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Chapter 1: What are George Hamilton's memories of the World Cup?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance. Many of us will be glued to our screens from this evening as the World Cup kicks off in North America, starting with Mexico versus South Africa in Mexico City. I think it's fair to say that my next guest is a World Cup veteran, legendary commentator George Hamilton. George, welcome to the programme.
Can I start by asking you, are you looking forward to it?
I'm looking forward to the football because it's the World Cup. And ever since I was a child, when Northern Ireland got to the World Cup in 1958, there was no television coverage. And I would read about it in the newspaper. The Belfast Telegraph came through the door in the evening.
And all my World Cup experience, because it was Northern Ireland, because I got to see them as a kid once a year at Windsor Park.
Chapter 2: How has the World Cup evolved over the years?
This was just something sensational. And I devoured every word. And I think that's probably... The match reporting of the sports editor of the Belfast Telegraph, Malcolm Brodie, that made me want to become a sports journalist. Initially a print journalist, and then I saw it in 1962, and then I wanted to be a commentator.
But the World Cup has been part of my life, such a big part of my life, ever since I was a nipper, that I couldn't fail to be excited by the prospect. of a tournament coming up again and the fact that I've been associated with it one way or another for so long since 1978 when I did my first World Cup.
It's a punctuation mark in the long-term calendar that every four years there's going to be this and it's going to be terrific.
And there's always controversy beforehand. I mean, people will remember the last time Qatar, this one, price of the tickets, Donald Trump, all of that.
Chapter 3: What are the controversies surrounding the upcoming World Cup?
Then once the football starts, you tend to forget about all of that.
The only downside of it is, to my mind, it's gone bloated at 48 teams. And it's almost harder to get knocked out than to progress from the first stage because there are so many teams. And I don't really think that the tournament is going to benefit from having so many teams that I think the first couple of weeks, there'll be an element of take it or leave it.
I mean, are we all going to get up in the middle of the night to watch matches? I don't think so. Even if we have an interest in it, because we'll know that the team that we're interested in is likely to progress and that we don't need to see every last second.
Every kick of the ball. So you predict that once we get out of the group stages, that's when... That's when the real things start. Yes, yeah.
Chapter 4: How does the expansion to 48 teams affect the tournament?
And Americans and football, how do they do it, do you think? Because it's not really their sport.
No.
I know you spoke on social media about the water breaks. You're not mad about those, but we're going to see a lot of them, I think, aren't we?
Every match, every match, regardless of the conditions, the water breaks, they say, are for player welfare. But to be fair, they're going to have them in every match, whether they need them or not.
But then you read into the regulations and you see that there are stipulations for the broadcast partners as to when they may leave the pictures and when they must rejoin the pictures when there's a water break on. And then you realise, well, this is actually America and American sport doesn't tend to be played in halves. It's played in quarters.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of water breaks in football matches?
And what we now have are football matches in quarters. Every World Cup match will be played in quarters. So you think this is a disruptor, obviously? It is a disruptor. I mean, the very basis of the laws of football are that it's a game of two halves with a 45-minute duration. And if it's all square at the end, you have two halves of 15 minutes.
And if you haven't got a decision, then it goes to a penalty shootout. So that's all clear. But now they've tampered with that. Because if you think about it, if a half lasts 45 minutes and you're inserting three minutes of a break,
Chapter 6: How does American culture influence football viewership?
It is a break.
Well, it is. It changes the dynamic of it. But this is a FIFA-approved break. I mean, this is the decision that they have made.
They have made that decision on the basis of commerce. There can be no question about that. Player welfare, of course. If it's necessary to have a water break, then have the water break. But don't stipulate it's going to be at 22 minutes.
Chapter 7: What is the current state of women's football in the US?
The referee is going to blow his whistle and say water break, which is not in the spirit of the laws of the game, to my mind.
Yeah, well, FIFA have been criticised on a lot of fronts, haven't they, about their commercialism and about pushing up the ticket prices and so on. Do you think that that has been fair?
I do. I think it's very fair. I can't believe what I'm reading about what it's going to cost to get from Manhattan to New Jersey to see the matches, you know, jacking up the ticket prices. Unashamed gouging is what it appears to be. And I think back to, for instance, the World Cup in Germany in 2006, where one of the sponsors they got on board was Deutsche Bahn, the railway company.
And everybody had subsidised travel basically around Germany because the railway company was making sure that the fans could travel for a reasonable fare. And what they did with people who were accredited like ourselves, we got free travel around the venues.
Chapter 8: What are George Hamilton's predictions for the World Cup?
It creates a lot of goodwill, doesn't it, when you do that?
Absolutely.
In comparison to this.
Yes, and when you realise at every turn that somebody's putting the arm in because they can. And that's sad. It really is sad. And the very fact that it's... If we look at where the World Cups have been in one country, like Germany, or like Spain, or like Italy, it's possible to kind of... condense the spirit of the World Cup and it becomes part of that country's life.
I mean, the Italians called it Un'estate Italiana, an Italian summer. That was the catchphrase they put to the World Cup. What are we going to call this, an American summer? What are the Mexicans going to say about that? Or the Canadians, especially the Canadians. So I'm just thinking, when you spread it like this, And think of the next World Cup, what they're doing with that.
It's the 100th anniversary. So they started in South America, they stop off in Africa and they finish up in Spain. I mean, where are the fans in all of this?
Yeah, that is crazy. And to expect people to travel, you know, the next time out. But even this time, as you say, geographically, to have it spread over this vast area, it does ask an awful lot of the fans. Americans, though, and football. Oh, you did ask me that, didn't you? Do they get it? Because if the water breaks, that's one thing. That's trying to change the whole thing.
We've established that. That's messy and we don't agree with it. But in general, football hasn't really caught on to the extent that you would have expected.
No, despite the best efforts of the likes of David Beckham and Lionel Messi and what they have done. I mean, it's at a higher level than it was. It is. Let's be honest.
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