Men in Hoodies: YNWA Edition

A respite from politics as Tom Hall and I discuss Liverpool.

This blog is usually a relentless dive into the politics of our current national nightmare. So for a change of pace, this week I wanted to turn to something a bit more enjoyable.

Last weekend, the Liverpool Football Club won its second Premier League title in the last six years, marking its 20^th championship title in top flight of English soccer, and making it the country’s winningest side ever, tied with some other club from the north whose name escapes me. It was a glorious and unexpected triumph for many many reasons, which we will explore shortly.

The celebration of that victory saw some 1.5 million people throng the streets of Merseyside last Monday, the biggest parade in English history, if you can believe that. (And England is fucking olde.) Tragically, the event was marred by a terrible vehicular incident that injured 79 people, including four children, many of them requiring hospitalization. It was a tragedy of a sort that seems to have dogged the club’s recent history, from Heysel and Hillsborough to now. But no one said it better than David Moyes, the Everton manager, who with tremendous class, posted his support for the Blues’ crosstown archrival. "One of the things that makes this city special is the solidarity between the people, who always come together in times of hardship,” Moyes wrote. “We always stand together in the most difficult times."

You’ll never walk alone indeed.

My dear friend Tom Hall, who writes the superb blog on culture, cinema, and politics The Back Row Manifesto, is a Liverpool supporter going back over thirty years, and has forgotten more about football than I’ll ever know. I wanted to speak with him about this epic and surprising season.

FERRY CROSS THE GITCHE GUMEE

THE KING’S NECKTIE: You have a great story about how you became a Liverpool fan. Can you tell us that?

TOM HALL: Yeah, so the World Cup was in the United States of America in 1994. We're hosting it again soon. I hope not, but maybe. (laughs)

TKN: Part of the FIFA Autocracy Tour.

TH: Yeah, exactly. How many demagogues can I fit into a schedule? (laughs) So I was at the very end of college at the University of Michigan at the time and watched the World Cup closely; there was a game in Detroit—Brazil-Sweden—and I saw that. And when the Cup was over, some buddies and I were like, ”Let's go watch more soccer.” Back then, of course, you had to pay $20 at 7:00 in the morning to go to the local Irish pub to watch it on pay-per-view, but you could stay and drink and leave extremely inebriated at like 12:30 in the afternoon, having watched two or three matches. And the first game that I ever watched was Liverpool versus Arsenal, and in that match, Robbie Fowler, who was a forward for Liverpool, scored a hat trick in three minutes and 30 seconds of game time.

TKN: That was the first Liverpool game you saw?

TH: That was the first—Robbie Fowler’s fastest ever Premier League hat trick. Later Sadio Mane—who also played for us—beat it by like a few seconds, while he was playing for Southampton. But it was incredible. And so I started following Robbie Fowler, who was not only an incredible goalscorer, but a man of the people. He would score and lift up his shirt and he would have a t-shirt on like, “Support the striking dockworkers of Liverpool,” and one time he scored and got on his hands and knees and sniffed the touchlineas if it were a line of cocaine. He was just a really fun player to watch.

I grew up in the home of the sitdown strike and the United Auto Workers, which is Flint, Michigan, and the labor movement was extremely important to my upbringing, so I felt a real affinity for the club during the strike, and a real connection between the fans, the club, and the game. Liverpool was sort of a British analog to Detroit in a lot of ways. And then I just started obsessively watching them, and then they got the Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard and Steve McManaman and that whole era.

They were good but not great at the time. They weren't winning leagues or cups—just every once in a while, like the 2001 FA Cup, I remember Michael Owen scoring twice in that to win, a couple of counterattack breakaway goals that were incredible. And of course, it was also the rise of Manchester United who, under Alex Ferguson, were extremely competitive, which tapped right into my Michigan-Ohio State vibes, just having a blood rival that you hated (laughs). Manchester being so close to Liverpool, Ohio being so close to Michigan, the same sort of northwest / Midwestern sensibility, working class type of thing. The energy of those games was unbelievable. And I really did not like David Beckham and I did not like Paul Scholes, and Roy Keane was an asshole.

TKN: Although Keane is very entertaining now.

TH: Yeah, totally. But Man U were just a great, fun team to hate. As a sports fan, I like having a good nemesis and being the underdog.

TKN: Man U are such a such a bandwagon club—like the Yankees—ever since the air disaster way back in 1958. It’s like the old joke, “How do you confuse a Manchester United fan? Drop them off in Manchester.”

TH: (laughs) Exactly. But Man U were good; that’s why people who otherwise had no rooting interest liked them. Like the Dallas Cowboys—when they were good—people were like, “Oh, America's team.” Or the Lakers, or Notre Dame. Like they say at the end of baseball season: “Don't worry, Yankees fans. It's almost time for Notre Dame football. “

Manchester United were a global brand and Liverpool felt sort of smaller than them for a while. But we're back baby.

WE ARE / AREN’T THE WORLD

TKN: For me, I’ve written before about arriving in West Germany in the spring of 1986 as a soldier just before the World Cup began, where Germany went on to lose to Argentina in the final, and it was also the tournament with Maradona’s hand of God goal against England. I never experienced anything like that: going down to my local gasthaus, or in the bar district of Sachsenhausen in Frankfurt when the games were on. The excitement of the people—it was just unbelievable. What is it about world football—soccer—that's distinguishes it from American professional sports?

TH: First of all, as a person who loves slow cinema (laughs), it's 45 minutes of sustained attention, where anything can happen at any moment. So the expectation of something happening is sustained for an extremely long period of time compared to American sports. You know, there's inning breaks in baseball, pitching changes, football has a million timeouts. The idea of a TV timeout in soccer is anathema to everything the sport stands for.

The NBA takes 30 minutes to play the last two minutes of a game—it’s sort of unwatchable. And if you're in the arena, there’s some deejay blaring music and they're shooting t-shirts into the crowd and they have cheerleaders to hype everybody up. In world football, you don't need that at all. The fans do all the work of creating the atmosphere and the vibe. There’s a real sense of camaraderie and community and everyone's locked in on the same exact thing. You get a big view of the whole field at once, and you can sort of see the way that the game moves and flows. The physics of it is completely different as well: there's so much passing and intricate movement, and I think that lends itself to being exciting in a completely different way. It's a lot more like hockey, but even in hockey there's timeouts and blue line offsides. So for me, it's the most popular sport in the world for a reason, and that's because it has a sense of drama and sustained attention that no other sport has.

TKN: On the subject of the fans and the culture: I worked at a bar in Palo Alto during the’94 Cup, and because Brazil played its group stage games at Stanford Stadium, the Brazilian fans set up camp in town—thousands of them. For like three weeks it was like Carnival, with dancing in the streets and playing samba in the bar day and night. Then Brazil went down to LA to play its quarterfinal—after beating the US at Stanford on the 4^th of July—and Sweden came to town with its fans and we switched to ABBA.

Then when Ferne and I lived in England briefly in the mid-‘00s, it was the era of Chelsea dominance under Mourinho, with Terry and Lampard and Cech and Drogba, and all the guys in the camera department were West Ham fans from Essex, and our casting director, Dan Hubbard, who’s Irish, was a huge Reds fan, had a framed Gerrard shirt in his office. But it wasn’t until years later that I began following Liverpool as a result of friends like you, and Arab friends of mine who are big supporters because of Salah. And when I did, I encountered this whole network of Liverpool supporters in the US. It’s the community that you were talking about which is so warm and wonderful.

I grew up with football—American football, as it’s never called in America—and I still follow the NFL, even though it’s problematic, because it’s in my bones and I feel a deep connection through it to my dad and my childhood. But there is something about soccer that is special. Obviously, there’s a tradition of hooliganism and all kinds of other problems—racism, and corruption, and that—connected to other problems in Europe, so I’m not trying to romanticize it. But you see someone with a liverbird cap on and you just feel this instant bond and camaraderie across all lines: race, sex, religion, nationality, whatever.

THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON

TKN: So this season was insane because nobody—none of the pundits, none of the experts, nobody—thought Liverpool would win the league. It was like Klopp was this god-king—and he was—but now he was gone. Huge shoes to fill….yet look what happened.

So first of all, let’s start with this: What did Klopp mean to this club?

TH: Well, he took them out of the wilderness. They had a bad run. The Roy Hodgson/Brendan Rodgers era after Benitez was so bad. Rafa Benitez was a good manager—not great, but he was a great person, and he understood the community and the town. Rodgers never felt that way and Roy Hodgson just felt like an old British doofus. So Klopp coming from Borussia Dortmund, another club of the people, had absolutely the right vibes to take over.

They had floundered for a long time. The ownership was terrible. The American owners, Hicks and Gillett, were godawful; they bought the club as a hedge or some sort of moneymaking scheme, and had no interest at all in football. So I think having the owners now, FSG Sports and John Henry, they finally got it right. It took them time, but Klopp was a restoration to the Benitez / man of the people style, but with way more football intelligence. He had a system, he had an elite backroom staff and scouting department, and they finally started spending money to buy players, which you have to do these days. So to me, Klopp basically restored the club.

There's a tradition of managers at Liverpool who elevated them from where they were to where everyone feels at the club belong. So for me Klopp is a Bill Shankly-like figure, he understood the importance of Liverpool Football Club to the city, and to the fan base, and he really got it. So just psychologically, that was incredibly important. And then of course he won the Champions League, and he won the league, which we hadn't done since 1990. He had a style and he recruited players for that style and it worked. He got rid of players that didn't want to participate in his system. I remember watching Being Liverpool, that reality show, and Raheem Sterling and Mamadou Sakho were giving him shit, and they were gone within a year.

He got the culture of the city. He built that culture into the team. I think that, since the 1950s, he’s one of the three or four best managers the club has had. I loved him. I love him still. So Slot had huge shoes to fill.

TKN: And everybody wanted Xabi Alonso, which I understand, and he’s a great coach. Slot was more of an unknown commodity, except maybe to people who meticulously follow the Eredivisie, which is a small sliver even in England and, like, no one in the United States. But it turned out to be a very very savvy and inspired choice. I know Slot was building on Klopp’s achievements, but he brought something of his own.

TH: For me, the move this year was Gravenberch to holding midfield. Slot built the whole team around putting Alexis McAllister, Dominik Szoboszlai, and Ryan Gravenberch in the midfield and they were just the absolute engine of the team. Salah gets all the love and credit, as he should, because he's an incredible goalscorer and just an unbelievable person living a clean life and being older and keeping absolutely fit. I've never seen him get tired. I never seen him stop running or slow down. I just don't know how he does it—he's like a machine. But for me, Slot’s midfield is the difference between what happened last year and what happened this year.

The other thing that happened was Rodri blew out his knee for Manchester City.

TKN: (laughs) Are you suggesting it was a Gillooly type situation?

TH: (laughs) I wish we had the stones to do something like that. Not John Stones. Because that was it for City, when Rodri got hurt. People who don't know football don't know how important that role is, but he's the engine of that team, and it showed. Haaland stopped scoring, basically, he slowed way down. Gundogan was underutilized.

So Slot putting Gravenberch in the holding midfield and letting the other two work around him and with him in a midfield three was the system. This was Gravenberch’s breakout year because they finally played him in the right position. He's just so good on the ball—I love watching him take that one touch pass and just glide past the guy who's running at him. I have always loved that position; Makélélé was incredible in that position, we had Mascherano for a little while, who I love. The holding midfielder position is, to me, the whole thing.

I think Slot’s style was less rigid but more clear, if that makes any sense. Klopp had a system and Slot was building around it, and people had a lot of clarity about what their role was supposed to be. You didn't see Salah coming through the middle; he's always been a wide player, but he was always out wide. Trent had clarity and flexibility; they would forgive his defensive issues if he would come up and swing across and Diaz could jump on and bang it in. And tactically Slot understood other teams and made switches, whereas Klopp would wait till the 60th minute no matter what, and then it'd be the same changes every time. There was adaptability this year, and when that adaptation happened, it was clear to the team what they were supposed to do. And I think that's a sign of a great coach. As a manager, you're running the club, you're handling the players and all that stuff. But coaching, like the actual structure of the system, Slot is really great at that. He's great at both things. Which again, Klopp was as well, just in a different way.

PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

TKN: So personnel wise, there's already been bunches of moves since we decided to record this. Frimpong. Wirtz hopefully. I know you want Kerkez. Who else do you want?

TH: We need a center back. We need a striker. I think Darwin has to go. Although (laughs) I don't know what you do with Wirtz, Diaz, Salah, a striker, Alexis, Szoboszlai, and Gravenberch. Because somebody is going to sit, system wise.

TKN: Plus Jota off the bench.

TH: Yeah, I don't know what that would look like. If Wirtz is going to play like a false nine, like a Messi role, do you put Alexis next to him, a little bit behind him? I don't know how they're going to make that work. I mean, I hope it happens. (laughs) This would be a great problem to have!

But I do hope that they sign a striker. Nunez is extremely disappointing as a finisher, but his energy and his commitment to running; it’s just crazy. If he could just bring the ball six inches in on either post or under the crossbar, he would be elite. But there's some disconnect. He also makes dumb passes, he doesn't keep his head up. It's just wild to me: he has so much talent, and then you get to the final third and you can't do it. I think they could probably get a price for him in Spain or somewhere, get a good amount of money.

It looks like Kelleher is going.

TKN: I love Kelleher. Having a backup goalkeeper that strong is a huge plus, but he should go, for his own good. He would be a number one in most clubs.

TH: Absolutely. He's excellent and I'm disappointed for him because you want him to be able to compete. But you're behind one of the best goalkeepers in the world.

TKN: And yet, incredibly, we might still have a goalkeeper controversy. Is Mamardashvili going to sit? He won’t like that. But you’re not going to sit Alisson.

TH: Right. Although Alisson can't save penalties.

TKN: And he's a little injury prone. Which was why it was so great to have Kelleher.

TH: Yeah, he’s injury prone. But I've never seen him save a penalty in my memory. I'm sure he has, but I just don't remember. We don't give up a lot of penalties, but still, he just sort of falls over one side and that's it.

TKN: I remember he saved one against Spurs in the FA Cup like three years ago.

TH: Right. But I watch other people in shootouts and they’re saving like four out of five. “Uh, can we do that please?”

TKN: Yeah, Donnarumma did that in the Champions League.

TH: Right, for PSG. As soon as it went to penalties, I’m like, “Oh, we’re done, unless they miss.” And they didn’t.

TKN: Let me ask you about some other individual players. What about Conor Bradley?

TH: I think he is a perfect backup at right back. He’s young and has room to grow. I know Trent came out when he was like nine years old and played (laughs), but not everybody can do that. But Conor Bradley to me is startable in the Premier League. Do I want him against Man City, or against elite clubs in the Champions League? Maybe not. But certainly against half the league you can give somebody a rest.

As a right back, you need a relationship with Mo Salah. You need to be able to get him the ball and then play off of him at the top of the box, do one-twos, swing the ball in when he's not cutting in, lay him one so that he can run on to it. Frimpong absolutely can do all that. He seems Salah-ish in terms of how forward he is and by himself on the right wing. Does Leverkusen not have a right winger? And I think communication wise he would be a really good fit with Van Dijk and whoever's on the opposite side. I think there's a lot of potential there, especially if you're not playing with a striker. I'm not sure I need a big crosser like Trent anymore to put perfect balls into that no one's going to run onto. Which happened a lot this year.

TKN: Who's on your wish list for strikers? There's a lot of good strikers.

TH: I don't know who would fit into the system. Isak obviously would be an incredible fit, but I don't think Newcastle will sell him. They're in the Champions League next year; they need him. Somebody like Cunha for Wolves I also really like and think he’d be a good fit for what we have.

TKN: He's a hothead, though.

TH: That's what I like. A Suarez-y hothead striker: give it to me all day.

TKN: That’s Darwin!

TH: I like Darwin’s hot-headedness. I like when he starts yelling, or jumps in the crowd and starts going after the fans, like he did in the Copa America.

TKN: I forgot you’re from Detroit.

TH: Exactly. Although I didn’t like Ron Artest. (laughs)

LOCAL HERO

TKN: What about Trent's departure? It was lovely that the reaction at Anfield was so warm at the end, because they had booed him a couple of weeks before. You could see how much it meant to him to get that reaction on the final day.

TH: Yeah. I understand why people are upset though. I don't know why he didn't say I'm not coming back earlier and give them the opportunity to sell him. It should have been last year, but they needed him this year. So we won the title. He was here. It was great. But you've invested so much in him, you want the club to be able to cash in, and you want him to facilitate that, if he really loves the club. And I think that's why people are upset about it. But on the other hand, you've got to be like, “Hey, thanks for everything.” Two titles, Champions League, all the cups, all the stuff that he's done. He’s a local kid, he’s been a great player.

TKN: I got the feeling that, in the end, despite the details and how it could have been handled better, the fans understood his decision to leave. New challenges, greener pastures, etc. You can’t begrudge him that, and he’ll always be a Scouse hero.

TH: The other thing is, the Liverpool-to-Real Madrid thing is extremely annoying. McManaman went there, Michael Owen went there. I just hate them being the richest club in the world and being able to just do whatever the fuck they want and take whatever players they want. And in the past it's been Liverpool players, in their prime.

TKN: They're like the Royals and the Yankees—no pun on “Royal.” I just mean, that pipeline of Royals players that KC would develop and then the Yankees would snatch up.

TH: Totally. Because they're rich. You know, Real has a history of state money from the King. They're not called the People's Madrid. (laughs)

TKN: More generally, what’s your feeling about players who leave the club? I’m setting you up, because we discussed this when Mane and Bobby Firmino left, so I know the answer.

TH: I root for the club and not the player. No player is more important than the club. I did not follow Stephen Gerrard when he came to play in MLS, I don't follow Firmino in Saudi Arabia— I wish everyone well, and will always love them for what they did for LFC, but once they leave Liverpool, I don’t really care about what they do. Unless they end up at United like Michael Owen. Then you have tainted the past, in my opinion.

TKN: I get that. It’s like that Seinfeld thing about team loyalty, which is a kind of Ship of Theseus argument about what constitutes the “club.” Players come and go, and you love them when they’re in your kit and hate them when they go elsewhere. “It’s the same human being, in a different shirt—boo!” As Jerry says, you’re rooting for clothes, when you get right down to it.

I get the absurdity, but kidding aside, it speaks to is the sense of community that the club represents.

WANTED: ANOTHER UNICORN, PLEASE

TKN: Of course I was happy to see Mo and Virgil sign new deals, but eventually they will leave, they’ll retire. Who can replace those guys?

TH: I don't know. A right wing player who can score like that? There's nobody. Salah is basically the central striker for the team, even though he plays on the right. If you can find a winger that scores like him, good luck. I don't know who that is in world football.

It was the same thing when they had to replace Steven Gerrard. You just can't. Gerrard played with us forever, and I didn't realize that nobody else could do what he did. I thought, oh, you get another central attacking midfielder and you just keep going. And then it was like, “Wait, he’s the only person in the world who plays like that? Oh, I didn't realize.” I think that Mo is like that: he’s a Gerrard-level unicorn.

TKN: What do you think Salah’s significance is as a sports hero who is also a practicing Muslim and an Arab in a country where tensions over those matters have been so fraught? The love for him is palpable. Do you think it’s made any difference in the broader culture?

TH: There’s a stat about the impact of Salah on attitudes about Muslims in Liverpool. They used data on hate crime reports throughout England and 15 million tweets from British soccer fans, and found that after Salah joined Liverpool., hate crimes in the city dropped by 16% and anti-Muslim tweets fell by half relative to other top-flight clubs. So there’s data to show this! Also, his own independence vs. the Egyptian FA, his refusal to be pigeonholed and pressured into playing in Saudi Arabia, etc—he’s a unique figure in the world. He lives a very healthy lifestyle which has helped him stay fit, he almost never is out with injury, he never stops running, as I said. He’s just a one-of-one as an athlete and a public figure.

Van Dijk, I think you can get a great center back. I don't think they'll be as consistent or as much of a leader as he is necessarily, but I feel like you can buy a high quality central defender. Although I wouldn't know who to target at this point. There’s Huijsen at Bournemouth, who plays with Kerkez—he’s excellent. Two footed. He would have been a great fit, but he just joined Real Madrid.

TKN: To your earlier point, about their buying power.

TH: You know, we had Carragher, Škrtel, Agger, and all of them were good. But nobody was like Van Dijk—just like a shut down CB. He just reads the game like nobody else; it's insane really. And concentration wise, this year was not even his best year. I feel like he was sort of all over the place a little bit near the end, after it was sort of in the bag,

TKN: This club has a weird Dutch cast. There’s Dutch elements in every department, including on the touchline: Gakpo, Gravenberch, Virgil, Slot, and now Frimpong.

TH: Yeah. Great. Keep it coming. Get Dumfries. (laughs) The weird thing though is the Dutch national team is not that great because they don't have a midfield, they don't have an Alexis or a Szoboszlai.

INSTANT KARMA’S GONNA GET YOU

TKN: Going back to your earlier comments about the sustained motion of soccer, how do you feel about VAR in terms of interrupting that flow?

TH: VAR doesn't bother me because I think refereeing is so inconsistent in soccer. It’s so fast, and goal scoring is so precious, that you can be denied a transformative game-winning moment by the linesman being off by two inches or something. It's just very upsetting to fans. So people want the referees to get it right, but it's physically not possible to be right all the time. So do you live with that inconsistency, on top of what's a foul, what's a card, who gets punished for talking back, who doesn't get punished? If you can bring at least some sort of certainty on the goal-scoring moments, that’s worth it.

I don't love the process. And also I don't know how they get it wrong sometimes, but they do. Like the Spurs game last year, we had scored a goal and they had waved it off, and the guy in the booth said that's a goal and the guy on the field was like “no goal,” because they didn't realize they were miscommunicating about what the actual call on the pitch was. Those types of things are unforgivable. And I also get why people like the human quality of it: like, just let them play and come what may. But the refereeing is so bad often that I don't mind it for goal scoring. I also don't mind red card reviews because I think people miss the violence. When the referee is far away and running to catch up and some guy’s hacked to the ground, you can't tell if his leg’s been destroyed or whatever.

TKN: I know people like to hate on VAR, but when it's done efficiently and it doesn't take forever, it's a good thing, for all the reasons you just cited. But ironically, talking about how precious goals are, VAR robs people of goals all the time over like a millimeter of offside that only VAR could see.

TH: Fine. They're offside. If you're a millimeter offside, you’re offside. (laughs) I don't mind that. I also don't mind the chip in the ball that tells you it's over the line. Chelsea will tell you they wish they had that back in the day when Luis Garcia scored, sending us to the Champions League final in 2005. I don't mind any of that technology stuff as much as when they got it wrong and people got hosed and would claim it was rigged. So having VAR helps.

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

TKN: What do you make of the explosion of interest in soccer in the US—particularly the Premier League—over the past few years?

In the mid ‘70s when I was a kid, and soccer was beginning to break through in the US as a participatory sport, we were told it was going to become as big here as it was in the rest of the world. That was the era when Pele and Chinaglia and Best and these other old stars were coming to play in the NASL. We were told that over and over—and again with the ’94 World Cup. But as a major spectator sport that Americans follow, it never did break through until the last five, ten years. Now, at least here in Brooklyn, I see a lot more kids wearing soccer shirts—Messi, Liverpool, City, PSG, Barca—than I do Giants or Jets jerseys, and I don’t think that’s just a function of the cosmopolitan nature of the neighborhood.

TH: The thought was always that our domestic league could compete with international clubs. So the goal was to build the Cosmos, get Pele and Beckenbauer and all these guys here and pay them a lot of money and then you can compete with the Europeans in terms of quality. But unlike Europe, the history and the connection between US clubs and the communities that they operate in is almost nothing.

I've watched a lot of Red Bulls, because they were the team in New York. First we went to the Metro Stars games, then they became the Red Bulls and we went to those, and then they brought in New York City FC and split the market. But the quality of the games is not even close. I mean, you’ve got the best player in history playing in Miami and still nobody pays attention to MLS. The only stories are if Messi scored a goal or is hurt….you don't hear about what's going on with Colorado and Portland. It's fun to go to a game, and I appreciate the fans who adopt the club, and it's affordable and all that stuff. But the quality of the domestic league is never going to be as good because the prestige isn't there.

TKN: I think MLS is perceived as a place for European and South American stars to come and take it easy at the end of their careers. It started with Pele in the NASL, right? And then Beckham came and played with the Galaxy, and now Messi. And next up, maybe, KDB. Which is fine for them and fun for us to see these amazing players live, even if they’re not in their prime anymore, and even if it’s never going to threaten the big European leagues, or develop the same passionate fan base.

TH: Right. And they don't get the guys around them that they need. I just remember watching Thierry Henry play for the Red Bulls and just laying pass after pass off and there's nobody there to get the ball. (laughs) And he was just like, what am I doing here?

TKN: That may explain why Thierry Henry is the dourest pundit in all of sport.

TH: He was an unhappy man on the pitch, that’s for sure.

TKN: (laughs) He's an unhappy man in the studio too! If you had Thierry Henry and Craig Burley in the same studio, by law you would need to have Jamie Carragher and Micah Richards parachute in with an emergency dose of levity.

TH: (laughs) Moderated by Eeyore.

TKN: Of course, I think Thierry is one of the sharpest analysts in world football, and that’s his role: to bring the gravitas. I remember he came and played a pickup game in my old neighborhood in Chinatown that Steve Nash organized, because Nash is a big soccer fan, of course—and player—and even does commentating. I didn’t see it, but I wish I had.

TH: I was there for that match! It was amazing to see all of these stars playing street ball in the middle of NYC….and I got to meet Robbie Fowler and he signed a shirt for me, so it was an absolute full circle moment. It also showed how much love they all had for the game. Henry went on to sign for Red Bulls not long after this, I think?

TKN: You were there? I'm so jealous.

So soccer has—finally—worked its way into the American sports landscape. But that’s not because we built a great domestic league; it’s because telecom technology gave Americans easy access to top flight European football. There's no way MLS is going to compete in the world we live in now, where you can watch really high level soccer instead. Why should I watch anything other than the very best football when it's available to me?

TH: Yeah. So kids wake up on a Saturday morning and they can watch the Premier League or the Spanish league, so Real Madrid and Barcelona. You don't see a lot of Serie A shirts necessarily or Bundesliga shirts because they're not marketed as well, and they don't have the same sort of TV deals here. So that is what you see with kids in the neighborhood. International club football has replaced any real claim that a domestic league would have or their attention.

I think it's actually undervalued. I listen to a lot of media-related podcasts, because I have a movie theater and I keep up with the state of the industry, and when NBC Universal do their big pitch at the upfronts, they barely mention the Premier League. Again, the problem is that they can't sell advertising every five minutes. The only time you can advertise in soccer is the pre-show, the halftime show, and the post-game show—there’s no in-game advertising. They do have the little pop-up screen with the sponsor sometimes….

TKN: But soccer players have ads on their shirts!

TH: (laughs) For a bank that doesn't exist in the United States. But yeah, it's a challenge. Even though they get a lot of viewership, especially if you have a subscription model. I don't have to do pay-per-view anymore, but now I have to pay for Paramount Plus to watch the Champions League, and I got to pay for Peacock to watch the Premier League, and ESPN Plus for the FA Cup. I just think it's weird that they people don't recognize the asset, having the rights to the Premier League. And they spent a lot of money on it.

THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN, EXCEPT THAT PALACE WILL FINISH MID-TABLE

TKN: At the top we touched on FIFA’s corruption and its coziness with autocracies. So you had the World Cup in Russia in 2018, then you had it in Qatar in ‘22, now you going to have it in the United States. Then we'll get a little break with Spain and Portugal and Morocco—their fascism was in the past—and then Saudi for 2034. It’s pretty despicable. I mean, FIFA’s always been corrupt, with Sepp Blatter and all, but this is a new low.

TH: Yeah, the whole business behind FIFA is disgusting. They've been horrific stewards of the sport; it’s putting an oligarch in charge of the people's game around the world. They go to corrupt states where they can do corruption, and they bring in football as the frosting for the people to have their bread and circuses or whatever. The good news is I don't think they're going to be building any stadiums in the US, so the real estate boondoggle part of it, the contractor boondoggle, money laundering, stadia investment aspect of it is missing, but they'll find other ways. I'm sure the first person who scores against the United States will have their sporting visa revoked to participate in the Cup.

TKN: And what do you think next year looks like in the Premiership?

TH: I'm really concerned about Man City coming back. I think they're going to be good. I also think parity is on the rise, like the NFL, just because there's so much money. I think you'll have the point total for the champion be lower than ever just because there's too many good teams who are investing. Newcastle is getting better. Chelsea is probably going to get better. Villa’s all right. I just think, like they say in the NFL, on any given Sunday.

TKN: And that’s a good thing, because it gets a little tedious watching the Big Six—the abortive Super League—dominating every year. And that’s another great thing about world football: that you've got excitement at both ends of the table. If we had relegation in the NFL….

TH: (laughs) It would be amazing.

TKN: Though I don't know where they'd go, the relegated teams. Maybe you don't play it all next year.

TH: Or you're going to the UFL and you dominate. (laughs)

TKN: But some of these teams like Leicester and Leeds and Burnley just yo-yo: the same handful of teams go up one year and back down the next. But there’s so much money in the Championship playoff for the third spot for promotion—the richest game in football as they say.

But back to City: This was considered a disastrous season for them, with no hardware, although they still finished third and qualified for the Champions League—that’s how spoiled they’ve been under Pep. But all dynasties come to an end. And I do love to see Noel Gallagher upset.

TH: Man City is incredible, but they're getting older. You know, Gundogan’s older, Rodri is coming off that injury, Bernardo Silva is old. But they also have a whole slew of incredible young players who never get any playing time. And I think Guardiola just rotates too much. But I do worry about them. I think Liverpool will be competitive again for the title. but if we have to integrate Wirtz and Frimpong, we’re gonna need time at the beginning. They may have a slower start this year, but I can't wait. It just ended and already I can’t wait for next season. (laughs).

*******

Next week, back on your heads with politics.

Photo: Liverpool lift the Premier League trophy crowning them Champions of England, May 25, 2025, at Anfield.

Other King’s Necktie posts about soccer or soccer-adjacent:

The Penalty Kick as Ontological Dilemma (2023)

The Tragedy of Brazil (2022)