Episode 9: Iran, Netherlands Deep Dive, and the Story of Carlos Caszely and the Phantom Team

00:00:07
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Away End and Danielle Alercon.

00:00:10
Speaker 2: I'm John Green.

00:00:11
Speaker 1: Hey man, Hey, okay, so high energy here John, stay with me. So for the first segment of our show today, we're going to talk about the dark and the light, the troublesome and the hilarious, the complicated and the silly. So we should start with the hard stuff, I think, right, yeah, And I think we can't. We can't get away from it. And although neither of us are really necessarily enthused or even particularly knowledgeable, perhaps I think we can't not talk about Iran, the war that's currently happening, and I guess just in the context of the away and what it might mean for the World Cup. So just to give a little bit of background, currently, because of the bombing the United States and Israel are doing, there's been a bunch of back and forth, right so, you know, on the one hand, there was a statement from Iran saying we're not going to participate. Then Gianni Infantino came out and said they definitely were and even thanked the US President Donald Trump for making them welcome. And then later in the day Trump tweeted or truth whatever, I really don't believe it's appropriate that they be here for their own life and safety. And then apparently Iraq, the Iraqi players can't even leave Bagdad to go play their their you know, intercontinental playoff Wich should be happening later this month, and there's reports that the United airb Emirates, a close ally of the United States, is kind of lobbying FIFA to be given Iran's space should have become available. So this is all kind of a weird thing and not fun to think about, but also kind of an unprecedented situation. That is, I think a you know, the kind of almost natural conclusion of a haphazard, bellicose bullying foreign policy that the United States has embarked upon in the last year or so. So I don't know, John thoughts.

00:02:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really heartbreaking anytime. I mean, look, that's obviously a very difficult situation. I mean, we've been talking on the away and from the very beginning about how you can't separate politics and nationalism from contemporary global football, and that you never really could. This is incredibly difficult. I mean, Iraq is supposed to play a playoff game in like two weeks, and it's not clear that the Iraqi team can travel at all safely, And so what do you do if your FIFA Iran has said that they won't participate in the World Cup. The Iranian women's team, some of them have been offered asylum in Australia, I believe because were playing in the Asian Cup. It's you know, obviously sport is one tiny fraction of all of what's happening. But I'm reminded of something a Major League Baseball player said once during the Black Lives Matters, like when the Black Lives Matters protests were first really growing. He said, sports is the reward for a functioning society. And I'd never thought of that before, but it really is true. Like when society collapses, sports collapses. We saw that at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. I've seen it in impoverished countries where my family and I have tried to make investments in the healthcare system. That like, you know, when Sierra Leone is doing well and healthy, there is a Sierra Leonian Premier League. And when sier Leone is in a state of collapse because of Ebola, or because of civil war, because of what ever else, there isn't a seer Leonian Premier League. Sports is the reward for a functioning society, and you know, I'm questioning how well our society is functioning, and as a result, I think that it is going to impact the World Cup. There's no getting around it.

00:04:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just can't. I mean, I agree with all of that. And I love that statement by that unnamed baseball player who.

00:04:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish I could remember his name so I can credit him, but somebody will write in and tell us, please, please, please do But no, it's a pretty powerful.

00:04:31
Speaker 1: Statement and it seems to be one of those things that it strikes me as very true just on the face of it. But I can't stop thinking about the discrepancy between the what FIFA probably wanted when they awarded the World Cup to the United States, Mexico and Canada and what they're getting, which is, you know, a fracture, not just North America, you know, because of the the way Donald Trump has been, you know, trying to annex Canada and bob Mexico, but then also just a kind of broader sense of global fracture that probably began with the Ukraine War and and and you know has and said it's even before that, but that feels particularly fraught right now, you know, with the United States doing what it's doing everywhere, and with with you know, this most recent conflict just sort of taking over the news and really sort of troubling so many people around the world, including me. So yeah, it's it's not an ideal situation for sport. I was noticing just yes, just today actually I saw the news that saor Mom, Donnie and Infantino met, and I was just thinking, I was like, what are they talking about? You know, like, we know that the mayor of New York City is a huge football fan, a huge Arsenal fan like me. But I don't think that's what they were talking about. I'm pretty sure you're talking about security. You know, what happens if Veron comes, what happens Ron doesn't come, you know, what kind of threats there might be. I mean, there were two kids arrested with you know, improvised explosive devices in front of his Gracie mansion like last week. So there's a real sense that the World Cup isn't happening in this kind of at this at a perfect moment of global harmony by any stretch.

00:06:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's important to remember that the people who are obviously most affected by this are the people who bombs are raining down upon, not people in the US. But it just to go back to a story we covered earlier. It really lays bare the importance of security funding. And it looks like in Foxborough, mass that has reached a conclusion and there will be games in Boston and the Foxborough government won't be paying for security. As somebody stepped up and made that call, probably the Craft family. We don't know exactly, but some kind of conclusion has been reached.

00:07:02
Speaker 1: There, probably after listening to the way End.

00:07:04
Speaker 2: Actually probably yeah, I'm sure that they once they were like, oh my god, it's being covered by hit soccer podcast The Away, and we better get this dealt with.

00:07:14
Speaker 1: But it is.

00:07:18
Speaker 2: It's a reminder that the global fabric is really tearing at the moment, and the United States is a big part of that. And that's often been the case throughout history. I mean, the US has often had a lot of global political muscle. But it's all just a reminder that a lot of what I thought of in our youth as being stable was in fact fairly fragile when it comes to American political institutions when it comes to American foreign policy. That's not to say that like in the past, the US covered itself in glory when it came to its foreign policy or anything, but it is to say that right now is an incredibly I was gonna say unprecedentedly, but unfortunately I think there are precedents. It's just the precedents should scare us. It is a precedentedly difficult moment.

00:08:14
Speaker 1: Definitely. So Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle Shawn Dolittle. Yeah, what a great name for what a great quote.

00:08:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And you have to say that you don't think of Major League Baseball players as being necessarily fonceive wisdom. But I have been completely proven wrong by Sean Doolittle.

00:08:36
Speaker 1: I remember a New Yorker profile of Many Ramirez where they asked a teammate of his if many Amirs felt pressure in these, like, you know, intense playoff situations, and his teammates said, Many Ramiirs is too dumb to feel pressure.

00:08:52
Speaker 2: Something. There was a memoir by a Liverpool player I can't remember which, which he said that when de Va Karigi scored a critical last second, he only scored it because he didn't know he was in the last minute of the game.

00:09:07
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, that's a good transition to the very silly, uh next.

00:09:11
Speaker 2: Silly for you. I mean, you're having a great time with this, Daniel, because you're an Arsenal fan. You're having a good old You're having a good old time. But there are Tottenham fans out there who are really suffering and whose lives are as real as yours, and whose griefs are are as real as yours. And you know they're going through a hard time right now.

00:09:27
Speaker 1: They are. They are. I want to propose to you a children's book. Okay, So I just want to say, this is very petty and uh and I own petty. It's very petty, and we sh maybe.

00:09:40
Speaker 2: We should bring on Sean real quick as somebody who doesn't know about Arsenal and Tottenham, just so we can explain to Sean the Arsenal and Tottenham situation. Sewan, do you know anything about Tottenham Hotspur?

00:09:51
Speaker 3: I do not, I mean outside of them being a team. But great, yeah, great, So I'll just give you a little bit of background. You can respond to this while Daniel just giggles in delight. So Arsenal and Tottenham are big London rivals. Okay, they both are big teams in London. They both have huge stadiums, huge followings around the world, they're both big global football clubs. And Arsenal almost always finish ahead of Tottenham. In fact, the day that they guarantee that they finish above Tottenham is called Saint Tottenham's Day by Arsenal fans. Totteringham's Yes, Totteringham, Sorry, thank you, Daniel. He really wants me to get all this right.

00:10:32
Speaker 2: It's important, it's important, and this year that day has come very early because Arsenal are winning the Premier League right now, and Tottenham, for the first time in like living memory, are in real danger of relegation and being kicked out of the Premier League entirely and being moved down to the Championship, at which point there is a small, small possibility that they will actually play the team that I sponsor, AFC Wimbledon, So like next year, they could potentially be playing a team that has MY logo on their butts. That's how bad this.

00:11:09
Speaker 1: Is or how beautiful it is actually, depending on how you how you take it. So is that enough background? Can I jump in here, so because you know, there's all this nonsense talk about Arsenal winning the quadruple, which is absurd. And I was actually talking with a friend mine who said, if if we were to win the quadruple and Tottenham go down, it would be the quintuple. Yeah, it would just feel so because they're not just London rivals, Becau, there's lots of teams in London. Obviously they're North London rivals, so they actually are in the same sector of London, I suppose. So anyways, I was imagining, I was talking with a friend and I just sort of it hit me this children's book. So imagine Spurs Stadium and there's a you know, a free kick, and the Spurs defense sets up there and Sean, you know what a draft excluder is? Do you know this terminology?

00:12:05
Speaker 2: No?

00:12:06
Speaker 1: No, I didn't know until today that this is what it's called. The guy who lies down behind the wall to make sure no one kicks it beneath the wall kicks it. Often kicks it low because often the wall will jump because ninety eight percent of the time if people are shooting directly, they shoot over the wall on very select occasions, and it has worked and it's always incredible. Someone will sort of trick the wall in the jumping and they'll shoot low and catching the goalkeeper off card. So what some times then they lie this guy down and then they lie this guy down behind the wall and that guy has to literally cover his groin, close his eyes and hope for the best, right, which is an app metaphor. So I was imagining this opening scene of this children's book. Tottenham set up a wall. You know, some defender call him, you know, Mickey vandabn whatever lies down and he's like, god, this is a nightmare. This is a nightmare. He just closed his eyes, and when he wakes up, the stadium's empty, the game is over and Tottenham's been relegated. It's like it was like the whole thing was a dream. And then we have this children's book that is just like what he was imagining what was going to happen, and then the rest of the actual what ended up happening. And then at a certain point it's almost like good you know, good night moon, but it's like good bye Spurs, and it's just like him walking around the stadium like turning out the lights and uh, and then he you know, he walks off into the sad, misty rain of North London and that's it. So what do you think. I could probably get a huge book deal for this. And I just think, John, you know a lot about sewing books.

00:13:45
Speaker 2: Goodbye Spurs. Yeah, I think you could. You could find an audience for it. It's it would it would you'd You'd have to lean heavily into the arsenal side of North London. But I think you could find an audience for it.

00:13:57
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:13:59
Speaker 2: I feel I feel that you are being a little petty, a little overly cruel to tie them fans.

00:14:08
Speaker 1: I completely embraced that at the beginning. I said that no one would sit here and deny this isn't petty. I have good friends who are sports fans. I just think that part of being a fan is also laughing at the misery of the other team, you know, Like I don't do that in real I don't do that in real life. I try to live my life in a way that is carrying compassionate, you know, to my fellow man, to my friends, to my family, to my loved ones. But in this one sort of aspect of my life, I feel like it's okay for me to be the immature boy that I was at age eleven, Like, what's wrong with that? I'm not hurting anybody. I'm not gonna, you know, punch someone in the face at a bar fight over this. I just think it's hilarious. I just think it's so funny and I think it probably will incredible.

00:15:03
Speaker 2: It will probably won't happen, but it is incredible that this huge club with an eighty thousand person stadium or whatever they have, the greatest in England. Yeah, the greatest stadium in England, has fallen so far that they are at real risk of next season playing me, essentially playing players I bought, you know what I mean, Like, Yeah, it's incredible, it is. It's InCred amazing, it's astonishing. It is such a failure of leadership on such a profound scale to have that big of a football club, that much revenue and not be able to find a way to squeak out forty one points in a thirty eight game season. It is truly astonishing. And so we don't usually talk about English club football, but we needed to on this occase.

00:16:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just just thank you, and I thank you for that. I think you for allowing me to bring out this aspect, this very immature, petty childish uh you know, source of joy for you, source of joy, Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And I just want to say to my friends who are Spurs fans, like, in all, honestly, I don't think it'll happen. You know, you need like two more wins to stay up, just as I don't think the quadruple will happen, or maybe nothing will happen and it will just be a regular season where our someone did better than Spurs.

00:16:30
Speaker 3: That's all so like, because of all that is Tottenham cleaning house. Like, if this is as dire as you guys are making it seem, well, they keep they keep firing managers and it keeps not working. They keep having to bring in new coaches who do an equally bad or even worse job. And they can't really fire a bunch of players, not least because all of their players are currently injured. So they have this incredible injury crisis.

00:16:57
Speaker 2: And in their last I mean, I don't mean to laugh, I'm sorry, but in their last game, in the last thirty seconds, two of their players collided with each other injuring each other, ensuring that neither of them can play in the next game. So that's the level of like just incredibly bad luck they're experiencing, but it is it is a difficult moment for them.

00:17:20
Speaker 1: Well I was, yeah, they're there. Their manager, the current manager is this Croatian guy named de or Tutor, who you know has all He said it in one of his first reviews that like time's got three problems with no defense, no midfield and no attack. And so he just seems like a like a real uh like like it was a real roll of the dice from the board of Spurs to hire this guy. He had no experience in English football, no experience, uh, no connection to the club itself. Uh. They bring him on and uh and all he does is talk shit about his players and how bad they are and and it's you know, uh, it just doesn't seem to be like the best psychological approach to managing the crisis. You know, he's just not the guy that you would want. It doesn't seem to me. But you know, all those players if they do get relegated, Sean And will say this, two thirds of their players will leave because they have buyout clauses. I'm sure they're not gonna play in the championship. These are people who these are great players. They play on you know, their international you know, they're they're they're national teams. You know, these are wonderful footballers who never imagined they would be in a in a relegation battle.

00:18:34
Speaker 3: And yeah, when is the last like how long has it been since that team has been relegated or like have they ever?

00:18:43
Speaker 1: They have been relegated before, but I can't remember when it was, you know, like a long, a long time, long, like decades ago. Yeah, and when will we find out? I mean, we're recording this on Friday, March thirteenth, so by the time you listen to this, you will have seen Tottenham lose to Liverpool probably.

00:19:01
Speaker 2: Maybe if if that's what happens. The last time they were relegated, Jean, was nineteen seventy seven, so right around the time that you and I and Daniel were coming into the world. In fact, just two months before I was born. Woow wow, what a gift. And I'm not young, that's gonna get neither of all.

00:19:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we'll see, we'll see very exciting times to be an Arsenal event.

00:19:31
Speaker 2: All right, On that note, we're going to take a break before Daniel continues to wax poetic for the next hour and a half about how much he loves Arsenal.

00:19:50
Speaker 1: All right, we're back on the away and John, you have a deep dive for us today. Tell us all about it.

00:19:58
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about the net. This is the first time we've talked about a team that I think has an actual chance to win the World Cup. According to the bookies, the Dutch are the eighth favorite to win the World Cup, so certainly not a favorite, but also not a favorite. According to the bookies, it's about ten times more likely that the Dutch will win the World Cup than the United States. This is a nation, as I'm sure you're aware, Daniel, of tremendous footballing passion. It's also a nation where I once lived for a few months in twenty eleven while I was finishing my book The Fault Inner Stars. I lived in Amsterdam and I got to see the passion of Dutch football fans up close. It is a nation that truly loves its sports, whether that is speed skating or football. They love to wear orange. They wear a lot of orange wigs. There is a lot of passion it is an incredible experience. I remember actually that year the National League came down to one last game and one of the teams in it were IAX, who play in Amsterdam, and so we saw all the IAX fans like marching to the train station and singing their songs. And my son was one at the time, and I said, Henry, we should go to a bar and watch the game. And Henry didn't really speak, so he didn't really have a choice. And Daniel, for those of you who are just listening, Daniel is making a face right now, and it's a good face. He's making a face of dubiousness.

00:21:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a face of like did someone call child Protective Services? Like what were you thinking? Yeah?

00:21:38
Speaker 2: So I took my one year old to a bar to watch the IAX game where IAX had to win the game in order to win the league. And it was a bar just outside where we lived, just across the street actually, and I got myself a pint of beer and settled in to watch the game. And then by the time the game actually started, there were about four hundred people behind me, all wearing Iye ex Jersey's, all singing in unison. Henry was having a great old time. He loves to sing along, and everything was great until the fans took over the bar, kicked out the bartender and began pouring their own pints of beer. And then a person was standing on a chair singing behind me and became so drunk that he fell off the chair, hitting his head and there was a lot of blood pouring around, pouring off of his head. And at that point, Henry, who again was one, was having a little less fun. So I was like, oh, we should probably make our way out of here, which proved to be pretty difficult because no longer was the bartender in control of the bar, and there were like four hundred people pouring their own drinks, and we sort of weaseled our way out of there, and by the time he got out of there, Henry was in a right state. And I think that's why he still doesn't like football very much.

00:22:47
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, yeah he Anyway, i AX won the game that he's the boxer. It was his first bar bral Yeah, yeah, yeah, he witnessed his first bar ball and fell in love with boxing instead of with Sadly, but IAX did win the game and the league. It was their thirtieth league title, as I recall the third star on their uniform, but so congratulations to them. I went to the big gathering after that of tens of thousands of IAX fans just to be a fly on the wall in a big park in Amsterdam and it was an incredible experience.

00:23:19
Speaker 2: But point being Peter Henry for that. No, by that time I had learned my lasson good parenting decision their time, Thank you, Bud. People in the Netherlands love football. The Dutch pioneered so called total football with Johann Croif in the nineteen seventies. They reached the World Cup final twice in the seventies and once in twenty ten, but have never won a major trophy and are widely seen as the best national team never to have won one. That game in twenty ten was really indicative of something that we've talked about before on the Away and which is that the old notions of like Nctional football DNA have sort of gone away. Like the Netherlands has been known over the years for its free flowing total football. The fullbacks get forward and everybody's playing an attack and everybody's playing in defense, and that has kind of become global football now. But in that twenty ten final, the Netherlands were actually very physical, very defensive, very tactical, and if we're being honest, probably did not deserve to win, and indeed did not win.

00:24:31
Speaker 1: What I remember from that game, John, apart from the Anderseniesta goal that won it in extra time, was Nigel Leyong planting his cleats directly in Tabulonso's chest. Yeah, and getting go away with it without it so much as a yellow card. Yeah, in a different era, in the video assistant referee era, that would have been a definite red. But that was sort of the approach that the Dutch took to the game overall, was very very very physical, and you know, it didn't work. It was probably their best chance. I mean, Spain were so much.

00:25:09
Speaker 2: Better on the ball, quicker, all that stuff, but yeah, it was one of those games that could have gone either way. And then and he has to scored an extra time and now we remember it as inevitable, the way that history gets written down as inevitable, when of course, while it's happening, nobody knows what it means as we are currently observing, well say, at any rate these days, the Dutch national team is absolutely stacked. Maybe not as stacked as France or Spain, or Germany or England, but we're talking about players like Cody Gakpo, Ryan Gravenburg, the aging Virgil van Dijk, all of whom play at Liverpool FC. Arguably, certainly, I would argue it the best football club in the history of the world. You've got Barcelona's Frankie Deyong, You've got Arsenals, you're in Timber. That said, the Dutch national team is always good. The question for me is whether they're better than the best teams, and I just don't think they are. If they couldn't win in those golden generations in the seventies and in twenty ten, it's hard to see for me how they win with this group of players. It's always possible, but I think a good outcome. In talking to my Dutch friends about this before recording this, you know they were saying, a good outcome is the quarterfinals. A great outcome as the semifinals, but of course we expect to win, and I just think that's such a beautiful notion that like a great outcome would be the semifinals, but we still want to win. We still think we can win, because that's the nature of football, right Like you always are dreaming of winning. So that's what I think would be a good outcome for them, is a semifinals run, which would not be too far off what happened in the last World Cup. But I just think eventually they're going to run into a team like France, Spain, maybe like Brazil or Argentina that's going to be too good for them.

00:27:05
Speaker 1: I have a question for you, John, do you think that a version of that kind of deluded sense of possibility that you just described among fans is necessary for the players too when they enter a tournament like this. Do they have to believe that the impossible can happen in order to make it possible.

00:27:25
Speaker 2: Well, we've talked about this before. The professional football players, professional athletes in general, have a level of self belief that most of us don't have. I certainly don't have that level of self belief about anything, including my writing or my podcasting, right Like, I don't wake up in the morning and think I am one of the greatest players in the history of the world in soccer podcasting, and I don't have to in order to do what I do. I think that really good athletes have to. I remember once I participated in Sydney Green's basketball camp. My mother's name is Sidney Green, but there was also an Orlando Magic player named Sidney Green. Spelled it differently, but same pronunciation. And Sydney Green came and spoke to us one of the days of his basketball camp, and he was like, I am the best player in the world. And I may not have made the All Star team, I may not have won the MVP, but I believe I am the best or one of the best players in the world. And this was a very middling player on the Orlando Magic, who at the time were not a particularly good team. But he had to believe that in order to get where he got, and so I took the middle. He had to believe in his own greatness to rise to the middle.

00:28:43
Speaker 1: Good for him. I love it.

00:28:45
Speaker 2: You love it, yeah, and I think you have. I mean when you said that when you would watch the New York Red Bulls, you could squint and imagine yourself playing there, if only you'd worked harder. I don't think you were entirely kidding, man.

00:29:00
Speaker 1: I wasn't, no, and I wonder if that says more about my deluded sense of like what I was at my athletic peak versus sort of my cold and possibly harsh assessment of what I was seeing on the pitch.

00:29:17
Speaker 2: I think it might. I think it might without without trying to bring you down too many notches. I think it might so fair. I do think that you have to believe that you can win. I do think that you've got to go to the tournament and think we could be the team that the miracle happens too. This could be the year, And I think believing this could be the year is a valuable thing. Like I tell myself that before every book, I tell myself, like, this could be the book that really has a big impact, that really, you know, it has a life different from what I could imagine for it and bigger than what I could imagine for it. I've told myself that before.

00:30:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like you're being hard on yourself. I mean in the sense I mean all your books have had a huge impact. You've had millions of readers, and you've changed people's lives, and and you know, young people and middle aged people and old people talk about your books. I mean, I come across fans of yours in Latin America all the time.

00:30:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the next one could be really huge.

00:30:23
Speaker 1: But the next one could be really huge. You're right, there's probably some people who haven't read your book, like the lawyer for the deposition last week. You know, you still haven't reached everyone.

00:30:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:30:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, you haven't reached everyone. So there's there's you know, reaching as many people. That would be a good outcome. Reaching every human being alive is.

00:30:40
Speaker 2: What you know, that would be a great outcome.

00:30:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:30:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Lebron James of authors, that's the goal where you're like Clive Cussler and you died in twenty twenty, but you've still got two books coming out this year. Oh my god.

00:30:53
Speaker 1: Wow. All right, let's take a break.

00:30:56
Speaker 4: Thank you for that, and we'll come back with a story.

00:31:14
Speaker 2: All right, Daniel, we're back at the away end, and I believe it is time for you to make your peace with the fans of the nation of Chile.

00:31:21
Speaker 1: Yes, I'll give a little context. A couple of weeks ago, when we did our sort of hierarchy of loyalties, I placed Chile at the bottom because of sort of nationalism and again pettiness, and I was thinking about I have a lot of wonderful Chilean friends, and so I wanted to sort of tell a really great and admirable and inspiring Chilean soccer story. The first person to tell his story was a Chilean friend of mine named Dennis Dennis Maxwell, who actually reported this for the Spanish language podcast that I run called rad and if you speak Spanish, you should go listen to it. So the story basically starts on September eleventh, nineteen seventy three. That's the date that Chilean General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup against the civilian government. He actually bombed the equivalent of the Chilean White House, which is called the Palace La Monea in Central Santiago, and the democratically elected president Sarva do Royende ended up taking his own life, and so began, I guess one of the most violent and brutal dictatorships in Latin America. There's a lot of competition for that title. Believe me, I'll give you the broad outline because this is a soccer podcast and not politics or history of Latin America podcast. But there were thousands killed and disappeared. Nearly thirty thousand Chileans were forced into exile and its pertains to soccer. The national stadium in Santiago Anal was turning to a jail and a torture center. So the national team. Remember the years nineteen seventy three, the national team is known as La Roja, and they were preparing it for an intercontinental playoff with the Soviet Union, one of those home and away games, and the stakes are super high because the winner on aggregate goes on to the nineteen seventy four World Cup that was gonna be played in West Germany. So the team was on a brief tour. They're playing friendly matches before the trip to Moscow, and one of the stars of that team was a guy named Carlos Casselli. Carlos was a much loved player and actually Dennis interviewed him and he said that it was surprising for him that after the games, you know, Chilean fans or people who come up to him, and no one wanted to talk about soccer. Everyone wanted to ask what was happening in Chile, and sometimes they had more news than what people in Chile had back home because it was so much censorship. This was like in the immediate weeks after the coup. Eventually the team flies to the USSR, which had that point had broken diplomatic relationships with the new military dictatorship in charge of Chile, and so Carlos and the rest of the team they're treated as if they're like emissaries and supporters of this coup. They're booed for the entire ninety minutes in Moscow, but somehow they come away with a scoreless draw to take back home to Diago. So now we're up to the second game. It's zero zero. The second game is going to take place on November twenty first, nineteen seventy three. But there's a problem, which is the Chilean military, as I mentioned, are using the National Stadium as a place to keep dissidents and students or people that might be perceived as a thread, and they have them in kind of in jail basically, and they're torturing them and stuff. That story is leaked out by that point, and the Soviet Union says it refuses to play in a stadium that's quote soaked in blood. The Chilean military obviously denies that there's any detainees in the stadium, and so to kind of adjudicate this question. FIFA sends an inspector. So Dennis actually interviewed a few people who were detainees in the stadium. We know that this is true. One of them was this guy in Jorgemental and he says, on the day of the FIFA was inspecting the grounds of the National Stadium. They were basically forced into the bowels of the stadium and at the point of a gun are told don't make a sound. FIFA comes in, takes a look at is like, oh, everything's fine. There were probably like seven thousand detainees in the stadium at the time, but FIFA, what do you know, They didn't see anything, and so they declared the stadium fit and the game has to go forward. The thing is that it's not clear at that point that the Soviet Union is going to send its team or not. No one really knows. The game is scheduled, and Carlos Casselli told Dennis that even on that day until the whistle blew, the players really didn't even know if another team was going to come out of the tunnel and into the stadium. If this was a normal match, you know, a game between two countries that were literally playing for a place at the World Cup, the biggest sporting event on Earth. You would imagine a packed stadium with like fifty sixty thousand fans chanting, singing for the national team. But this was not that these were not normal times. There were like seventeen thousand fans, which is really like a smattering of people, and the game itself bizarrely lasted like a minute less than a minute. Actually, the seven thousand detainees, in case you're wondering, they'd been moved to a separate attention facility for this game, so the USSR didn't send their team. So the Chileans are lined up against nobody, against literally against nobody, but just to kind of go through the protocol of it, they have to kick off and they have to score. So they kick off and they just basically kind of look around, walk the ball down the field, and then kick the ball into an open net. The ref, who incidentally was a land ref not a FIFA ref, blows the whistle. The game is over. Chile wins one nothing and goes on to the nineteen seventy four World Cup.

00:36:23
Speaker 2: So crazy.

00:36:25
Speaker 1: Imagine the stadium and you're playing against nobody, so At the actual World Cup, CHILEA does pretty miserably, a couple of draws and a loss. They have one goal to show for their troubles. But probably the most important part of this World Cup campaign comes before the team even leaves Chile, when they're invited to the Palazio to meet the dictator, Augusto Pinochet, and he's going to wish them good luck, kind of this protocol thing that they do. And here's where Carlos Casselli does something really remarkable. Pinochet is going down the line shaking everyone's hand in Cardos Casselli just puts his hands behind his back and refuses to shake Pinochet his hand. This is an act of extraordinary courage in this moment. There were many people in prison, you know, as thousands at that point, people heading in exile, people being forcibly disappeared, tons of fear, and I just can't say enough about the dignity and the bravery of someone like that in that moment to take that decision that you know could easily cost you your life. But he does it. And what's kind of beautiful about the story, and one reasons I love it is it kind of comes full circle, right so about ten years later, Casselli retires from professional football. It's nineteen eighty five and there's kind of a testimonial farewell match organized and it's being held at the Stadi naa Jorgementalegre, who we talk to in this episode. He was seventeen eighteen at the time he was detained in the stadium. He told us that when he was a kid, he used to go to games at that stadium with his family, and then after he was detained there, he could never go back until Casselli's farewell game. Cassetti had become famous and kind of beloved among people opposed to the dictatorship because he took that kind of brave decision not to shake hands with Pinochet. RK says that he was at that game and it was cathartic and it was healing, in particular for one reason, the same reason that no television channels chose to broadcast that game. Because of Casselli's unique position within the culture and within soccer. His testimonial became one of the first mass displays of defiance, so people singing his name, but also singing ebach guy head, ebach guyhead, ebach ay. He back guy Ebach guyed, which is one of the famous chants against the dictatorship. It's gonna fall, It's gonna fall, the dictatorship will fall. No channels showed on TV because this is still in the middle of the Pinochet regime, but one radio station did rather Copatia, and people all over the country heard it. And this is just one of those moments I think about a lot, and I think about what it means to be brave, what it means to show courage, what it means to show dignity in moments when maybe it would be easier just to reach out and shake the dictator's hand. So within three years, in nineteen eighty eight, when the continuation of the dictatorship was put up to a vote, the very famous Pletiscite of Chile, to many people surprise, the country stood up and voted no. So anyway, I just want to give a shout out to Carlos Casselli, one of the greats, and of course my friend Dennis and everyone I fine will want to help produce that story. But yeah, it's one of those stories that I just love.

00:39:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really beautiful story, and I think one that has many resonances for our moment, one that resonates across the globe right now, but especially in my own life as an American, it resonates as well. So thank you for that story, Daniel. And it's really really beautifully told worthy of Dare I say at a MacArthur Genius Grant winner.

00:39:58
Speaker 1: You'd hear it in Spanish.

00:40:00
Speaker 2: By the way, I will stop talking about you're a MacArthur Genius Grant when never. Okay, let's get to the mail. We're gonna cover some recent emails we got, beginning with this one from Rachel, who writes, Hi, John and Daniel. This is not a question, but I just wanted to say I was inspired by this podcast to actually watch soccer, and I went to my first game tonight, specifically DC United versus inter Miami, held at M and T. Banks Stadium in Baltimore. I had a wonderful time and would definitely go to another match if given the chance. Rachel, Rachel, that makes me so happy to know that you went to a actual football game as a result of this podcast. Thank you.

00:40:37
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I took to my oldest son to a actual live soccer game in a stadium and we brought him up the stairs. We'd watched a ton of soccer on TV and he loved played it in the park with his friends, and we walked up the stadium steps and when you step out through the concourse and you can see the field, he did like that, like a sharp intake of breath, and he said, this is so unusual for my eyes.

00:40:59
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that.

00:41:01
Speaker 1: I do love that. It's one of those phrases that your kids say that you remember forever and and it's true because the experience of being in stadium is so different. You really have, you know, this kind of vantage point that you that you otherwise would never get. You know, you don't see it on TV. You don't see the whole field. You don't see where the players are moving. You don't feel the way an entire stadium holds its breath right before a goal, you know, right for a chance. You know, it's it's it's a really remarkable experience. I think, uh, the MLS, Hancho's should give us free tickets because we're inspiring people to go to the games, just putting it out there.

00:41:41
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'll drive to Cincinnati to watch Cincinnati FC.

00:41:46
Speaker 1: Sure, why not? In the same way that we helped tilt the balance for the Foxborough City Council. I think, uh, yeah, we might. We might really be what's gonna get them MLS numbers up where they need.

00:41:58
Speaker 2: To be well. England Revolution owner Robert Kraft is a fan of the pod. I think we know that. We don't know it for a fact, but I think we know it by inference, you know. So yeah, it makes sense that we were able to kind of settle that Foxboro mass issue with our coverage.

00:42:16
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of us, John, really proud of us.

00:42:18
Speaker 2: Me too, Man, me too.

00:42:20
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to read this email mostly because I want to. I want to. I love it, but I also want to recommend a documentary that Lucas will love. So Lucas writes, Hello, everyone, thank you for producing such a wonderful show which helps me discover new ways to think about my favorite sport. My wife's family is from El Salvador, and mine is from Italy and Ireland. Both of us and our families take both great joy and more often experience a good deal of pain because of the respective results of our country's national teams. My question comes out of your conversations about relative expectations of our teams and what counts of success. So which of these scenarios will most likely happen? Soonest One El Salvador qualifies for the World Cup, Two Ireland progresses further than England in a major tournament, and three Italy wins a World Cup.

00:43:03
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's tough. None of those are super likely. None of those are super likely. I mean I could see Italy winning a World Cup before I could see Ireland progressing further than England in a major tournament. El Salvador is the wild card for me.

00:43:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, honestly, if El Salvador had it, this was the year. You know, the heavy hitters of CONCACAF were not in the qualifying matches, so this was the time for.

00:43:34
Speaker 2: Asalm made it for God's sakes.

00:43:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry to Lucas's wife, but this was really a big bissed opportunity here. But I used to play in Oakland, California. I think I've mentioned a dozen times, and so we played a league with my wonderful club team, Left WINGFC, and the ref was Salvadoran And one day, you know, after the game, we were chatting up the referee as one and it turned out that he had been on the World Cup team, you KNOWL Salvador in nineteen eighty two when they went to Spain. Yeah wow, and he was living in the Bay Area and refing games. He's probably in his fifties. I don't know. I mean, you know, hard to tell. And it was kind of remarkable to have this. I mean, it was like for me a brush with fame. Oh my god, someone who played in the World Cup. Now El Salvador. That World Cup, you know, was just brutalized. Basically, they lost all three matches and they played a game and I can't remember right now off the top of my head because it was against Hungary. It might have been against the Hungary, but they lost ten to one, which is one of the worst results ever in the history of World Cup. However, there is on YouTube you can find it Lucas and anybody, really wonderful documentary called Uno Lestoria ion The History of a Goal that is the story of the one goal that El Salvador scored in that World Cup. And it's a lovely documentary and it sort of actually gets at this this thing we've been talking about, which is like, what would it mean to different countries, you know, and you get the sense from watching that documentary that what really matters was being there and then having this moment to celebrate, because the players celebrate that one goal as if as if they'd won the entire thing. You know, it's beautiful. So yeah, guess Lucas go check out that documentary and we have one last question.

00:45:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll read this email from Robert, who says a longtime fan of John's work and newfound fan of Daniels, I just wanted to write into thank you guys for helping me, helping fuel my love of footy. A decade ago, I dated a wonderful woman from Australia who hated the Australian Football League and together we became longtime timbers, AFC Fiorn Tina and Liverpool fans. Since he're passing in twenty sixteen, as well as a number of other factors, I only allow my love of the beautiful game to exist and pop ups on my sports apps and occasionally scarf wearing when patronizing my local German food place. But I saw a real on Facebook of you two and knew I had to immediately binge all seven episodes and I've already ordered another kid and a fresh Fiorentina Battistuta jersey, as my old one seems to have vanished from the closet. The passion was always there, but it took two great writers and hilarious podcasters to rekindle the embers. Thank you both and Sean so so much much love and pray that Fiorentina rebounds and avoids relegation. Robert, Wow, that's such a great email. I'm so pleased to Robert. I'm so happy that we could have been a part of that. I also want to commend you the Battistuta, great player obviously, and Fiorentina lovely jerseys man, the Purple, the Purple, some of the best jerseys in the game. They avoid relegation just so that they can stay. I mean, in general, syria A jerseys are the best, like Benitzia has incredible jerseys, Parma has great jerseys. But man, those Fiorentina jerseys are gorgeous.

00:46:51
Speaker 1: Not absolutely and quite a lovely coincidence that you did Netherlands for Robert today on Today's Yeah, it was a gift. Yeah, wonderful man. That warms my heart and my only question is what is German food, which I don't know if the answer to, but oh, it's all.

00:47:11
Speaker 2: Like sausages, brought some sour kraut. We used to have a German when I was in my internet dating phase Daniel, before Sarah and I rekindled our high school acquaintanceship and fell in love and everything. I'd had this internet dating phase and there was a German restaurant just down the block from where I lived, and that's where I would take all of my internet dates. It was called the Browhouse and they served they served beer in glass boots in Chicago. And I remember taking a Hannah, a rent scholar, to the Browhouse and she was like, what.

00:47:44
Speaker 1: The hell is this place?

00:47:46
Speaker 2: Hmm? But it was great, man, it was you know, a whole lot.

00:47:50
Speaker 1: I'm taking up my headphone because I need to show you something.

00:47:53
Speaker 2: Okay, well, Daniel's gone. I'll just say that, like, I was not a genius it came to internet dating. It'll surprise you to learn.

00:48:03
Speaker 1: Look at you look at that glass boot. Was it like this was this where you? It was than that, but it was that it is a dainty little This is a dainty little Yeah, that's.

00:48:17
Speaker 2: These were proper glass boots of beer, you know, like you wouldn't feel great after you drank one. But yeah, I looking back, I mean I often look back at my twenties and think what the hell was I doing? But I look back in that and I just think, what the hell was I doing? Why didn't I? You know, I could have I could have taken them anywhere. I took them to the brown House and no wonder. I had so a few second dates, no wonder.

00:48:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, uh, I yeah, I'm not going to tee. I was. I only went on one Internet dating. It was terrible, and I'm so glad to be married that I missed that, so glad.

00:48:51
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I would not be good at it. I mean I wasn't good at it when I had to do it. It's kind of a miracle. And I know that we need to end the podcast, but I'll just say here at the end, when no one's listening anyway, that it's kind of a miracle that Sarah fell for me, like we all thought somebody recently, I know, I remember, actually I remember when my first book came out. Sarah was at the book launch party in Birmingham and doctor Cooper, our high school history teacher said, what are you doing here? And she said, I'm dating John And he said why a.

00:49:30
Speaker 1: Wow, doctor Cooper. You know you study history, you really don't have time for sort of social niceties. You just say it, like.

00:49:40
Speaker 2: God, What a great teacher he was. He's a great teacher.

00:49:43
Speaker 1: Is still is is? Yeah?

00:49:45
Speaker 2: Yeah? All right, Well, thanks to everybody for listening and allowing us to wax poetic abount our our earlier days. We appreciate you being here so much, and we'll see you next week.

00:49:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks to Brusus, Sean Titane and Kirk, and remember to send your emails away endpod at gmail dot com. Thanks so much. I'll see you next week. John. All right m hm