Why Social Democracies Win World Cups

56.314 - 81.966 David McWilliams

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.

82.247 - 100.785 David McWilliams

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.

101.165 - 128.959 David McWilliams

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...

128.939 - 152.613 David McWilliams

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.

152.893 - 181.851 David McWilliams

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.

504.07 - 524.813 David McWilliams

Meaningless. This is where we kick off. Don't say we're going to be meaningless to kick off. Okay, Simon, your latest book, World Cup Fever, A Journey in Nine Tournaments. It's a lovely book. A lot of it's memoir, which is lovely. And it's a sort of a very, very gentle reminder of what happens...

524.793 - 551.188 David McWilliams

Largely to the male of the species, but sometimes to the female of our species, this relationship with this mad game called football. You're starting, you're a student in Oxford. You blag a ticket because somebody's dad got a bucket of tickets free to the 1990 World Cup and we take it from there. Explain to me, Simon, your love affair brought up in Netherlands with the game of football first.

552.333 - 568.755 Simon Cooper

I arrived in Holland 50 years ago from London with my family. And it turned out we'd landed in the middle of the golden age of Dutch football, in fact, of global football. It's the 70s, Holland are between reaching two World Cup finals. So my first World Cup, I'm eight years old.

568.735 - 586.778 Simon Cooper

And the country I live in, the team I've come to support, is playing its second straight World Cup final against Argentina. 78th minute, Dick Nonnenka, Dutch substitute centre-forward, who is a flower seller in daily life because several of the Dutch players are semi-pros. So he has a flower stall in a small town. He heads the equaliser.

586.758 - 609.001 Simon Cooper

Last minute of extra time, Rob Rensenblink, brilliant, the snake, they called him, the snake man, hits the outside of the post. So the Netherlands could have won a World Cup final my first time of asking. So I grew up in Dutch football, which is obviously the highest form of football, which later became the world's form of football, played by teams like Klops Liverpool or Pep's Manchester City.

1788.781 - 1805.52 Simon Cooper

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.

1806.001 - 1826.906 Simon Cooper

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.

1827.627 - 1845.708 Simon Cooper

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.

1846.449 - 1870.959 Simon Cooper

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.

1871.379 - 1879.47 Simon Cooper

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.