38:11
Speaker 2: I believe it's called Foxborough Stadium. Maybe it's got maybe it's called Gillette Stadium because it's been papered over by some kind of corporation. But in our hearts it will always be Foxborough Stadium, got it. Well, the town board there has has said, look, it's going to cost us about seven point eight million dollars to do security for this event that we're hosting I believe seven games of the World Cup, and we're gonna need FIFA, which expects to make eleven point seven billion with a B dollars from the World Cup. We're gonna need FIFA or somebody to pay that money. And it's very complicated. There are a lot of different parties involved, including the Craft family who owns the New England Patriots, and also this group Boston Soccer that is a a a separate group from FIFA but sort of aligned with FIFA, that's bringing the World Cup to Boston, although technically to Foxborough, and they cannot seem to come to an agreement on this seven point eight million dollars now. They announced Boston Soccer and the Craft family announced that they had come to an agreement, but the Foxborough select Board immediately responded, you've come to an agreement with yourselves, not with us. You have not, in fact come to an agreement with us, got it? And it is not at all clear if these games which are now scheduled for I don't know ninety five days from now, are actually going to happen because it's the seven point eight million dollar disagreement.

00:39:40
Speaker 1: Seven point eight million dollars when you're gonna make eleven billion. Seems like like just you know, fish it out of the you know, between the sofa cushions, you know, like that's what like FIFA spends on, like SODA's at the offices, Like just give them money.

00:39:56
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's how I feel, too, right like, And it's not it's forced security, and I'm all like, I want this to be a secure World Cup. That's something I worry about and so I'm all for it. I also feel like it's a solvable problem. But it's one of those things where big, powerful institutions think they can come up against a little select board and automatically win just by throwing around their weight. And I sort of love that these New England town councils are like, you don't understand, We've been doing this since like seventeen fifty one.

00:40:28
Speaker 1: It's like a it's like a Manhattan co op, you know exactly. It won't be believed by the celebrity resident, you know, your influencer.

00:40:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they were not getting a break on rent.

00:40:41
Speaker 1: No no noise after eight pm, sorry, you know, no smiling in the elevator, that's the rules. I love it. I love it. Yeah, what who's the bad guy here? And does it start with an F and in an A.

00:40:57
Speaker 2: I think it starts with an F and NS in an A, as it usually does. But all so, like, I'm so biased at this point, you know that, Like I haven't really looked deeply into the question of who's the bad guy. It's just that the bad guys always FIFA, so it has to be FIFA. But yeah, there's a lot of a lot of a lot of mutual finger pointing in this, in this and it's hard. It's hard to know, except that it seems to me that it's going to be expensive for the town to host the fricking World Cup, and it makes sense that they're going to need some support to do that.

00:41:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, I'm gonna look this up because I think that the listeners want to know. Okay, So the games that are going to be held in Boston slash Foxborough, hand versus Scotland.

00:41:47
Speaker 2: Oh god, that's going to be a banger.

00:41:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, Iraq of Bolivia, Yeah, that's gonna be a good one. Haitian fans are gonna come. That's gonna be wonderful.

00:41:57
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:41:58
Speaker 1: That then there's the winner the playoff between Iraq, Bolivia and Suranon versus Norway, Holland early Holland, our Noda Guards debut. All the wonderful players from Bodo Glimpse are just going to be there, just you know, playing. Can they play in the heat? Are they able to? I don't know, who knows? Who knows? Yeah, Norwegians. In June in Boston, we'll see h Scotland versus Morocco. That's a great game. Yeah, England versus Ghana that's also a great game, a class colonial matchup. Yeah. And then this one is going to be another banger here Norway versus France.

00:42:41
Speaker 5: Wow.

00:42:42
Speaker 2: I mean those are good games that Boston has if I now see, if I were Foxborough would come to some kind of agreement just so I could host those games. I mean they count Select Kennedy free tickets.

00:42:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would, I would probably. You know, you only need three votes, FIFA, make.

00:42:57
Speaker 2: It work, FIFA. If there's anything you're good at, it's bribing elected officials.

00:43:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that's like one of the tenants of the organization. Yeah. I hope they come to an agreement. I hope Foxboro gets the money it needs. When I read about this, I thought, what was remarkable was that the Boston Soccer which is kind of what I understood was kind of an offshoot of FIFA that was like a nonprofit that was created just for this to put on these seven games. They basically said, yeah, you'll get your money, you know, June first, and the town council was like, oh, hell no, we're not going to start ordering the equipment that we need to make these games flow safely, like twelve days before the tournament starts. That's preposterous. And you know what, I think they're right. I think they're absolutely right, and I hope they get their money. Yeah, yeah, thank you. John. We have a couple of letters before we go. Do you want to hear them? I'll read this one for you because it's a question just for you, Dear Daniel, John and Sean. We would love to hear John's answer to the question of which, if any domestic team he supports. We know about his support for Wimbledon and Liverpool because he won't shut up about fucking Liverpool. But there's nothing like going to your hometown team's game. I can honestly say my soccer interest sword into soccer obsession during my visits the Red bull Areno while I lived in New York, joining the crowd and singing for Columbian star Juan Pablank, future American star Josie Altadoor and a cast of guys like John Wolgek, who they might have just found playing pick up on the Opper West Side. Took my consumerist interest and turned it into ritual participation in community action, a switch which felt like learning to live.

00:44:34
Speaker 2: Man.

00:44:35
Speaker 1: This guy can write.

00:44:35
Speaker 2: Yes.

00:44:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Luke asks, has John been to an Indie eleven game? Their next game home game is the US Open Cup against Des Moines Menace on the seventeenth, and they host Detroit in the League on the twenty first. We'd love to hear about that experience.

00:44:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have been to several India eleven games. I mean the issue with American soccer teams for me, and look, this is also an issue with Liverpool Football Club not going to pretend otherwise, is that they are franchises. Now usl is opening itself up to promotion and relegation, which is really exciting, and I think I'll go to more Indie eleven games in the future now that that's part of the now that there's some real jeopardy. So there's some meaningful jeopardy for these very wealthy people who own these institutions. But it's hard for me with MLS a little bit because they're guaranteed their league spot and they paid hundreds of millions of dollars to basically create a monopoly. English football's a little different, but still there's a sense in which these community assets are the playthings of billionaires. I think that what makes it a little different for me than most American sports is that one there's the jeopardy of relegation. Even a team like Spurs can get relegated, as we may find out in May. But secondly, there's the fact that they are still treated as community institutions. You know, they're not moved around the way the Baltimore cults become, the Indianapolis cults become the God only knows what's cults, and so I struggle a little bit with that. I mean, the reason I love AFC Wimbledon is because we're owned by our fans. There is no rich guy in charge, you know, it's all the fans who make the big decisions, and I think that's really beautiful and should be a model for the rest of the world and is a model in some parts of Europe, but not most, and so it's something I struggle with. But I do enjoy the INDI eleven games a lot, and I enjoy I think, to Luke's question, that feeling of ritual participation in community action is really really powerful.

00:46:43
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's the best thing.

00:46:45
Speaker 2: What about you, I mean, do you have a do you have a team?

00:46:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I have a well, okay, I'll say a couple of things. I spent a lot of time read beul Arena when my older son, who loves football, was was not you know, it was in middle school, in high school. My youngest son, who's turning thirteen later this month, doesn't care really about club soccer, only cares about the World Cup, and so I could never interest him in like taking the train to Harrison, New Jersey to watch the Red Bulls games. There's a new USL team in New York called Brooklyn FC, which when we move back to New York, I'll probably go see a couple of those games, see what that's like. But then here in BA where we're living now, I just found the the Colombian Gooner's Club and the bar that they watched the games at and and I went to one of the games. I went to the to the Chelsea game. Not a classic. Not many Arsenal games are classics these days, I will say, but it was beautiful. Man. They one of the guys takes out of cornet and plays every time Marsenal scores, he plays like a fanfare. There was a man literally crying at the end of the game because the last few minutes were so tense and ry I had to make a couple of really brilliant saves to to keep our our slim margin of victory. And also this was remarkable to me was that there were people there who recognized me as the host of and so people kept sending me beers over, which was great.

00:48:27
Speaker 2: That's fun, it is.

00:48:29
Speaker 1: It was really fun. And and so it's great to.

00:48:33
Speaker 2: Be recognized as the host of a radio show, you know, like that's when you've really made it, Daniel, Like it's you and Ira Glass who are known for being the visible hosts of radio shows.

00:48:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's an odd thing. It's an odd thing, you know. I I loved it, and I think that to answer Luke's question, the switch that Phil feels like learning to live. I think you can create that experience of like watching the game with friends, watching the game with community, watching the game with other fans of the same team sort of scratches that same itch as being at the stadium. Sometimes it can. I have great memories of watching you know, World Cup Finals with friends, you know, at our house, at other people's houses, are watching big games, even with one, you know. I remember watching the Arsenal against the Madrid first leg last year at a bar in Manhattan with a with ib, a friend of mine, and man, you know, it was like we were good friends before that and we're better friends now, you know, like we went through that, so I didn't there's something about that. But you know, John, if I come position you in Annapolis, we'll go to any eleven game. How about that?

00:49:45
Speaker 2: I love it. Yeah, you got to come visit me. We got a guest room and everything. All right, We're gonna read this email from Raoul as well. I suspect this Raoul is a friend of ours actually, but he writes, greetings, gentlemen. I've been enjoying the pot of great deal, and I have noticed a recur theme. Both of you have spoken about the role that football has played in your relationship with your father's not your mother's, though, and how it has influenced your relationship with your own children. I wonder if you could expand on the ways that football is affected you're parenting. As I write this, I've just returned from watching my oldest, my older daughter's final high school basketball game. They were eliminating in the quarterfinals of the city Championship, playing away at a school in far Rock, Away more than twenty miles from the Upper West Side but still technically in New York City. Cleo played amazingly well, probably your best game of the season. And I don't know who is sad or basketball has given her and our family so much, and I imagine that football is not the same for your family, so, though perhaps not in the same way as so, can we talk about that a little bit?

00:50:36
Speaker 1: In Yeah, I think that's lovely. I mean, I, you know, I really identify with this the kind of sense of purpose that high school sports gave me, and the camaraderie and the discipline. So I know sort of a lot about what role was talking about. And I missed that for my kids a little bit. Because Elisel plays chess, you know, so there's a team aspect to it, but it's very much one on one and that's his his you know, sport. To the extent that it is a sport, we could debate, but I mean he'll say it is, of course. And then the thing he likes to do is like rock climbing, which again is very individual, you know. So I feel like that the like I wish he were in a team because I think being part of a team is an important thing. How about you, y'all?

00:51:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, my son is a boxer, and so he loves, really loves boxing and watching boxing and the science of it and the you know the complexity of movement and defense and all that stuff. But again, there's not that sense of camaraderie that you have when you're on a team, especially a team that spends a lot of time together. You know. He has a sense of camaraderie with the people he shares the gym with, but it's a little different.

00:52:00
Speaker 1: I think, I think there to hit each other. Yeah, I was gonna say that. I think that watching your kid play basketball, although of course injuries can always happen, is different from watching your child in a ring with another person. That wants to punch him in the face.

00:52:15
Speaker 2: Uh is it hard to watch some box? He doesn't box much. He's not really allowed to box the way that he wishes he were, and indeed the way that his coach wishes he were. He's his coach is always like, she's always like he's so good, and I was, I'm like, I don't. I don't really care how good he is. You know, it doesn't really matter. He's not he's not going to go pro in this because his dad will do everything in his power to prevent that. Right.

00:52:48
Speaker 1: It's like, right before the boxing match, you know, a streaker comes on the ring and it's like.

00:52:55
Speaker 2: Who's that.

00:52:55
Speaker 1: Oh, it's you know, the box his dad. He's oh, now he's changed himself to the to the to the ring. He won't get up.

00:53:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:53:07
Speaker 1: I would do the same thing.

00:53:08
Speaker 2: John, you know, like thank you, you know, thank you.

00:53:11
Speaker 1: Chess is a non contact sport, but any sale takes every loss very seriously. There's emotional pain. It's not a physical pain.

00:53:18
Speaker 2: It's not physical pain. Yeah. And then my daughter is a really good volleyball player, and I do love that for her. I love that she's able to be on a team that they're so encouraging of each other, that they fight for each other, that they love each other. That's all you want from your experience of adolescence, I think, is to have friends who love you with that ferocity that you experience in high school, you know. And I was really lucky to have those friends, even though I wasn't on the soccer team or the basketball team. And I know you feel that way about the folks that were on the soccer team with you.

00:53:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, for sure. And you know, you know, if all goes well, thirty years later you can have a podcast together.

00:54:04
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, if you're really lucky, if.

00:54:07
Speaker 1: You're really lucky. Okay, Roll continues, and I want to read the last bit here. He says, in two episodes, at least you spoke about talent and effort as they relate to success, and I'm curious what you think about what I see as a bit of a contradiction. On the one hand, we as parents often tell our kids that if they just work hard at something, usually school, but it could be art, music, theater, even writing, they will succeed, and the same is often true for sport. There are, however, cruel limitations which when it comes to sport, we usually have no trouble recognizing and explaining to our children. When it comes to school work, I'm reluctant to tell them that hard work may not lead to the results they want. Sometimes people are just talented, and talents are not equally distributed throughout a population. Have you come across this issue in your parenting? And if so, has football provided you any guidance? Keep up the good work, both with the pod and everything else, and Roll says, stop making fun of Sean. I just don't feel like we're making it.

00:54:56
Speaker 2: We're making fun of Sean.

00:54:57
Speaker 1: We love Sean. We love Sean.

00:54:59
Speaker 2: Sean is my fa hey saw no respected, No disrespect to Daniel, but Seawan is my favorite person on the podcast.

00:55:05
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah mine too? Yeah disrespected? John, Yeah, I'm taking it.

00:55:10
Speaker 2: Well, all right, okay, heard heard?

00:55:13
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you Rol for your question. And yeah, do do you have any any guidance on that?

00:55:19
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I think a lot of times, the stuff that we're talented at and the stuff that we get positive feedback for are the same stuff. And you know, at least when I was a kid, all I want I don't even know if I'm a good writer. I was just told that I was a good writer when I was in third grade, and as a result, I worked really hard on writing. It's hard to know what the what the line was, you know, was I was I actually talented? Or was I just told that I was talented? And so I worked really hard on it because I wanted the affirmation of adults. I never know where that falls, do you right?

00:55:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I think that's fair. I mean I think that that it's you know, you can ever do a double blind study with your kids in terms of like different ways to raise them, and you're always sort of trying to figure out the right way to do it, and and you know, the between pushing them and encouraging them. I was just thinking about that, you know, the intense academic pressure that I was raised in, you know, with uh and that caused me grave anxiety. It's so different like what the way I raised my kids, you know. Yeah, but there's no way too, there's no way I have of knowing if I am who I am because I was told that I had to, you know, get perfect grades, and if that sort of learning to deal with that anxiety and that pressure when I was young has helped me in situations as an adult. Having said that, I have a much more lesly fair attitude with my kids or and I find it difficult to implement the kind of pressure that my parents put on me with great intentions and you know, with with you know, decent results on my own children. I just don't see how how to do it.

00:57:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very much in the same boat.

00:57:02
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel natural to me.

00:57:04
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel natural to me, it doesn't feel right to me. And so I'm raising my kids very differently from how I was raised. Probably that said, like, my parents were very supportive of my writing. They just wanted me to take it as seriously as I would take going to med school. You know. They were very supportive of the idea of me being a writer or a creator or whatever. But they wanted me to take it as seriously as as I would, you know, being a warrior or whatever. And I kind of have. And yeah, to your point, it's it's been effective in a lot of ways. But the way that we raise our kids is very much to school is important, you know, But but school is not the only important thing in your life. Yeah, right, I hear you, And you know, and I just want to I just want to take a second, Daniel, if I can to say how disappointed I am in you for not becoming a doctor.

00:57:58
Speaker 1: It's a huge letdown. Yeah, you know what. The die was cast and we had to dissect the like and like.

00:58:10
Speaker 2: Pig.

00:58:10
Speaker 5: Yeh.

00:58:12
Speaker 2: When we had to dissect that fetal pig, I was like, this is all over for me, Sean. Can you come back on so we can talk quickly about dissecting the fetal pig. Do you remember that.

00:58:20
Speaker 6: I just got a waft of formaldehyde and uh psychosomatic formaldehyde. That's uh yeah, I may or may not be in my in my office, but yeah, that was uh, that's that too, is why I that's the only reason I did not become a doctor.

00:58:39
Speaker 2: Yes, otherwise otherwise yeah, yeah, just three people pursuing the creative life for fear of fetal pigs.

00:58:50
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly. Now. Just to finish with with Raoul's question, I think that you always I mean, at least I would never tell my kids there's something that they can't do. I think I would always sort of be upfront with my kids about the risks and the challenges and the work that would be required to do. It. But I can't imagine never telling my kids they weren't talented enough to pull something off because people surprise you, and you know, who are you really to say? I have heard many examples of famous, successful writers who have or this, even a guy on my staff at Roan Bulante who was told by a journalism professor that he would never be a journalist.

00:59:30
Speaker 2: I didn't get into the advanced fiction writing class at Kendon College. There were fifteen applicants for twelve spots and I didn't get in. I remember that, and look, yeah, I know you remembered it. I told everybody, yeah, traumatic and look now, man, yeah you're yeah, God, I still couldn't get in.

00:59:51
Speaker 1: You're like the abes.

00:59:54
Speaker 2: Of writers said, I couldn't make it, but I did.

00:59:59
Speaker 1: He sed it, all right, all right, that's all the time we have for today. On the away end, remember to keep sending us your emails away ndpod at gmail dot com. Sean, thank you, John in Jamaica. Thank you.

01:00:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks everybody for listening this.

01:00:16
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.