Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out What the World Cup Can Teach the American Fan, with John Green and Daniel Alarcón About this episode We are numb, as Americans, to the attention of the globe and the power structures of our sports leagues. But what if love of country could be simple again? And what if fans had more power than we thought? Pablo feels the football osmosis from the (banned) bestselling author and his old friend turned MacArthur Genius, as they offer a liberal-arts education in the beautiful game — from the fault in our superstar interviews to the damage wrought by Alexi Lalas upon our would-be Neymars and Messis. Plus: a pump-up speech that Ted Lasso would never, ever fantasize about.
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• Previously on PTFO: How John Green Turned Celebrity into Obsessive Optimism https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUzMGVmMWUtODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtZTM2ZjIxMDFhYTFk
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 You either have to love something together, or you have to hate something together. And the great thing about the 26 players sitting in front of me right now is that you all [bleep] hate your coach.
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2:28 Speaker 01 I remember the first time I was in this studio, I was like, I can't believe that an audio podcast has
2:33 Speaker 04 Cameras?
2:34 Speaker 01 All this, all this stuff. And then I slowly realized that it was just that I'd glimpsed the future.
2:41 Pablo Torre? You know, John, I like to think that the future of media looks like is what Patrick designed here, which is
2:48 Speaker 01 It's awesome.
2:48 Pablo Torre? Psychedelic in ways that delight me.
2:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:52 Pablo Torre? It feels like you're playing laser tag on acid sometimes.
2:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:56 Speaker 04 Oh, man. Yeah, it does give laser tag vibes.
2:59 Pablo Torre? So I always want to figure out the appropriate way to call a MacArthur genius.
3:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:05 Pablo Torre? A genius.
3:06 Speaker 04 Sure.
3:07 Pablo Torre? Daniel Allercon, thank you for being here.
3:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's good to be here.
3:09 Pablo Torre? John Green, how would you explain the genius of the guy sitting next to you?
3:14 Speaker 01 Thanks for asking. The most uncomfortable thing in the world for Daniel is having won this award and me calling him a MacArthur genius every chance I get. Basically, Daniel is an important novelist, a major Peruvian-American novelist, but also a really important journalist. He writes for The New Yorker. He writes for Radio Ambulante, the brilliant Spanish-language podcast that he helped found. And he is a proper genius. And I've known him since I was 14, so I feel qualified to say that.
3:46 Pablo Torre? Well, Daniel, do you have a way of describing John as you curdle inside of yourself in response to his compliment?
3:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, people listening on audio can't see precisely how uncomfortable that makes me. Yeah, so I've known John for a very long time. John is one of the most brilliant observers of human ego and vanity that I've ever met. He is as kind in every interaction as he is on the page because he extends this incredible generosity to his characters that has always really made me jealous. And then he's just a great friend and a huge Liverpool fan, to the point of, you know, possibly like to his own detriment, you know?
4:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, probably. I'm definitely an AFC Wimbledon fan to my own detriment.
4:32 Speaker 04 You could argue that all sports fandom is kind of to one's detriment because winning is so rare, you know?
4:37 Pablo Torre? If you haven't noticed, this is our World Cup episode.
4:40 Speaker 01 Heyo.
4:42 Pablo Torre? And I want to establish that John Green has been a guest on the show before to talk about his last book, Everything is Tuberculosis, which is quietly also kind of a soccer story, I dare say, because if nothing else, John Green is one of the strangest proprietors of a professional soccer club on the planet.
5:00 Speaker 04 For sure.
5:01 Pablo Torre? How should we just speed people up on AFC Wimbledon?
5:05 Speaker 04 Well, so I'm not an AFC Wimbledon fan. I actually don't-
5:09 Pablo Torre? I love that, by the way.
5:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, it hurts my feelings, but I take it.
5:12 Speaker 04 I'm not convinced that they're real, because John just keeps talking about this team and there's so much narrative that he builds around this club that it feels almost like one of his novels that he's invented. And I will not believe they're real until he takes me to a game and we get to actually prove it, because right now, it's just like this magical realist novel that he's created in his head.
5:32 Speaker 01 Well, it's as good as a novel, and thank you for acknowledging that.
5:35 Speaker 04 It is.
5:35 Pablo Torre? Hasn't quite made as much money as The Fault in Our Stars?
5:38 Speaker 05 This weekend's box office produced a summer surprise, the teen romance, The Fault in Our Stars, had a $48 million opening weekend.
5:48 Speaker 02 Well, the young women and a few men turned out in droves for The Fault in Our Stars this weekend. Number one at the box office, $48 million. Poor Tom Cruise, the actor tomorrow, debuting in third place.
6:00 Speaker 01 We're not there yet. Someday we will be. Don't you worry, Pablo. AFC Wimbledon's going to pay off in ways that no one can imagine. I'm going to be the Ryan Reynolds-
6:09 Speaker 04 That's right.
6:10 Speaker 01 I'm going to go all the way with them. No, they're owned by their fans, so it's a different model than a club like Wrexham or any other football club in England can have. But within the limits of being owned by the fans and everybody getting the same one vote, no matter how much money they put in the club, we've been incredibly successful, and I'm really proud of it.
6:28 Pablo Torre? Yeah, and you guys have known each other, all of your vulnerabilities, all of your idiosyncrasies, for how long now?
6:35 Speaker 01 35 years. Yeah, it's a long time.
6:39 Pablo Torre? We have sources close to your high school.
6:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, you do.
6:44 Pablo Torre? Indian Springs in Birmingham, Alabama. And thanks to that source who shall-
6:50 Pablo Torre? Remain unnamed? We have some photos of you guys. Oh, no. Our soccer experts here today on Pablo Torre. Oh, dude.
6:56 Speaker 01 Oh, look at us. Look at us, Daniel. Just a couple of teenage dirtbags.
7:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, we haven't changed a bit.
7:01 Pablo Torre? Could you describe the photograph for those who are not watching?
7:04 Speaker 01 I am wearing a Jägermeister t-shirt. My posture is about as bad as it is today. Daniel is phenomenally handsome. He has hair swept over one eye. This makes Daniel so uncomfortable, but it's true.
7:19 Pablo Torre? The hair covering the one eye feels so perfect as to seem deliberate.
7:24 Speaker 01 Oh, it was absolutely deliberate.
7:26 Speaker 04 It worked.
7:27 Speaker 01 It was very effective at the time.
7:29 Pablo Torre? And you have a backwards cap on.
7:31 Speaker 01 I've got a backwards cap on.
7:32 Pablo Torre? And the neck of your shirt. It's a gaping.
7:36 Speaker 01 It's a thrift store purchase, Pablo.
7:37 Pablo Torre? A gaping portal.
7:41 Speaker 04 You can see the clavicle there, too, if you look closely.
7:43 Pablo Torre? Yeah, really showing some clavicle.
7:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
7:45 Pablo Torre? So, John Green, 95. This is his, yep, there he is.
7:49 Speaker 01 Look at me, I'm wearing a beanie that has a propeller on it.
7:52 Pablo Torre? I mean, I can't tell if that's literally true, but it does seem to have the characteristics.
7:56 Speaker 01 It is literally true. I remember that hat.
7:58 Pablo Torre? Can we go to the next photo? The intensity on your face in the middle frame.
8:03 Speaker 04 I hate losing, man.
8:04 Pablo Torre? In this cryptic of Daniel Allercone's youth.
8:07 Speaker 01 I mean, Daniel was such a good soccer player. And I love these pictures because you can see that he was very balanced. You're just dying on the inside. I can tell.
8:16 Speaker 04 No, it's awful, yeah.
8:18 Speaker 01 You were not a good guitar player, so in the other photo, you're playing the guitar. And I will say, you were not a great guitar player. But you were a very good soccer player.
8:24 Speaker 04 Thank you.
8:24 Pablo Torre? What position did you play?
8:26 Speaker 04 I was a midfielder, attacking midfielder. I did play with a lot of intensity because I hated losing. I still hate losing.
8:32 Pablo Torre? Well, how does it manifest in adulthood?
8:34 Speaker 04 I just think I work too hard. I work a lot, yeah.
8:37 Pablo Torre? You do. That said, one thing that you don't have on your resume is something that John does, which is the second most banned book. In America, from the years 2021 to 2024.
8:51 Speaker 04 That's amazing, dude.
8:52 Pablo Torre? Which is Looking for Alaska. This is your first novel, right?
8:55 Speaker 01 Yeah. Set at a small boarding school in Alabama, not completely dissimilar from the small boarding school in Alabama that we attended. And there is one scene that causes the book to be banned. It's an exceptionally unerotic oral sex scene that is meant to be contrasted with the next scene, which is much less physically intimate, but much more emotionally rich. But of course, nobody reads the second scene. They only read the first scene out of context. And they say, this is completely inappropriate for high school students, and we must remove it from all libraries and schools. It's a bummer, man. I mean, I want to be good spirited about it and treat it like it's not a bummer, but it's a bummer. I live in Indianapolis. It just got banned in the town directly north of me. It's a bummer to think that people see me in the grocery
9:39 Speaker 01 store and they're like, oh, that guy's a pornographer. Like, I promise I'm not. I'm just not. You know me.
9:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, no. I mean, I haven't checked your browser history, but I do know you. And now I don't think you're a pornographer.
9:53 Speaker 01 Thanks, buddy. I appreciate that.
9:54 Pablo Torre? Let's get that headline aggregated. John Green and Colin, not a pornographer, dash, friend of 30 years.
10:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, there you go.
10:03 Pablo Torre? Do you get notified when your book has been banned from yet another school and/or library?
10:08 Speaker 01 Sometimes, like, the whole state of Iowa banned Looking for Alaska. And then I got notified. And we ended up suing them and winning. But a lot of times, I'll just hear from somebody, you know, a concerned teacher or a teacher who's been affected by it. Authors get all the attention for this stuff, but the people who are most affected by it are teachers and librarians, because their ability to do their job on a daily basis is so profoundly affected by these book bans.
10:32 Pablo Torre? Right. And so, wait, so Daniel, when this is all happening to John's book, a book that is allegedly bearing some resemblance to your high school experience.
10:42 Speaker 01 Sure.
10:43 Pablo Torre? I guess I'm really asking, is there a Daniel character in this book?
10:46 Speaker 01 There's not. No, there's not.
10:48 Pablo Torre? Wow, that was a very immediate no.
10:50 Speaker 04 No, we've had this conversation before in great detail. There's a notable absence of Peruvians. In the book.
10:58 Pablo Torre? Hold on, we're gonna aggregate that headline.
11:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:01 Speaker 01 John Green hates Peruvians.
11:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, there's no, there's no, you know, uh, young man with curly brown hair over one eye who plays guitar badly and plays soccer well.
11:12 Speaker 01 Well, you know what it was, man? I couldn't write about you because I like to write about flawed characters. And you're just too perfect.
11:22 Speaker 04 Wow. Oh, man. Yeah. No, I can see that. I can see that.
11:43 Pablo Torre? The end of June and July can be a really rough period for sports fans with football still a few months away and basketball and hockey ended. But this year, we're pretty lucky because not only is there a World Cup, there is a World Cup in our backyard. And so make sure to check out the Athletic Podcast Network to stay up to date on all things related to the World Cup. You can wake up with the Totally Football Show from LA, then dive deep into the biggest talking point of the day with the Athletic FC Podcast. And you can watch the Tifo Podcast fool around on their daily live streams in the afternoon. All shows are free to watch or listen on your favorite podcast platform.
12:26 Pablo Torre? I want to give the origin story of Daniel, though, because he grew up in Peru.
12:29 Speaker 04 No, so I was born in Peru. I lived in Peru until I was three and a half. Uh, we moved to the United States, to Birmingham, Illinois specifically, uh, in 1980, and grew up in Birmingham until I came to New York to go to college.
12:45 Pablo Torre? And your dad himself did what?
12:48 Speaker 04 My dad, his first job was a soccer announcer in Peru.
12:52 Speaker 01 And then he became a physician?
12:54 Speaker 04 No, I know, but this, we're, we're on the World Cup podcast.
12:56 Speaker 01 Oh, I forgot we were on a World Cup podcast.
12:58 Pablo Torre? We're talking about, we're talking about.
12:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, he was a soccer announcer in Peru. That's legit.
13:01 Speaker 04 That's legit. That's real.
13:02 Pablo Torre? In Arquipa?
13:02 Speaker 04 In Arquipa, yeah. He was basically choosing between being a journalist, um, and a sports journalist or being a physician. And, uh, Arquipa was a small town back then. It was like 10 blocks past the plaza. It was like the countryside, you know? So when we're saying that he was on the radio, you know, it was not like the studio we're in now. You know, he was pretty much a child doing this like at age 15. Um, because he took over from the announcer that had the job, moved to Lima, the capital. And, uh, and my dad was like one of those hangers-on who was always like hanging out at the booth because he loved it. And they were like, okay, kid, you want to do it? Here's your shot. And he did it. And that was his job like through the first years of college and then he moved to Lima to go to medical school.
13:46 Pablo Torre? Did you ever get to listen to any of his?
13:48 Speaker 04 They're, they're not recorded, but I have had him, he, for the family and, you know, in public, we've done events at Raimboulante where he's done it. And, you know, he hasn't done this in 50 years. And he'll grab a mic and go up and narrate a goal from memory. Uh, the goal he always does is a Peru versus Brazil goal in like the 1950 Copa America. And he does the goal with the names of all the players and, you know, exactly how it happens. It bounced off the crossbar and then, you know, back in and it was like, uh, yeah, so he can still do it.
14:15 Pablo Torre? I mean, one of the theories I have about like, as we chart, obviously the growth of soccer in America. If American children were exposed to Spanish language.
14:24 Speaker 04 Oh, for sure.
14:24 Pablo Torre? Announcers, we would be winning World Cups already. We would have inspired generations based entirely on this sort of poetic enthusiasm. The unapologetic delight and energy.
14:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:39 Pablo Torre? Of a Spanish language broadcaster.
14:42 Speaker 04 Yeah. And just how much damage has Alexi Lalas done to the game?
14:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was gonna say, say it with your chest.
14:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, I'm, I'm putting it out there.
14:50 Pablo Torre? It's true.
14:51 Speaker 04 Uninspiring young American would be, uh, Lionel Messi's and Neymar's, you know?
14:57 Pablo Torre? Yes. I mean, I do want to explain, John, part of what you do is also like talking to a lot of people on YouTube. Who I don't consider, correct me if I'm wrong, soccer diehards.
15:09 Speaker 01 No, they're not soccer nerds. They're nerd nerds. Uh, as am I. Daniel and I talk a lot about how we, you know, he grew up playing, playing soccer and I grew up loving soccer and loving sports. But we also grew up reading non-stop and talking about books and talking about big ideas. And like, that's 99% of the conversations I've had with you over the years have been of that variety.
15:31 Pablo Torre? Right.
15:32 Speaker 01 Even when we're talking about football, we're talking about it as like a nation building exercise or whatever, as much as we're talking about the game. But I think if you see sports through that lens, you can see sports through a nerdy lens, right? You can see it as, in fact, that's what you do here in a lot of cases, is you look at sports not just as something that happens on a field where players are trying to get a ball past a line, but as a cultural, social experience and one that has a profound impact on the world we end up sharing.
15:59 Pablo Torre? Yes, and I think one key difference between what I do here on this show and what you do in your capacity as sponsor of AFC Wimbledon is literally give pep talks.
16:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm not afraid to give a little pep talk here and there. When they let me in the locker room, I give a pep talk 100% of the time. I've said this to Daniel before, I was never a good soccer player, but I feel like I would have been a good locker room guy.
16:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:23 Pablo Torre? Well, I want to play it and we can sort of share with our audience.
16:26 Speaker 01 Oh, no, I thought we were talking about this abstractly.
16:29 Pablo Torre? No, we're talking about a very specific.
16:30 Speaker 01 Oh, yah, yah.
16:31 Pablo Torre? Instance.
16:32 Speaker 01 I'm John Green. I sponsor the back of your shorts. I hope you know that there are people around the world watching you every Saturday, living and dying with every kick of the ball. We fucking love you guys. I don't know what it's like to be a professional footballer, but I do know what it's like to sell 30 million books and you have to fucking believe in yourself. At this point in the season, I have seen how much you fucking believe in yourselves and it is so fucking inspirational. It fires me up every fucking Saturday. I don't mean to curse so much, but like that's how much it fires me up. And I'm so excited to be here in person and see you play today. I know this is a massive game for you. I'm just really fucking grateful that I get to be with you in person. So, thank you so much and fucking get them.
17:09 Speaker 01 Not my best work.
17:10 Pablo Torre? Again, for people who are not watching, John was looking like Daniel was looking when John was calling him a genius.
17:16 Speaker 01 I felt like I just, my whole body turned into a series of increasingly small polygons that folded in on themselves until I ceased to exist during that 30 seconds.
17:24 Speaker 04 I'm so grateful that you played that so that John can feel what I feel.
17:28 Pablo Torre? I'd never seen a person become an innie, just like an actual belly button, gone inward. But a couple of things that I relate to is if you're to put me in front of a room, in front of a bunch of athletes that I need to sort of impact in any way, I am gonna curse a hundred times more than I would normally.
17:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found myself unable to stop saying the F-word.
17:50 Pablo Torre? Yeah, it would be anti-Ted Lasso, which I do appreciate.
17:54 Speaker 01 Ted Lasso could never, no.
17:56 Pablo Torre? I should say that your passion, you come by it honestly, AFC Wimbledon has had a rough season.
18:02 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, most of the seasons are rough, Pablo, to be fair.
18:07 Pablo Torre? Is 19th in the league about what you're used to?
18:11 Speaker 01 19th in the league felt like a million dollars. So we had one game that we had to win to stay up. It was basically our last chance to win a game to stay in the third division of English football and not get relegated down to the fourth division. And I was in a bus in Sierra Leone, learning about the healthcare system there with a few friends of mine who also are co-owners of AFC Wimbledon. And we watched this game on very spotty internet on the bus. And in the 89th minute, AFC Wimbledon scored to secure their status in League One in the third division. And it felt as good as anything in football has ever felt for me.
18:48 Speaker 04 Gonna power his way forward. Goes to ground, but it's Nelson in the middle. Chance for Hackett. Oh, it's on to Hackett for Wimbledon in the last minute.
18:58 Speaker 01 I think sometimes just staying up feels as good as winning a championship. And that's what it felt like to me in that moment.
19:04 Pablo Torre? Yeah. Look, the spectrum of relationships you can have with soccer players as the guy sponsoring, again, the back of the shorts.
19:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, no.
19:12 Pablo Torre? For those not familiar.
19:13 Speaker 01 The liminal space between left thigh and buttock is where I like to have my logo.
19:17 Pablo Torre? So it is. And as a journalist, and again, I should clarify that, we're bringing it together in part because The Away End is the World Cup podcast you guys are hosting together, which is, of course, it makes all the sense in the world now that we're, however many minutes into this conversation, of course, you guys want to do that with each other. But there's also a version of being a sports journalist, being a magazine writer, where you get what feels like this dream assignment.
19:42 Speaker 01 I think I know what you're talking about, right?
19:44 Pablo Torre? And it- Ends up not quite being that.
19:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, so basically, I was asked to write a profile of Lionel Messi. And I was promised three days with the greatest soccer player of all time. Although this was, you know, maybe 10, 10, 11 years ago. So he wasn't quite where he is now. But he was, you know, in his prime, wonderful player. And I jumped at the chance. It was right after my wedding. Postponed my honeymoon to go do this.
20:11 Pablo Torre? So just that conversation? How did it go?
20:14 Speaker 04 She was into it. She was into it. She was like, we'll both go. And I was like, that was a harder conversation because I don't like reporting with other people. Like, it's like, no, it's like, you gotta go report alone.
20:23 Pablo Torre? Yep.
20:24 Speaker 04 On the way there, it was dropped from three days to one day. And when I arrived in Barcelona, I checked my email and it was like an hour.
20:30 Pablo Torre? Messi at this point is playing for Barca.
20:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what happened basically is I, I showed up at the appointed time for like a 10 a.m. interview. And Messi wasn't there and they put me in a room. And they didn't let me walk around the training ground. They didn't let me talk to anybody. They didn't let me watch a practice. And they kept me in there till like, maybe like 6 p.m. And it was just like, and, and, you know, by that point, I was a mess. It was super hot. I'd, I'd been like literally drinking water out of the, the bathroom, you know, like lapping it into my mouth. Because I didn't, they didn't give me anything. And.
21:08 Pablo Torre? At this point, are you feeling like you are being hazed? Are you feeling like this is a deliberate thing?
21:14 Speaker 04 No, I'm just feeling like there are just, there are systems around superstars, you know, that are designed to keep people like me away from them. And this was the system working at its finest. And I guess at any point I could have just walked out and left, but I was on assignment and I thought, I can still save this, which was, which ended up being false. And eventually when Messi finally is brought to me after, it was going to be in the morning. Then it was going to be, you know, after morning training. Then it was going to be before afternoon training. Then it was finally ended up being after, the long after.
21:48 Speaker 04 He came in and just, you know, it was the worst interview that is probably in the history of journalism. I mean, it was like monosyllabic answers. He was super bored with every question that I'd asked him. I was sweating. I was so nervous. It was utterly humiliating. And it was also a good reminder of just like, these people live in this world and you're on the very periphery of it. And you, and, and whatever you think of the relationship that you've invented in your head between you and this person and their work, because that's their job, it's false. It's made up, you know? They give us, they, the athletes, give us joy. They give us despair. They give us moments of great drama. They allow us to connect with our community, with our nation, with people all over the world. But they
22:31 Speaker 04 don't have to care about us. And when you're in the presence of them, they might be having a bad day. It might just not be the right time. You might be the imperfect messenger for these set of stupid questions that you'd written. And that's it. It was a real learning moment, I gotta say.
22:47 Pablo Torre? Did it affect your relationship with the sport at all?
22:50 Speaker 04 No, but it affected my relationship with journalism. Like, I, I never again have attempted to write about anyone famous. Like, I'm just not interested. Yeah.
22:58 Speaker 01 Well, there's something wrong, like fundamentally wrong with the celebrity profile, right? Which is that they're exchanging pieces of their private life for public attention and they want to be very careful about how much of their private lives
23:09 Speaker 04 Sure.
23:10 Speaker 01 they exchange because once you give that up, it's not yours anymore, right? Like, once you share X or Y about yourself, it doesn't belong to you anymore. It doesn't belong to your family. You have to call your friends and say, I'm sorry that you found out about that from a magazine.
23:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:26 Speaker 01 And so you have to be super protected. I understand why it's miserable from a journalism perspective, but I also understand why Lionel Messi would wanna, would wanna give a monosyllabic answer.
23:37 Pablo Torre? As somebody who spent more than a decade writing about famous athletes, you begin to realize, okay, boxers who are incentivized to be interesting as a matter of their own, like, capitalistic incentive structure.
23:50 Speaker 04 Sure.
23:51 Pablo Torre? They are very different from the most famous soccer player on the planet for whom popularity
23:57 Speaker 04 It's not an issue.
23:58 Pablo Torre? is, is, is so not an issue that they exist behind walls that are protected by other walls.
24:05 Speaker 04 Right.
24:05 Pablo Torre? Like, it's just, they have no incentive to give you a second of their time.
24:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:10 Pablo Torre? But I'm always staggered by the numbers on these soccer player's social media accounts.
24:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:17 Pablo Torre? Cristiano Ronaldo has 666 million Instagram followers.
24:21 Speaker 01 That's the mark of the beast for a reason Pablo.
24:23 Pablo Torre? I mean, I'm just reading numbers, but I think it's up for the interpretation you provided. 666 million.
24:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, amazing.
24:32 Pablo Torre? Messi has 507 million.
24:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
24:35 Pablo Torre? Which is all to say that if you are a writer who wants access to these athletes, you literally need to sponsor the liminal area that John described.
24:44 Speaker 04 If I had a million or 6 million or any number of, like, anything remotely, I would just never tweet or post again. It would just be so much pressure.
24:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:55 Speaker 04 Yeah. I don't know. You have a million or so followers.
25:00 Speaker 01 I love that you have no idea how many Instagram followers I have. It's beautiful.
25:03 Speaker 04 I'm one of them.
25:04 Speaker 01 Stay golden pony boy.
25:06 Speaker 04 Thank you. Doesn't that feel like too much pressure?
25:08 Pablo Torre? 2.2 million.
25:10 Speaker 04 That's a lot.
25:11 Speaker 01 It is a lot of pressure, but I just tell myself they're all bots.
25:14 Pablo Torre? Hmm, yeah.
25:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, I'm not a bot. I follow you. I appreciate that.
25:19 Speaker 01 I follow you Pablo. I don't follow Daniel.
25:20 Pablo Torre? I mean, I don't think Daniel loves it enough.
25:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, he doesn't love the Instagram game like we do, man.
25:26 Pablo Torre? No, we're posting. We're true posters.
25:28 Speaker 01 That's right. That's right. Internet natives.
25:30 Speaker 04 I post. I post.
25:32 Speaker 01 You post occasionally.
25:33 Pablo Torre? I get the vibe that Daniel's just mostly flopping his hair in front of us one of his eyes.
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28:17 Pablo Torre? The question of what should the World Cup feel like? As soccer is, as we've now described it. Potentially a liberal arts education for someone. If you wanted to treat it like that. It is also, though, outside of the United States, something that is, I think, worthy of explanation. How would you explain the World Cup to countries that are not this one?
28:39 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, I'm currently living in Bogota, in Colombia. And I can say the World Cup is a national obsession. Every bar, every restaurant, people are getting together to watch games. People are talking about games. People, for the last two months, you know, all over the city, people have been trading panini, you know, the stickers.
28:59 Pablo Torre? Yeah, like trading cards.
29:01 Speaker 04 Trading cards, yeah. The kids talk about it, you know. When we moved to Bogota, my son liked soccer but didn't love it. And over the course of this one year in Bogota now, he's like, has opinions about, you know, the defensive frailties of New Zealand, you know, like, I mean, he's just like gotten obsessed because it's just osmosis in the culture. And like, I'm flying back tonight in part because Colombia plays tomorrow night. And I don't want to be here when I can be there. I mean, it is how we mark time in Latin America. And I know that's how, you know, people in Europe and African Asia mark time as well. Every four years, it's like, okay, we're gonna pause, celebrate this beautiful spectacle,
29:46 Speaker 04 and then go on with our lives. And, you know, people are saying like, you know, even if you play three games and you're out, it's three moments of communion for a nation. It's three moments when you're visible. You know, I was watching the Cape Verde game with a good friend of mine who's Cape Verdean. You know, when they played the National Anthem, she gave me a hug and she was like, "We did it." Before the ball had even been kicked. And then they went on and did something extraordinary.
30:18 Speaker 04 And this will be remembered for a long, long time. But just the visibility, just being there, especially from a small country, it's like no one ever thinks about Cape Verde, no one ever thinks about Peru where I'm from. And usually they think about Peru when something bad happens, you know, or we get another president or whatever happens. And so just to be visible and just to be, see yourself, you know, people talk a lot about, you know, sort of this idea of like, you know, what it means to be seen. And, and I think the World Cup for a lot of people from small countries, from obscure countries or countries that people don't think about much, the United States. When, when we appear on the world stage, you know, on this particular world stage, it's so emotional. And that's the one thing that I think Americans take for granted.
31:03 Pablo Torre? The excess of attention paid upon America.
31:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:07 Pablo Torre? Has left us numb to the idea that being in a tournament like this, in which the world is paying attention.
31:13 Speaker 04 There's one other thing that I think that Americans don't get because we don't have a diaspora. Diasporas come to us. National teams for diasporic peoples are so important because they are the simplest way to express your love for a country, even if that love can be very complicated, even if your parents left because they had to. You still love that place and it could be a complicated love. And the national team for 90 minutes allows you to simplify it. You throw on the jersey. You forget about the politics, you forget about your crazy family, you forget about the reasons why you emigrated. And you just express this very simple love for the place that you come from.
31:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's that great line in Ulysses where
31:58 Speaker 01 someone asks Bloom what a nation is, and he says, a nation is the same people in the same place. And then he pauses and says, or in other places. And how do you understand yourself as part of the same people if you're in other places? And I think football is one of those ways.
32:12 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I mean, you just got back from Norway, right?
32:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was great. I had a great trip to Norway and-
32:17 Pablo Torre? Noted World Cup participant in Norway?
32:19 Speaker 01 Absolutely. Everybody was talking about Erling Haaland and how many goals he's gonna score and it was an, it's an absolute obsession. It is, it is the only thing that's happening. That's the only way I can describe it. It's the conversation that everyone has. And so, instead of talking about the weather, you talk about the World Cup. There's so little that human beings can pay attention to together that is even moderately positive, and I don't want to minimize the corruption of FIFA, which is horrific.
32:45 Pablo Torre? Of course.
32:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's a given.
32:47 Speaker 01 It's a given.
32:48 Pablo Torre? But, but the corruption is contingent on the power that you guys are describing.
32:53 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And so, this is all inseparable, right? So, that's, that's a great point, that you can't have that corruption unless you have this incredibly powerful thing. That in some ways, I mean, most people on this earth are at some point going to pay attention to this World Cup. And that's not true for any other thing.
33:13 Speaker 04 FIFA doesn't own the World Cup. We do, you know? They might own the branding and the, you know, they make all the money, but, and they might have successfully weaponized our love of the game against us. But for me, you know, the reason that I'm flying back to Bogota to watch, I'm not Colombian, my wife is, our family is, our friends are. But flying back to Bogota to see the game with that community is because it means something that FIFA can't touch.
33:39 Pablo Torre? Yes. And I don't know what you guys talk about when you talk about nation building, but the thing I think about all the time here domestically is how an understanding of sports and soccer at the most extreme end of the spectrum in terms of its ability to galvanize, you know, millions upon millions, nine figures worth of people all the time. But the ability to understand sports so that you are not caught blindsided by its power is also really important.
34:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:07 Pablo Torre? Because it is, in this era in which everything is siloed and broken apart, it's the thing that resembles the big tent, as I often say on this show. And so, being surprised and, and naive to its power is also, at this point, just a massive liability if you're trying to- Do anything resembling organizing.
34:28 Speaker 01 Right. One of the things I love about AFC Wimbledon as opposed to Liverpool, which I love, I've loved since I was a kid, as opposed to any, you know, modern football club or modern sports team is that, you know, the Knicks, that's an incredible story. It's amazing what they accomplished, what those players accomplished.
34:46 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
34:46 Speaker 01 But ultimately, like, that's a billionaire's asset that's being used by that billionaire. And it's true for almost every soccer team in England, even the, like, lower league teams. I was in a meeting once with a guy and I was like, "So who owns your football club?" He was like the managing director and he was like, "Oh, the Saudis." And I was like, "You're in the fourth division, like, you guys are terrible at this."
35:12 Speaker 01 And so I think, like, we have to find ways to build different structures and different systems where the fans actually do have the power. And the New York Knicks can't become the Los Angeles Knicks next year if somebody decides that they want to.
35:28 Speaker 04 The city would burn to the ground.
35:30 Speaker 01 No, I know. But see, that wouldn't happen because there is power in the people.
35:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
35:34 Speaker 01 Like, there is power in the fandom.
35:36 Speaker 04 Right.
35:36 Speaker 01 And so I think that's important for everyone to understand. Like, you have more power as a fan than you maybe think you do.
35:42 Pablo Torre? And I think about that whenever I watch European football.
35:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:46 Pablo Torre? You know, I talk about this on the show, but like, the Super League as this eye-opening thing of like, that was a populist, that was Occupy Wall Street.
35:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:55 Pablo Torre? But somehow more effective.
35:56 Speaker 01 They just rejected it out of hand and the football clubs had to say like, "Okay, I guess we're gonna back off."
36:01 Speaker 04 Within like 72 hours.
36:02 Speaker 01 Yes.
36:02 Speaker 04 It was amazing.
36:03 Pablo Torre? Yes. Within three days, everyone was like, "I guess the fans decided that we can't do this." And they couldn't. I think about, we've done episodes about the Bundesliga. I mean, in German football, there's the 50-plus-one rule.
36:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:16 Pablo Torre? Could you explain just the very basic premise of that?
36:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, so all German football clubs are ultimately owned by their fans. 50-plus-one percent of the club has to belong to the members. And the members are, with very rare exceptions, a pretty large community. And so it's very difficult for a corporation to come in. Now, it has happened to Red Bull has done it successfully where they come in and kind of flood the membership of a small club and then build it up to become Redberg Salzburg or whatever. But in general, those clubs are owned by their communities and that's that's the way it's always been and they're very they're very successful. I mean, you could argue that maybe German football hasn't been as successful in the last 20 years as English football or Spanish football.
36:59 Speaker 01 But Bayern Munich is still a huge club and they're owned by their fans.
37:04 Pablo Torre? Yep. We did an episode about Schalke 04, uh, which is within the 50 plus one model in which it's, you know, 51% just a majority. That's the concept of 50 plus one. Yeah, they they finished first in their division.
37:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:17 Pablo Torre? And they're getting promoted.
37:19 Speaker 01 They're going up to the Bundesliga. Yeah.
37:21 Pablo Torre? I guess my point is the large American sporting machine is not the only way that this has to be. And that's what soccer always reminds me of. It's like, oh, wait a minute. You guys have lots of money. You guys have all of these competing oligarchs and interests and incentives. And you've figured out that there's a different way. Again, FIFA being the apex predator of corruption, yes. But at the team level, there are different ways you could own and operate these things.
37:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely.
37:47 Pablo Torre? I will say, I had the experience of covering the World Cup in Brazil for five weeks in 2014.
37:54 Speaker 01 Right.
37:55 Pablo Torre? I was there for Brazil playing Germany.
37:58 Speaker 01 Ooh, one of the great catastrophes of human history.
38:04 Pablo Torre? Around the Stadio Minero in Belo Horizonte. The only word you can think of is total disbelief right now. Germany blew out Brazil 7 to 1. And at no point in that entire game was it even close to uncertain.
38:23 Speaker 01 No.
38:23 Pablo Torre? What was happening.
38:24 Speaker 01 It could have been worse than 7-1.
38:26 Pablo Torre? And it could have really been worse. I just remember feeling like, oh yeah, this is this is like, this is a 90 minute funeral.
38:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:34 Pablo Torre? And people are not leaving because it's the World Cup in Brazil.
38:38 Speaker 01 Right.
38:39 Pablo Torre? And of course, like, you're not gonna get up and go. But I just don't know of a feeling that's quite like, what's the analogy for that? Like, there is something that's really hard to define about the mixture of pride in your team despite an unbelievably embarrassing showing. Pride in being the host country, this thing that you've been waiting for your whole life. And just knowing that you're being dunked on over and over again. It's a particular kind of like, there should be a German word for that, I guess.
39:13 Speaker 04 It probably is, and it has like 14 syllables. I mean, I think you could argue that Brazilian soccer hasn't recovered from that. And they won't recover until they win another World Cup. Because the, there's just kind of no way to overstate the trauma of, Brazilians go into any tournament thinking that they can win. They think that there's this magical power associated with that jersey. And it's the, the team of Pelé, it's the team of Romario, it's the team of Ronaldinho and Ronaldo.
39:44 Pablo Torre? It's a team of like, joy.
39:46 Speaker 04 It's a team of joy. I was, I was talking about this with a Brazilian friend. It's like a sad Irishman, we can get that, and like a sad German.
39:54 Pablo Torre? Yes.
39:55 Speaker 04 Even like a sad Mexican, like, but like a sad Brazilian, there's something really like, it's, it's traumatic as an outsider to even view Brazilian sadness. Because, because we associate the country, the music, the culture, with a kind of joy that has always been expressed on the pitch with the way they play.
40:12 Pablo Torre? Right, stylistically, in every way, culturally, it, it kind of, it was like watching.
40:19 Speaker 05 State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier. We'll have room for fried cookies. Okay, you'd never overspend on food. What's your deal?
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41:16 Pablo Torre? It was like watching this person you knew be lobotomized.
41:20 Speaker 01 Oh, God, it was brutal.
41:22 Pablo Torre? It's just like, this isn't what you're like.
41:24 Speaker 01 You could tell that they felt that on the pitch. Like, they were looking at each other like, what is happening? Who are we? What has occurred? And I think what people sometimes forget about that game is that Neymar was really badly injured. Like, within a... Within a... Am I wrong, Daniel, that he was within a couple centimeters of being paralyzed?
41:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, in the previous game by a Colombian defender, yeah.
41:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, and so he was really badly injured in a scary way. And he was their...
41:49 Speaker 04 Talisman.
41:50 Speaker 01 And their expression. The vast majority of them are there to, like, be in the right place at the right time and kick the ball to the right place.
41:56 Speaker 04 Right.
41:56 Speaker 01 But then you need someone like Neymar or Lamine Yamal or Messi to... Who does have that genius, that understanding of space, that understanding of passes.
42:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
42:08 Speaker 01 And without that, they were just hopeless.
42:09 Pablo Torre? Right.
42:10 Speaker 04 I will say this, I was in a cab yesterday going to the fan zone in Philly, and our Uber driver was Haitian. And we were just talking about the World Cup. And he guaranteed me that Haiti would beat Brazil.
42:23 Speaker 01 Wow!
42:23 Speaker 04 Yeah. So, when you talk about the long tail of that 7-1, can you imagine? Like, here we are, you know, three World Cups later, four World Cups later, and there's a Haitian fan who is telling me with 100% confidence that Haiti can beat Brazil? Imagine that before the 7-1. It's unthinkable.
42:45 Pablo Torre? Right. Okay, look, this is a sports show, allegedly. Who's winning the World Cup, John Green?
42:53 Speaker 01 I have no idea. And all predictions are stupid. And they're... They feed the betting machine that terrifies me. Spain.
43:04 Pablo Torre? Why are you laughing so heartily at that?
43:06 Speaker 04 I'm laughing because I think I put Spain 2. And then after seeing them sort of flounder around and get bossed by Cape Verde, I'm doubting myself. I'm gonna go with my heart, and I'm gonna say Colombia, even though...
43:18 Speaker 01 That's very unlikely.
43:20 Speaker 04 That's very unlikely.
43:21 Speaker 01 Fine, I'll say the US. The US is gonna win the World Cup.
43:24 Pablo Torre? Great.
43:24 Speaker 04 Colombia's gonna win.
43:25 Speaker 01 It's gonna be a US-Canada final after the US beats Colombia in the semis, and we're gonna beat Canada.
43:31 Pablo Torre? This is a lot of pressure to put on you, John. Can you give the US Men's National Team a pep talk?
43:36 Speaker 04 Wow. I want to see this.
43:38 Pablo Torre? You've stepped in, for those who are just listening, John Green.
43:41 Speaker 04 Yeah, okay.
43:41 Pablo Torre? Best-selling, young adult author, novelist.
43:44 Speaker 04 Right. Get in the zone.
43:47 Speaker 01 You either have to love something together, or you have to hate something together. And the great thing about the 26 players sitting in front of me right now is that you all [bleep] hate your coach. And you're gonna use that, you're gonna use that hatred to bring yourselves together. And you're going to express an American football identity that we've never seen before, that shifts the world so profoundly that they will no longer call football in America "football." They'll call it "American football," if that makes sense.
44:23 Speaker 04 That's great. I could see the, like, eagle, like, appearing on your shoulder.
44:26 Pablo Torre? Yeah, we're gonna put music underneath there.
44:29 Speaker 04 The flag wave. That's great.
44:31 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I was hoping you would go with, uh... And then she wrapped her hand around it and put it into her mouth.
44:36 Speaker 04 Oh my god, are you reading from my novel?
44:38 Pablo Torre? And waited. We were both very still. She did not move a muscle in her body.
44:41 Speaker 04 Oh, I gotta go.
44:41 Pablo Torre? And I did not move a muscle in mine. I knew that at this point something else was supposed to happen.
44:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
44:46 Pablo Torre? But I wasn't quite sure what.
44:47 Speaker 01 Pablo, I'm just gonna stop you right there and tell you that there are no adjectives in that entire scene. That's how un-erotic it is. It's literally an adjective-less scene. I think the only adjective on that entire page is nervous.
45:01 Pablo Torre? I could go on, but I think-
45:02 Speaker 01 This is one of the worst things that ever happened to me.
45:04 Pablo Torre? I could go on, but I think the US Men's National Team gets the drift.
45:07 Speaker 04 Wow. That reads like a medical textbook.
45:10 Speaker 01 Thank you. It's un-erotic.
45:12 Pablo Torre? No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. What that sounds like...
45:17 Pablo Torre? is freedom.
45:19 Speaker 01 That's right, an essential American value.
45:22 Speaker 04 Thank you.
45:23 Pablo Torre? USA.
45:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
45:24 Speaker 01 USA.
45:33 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
46:00 Speaker 05 State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier. We'll have room for fried cookies. Okay, you'd never overspend on food. What's your deal?
46:09 Speaker 02 What's his deal? He went to Metro and got $450 in value on the new Samsung Galaxy A37 5G for free and no activation fees.
46:17 Speaker 05 Free phone? Oh, sign me up.
46:20 Speaker 02 Get that more for your money feeling, only on Metro by T-Mobile. Bring your number and activate $40 period plan. $450 based on device discount and activation fee. Not available with Metro T-Mobile in the past 180 days.
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