What the World Cup means at a time of global conflict

**Brian Lehrer** (0:05)
From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast. It's Thursday, June 11th.
Yeah, it's the opening day of the 2026 World Cup. In addition to everything else going on in basketball and in life, later today, Mexico and South Africa will kick off at the Azteca in Mexico City. The tournament will eventually sprawl across 16 cities. In Mexico, the United States and Canada, will you be watching? You can catch the action in a living room or a bar literally all over the world, which is exactly the point that Franklin Foer made 22 years ago when he wrote How Soccer Explains the World, An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. Though soccer wasn't as big in the United States at that point. Foer's argument was that it was actually the most advanced expression of globalization on Earth, with all the money flowing through it, the tribalism inside it, and the politics complicating it. That was 2004
Now it's 2026, and some of the players representing their countries at this World Cup play for teams like Saudi-owned Newcastle United or United Arab Emirates-owned Manchester City. Really? Did you know that?
Of course, Iran, which the US is currently at war with. How Soccer Explains the World has a new edition out with a new preface, and there has perhaps never been a better moment to revisit it. Franklin Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of several books, including World Without Mind and The Last Politician inside Joe Biden's White House. He's also written a recent piece in The Atlantic called The Quintessential Trumpian Sport. Spoiler alert, it's a pretty dark version of Trump's interest in soccer, and we'll talk about it. Hi, Franklin. Welcome back to WNYC.

**Franklin Foer** (2:03)
So good to be here. You know, I haven't been looking forward to this World Cup because of all the external political circumstances around it. But your enthusiasm about last night's Knicks victory is really, it's set in the mood here and you're getting me pumped up for a sports extravaganza. So thank you.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:22)
I knew we had a function in the world. I just didn't know until now what it was. But seriously, how does soccer explain Franklin Foer? What's your relationship to the game that led you to write this book 22 years ago and revisit it now?

**Franklin Foer** (2:36)
So when I was a kid, I just had the most vivid memories of watching the 1986 World Cup and the 1990 World Cup. And when I would look into the stands and I would see the raw passion, which was also so clearly related to global events when England is playing Argentina just after they had fought the Falkland Wars. And there were all these rivalries between countries that had fought in World War II and those rivalries were being played out in the soccer stands and on the field. There was something just intoxicating to me about it. In some ways, it stood in contrast to a lot of what I was experiencing in American sports, that there was no need to have a scoreboard tell people what to say or cheerleaders to gin up a crowd and there was something sometimes even dangerous about the passion. And so I felt when I was watching games, like I was opening up the atlas, but I was doing much more than just looking at geography. I was kind of pouring into culture, into history.
And the game itself is magnificent, but it was really having that extra overlay that I found just so fascinating and it just enraptured me. And so 20 years ago, I was able to go on this great little mini epic for myself, where I traveled the world. And each place I went, I tried to kind of extract some sort of lesson about the globalized world we're living in and how we think about ourselves and our identities, even as we become interconnected in the most profound ways.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:20)
Yeah, and you're right. When I wrote How Soccer Explains the World some two decades ago, I admittedly failed to anticipate the day when foreign governments would own English soccer clubs. But the thesis of the book was that the global game of soccer was a leading indicator of the future, as you've just been explaining a little of. Soccer was globalization and capitalism in its most advanced form. You're right. And I guess even if you couldn't anticipate a Saudi-owned Newcastle United or United Emirates-owned Manchester City, which of course are British soccer teams.
What did you see as the most emblematic of globalization in the world of soccer back then?

**Franklin Foer** (5:01)
Well, the thing that was fascinating to me was the way in which things can get big but still remain intensely small and intensely passionate. So even as you had the rise of global super teams, in the form of Barcelona or Manchester United, there was still something both rooted about those teams and rooted about those passions. I think one of the promises of globalization in its kind of most cheerleader form was that by becoming interconnected, we would get along, that the famous theory about McDonald's countries never fighting wars against one another. That just hasn't turned out to be the case. It seems like in a globalized world, nationalism in both its most beautiful forms and its most dangerous forms has thrived, and you could see that through soccer.