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Full Free Episode - The Interview: Aaron Bastani (Ep. 175)
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The Italian Football Podcast was thrilled to chat with renowned British journalist and Gli Azzurri supporter Aaron Bastani.
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Italian football podcast with John Solano, Carlo Garganese and Nima Tuvali.
00:00:24
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another interview episode of the Italian Football Podcast.
Meet the Guest: Aaron Bastani
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm Carlo Garganese and today's guest is a multi-talented journalist, broadcaster and political commentator. He is the co-founder of the UK's leading independent media company, Novara Media. He is also the author of the book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
00:00:51
Speaker
And he is a big football fan, a big culture fan and a fan, I believe, of Fiorentina. So we are delighted to welcome onto the show, Aaron Bastani.
Fiorentina Fandom and Florence Memories
00:01:02
Speaker
Aaron, how are you doing, mate? Salve, how are you doing, Carlo? I'm doing very well, thank you. Well, hi, Aaron. It's Nima. Thank you again for joining us. So let's start with your interest in football and Italian football specifically. I mean, you mentioned to me privately that you used to live in Florence and that's how you started supporting Fiorentina. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
00:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I always growing up, I liked watching them. Obviously, you had a really great side. You had Battistuta, Francesco Toldo, you know, they were always there or there about top four, top five side. And this is, you know, the sort of apogee of Italian football in the in the early mid 1990s.
00:01:39
Speaker
I was there last day of the season, I think when they made it, and I think Luca Tony scored, he of course did his trademark goal celebration. And at the time there was this big debate about what is he saying, but apparently maybe you guys can correct me. It was, change the radio station over, listen and Luca Tony scored for Fiorentina again.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I think that year, again, I might be wrong, I think he didn't just get Capital Canyonator, he got maybe European Golden Boot. That's right, yeah. Yeah, he did, yeah. 31 goals, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I mean, he was unstoppable that year. So it was, I mean, I picked a good year to go and watch them, and I watched a couple of international matches as well. I watched, there was a friendly, Italy-Germany friendly in Florence that year. Oh yeah, 4-1. Yeah, that was great. That was really fun to watch.
00:02:25
Speaker
I knew a few characters from a local gym in the sort of historic centro I used to work out in. The gym was on, oh God, where was it? It was near Villa dei Alfani in the historic center. I mean, that sounds like an American tourist, but it was a proper gym. And it was a great way of meeting loads of sort of ratbags who do the couch historically and doorman and all that stuff. So obviously going to watch a Germany match with them was great fun.
00:02:51
Speaker
And then finally, there was a copper Italian match I remember as well. If I recall correctly, there was tear gas involved. So I got the full Italian football experience. You mentioned cultural story code. Did you go to any of those games or did you play it or were
Italian Cities and Quality of Life
00:03:10
Speaker
you able to? No, I never played it. Oh my God. No, I did watch one.
00:03:15
Speaker
I think if I recall, it was so violent, it got cancelled. Sounds about right. What was amazing was, I think it was called off. People started throwing their tickets on the ground and then immediately, I remember these kind of these Spanish guys who I was friends with picking up all the tickets and then they were claiming that they were tour operators and they wanted to refund.
00:03:42
Speaker
Their default was this immediate scam, which I thought was great. Brilliant. Well, what's your favorite Italian city and why? When you lived in Florence, because when I lived in Florence, I traveled quite a bit around in Tuscany and I absolutely fell in love with Tuscany. What about you? Do you have any favorite place in Italy?
00:04:04
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, it's husking of your sport for choice, aren't you? Just for sort of picturesque places, you've got Arezzo, Luca, Grosetto, smaller places, of course, you know, villages and so on. I really, this is gonna sound strange, I really like Bologna. I think as a city, it's got a really nice quality of life. I mean, as a tourist destination, it might not be heart people's sort of list. It's not there with, you know, Venetia or something, but I really like Bologna. I really like Parma. I'm quite boring, you know, I like food, nice city, nice surroundings.
00:04:33
Speaker
Well connected. Genoa is nice. But I've never been to Sicily, so maybe I'd be convinced by Catania or Palermo.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think the gazetta did the other day or it might be in the coriander. They did a rankings of the best quality in life in Italy by city. And I think Bologna was was top three in Paris as well. But I mean, part of my I completely understand because it's you eat the food there is just unbelievable. Yes, it's like it's Naples and Foggio were in the bottom three. That's that's my mom's hometown and my dad's.
00:05:09
Speaker
Fodger, that's a blast from the past. And again, you know, growing up again, you know, Brian Roy being up front for Fodger, you know, Fodger was a, tells you about sort of brand Italy in the mid 1990s. Fodger was a name that millions of people would have known and now less so, without being rude to Fodger, obviously. No, no, they had a great team. You named Novara Media after Novara, didn't you? Is that correct?
00:05:36
Speaker
That is correct, yeah. We had some Italian authors that we interviewed a few years ago, Wooming Foundation Collective. They used to be called the Luthablistic Collective. And they wrote a book called Q, which was a huge European bestseller about 20 years ago. And they said, in Italian, why the hell have you called it Navarro Media? It's just crazy. What a weird thing to call a media company.
00:06:02
Speaker
And it's the filming location for a film called The Working Class Goes to Heaven, a great film, a favorite film of mine and my co-founder. So, you know, we thought it's a kind of got like a vibe, you know, made in Dagenham sort of vibe. And Navara has a kind of trans,
00:06:26
Speaker
Transnational quality, it could be Italian, it could be Spanish, it could be Portuguese, you know, it's a bit like when Ford choose models for their cars, you know, Sierra, Mondeo, you know, everybody kind of, that's nice sounding phonetically. So, yeah, that's why we chose it. Let's talk a little bit about the Euros.
Analyzing Euro 2020 Final: Italy vs. England
00:06:44
Speaker
What did you make of that Italy side that won the Euros against England in the final?
00:06:49
Speaker
You know, it's strange, isn't it? I do think there's a huge gulf in football, not footballing talent. The quality of what you're watching is so different international level to Champions League. And I wonder how good that England and Italy side would do against top Champions League sides. I don't think they would win a major tournament, for instance.
00:07:12
Speaker
If you look at England, Luke Shaw and Harry Maguire looked phenomenal. And now for Manchester United, you know, I mean, Luke Shaw's a shambler. I mean, that's probably just partly a hangover, but he looked like the best left back in the world last summer. And I suspect he probably isn't the best left back in the world.
00:07:30
Speaker
I'm trying to agree. I thought Italy's main strength was spirit decor and their sort of togetherness, tactically very astute, fantastic goalkeeper and two centre backs in front of him, which to win tournaments is what you need.
00:07:49
Speaker
There's that great quote by Fabio Canavaro out today, I think, or yesterday. And he said, you know, strikers might win you games, but defenders win you championships. And I think that's so true. And my worry was when England, I don't know if I can swear on this podcast. When England tries to shithouse a 1-0 willing against Italy in a final, you think you don't do that against the Italians.
00:08:15
Speaker
So I thought either they're going to, I thought they might blow Italy away cause they scored so early. I thought either they win this three or four nil or Italy are going to win this. Um, and the longer it went on one nail, I just thought Garrett Southgate, you're not much out of Lippi. This isn't going to work.
00:08:31
Speaker
Oh, dear. No, well, yeah, that's actually that's a good point, because I mean, if England did play pretty much catenacho, and that is what the correct use of the term catenacho, not the way it was used in the summer and in the media by some people. Speaking of I mean, let's I mean, you're a political commentator, you're a political animal. Do you I mean, there's this endless debate about sports and politics. I want to hear your thoughts. Do you think that football and politics should mix?
00:09:01
Speaker
You know, I could give you a sort of cliched leftist answer, which is, you know, sport is political and, you know, that, you know, you can't divide the two, which obviously is correct. That's obviously true. But I do worry sometimes, you know, people can't enjoy a footballer because they don't agree with his political opinions, which I think is silly. You know, I think ultimately it's a game that should be enjoyed for its aesthetic pleasure. Or if you're involved in it yourself, because, you know, it's team sport.
00:09:29
Speaker
It manifests all these nice things about being alive, like team effort, hard work, overcoming adversity, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, of course, sports is political, but you also don't want to take it too far. You don't want to be supporting, you don't want to see kids supporting football as purely because they agree with their political views. I think that would sort of be a bit of a shame. It's meant to be more enjoyable than that.
00:09:54
Speaker
But at the same time, when you see, for instance, people saying, oh, football shouldn't take the knee because it's politics. You shouldn't have that in sport. Well, overwhelmingly, it is the young men of color. It's an industry which has huge numbers of young people of color. I should say women as well. Obviously, the focus was on the men's teams over the summer and on the Premier League side since, again, the men's Premier League.
00:10:21
Speaker
I think obviously they have a right to talk about and protest and express things that matter to them and they have players associations which listen to their concerns and grievances and act accordingly like any workplace.
00:10:37
Speaker
It's an interesting one, isn't it? I have absolutely no issue with sport in politics, but I think also, you know, sport should be enjoyed on its own terms. It's a bit like with literature, you know, people say, oh, I really enjoyed that book, but the author's a right-wing asshole. I don't like it anymore. Well, the film, the director, the filmmakers, an asshole, you know, they said this, they canceled, you think? I mean, come on, that's, I think that's somewhat myopic. I mean, it's a slightly separate thing.
00:11:04
Speaker
I was just going to ask you, since we're on the topic, we are living in a time of council culture, and this is something we're seeing even in football. Personally, I kind of agree with
Sports, Politics, and Ownership Models
00:11:15
Speaker
you on that. I mean, I think, for example, someone like Woody Allen, his movies, I love his films, but it doesn't mean that I have to agree with everything he's done in his life. I mean, Inman Bariman, Swedish director, one of the best of all time, he was an artsy for seven years.
00:11:28
Speaker
I mean, again, we have to be able to separate the art and the artist, or do you not agree? No, I completely agree. There are boundaries and so on, and things are relatively permeable, but no, I completely agree, especially for great art.
00:11:47
Speaker
Where would you want to draw the line? You know, somebody, a reactionary would say, well, Leonardo da Vinci, I don't enjoy his art because the man was a homosexual. A, we would find that repulsive, but then B, we would say, what a strange, bizarre thing to say. He's clearly a genius.
00:12:04
Speaker
I think the Woody Allen one's a good one. I don't want to get into a debate about platforming and all these things because obviously who people choose to give awards to or have a platform to or whose films they choose to fund is their business. But I think that's true. I don't think somebody should say,
00:12:20
Speaker
Oh, I'm not going to watch a film. I'm not going to watch a Woody Allen film because of his private life, his personal life. I think that's quite strange. And I think very quickly you run out of actually people that you would want to watch. Exactly. I've recently read a great series of books by a Chinese author called Xi Jinping, or Liu Xi Jinping, the science fiction trilogy. Really great. And people are saying, well, he's an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party.
00:12:49
Speaker
you think, well, if he wasn't an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party, he's a very high profile figure in China, he'd probably be in prison. Like, you know, what, what do you want, you know, you want the guy to go, you know, so I just, he's not done anything overtly bad, as far as I can tell. So, you know, it's the same, you know, same in Italy, you've got, you've got fantastic, you know, literature in the 19th century, or whatever, you know, Alessandro Manzoni, or whatever.
00:13:17
Speaker
God knows what their politics were. God knows. Exactly. But I mean, sports watching has been a big talking point in football recently, especially after the Saudi state run fund, the Public Investment Fund took over Newcastle and this talk of, I don't know if it's official yet, but this talk of the Premier League chairman resigning because of it. What's your views on clubs like Newcastle, PSG, Man City being owned by states with
00:13:46
Speaker
let's say, shady human rights records. Should that be allowed, do you think?
00:13:51
Speaker
I think the Saudi one is almost unique. It's important to say, obviously, what's going on with Qatar and the kafala system and the abject treatment of human rights and the construction of these sports data, et cetera, is appalling. It's disgusting. But I think with the Saudis, you are dealing with a regime which, probably the most vile political regime in the world, certainly amongst the major powers, the G20, which it is in.
00:14:18
Speaker
This is a regime which had a Washington Post journalist chopped up into pieces. You know, they don't muck about. It wasn't some sort of dissident you'd never heard of. It was an American citizen who wrote for the Washington Post. And they command such power principally because of course, their fossil fuel reserves and the major holdings they have, economic holdings they have in the United States that they can get away with it. So I think the Saudi Arabia thing is a bit different to the other ones, although not a particularly nice people.
00:14:44
Speaker
I would extend that also to probably, I don't know him, but Abramovich has obviously major concerns. I mean, most billionaires do. I think the solution has to be political and structural or whatever. For me, it would be something like, yes, broadly speaking, anybody can invest in English football, but we should have something like 50 plus one.
00:15:06
Speaker
I feel like fans or supporters trust should have a say, at least, in how their clubs are run. People say, oh, well, if you did that, then they wouldn't work. They would be terrible. They would be useless. Well, two of the best run clubs in Europe, Bayern Munich and Ajax, run along exactly those lines. I don't think anybody can say seriously that Ajax is a poorly run business.
00:15:27
Speaker
poor league, economically speaking, yet they do very well and they continue to perform very well in Europe, they continue to have a conveyor belt of great players, they have a great stadium, it's full, they have a quote unquote global brand, you know, and so what they're playing, if only Manchester United could be run like Ajax.
00:15:45
Speaker
It's the idea that you need these people and their money, not that the Glazers have any money, to run a club. I think it's strange. I would start by giving supporters trusts 10% maybe. I think we need to normalize that as a culture in England. All football clubs, all professional clubs, 10% of the equity should be held by supporters trusts with a view to becoming 50 plus one.
00:16:08
Speaker
And I think once you do that, then the Abramovichs, the Glazers, the Binsalmans, they become far less interested in the Premier League. And I think for English football fans in particular, this is a big, and I know this goes beyond just England, there's investment in football clubs across Europe. But I think for English football fans in particular, this is a big, big thing to grapple with. Because we don't realise that the Premier League is probably this country's number one cultural export now.
00:16:35
Speaker
And and so, you know the ethics around it really matter but also it poses really amazing political opportunities Because if you if you can politicize ownership in the Premier League, then you can do it around housing around electricity around public transport You know who owns war and and and whose interest is benefited by the status quo and the status quo football in England does not benefit fans and so yeah, I think
00:17:03
Speaker
That, to me, is a more important question than which oligarch should be allowed to own a club, although, of course, they're related. Look at the glazes. I mean, in a way, I think the glazes are more, from a footballing perspective, more reprehensible than bin Salman. They've gone into a club. They've taken out more than a billion pounds since 2005. The stadium is trash. It's falling apart. I mean, not trash. That's an exaggeration. 76,000 stadium. But the stadium is falling apart, given the revenues at hand. It's terribly run.
00:17:34
Speaker
I don't think it's a living wage employer that might have changed. I think four out of 20 clubs in the Premier League a few years ago were living wage employers. You can really judge a business by how it treats its most poorly paid staff. For me, that's a bigger thing than the billionaire ownership. Bin Salman and the idea that you've got Jordy's waving around Saudi Arabian flags, I find it very strange.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah, 50 plus one would be the dream for me. And that should be the law. But I think that we've reached the we've crossed the line now, haven't we? In the Premier League, where it's like, how can you ever go to 50 plus one? I mean, these owners, these states are not just going to give away what they own, especially like City, for example, spent 1.5 billion, you know, they spent all that money, they're not just going to suddenly give away 50% of the club. It's I don't know how we could ever get to that, unfortunately.
00:18:28
Speaker
No, I completely agree and I think that's why, you know, you have to be realistic and say, let's normalize the culture of fans having a say in their clubs. You know, I think 10%, maybe I'm getting a bit older, you know, I'm getting a bit sort of conservative my old age, but I think you used to be small and think big.
00:18:44
Speaker
No, football is, I think football is the one sport where you actually have to be conservative because you need rules in sport. If you don't have rules and you don't regulate it, you get what you've got now and you have, you know, state zoning clubs where it's like from a sporting point of view, it's impossible for anyone to compete. You can't compete against the Saudi Arabian state or Qatar, you know, the endless money they've got. It's impossible. So, but that's the mess that from a sporting point of view that we're in now.
00:19:11
Speaker
in football. But I mean, going back to going back to the politics and just leading on from the sportswash in nations who are
00:19:23
Speaker
who have shady records of human rights, but nations who are, let's say, committing human rights abuses or other atrocities. In the past, for example, we've seen apartheid South Africa, though they were banned from sport for a long time. I'm not sure if they were banned from football, but they were banned from cricket and rugby. Should countries like these be banned by FIFA?
00:19:45
Speaker
today, or should we separate again, as we were discussing before, should we separate sport from these things? Obviously, the obvious talking point is Israel. There has actually been campaigns for FIFA to ban Israel with what's going on in Palestine. What do you think should be the way that football deals with these kind of issues?
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a great question. I mean, I'm a critic of what's happening in occupied Palestine. I support BDS. Do I think that Israel should be banned from the Olympics or from a World Cup or from, you know, not that they're ever going to qualify for a World Cup or from, you know, European qualifiers?
00:20:22
Speaker
I don't think they should. Again, maybe that's me being really weak because the thing is the idea of excluding certain nation states on the basis of their politics is a very slippery slope. My concern is that once you start to see football used as a means of geopolitics, the question is where does it end?
00:20:45
Speaker
It would start with Israel, or Israel will be a course celeb or something. Very quickly it becomes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, China, Bolivia, Venezuela, and before you know it, half the world can't compete in sports events.
00:21:03
Speaker
So, I would be reticent to adopt that as an approach. In extreme examples, clearly it worked with apartheid South Africa, but that's because it was quite a sui generis, which is to say it was quite a unique case. You could say the same with regards to Israel, and I think people don't realize this sometimes. People say, oh, well, the left is obsessed with this one country. Why not China or Iran? There are human rights abuses going on in those countries.
00:21:27
Speaker
sometimes worse, in fact, if you look, for instance, at the death penalty with regards to homosexuality in Iran. But the basis of the political settlement in those countries isn't built upon the displacement of 800,000 people, which is what happened with Israel. And it isn't based upon apartheid between two different peoples. So there's certainly a case for Israel, but I think as a general principle, I'm ambivalent about it.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah. And it also depends who's making the decision. Like you say, it's a slippery slope, isn't it? Who decides which countries should be banned and who doesn't? That's a difficult one as well. Well, I think you could see a world where India and China are excluded because of their regimes. Both not great.
00:22:15
Speaker
That's 2.8 billion people excluded from participation in elite sport. So, you know, I mean, Israel offers an easy example in a way because it's not a massively competitive nation, you know, for a footballing sensibility, it's quite small. And what it does is incredibly egregious. But the broader principle is a tough one. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:22:40
Speaker
Access journalism and mainstream journalism, this is something that me and Nimr, we pride our podcast on being a bit independent to the mainstream media.
The Role of Independent Media in Sports Journalism
00:22:53
Speaker
I worked in the corporate media for
00:22:55
Speaker
for well over a decade so i know exactly how it works and novara media can be regarded as as i mean i would regard it as an alternative to the mainstream corporate media and. For those who've not worked in the mainstream media they may not fully understand what i'm gonna ask our now but i think an increasing amount of people will understand but it goes like this so.
00:23:18
Speaker
the way I see it, when you work for the mainstream or corporate media, let's just say the BBC or right, or maybe not the best examples, because they're public broadcasters, but one of the main newspapers, it's very difficult to do certain journalism, I would say, I say you'd have to toe the line of your corporate employer, you know, there's certain people issues that are literally, literally untouchable, you can't go there. Yeah.
00:23:41
Speaker
If there's a risk of being sued, you don't go there. If you are going to upset a sponsor or a corporate interest with a story, you don't go there. But most importantly, in the coming to access channels, if you're going to risk your relationship with, in football's case, you know, a club or a player or an agency,
00:23:59
Speaker
you don't go there. I mean, that's what's known as access journalism. You basically you get access by self censoring. And that's the most powerful form of censorship, in my opinion, self censorship, more than actual enforced censorship. And, you know, I'll give you an example just before I put it over to you. I mean, I worked at a company a few years ago where we weren't able to run a public story. This was already in the public domain of a footballer's rape case because the company had a close relationship with the player.
00:24:26
Speaker
So, I mean, that is for me that kind of in a nutshell, it describes the mainstream media, the corporate media, and it's why I kind of got turned off it, to be honest with you. So, I mean, I'd love to know what your thoughts are as someone who's been, you know, with Navara Media being like the kings of the independent media. I mean, how do you view this whole mainstream media versus independent media debate?
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think for football fans to make it sort of make it maybe a bit more comprehensible. When I think of Nevada, I think of the Manchester United dictum, hated, adored, never ignored, which is what you do when you do independent media, like you say, some people really don't like it, some people do like it, but you're generally not ignored because you're telling stories that nobody else is telling.
00:25:13
Speaker
a lot of the time, especially when you're breaking news stories. Like we broke the Labour leaks story. Maybe some of your audience will be familiar with. And it was precisely the dynamic you're talking about of access journalism, which is why nobody else would touch it. And it was a profound public interest. That's why we did it. And our lawyers said that. No, you have to run this story. I didn't say have to run it. So obviously, it's an editorial calculation. But they said, of course, you have every right to run this story. And it's had huge implications for the Labour Party.
00:25:41
Speaker
They've now got legal cases going on. There's been challenges to all sorts of things. It's got political and financial implications for the party for many, many years. Now, we were the only organization willing to run that story. Yes, I mean, the lawyer thing I think is overused actually because the lawyers told us it was fine quite quickly.
00:26:00
Speaker
I think that's often used as a means of self censorship so we can't do that because you know it's not been legal or take ages to legal you know you can pull some punches and you know lawyer things properly and still tell a really good story. But the self censorship thing is is bang on those a great example of this a few years ago where.
00:26:21
Speaker
Andrew Marr was speaking to the academic Noam Chomsky. And he says, look, nobody tells me what questions I should be asking. What a ridiculous thing to say. I'm, you know, I self censor. And Chomsky says, well, look, I doubt if you ask the wrong kind of questions, you'd be sat here asking me questions.
00:26:39
Speaker
So, which is to say you wouldn't be a BBC journalist with your own show if you didn't ask that quote-unquote right questions. So, that's exactly it. And I think most people intuitively get that. And I think that's why there's been this explosion in new media, independent media, non-corporate media in terms of football coverage.
00:26:59
Speaker
Because what I find super interesting actually is that the people who are most credulous when it comes to corporate mainstream media, it's not about who's earning the most money or who's got the most qualifications. If I look at, for instance, the Trump stuff,
00:27:18
Speaker
I don't like Donald Trump. I mean, some of his stuff's quite funny. But if you look at some of the stories that were being latched on by the New York Times, etc, like the Steele dossier, you know, the pee tapes and stuff, it was complete fabrication. And I'm not just saying that, they have literally, you know, they've gone to jail right now because of that.
00:27:41
Speaker
know, it was complete fabrication. And yet you had huge numbers of highly educated, you know, smart, you know, very affluent people sort of believing it, they were very credulous. And what I think is so powerful, it gives me a bit of faith in humanity, is actually the default of a lot of new media, not just with politics, but with sport with all number of areas, is actually not cynicism, because that's not powerful. So cynicism is very easy, and I don't like it. But there's a very healthy skepticism.
00:28:06
Speaker
And people, the default of younger people in particular, because they've been raised in this new media environment, is to say, well, whose interest is served by that relationship? Why are you saying that? What are you getting out of it? And I do think people look at independent media covering their favorite club or whatever, and they see legacy media, I won't name any names, and they see two different completely genres of journalism.
00:28:30
Speaker
It's very visceral. So, yeah, in sport, it's a problem, but in politics, it's deadly, because ultimately, the people who run our governments have huge power over us. And again, another example of access journalism, I just find this a remarkable example,
00:28:46
Speaker
again andrew marr there's nothing unique about him it just happens to be two examples he wrote a novel i think six seven eight years ago you can probably find it on amazon if you you know type in andrew marr and the launch event for that novel guess where it was
00:29:03
Speaker
launch event. It was at number 10 Downing Street. Oh my god. Yeah. And you think, wait, your job is to scrutinise these people. They've done you a favour in launching your book. It's about scratching each other's backs. It's terrible. Again, it's just basic professionalism. Jesus. They shouldn't be frightened of you. They should be, oh god, if Andrew Marr gets hold of this, we're in deep shit. We have to do X, Y, Z.
00:29:31
Speaker
Obviously, they don't behave like that if they have that kind of relationship with one another. So it's a huge problem in political journalism. Yeah.
00:29:40
Speaker
I'm not sure if it was George Orwell that actually said it or if it was misquoted to him, but it's basically public relations, a lot of the stuff you see in the mainstream and corporate media. For sure. Turning back to your point earlier about ownership of clubs and fan ownership, one of our patrons, Joel Mialich, he sent in a question and he asks,
00:30:01
Speaker
Is fan ownership the ideal model for football or would it better if the councils or municipalities owned the teams and they in turn were elected by people living there locally?
00:30:16
Speaker
I don't think there's any one model which is the model which football club should be adhering to. If Jack Walker, who owned Blackburn Rovers, he was a good oligarch. If Jack Walker wants to walk into Blackburn Rovers and spend 200 million pounds to make them the champions, which he did in the mid-1990s, no strings attached, and he's not trying to make it a global brand or whitewash human rights abuses, I don't have a problem with that. I'm from Bournemouth.
00:30:46
Speaker
I would go to watch both occasionally as a kid, but they were in what is now league one, so it wasn't very good football.
00:30:54
Speaker
If somebody like him worth half a billion pounds, I'm going to buy Bournemouth, I'm a Bournemouth guy done good and I'm going to build a 30,000-seat stadium, invest in the academy, get young players from Dorset going up the football pyramid because there's incredibly few footballers that come from the south of England, not including London, but people like Graham Lassieux, Matt Letizier,
00:31:17
Speaker
quite rare. You know, that would be quite cool. I mean, I'm up for that. I have no real problems with it. But of course, that's the exception of the rule. And where you get weak political arguments is people saying, well, Jack Walker did it, so there's no problem with big money coming into football. Well, we know there is. Look at Adam Gaidemack in Portsmouth,
00:31:37
Speaker
look at, like I said, the Glazers, look at Mike Ashley. We could go on and on in terms of bad bookloads. I mean, M.K. Dons, what happened to Wimbledon and K.W. Milton Keynes? I mean, it's just insane. That was incredible. And also you think, I wonder if that would happen now as well, because I think now people understand the
00:32:00
Speaker
brand equity of football heritage and English football. They get it, I think, even like complete idiots like the Glazers get it. So you think this is a club which was competing in the Premier League. Their story was incredible. And it's in London, which is a huge consumer market. If that's the game you want to play,
00:32:19
Speaker
And there weren't that many, there were no big clubs in South London. I mean, there still aren't arguably, not ticking in Chelsea, but Wimbledon, you've got Crystal Palace. There's no big, big clubs. You think, if that's the game you want to play, why are you going to Milton, bloody Keynes?
00:32:33
Speaker
Crazy, but you're right. For me, I think fans have to have a say. It doesn't mean they always get it right. There's that great clip of Harry Redknapp being told by fan AGM, West Ham AGM that Frank Lampard will never amount to anything.
00:32:52
Speaker
You know, that's, and they were saying, was it, um, Scott Canning or somebody. Yeah. You know, so fans that always know best, of course they don't, but that, that, that guy, even he had an idiotic position on Frank Lampard, he still goes and buys a shirt. He still gets the season ticket. He should have some say in how the club is run.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, the problem is now is that certainly in the Premier League, but the clubs value the international global fan base. This is part of globalism is much more than than the local fan. In fact, you know, I think that's even I think it might be Nanyeli, the Juventus president even said that the the global fans are more important than the local fans.
00:33:35
Speaker
because that's where they make their money, commercially. There's only a very small, I mean, if you take Manchester United, I don't even know how many, how many Man United fans there even are in Manchester. Whereas you see how many Manchester United fans there are in Asia and you know, so who gets the voice? Is it the local fans that go to the matches every game or is it the live in the city or is it those around the world?
00:33:57
Speaker
I mean, maybe I'm going to sound quite insular here, but I think it has to be the local fans, doesn't it?
Local vs. International Fans in Football
00:34:03
Speaker
Because I think international fans are attracted to a club because of its story, its players.
00:34:10
Speaker
But that's been created by the local people. You look at United, you think of the Busby Babes, Sir Matt building the stadium after the Second World War, playing at Main Road. Absolutely, I agree. But I think from a financial point of view, and the likes of the Glazers, they only care about getting their dividends and the financial, then the international fans. But even from a financial perspective, I don't think it's stupid, because people, again, you're trying to recuperate the energy, the fan culture,
00:34:38
Speaker
which, let's be real, has been lost in the Premier League substantially. And that's what people are attracted to. Even now, football fans across Europe, they identify English football culture as interesting because they appeal to a culture, especially in Italy when I was there anyway. They appeal to a fan culture which had its downsides, like beating people up and hooliganism. But they appeal to a fan culture which was very different to the one we have now. So in many ways, that is the product.
00:35:04
Speaker
You know, as much as the players on the pitch, you know, having Mancunians or Scouses. I mean, Liverpool is a great example, right? Liverpool's footballing brand is iconic because of Scouses. It wouldn't be the same club without them.
00:35:16
Speaker
No, no, absolutely. You're right. You're right. But also the price of football has gone up so much that a lot of these traditional fans have been certainly young fans have been priced out. Okay, final question. And then we'll finish just to finish Nimble finished off of a game. And so I just this is something I just came up while just while we recorded. And so I was trying to think of communist footballers. And the couple of couple of famous ones I know of definitely soprates, who's actually a former Fiorentina player, and where you that's where you live.
00:35:46
Speaker
And Paul Breitner, a Germany legend who was very famous, used to grow a massive beard. He actually used to read the Little Red Book and then got called a hypocrite because he then became one of the first high profile
00:36:01
Speaker
did a commercial selling stuff and everyone's calling him a hypocrite. They're the two that I can I can think of but I mean do you know of any others or or I guess more importantly have you ever had like any association with footballers who support like left-wing causes like your own or or even supported Jeremy Corbyn like during the you know in the last few years when he was in when he was at Labour?
00:36:22
Speaker
There is, the first one that comes to mind is Cristiano Lucarelli. He used to play for Livorno. Livorno. Yeah. And, you know, again, mid 2000s, you know, he was in and around the fringes of the Italian national squad. He was a good journeyman who sort of really peaked towards the end of his sort of career. He was solid sense forward, very political. In England, I think the funniest one, you know, this is a bit left field. It might be Chris Powell.
00:36:52
Speaker
okay yeah who yeah i think in the late 80s chris powell was like part of some communist group really yeah i'm pretty sure i'm maybe gonna have to legal this one i'm pretty i'm pretty sure that he wrote he like wrote explicitly for like some trotskiest organization or something fantastic yeah and no idea yeah yeah well obviously a lot of that um i'm not saying he was a member or whatever but because obviously you had um
00:37:21
Speaker
rock against racism. You had these broad kind of umbrella groups against Thatcherism, which encompassed, you know, liberals who just didn't like Margaret Thatcher for quite good reasons to, you know, communists. So maybe he was just brought in through that. But there's a few examples. Yeah, there's a few good ones in 80s football culture.
00:37:42
Speaker
In terms of socialists, I mean, there's obviously many, many more. You've got Shankly, you've got, you know, some Matt Busby a little bit, you've got Alex Ferguson, although, you know, his political credentials are a bit stranger. But I think Alex Ferguson's, you know, you read, you watch the documentary rather on Amazon and you think, yeah, you know, in the early 20th century, this guy would have been on a picket line and would have been a very militant person.
00:38:08
Speaker
In terms of communists now, I mean, you've got Diego Maradona, of course, you've got the Shea tattoo on the arm. And of course you had, and this is a bit of a bugbear for me, is that, and I don't know why we don't talk about this more on the left, is how good club football and international football was in the Eastern Bloc under actually existing socialism. So like, okay, I'm not saying they were, I never went to them, I have no idea. I'm not saying that there was a great way to run a country,
00:38:35
Speaker
But if you look at, you know, like Stojer Bucharest being European champions, if you look at, you know, the Polish national team during the 1980s, you look at the USSR in the 60s, what a great side it was. I think they won the European Championships once, maybe. You know, super, super competitive teams.
00:38:57
Speaker
hungry, a bit different, or you go back further. I think that's a kind of different football sort of lineage. But it's interesting that, you know, you had these, like I say, Sturbock arrest outstanding team in a very poor country. And now, you know, it's developed country. And we've got, well, we're not developed country. So it's a mixed market economy.
00:39:16
Speaker
And if you want to make yourself anything of yourself as a footballer in Romania, you get the hell out. So that's perhaps another one. Football under actually existing communism, socialism wasn't so bad. They were performing pretty well. Another one is performing Yugoslavia. And again, I don't want to get into the sort of ethno-nationalist politics of that.
00:39:38
Speaker
incredible footballers and club sides were being produced, which is great. I mean, that, you know, the Balkan culture of football is a technique, the technical players they produce, especially in the late 80s and early 90s. I mean, unbelievable.
00:39:53
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, the Croatia side, you get in 1998, a lot of them were basically were playing for the Yugoslavian team in the early 1990s. Yeah. Because the next few was, I remember. Yeah. Boban, Davos Šuka, and you think Denmark, of course, famously replaced them in 1992. They could have possibly won that tournament.
00:40:16
Speaker
They probably would have. I mean, if you go through the squad list of that 92 tournament, it is by far the best squad on paper. It was unbelievable. Yeah. So that's that's my answer in terms of communist footballers is that we had, you know, we had communist countries and club teams. Yeah. Right. Before before we let you go, we have this game. We play a rapid fire game. I'll give you two or more options and you just pick one and you don't have to give an answer, you know, expand on the answer if you don't want to and you can if
Rapid-Fire Round: Football and Beyond
00:40:44
Speaker
you want. OK. Yeah.
00:40:45
Speaker
First one, fairly simple. Everyone in the world's been asked this. Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo? I had the same answer as I think I heard somebody else say, which is Lionel Messi is the better player, but if you had to have a single player produce a goal in a single game, high stakes, Cristiano Ronaldo. Pele or Diego Maradona? Maradona. Francesco Totti, Roberto Bajo or Alessandro Del Piero.
00:41:18
Speaker
pure talent badger. Franco Baresi or Paolo Maldini? Wow. Oh, that is tougher. Yeah. Maldini lasts longer, so I suppose Maldini. Rather stranded with on a desert island, Gary Neville or Roy Keane?
00:41:37
Speaker
I think Keno, I actually quite like Roy Keane, but I think he'd do your head in, wouldn't he? The whining and the moaning. Well, wouldn't Gary as well? I mean, we had Ericsson on and he called him a professional moaner. Yeah, that's true. Maybe Keno would actually just get stuck in and do things. Yeah, it's a tough one, isn't it? Actually, maybe Roy Keane would just shut up and keep himself busy.
00:42:01
Speaker
Okay, I'll go with Keynote, at least he'd be entertaining. Yeah. England to win the next five World Cups or Jeremy Corbyn to become the next Prime Minister of the UK. The next five World Cups, I mean that's... It's a one World Cup.
00:42:29
Speaker
You know, this is gonna sound strange. I would take the football because I firmly believe if he was the prime minister that, you know, there would be a coup of some kind. There'd be a military coup. And I don't want to be responsible for that. So I'm gonna say the five World Cups. Well, there already was one, covertly. Exactly, it wasn't even a bow and bow guy. Yeah, so I'll take that over. Yeah. And finally, the most contentious question we probably asked you, pineapple on pizza, food heaven or food hell?
00:42:59
Speaker
I mean, this is ridiculous. Come on. Pineapple should be nowhere near a pizza. Thank you. Especially 10 pineapple. Thank you very much. That's the correct answer. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on, Aaron. We really appreciate it. And if people want to find you on social media, where can they find you and where can they find Navara Media? Yes, Navara Media is NavaraMedia.com. Navara Media on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
00:43:27
Speaker
Um, I'm on at Aaron Mastani on Twitter. That's primarily where I sort of work, I guess. But if you, if you're kind of just interested in what we do at Navarra media, the best place to start is our YouTube channel, Navarra media. Well, thank you very much for coming on and everybody until next time, we'll be back on Monday doing a review show. So until then, take care of each other and bye-bye.