Simon Cooper

speaker

334 appearances 5 recordings 4 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 10 Jul

Simon Cooper’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 4.

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The David McWilliams Podcast · Why Social Democracies Win World Cups · 9 Jun 2026 podcast

It seems that some FIFA delegates who voted for Qatar were nicely recompensed for this, as were some who voted for Russia to host the World Cup in 2018.

But Gulf countries are the ones who want to put money into football.

And then Saudi Arabia sees Qatar.

Saudi Arabia, less bright royal family, MBS, the crown prince, thinks, I would also like to buy status and world fame through football.

But these damn Qataris from their tiny country got there ahead of me.

So now Saudi is getting a World Cup.

And Saudi also more or less paid for the whole World Club Cup, this ridiculous tournament last year won by Chelsea.

So all this money is pouring in from these ugly regimes.

And FIFA says, yes, thank you, let's have some more.

But then so do Western governments.

They all do business with those regimes.

And so do Western companies.

So it's sort of hard to pinpoint FIFA as uniquely villainous.

Yeah.

Now, you say that East Germany was their team, but of course, a lot of East Germans were supporting West Germany.

Because as you know, they got West German TV.

So a lot of people would sit around watching West German footballs, that kind of comfort life.

You go home, you turn off communism, and then you were watching Bayern Munich.

So in 1954, when West Germany won the World Cup, there were celebrations in East Germany.

1974, as you said, is the only time the two Germanys played each other, I think, in any match.

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