Beneath The Surface - Sunday, June 21, 2026

Follows the audio · click any line to jump

1. to inform a motivated majority to save our democracy before it's stolen next November.
2. Tune in Mondays to Thursdays at 5 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 a.m. for your background briefing
3. here on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and worldwide at kpfk.org.
4. Hi, this is Curt Elling.
5. You're listening to KPFK, 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM Santa Barbara,
6. and on the World Wide Web at kpfk.org.
7. Nighttown, Lady Bright, in the arms of night.
8. Welcome to the People's Game. I'm Melissa Figueroa with my co-host, Alan Minsky.
9. We are sitting in for Susie Weissman this morning during our takeover of the airwaves for the Quadrennial Men's World Cup.
10. The People's Game is a special series that looks at the economic and political subtext of the tournament,
11. as well as the joys and passions of the game on the field in Mexico, Canada, and Donald Trump's America.
12. Today, we spend the hour with Ryan McKnight, a doctoral researcher at Manchester Met University,
13. who is researching the impact of neoliberalism on what he calls the opportunity of football fandom.
14. Football fandom, to him, is the last remaining act of large-scale collectivism in the UK where he lives
15. and offers a special window into what he calls the nature of society,
16. the individuals within it, and people's reactions to life under neoliberalism
17. and the contestation of what football means and is to fans in the UK and throughout the world today.
18. Stay tuned for a fascinating conversation when our program returns in just a moment.
19. And welcome back to the People's Game.
20. We are here. We're going to have a lovely discussion right now with Ryan McKnight.
21. Now, Ryan McKnight is a doctoral researcher at Manchester Met University, completing his Ph.D.,
22. which is researching the impact of neoliberalism on what he calls the opportunity of football fandom.
23. So, Ryan, if you could, first of all, explain to those of us in the United States,
24. because football culture is not quite as developed as it is in the rest of the world.
25. If you could explain, Ryan, first of all, describe what football fandom is like and what the meaning is in the UK,
26. which is very different than what we have in the United States.
27. And also, why do you think that there's opportunity?
28. Why is it so special, a thing that can be revived, reclaimed, etc.?
29. So welcome to the program, Ryan.
30. Thank you.
31. Amazing to speak to you guys.
32. It's brilliant for me as an Englishman to be speaking to Americans at the start of the World Cup.
33. We were just talking off air there.
34. A lot of nervousness from us over here of how it was going to go.
35. But no one knows how to put on a show like the Americans.
36. And it's been fantastic.
37. It great to be here Yeah What is fandom It such an amazing question to me it been my life really in terms of trying to build up to answering that question You know I worked in football here in the UK for 20 years and I been researching the nature of fandom the governing dynamics for over 10 of those
38. And I think the first thing to say is that if you were to ask the average man on the street what is being a football fan and what's kind of in it for you, the answer would be one that reflects our socioeconomic policy, the overarching dominant economic reality that we exist in, which is neoliberalism.
39. So the average man on the street would answer it in a way that is a relationship between the kind of individual and this thing called the club, in which the burden is on the club to deliver for the individual.
40. And we've ended up with a notion in the UK and other developed football territories where a good experience of fandom is your team winning and a bad experience of fandom is your team losing.
41. Now, I totally reject that completely. I think that leans into the work of Alan de Botton, Status Anxiety. I think it leans into the work of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism. I think it feeds into the work of philosophers like Eric Fromm, who talks about this sort of transactional nature to love.
42. and to me it's in dispute it's contrary to what i call the opportunity of fandom and it's the
43. thrust of my study which actually the real opportunity of fandom comes in the intergenerational
44. suffering it comes in not the winning but the losing because ultimately and it's the hypothesis
45. of my research is that really the only thing that football fandom has to offer and it really only
46. has one thing to offer you and that is to give you in really really safe doses all the emotions
47. of existence joy happiness elation devastation anger despair it's the full rainbow of emotions
48. and it does it in really, really safe little doses.
49. You're allowed to leave at the end of the game.
50. You know, the police don't pick you up on the way home
51. if your team have lost.
52. And guess what?
53. You get to come back again the following week
54. and go, oh, well, it's still here and we're playing again
55. and things might be different this time.
56. So for me, the opportunity of fandom
57. is a rehearsal of resilience
58. for how we go about the rest of our lives.
59. because the rest of our lives is steeped in the ache of capitalism.
60. So I always think, is it any surprise that we have the levels of people
61. that are in depression and on medication for that,
62. the level of anxiety that exists certainly in British population now?
63. Is this any surprise whatsoever where there is no real other part of our life
64. but we're practicing to rehearse ourselves to have the resilience in which to live in this wider
65. existence and when you look at what's on offer really only football fandom offers that here in
66. the UK in India it cricket maybe in the States it baseball basketball whatever but here in the UK it football and football alone if i may uh alan here it hard to hear you frame that so brilliantly
67. without in the united states right now as the world cup has started and we see the incredible
68. passion of the fans 48 nations a few of them come in understanding that if they just make it through
69. the group stage or maybe win the round 32 that'll be a great world cup for them but many of them
70. years. You're set for heartbreak. Only one team's going to win at the end, right? But to hear that
71. in the context of what just happened in New York City, and I don't know how much you've been
72. following it, but what's been especially interesting about that is it has coincided
73. with not only a honeymoon for Mayor Zoran Mamdani, but through his victory, enthusiasm about
74. democratic socialism. And the sort of negative undercurrent of what you just outlined is the
75. degree to which maybe somebody would then say it's bread and circus's distraction away from direct
76. political engagement. And it's so strange to think about New York City, where it seems to have this
77. momentary harmony, but that is so rare, so infinitesimally rare that that would coincide.
78. Because I do think that's part of the texture, especially with Trump going to game three,
79. they lose game three, he gets booed. And there's the incredible affection and adoration right now
80. that Mamdani has in his honeymoon. So just your reflections on that. And by the way, the outpouring
81. of sentiment and social solidarity in New York around the Knicks victory was as elevated as any
82. response I've ever seen in an American sports victory. In most places, NBA basketball wouldn't
83. be the sport that would generate that, but in New York City, it has proved to be such
84. in this political context. So your thoughts on just all that?
85. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, first of all, the Knicks story is being covered quite heavily here.
86. And for me, I've spoken about it. I've spoken about it with colleagues. It's because of the gap
87. between the last 53 years of course right without that it's not really a story and and so look i
88. remember some of the clubs that i've been at where they've had sort of poor performance seasons but
89. in other ways they've had better seasons of fandom they've been more participatory in the experience
90. and normally when your team isn't doing great and the longer that goes on for kind of ends up still
91. there still following it is the kind of fandom that i'm talking about the kind of high caliber
92. hardcore fandom that this is our love it knows no division kind of sentiment to it but the longer
93. it goes on the sweeter it tastes when the opposite eventually arrives again this is kind of the
94. rehearsal for life that i'm talking about you know you only know black because you don't know white
95. you only know night because you know day being able to get a rehearsal of how to deal with the
96. contrasts of everyday life where'd you go to learn that where'd you go to start to feel what that is
97. I thought it was one of the greatest inventions of humanity in terms of the lessons that it can be learning and teaching if we go about it the right way, if we reject a capitalist approach to it.
98. I'm going to have one thing in my mind that I don't surrender to the market.
99. You know, I'm not going to surrender 150 years of intergenerational Wolverhampton Wanderers fandom, in my case,
100. just so that I can be experienced momentary playing pleasure by being a Manchester City fan or an Arsenal fan The market will never take that away from me Capital will never take that away from me It so interesting because when you describe again the negative aspects you know sort of
101. what it's become, it kind of reminds me actually of American football kind of culture, that kind
102. of winning is everything, the messages that come out in the Nike ads and all of this stuff, you
103. And maybe, maybe something maybe close to what the other part of you described is maybe being a Buffalo Bills fan, but who knows.
104. But it's very interesting because I wonder if there is some relationship between, again, that winner-take-all type of culture in American football and the financialization of real football, soccer.
105. and especially in the UK as more American owners have been taking over Premier League teams.
106. So I'm wondering about your thoughts on that.
107. Yeah, so American owners here in the Premier League,
108. we're getting up to this magic number that needs to exist in the Premier League.
109. So when it gets up to 14 owners of the 20,
110. that's how many votes you need to change anything in the Premier League.
111. And so our government has reacted to this,
112. not specifically just for that reason but we've now got a regulator so we've got a sort of
113. oversea government regulator and part of their mandate will be to monitor fundamental structural
114. changes that may or may not be proposed by you know could be american owners could be other owners
115. to hopefully protect the integrity of what we call the pyramid so you know our pyramid goes
116. right the way down 13 14 15 divisions and there's structurally nothing stopping somebody
117. starting a football club today and in 15 years season's time then being in the premier league
118. but do you know what i talk about this in my research this is a system that neoliberalism
119. would never conceive of it would never introduce something like that it would be an inefficient way
120. of modeling the market, the idea of profit sharing, the idea of solidarity payments.
121. I mean, let's have it right. Do we see in any other part of the market a company doing really
122. well and going, do you know what? I'm going to give some of my revenue to potential future
123. competitors. It would never happen. It doesn't happen. So that's constantly under threat.
124. And I think that we just don't see the relationship between our big sports and the overarching
125. socioeconomic policies that exist everywhere else.
126. But, you know, if we care about our sport, if we want to be participatory, if we want
127. these things to be a reflection of us, then we need to talk about it.
128. We need to try and put up a fight for it.
129. And there's been a couple of examples here in Europe where capital has tried to change
130. it.
131. So the super league and that got stifled really quickly.
132. But again, all the commentators on that go, oh, that's a great victory.
133. That's a great victory for the fans.
134. You think liberalism isn't stupid, right?
135. Big market capital isn't stupid.
136. They're the first salvos, right?
137. They're the first salvos.
138. They want to see what the defenses of the opposition look like.
139. And they will have learned from that.
140. And will they come at it the same way?
141. No way.
142. But are those of us that feel uncomfortable about that?
143. Are we readying ourselves in the same way?
144. Absolutely not.
145. Yeah, and I know this is a little bit of a sorry thing,
146. but maybe just very simply for those people listening
147. who aren't soccer fans or fans of European soccer,
148. because there's a lot here about capital and capitalism.
149. and neoliberalism that's going to hold the KPFK audience, the Jacobin audience here.
150. In European football, a team that is in the first division, even the most elite team,
151. can be relegated into the second division.
152. The amount of people around the world who watch British second division football versus
153. watch British football, it's like about 1,000 to 100,000 ratio.
154. And of course, in American sports, including in the MLS, there's no relegation.
155. and that makes the MLS very distinct from almost all leagues around the entire world
156. and as Ryan has said it is the American structure that suits neoliberalism and neoliberalism is
157. continually trying to find workarounds to end the relegation structure in European clubs now I do
158. want to say too for those who are listening and maybe catch this on the Jockovin podcast
159. we will put links to Ryan's work whatever we can whatever you can share with us to the interview
160. and we may also put links to a three-part series that Mel and I wrote for Truthdig in 2014.
161. And boy, would I love Ryan to read through that and critique what we say about all this,
162. because in various spots of that, those long articles, we talk about the relationship of
163. core and periphery capital, the decimation of some leagues in, of course, it never really
164. developed in Africa, but South America in particular, where the talent draws into the core
165. of neoliberal capitalism through the Spanish leagues, the English leagues, and the top talent
166. goes there. And so there's those dynamics in contemporary football that reflect contemporary
167. capitalism. Back to relegation, your club Wolves, they were relegated. My club Everton was almost
168. relegated. And I just want to say you are absolutely spot on. The time where they first
169. avoided relegation when Frank Lampard was the coach, the exhibition of joy when they avoid it
170. on the field at Goodison Park was unlike almost anything I have ever seen. And my personal sense
171. of bonding with Evertonians around the world could not have been greater at that moment.
172. And I think that's known in America by particular clubs that are loved and baseball teams, the
173. Cubs and Red Sox, the Bonds, the long-suffering fans were greater than ever.
174. And so, yeah, relegation.
175. How are you feeling about Wolves?
176. And what is that?
177. I mean, your team was just relegated.
178. Now, it wasn't a dramatic relegation.
179. They were relegated as early in the season as possible.
180. But not without talent and not without, you know, good players.
181. they were stronger the second half which this was a terrible first half what was your feeling and
182. thoughts about that relationship to your work yes you know i worked at wolves for a short period
183. and i was actually helping getting the club ready for a non-sale so prior to the sort of huge
184. chinese conglomerate that owns them now boson it was a british guy called steve morgan who's a
185. house builder actually it's a really interesting story because he had acquired the club from a
186. previous owner who is a legend at the football club a guy called sir jack haywood who had sold
187. the club to steve for 10 pound so eight bucks whatever um on the promise that he would invest
188. some money into the football it was a huge act of philanthropy you know it was everything that like
189. positive capitalism it was the perfect example of it he'd been a fantastic businessman he'd
190. save the football club he'd rebuilt the ground he'd lost hundreds of millions and then at the
191. point of sale he didn't try and recoup any of it he gave it away he gave it away on the promise
192. that somebody else was going to take over and so we were getting the club ready for to be handed
193. over from steve and and we were going to build a club that was going to be a reflection of
194. of warbhampton of the area that it exists in called black country and we were going to make commitment to six or seven of the first teams being from the Black Country for it to be a kind of reflection of a Spanish club called Athletic Club Bilbao
195. a club where you have to be from the Basque region in order to play.
196. They don't buy players.
197. They literally grow players.
198. Can you give us a sense of the years for this?
199. What was the time frame?
200. Oh, so this is 2015 going into 2016 before Fosun take over.
201. And so internally, the club is planning for this sort of radical change that would have served fandom in such a more meaningful way.
202. Like Bilbao fans, Wolves fans would have become participatory in the football club again, where the degrees of separation between you and player are unbelievably low.
203. when you go to Bilbao, the people in the stand there,
204. they went to the same school, their parents work in the same business,
205. they grew up in the same neighbourhood, you see them in the same restaurants,
206. you help to grow the sense of the team, you are a participator in it.
207. You know, you fast forward 10 years of where Wolves have gone,
208. which is sort of 10 years of Chinese investment,
209. and not necessarily because it's Chinese,
210. it could have been American, it could have been from the Philippines.
211. They also became a team known for having a slew of Portuguese players.
212. Of course, yeah, yeah.
213. And again, that was in the kind of network ownership that Boston is a big agency in Portugal.
214. So ultimately, how do I feel now?
215. Well, I feel completely melancholy and completely disconnected from my own club.
216. There's nothing about that football club that is a reflection of me or anyone else from the West Midlands.
217. We do well to get any English players in the starting 11, never mind any local players.
218. The manager is now Portuguese again.
219. The ownership is obviously extremely external.
220. But I know that my fandom will outlive their ownership.
221. So I am calm in that sense.
222. And unlike other fans, it's not going to stop the regularity of how often I go.
223. and I think other fans of other clubs have got very excited about being frustrated but let's
224. have it right if Wolves were at the top end of the Premier League you wouldn't hear a peep out of
225. these who are uncomfortable with Fulton's ownership in fact it was only a few years ago that Wolves
226. were doing very well in the Premier League and at that point they were the best thing since
227. slice bread so you can't have it both ways you're either going to approach your fandom as something
228. separate to capital the one thing that you've got that exists outside of capital or you're not
229. the vast majority of people are not and we see that in the death of intergenerational support
230. We see that in the nature of fandom, how fans treat their clubs.
231. Winning games is doing well.
232. Losing games is doing badly.
233. But no matter whether it's football, baseball, basketball, American football,
234. if you win, someone else loses.
235. It's part of it.
236. But a unique aspect also, by the way, very much different than American sports.
237. While baseball has the minor leagues that were developed in the farm system
238. by Branch Rickey with the St. Louis Cardinals in the 20s,
239. brought him over to the Dodgers. Even that wasn't regionally focused. So, you know, not all the
240. players came from St Louis to a degree That was true way back then but it a long time past since that was the case And of course players come from still predominantly United States but large numbers from East Asia and Dominican Republic and other countries in the Caribbean now
241. But in soccer, the major clubs have academies.
242. And how strong is the Wolves Academy?
243. Because I'm a partisan of Everton, and Everton does have a very strong academy and system.
244. And this is a big thing for Evertonian fans to want to see the players come up.
245. And, of course, generationally, recently, Wayne Rooney was the most celebrated product from any British academy probably the past quarter century.
246. And, tragically, when he was still a teenager to Evertonians, he was traded to Manchester United.
247. But at a time, at least, where there still was strong faith.
248. And Rooney has come back and is a solid Evertonian, even as much as he's a roots from Manchester United.
249. But, yeah.
250. Look, you know, my hero growing up was a guy called Steve Ball.
251. So he's always great.
252. He's had big goals for that story.
253. and he was so good he could have gone anywhere and he had the opportunity to go anywhere but
254. he made a decision that he wanted to just stay at water where did i where did i learn what a sense
255. of loyalty looked like where did i learn as an individual what hard work desire sense of place
256. localism civic pride where did they get a sense of any of that well it wasn't the local council
257. It wasn't certainly local member of parliament.
258. It was Steve.
259. And let's have it right.
260. The Premier League, since its inception, has just overseen a decad in the volume of minutes for English players and therefore local players.
261. People had had a hope that Brexit would see this kind of rejuvenation of the local player.
262. Well, it's actually had the kind of opposite effect.
263. so the new work permit system that was put into place and we call the gbe basically opened up the
264. world to the premier league so prior to brexit a brazilian player for example would never have
265. really been able to come directly from brazil straight into the premier league right they just
266. wouldn't have got a work permit they wouldn't have got a visa for it they would have had to go
267. to Portugal or to Spain,
268. stay there for a few years, and then come.
269. Now the world is open, and we
270. can go and get players directly
271. from South America. And what you saw was a lot of
272. Premier League clubs started to
273. set up bases in South America.
274. A lot of Premier League clubs started to
275. multi-club ownership. So obviously City
276. have got, obviously, a team in America
277. as well. So ultimately,
278. it's just become a sort of globalised
279. asset. And let's
280. have it right. And as an
281. asset of the British economy,
282. The Premier League is an unbelievable success story.
283. And I'm not talking down the Premier League.
284. I think what the Premier League have achieved as a feat of industry has been phenomenal.
285. But it is at odds with the opportunity of fandom.
286. And if clubs are not a reflection of the place in which they reside,
287. the experience that said club can give to a fan is a lesser one and that transcends even like the
288. nicks imagine if the nicks were all from new york how much more intense that feeling would have been
289. how much more concentrated it would have been and you know what i say to people is bill bow fans
290. have a better experience of fandom
291. than what the rest of us do
292. because they are participatory
293. in what goes on And actually I mean they stand for more than a football club You know I not 100 sure they a football club You know they still strive for this independence and you know a remaking of the borders of Spain
294. I mean, that's a pretty powerful thing to get behind.
295. You know, if someone says to you, like, what does Everton stand for?
296. What does Lille stand for?
297. They stand for nothing.
298. They are subservient to capital.
299. That is what they are.
300. But Barcelona, of course, has a softer core version of that with Catalonian nationalism.
301. It's so interesting, too, because, you know, that type of localized fandom.
302. I mean, I experienced that very much when I was in Brazil in the 2010s, where almost every Brazilian city even has an identification with a neighborhood in a city.
303. because in most cities there's a derby between like the working class team and the elite team,
304. which literally represent different spatial neighborhoods. And I'm wondering, I mean,
305. I haven't been recently, so I don't know how much that has broken down or not in the new era,
306. but there's another thing that I think, you know, people have talked about it becoming a
307. distorting influence on fandom in the United States, and that is the influence of prediction
308. markets. So, CalShe and PolyMarket, you're seeing a lot, especially young folks in the United States,
309. I mean, because they can't get a job here in our, in our more urban labor market,
310. more and more people are sports betting on these platforms that, you know, are somehow able to
311. evade regulation and all of that stuff.
312. I'm wondering if you're seeing that same kind of influence in the UK and how that is distorting
313. the fandom that you're talking about.
314. Yeah, it's really interesting.
315. It's timely that you ask that.
316. So in the Premier League, actually a ban comes into place very soon where Premier League
317. clubs won't be able to have betting companies as sponsors anymore.
318. And actually, if you look at the kind of like makeup of who is sponsoring Premier League
319. clubs you know betting is a huge percentage of that and who knows maybe it'll be american ai
320. companies that fill that void but look you know betting is a fundamental part of our culture
321. here in in the uk it is centuries old um and the idea that we're going to be able to sort of
322. divorce ourselves off it is just it just isn't going to happen we do need to manage it though
323. Well, I did want to ask about one component of this, which is the Bundesliga, famously 50 plus 1% of every club are owned by the fans, with the exception somehow of the clubs owned by the Red Bull company.
324. And then Barcelona and Real Madrid, two other super clubs, so Bayern Munich is a super club, of course, are owned by the fans.
325. Not the case with any of the major English clubs or, for that matter, the Italian clubs, major Italian clubs.
326. Luton Town made it to the premiership as a fan-owned club, which is a real rarity.
327. Now, before we all jump on board and become Luton Town fans, people should know that super right-wing fascist racist Tommy Robinson became to prominence for being a Luton Town ultra.
328. So there's that kind of thing.
329. But fan ownership, it seems almost an impossibility in the premiership.
330. And I know because when everything was up for sale and there were no takers,
331. I started to try to figure out how we could start a movement
332. for fan ownership of Everton.
333. And I took it as far as I did.
334. I never contacted the 1878 years or the various Evertonian
335. podcasts and YouTube shows that I watch religiously
336. because I wanted to see if there was some kind
337. of serious apparatus I could build. I actually met with the chief operating officer of a major NBA
338. team and shared with some Evertonian fans and other people, lawyers and such, what it would
339. take to build this kind of thing up. And I knew that I was far short when I was told that these
340. kind of applications are considered by the premiership decision-making body as to who gets
341. to apply seriously. You have to come in with a certain group of people who understand the
342. balance sheet of a soccer club. And well, that would be the next thing that I was going to see
343. if it was possible to pursue, because this kept dragging on and on and on. And in my logic, I
344. thought, well, everybody in the world is a soccer fan, can't stand this oligarchic ownership of the
345. clubs. Everton could become, like you were saying about Wolves, this was a strategy to turn Everton
346. into truly the people's club. I mean, obviously, Everton and all of Liverpool is still thankfully
347. associated with left progressive politics. And David Moyse, however, was the one who came up
348. that quip of the people's club so it's not like a legacy title but uh the fan base is generally
349. quite progressive uh and left-leaning and they certainly couldn't stand mishiri's ownership
350. and uh it was completely imploded on itself because it was he was backed by a co-russian
351. oligarchy got kicked out his money got kicked out after the ukrainian invasion and then he was really
352. flailing and uh the club was facing relegation evertonians were having great degrees of solidarity
353. among themselves, but heartbreak nonstop and indigestion, sleepless nights and all of it.
354. And I knew it would resonate, but I didn't want to play people. So I didn't bring it forward.
355. And obviously, I'd never been involved in anything like this, except very remotely once in the United
356. States. But I knew that wouldn't go anywhere. That would have just been a symbolic gesture.
357. What are the possibilities and impossibilities of fan ownership? And let me say, by the way,
358. as I researched this, the proposal that was being cobbled together amounted to requiring and you
359. You need to have like a white knight person like you had the wolves who would basically come in and buy it with an agreement with fan groups that they would sell it once the capital was built up and the fans thought it was real.
360. Because there's no way that a fan group could create a pool of money adequate for the initial amount of money.
361. And but, you know, that would be very beneficial to such a white knight person, because if they just held on to ownership for five years and then sold that for five years to the fan base, we know they would make so much money because the ridiculous escalation in the value of these clubs, especially one with a new stadium and potentially a global fan base as the British Screamership Club that is only owned by the fans.
362. But your thoughts on all of that in my ridiculous, quixotic fantasy.
363. Yeah, so here in Europe, the German 50 plus one model is kind of like put up as like this sort of balance between kind of capital and society.
364. And that's under huge pressure.
365. You know, I was interviewing somebody at a conference six months ago, a German lawyer, a sports lawyer.
366. And he was making a prediction that the 50 plus one model would break within the next 10 years.
367. if German clubs had any desire to continue to want to compete at the top end of European football
368. it simply was not feasible for the 50 plus 1 models to be sustained and there are already some
369. mechanics in there where if a certain sponsor has been there I think it's 25 years they can
370. acquire more equity but obviously that's a long time most people aren't there but there seems to
371. this sort of growing direction that the 50 plus 1 model will break which would be a shame but in
372. terms of your second question what the likelihood of kind of fan ownership at the top end of English football it a mathematic impossibility the numbers involved now are just enormous let take a club say like newcastle united we got sold for sort of circa 350 360
373. million pound but then all the kind of like capital investment after that as well for working
374. capital so let's say if you want to buy everton lock stock and barrel the realistic number is that
375. you're going to need to generate in excess of 500 million pounds and just how do you get to that
376. number as a fan base and maintain a sense of happy democracy within it you know the examples that
377. we've got a fan ownership here in england you know i've positioned myself as a bit of a kind of black
378. sheep on this a little bit you know there is this kind of like left leaning opinion that fan
379. ownership is great and it's the silver bullet but actually what's actually manifested fan owned
380. clubs you know isn't this utopia that we're promised you know we've had fan owned clubs that
381. have gone out of business we've had found clubs that have ended in administration we've had fan
382. owned clubs that have ended up have leverage in huge amounts of debts on themselves acting
383. exactly the same way as the traditional clubs for me the best form of ownership comes in the
384. the version of the philanthropic individual
385. that sees their ownership of the football club
386. really as a stewardship of the club.
387. And of course, they're few and far between now.
388. You know, a lot of clubs are owned by kind of big multinationals.
389. They're like leveraged on debt.
390. So to answer your question, I think the ship has sailed.
391. I really, really do.
392. Is it still possible at the lower levels potentially,
393. but top end, like it's gone?
394. Right. No. And of course, what I arrived at and what I realized from my research was an exaggerated form of the philanthropic person that you mentioned.
395. The only idea being stipulated that if the fan base grew large enough and had enough developed capital, which was predicated on this idea of selling Everton with its new stadium as the People's Club globally, given the premiership.
396. But it's a fantasy and it would probably never have been past mustard for the people who reviewed it.
397. But I did want to follow up questions. Why Barcelona and Real Madrid?
398. because Bayern Munich obviously is,
399. given the ridiculous structure of the Bundesliga,
400. the top club bar none.
401. They win almost every year, all the top German players.
402. And then Harry Kane too now and other great players
403. come to Bayern Munich.
404. They're one of the top competitive clubs.
405. And then Real Madrid and Barcelona also owned by their fans.
406. I mean, how are they able to achieve that?
407. And I've seen, of course, I've read everywhere
408. that the Bundesliga, people think that's going to break apart.
409. I recognize that.
410. But the one exception seems to be these other two super clubs.
411. Barcelona has basically
412. financially broke itself over the last
413. 10 years, if it was any other organisation
414. it would be out of business
415. to the extent where they were
416. ultimately forced to let
417. their greatest asset leave
418. the football club in Massey
419. and obviously to the point
420. where they were almost
421. in a kind of like police state
422. with La Liga in terms of what they were
423. and were not able
424. to do, now of course
425. those two clubs are these kind of like two huge legacy entities that have been able to kind of
426. leverage on all of that to still be kind of like commercially viable so despite breaking themselves
427. the biggest brands in the world still want to sponsor them they've still been able to leverage
428. huge amounts of finance to reinvest both teams have reinvested unbelievable amounts of capital to rebuild their respective stadiums And obviously in doing so they completely repositioned
429. what the proposition of those two entities actually are.
430. Again, I'm not 100% sure
431. that they're two football clubs anymore.
432. They're more like data companies.
433. You know, they're more like your classic data company
434. in terms of what the overall business is all about.
435. overall business is largely about collecting a lot of data and obviously that those stadiums
436. have been built for mass tourism mass corporate hospitality and they've kind of been able to
437. reposition so all the clubs wouldn't have got away with that and it's only because of intrinsically
438. who they are that they've kind of been allowed to get away with that as as well certainly not a
439. model I'd want anybody else
440. following. And again,
441. I always think to the Barcelona
442. fan, how do they
443. square the circle? Because
444. I'm not sure if it's in the new stadium,
445. but in the old stadium, Mecón Club,
446. more than a club.
447. This notion that it was this kind of
448. political movement for Catalonia,
449. as you've said.
450. In Unicef.
451. Exactly.
452. And have they betrayed those kind of
453. noble acts?
454. As a Barcelona fan for many, many years, I have been struggling with that.
455. So, yeah.
456. It's interesting.
457. It's still too unbelievable.
458. But what's really interesting has been the rise of some of the other clubs in Barcelona as well,
459. who they portray are more authentic about those sort of values of Catalonia.
460. And they have been seeing an upsurge in sport.
461. And again, it's this sort of changing demographic of who's going to the stadium of top tier football, not lower league football.
462. That's ordinarily the same kind of demographic.
463. But in the Premier League, the demographic is completely changed.
464. And, you know, the other club, Treverton in Liverpool, Liverpool, has rebuilt its stadium not to fit in more local people, but to serve more corporate hospitality.
465. I don't know the exact number, but it's over 20,000 people on the match day at Anfield.
466. Are they in corporate fashion?
467. Well, everything about that sentence is kind of contradictory to what day-to-day life is of living in Anfield or living in Goodison or living in the great city of Liverpool,
468. which, of course, if you look at its political affiliation, is left-leaning working class Labour voters.
469. It's certainly not high finance.
470. And again, this is the sort of smoke screen
471. that fandom has been just happy to ignore
472. and kind of like go on as if everything's normal.
473. Everything's not normal.
474. It's never been normal,
475. our local clubs to be owned by people
476. from all corners of the world.
477. It's never been normal for British players
478. to be getting less than 30% of valuable minutes in the Premier League,
479. that's not normal.
480. That's neoliberalism.
481. Given that, on the international stage,
482. how are you seeing folks experiencing the World Cup now,
483. and the England team hasn't been doing too bad?
484. And that is another interesting example, too,
485. of the football fandom that you're talking about,
486. given every single tournament, it's coming home, maybe not.
487. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
488. Cynicism and all of that stuff is great.
489. Yeah I think the great thing that exists about international football although there is a little invasion of it is that it all the guys and girls from your country
490. whether it's the Women's World Cup or the Men's World Cup,
491. it's a kind of like bigger version of the kind of situation
492. I'd love to see in club football.
493. So you are a participatory.
494. You're participatory through nationality.
495. And, you know, you can't buy players for your national team.
496. There's some interest in immigration policy, which can make or break your team.
497. But largely, you know, clubs aren't trading players for their national team.
498. Look here in England, we're a confused set of people.
499. And you can see that in our politics.
500. you can see that in our voting patterns. We're a country that has no real sense of
501. who we are anymore, culturally, visually, politically, economically.
502. So when these anchor events of society come around, it's a form of nostalgia. It's a kind of
503. echo of not not nostalgia that we can get behind a memory we can get behind a memory of what we
504. remember our country um to be in a more favorable um light and you know certainly you know i'm in my
505. sort of mid mid 40s you know sort of growing up in the 90s um england had a you know quite a clear
506. sense in the early 90s of like who it was where it was brit pop um uh you know economy was uh
507. growing kind of sort of center politics generally prevailed um and the difference between then
508. and now is is unbelievable um and that also manifests itself i think in the authentic value
509. that the population has to how it feels about um about about the team i think a lot of positive
510. work has been done over the last few world cups and major championships and gareth southgate the
511. previous england manager a lot of his thinking and working it was was around reconnecting the team
512. to the people um and interestingly he is now reinventing himself in more of a sort of political
513. um um uh fashion so he's had quite a few programs on tv talking about um men's place in society
514. young people um in in in society and how they've lost that connection um so i think it's going to
515. be interesting for us and look you know we've got a german leading our team you know everything
516. about it we couldn't get any more confused do you know i mean like that's the height of confusion
517. for England. But look, if they win the World Cup, he'll be lauded and lionized forevermore.
518. It's funny, with the World Cup, and again, I write about this somewhat in the, and Mel did as well,
519. and it was a co-authored article, in Truthdig in 2014, ethno-nationalism in general is a huge
520. the right-wing force in the world.
521. And it sort of whinges sometimes at rooting for countries or the population
522. rooting for countries in that regard.
523. But on balance, it seems the World Cup is more an example.
524. of how the people from your region are brought back into teams.
525. And it's a countervailing force against the hypercapitalism of the peaks of club soccer.
526. So I agree with that.
527. And then the paradox being that it's all put on by an incredibly corrupt sort of mafia-esque
528. international organization called FIFA, right?
529. But I wanted to actually end this part of our dialogue with the fact of the really very
530. likely the next prime minister of England, a fellow Evertonian, though he's an Evertonian by birth,
531. but was the mayor of Manchester recently, Andy Burnham, who very much looks poised to replace
532. Keir Starmer as the head of the Labour government in England. His public reputation
533. really grew around an appearance he made at Anfield in Liverpool about the Hillsborough
534. disaster and the response he experienced and this is to his credit i think uh sparked his activism
535. on the subject and that really recalls a different era in fandom and um i sense sometimes that there
536. is real not for the hooliganism but real nostalgia among english football fans for the that era of
537. fandom and um any thoughts on on soccer and burnham but also just again your sense of the band the
538. bond that fans feel now in this hyper neoliberal era where global capital comes in and controls
539. these clubs and of course dominates even a national team oriented uh spectacle like the
540. world cup um so maybe something on burnham and then final thoughts on on fandom at this moment
541. yeah yeah i think what's top of my mind that there is definitely a pushback from fans of a certain
542. generation that experience what it was like to go to games in the late 70s 80s early 90s
543. versus what it is now you have hillsborough you have the taylor report in 1990 you have this
544. all-seater stadium put on to English football and then it was the atomizing of the of the band
545. and I know that we've got safe standing returning now but safe standing is you are designated a
546. place to stand which is a world away from the wash that was standing before it was a great act of
547. social capital that because you were bonding and bridging you could be stood next to a lawyer
548. a teacher, a judge, a politician, or somebody who worked in the same factory.
549. As you know, it was the great third place where all of that intertwined.
550. And there's lots of social channels, one that I'd recommend to everyone called Casual Bible,
551. which is this prevailing nostalgia to what it was like.
552. But, you know, Mark Fisher would warn us against being too nostalgic.
553. you know we should be looking for not a slow cancellation of the future but you know a
554. progression of something new as well so i think you're absolutely right there is this tension
555. between those of experience something that felt more real to effectively the plastic experience
556. that is served up now but there are ghosts of that and hillsborough is the biggest ghost of all
557. of that. Just so folks know,
558. the Hillsborough disaster
559. was an incident of a fatal crowd
560. crush at Hillsborough
561. Stadium in Sheffield, England
562. in 1989 during an
563. FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool
564. and Nottingham Forest. The tragedy
565. resulted in 97 deaths and
566. 766 injuries,
567. making it the deadliest sporting disaster in British history And of course there were a lot of recriminations about the care not given to the working class fans which was also part of the scandal surrounding that tragedy
568. So I just wanted to let our US listeners know what Hillsborough is.
569. You know, what Hillsborough was about wasn't just the tragedy in isolation.
570. It was about how different parts of the country felt differently about other parts of the country.
571. And it was how bureaucratic elites felt beyond and above others.
572. And ultimately, people still feel that the same now.
573. We just brand it differently.
574. We talk about leveling up.
575. You know, we talk about kind of economic equality in different parts of the country.
576. You know, I was reading a great piece of research the other day.
577. The economic reality of living in London is equal to living in Switzerland.
578. The economic reality of living in the northeast, where I am, is akin to living in Slovakia.
579. So these are the sort of north-south divides that are still very real and very raw.
580. And what Hillsborough did and other disasters, Bradford and other disasters,
581. not in the same way at Bradford because that was just an individual tragedy,
582. but what it does is it kind of anchors any external reasoning
583. about why something had happened in a really, really tangible way.
584. And you're right, Burnham kind of played a political blinder
585. during that process.
586. And you've got to say it was pretty hard for him not to do well
587. in that situation.
588. I mean, Hillsborough is such a sort of political hot potato for politicians, and many have made the mistake of talking absolute nonsense around it.
589. And of course, he did the right thing, and he played it with a straight bat.
590. But I think what came across is that he was genuine and authentic about it.
591. This wasn't somebody from Westminster that had been rolled up to talk about it.
592. He was from the area. He could speak with relevance.
593. Again, he was participating in those degrees of separation were low for him.
594. And let's have it right.
595. You know, as jobs don't, he's done a good job in Manchester.
596. I spent a lot of time in Manchester.
597. And you look and you go to Manchester and it feels booming.
598. There's plenty of cranes, the skyscrapers going up.
599. He's done the right thing by integrating the universities into the decision making of what goes on in the city.
600. And, you know, he's come out all guns blazing that if he arrives in number 10, he's coming after neoliberalism.
601. He wants to impose what he calls Manchesterism onto the rest of the country, which is effectively more state owned entities.
602. So, you know, the removal of the privatization of things and more decision making for local communities.
603. I think he's unbelievably naive if he thinks we would see any impact of that in this parliament.
604. As we've touched on a couple of times, I don't think neoliberalism is a room full of old guys pulling levers.
605. I don't think neoliberalism is that.
606. It's actually far more subtle and ingrained than that.
607. You know, Oliver James calls it like affluenza.
608. It's on our DNA.
609. Why is it that when someone gets a pay rise,
610. they go and buy a better car a better house Why is that the instinctive thing to do Because it been ingrained into us so the idea that we can have a reversal of that really quick like look i feel really uncomfortable
611. about where neoliberalism has left us and i worry for my children in terms of like what their
612. perception and experience the world will be in that someone coming along and going i'm going to
613. to take aim at neoliberalism yeah i can get behind it but it needs to be a 50 100 year
614. process we need more politicians that are going to plant trees that they know they're not going
615. to sit in the shade of well what i see when i see burnham though i think it's a lot of softening
616. the blows that neoliberal impacts upon working class people look obviously there's a certain
617. percentage of the population that while they've been living inside the very logic of neoliberalism
618. that you described, it has not been working for them. And certainly in the United States of
619. America, which I know even better than the UK, it's the majority of the population. And there's
620. even greater geographic dispersity out of the regions which are so poor, and a very strong
621. sense among working class people that this is all a rich man's game, they're not going to make it.
622. And so what Burnham's program yet doesn't really deliver, if you look at, I mean, really, really
623. muscular social democracy or FDR's New Deal was a pathway into the middle class for the working
624. class. And it's those populations receiving material benefits that neoliberalism excludes.
625. And to deliver that level of change, I don't see in Burnham's program.
626. You're absolutely right. It's the same here. Inequality is what has manifested. So everything
627. that was promised from neoliberalism, you know, and let's have it right, it's Thatcher and Reagan
628. that roll this out.
629. What is promised
630. has not come to pass.
631. It has not.
632. Right.
633. Well, hey, this is beautiful.
634. And we're going to be back
635. in a second, right, Mel?
636. And we're going to talk
637. directly with Ryan
638. about the games on the field.
639. And we'll wrap with that
640. on the People's Game
641. installment of Beneath the Surface
642. right here on KPFK Radio.
643. We'll be right back.
644. We're back. I'm Alan Minsky here at Melissa Figueroa.
645. This is the People's Game Takeover of Beneath the Surface.
646. And as we did last week with the five questions with our guests,
647. we have a variation a week into the tournament.
648. And so we're going to ask you, Ryan, the five questions.
649. Let's focus on clubs right now.
650. Then we'll do one about players and then we'll do about politics.
651. So on clubs, a week into the tournament,
652. what national team have you been pleasantly surprised by
653. and what national team have you found disappointing?
654. I'm really impressed by Norway. I think Norway are an interesting dark horse for the tournament.
655. Won every game in qualifying, a couple of world-class players in there. Keep an eye on them.
656. In terms of disappointments, that's a great question. Do you know what? I watched the Australia game the other night.
657. I think Australia maybe should be a little bit further on as a nation,
658. soccer nation now.
659. I thought they were really disappointing the other night.
660. Interesting.
661. Of course, what we've been hearing, of course,
662. the press is Portugal and Spain being disappointing.
663. Great, great call on Norway, though.
664. Okay, still, though, right now,
665. the national team that you would pick to win the tournament?
666. Anything beyond, and this kind of does pain me a little bit
667. as an Englishman, but, like, I think Argentina.
668. everything to be again, I think.
669. Full of world-class players,
670. comfortable in the climate comfortable with everything that seems to be Fourth question is what player do you think will really stand out and make an international reputation in this
671. tournament for themselves yeah look i think harland's gonna score a lot of goals at this
672. tournament but everybody already knows like what an unbelievable player he is he's an objectively
673. massive human being too yeah absolutely but you know norway have gone i think it's like over 25
674. years since being at a World Cup.
675. So for him to have the opportunity to come play at World Cup is massive for him.
676. Two goals in the first game is off the fly.
677. He's going to score a lot of goals.
678. Wow.
679. And then, look, obviously on the People's Game, we cover the political subtext, the
680. subtext of the economy of FIFA's tournament, relating it to, of course, the economy and
681. the politics of the world.
682. What would you hope to see in terms of political expression in and around the 2026 FIFA World
683. Cup?
684. yeah i mean it's become the most politicized world cup hasn't it in terms of players immigration
685. status referees immigration status the price of the tickets i think it falls back on everything
686. that we just spoke about over the last hour i think this has got to be some sort of line in
687. the sand some sort of turning point where fifa remembers what it's meant to be all about and
688. it's the title of your podcast you know it's got to be something for the people um of the world
689. not the elites it's got to be something that allows people to feel positive about where they're
690. from and they've got to be positive that they've got the opportunity to go and express that as well
691. and hopefully there'll be some lessons learned for future world cups and mel as we wrap your
692. your thoughts now a week into the tournament just in general on the politics the players the teams
693. your thoughts oh wow so morocco i think is uh going to go far they have been incredibly
694. impressive i'm not going to spoil stuff but i think germany has been a little disappointing
695. and then in terms of you know like the u.s has actually not been too bad you know in some weird
696. way, I sometimes categorically do not want to root for them. But, you know, and again, I'll mention
697. that some of the top scorers would not be playing if Trump had his way on immigration policy,
698. because they're all anchor babies. So that's one thing. In terms of players,
699. who's been really, Bellingham has been really impressive for me this week.
700. By the way, of course, you know, there were three Evertonians on the starting English team. They're
701. not all with Everton anymore, but Anthony Gordon, John Stones, and Jordan Pickford.
702. And I root for the ex-Evertonians still.
703. I'm that much of a club fan of Everton.
704. Pickford, of course, is still with Everton.
705. But I think England looks powerful.
706. And then the last thing I'd say is I just hope Uruguay stays in the tournament as long as they can
707. because I love watching their variation of Bielsa Ball.
708. It is exciting.
709. Ryan, it's so great to talk with you.
710. Thank you so much, guys.
711. Thank you so much.
712. Thank you.
713. and with that thank you very much for listening to the people's game we'll be back next friday at
714. 5 p.m right here on kpfk and what are those social media tags where people can follow the people's
715. game mel so we are at peoples.game at instagram peoples underscore game on x or twitter people's
716. game project on blue sky and you can catch our podcast wherever you get your podcasts at the
717. people's game. Thank you so much, Mel.
718. Talk to you very soon.
719. The benefits of donating your used vehicle to KPI