For Roger Bennett, Soccer’s ‘A Pleasure that Hurts’

DAVID GREENE, HOST: I just want to start by asking you one word, one word that you would use right now to describe this World Cup that’s getting started.

MEGAN SWANICK: Oh, well, I want to give you an excited word because I think the excitement is going to hit us.

DG: Do it.

MS: But to be frank with you, I’m actually going to go with uncertain. I think that I’m a little bit uncertain how the World Cup is going to manifest. The fans are just starting to arrive. There’s some complications, there’s some things to be excited about. So yeah, for right now, I am going to with uncertain.

DG: Uncertain, okay. I’m talking to Meg Swanick, who’s a soccer journalist, and you can find all of her work in places like ESPN, the Guardian, Men in Blazers, the Philadelphia Inquirer. She lives and breathes the sport as a journalist, which makes me really wanna dig into the word uncertain. What are you not certain about as this thing is kicking off right now?

MS: Well, I think there’s the on-field questions and the U.S. Men’s national team has so much going for it. They are just coming off to exciting, friendly results, even though the more recent one was a defeat, but it was a defeat against Germany and they looked good for large phases of that game. But I think in both of their friendlies and in their recent windows, there’s a lot of concerns in terms of their defensive setup and personnel. Their goalkeepers are not as legendary as we’ve seen in previous generations for this team and their bus center back is training separately and just working back from an injury. So I think that the on-field uncertainty for the U.S. Men’s national team specifically is one thing. They have a few days to get it together and again I think they do have a lot going for them. And they could deliver a historic run, but we’ll have to wait and see. And then I think that in terms of the fan experience. I’m a bit uncertain right now how this tournament is going to infiltrate and bring in the non-soccer-watching public at the moment.

DG: Oh, interesting the non-soccer watching public might infiltrate this whole event.

MS: (Laughs) Hopefully in a good way. That is a bit of a pejorative.

DG: I was going to say, yeah, that’s not so friendly to non-soccer fans. Like, there’s a little bit of a message here, like, can you people who don’t know anything about soccer stay away? We want to be, we want to be welcoming though.

MS: The collision of different sports fan bases is always entertaining. No, I mean, hopefully they infiltrate in a good way. And, you know, that’s what you want you for years, ever since this tournament was announced to be co-hosted across North America. We’ve been getting the promises of this is going to change soccer in the United States. It’s going to be like it was in 1994, which brought in the dawn of Major League Soccer and definitely, I think, ramped up fandom as well as playing in the United States. So you hope that that’s going to level up again as they’re hosting, as the United State is hosting for a second time now, all these years later. But yeah, I think it’ll be interesting to see how this tournament grasps hold of an enormous country with lots of different pockets whose attention can be hard to grasp hold of. So I’ve definitely been asking everybody I can get my hands on, do you know what’s happening? Are you excited? What do you know?

DG: What are you hearing?

MS: Well, the answers are all over the spectrum. You get everything from people who are vaguely aware it’s happening to people that maybe they’re basketball fans, they’re baseball fans, they know what’s happening, they don’t know that much, but they’ve got the HBO series lined up to watch and they’re excited. They could be bought in, I think, with good results in the group stage. And then people who are completely oblivious, to be honest with you, and don’t know that it’s coming, which is remarkable, but.

DG: Must be hard for you as someone who like spent so much time reporting on soccer to find some one asking you like the World Cup is where and when?

MS: I kind of love it, to be honest. I don’t want that to be the case, but I appreciate a person who is that removed from the news cycle sometimes.

DG: I agree with you. Yeah. You’re not as obsessive as I am. Maybe I don’t have to be this obsessed with the news. If you’re living your life comfortably and not following every single development. That’s actually a really good point. Well I do want to dig in more to this because like what is your advice? I mean, we should say, we’re recording this before the USA-Paraguay match, which is the first one. Some people might be hearing this after that’s taken place, but I guess I wonder just broadly for sort of non-soccer fans, but soccer curious people in the U.S. who are like hearing from friends, like, oh, we should all watch the U.S. matches together out on the street in some cool place or at a bar. What are the do’s and don’ts for these infiltrators who might wanna get involved in this, but don’t really know soccer that well?

MS: Oh, that’s a good question. I think that maybe one question is to have patience with the U.S. men’s national team as they compete in a pool of 48 teams. They’re not as good as the U.S. women’s national team compared to the rest of the pool. And I think sometimes when people who don’t watch start tuning in, they wanna know why we’re losing to teams like Turkey or Wales and stuff like that. You got a lot of that at the last World Cup, or they fail to appreciate how impressive 0-0 draw against England was in the last World Cup, that kind of thing.

DG: It was huge the fact that we tied England was pretty big deal

MS: I mean, that was one of the best performances of this era of players. So I think, yeah, I would just say have a little bit of patience and appreciation for how this team is able to compete against teams that have been playing for much longer or it’s the number one sport in that country, all those kinds of things.

DG: For people who haven’t been following this team, and you were pointing to this a little bit, I mean, defense for the American team could be a vulnerability, and Chris Richards, who is one of, if not our best defender, not clear if this injury is gonna let him play. I mean how risky is it for this U.S. Team to go up against a team with a really good attack and just, they’re gonna end up giving up like three, four goals quickly and it’s over.

MS: Yeah, it’s the biggest concern for this team right now and I think it’s kind of the inverse of what we’ve seen from this team recently, even in the last World Cup or under Gregg Berhalter, where they were more defensively sound but struggled to score. And now we’ve got a team where, especially in these past two friendlies, also in Qatar, every goal they scored in some way went through Christian Pulisic, whether he was setting up the goal or scoring the goal. Now they’ve got a plethora of riches offensively, three different strikers all inform that you can feel comfortable out there. But defensively, yes, this is the biggest concern. Chris Richards, I think, is definitely the team’s best player. I don’t know if he will start and be fully healthy for the match on Friday. I do have a sense that he’ll be healthy by the end of the group stage. And yeah, you hope that the personnel and the team is able to set up in a way that limits the offensive threat of the teams that they’ll play until he is on the field. And they do have a surplus of center backs in the rosters. So I think that was done partly to account for any injuries suppliers like Chris Richards. Tim Ream is a smart, experienced leader on the field. He has lost a step since his younger days, but you do have faith or I still do have faith in his leadership and his vision in the game back there. And then I think, you know, Mark McKenzie, Miles Robinson, Auston Trusty, will probably be asked to really step up in this group stage. And I think perhaps some of them, whoever Pochettino goes with, maybe Mark McKensey on Friday will do that.

DG: We talk about a World Cup as having the potential to bring, you know, a divisive world together, a device of country together. It’s like, I could imagine if the U.S. makes a run and does better than expected, some of those infiltrators that you mentioned, like people get really into it and something magical could happen. And if they get eliminated early, like we won’t see that. I mean, it’s hard to see a world where there’s not pressure on these guys.

MS: I think they handle it well. I think Christian Pulisic, what I’ll say is he’s come into this tournament in the worst form of his career, specifically at the club level. I think it was pretty dire in terms of the number— and there’s a lot of caveats to that, he was creating opportunities. He’s playing out of position. Other people are injured that were key to his production with AC Milan. But I was at the game in Charlotte, they beat Senegal. And I think when he scored and he assisted a goal, you could see the weight come off of his shoulders. And he’d been saying in his celebrations, in his mannerisms, it was like he had shed this pressure, which is a question that he doesn’t like getting. He gets it all the time. He’s been getting it probably since he debuted on the team. And that’s only accelerated as he’s become more important. But I do think that the game that he had against Senegal, scoring that goal, getting that out of the way, putting to rest the question about his goal drought was really essential and a big win of these friendlies. He didn’t score against Germany, but he did also have a really good game, I thought. So hopefully that reduces the pressure that I’m sure is there, but that he does handle well. I think the rest of the team. It varies by players. I mean, some of them, like Weston McKennie or Tyler Adams, you kind of never see them sweat. They come through the mix zone after that Senegal game. The two of them are kind of arm in arm with their arms around each other. I think that they’re excited. They definitely understand the stakes and really want to deliver as the host of this World Cup. But I do have a sense that they are excited to have that stage. And are able to compartmentalize the pressure.

DG: I’m thinking about some of the people we were talking about, too, coming into this this World Cup maybe is not the biggest soccer fans, but wanting to, you know, get into it and understand it. What would you tell a fan who’s like, okay, I’m kind of into this. I want to follow the U.S. men’s national team. But also, I don’t want just, you know, to be a U.S. centric fan. What other what other countries what other storyline sort of stands out is something you’re going to be watching really closely in these next few weeks.

MS: One, for sure, the co-hosts. I’m really excited to see how Mexico and Canada do. I’d love to see them both make deep runs. I think Jesse Marsch has done great work leading the Canadian team. They’re in an interesting group. Hopefully Canada also gets behind them and maybe they can do something like they did in the Copa America where they made a really deep run into that tournament. Mexico is probably the best place of the cohosts to really do something. And I think that the crowd moment behind them as they begin their tournament in Mexico and then migrate into the United States is going to be among the more impressive fan bases in the tournament. So that’s gonna be really fun to see how they do. Beyond the hosts, the three co-hosts, I love watching teams making their debut even though they’re probably long shots to do anything spectacular, but you never know even getting out of the group for Curacao or Uzbekistan, both in their first tournament is always really fun to watch. You’ve got probably the last attempt at winning this trophy for teams, like, you know, this is probably Lionel Messi’s last tournament. I think last time people thought that and they won, this is really probably the last.

DG: That’s really it for Lionel Messi. We’re not going to see him again.

MS: Yeah, so you’ve got kind of those storylines, which will be fun to watch. Always interesting to see if a team like Brazil, which is obviously one of the greats, but hasn’t been as at the same level as they have been in previous tournaments in any tournament. All of the Brazilian club teams, I think, really shined in the Club World Cup last summer, and it’ll be interesting to se if they can deliver with a tournament in the Americas and return to some of their previous ways. And then you’ve got the heavyweights, the teams in Europe, like Spain, France, maybe England, who are just star-studded on paper, the favorites to win. But the weather seems to be really throwing all of them off. So yeah, it’ll be interesting to see if they make good on the deep reservoirs of talent that those teams have in this World Cup.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: I’m gonna ask you the broadest question in the entire world. What do you love about soccer?

MS: Well, I mean, I grew up playing. I love the game, the on-field product. I love the patience of it, that there might not be any goals. There could just be one goal and you have to kind of just follow along the rhythm of the game and let it flow through the direction it’s going in. But I really, really love the culture around it. I’ve worked in the travel industry and lived abroad, been fortunate to travel a lot, and that’s definitely accelerated what I get out of this sport is all the different fan bases, the different ways they watch, the stories of whether it’s diaspora communities in the United States or people abroad, what the sport means to them and all of the opportunities to kind of hang out with people, tailgating and stuff like that. I think that’s what makes the sport unique and also makes this tournament really special.

DG: I know you’ve done some work with Men in Blazers. I mean, you know Roger Bennett pretty well?

MS: Yes, yes.

DG: Excellent. Well, we’re gonna hear from him next. We’re gonna do a really deep dive on some of the history of the World Cup, but you’ve done an amazing job kind of setting things up for us and I think getting us excited. I’m really excited about these next few weeks. Soccer journalist Meg Swanick, thank you. Enjoy all the games.

MS: Thanks for having me.

\[MUSIC\]

ROGER BENNETT: It’s Rog, and today we continue to preview the Copa America. Every team, every group, every storyline. The United States men are back! Oh, poised to Avenger assemble and face our neighbors to the North. Yes, we’re about to re-litigate the War of 1812!

DG: If you’ve ever stayed up way too late watching a match, you absolutely did not need to emotionally invest yourself in, well, Roger Bennett gets it.

RB: It actually allows me to feel things in real life that I think normal people feel all the time like happiness and sadness and loss and victory and connection.

DG: Since his days hearing match stories in Liverpool pubs as a kid, the British American author and broadcaster has spent years turning soccer into something bigger than highlights and standings. Notably, he founded Men in Blazers, the largest independent football-obsessed media network in North America with over a dozen recurring podcasts, videos, and TV shows. For Roger, the game is memory, community, occasionally suffering, often absurdity. And somehow through all of it, he has built one of the most distinctive voices in sports media, equal parts, historian, comedian, therapist, and fan in the cheap seats. His new book, We are the World (Cup): A Personal History of the World’s Greatest Sporting Event is exactly that kind of ride it’s funny and nostalgic and human, using the history of world cup to tell a much bigger story about belonging, culture, heartbreak, joy, and why this game means so much to so many people. With the 2026 World Cup kicking off this week, it’s hard to miss the broader political landscape. No one will be watching more closely than Roger, who argues that politics have always been part of this tournament.

RB: There’s a cliche war stop when the World Cup kicks off. It’s a cliché cause it’s actually true and please God it will be true again. But like the sense that the whole world is watching together, that heroes are made, that’s not changed.

DG: That is because it is more than a sporting event. With nations gathering beneath flags and anthems, questions of identity and power inevitably take the field alongside the players. Today on Sports in America, Roger Bennett goes deep on his journey from Liverpool to America, the rise of Men in Blazers, and why the World Cup still has the power to stop the world in its tracks every four years. But first, we weigh a business opportunity.

You know, it’s funny, Roger. I’m just, I feel like I was talking to a friend, having lunch on the beach yesterday. And I said that I was about to interview you and you know, the soccer and talk about popularity. And he was like, “Well, you know David, I’ve invested in a club in Europe,” and I’m like, what the hell are you talking about? And he said he was a small investor in Club Brugge in Belgium. I guess it’s Bruge in French, Bruga and Flemish. But like, this is all the rage now. I’m feeling out of the loop. Like I have people in my life who are investing in soccer clubs.

RB: Well, David, you and I, I think are the only two Americans who have not bought a piece of a European football club.

DG: Well, we could do this together today, I mean, we can figure it out.

RB: We could also put our money in a garbage can and set it on fire if we wanted to. And they’re both pretty much the same thing, but one’s a great conversation piece. The other is just a garbage can, a flame. It’s one of the storylines of the book that I think I’m most elated by. I moved to the United States, head of the last Men’s World Cup being here in 1994. I wrote about it in the book. A couple of weeks before the tournament, there was a national study released about fandom. And soccer was revealed to be the 67th most popular sport in America and I think tractor pulling was number 66.

DG: Man, just barely ahead. Barely.

RB: Yeah, The Economist has just done a similar study and released it and they found out that football soccer is now America’s third most popular sport, just edged out baseball in terms of the fandom here, obviously the NFL and the NBA ahead of it. But that journey from a football-hating nation, which America really was, they didn’t just not care, they actively, and I write about this in great depth, went out of their way to show just how much they hated it to where we are now. Where almost every Premier League team, the majority of Premier League teams, the elite of world football have American ownership. That’s an incredible journey from nothing to everything in 30 years and it’s been beautiful to witness.

DG: It’s true when the United States hosted the world cup in 1994, soccer was still fighting for attention in the American sports landscape, but the tournament ignited a wave of interest that transformed the sports place in American life. Today, MLS has grown from 10 teams to 30. High school soccer participation has more than doubled. More than 16 million Americans now play the game. For a generation, soccer was called the sport of the future. Well, now it appears at least that the future has arrived.

It’s been shocking and I wanna get into what you think has led to that, but I do not wanna let go of that statistic because I think it’s a big effing deal. I mean, baseball is America’s pastime and you’re saying that soccer has now eclipsed baseball in terms of popularity in the United States, at least according to The Economist. I mean that is a huge thing.

RB: I know it’s just The Economist, it’s clearly fake news, but I talk about how in the book when I was in Portland, Maine as an English counselor on camp in 1990, England got into the semi-final. I could not get a single bar in Maine to use their huge satellite dishes to play the game. They all refused. They wanted to play minor league baseball and to go from there to here, where there’s a vast young audience who are obsessed with the sport in the United States. It’s been the story of my life to witness, it’s been profound and I think football is a mirror that shows you the world and to understand how that’s occurred, why that’s occurred and project it forward is really to understand a lot about ourselves.

DG: Yeah, that’s one of my favorite lines in your book. I think that, that, “the World Cup is, you know, is a mirror on, you, know, the society around it.” I mean, say more about that. Why is there something, uh, so distinctive about the world Cup in that way?

RB: Yeah, the book is based on a sense that when we watch sports and the World Cup is a global eclipse that strikes the entire planet for, in this case, 39 straight days simultaneously. And its power lies in the fact that 200 million people watch the Super Bowl. It’s a big deal. Five billion people watch The World Cup. So when you’re watching, number one, you are feeling an electric connection to the entire plan because you’re making memories and they’re making memories at the same time.

DG: Yeah, that’s billion with a B. Five billion humans watched this tournament, making it the most watched sporting event on the planet.

RB: We are all paying witness to the spectacle. And then the other dimension is that when two teams take the field, their nation’s histories, their nations culture, their nations politics, take the filled alongside them. That’s what makes the World Cup so nuanced. Walt Whitman would say it contains multitudes. Oh, I love baseball. All right. In the book, it’s like chess with chewing tobacco. But when the Chicago White Sox play the Boston Red Sox, it was a game, it’s two franchises colliding. When Germany play France in the World Cup when England play Argentina in the World Cup. In this World Cup, when the United States play anybody, just say there’s a lot of history, which is going to take to the field. There’s a of depths to those games. And that’s what makes the everything feel so alive, so beautiful. I did write in the book, I’ve always said it’s a great thing that football is a mirror in which we can see ourselves. And that true in great times. It’s also to It’s also true in times of challenge, but it absolutely refracts the reality that’s around us.

DG: Roger came up in Liverpool at a time when soccer wasn’t just entertainment. It was woven into daily life. The rhythms of the city, the conversations at home, the feeling in the streets on match day, all of it revolved around the game. He talks about falling in love with football young simply through ritual and community. Those early experiences shaped not only the way Roger sees soccer, but the way he tells stories about it now with humor, nostalgia, and a deep understanding that sports are never, ever really just sports.

What is your first memory of realizing that the World Cup was much more than a sporting event, that it really was a global and cultural event?

RB: It was instant, instant. The first World Cup I remember and I write about was 1978 in Argentina. I love America. I’m very American now, but I grew up in Liverpool in the 70s and 80s. It was a rough time, a tough time. And English football was in its hooligan era.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: This was during an era known as English football’s hooligan years, which grew out of a Britain grappling with economic decline, social upheaval and deep class divisions. Football clubs became powerful symbols of local identity and for some supporters defending that identity became as important as the match itself. A trip to the stadium carried at least a small chance of witnessing either sporting transcendence or complete societal collapse. It was chaotic, ridiculous, occasionally scary, and utterly unforgettable.

RB: I’d go to games with my dad and you’d routinely stand over, walk over broken bodies in the way to the stadi um without even thinking about them, like a man with a bloody…

DG: Literally bodies on the ground, like people being beaten up by…

RB: Oh yeah people have been being out the bloody you know their teeth kicked out just like begging you for help and you just keep chatting six-year-old kid being like, “Hello daddy I’m so excited about the game,” as you stepped over like a broken carcass. I don’t know what’s going on down there but yeah. Yeah you don’t even think twice oh it’s the football of course there’s broken bodies smashed up around so you’d go in and English football muddy pictures you can see this on YouTube it’s so hilarious how like the pictures will just mud true. The footballers were lumpy, pumpy, dumpy men, not athletes. They look like me. They’re like bald, sad guys. You’ve kicked the crap out of each other. And then when the whistle went with a sigh, they’d retreat into the locker room, have a cigarette and a beer. Well, the fans then took turns to try and kick the crap of each other. That was football. I don’t know why we went. The way I’ve described it, it was actually very miserable. But you went because your dad had gone and his dad had done. And that’s the way it was. It was a great purveyor of memory and community and connection. And pride, local pride to be honest. And then 1978 World Cup in Argentina. We didn’t have any sports on live television. Definitely not soccer.

DG: I was gonna say it’s not like you’re streaming this on on Fox or something. I mean.

RB: We had no live football because the teams in England were worried that if they put live football on, no one would go to the games anymore. So they really worked hard to make sure we never saw it on television. Suddenly you saw it, it was in Argentina, there was a sun in the air, like a joke that in Liverpool, where we’re a nation of mole men, we’re all like, “What’s that orange thing in the sky, dad?” And then it was like, “It’s called the sun, lad.” We looked at it and it was this huge stadium. The moment the teams took the field. Just confetti rained down from all sides of the building, just an explosion of happiness from the top tier, incredibly Argentinian football. They took toilet rolls, thousands of people, and just streamed them down simultaneously. My mum turned to my dad and goes, “Who would think of taking a toilet roll to a football game, love?” Very practical, my mother. But it looked so ecstatic, David, that in that moment, I turned to my dad that I said oh my god, who knew football can be joyous. And I was hooked almost immediately.

DG: Is it really the joyous is not a word you would have used when you were going to your kind of local matches Is that yeah, and also good soccer did not feel joyous to use a cat until then

RB: No it was muddy it was painful it was excruciating look in the epigraph to my book is by the Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano who wrote “Football is a pleasure that hurts,” which I just love I mean any New York Jets fan listening to this is nodding safely when they hear that it is a pleasure that hurt. By the way, subplot, this is going to take a bit of a dark turn. Seven year old Rog did not know that the ebullient cacophonous joyous scene in Argentina was going on simultaneously with the military hunter using the World Cup as a propaganda tool.

ANNOUNCER: So after all the excitement and the drama and the controversy, it all comes down to this. Argentina against the Netherlands in the World Cup final.

DG: Yeah, when Argentina hosted the World Cup in 1978, the country was under brutal military rule. Beyond the stadium walls, the regime was carrying out a campaign of repression that would leave thousands of people disappeared. The tournament offered something invaluable to the regime, a global audience and a chance to show unity, strength and national pride. It was a reminder that the World Cup has often been a stage on which nations project who they want the world to believe they are.

I mean, we talk about the politics in the World Cup. That was one of the most prominent of all of them, right? I mean the military dictatorship was using his propaganda and doing brutal things in that country.

RB: Yeah, in the build-up to that one, English journalists were handled a book of Spanish phrases for their own use while they were in Argentina. I think the first one was, “Please don’t abduct me.” I mean, it was dark and it was twisted going into that, but for a seven-year-old, I had no idea. I saw the confetti, I saw The Sun, I saw live football crackling. Were these players that we didn’t know what Brazilian— we heard they were good. We didn’t ever saw them. They may as well have played on Venus. Like suddenly they were there. The French, we didn’t even know they played football. Oh my God, they’re silky of short, curly of hair. They played as if they had wafting drak on the wall clouds coming out from behind them. I was like, oh my God. This is this is like a Star Wars cantina and I love it.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: As with Argentina in 1978 and throughout history, authoritarian governments have understood something powerful about the World Cup in particular. If you can wrap yourself in the emotion of national pride, you can borrow some of its legitimacy. Because when millions of people are emotionally invested in the flag, the anthem, and the team, the lines between sport and propaganda can blur pretty quickly.

Why do, particularly authoritarian regimes like a military dictatorship, get so into the World Cup and get so into this sport?

RB: But which they have, by the way, from the very beginning, I think Mussolini was the first in the 30s hosted the World Cup and was very proud of his order to have intricately paper cut tickets because he knew people who came to the games would take them home to their nations and be like, look, this is Italy. Look how beautiful their tickets are. I mean, an early form of going viral. In remarkable ways. And it was important that Italy won the tournament just as it was for Argentina’s military government that Argentina won it and they did. Why are they drawn to it? Look, I’d like to pretend it’s because they just love the football. But what they understand and what every autocrat understands, you look at Erdoğan and his use of football.

DG: In Turkey, yeah.

RB: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he’s invested in teams, invested in stadium infrastructure. It’s a way to announce the nation to the world. Why? It’s because they understand that it’s the last global megaphone that is available. It’s how you can, from optics POV, speak to the entire planet. And so that is the lure. There’s nothing like it to deliver messages of strength and power and dominance, both to stoke up your base, to make your own nation feel proud. I mean, this is the power of the World Cup. I tell two stories about France, for instance. 1982 World Cup, when I was actually in France as a kid with my family on vacation, France got to the semi-final and were beaten in a horrifically violent final by the Germans, an echo of the Second World War. For reals, I’m not being— France felt it as if it was happening again. But they departed with honor, valiant honor. And I watched in a restaurant that night as a kid. And when the game was over in England, we’d shred our clothes, we’d tear up, we’d wail to the moon if we lost, especially to Germany. The French danced, they left with valiant honor. And I asked a guy, why are you all so happy? He said, this is who we are. The result is not important, it’s that we played with honor. We were, the word valiant was used a lot. I was like, ultimately, it was about this notion of France in the 80s, petty France, they couldn’t imagine a France who wins things. Fast forward 1998, Zidane led a beautiful multi-ethnic French team on home turf to World Cup victory for the first time. And it redefined the way the nation saw itself and wanted to see itself in that moment as a nation that wins things, that roars, that, you know, they broadcast Zidane, this Algerian son of an immigrant. His face on the side of the Arc de Triomphe and shouted Zidane for president. This is in the Le Pen era where there was a far right growing backlash. So in those two World Cups, you saw a France that was happy to lose, little France, and then you saw grand France, a France who wins. And football allows you to do that, to announce yourself, to be seen how you want to be seen or how you aspire to be. And it’s the power like no other game in the world.

DG: So your, your book, masterfully tracks world cups from 1978 through the last one in, in 2022 and Argentina winning that stunning championship. And, Lionel Messi redefining his legacy to the world. I guess I wonder like how much has changed in those decades that you cover in the book, and how much is stayed the same.

RB: Woof. I mean, I had more hair at the beginning, like 1980s was the beginning of the super commercial era. It was just after a moment when televisions had totally penetrated Africa. And so when that kicked in, what it made was football, the fusion between football, the game, the World Cup as an event and broadcast global reach. And then the other layer that came in was just the commercialism, like the World Cup is the last event. You have the Olympics is an amazing event, but there’s, you know, 27 events going on at the same time. You’re watching the skeleton while I’m watching the ice dancing and somebody else is watching the curling. The World Cup, the whole world is watching one game at a time. And so all eyes are on 90 minutes, 22 men on the field, making human decisions under conditions of hysterical duress, living out essentially the greatest telenovela with the world watching. So what’s changed is in the commercialism, the commercial heft. Obviously, the digital reality has changed everything. The conversation, the way we watch has changed dramatically. 1978, you watched every kick of the ball. Your eyes never left the screen. And now our eyes are pulled in, in many, many ways. In fact, the younger and younger audience don’t actually watch the games. They watch sports very differently. But what has not stopped is that sense of this thing for 39 days. And I tell this story in the book, even in America. Which was like space to Captain Kirk in 1994, the final frontier for football to conquer. Even in America, the world will stop. You know, there’s a cliche, wars stop when the World Cup kicks off. It’s a cliché because it’s actually true and please God, it will be true again. But the sense that the whole world is watching together, that heroes are made, that’s not changed. The power of the World Cup to make us feel alive, to make it feel transcendent, to make this feel connected, that stayed the same.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: Roger was drawn to America by what he saw as its openness, the feeling that reinvention was possible here in a way that felt exciting. In many ways, that outsider perspective became his superpower, helping translate the emotion and culture of soccer for a growing American audience that was ready to fall in love with this game.

Roger, as someone who grew up in Liverpool and was into this sport early on and then caught the magic of the World Cup when you saw it on TV in 1978, what led you to want to build your life in the United States?

RB: I wrote about that in my other book, Reborn in the USA, which is a memoir I wrote during Covid about why the idea of America has been the dominating one of my life. I grew up in Liverpool at a time when the economy was terrible in Britain and the North was ravaged post-industrially. So John Hughes movies, the Chicago Bears in the NFL, the albums of Public Enemy and Tracy Chapman, they were all like sirens calling us, you know, with the order. We were living in black and white and in America you could live in technicolor. And so I moved here. Liverpool was always an amazingly proud place. When I grew up, it was demonized in the rest of England. There was a big debate politically when I grew up over whether Liverpool should cede and become its own Republic, which I would have loved, its own passport, the Republic of Liverpool.

DG: Sounds great.

RB: As if it was Monaco or Lichtenstein or something. But we all were in the thrall of the United States, that pop culture idea, that soft power idea that America had that was so attractive. When I became American, I write about this in the book, 2018, I actually became American because during the 2014 World Cup, when America were in The Group of Death and I was broadcasting on ESPN, a World Cup in Brazil that really made Men in Blazers, we were made by that World Cup, and I swore the United States needed to get out the group so that the game would continue to develop. And I swore that if Clint Dempsey and his team got out of the group, I would become an American citizen. David, I always wanted to become one, but I’m just terrible at bureaucracy. So I swore live on television. I’d do it. They did, and I did. And then 2018, when I did become an America citizen. I just urge any of your listeners to go and watch a swearing in it’s anyone can go and watch it’s still one of the most powerful things to be with you know, 188 other people who I think was from like 67 countries or something. And as we’re all there from all around the world, I mean, I just survived a couple of beatings at football games there were people who crawled across deserts who’d like escape wars to be there. And all of us were animated by the idea of America and it represented A sense of hope and a sense of possibility. So I think that’s why I came to the United States.

DG: Well, I want to kind of set the scene for the World Cup coming here. I mean, you write almost cinematically about the last World Cup in 2022. And, you know, that was, that was Argentina. It was Lionel Messi, but it was also, I, you know, I had, I hadn’t realized how close to the championship it was. The Grant Wahl, the American journalist, you know, died suddenly, which sounded like it just cast a pall over the whole of closing days of that World Cup, leaning up to the championship.

RB: Yeah, I was actually live on stage in LA the day we found out he’d passed away, news crackled out and it was devastating. Grant was a pathfinding journalist in the United States, I think the first that I knew who proved he could have a full-time job covering the sport. He gave his life to it and was a Pathfinder that many followed. And in the game, in the press box, I think it was Argentina, Netherlands, Claps passed away. I mean, it shows you. I’ve thought a lot about it. I write about it at the end of the book. When you’re a kid, you think every sporting event, you watch every season, every game, you think there’s an infinite amount, like, you know, watch an infinite number of Super Bowls, an infinite of World Cup finals, an infinite a number of whatever. You’re a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, an infinite numbers of Sundays with the Steelers coming together to play football. The honest truth is, we all have a finite number. And I do, I hope that this is the message for everyone ahead of this World Cup. I hope we savor it. I mean, it’s a message for everything we do that we don’t take a second for granted watching this stuff, communing together, making cross-generational memories. For me, that’s the real power of sport is the cross-generation memory making that can occur between grandparents, people and their kids in the most beautiful way. And then to not take a second of watching any of this together for granted.

DG: Yeah, no, that really lands powerfully with me. I mean, my mom and I watched the 2006 Super Bowl when the Steelers won. It was the, you know, we’re both diehard Steelers fans. And she was like my Steelers buddy. And she passed away three months after that Super Bowl. And you know the Steeler’s made it in a couple of years later. And I just felt this tremendous hole in my life. The fact that I wasn’t watching with her. And you’re right. Like it, take advantage of the opportunity you have to be with your loved ones, parents sharing in moments like this, because you just don’t know how long they’re gonna last.

RB: I mean, it’s very beautiful. And there’s so many of the stories in the book of watching my dad who passed away July 4th, 2024.

DG: I’m sorry, that’s hard.

RB: He lived a wonderful life and it comes for all of us, but it’s the joy of watching this stuff. So many of my memories with him are through football, watching England lose, which never bothered me. He pretended it didn’t bother him, but he’d go into agony with it. He was so English, my dad, in every regard. The cover of the book, I tried to capture this, is that the artist painted so many with me in different stages of my life; seven-year-old me, 11 year old me, 15 year old me watching football, 19 year old me 23 year old me and ultimately i do believe when you watch the team you love when you watch the sport you love when you watched the tournament you love you’re watching but all of those yous are watching alongside you. And also your mother will always be alongside you watching the Steelers, you know, just like when I go and watch Liverpool club now, my dad is alongside me, all those memories. That’s the greatest thing about the World Cup. And that’s why I wrote this book. And I hope your listeners, if they have those memories, it triggers so many for them of their own. If they don’t have those memories, they can almost borrow mine. But that’s the power of sports and the World Cup in particular is just the incredible memory making that it allows.

\[MUISC\]

DG: This World Cup in 2026 arrives in North America at a moment when the continent feels deeply fractured politically, culturally, even socially. And yet soccer has a strange ability to create at least temporary common ground. Millions of people from wildly different backgrounds, all emotionally invested in the same 90 minutes, whether the tournament becomes a source of unity tension, or both at once, may end up saying as much about North America as the soccer itself.

You know, I think about this moment now with the World Cup starting in the U.S. You know you talked about that there are leaders, governments who like to use the moment of hosting a World Cup to promote strength, to promote pride in country. Obviously a lot of the themes that President Trump talks about a lot, you know, to what extent do you think he’s going to use the World Cup being here as a chance to advance those themes in that agenda and are we okay with that?

RB: No, this World Cup is going to be in Mexico and Canada and I’m only saying that because it keeps getting reduced to the United States And I do think it’s important to acknowledge these are incredible moments for their nations, too. It’s very rare that a World Cup has split It’s happened once before in Japan and Korea, South Korea, and it’s meant to bring those nations together. It was a fractious relationship for Japan and South Korea to be candid. They did a lot of petty stuff like leave each other’s name off the official tickets and things like that. It’s very clear when we are 94 days out as we sit here, it’s very clear that this is almost there was an article in Politico this week about how it’s going to feel almost like three parallel World Cups taking place at the same time. In terms of the politics of the thing you know Jake Tapper can probably articulate, Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room can probably do a better job than me, ultimately i come to football for the football.

DG: For Roger, this moment is something of a perfect storm. The rise of men in blazers, the explosion of soccer culture in America, and a World Cup arriving on US soil during, we should say, the nation’s 250th anniversary. It’s a global mega event landing at the center of a country still actively debating its identity. And Roger, an immigrant who helped narrate America’s relationship with the sport, suddenly finds himself near the middle of that story.

How personally fulfilling is this for you as, you know, since starting Men in Blazers and playing such a prominent role in telling the story of this sport in the United States, you know now we’re in 2026 in this big moment that, as you say, could be dark, could light, could some combination of it, but we, we know for one thing it’s going to be big. What does this mean to you?

RB: Look, I’m dead inside, David, so there’s something you don’t know about me, I don’t feel things. It’s why I watch football, it actually allows me to feel things in real life that I think normal people feel all the time, like happiness and sadness and loss and victory and connection. So what does it mean for me? I find it very hard to articulate cause I don’t like talking about myself. It’s like the last bastion of Englishness in my American identity. Normally in these moments, my beautiful wife, if we’re out for dinner, she’d articulate for me.

DG: She didn’t answer the question for you? I love it.

RB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’d have no problem by the way. Always amazing. Yeah. so I don’t really like think about myself in those. I think about the things that I don’t like. I’m very negative. Yeah, when we just— we did a live show in Houston with J.J. Watt and Hakeem Alarjawan talking about the World Cup.

DG: J.J. Watt , who’s invested pretty significantly in football abroad, right?

RB: I mean, by the way, he came on our show, knew nothing about football the first time, two months later knew everything.

DG: Yeah, he was an expert, ready to be a commentator.

RB: And when we’ve got J.J. Watt , what America, like football is taking over this nation, this child of Wisconsin, he’s amazing and it is incredible. What a journey. So I see the outside, I see the journey, I see the arc, I seen the 94 World Cup, Men’s World Cup. I saw the ’99 World Cup the role that women have played in changing the profile of this sport is unbelievable. I write about it in the book in detail, you know, 2006, the first World Cup here, where it was really starting to change dramatically, where, you’re in New York City, the Ghanaian juke joints that you go to watch there in Queens to go and watch the Black Stars or the Brazilian barbecue in Brooklyn that you’re going to watch, like that was happening. The biz bros were watching on the Bloomberg terminals. It was really so that it’s taken off because of cable television and streaming, which needed niche sports that people had deep emotional connections to and football is that and more. The internet connecting Liverpool to Los Angeles as close as as if you live right by the stadium so you can follow the team dramatically. 1990 I tell the story, 1994 I tell this story of how after the World Cup my team Everton were in a big game. It wasn’t on any American channel. I had to phone my dad and he held the phone against the radio in Liverpool so I could follow along. We’ve come so far, so far. The rise of the women’s game. And also EA Sports FIFA, which is a game, which has sensitized a whole generation to the players, the teams, the leagues, and really hooked America silently on this sport.

DG: In an America this polarized, there are fewer and fewer moments when millions of people experience the exact same thing at the exact time. But a World Cup match can still do that. As we prepare for that first match to kick off, what will that moment feel like?

\[MUSIC\]

Well, let me finish with this question, Rog. Since we don’t have your wife with you to articulate your personal feelings inside, What do you want Americans to feel when that first whistle blows?

RB: It’s a beautiful question. We have a lot of athletes come on our show and we ask them what would they say to the American team in the locker room before the game, but I haven’t thought about what I will feel in that sense. I mean I think I’d imagine I will feel, I mean, I’d feel a sense of hope. I think i pray, I’m not a religious man, but i pray that for 39 incredible days of positivity and joy and connectivity and the best. A football in the world and a transcendence. Like I really do hope for that. What I will feel personally, I’ll tell you this, I imagine I would feel what Sisyphus would experience the day he gets the rock to the top of the boulder. Just like, what would he feel? Sisypheus, he’d feel like, oh, thank God. I think I’ll reach for my lower back like Sisypyse and be like, finally. Oh, my back hurts. That’s probably what I’ll say. It’ll be relief, joy, pride. And an eagerness to make memories with the rest of the nation.

DG: Roger, don’t look now, but I got you to talk about your feelings, even though you weren’t anticipating that. I just want to note that.

RB: David Greene, you’re a legend and an icon.

DG: Maybe the first time ever tell your wife like you’re once in a while someone can get you without her being around

RB: It’s lovely to be with you.

DG: So nice to talk to you. I really appreciate the time

RB: Thank you, man. Courage.

\[MUSIC\]

DG: Next time on Sports in America, we’re gonna continue our coverage of the 2026 World Cup, and we think it is time to bring up the elephant in the room, the U.S. Men’s national team— they don’t win a lot.

JOZY ALTIDORE: Obviously when you’re in that position where nobody thought you’d be in Concentration level goes up even higher right that hunger to make an impression to get a result goes up even higher, so I think you’re playing with a with a risk where you have nothing to lose

DG: But Jozy Altidore learned how to set those expectations off to the side. And when everyone in the world seemed sure the US men would lose, it only fueled him.

JA: Well, that was not the view from the inside. I can tell you that much.

DG: How Jozy Altirdore defied expectations and became one of the best soccer players in U.S. history. That is next time on Sports in America.

This is Sports in American. I’m your host David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler.

Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

Our engineer is Mike Villars. Our theme music is composed by Emma Munger. Our talent booker is Britt Kahn. Our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.

Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by religion of sports with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in American on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeartRadio app, you know, wherever you get your podcasts.

And we also want to hear from you. How about you drop us a line. You can write us at sportsinamerica@whyy.org that’s sportsinamerica@whyy.org. Thanks everyone, and we will see you next time for Sports in America.

Host: David Greene
Executive Producers: Joan Isabella, Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Talent Booker: Britt Kahn
Engineers: Mike Villers, Charlie Kaier
Tile Art: Bea Walling
Theme Song: Emma Munger
Sports in America is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.