Tim Vickery

I think it's more, it's more, there's more of the country's identity invested in the World Cup.

So it's, Mundial is, one chapter, our book is one chapter about each World Cup.

So it's very easy to kind of dip in and read about any particular World Cup that you might have a special interest in.

But if you step back, there is an arc there.

And a lot of the arc is the story of Pele, I think.

I was thinking a lot about this recently with all of the Epstein file stuff.

I know this is a stretch, but

All the sex traffic, we kind of knew already.

We knew that.

You know, it's sordid, but we knew it.

What was really a shock to me with what we saw is just how much the extent to which that Epstein class see themselves as some kind of master race.

It's just stunning to me.

And football is a great antidote to that.

It's a fabulous antidote because where does the talent come from?

from the kind of people that the Epstein Files class absolutely despises.

It comes from where people look least.

It comes from the peripheries.

And so our book, I think it's a play in three acts, really.

The opening is when you're waiting for a Pelé figure, and then in comes Pelé, and in the course of...

three World Cup wins in four, transforms Brazil into the country of football, but more than that, transforms the World Cup into the event that stops the planet for a month every four years.