The World Cup was supposed to bring world peace
6/4/202652 min
World Cup tickets are going for as high as $45,000. Not in most of our budgets. How did things get so out of hand when the tournament's founder intended to bridge class divides? Today on the show, the origins of the World Cup, from World War I to Mussolini’s fascist Italy, and how it grew into the multibillion-dollar spectacle the world is gearing up to watch.
Guests:
Jonathan Wilson, columnist at The Guardian and author of The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup
Simon Kuper, columnist at the Financial Times and author of World Cup Fever
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Rund Abdelfatah· Host0:18
[ship horn] In 1930, an ocean liner called the Conte Verde set sail from Genoa. The final destination, Montevideo, Uruguay. Three soccer teams are aboard the ship: one from Romania, another from Belgium, and the third from France, along with some referees. For nearly two weeks, they journey across the sea in close quarters, everyone sort of sizing each other up. Because when they make landfall in Uruguay, they'll be competing against each other in the first ever World Cup.
Speaker 31:06
The French start training really early in the morning so as they don't disturb the other passengers, so running around the deck, running up and down stairs, doing sort of pull-ups on pipes. And then the Romanians see them doing this, think, "Oh, hang on, maybe we should be doing some of that as well."
Rund Abdelfatah· Host1:20
But they also have a lot of free time, and sometimes they just hang out.
Speaker 31:28
They have dance contests.
Speaker 41:29
It was