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

So the two World Cups are given to Russia and a country that many people hadn't heard of.

And this moment exemplifies what my colleague Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times calls easternization, the movement of power, the draining of it away from the West towards the Gulf, Russia, China.

And this becomes visible then, and it's a shock to many people in the hall, including Bill Clinton, who had fronted the US bid, who was in the hall because he expected the US to win.

And this is an, oh my God, we've lost control moment for the West.

And the other moment is the first match of the 2018 World Cup.

Russia, Saudi Arabia, the Petro Derby.

And before the game, Vladimir Putin, the host of the World Cup, stands up and he makes this speech about football spreading love.

So very much in the Julie May spirit.

And the crowd gets bored.

And after a couple of minutes, people start to chat amongst themselves and watch videos on their phones.

When he's down, people are delighted and they clap.

And then Putin sits in a box with Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, and MBS, the Saudi crown prince, and they laugh and joke while Russia wins 5-0.

And it's a vision of the world where the West is just not present.

And on the advertising boards, you have Gazprom, you have, I think, Saudi Aramco, you have KIA Motors from Korea.

You have this new economy where our people don't exist.

So the story of the World Cup, to some degree, is the loss of control by Western Europe, where FIFA was always based, over this thing that was created here.

Yeah, so until 2006, the majority of World Cups had been in Western Europe.

And then we haven't had any in 20 years.

There hasn't been one in our part of the world in 20 years.

Now, you say this is the Monroe, the Donro doctrine World Cup.

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