Simon Cooper

But you also have dissent in a stadium.

You have opposition in a stadium.

So Trump goes to an NFL game a year ago, is booed by the crowd in Washington.

And that is exactly what would happen if he goes to a World Cup stadium now.

All the stadiums are currently in blue America.

And his popularity is a record low.

So a stadium is also a place of anonymity, even in a dictatorship like Iran, where people have some opportunity to express opposition to the leader.

And then in a country like the US, you have politicians like Zohra Mamdani, big football fan, totally fluent in the language of football.

And in the kind of fans view of football, he's using the affordability story of the World Cup against Trump.

So those are two key themes, dictatorships, but also the stadium as a place of opposition.

And then the third thing I say is football provides this alternative global hierarchy.

It's a hierarchy where China doesn't exist, where the U.S.

is also ran, and where Argentina is currently number one in the world.

You know, where else do you get that?

What other global hierarchy could give you that outcome?

Yeah, I mean, the US has three quarters of the games.

It has all the good games.

I would say this is a US World Cup with kind of small franchises in Canada and Mexico, which the Canadians and Mexicans are understandably very excited about because they're never in the spotlights of the world, and now they briefly will be.

The US doesn't really care because it's always in the spotlights of the world, but because it's such an isolated country geographically, emotionally,

It doesn't really care about being in the spotlights of the world.