Money and Power in the World of Soccer — with Rory Smith

Rory Smith, the chief soccer correspondent of The New York Times and author of the new book, Expected Goals: The Story of how Data Conquered Football and Changed the Game Forever, joins Scott to discuss the state of play in professional soccer and what to expect during the upcoming World Cup. Follow Rory on Twitter, @RorySmith. Scott opens with his thoughts on Walgreens moving further into the healthcare space, as well as Gap's decision to start selling on Amazon’s marketplace. Algebra of Happiness: respect our institutions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  Episode 213. 213 is the area code of Central Los Angeles. In 2013, Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term as president, and Argo won Best Picture. Pro tip: Just because Ben and Jennifer are back together does not mean you should reach out to your ex. Trust me on this. Go, go, go!

• 1:46Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 213th episode of the ProgGPod. In today's episode, we speak with Rory Smith, the chief soccer correspondent of The New York Times and author of the new book, Expected Goals: The Story of How Data Conquered Football and Changed the Game Forever. We discussed with Rory the growing interest in soccer in the US and what to expect during the upcoming World Cup. Who's going to the World Cup? I am, I am. Human rights abuses, sports washing, it's all incredibly true. And guess what? I'm going. Anyways, okay, what's happening? Let's take a break from covering Elon, FTX, and all the other noise and dig into some interesting business news. Because that's why we're here, we're here for you.

• 2:27Scott Galloway?

  So last week, Walgreens' primary care unit, Village MD, agreed to buy Summit Health, the parent company of City MD Urgent Care Centers, in a deal reportedly worth roughly $9 billion. That's what we call serious cabbage here, according to GAAP accounting rules. The acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of 2023. And according to CNBC, Walgreens will remain the largest shareholder of Village MD with about a 53% stake. Walgreens is looking to build 1,000 primary care clinics inside its pharmacies by 2027. There's a chance a deal may fall through, though, but regardless if it does, we'll continue to see consolidation in the healthcare space. CVS, for example, recently

• 3:08Scott Galloway?

  beat out Amazon in a bid to acquire Signify Health, a home healthcare company, in an $8 billion deal. The Signify deal is CVS's largest M&A move since its $69 billion acquisition of Aetna in 2018. Okay, so what do we have going on here? Everyone is shit scared of Amazon coming into the healthcare sector. The healthcare sector is the most disruptible business in the history of the business world. Why? Because the definition of disruption, what makes you disruptible? One, you keep increasing your prices faster than the underlying innovation. See above education, see above healthcare, where despite raising prices faster than inflation for about half a century, we now spend about, I think it's about 11,000 bucks

• 3:53Scott Galloway?

  per person, the UK spends about 5,000, and guess what? They live longer here. So the best way to describe US healthcare? Expensive, but bad. So what does that mean? It's like a relationship. If you keep getting more high maintenance, if the cost of being in a relationship with you keeps going up and up, and there's no underlying return, there's no underlying ROI, you're not getting nicer, you're not getting more interesting, you're not providing a better life, and you know what? You're disruptible. And the healthcare industry is the mother of all bad relationships, where you wake up and think, what the fuck am I doing in this relationship with US healthcare? And a lot of companies see this giant bleeding carcass called the US healthcare, and then, yeah, I want some of that. I want to feed on that. True story, I went to Hawaii once for a golf trip. That sounds very douche-baggy. Anyways, in business school...

• 4:37Scott Galloway?

  And we were staying near the beach and there was this giant whale. That's kind of, that's kind of redundant. That had been caught in a net and a bunch of tiger sharks were feeding off the thing. I did not go in the ocean for about two years after that. Anyways, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. But everyone, the entire health industry is scared of the great white shark of Seattle coming into their waters. And they're making a lot of big, bold investments trying to go vertical. Vertical, you go upstream into pharmaceuticals or healthcare maintenance or management. And you go vertical down and you say, you know what? Going into a doctor's office is intimidating. The idea of walking in saying, hey Alexa, I have a rash. And it says, well, I'm connecting you with a one medical professional right now. And they'll use their smart cameras and their distributed healthcare, if you will,

• 5:22Scott Galloway?

  workforce of echo devices all over the nation. We're going to see this go vertical to offer better service. Why? Because I don't think the opportunity is around economic savings. I think the opportunity is around time savings. Why? Because A, it costs a lot, right? It costs a lot. The happiest nations in the world, six out of 10 of them are in Northern Europe. Why? Why? Because happiness is not only a function of what you have. It's a function of the absence of fear that something might not be taken away from you. You have an absence of fear in Northern Europe of when you find out that your wife has lung cancer, it doesn't necessarily mean you're also going to go bankrupt. Bankruptcy, the number one source of bankruptcy in the United States are healthcare bills. So what do you want to do? What do you want to do? You want to lower costs. But in addition, the bigger, the even bigger opportunity, I believe, the bigger opportunity

• 6:07Scott Galloway?

  is to save people time. And what we have is distributed medicine. We have dispersion. We have the dispersion of healthcare. You have tech-based preventive healthcare. You have diagnostics. You're going to see all sorts of interesting devices. And who's best positioned to do this? I would argue it's Amazon. But these entrenched players are not dumb. They have large market capitalizations. They have tremendous interface. Think about the tens of millions of people that walk into a Walgreens or CVS. I think they do a good job. By the way, I love, I love pharmacies. I love going into drugstores. I could just walk around and buy mouthwash and, and different types of toothpaste and different types of deodorant. I just find that all that shit really clean and interesting. I love the merchandising. There's a high-end pharmacy, I think it's called C.L. Bigelow in Manhattan that I love.

• 6:52Scott Galloway?

  Sometimes I just go in there. Sometimes I just go in there. Little nuance on the dog. Little strangeness. Anyways. There is going to be upstream and downstream verticalization in the healthcare business. It's going to be an interesting place to understand the intersection between technology and healthcare. The Wall Street Journal reported that digital health startups in the US, that is telemedicine and software-based therapeutics garnered 2.2 billion in VC funding during Q3. The sector has secured 13 billion for the year. However, it's tracking to be well below 2021's total of 29 billion. Why 2021? We were all in sort of the halcyon ayahuasca, big gulp days where we were throwing money at everything. All right, all right. What about other news?

• 7:34Scott Galloway?

  Let's check in on what's happening over at Amazon, but not Amazon Health, other points of Amazon or other parts of Amazon. The firm has lost, get this, $1 trillion in market value. By the way, full disclosure, shareholder, that kind of hurts. But Amazon isn't the only big tech firm that shed value. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta have lost more than $3 trillion combined in market value this year, bringing their weight of the S&P 500 down to 19%. That's down from a record of more than 24% in September 2020. It was becoming the S&P 5. Amazon is laying off 10,000 employees. The stock is down 40% year-to-date. What I find interesting here is the difference between what is spectacle and what is significant.

• 8:17Scott Galloway?

  So Twitter lays off 3,750 employees. Oh my gosh, our hair is on fire because Elon Musk. It's fun to watch a person unravel. That's why Kanye is the most interesting story of October. Why? Because it's fun to watch a billionaire unravel and November brings us another billionaire unraveling before our eyes. But anyways, under the cover of dark, Meta lays off 11,000 people, three times the current workforce of Twitter, but they do it during the midterms. They're total pros. They don't make a spectacle of it. They treat the people they're laying off well and boom, no one talks about it. By the way, in terms of layoffs. We are just getting started in big tech. Okay, putting all that aside, let's focus on a partnership that Amazon recently secured. Gap has launched an apparel storefront on Amazon's marketplace.

• 9:02Scott Galloway?

  Gap shares closed up 8% on the news. That's right. Gap needs to do something. When I, when I got out of business school, Gap was considered one of the best performing, most innovative companies in the world. Mickey Drexler was one of the first billionaires in business who showed up and he wasn't the founder and had become a billionaire because he was such a, such a genius. By the way, up until about 10 years ago, Mickey Drexler, often referred to as the Merchant Prince, was considered the best merchant in the history of retail. I think he has ceded the iron throne of the Merchant Prince to Gary Friedman. If you've been into a Restoration Hardware, you can't admire that bold vision. Gary took me on a tour of one of their Grand Palazzes or whatever it's called in the Meat Packing District. And I remember going, this is amazing. I'm going to shop here, but there's no fucking way you're going to make money. Look at this thing. There's money everywhere. And guess what?

• 9:47Scott Galloway?

  Gary ignored everyone, including me, and built these cash volcanoes. I mean, you go into Restoration Hardware, they have created such an amazing vibe. Interesting fact, interesting little tidbit here. Created a great restaurant. A, is it weird to build a restaurant in a retail location? Yeah, but that's not all. He doesn't serve hard alcohol there. Why? They can make a ton of money. By the way, restaurants basically lose money on the food such that you'll order as a cop and coke, which are about 95 points of gross margin. Give me two or three and then another one every five minutes. Anyways, he said, why? Because I don't want a bunch of like hedge fund douchebags coming here and getting drunk and bothering women. I want a safe place for women that feels like they're in Sonoma with a bunch of friends. And I thought, Jesus Christ, this guy's a visionary, right?

• 10:30Scott Galloway?

  Zigging when everyone else is zagging. Anyways, Gap, back to Gap, is going on Amazon. They need to do something. This stock for the last 10, maybe 15 years, has just been a massive underperformer. Gap's trailing returns, it's down 51% year to date as of November 15th. Last quarter, Gap had 37% more inventory compared with a year earlier. I mean, this thing just isn't working. And when I say thing, I mean Gap, it kept 500 jobs in September. So the bottom line is experimenting with distribution. Oftentimes, distribution is more important than the core brand itself. The Gap is really a lesson in distribution. What's the lesson? Let's go back, let's go way back to the 80s and 90s when the largest apparel company in the world, there's a trivia question.

• 11:13Scott Galloway?

  Something's happening upstairs. I think my son is angry or home or something. Anyways, Levi Strauss and Company was the biggest apparel company in the world. It was actually probably the biggest private company in the world at one point. Why? Because they did amazing job creating this unbelievable imagery around the Levi's brand, basically sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And then they discovered this trend called Casual Friday and came out with this brand of accessible fashion called Dockers. And it was just a juggernaut. And they would run these amazing commercials, create incredibly aspirational brands, and then stuff really shitty distribution with a pile high of Levi's, JCPenney's, Sears, Army Navy stores. And then the Fisher family came along and said, you know, the Gap is sort of selling CDs. The Gap used to sell record albums and said, I got an idea. Let's

• 11:58Scott Galloway?

  hire this really bright kid named Mickey Drexler. I think he came from The Limited. And he said, kick all the other brands out. We're going to go vertical. We're going to merchandise our own clean, fun, progressive, youthful look. We're going to take stores and we're going to give them bleached blonde wood. We're going to make the dressing rooms larger. We're going to wrap everything in nice packaging. We're going to tailor the music. We're going to manicure the music. We're even going to manicure the smell. And then all of a sudden, boom, you could go in and have that luxury feel in an accessible fashion specialty retailer and turn basics and pocketies into things that people were willing to pay 18 bucks for, even though they cost about 18 cents to produce. Bit of an exaggeration, bit of an exaggeration. And the Gap became one of the best performing

• 12:40Scott Galloway?

  stocks in the world, displacing Levi Strauss and Company. And then you know who displaced the Gap? Well, you could argue a lot of people, especially retail, but mostly, retail's become zero and one. Zero, Walmart and Amazon, trust, Costco. I want to know, I don't have to spend any time shopping around. I know if I buy my 40-pound drum of peanut butter, I'm getting a pretty good deal at Costco or Walmart. Or, or, I want high-end. I want LVMH. I want Celine. I want the Alhambra necklace from Van Cleef and Arpelle. I want a Panerai watch. Why? Because the middle class has been eroding. But not only is the middle class eroding demographically, it's eroding psychographically. And that is, people would rather go to Walmart 50 weeks a year, and then two weeks a year,

• 13:22Scott Galloway?

  go stay at an almond resort, save up and buy a nice pair of Yeezys. People are bifurcating their expenditures. And the Gap is sort of stuck in the middle. A lot of people think it's a mid-tier brand. It's not. It's actually upper mid-tier. They're big innovation. They're big innovation. You want to be a zero to a billion-dollar brand faster than any brand in the world? This is the cocktail. 80% of the aspirational brand for 50% of the price. That was what Southwest Airlines did. That was kind of what JetBlue did. We can be as good as American or United, or we can at least be 80% of good. It's not as 100% or 110% as good as what I would argue JetBlue is. By the way, JetBlue meant best business class product in the market. But Southwest came along and said, we'll give you 80% of what any of the majors give you at 50 or 60% of the price. What did Old Navy do?

• 14:07Scott Galloway?

  We'll give you 80% of the Gap for 50% of the price, recognizing a demographic shift, which is responsible for any huge increase in shareholder value. And what was that demographic shift? Single mothers, specifically, single mothers, wanted to get their kids cool clothes that they would feel good about, but they couldn't afford the Gap. The Gap is expensive at the majority of households in America, so they came up with Old Navy, just as Levi Strauss and Company had come up, or attempted to come up with a value line in different regions, called the orange tab, different talk show. So what do we have? We have continued disruption in retail. We have merchandising. It's still the original bomb here, but we've gone zero and one, and Gap is caught in the middle. What does this mean? It probably invites an activist. It probably gets split up for parts. I don't know what happens here, but they need to experiment, just as Peloton has gone on Amazon and is de-verticalizing.

• 14:51Scott Galloway?

  If your company is in trouble, you got to look at the product. Obviously, look at management first, but then you got to look at the product. And then what people oftentimes overlook, you got to look at distribution. Why is Samsung going sideways? And Apple has become the most valuable company in the world? Is it the product? No, it's the distribution. The Galaxy phone, from what I've heard, is as good or better than the iPhone. But my God, look at the distribution of Samsung versus Apple. Going to an Apple store? I'd like to live there. I'd like to have coffee there, settle down, take off my shoes, watch some TV, and then go to sleep somewhere there. I like it there. I'd like to have people over. Hey, where do you live? I live at the Apple Store in the Me packin' district. I think that'd be a good wrap. I don't want to hang out in the AT&T or Verizon store and talk to a guy named Rick. How do I know his name's Rick?

• 15:36Scott Galloway?

  Because he's got a name tag that says Rick with bad carpeting and terrible lighting. Look at your distribution. This is a lesson in distribution. The Gap initially disrupted the world of distribution by moving out of broadcast advertising and putting all of their money into the stores. And now they're getting the shit kicked out of them by the zero and one bifurcation that's happening in retail. And that is, I either want LVMH or Restoration Hardware, or I want Costco or Walmart.

• 16:04Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back for our conversation with Rory Smith.

• 16:11Scott Galloway?

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• 17:14Scott Galloway?

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• 17:59Scott Galloway?

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• 18:30Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Rory Smith, the chief soccer correspondent of The New York Times and author of Expected Goals: The Story of How Data Conquered Football and Changed the Game Forever. Rory, where does this podcast find you?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  I am in Ilkley, which is a small town just north of Leeds.

• 18:49Scott Galloway?

  Ilkley, I mean, that right there, that gives you a ton of credibility around football. So I am, we, we're blessed here at the Prof G Pod and we get to speak to a lot of very interesting, important people. This, this was the one I was excited about. Me and my boys are football mad. And not because I have any affinity for football, but they're crazy about it. And it's a great way to engage with my sons. And it's been just a gift for us. And also part of the reason we moved to London. But anyways, enough about me. Give us, break down, if you will, the business of football. What are the major trends? Who are the key players? Where is it headed? Is it a growth business, a maturing business?

• 19:33Scott Galloway?

  Break down Football, Inc.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Well, that is kind of an interesting time for Football, Inc. We, we are at the cusp, I think, of a, a kind of a fork in the road. So football's been growing essentially exponentially for probably 20 years, particularly in England, but largely across Europe. It's become a kind of global cultural phenomenon. I think David Goldblatt, who's a historian of, of football, has described it as, as the great cultural phenomenon of the 21st century. I think that's probably true, driven by Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, this kind of galaxy of stars who've become household names. We've seen massive rises in, in TV revenues, you know, kind of the Premier League every two or three years will announce a, another few

• 20:19Speaker 02

  billion dollars coming in from, from either international or domestic TV rights. And it has seemed as though it's, it's a bottomless pit effectively, that it, that the money will just keep rolling. Earlier this year, Roman Abramovich, the Russian tycoon with very close links to Vladimir Putin, was forced to sell Chelsea, which was the kind of trophy asset he'd owned for 20 years. And you had this feeding frenzy of investors, mostly real, some a little bit less real, who were prepared to pay almost anything to get hold of one of the biggest names in the sport. Eventually went to a group led by Todd Bowley and Clear Lake Capital, who paid $2.5 billion down with promises to kind of commit another $1.7 billion on infrastructure, squad spending,

• 21:02Speaker 02

  that kind of thing, which was a record for any team in any sport, anywhere. And that has led, I think, to a realisation from the first generation of US investors that now maybe is the time to cash in, that the market is hot, you know, we're entering a period of global uncertainty, that feels like a safe thing to say, you maybe aren't going to get as much for your money in two years as you would now. So Liverpool, another of the great brands in football, has kind of gone on the market quite recently. Clearly, Fenway Sports Group, the owners of the Red Sox, who also own Liverpool, they have decided that now is the time to cash out. I think that's a rational decision. But it raises a question, which is that if you are selling a premium asset for $2, $3 billion,

• 21:44Speaker 02

  where is the growth that enables you, when the new buyer, when they come to want to see a return on their investment, where is the growth coming from? Todd Bowley, the owner of Chelsea, seems to be backing streaming as the next kind of, the next dawn, I guess, for football. You know, it's still tied to old broadcast models. The theory seems to be that streaming will lead to an even greater cash bonanza. I don't know how true that is. I don't know if that's necessarily as easy as everybody seems to think it is. And at the same time, you have these kind of great names on the continent, particularly outside of the Premier League, who are struggling for money to the extent that they're, that three of them, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, are pleading poverty essentially

• 22:27Speaker 02

  to try and force through the establishment of a breakaway competition outside the traditional auspices of football's governing bodies. So you have this kind of twin narrative where football is kind of richer than it has ever been and seems to convince that ever greater wealth is on the horizon. And some very rich people contradicting that and kind of going in for a lot more doom-mongering, saying that everything is about to come crashing down.

• 22:52Scott Galloway?

  So I'll put forward a number of theses and you nullify or validate them. My sense is that, similar to sales of Ferrari or Porsches, that as long as we keep this global trend of income inequality and men continue to have midlife crises and the top 0.0001% continues to aggregate more wealth, the value of the ultimate Ferrari, and that is owning a sports team, will continue to escalate. My sense is for the last 50 years, none of these have made any economic sense in terms of the yield on them. It's just, this is the ultimate consumption vehicle. That's the first thesis. The second is that, do you think that there's an investment thesis around what Ryan Reynolds did or some of these people that going into these smaller teams?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  So, I agree with both of your theses. I think, yeah, it feels pejorative to say that it's midlife crises, but there's no question there is a trophy asset element to it. In fact, one of the theories around Fenway Sports Group's decision to sell Liverpool or to seek outside investment in Liverpool is that they either want to buy an NFL team, the Washington Commanders, I think they are now called, or that they might be interested in taking an NBA franchise to Las Vegas. That strikes me, it's difficult for me as a European to accept this, but that strikes me as being the ultimate thing American billionaires want. You want to be part of the two most exclusive clubs in the world, which are the NFL owners and the NBA owners. There is definitely a kind of, you know,

• 24:21Speaker 02

  these guys are in their 70s largely. You know, they're not necessarily, I don't think they're necessarily looking for a return on that final investment. It is purely, I think, it's a garland to say, I am an NFL owner. That is a status that obviously has a value in those circles, which are not circles I am invited to mix in. I don't think they do make any economic sense. There isn't any particular way to take money out of soccer. If you look at, you know, at the same time as we've seen these these rising revenues, sums of money pouring into the sport that were unimaginable 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, all of that goes to the players and largely to the agents. And, you know, have this weird situation where the Premier League every so often will announce these kind of TV deals with this great triumphalist sense,

• 25:06Speaker 02

  which you'll have been in London long enough to know the British do very well. And this sort of sense of this is kind of a gauge of the Premier League's power. But all of that money, or a good proportion of that money, ends up in continental Europe anyway, because that's where the players come from. So, you know, they'll get the... The one hundred and twenty million dollars, one hundred and thirty million dollars for being in the Premier League and they will go straight away to France or to Portugal or to Belgium and they will buy players from there. That's where that money goes. And no one seems to have cracked the way to make money out of owning a soccer team, particularly not an elite sort of premium brand soccer team. The one exception is something we're seeing a lot more of now is the idea of networks. So there are a couple of quite high profile network examples, the City Football Group based around Manchester City and Red Bull,

• 25:51Speaker 02

  who own teams in Austria, Germany, the States and in Brazil are trying to, I'll be out of my depth now, but they seem to have decided that the way to increase efficiency in the transfer market is to have a network of teams around the planet that you can trade between, but also is a place to store players as they develop or once they don't quite reach the level you expect. And that that pattern is starting to repeat elsewhere. There are networks springing up all over Europe, some of them with a Premier League team at the top or kind of an elite European team, others on a much smaller scale. My one caveat to the idea that they might, that they will keep on rising exponentially is that all

• 26:32Speaker 02

  of this money comes from us. And you're right to kind of mention income inequality, but there's no question that as the, you know, the 0.01% aggregate the wealth, that that the kind of status matters more. But at the same time, if we hit a period of global recession, it's really expensive, and I can only speak from a British perspective here, it's really expensive to watch football in Britain. It's, it costs a lot of money. If you want to watch everything, you're looking at an amount of money that, to be honest, if you're struggling, is probably not really forgivable. You know, to, you know, you're going to have to make sacrifices on other quite key things to pursue what is essentially a leisure activity. With the irony being that because of various rules and regulations over what can be shown when, you can pay a hundred pounds a month to have access to Sky and to BT Sport and Amazon

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Prime to watch every, every single second of the Premier League, but you can't actually watch every game. You know, there are games that are, that happen at three o'clock on a Saturday that can be watched all over the world, but not in Britain. And I do wonder at what point. The real world intrudes on kind of the fantastical world of soccer. That would be my one slight worry about soccer's belief that the good times will keep rolling.

• 27:42Scott Galloway?

  Okay, so World Cup. Qatar is reportedly spending, I think, a quarter of a trillion dollars to to kind of host, I don't know, the wealthiest people in the world for what is, I think arguably it's now, I think it's bigger than the Olympics now. Anyways, any broad brush observations or predictions about the World Cup in Doha? What does it mean for for the region? What does it mean for Qatar? Do you think it, you know, the accusations of sports washing,

• 28:13Scott Galloway?

  what it means for the countries themselves? Any thoughts on on Doha?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  I'm a little bit torn. I think sports washing has become a slightly meaningless term. I use it myself constantly and will use it frequently over the next month.

• 28:27Scott Galloway?

  Toxic masculinity, I agree.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I kind of get what it's driving at, but I don't know if if it kind of encapsulates what what has happened. Qatar has become enmeshed in in Western policy, in Western kind of thought, in a way that I think it's very hard for us to to realize. And the World Cup has been a prong in that process. But so too has kind of investment, you know, Qataris own huge tracts of real estate in London. That's that's probably equally important and maybe not quite as expensive, but not far off. So I think beyond the the two, the twin, the major twin problems with with this tournament, which are the treatment of the migrant workers in in the in the run up, $220 billion spent building essentially a nation from scratch around a month long soccer tournament. The treatment of the migrant workers is, I think, has been a real problem.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  And obviously, what we're three days out as we're talking, and it's still not entirely clear how welcome gay fans will be. We, you know, FIFA and the Qataris have said everyone is welcome, there's no problem. But we've heard certainly in Britain, we've heard advice from from the Foreign Secretary that it was sort of summed up as don't be too gay. That that seems to be the kind of the advice that the government are giving gay fans to to protect their safety. Those are two major issues. But I think the thing that might become the theme of the next month. Is the inherent weirdness of what's about to happen. World Cups are always slightly Potemkin. There's always a kind of, you know, the streets get swept a little bit more clean, that, you know, the police are a little bit nicer. The, I remember in Russia in 2018, speaking to Russians who were amazed at, at, at the kind

• 29:58Speaker 02

  of the light touch policing that they'd never experienced before. But for that one month, the, the Russian police decided actually they were going to turn a blind, a blind eye to minor offences. That happens at every World Cup. It happened in Brazil, it happened in South Africa, it happened in Russia and it'll happen in Qatar. There is a degree of pretense about a mega event, a country presents its best face. This is the only tournament I can think of where, that, you know, there are suggestions that fans have been paid to go to the tournament to create the right atmosphere and send the right message. And that, from a journalistic point of view to me, is, I think might be the dominant theme of the next month, that this is, there is a tension between what is being projected and what is actually real.

• 30:39Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, well, if it's any indication of what we should expect, I am staying at a hotel that is being rebranded, the Budweiser Hotel. So, and it's funny what you're saying, it, it really resonates because I would argue, and I love the way you've stated this, that the governing authorities for these four or five weeks move from the local nation, if you will, to basically FIFA, Samsung and ABM Bev, that those are the new sort of governing bodies. And, uh, but what, what, what I do think is different, and again, this is pulse marketing. I got the sense if you were visiting Moscow or St Petersburg during the World Cup, you had a very wide berth. You could get away with more than any other time than when you were in.

• 31:23Scott Galloway?

  They weren't going to lock you up if they found THC in your vape cartridges during those, those four weeks. Having said that, I think they're especially heavy-handed with their local citizens who do anything that might shed their host country in a bad light. I don't, I don't think the same rules apply for the local residents if they get out of line. But again, this is, this is all conjecture. Let's get to the fun stuff. What nations, uh, you're obviously a huge football fan. What nations do you think might surprise us? In the World Cup.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Well, this is now inviting me to be very boring, so I apologize. The, so I have a little, every, every four years, you kind of think about who's the dark horse for this tournament. But I'm never quite sure what dark horse means. Is it, is it somebody who can win it? Or is it someone who unexpectedly gets to the quarterfinals? Because to me, it's probably, to me, it's probably the latter. And I guess, you know, you're formed by your, your own experience. And my first, the first World Cup I remember was 1990, when Cameroon got to the quarterfinals.

• 32:24Scott Galloway?

  Well, Iceland made it far. Who might end up in the semis that would shock everyone?

• 32:28Speaker 02

  I don't think.

• 32:29Scott Galloway?

  Or even the quarters.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  I, the semis might be a step too far.

• 32:32Scott Galloway?

  A stretch, yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Costa Rica made the semi, made the quarters in 2014 and got to within a penalty shootout of the semis, which would have been a staggering achievement. I think this time around, there are, there are two standout favourites, and that's Brazil and France. And then beneath them, there's a clutch of half a dozen teams that, that all look relatively strong. You can make a case for each of them. Argentina would be in there, Spain, Germany, England, the Dutch. Beyond that, I think Uruguay have got quite a nice balance. I think they might.

• 32:59Scott Galloway?

  Belgium, what about Belgium?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Belgium, well, so Belgium, the received wisdom is that Belgium, this tournament is too late for Belgium. You know, we, I think I wrote my first piece hailing a Belgian, a Belgian golden generation in 2012. And I have written that piece at least six times since, because once you get hold of a good idea, you should really, really kind of milk it for all it's worth. But they are all kind of, the vast majority now 30 plus, then waning a little bit. You know, Eden Hazard, who was the, the star Belgian name for, for a long time, has barely played in three years at Real Madrid. But that, at the same time, this sounds like hedging my bets enormously. That at the same time can be a recipe for, you know, a last golden sunset. So Belgium will be a threat. They, they, they should get out of their group. They've got Canada and Morocco in there and Croatia. They should get out of the group.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  And once you're in knockout football, if you've got a load of kind of motivated 30 year olds, that's not a bad thing necessarily. And the other, the other country that I think is really worth, worth a mention is Denmark. The Denmark have this incredible kind of.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Inspirational motivation in that Christian Eriksen, their star player, collapsed and almost died on a pitch during the European Championship last summer. So that's 18 months ago. He is now, they thought at the time, the first question at the time was whether he would survive. The assumption was he would certainly never play again, even once he was stable and in hospital. He's since come back to playing in the Premier League. He's playing for Manchester United. He scored a few days ago, his first goal. He will be on the field in Qatar and he is part of a team that has over the last four or five years become extremely good at the slightly strange sport of international soccer. You know, they are, they're well organised, they have a clear vision of what they want to be, they have a clear plan. They're not particularly beautiful in the way that, you know, we'd necessarily associate Brazil

• 34:42Speaker 02

  with being, but they are smart and they're effective. They don't, apart from Eriksen, they don't have many stars.

• 34:48Scott Galloway?

  They have Simon Kjaer, is that his name?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Simon Kjaer, yeah, the defender who was central to kind of helping to save Eriksen's life on the field. Lots of players at kind of relatively major clubs in Europe, so plenty of experience. Great coach, really kind of inspiring coach, Kasper Hjulmand, who just seems like, seems to really have the kind of the buy-in of his players, which I think is important in tournaments when, you know, tensions can rise. They are in a group with France, one of the favourites. Denmark have beaten the French twice in the last five months in less meaningful games, but still in meaningful games. They qualified by barely breaking a sweat. They made the semi-finals of the European Championship last year, even after what happened to Eriksen. If I was to nominate a dark horse who could get to the semi-finals, it would

• 35:33Speaker 02

  be Denmark. I think they, they look like the best bet. But Uruguay have a nice, a nice mix and a history of doing it as well. So those would be the two names outside the normal contenders to look for.

• 35:44Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 35:48Scott Galloway?

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• 37:41Scott Galloway?

  Rory, any closing thoughts on what you're expecting in World Cup or the game? Or any thoughts?

• 37:48Speaker 02

  My abiding. Impression at this moment is that this is, that there is an end of, end of a cycle coming in football that it, I was going through, as every journalist has to unfortunately, our kind of previews for each, each team, so 32 teams, 150 words on each, it was a long train journey. And in almost every single one, I was kind of writing, you know, this will be the last tournament at international level for this player, or you know, this player is expected to retire. And obviously Messi and Ronaldo are the two kind of headline figures, but there's, there's a whole cast of others who've been Bale, I mean, even Yeah, Gareth Bale, Robert Lewandowski probably won't play in another international tournament. Neymar said he might not. There are, there are a dozen, 20 maybe, who will,

• 38:31Speaker 02

  will step aside, I think, after this tournament, or at least start to kind of usher themselves towards the sunset. And it's, it just got me thinking that, you know, if you look at Diogo Maradona, who to people of my generation was kind of the, the bar of the greatest player of all time. Maradona's peak probably lasted five years, between 1985 and 1991. Pele, his peak was probably longer, maybe twice that, 10, 12 years. But you know, a lot of that time he was in Brazil, it was a much less globalised world. He then went to the Cosmos in, in New York as a kind of Pele tribute act. He was famous, but not necessarily a, a peak performer. This generation of players have been dominant for 15 years, for a length of time we've never really seen before. And at a time when the game has grown

• 39:14Speaker 02

  exponentially, enter, you know, all four corners of the world to, to have, to become this sort of huge, sort of money spinning machine. And it's really curious to think that, you know, in a year's time, quite a few of these players, when you're watching international soccer, won't be there. And then pretty quickly after that, when you're watching club soccer, they won't be there. And I think they, they might all, or there will be the feeling that they all disappear at once. And it feels fitting that perhaps Qatar, this kind of great controversy, all of the allegations, all of the scandals, all of the issues around Qatar. It feels sad on one level, but suitable on another, that might be kind of where the curtain is drawn.

• 39:50Scott Galloway?

  Rory Smith is the chief soccer correspondent of The New York Times, where he covers all aspects of European soccer. He is a former journalist for The Times, The Independent, and The Daily Telegraph. He's also the author of the new book, Expected Goals: The Story of How Data Conquered Football and Changed the Game Forever. He dials in or joins us from his home just north of London. Where are you again?

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Just north of Leeds.

• 40:17Scott Galloway?

  Just north of Leeds. Well, I really, really enjoy this. And I gotta say, I think there's a lot of people who want to grow up to be you. You've got a great job. Congratulations.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm quite lucky. I'm the rarest of things. I'm a journalist who has nothing to complain about.

• 40:32Scott Galloway?

  There you go, Rory. Thanks for your time.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 40:45Scott Galloway?

  Algebra of happiness. What binds us together? Our institutions. I'd like to think I'm connected to you if you live in America, because we're both citizens. I'd like to think I'm connected to you if your parents were immigrants. I'd like to think I'm connected to you if you like Rangers. I'd like to think I'm connected to you if you went to UCLA or Cal. I'd like to think I'm connected to you if you have an affinity for charity water or if you have an affinity for World War II history. There's just so many institutions that connect us, whether it's the University of California, whether it's the US government, whether it's having served in a military branch. And our institutions have been under attack. Without strong institutions, without believing that we are all working

• 41:30Scott Galloway?

  in the agency of something bigger than ourselves, we all turn very individualistic and start believing that we're exceptional and that our belief supersedes our need to reinvest back in these institutions. And institutions have taken a shit-kicking, basically, since the 80s. When Reagan and Thatcher decided that government was the enemy and it was the individual, if we just push more money back to individuals, it would all work out. And it ended up, it has gone way too far. What? Oh, a 30-year-old graduate of MIT can save us and he does need a corporate board? No, that's not true, Sam Bankman-Fried. You absolutely needed a board. What? This individual is putting, gonna put people on Mars, it can land rockets concurrently on two barges. That means he's playing chess, not checkers with Twitter and everything he's doing is

• 42:15Scott Galloway?

  genius. No, he's fucked up bigly. He's fucked up bigly. And guess what? And guess what? Atheism. There is no Jesus Christ. Everyone is fallible. I've known a ton of billionaires and guess what? They fuck up all the time, personally and professionally. What's important, what brings us back to a center? Institutions. Respect for institutions, respect for the people who fight our wars, respect for this great experiment called America. And last week was a fantastic week for institutions. And guess what? The SEC and FINRA and some of our institutions that want financial institutions to file documents saying how much money they have or maybe impose on them certain liquidity requirements, guess what?

• 43:00Scott Galloway?

  Those institutions matter. What do you know? The electoral process in Brazil, it is held, the peaceful transfer of power, a pillar, a pillar of democracy is holding. Our institutions are holding. And this notion that we all want to find a Jesus Christ and that this person is infallible, well, guess what? That's been brought down a notch and it's healthy. There is no Jesus Christ, there's only institutions. Let's invest in them, let's invest in each other, let's realize the connective tissue of being Americans, of being kind, of being part of nonprofits, of being a part... Of something together, whatever it might be, wherever you find connective tissue,

• 43:41Scott Galloway?

  embrace it. Our institutions matter. There is no institution that has added more value in the history of mankind than the US government. It turned back fascism, it invented silly putty, it's cured diseases, it invented the bomber jacket, and it's also, it's also created the greatest infrastructure that has brought more people out of poverty, maybe the exception of China, let's be honest, they brought a lot of people out of poverty, but has provided more freedom to people of color, more opportunity to people from different sexual orientations, and created more prosperity than any institution in the world. Let's respect our institutions. Last week was a wonderful week for institutions.

• 44:21Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager and Drew Burrows. Sammy Resnick is our associate producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week.

• 44:43Scott Galloway?

  Can you believe how fast I'm speaking and I'm not even that caffeinated? Anyways, wrong time to give up meth. Anyways, oh my god, daddy was on fire.

• 44:51Speaker 04

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