Episode 2: The Power of Hope, AFCON Aftermath, and the Story of Jimmy Glass

00:00:06
Speaker 1: Welcome to the away, And I'mmanielle Alarconne and I'm John green Don. If we live to be seventy eight years old, which is the average length of an American man's life, that means that we don't have eight World Cups left. Wow, I think I sent you that and you expressed some dismay. Do you want to talk through your feelings? Yeah?

00:00:25
Speaker 2: It did send me into a bit of a spiral, to be fully honest with you. It reminded me a little bit of when I was doing physical therapy for some pain in my back, which is another evidence of the fact that I'm getting older. And I made the joke that I've been making for the last ten or fifteen years when someone asks how old I am, I said, I'm forty eight. Halfway home And the physical therapist I made the joke to looked at me and said, well, but probably more than.

00:00:51
Speaker 1: That love their bedside manner. Yeah, yeah, so that's how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like I'm more than halfway home. Yeah, I mean, you know, eight World Cups is a lot is a lot of World Cups. You know, It's not like it's one World Cup, right, And I I, you know, I have a feeling like I feel like that means eight more shots at something truly unexpected happening, you know, eight more opportunities for you know, the surprise winner, for a new team to emerge, for for a you know, a generational talent to show up and sort of transform review of the game. So I don't know, I feel sort of weirdly optimistic, maybe because it's eight and not like three, you know, yeah, but it's just the fact that it's accountable number as a bummer to me, Like we can count it on our hands, you mean, yeah, And just the thought that I only have a finite number of World Cups in general is a little depressing. It reminds me my friend Amy Cross Rosenthal, toward the end of her life, wrote about how many times she had left to look at a tree, and that she knew she only had so many times left to look at a tree, and how discouraging that was in some ways, but also how poignant. So I guess that's what I feel. I feel the poignancy of time passing, which is a start contrast to how I usually feel when I think about the World Cup, which is exactly what you described. For me, which is that I feel like I'm twelve years old again, right right, But maybe I'll feel that way when i'm old. Yeah, I think maybe I'll just appreciate it more. And I want to apologize to our listeners for the downbeat way of beginning our second episode, but I do want to just mention how excited I am to be back with you and hopefully with a bunch of listeners too, because we are talking about something really beautiful. We're not talking about death and dying and our limited time here on this swirling planet. We're talking about the World Cup, about global football, and maybe we should start with Afcon, which I realized by the time you listen to this will have been a few days. But I also feel like it's the kind of thing that needed a few days or you know, ten days or so to process because of the final that was so crazy. We should get to that in a second, but I want to start with you, and I know everyone knows you're a Liverpool fan, and everyone knows how seriously you take it, and I wanted to ask you, as a fan a couple of questions about the semifinal two Liverpool legends. Sadiomane and Mosala battling it out, not for the first time, And I'm just kind of interested in the conflicting loyalties that you might have as a fan. So how did you experience that?

00:03:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I didn't have a preferred team to win that game. It feels weird to root for one Liverpool legend over another, even if Mosaala is still with the team and Money isn't. But I did feel like Senegal deserved to win the game. I thought they played a much more aggressive, attacking forward style game. They brought the game to Egypt. I was confused actually by Egypt's tactics. And so I always want players to do well right, like in my dream Afcon or my dream World Cup, everybody has a great tournament, and it just turns out that like somebody has a better tournament than had somebody else, you know, Like I never even with players I actively dislike, I don't root for them to have a bad tournament because the World Cup means so much, you know, it's so devastating to a player if they make a mistake, as we'll talk about in the final. It's so permanent, you know, Like I have a few regrets in my life that there's just no way to walk back. And that's what it is to miss a penalty in a World Cup final or in an Afcon final. That's what it is to make a mistake that leads to a goal. I think about when I was the ultra for our high school soccer team. There was a player he'll remain nameless, because I think he probably still thinks about it, who lost in the state tournament, like we lost in the state tournament, because he basically got he was basically gassed.

00:04:56
Speaker 1: An extra time.

00:04:56
Speaker 2: I don't know if you even remember this, Daniel, but you know a player ran past him and he couldn't do anything about it and didn't take him down. And that player went and scored a goal, and that was the goal that sent Indian Springs home from the tournament. And if I were him, I would still think about that. And that was just high school soccer.

00:05:14
Speaker 1: Wow, I was I was probably playing that game, and I don't remember unless that was me, in which case it was, I don't think about it anymore. What I remember was from that I've completely forgotten. I didn't play in the final because I got injured in the semifinal. Oh really, yeah, yeah, I got taken out, and I was like, it was almost immediately after I'd scored a goal, which was like one of the I was at midfield. I rarely ever scored, but I do remember Alan O'Neill put me through and I scored a one touch, great goal, great player, and then my defender like cleaned me out the next play and I woke up the next morning I couldn't walk. Yeah, So anyway, but I guess I do understand that feeling. I'm sort of like, oh, I do sometimes weirdly because I'm forty eight years old. Who cares. Wish I'd played that game? You know, Yeah, I wish he'd played it too. But if I played the final, you know, like I might have like permanently damaged my ability to run, you know something like you know, uh, And so I'm kind of glad that the doctor that I saw that morning was like, absolutely not, you can't play. Yeah, in the scheme of things, it's more important. Yeah. Yeah.

00:06:19
Speaker 2: But to take it back to AFCON, I mean, I root for the same thing. I root for everybody to have a good game, and I root for nobody to get hurt. And I was very impressed with Saudiomane. I mean he is an elderly gentleman.

00:06:32
Speaker 1: Let's be honest. I mean he is. He plays in Saudi Arabia. He hasn't lost a step, he's lost four or five steps. And he's an attacking player who you know, was never that dependent upon pace, but like needs his pace to really perform at the highest level, and yet still basically carried that team to an African Cup of Nations trophy. I have many questions with that one. When when it was that I'm Verrid of Sala and Mane and Bobby Formino. Am I correct saying that your favorite was Bobby Formino.

00:07:07
Speaker 2: By a country mile. Yeah, I'm a big Bobby Formino fan because I always felt I mean, he wasn't underappreciated by Liverpool fans, but I feel like he was underappreciated in world football because he didn't score that many goals, but what he did was much more interesting. Yeah, you know, he opened up space. He had that genius for for finding players in space, for finding space where it seemed tight, and I've just always loved him.

00:07:30
Speaker 1: I also felt like he was the kind of the most zen of the two and the one who balanced them to keep them from from fighting.

00:07:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would often argue, and he was the I remember once they had a fight. And then in the in the tunnel on the way home from the game, there was a there was a meme of Bobby for Meino smiling nervously, like looking at the camera like what are you going to do about these guys?

00:07:57
Speaker 1: Totally, So that was one thing. And then and then the other thing I wanted to ask you was about the final because money played a huge role in avoiding what would have been a complete embarrassment for African football by bringing the Senegalese team back onto the pitch. Did he ever show that kind of maturity at Liverpool? Like would you have guessed that it would have been him to show that kind of leadership and maturity in that moment?

00:08:23
Speaker 2: I would not necessarily have guessed it would have been him. I will say, I think the context here is really important. So the Senegalese team felt very hard done by throughout that game and then the lead up to that game, in terms of ticket allocations, in terms of security, in terms of all kinds of things. And then during the game there was towel gate. I don't know how closely you followed towel gate. Oh yes, yeah, the goalkeeper's towel was stolen by initially by the captain of Morocco, the Senegalese goalkeeper's towel stolen, and then by the ball boys. The ball boys kept stealing the towel until eventually a substitute was sent just to watch over the towel. A Senegalese substitute was sent just to watch over the towel, and I think by the time the actual penalty was called in the ninety eighth minute, So it's the ninety eighth minute, there is a very normal amount of contact on a Moroccan cornerkick, and the video assistant referee calls the referee over and says it's this a penalty, and the referee decides it is a penalty against Senegal for Morocco in the ninety eighth minute on what was a very I mean, it was not a foul at least if it was a foul, then there would have been thirty penalties that game, and so I think the Senegalese team felt very hard done by. But Moni was absolutely right that the response to a poor refereeing decision is not to remove yourself from the playing field and refuse to finish the game. The response is and has to be, well, you know, that's the nature of the game. We play like we all want football to be totally fair, but it isn't fair, right, Like, That's part of what we love about the game is that it is like life. Sometimes it doesn't break your way and for reasons that aren't good reasons. And so I thought he was he really was the hero of that moment to call the players back and say over the coach's head basically say no, we're going to finish this game. They're going to take this penalty and we're going to see how it goes.

00:10:37
Speaker 1: Yeah. When I was a kid, my dad would, you know, whenever I would say something isn't fair, he would he would say, I see, he said football, that's soccer, which I always loved because it's basically saying that's life, except you replace life with football, which is how many people actually exist in terms of their you know, emotional hierarchy of of of importance. And I think it is a lesson and I think it's like one of the reasons we love sport, I think is because there are rules and life there aren't you know, And the game lasts this long and you can't use your hands and off sides, which producer Sean explained to us in great detail last episode. And all those things are sort of like, you know, you hold onto them tight and they feel like certainties that you can you could build an understanding of events around. But the truth is that there are bad referees, there are bad pitches, There are difficult context in which to play where things feel unfair. There are you know, insane ball boys who go around stealing towels, and all kinds of other things that give texture to our idea that sport is this kind of level playing field, because it isn't obviously. And yeah, I think Mani did a great service not just to his team but to Afkhan and African football and too world football, because I think it would have been just a huge embarrassment if the team had just walked off. To have a final abandoned is terrible, Yes.

00:12:00
Speaker 2: It would have been terrible, but not only that. Of course, the game is eventually restarted and then the penalty is taken and it is a pananka do.

00:12:09
Speaker 1: You do you want to do this? Now? Should we wait? Let's do it now. Let's do it now, Sean, do you want to come on? Hey Sean?

00:12:14
Speaker 3: What's up?

00:12:14
Speaker 1: Guys? How's it going? Man? We had a question for you. Okay, what is a pananka?

00:12:20
Speaker 3: I have never heard that term before in my life. I thought it was the name of a player.

00:12:25
Speaker 1: So it is a player, that is that's great, that's great, you nailed it. Yeah, but okay, yes and no, Yes and no, it's the name of a player. I mean, strictly speaking, you are not incorrect. All right, how about that? All right, that's a good story. Should I explain what pananca means in this context? Yeah, Panenka is a is a specifically is yes, named after a player, but it's also a type of penalty kick, and it was pioneered in nineteen seventy six by a fella named Pananka who in the European Final, in the most important game of his career, ran up to take the penalty kick, which is a spot kick from like twelve yards away. Ran up to take the penalty kick, and instead of kicking it hard into a corner like you always do, he kicked it very softly and slowly in a high arc straight down the middle. And he did this because he knew the goalkeeper would dive to the left or the right and then the ball would just sort of trickle into the net, thereby humiliating the goalkeeper, winning the European Cup, becoming the hero, and having the penanka forever after named for you.

00:13:40
Speaker 2: Just one problem. If you try a penanka and it doesn't work, it's the most humiliating thing in football, because the goalie stands still and the ball essentially falls kindly into his arms, which is what happened in this game.

00:13:55
Speaker 1: That's exactly what happens. Exactly what happened, and it was humiliating. I don't think I would ever try panenka unless I was, like, you know, in the rec room with a bunch of children, like playing around. This whole thing reminded me actually of a Chilean player, Alexis Sanchez, who did a panenka in a Copamerica game penalty kicks against Argentina. It takes an incredible amount of self confidence, and one of the things that I find interesting about elite athletes is how you know, it's almost a sense of delusion. You have to have a level of self belief that borders on delusion to play at that level anyway, and then to attempt something like that, you know, like in many of the soccer chats I meant, everyone was saying, you know, he's crazy, he's crazy. He's crazy. Yes he is. That's a crazy mistake to make. But I feel like it's something that you do when you have such formidable self belief. And he attempted something that if it had worked, he would be a legend. And it didn't work, and he looks like an.

00:14:51
Speaker 2: Ass sean before we let you go? Is there any field in which you have that level of confidence to do a panenka? Yeah, like or or a pananka style thing like? I feel like I don't have that level of confidence in young adult fiction writing. And I am a pretty good well, I don't know.

00:15:09
Speaker 1: I do my best. I can't even say that I'm a good writer. I stop myself in the middle of the sentence.

00:15:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, does does cooking count cooking? Cooking?

00:15:20
Speaker 1: What would a panenka in cooking be? What would that even be? Oh? When you're just like a bold cook who needs no recipe.

00:15:27
Speaker 3: Right, like, you know exactly what you're doing. You've made this dish a thousand times.

00:15:31
Speaker 1: No, but it's more than that because it's like everyone's expecting bay a ya and you make mashed potatoes instead and it turns out to be delicious. Like that's what it is, because it's not that you can do something incredible without a recipe, it's that you make something simple so good that it's shocking and stuns the audience. Because the essential element of the panica is the misdirect. It's like throwing the change up instead of the fastball, you know, So it wouldn't just be cooking without a recipe. Would be someone expecting calamari and you give French fries but they're incredible. Yeah, I think Sean could do that. I could. I can't wait to come to you.

00:16:09
Speaker 3: Before I hop I do have one quick question, like, is there a precedent to what happened in this game where in a final the team stages a protest or a walk off? Because I've never heard of that happening before in any sport, but especially football.

00:16:26
Speaker 2: I have also never heard of it happening. And while it was happening, I felt sick to my stomach because I was like, this just confirms what everybody says about football, right, Like this confirms what everybody says about African and North American football especially, but about you know, FIFA in general, that it's corrupt to the core and that there's no way to respond to the corruption except not playing the game. And whether or not that's true, I think that's certainly how the Senegalese team felt, and listen, I don't think there was anything corrupt in the referees decision. I think it was just a bad decision, and referees make bad decisions all the time because they're human beings.

00:17:06
Speaker 1: Can I offer a contrary take? Yeah, because I watched the game, and the more I watched the replays, I was like, that's a penalty. Wow, that wasn't a It wasn't a bad call. It was a defender had his arms on Brian Diaz's neck right in the ninety eight minute of an Afcon final as the corn cakes coming in. He pulls them down. Brian Diaz makes a meal of it, obviously, but that's not a terrible call. That's that you've seen them, as they say, you've seen them given so I thought that the response was terrible and it was embarrassing, but it's also also placing it in context. You know, the Copaminica final in Miami last summer was also chaotic. There was a couple of years ago in Peru the two rivals improving soccer against A Lima and when you were decided that port this were playing basically what amounted to the final. They were playing the final game at Alansas Stadium in Matute in Lima. And as soon as the game ended and when we started hood one and it was going to celebrate their championship on their rivals field, Alansa just turned off the lights, which was so that's class. That's great. Yeah, I'm all for that. That's that's it was. It was a huge scandal, but and also like I'm an Aliansa fan, and pretty embarrassing but also kind of hilarious. And I do feel like, you know, everyone was saying like, oh, you hate to see it and wringing their hands, but you know, like it was pretty riveting spectacle. You can't say it was uninteresting, even if it was embarrassing. Uh, you know, you know you don't want your kids to follow this kind of example. I will say the only time that I've seen or I can imagine people storming off in the final would be in high school sports, you know, like you just don't see it at this level because you know, I mean there's millions of people watching, you know, and it's just and they're grown ups. They're supposed to be grown ups. I mean, I still think of Brandy as his twenty six and I still think of him as a kid. You know. I felt bad. I felt so bad for him. He's just shattered. He could tell he was just a mess. He's not going to recover from that for years years of therapy, which he probably won't get. You know. My first thought was, like his mental health. Honestly, Yeah, no, I agree. All right, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about politics. Great.

00:19:28
Speaker 4: Thanks John, guys, welcome back to the Away End on Danielle Alergonne.

00:19:41
Speaker 1: John. I don't want to do this, but we have to. I have to talk abut a little bit about politics. Last week, President Trump abruptly announced that he was canceling visas indefinitely from seventy five countries. I want to list off some of his countries, just the ones that are in the World Cup or in the playoffs of the World Cup. Okay, Verdie Columbia, Ivory Coast DRC. This Democratic Republic, Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kosovo, Morocco, Nigeria, Sene golsbeck Say and Uruguay. You may have noticed that all four Afcon semifinalists are on this list. You may have noticed how many of these countries are important soccer nations. I think you can also notice which countries aren't on the list. I think that's also interesting. But anyway, it's really troubling, and there's talk that there might be an exemption for the World Cup. I know the mayor of New York's Armamdani has been talking about he's going to call Trump and try to get this sorted since the finals being played in just outside New York at MetLife Stadium in Jersey. What was your reaction when you saw this list?

00:20:44
Speaker 2: Well, I have to say that I wasn't tremendously surprised because escalation has been the name of the game for the administration throughout the first year, and I do a lot of work as you know, in Sierra Leone, which has been on the visa ban list almost from the beginning of the administration. It was one of the first countries where visas were suspended indefinitely, and that means that essentially no one from Sierra Leone, with very few exceptions, can visit the United States, and that you know, if for instance, Sierra Leone had qualified for the World Cup, which unfortunately they didn't, but if they had, that means that they would have no fans from Sierra Leone. Potentially, you know, Sierra Leonian Americans could still visit the tournament and everything, but it's just to me, yet another punitive move by the administration, and it has big impacts for the World Cup. I don't know what the World Cup is going to look like. If there will be no Uzbek people at the Uzbekistan Games, you know, or at least like people who only have an Uzbek passport, It's going to be a very weird World Cup as it is. You know, the argument was always, oh, the World Cup is corrupt because it's here. The World Cup is corrupt because it's there. So I'm really disappointed by this decision. I mean, obviously, the way it impacts football is a footnote in the story. I wonder how you're feeling about it. It's hard to separate. You're right, how it affects the World Cup is a footnote, is very much of a piece with everything else the Trump administration is doing with regards to immigration and its violent implementation of immigration enforcement tactics across American cities. It's hugely disappointing. I think it's something that I've been keeping my eye on for you know, since the Trump administration began. The idea of the three countries, you know, Canada, United States, and Mexico coming together to host a World Cup was built on this notion of integration and friendliness between these the three countries, the three large countries that share in North America that no longer exists.

00:22:54
Speaker 1: You know. The Trump administration has blown that up, you know, threatening to go into Mexico, go to attack the cartels, something the Mexican government obviously is like, look, you know, you can't just bomb us across the border. He started off, you know, kind of taunting Canada with this fifty first state stuff. So you know this that's not exactly the kind of I imagine, It's not the political environment in which FIFA wanted to stage it's showpiece event. Now, I wonder because like, you know, these these kinds of ammoral apart chicks of big giant organizations like FIFA fascinate me. Like, I wonder what Gianni Infantino was thinking, you know that the FIFA Peace Prize was going to buy him, you know what kind of you know, He's like, okay, good, we make up this prize, we give it to Trump. Then he won't mess with us on visas. He'll stop saying that he's going to take games away from you know, cities and blue states, and we can finally just go on to our business of making money off of rabid soccer fans from all over the world. Now they seem to speak the same language, Inventino and Trump. So it surprises me that this wasn't something that Inventino was able to head off at the past, you know what I mean.

00:24:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he's used to dealing with a different kind of strong man. I think he's used to dealing with different sorts of totalitarian leaders. And part of this is because Trump isn't an elected dictator, despite whatever ambitions people around him may have, and so, you know, instituting some of these changes is difficult. The places where Trump does have a lot of power also places where he tends to exercise a lot of power In immigration in you know, handing out visas, etc. I am reminded that football has always been political, you know. And I think it was before the nineteen thirty World Cup that somebody said to the Uruguay national team, you are the motherland. Like for those weeks, you are the motherland. And it's never not political. It's just that it would have been, as you say, nice to have a World Cup hosted by three countries that are getting along and coming closer together over time, deepening their relationship through the magic of sport. That was the narrative, and it's very clear that's not going to be what happens. And what I'm hearing from a lot of my friends in Europe in Africa is that they don't want to come to the World Cup, even if they have the means to do so. They're nervous about coming to the United States. They're nervous about having their social media checked, They're worried about you all kinds of not just the absurd cost of going to the World Cup in twenty twenty six, but also the risks of going to the World Cup, which feel very palpable to a lot of people.

00:25:49
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, I mean, I'm an American citizen, and I'm nervous about going back to the United States right now. I'm nervous that I'll be outside somewhere speaking Spanish to my wife and someone will come try to detain me, you know. So yeah, I completely understand that, and that's part of why I'm tentatively but probably going to spend the World Cup here in Columbia. Parenthetically, I should say that my son made his first bracket and I don't know if I sent this to you, John, but somehow he ended up with a final that was Columbia versus the United States. Via hell of a moment, it sure would be. I think that would be remarkable. You know, if you put a dollar on that, he's going to get a lot of money back for the college fund. So yeah, I think soccer's always been political and also always geopolitical, and also the space in which scores get settled between nations, right just in ways that are controversial, in ways that are riveting to watch. I mean, I grew up and I should mention I think I've said ten times now in two episodes that I'm Provian, but I remember growing up and hearing about the glory days of proving soccer, which essentially came to an end, at least in the telling that I was given as a boy in the nineteen seventy eight World Cup when Argentina had to win a game by six goals against Peru, and apparently it was a range And this is the story that I've heard, and I believe it because it was told to me by my father. And you know, why wouldn't I Kissinger arranged for Peru to lose that game and they did exactly six nothing and Argentina won, moved onto the knockout phase and ended up winning the World Cup. And they say that winning that World Cup sort of gave the kind of dictatorship that was running the military junta I was running Argentina at the time, an extra few years of oxygen to survive because of just changed the national mood. And winning a World Cup can do that. I wouldn't know, not, nor would I, So yeah, I wonder, I wonder. You know, it's always been this way. It's a way for nations to settle scores. You know, there's a famous Argentina England game and that he's six post Falkland or there was an incident when the Swiss team played Serbia in the last World Cup. Do you remember, Oh yeah, it wasn't Grant Shackay, it was the other guy, Jared and Shakiri. Yes, yes, short little bulldog of a man, incredibly talented technical player. Yeah, but one of those teas play's best games with his national team, scores and then does the Albanian symbol and gets fined for it, you know, because he's of Albanian descent.

00:28:30
Speaker 2: Or I think about the games between the US and Iran and the World Cup, or the games between France and Senegal, France and Algeria. These are charged, yeah, geopolitical relationships, and football is one of the ways that we express power among nations. It's one of the ways that nations become nations, right. I mean, part of being a nation is convincing yourself that you're a nation, but part of being a nation is convincing other people that you're a nation and having a football federation and being able to feel the team that can compete in FIFA sanctioned competitions as part of what being a country is.

00:29:07
Speaker 1: Yea. And so I think that there's no separating this stuff out, which means there is no leaving politics out of football that simply doesn't exist. It's like leaving money out of football. It's like it's already there. Yeah, I wouldn't mention one thing because you said something really interesting, John, This idea of like convincing yourself that you are a nation, I think it's particularly true. I think this is one of the things that's going to make a World Cup in the United States is very interesting. Despite attempts to change this, the United States is a country of immigrants, and I think as an immigrant, I can say that latching on to the Peruvian national team was always a way of asserting my identity and understanding where I fit. You know, and I've written about this before, but there are times when you're growing up in the United States where you don't feel like you fit in anywhere, and then you want to be closer to the country of your birth or the country of your parents' birth, but you don't quite know. You don't understand the politics, maybe you don't speak the language perfectly, and so you're sort of wandering through adolescence in this way where you're trying to figure out where you where you fit in, and who you are. But for the ninety minutes in which you can you know, stand in the stadium cheering, singing the songs, or watching the TV and you know, wearing the jersey. It's very simple. It's very simple, and it feels really good, you know. Unfortunately it also feels really bad, especially if you're proving, because mostly we lose. However, so much suffering. Yeah, but even that suffering is like this this. Uh, you know, you're joining a community of sufferers and of people who suffer along with you. You always have when you get into a taxi and lima something to talk about with the driver or with you know, with whoever you might come across, and there is this kind of shared sense that in other situations you might not have. And I think that's something that's super interesting to me, and I can speak from personal experience. It has been fundamental to sort of shaping who I am or who have become. Reminds me of a line from Ulysses where Bloom has asked what a nation is, and Bloom says a nation is the same people in the same place, and then he pauses and says, there are also other places. Yeah, exactly. Come for the discussion on world football, Stay for the Ulysses quotes. Should we take a quick break and come back, let's do it.

00:31:43
Speaker 2: I want to tell you a story, Daniel, about club football, about a little team that could called Carlisle United. So Carlisle United have a long proud history, not currently, but at the time had a long proud history of being in the Football League, which is the top four divisions of English soccer. Okay, so in English football, the top four divisions are considered full time professional divisions, and then below that you up what's called non league football, which is ostensibly amateur, although some of the teams are professional, and Carlile United had been continually in the Football League for I believe over one hundred years by nineteen ninety nine, when they were one game away from being relegated out of being a full time professional team. Of course, the other thing that being a full time professional team in England means for you is that you're part of the video game FIFA or now EAFC, and so if you're not in the top four divisions, then you're not part of that video game, which does hurt your revenue a lot and your reputation, and generally it just means that people can't play as you you know, so like people can't live the dream of taking Carlile United all the way to the Champions League. So Carlile United has this long, proud history of being a professional team in England. It's the only team in their town and they're one game away from being relegated out and they have a brand new goalkeeper who's only played two games for them. He's on loan from Swindon Town because their regular goalkeeper got hurt. His name is Jimmy Glass. Today Jimmy Glass sells insurance. It's not like you make a lot of money being a fourth tier English goalkeeper, but that that's the story. This is the story, this is the setup.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: The game is incredibly intense because when your whole, the whole future of your football club is riding on one game, it also feels like on some level, the whole future of your community is riding on one game, right. I mean, there are so many little towns in England that have these teams in the third or fourth division and it's a huge part of the identity of the town that they have a team in England's professional leagues. A lot of these towns, you know, it's common to say these days that outside of London, England is poorer than Mississippi. And it's true. I mean a lot of these towns are part on their luck and have been through a lot, et cetera.

00:33:58
Speaker 2: And so Jimmy Glass is playing this game for Carlile United.

00:34:03
Speaker 1: The game ends one to one. Okay, are you still there, Daniel, Yeah, yeah, I'm riveted. I can't wait to see what happens to Jimmy. All Right, they're playing Plymouth Argyle. It's one to one. They have to win. There are only ten seconds left in the game. Carlyle United win a corner kick. Okay, So Jimmy Glass looks over to the coach and the coaches like, just go up there, Just go up there. You see this all the time in football, in the last second in a must win match, where it doesn't matter if you lose the goalkeeper or how many goals you lose, buy or whatever, the goalkeeper will come up. It never works, like it works one time out of ten thousand. Maybe it certainly never works in like fourth tier English football, where frankly the quality of the goalkeepers is not great. So Jimmy Glass comes up, Carlile United kick the corner kick. It sort of bounces around in the box for a second and then the ball falls at the half volley to Jimmy Glass, a man not known for his footwork. He is a professional goalkeeper, and he kicks the ball straight into the back of the Plymouth Argyle net and instantly becomes a hero in Carlisle United lore, such that he will never have to buy a drink again. He will never He saved this football club after three games with them with a kick with a goal, the one thing the goalkeepers aren't supposed to do. And I just I love this story because it reminds me that at any moment, all things are possible, Like in that moment with ten seconds left, like when there was no hope, there was still hope, and that hope isn't always rewarded, but hope is always justified. Hope is always the correct response to the moment. The reason Saudiomane was right to tell the players let's get back on the pitch wasn't just because it was the right thing to do and the sportsman like thing to do. It was also because there was still hope. And then in fact, in that case, the hope was rewarded in Senegal went on to win the African Cup of Nations. In this case, the hope was rewarded and Jimmy Glass went on to become a hero for Carlisle United. And this is what I love about football in the end, is that it reminds me over and over again that hope is correct.

00:36:20
Speaker 3: Ah.

00:36:20
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that I have a counterpoint though, all right, give it to me, give me the proving counterpoint where hope is never just no, no, no no. I was just thinking about relegation, which I should say. You know, the United States, we don't have relegation right in our professional leagues, and I think we should. Oh yeah, I think it adds another level of intrigue that it's just so exciting. But so there's a story that I reported many years ago. River Plate, one of the biggest clubs in South America, team from Buenos Aires, had to play you know, they had a few miserable years and they were going to be relegated. The Argentine legue actually changed the rules to make it harder for him be relegated, but they still ended up being in a playoff where they had to be relegated. They had to sort of win to be to avoid relegation, and they went down and they were they were losing, and something happened that was really extraordinary, which was that the announcer for the team, a guy named that Tilio Costa Febre on national radio Radiomitre in Buenos Aires, was calling the game. And then when it was clear that Riverplay was going to lose, the Riverplay was going to be relegated, something which had never happened. Imagine the New York Yankees having to play in a you know, in a in a in a farm league or minor league baseball or something. Stopped narrating the game and started basically ranting. And we interviewed him about it later because it was such a remarkable rant. He basically started talking about the directors of the club, how they'd screwed everyone over. He kept calling them ratstas wow, and he's like, no, you know, like ker seeing on national radio for the last ten twelve minutes of the game, it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful piece of found poetry and an expression of rage, of love for the club, of the desire to succeed, the club succeed, and of this enchantment. We talked to him about it later and he said that he was only saying what he imagined every fan wanted to say, but they didn't have the mic and he did, and so there was no Jimmy Glass to save them. Then river Plate got back up to first division. Actually interesting side note. You remember Theresa Gez, the French player. Yeah, of course he had Argentine roots. He actually went back to play with river Plate to help them come back up, which is a really remarkable coda to his career. Anyway, they made it back up. You can still hear coast Or on the radio, I believe in Argentina calling riverplayed games. But he says something that stuck with me, which I think historians would quibble with. But just so you understand how important club soccer is, or you know, can be, not just an Artina, but all over the world. He said. He told us in the interview that the relegation of river Plate to the second division was one of the fifteen most important events in Argentine history. And he said it like stone cold straight, like he wasn't There's no irony in his voice. He wasn't kidding. He meant it, and I kind of love him for that, you know, I love him for that. So anyway, that's my counterpoint, No Jimmy Glass to save River Plate at that time.

00:39:37
Speaker 2: It's true, it's not always. It's that's the thing about hope, right, is that usually it doesn't work out, and in fact, like somebody has to be relegated, right, Carlisle United's amazing day with somebody else's disastrous day. Yeah, And that reminds you that whether or not something is good news always depends on where you're situated. But yeah, I like the story be kaind is. For Carlo United fans, it was as close to a miracle as they're ever likely to see in their lives.

00:40:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's beautiful. It's beautiful those moments of sport. And it's also exciting to think what those moments might be that we're going to see this summer. That's the world. Yeah.

00:40:18
Speaker 2: I hope we see some I hope we see some last minute goals. I hope we see Landon Donovan breaking away, scoring on the rebound. I mean that this is good. That's as good as I've ever felt as as an America. Now I have to tell you that I feel very distant from that feeling at the moment.

00:40:38
Speaker 1: You know. My favorite, both my favorite and the most heartbreaking was the Belgium goal against Japan. Japan they were drawing, they were going to go to extra time, and Japan had a corner kick, and the reasonable sensible thing to do, taking into account the state of play in the game in the ninety something minute of extra time, was to kick it short and just run out the clock and just sort of live to fight another day and go to extra time. Instead, they whipped it into the center of the park and center of the of the goal. The Belgian goalkeeper caught it and there was a fast break on and uh it ended up with the with Lukaku scoring and that was it and Japan was knocked out. And I always admired the bravery of the Japanese players, like, okay, sure, let's just you know, put this ball in the center, and these giant Belgian defenders were definitely going to score aheader here and win and then getting punished for that. Hope. So I guess I've I've kind of given two examples of the opposite of hope. But I believe, and I love the phrase, and I want to just sort of like rescue that phrase from my own grim defeatism, that hope is is what was it again? Hope is always justify. Hope is always justified, even if it's not always rewarded exactly. That's nice. That's nice. We should leave our listeners with that before I say something else depressing, or if you have another quote from Ulysses, we can end there.

00:42:12
Speaker 2: No, I think I think I'll save my other Ulysses quotes for future episodes. We should say before we go, Daniel and I have decided upon stakes for our bet, and Sean, you might want to come back on because this involves you. We are laying out who we think will win the tournament, who we think the semi finalists will be, who we think the Golden Boot winner will be, et cetera. And then all of that will be scored one point per correct answer, and the loser has to put the other person's name in their next book, unless Sean wins, in which case both Daniel and I have to put Shawn's name in our next book.

00:42:51
Speaker 1: Can I tell you that I think Sean is the favorite here? Sean is absolutely the favorite, Because you know, you can sometimes be hampered by knowledge Sean, you can be you know, you know too much. Yeah, be like Daniel's son who thinks that the final is going to between Columbia and the US. You know what, He's going to prove us all. We're gonna look like crazy ones. Sean, what do you think.

00:43:10
Speaker 3: I should warn you guys that I'm writing some momentum right now of just winning my work fantasy football league.

00:43:17
Speaker 1: Oh wow, congratulations? Would you win? Thank you? Novel in your name.

00:43:24
Speaker 3: A financial amount that I won't disclose here. But yeah, I hadn't even thought that I will be doing a bracket as well, But now I'm very excited to work on my bracket.

00:43:33
Speaker 1: Sounds good. Sounds good. I'm excited too.

00:43:36
Speaker 2: I'm excited to have to find a way to put Shawn's name in my next book. There are a lot of characters. Usually I write books with like four characters. This book has a lot of named characters, so I feel like I could do it. I could make you like the head of the studio, Sean. It's a Hollywood novel, so I could make you like the head of the movie studio.

00:43:57
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. That's perfect. I'm glad you're writing another novel. John. I thought last time we spoke you were going to become a full time tuberculosis reporter.

00:44:05
Speaker 2: Well, I definitely am still a full time tuberculosis guy. It's just that now I write novels for fun.

00:44:11
Speaker 1: Good, good for you. That's the only reason to write novels. I will say that we're going to work on the details of this. There will be a bracket, there's we also have had it. I created two categories which are very subjective, Biggest Flop and Biggest Surprise, which I think might be too subjective to include, but I want to keep them anyway, because you know, we can always go to Var on that one. Yeah, if we have to go to Var, we'll go to Kurt. Yeah sounds good. Yeah, all right, Well that's it. Thanks Sean for joining us. Thanks also to our producer Kurt Garren. Thanks to everyone at iHeart John, Thank you so much. Been fun to see you next episode. Thanks for listening. Everybody, Take care,