Simon Cooper
speaker
27 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 17 Jul
Simon Cooper’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So Western Europe has 5% of the world's population.
The whole rest of the world has produced one team to compete with them, and that is a team with Leo Messi.
So Western Europe has 5% of the world's population.
The whole rest of the world has produced one team to compete with them, and that is a team with Leo Messi.
It starts really at grassroots.
What European countries do very well is they provide facilities.
There are football fields everywhere.
The coaches at small amateur clubs have diplomas.
And that takes money to build that infrastructure.
But you're not talking about, say, the Barcelona or the Manchester United Academy here.
You're talking about getting millions of kids playing.
And then it takes many years, really until adulthood, to discover who gets good.
My favorite example is Norway's Erling Haaland, who just played for his local club.
I mean, they were a decent club, but it was just his local club and he was playing with kids of mixed abilities until he was about 16.
The great Dutchman Johan Kraus said, football is a game you play with your head.
Of course, you need skill, but you're making decisions all the time on the field as a player.
And the main decision is, where should I be?
Because for 88, 89 minutes, the individual player doesn't have the ball.
And football is a game about space.
It's about increasing space when you have the ball, shrinking space when you don't.
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