Simon Cooper

And so you have to learn it as a kind of mental discipline

And that works in countries like Holland or Germany, now Spain and France, where everyone around you understands the game.

It's probably similar for, it was probably similar for basketball in US intercities 40 years ago.

The level's really high.

Everyone knows what they should be doing.

And so you kind of laughed out of class if you don't understand those basic things.

And I saw this as a kid.

I lived in the US when I was 11.

And I realized these kids, they don't understand how to play football, played in a soccer team there.

And when I moved back to England at 16, I was a midfielder.

And in England, I never had the ball because the ball would just fly over your head both ways.

And I realized every country really is raised with a completely different way of playing football.

And it turned out that the Dutch way was the winning way.

It later spread to Spain and Germany in particular, now to England.

And those countries have bigger talent pools.

So now they beat the Dutch.

Yeah, so Jules Rimet, people will know the name, and it's in the English football song, Three Lions, Football's Coming Home.

Jules Rimet's still gleaming.

That refers to that first World Cup trophy.

It was named after him, stolen in Brazil in 1983, never seen again, and now the World Cup is a kind of less glamorous, less pretty object.