Why Social Democracies Win World Cups
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What are the economic themes behind the World Cup?
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How are you doing there? It is Tuesday. It is the beginning of the world's greatest sporting event, which is the World Cup, something that we have watched religiously in this country, a religiously, but also slightly trepidatiously, because we have only qualified World Cups, which is kind of pathetic, but that is the problem with the Republic of Ireland. We tend to fall at not even the last hurdle, but usually the first hurdle, unfortunately. But we're going to use the World Cup as a template to talk about the economies of the teams that we'll be featuring in the World Cup. Now, not, of course, all the teams, but maybe the top six. We're going to look at the hosts, we're going to look at the favourites, and we're going to look at one or two wild cards.
So, We are bringing you a series of economic podcasts using the World Cup as our leverage or our crutch into examining the economies, the politics, the economic history of certain of the main players. I hope you enjoy the series. We are going to kick off this series with... a general World Cup, what it means, history, politics, economics, with the brilliant Simon Cooper of the Financial Times. We're going to talk to Simon, who is in Holland, which is, again, the country. that has punched furthest above its weight in the World Cup, with the exception, I would say, of a country that's very dear to my heart, Croatia. The Croatians, since the collapse of Yugoslavia, have been unambiguously the most successful small country when it comes to World Cup positioning and performances in the world.
Oh, right. Didn't know that. Yeah, the Croats, John. The Croats have been, without a shadow of a doubt, Croatia. That's Modric, isn't it? Well, Modric is now their slightly soon-to-be-over-the-hill 40-year-old superstar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he is an amazing footballer. He's an amazing footballer. He's an amazing footballer. But all the way going back to Boban, who was the captain of the Croatian national team, who was also the proximate reason, many would say, for the flare-up of tensions between Croatia and Serbia when Boban, Google it on YouTube.
Right.
drop-kicked a copper in Serbia when Red Star Belgrade were playing against Dinamo Zagreb, which was the great animosity, the great derby in the former Yugoslavia. But we can go into that later on, John.
Right, okay.
But I think Croatia have been the best team per player in the last 30 years in World Cups and in European Championships.
But it's funny though, you're a football mad and you know a fair bit about football. Whereas me, as you know, I was a terrible football player on the road growing up, but I loved playing. Football was one of those things that I had a passing interest in. But I'm more into football, the older I get, the more into football I get. I can't quite explain that, but it's true. And I've been looking forward to the World Cup. But actually, with this World Cup, I'm a little bit apprehensive about it. Purely because... of Trump and Trump making it all about him. It also spread out over, you know, three countries, which is kind of a bizarre thing anyway for the fans. So it feels like this World Cup with Trump, with Infantino spread out over three countries that this is more about the business of football and politics rather than for the fans.
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