Why Football Saves Our Souls: Brian Bunk on the Collective Beauty of the World’s Most Popular Game

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody. It's Thursday, the 4th of June. It's only a week. The shortest amount of time, seven days until the World Cup begins. The Football World Cup, or what Americans call soccer. And appropriately enough, given that short period of time, we're talking about a new book. The Shortest History of Soccer is by my guest, Brian D. Bunk, Brian with a D.
He is joining us from Northampton in Massachusetts, not Northampton in the United Kingdom. Brian, congratulations on the book. How do you write a shortest history of soccer? What do you leave out?

**Brian D. Bunk** (1:09)
That's a good question. I left out a lot. I just had to make certain choices and, you know, other people might have made different choices, but, you know, it's a big history and so some things are going to be left out.

**Andrew Keen** (1:25)
How did you get involved? Well, in what people, some people call the beautiful game. Others now are suggesting is rather ugly. How did you get started? You're an American.
I know you're a big fan of Spain. You were an academic teaching Spanish history. Now you teach the history of soccer and football. You've written all sorts of books on it, including a fascinating book called Beyond the Field, How Soccer Built Community in the United States. What got you into the game, the beautiful game, Brian?

**Brian D. Bunk** (1:55)
It might be a bit surprising, but I never played the game as a child or as a young person.

**Andrew Keen** (2:01)
By the way, for people watching this, Brian, you look a lot like Elton John. Are you Elton John in disguise?

**Brian D. Bunk** (2:08)
No, I wish I was.

**Andrew Keen** (2:12)
Elton's a big football fan. He was the chairman of Watford, and he financed them into the top division. Everyone loves football, Elton John and Brian Bunk.

**Brian D. Bunk** (2:24)
Yeah, there's a little, throughout the book, there are these things called sidebars, and one of them is about pop stars and soccer. We talk about Elton John, talk about Robert Plant, who's a big fan of Wolverhampton, I think it is.

**Andrew Keen** (2:37)
Yeah, Wolverhampton Wanderers, who didn't have a very good year this year, unfortunately.

**Brian D. Bunk** (2:42)
No, and then the guy from One Direction, who signed a contract with his local club and played in a few games. And Ed Sheeran, of course, who sponsored Ipswich when they were in the Premier League last season.

**Andrew Keen** (2:56)
And the Gallagher's, who support Manchester City.

**Brian D. Bunk** (2:59)
Yep.

**Andrew Keen** (3:03)
So go on, you're a celebrity too, you're Brian Bunk, otherwise known as Elton John. What got you into the game?

**Brian D. Bunk** (3:10)
When I was in college, I spent a semester in Ireland and it happened to be 1990
And Ireland was in the World Cup. And, you know, the country was ecstatic about this. And I was a huge fan of the Pogues, an Irish band, and they put out a song with the Dubliners. And I somewhere still have the cassette tape. And that kind of put soccer or football on my radar, I guess, as a sport. And I saw the, just how deeply it meant to people in a way, maybe, that I didn't appreciate prior to that. And then later that spring, I was in London when the World Cup began, the 1990 World Cup in Italy. And I saw the opening match, which was Argentina and Cameroon, with Cameroon winning and an upset. And just the whole, even seeing it on TV from my hotel room, just the whole spectacle of it really, you know, gave me an appreciation for the game in a way that maybe I hadn't previous to that point.

**Andrew Keen** (4:10)
There's a wonderful trilogy of books by Roddy Doyle, and one of them is on that 1990 World Cup. I don't know if you've read them.

**Brian D. Bunk** (4:17)
No, I haven't.

**Andrew Keen** (4:19)
So you got into the game, Brian, and you became a teacher of soccer, football and academic. What do you tell the kids in the classrooms at UMass about soccer, football?

**Brian D. Bunk** (4:37)
Well, we try to trace the history, the origins, where it came from, and then hit on some of the most important players, most important teams, most important competitions.
They like to know how we got to where we are now, I think. I tried to do that a little bit in the book, where there's a lot of more kind of contemporary references, perhaps, than one might expect in a history. So I think I found the students really like to know, how did the Premier League get to the point it is now? How did the Champions League get to the point where it is now? How did women's soccer get to the point where it is now? So that's what I try to do in the book and what I try to do in the classroom as well.