# Futbol In America & The Death of Monoculture

An episode of [The Real Deal: A Real Madrid Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1807821669), 5 Dec 2025, 24 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/103607aa8/podcast/play/112210466/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-11-5%2F413841228-44100-2-c65be27634114.mp3

Jarod Hector and Sid discuss how the death of monoculture and pressure on corporations to grow profits has led to "crossover" style sports events related to America, a place where the game is not a traditional stronghold. We discuss the NFL at the Bernabeu, Ronaldo at the White House, Messi in the MLS, and how it all relates to new methods of audience capture. The Beautiful Game is embracing modern marketing

## Transcript

[0:01] A lot of talk about soccer in America nowadays.
[0:05] You have Messi in the MLS, you have Ronaldo at the White House
[0:07] pissing off Barsa fans that he got to be there.
[0:10] It's a it's a crazy time. A lot.
[0:13] Hey, big, big window for us, Gerard.
[0:15] We got to we got to wave the soccer flag in America.
[0:18] No, listen, this is a sport that you know, America is a strange
[0:23] place. It like is it is at once a place
[0:28] where the powers that be and the people who are in control cannot
[0:36] trace their family lineage back to this country, right?
[0:39] Like because they weren't from here.
[0:40] They all emigrated here, right? Like from somewhere else,
[0:43] however far back you have to go. So this idea that the reason why
[0:50] soccer is so hard to catch on here is because it's not quote
[0:52] UN quote an American thing. And I'm like, well, neither is
[0:56] quote UN quote America, right? America is not an American
[0:59] thing. So it's just so odd to be right.
[1:02] Like this idea of like, you know, soccer is this thing that
[1:05] like people don't doesn't catch on here for whatever reason.
[1:08] I mean, the bottom line is, is that we as a country do not
[1:12] funnel our best athletes into this sport, right?
[1:16] There's no mechanism to do that. The way it's set up is that in
[1:20] order to play elite youth level soccer in this country, you have
[1:23] to come from a family of means, whereas in most other countries
[1:26] in the world that is the complete opposite case.
[1:28] If you Got Talent, we'll find a way to get you into a program to
[1:31] make you good. Oh yeah, that is really well
[1:35] said. And that is part of the story of
[1:37] why I'm on the real deal and not playing.
[1:39] Because I would love to have played.
[1:40] Don't get me wrong. I'm a competitor, Gerard, you
[1:42] know me, I want to be #1 I played, no doubt, but when I was
[1:47] in Singapore, I was a great two way player.
[1:50] JSSL, Arsenal Academy shout out Arsenal.
[1:53] They, I didn't, I didn't like that.
[1:54] The coach referred to Chavi Niesta when he showed me how to
[1:57] turn, but they knew what they were doing.
[1:58] I'll I'll give it to him. Those were the examples of the
[2:00] day. It was 2012.
[2:01] Modrich wasn't at reality yet. But I I left Arsenal and from
[2:06] Singapore and I come over to New Jersey and I hear about the
[2:10] tryouts for the team going into my sophomore year of high school
[2:14] and I'm excited. I get ready with everything and
[2:16] I go and then I find out I missed the paperwork deadline by
[2:19] 100 days. I'm like, wait, what?
[2:20] Like you're not going to let me play over paperwork?
[2:23] Like, are you kidding me? I'm like a talent here, dude.
[2:25] I care about the game. And so that was the end of my
[2:28] soccer career. That was the end.
[2:30] I'm not spending. I'm not spending $1000 to go
[2:34] play for a club team in the middle of the winter in New
[2:36] Jersey when half nobody like when the few kids who care about
[2:39] the game I could have played with and found my community were
[2:42] taken away from me not but like it was my fault.
[2:44] I don't know what the paperwork, but why is that technicality the
[2:47] thing? And two, I saw how much those
[2:49] kids who were playing were spending to stay good year
[2:52] round, and that was a lot of money.
[2:54] Jerrod, that was. It is it's wild to me that
[2:59] that's how we we do this pay for play system here in the United
[3:04] States. And so yes, that's a big reason
[3:05] why we are not good. What I think is interesting too
[3:08] about your story is that I mentioned that America's not
[3:10] American powers that be. You know, people trace by their
[3:12] lineages are all they're all immigrants.
[3:14] So clearly that is your family's history and yours as well,
[3:17] right? You emigrated here.
[3:19] I wonder if it's the same story as everybody else, which is that
[3:22] your mom and dad, like most immigrant parents, like I ain't
[3:25] got time for this football nonsense.
[3:27] You got to figure out if you want to play.
[3:28] It's on you to figure out when to get the paperwork in and do
[3:31] all that. I got other things to worry
[3:32] about. Is that is that the story?
[3:34] Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say I was
[3:36] always an independent kid, like in the sense that I'd always
[3:39] like kind of sort my things out. I wouldn't want my parents to
[3:42] come and kind of interfere. And in that case, it's like,
[3:44] hey, I'm playing soccer, I'm taking the initiative.
[3:46] I've always just seen it as something I do and I just think
[3:50] like fundamentally like the fact that that was the loophole was
[3:53] annoying. But even beyond that, soccer is
[3:55] expensive in this country. And culturally like America's
[3:59] done something very impressive, which is just taken several
[4:02] other sports and monetize the shit out of them very
[4:04] efficiently. And the I think now what's
[4:07] happening is like the rest of the world's looking like, hey,
[4:10] per game, America's smarter at monetizing their sports, Simply
[4:14] put. And like we may not see eye to
[4:16] eye. We may not like them, they may
[4:17] not like us, but at the end of the day, like I think the money
[4:20] and has crossed a point but two, I think Jerrod, we've also
[4:25] crossed a point of monoculture in our reality where 20-30 years
[4:30] ago there was a monoculture everyone in America watched like
[4:33] the bulls, Michael Jackson, I don't know the.
[4:36] Cosby Show? Whatever.
[4:38] Cheers. Seinfeld.
[4:39] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yeah, friends.
[4:41] Yeah. That was America and that era of
[4:44] America. Or not America, but the whole
[4:46] world has kind of seen that era stop.
[4:49] And America was like a big cultural leader when it was a
[4:51] thing. And technology comes in,
[4:53] everyone has TikTok, everyone has YouTube, no one reads
[4:57] anymore. And so the amount of influence
[5:00] one person or thing or entity can have has gone down.
[5:04] And that's why you're getting all these crossover events,
[5:06] these multiverses messy in America.
[5:08] Ronaldo at the White House, the, the crossover theme is because
[5:12] audience capture is just really hard now.
[5:14] And so the soccer people are like, oh, let's get the American
[5:17] audiences. Formula One, the movie.
[5:20] They made it because they could hook American audiences, but the
[5:23] international audiences fed the box office.
[5:26] It wasn't as big in America. And now it's, it's the same
[5:29] idea. Like internationally, people are
[5:30] going to watch it. We're going to ramp up the
[5:32] digital engagement. We're going to be able to sell
[5:34] that to sponsors. So more sponsorship money comes
[5:36] in and this this shameless crossover thing is going to keep
[5:40] happening. And I call it shameless because
[5:41] like it's really not with a brand strategy in mind, but
[5:44] everyone is just going and endorsing someone else, like
[5:47] Logan Paul endorsing the the Saudi Arabian Prince.
[5:50] I don't know, you know what I mean though.
[5:51] It's all because everyone's got hands everywhere and nobody
[5:55] watches one thing anymore. Well, it is and it's all tied
[5:59] into the profit model, right, Which is constant growth year
[6:04] over year over year over year. But money is not an infinite
[6:07] source, right? Like money's finite.
[6:08] Like it, it runs out at some point people own, no matter how
[6:12] much you make, you only make so much at some point, it's it,
[6:15] right? And your discretionary income
[6:17] and what you spend to go to sporting events is limited,
[6:20] right? Like, OK, this is what I guess
[6:22] my not sporting events and that's it, right?
[6:24] But the constant need to, we need more, we need to tap in,
[6:26] right? That's this idea you mentioned
[6:28] about, you know, moving the football over here to the
[6:31] America cause tapping into the global audience is why the NFL
[6:34] has been playing games in Europe since the 80s, right?
[6:37] Like or or early 90s, excuse me, right, like they're just trying
[6:39] desperately right to tap into. And catching the audience.
[6:42] Wait, that's been since the 90s? Yeah, remember and and there was
[6:45] a league called NFL Europe for a while.
[6:47] There was an actual European NFL league.
[6:49] I mean, it failed miserably, but there was an NFL Europe league.
[6:54] Wow, I did not even know that. And that just shows how far
[6:57] ahead the NFL is just thinking about these things like in the
[7:00] 90s, like. Wow, Yeah.
[7:01] Oh, for sure. They were.
[7:02] They were always trying to globalize.
[7:03] I think the difference, though, is, is that no matter.
[7:06] Look, I don't know the full numbers and I'd love to check it
[7:08] out. I don't know that the NFL
[7:12] captures and translates overseas as much as the NFL pretends that
[7:18] it does or makes it seem like it does.
[7:20] As we know being in We are a Real Madrid podcast, the
[7:25] Redskins and I forget who, sorry, the Redskins, excuse me,
[7:27] wrong name the Commanders and maybe the Broncos.
[7:30] I forgot who they were playing. They played that that that match
[7:33] up at the burnabout. There were numerous people who I
[7:37] talked to soon who were there, people like Spaniards, the
[7:40] people who are actual native, native Spanish people who went
[7:43] and said I mean it was cool and all, but it felt like the
[7:46] stadium was in the other fans. It was predominantly Americans
[7:51] and I wonder, and again because of the nature of the NFL in that
[7:56] it is a once a week sport, your team plays one game a week.
[8:01] Sit in this country and I don't know if all listeners know this,
[8:04] but there are people who season tickets to their favorite NFL
[8:09] team. That is where their
[8:10] discretionary money goes. So not only do they go to their
[8:14] eight or nine home matchups, they also travel on the road for
[8:19] those other eight or nine games away and spend the weekend in
[8:21] the other NFL cities watching their team play.
[8:23] That is what a lot of people do. And so if you know in advance
[8:28] your team's playing in Spain, for example, right, you can plan
[8:31] to go to Spain for the weekend, right?
[8:33] It's not a long flight, 6 hours, right, Depending on I mean, if
[8:35] if if you're from New York, a little bit a little bit further
[8:37] if you're somewhere else, but you can plan that out, right?
[8:40] And you can go. I don't know how many native
[8:42] Spanish people, like people born and raised in Spain who lived
[8:45] there, give a crap about the actual National Football League.
[8:49] Yeah, for sure. It's funny, I was seeing tweets
[8:53] like on the Spanish on Spanish Twitter and we're called
[8:56] Americans are called Yankees on Spanish Twitter and they're
[9:00] saying damn, the Yanks sold us like Rio Valicano versus LJ at
[9:04] the Bernabao and made it seem like the Super Bowl.
[9:08] I mean, yes, right it it it it it wasn't the two of the NF LS
[9:12] best teams this season. We did that that wasn't who was
[9:15] there, but regardless, right. We know that from ratings here
[9:19] in the States, a a middling Thursday night matchup between
[9:23] 2-3 and eleven teams will crush an NBA game between the Nuggets
[9:32] and the Lakers. It'll crush the Christmas.
[9:34] It crushes the Christmas Day game sometimes last year.
[9:37] Not all the time. Not sometimes, all the time.
[9:39] OK. And any.
[9:40] Anybody watching the NFL game will demolish any NBA game.
[9:44] Any NBA. Game and they don't know that
[9:46] Jerrod like the face of the NBA comes and jokes about how the
[9:49] NBA owns Christmas and it's really a sarcastic joke at the
[9:51] fact that they don't, which is what like I thought that was.
[9:55] The NBA used to own Christmas, right?
[9:57] But once the NFL decided, oh, we're going to put games on
[10:00] Christmas now, Now it's not contest, right like.
[10:03] That's so funny and that is very interesting.
[10:07] And so now to talk a little bit about soccer in America and how
[10:11] they're seem to try to sell it. You have messy Apple TV.
[10:15] He is playing the final on Sunday or tomorrow one either
[10:20] tomorrow or Sunday. Also, I'm throwing this episode
[10:22] up today. We can just talk about it.
[10:23] But messy versus messy versus Mueller in the in the in the big
[10:28] game. How much do you think Messi's
[10:30] brought interest to America? I'll say this now, I, as a
[10:33] football historian and fan of the game, have when I had a free
[10:37] trial for Apple TVI was sitting down and you know, it was on.
[10:40] I threw it on cuz I'm like, how? And to be fair, I might have
[10:43] been little inebriated and having fun just relaxing that
[10:46] evening. But I I don't think I would do
[10:48] it normally. But but with that being said, it
[10:51] is fun to watch like a problem solver like Leo in an
[10:55] environment where everyone is so much so far in fear to him
[10:59] cognitively. I hate to say it but it's just
[11:01] true. Like he's he's the best brain in
[11:04] the history of the game in my opinion.
[11:05] Like, just deadly. It, it, it is.
[11:09] It is helped certainly because Leo, Leo is a global phenomenon.
[11:13] He's a name that everybody knows.
[11:16] One of the things we like to do true is, you know, Henry will
[11:22] talk about, OK, but does your grandmother know who this player
[11:25] is, right? Like your grandmother has heard
[11:27] of Steph Curry, right? Like that's like a player who
[11:29] transcends even the casual, whatever that it's.
[11:32] He's part of the even though there is no monoculture, he's
[11:35] part of popular culture, right? That's who Leo Messi is.
[11:38] You know nothing about soccer. You know who that is, right?
[11:41] So from that standpoint, yes, he has brought in so much attention
[11:44] and because of our media apparatus here in the United
[11:48] States and the way that the media works here, so much of the
[11:51] sport was of of sport coverage was focused on that, right?
[11:55] Messi's in Miami. Oh my God, the MLS is about to
[11:57] take off. And it's much like when the
[12:01] media decides that Toy X is the popular toy this Christmas and
[12:05] you didn't know about it, but now you do.
[12:07] And now everybody rushes out to buy Toy X.
[12:09] It's the same kind of thing, right?
[12:11] Everybody's like, Oh my God, I got to watch the MLS, whatever,
[12:13] right? So like there was a lot of that
[12:14] surge and swell and that is good for capturing attention.
[12:19] I don't know how good it is for sustaining attention, right?
[12:22] Because ultimately the thing itself has to be good and good
[12:25] quality. Now for people like us, right,
[12:27] who are who enjoy the sport. One of the ways, however you can
[12:32] make it sustaining is you mentioned F1 is what F1 did with
[12:36] the Netflix deal, which the whole drive to survive thing,
[12:38] right? We're doing the whole behind the
[12:39] scenes about the race and the drivers and what's going on
[12:43] because again, when we talk about leagues and sports trying
[12:46] to gain in popularity, it's not about diehards.
[12:50] Lee, I, I promise you this folks, leagues give less than 0
[12:54] fucks about diehard fans. Literally.
[12:56] And you know why? Because they know they got you
[12:58] already. They know no matter what you are
[13:00] tuning in, they are trying to capture the casual.
[13:03] How do I capture the casual? I got to do things that interest
[13:06] them, celebrities, this, that and the third, all these other
[13:09] things that pique their interests, right?
[13:11] That's how they keep them connected to the game.
[13:14] And that's what we're seeing more and more, right?
[13:15] I mean, today was a perfect example with the World Cup draw,
[13:18] which is in DC. How many non soccer people were
[13:23] involved in that, right? A ton.
[13:25] Because that's the goal. They're trying to capture people
[13:27] who don't give a shit about soccer but who like famous
[13:30] people to get them to watch. Yeah, and that ties into how
[13:35] it's all about the end of monoculture.
[13:37] So to get a new audience, you have to target these, like ADHD
[13:41] audiences that are on social media that may scroll across
[13:44] your thing because you landed on their leg of the algo.
[13:47] And that's what we actually got with Ronaldo at the White House.
[13:50] That was, you know, Ronaldo now has the largest personal brand
[13:54] in the world of any human being, I believe, and he has for years.
[13:58] Like you might think Messi's a better player.
[14:00] Ronaldo's winning the business game, man.
[14:02] Like he's he's at least per ounce of talent.
[14:04] He's at stretching it out as well as anyone.
[14:06] And credit to him for doing that.
[14:09] And, you know, it's at the point where the only way to guarantee
[14:13] like the what the White House achieved with that was everyone
[14:17] around the world that normally follows Ronaldo got to see it.
[14:21] And the same thing we get with Messi.
[14:23] I just find it interesting because audience capture, like
[14:27] the types of audiences they're trying to capture Jerrod, you
[14:29] can't even capture them for long form anymore.
[14:31] They're trying to capture impressions, the TikTok scrolls,
[14:35] like if you're like going fishing and there's so many
[14:38] types of fish, but most people really don't even have that
[14:40] attention span anymore. So I just wonder if a lot of it
[14:44] is a game for more social media like followers, which is now
[14:49] like the easiest way to leverage your brand because no one brand
[14:51] has that effect. But if you have a large
[14:53] following like Ronaldo, you can be like, hey, bring me to the
[14:55] White House. I promise you it'll be worth it.
[14:58] No individual other than Messi or someone like that big could
[15:01] have that type of effect. Maybe music stars of that size.
[15:05] But in general, Ronaldo's bigger than all of them.
[15:07] On Instagram, his comment and his comment on Mbabe's post was
[15:11] the most liked comment. So that's power.
[15:13] And but yeah, just just a thought on like, I feel like
[15:17] they're trying to just engage short form audiences with all
[15:19] this. Like they're not long form
[15:21] audiences just don't exist. They're not getting born
[15:23] anymore, Gerard. That that pivot, that the pivot
[15:26] that you talk about said has happened and is happening,
[15:28] right, like the old metric of and This is why it'll be so
[15:31] interesting to see how broadcast deals continue to get done going
[15:36] forward in the future. That old metric of, you know,
[15:41] the the Nielsen rating, right, 20 point, whatever million
[15:44] people watch, whatever. That only works for single stand
[15:48] alone events, right? But for like, and I, I know that
[15:52] linear broadcast still uses that, like the NFL still uses
[15:54] that number and they can because they have such big numbers, but
[15:57] that is such an irrelevant number.
[15:59] Now, to your point said, it's about are we going to go viral
[16:02] with something that happened? That's the new currency, right?
[16:04] And that is where you can see it is what every broadcast partner,
[16:10] every time there's a new event they're trying, they're trying
[16:12] to reverse engineer going viral, right?
[16:14] Not recognizing that virality doesn't happen by reverse
[16:18] engineering it. You don't know what's going to
[16:20] capture people's attention. Shit just does, right?
[16:23] I don't know why. It just things just happen and
[16:25] you're like, Oh my God, it's the funniest thing ever.
[16:27] Like, I don't know, like it just right.
[16:29] Like it's the mummification idea, right?
[16:31] There was 7 hours of the last dance, right?
[16:34] In terms of that, that, that that Michael Jordan documentary,
[16:38] Bulls documentary. But the enduring meme was which
[16:42] one? And I took that personally.
[16:44] You, you didn't know that was going to be the one at the time.
[16:47] It's just it was the one that stuck out.
[16:48] You cannot plan for that. It has to just happen on its own
[16:52] organically and there's no rhyme or reason as to how it's going
[16:55] to happen. It just does.
[16:57] But every company is chasing that high, right?
[16:59] How do we get that thing to happen?
[17:00] And you can see, you can tell when activation and crossover
[17:03] events and brands are forcing it, right?
[17:05] You can, you can clearly see you're trying to make this a
[17:07] thing and it's not a thing, right?
[17:09] Like, because that's not how it works.
[17:11] Fortnite, you have to let it happen.
[17:12] Like Fortnite. Yeah, Fortnite's number one.
[17:14] Like Fortnite does everything Like Fortnite just recently had
[17:17] a crossover event with like every comic book in history or
[17:19] some crap. I've never seen it.
[17:21] I don't know how they got the rights, but everyone gave it to
[17:23] Fortnite because Fortnite's so big.
[17:24] They're like, yeah, we'll give you our IP.
[17:27] And also in general with the and what they want are the viral
[17:32] moments. Agreed.
[17:32] And like it's really funny, like the White House definitely got
[17:36] that or or Ronaldo got that. I don't know who he wanted, but
[17:38] when all his fans are like, hey, messy fans, you said we wouldn't
[17:41] make it into the US. Now we're here.
[17:42] They got it. Like that's how you win.
[17:44] Now you you get your online mob to go.
[17:46] You get a idea to go viral. You may not believe it, but
[17:49] there's there's a lot of people online that will just tweet and
[17:52] like and retweet. I don't know who pays them to do
[17:54] it, but they're just there. Yeah, for sure.
[17:56] I mean, there's a whole, I mean a whole, there's a whole economy
[17:58] built on that, right? Like, and then influencers who
[18:01] literally like that's their job, right?
[18:02] It's to because there's something called a cult of
[18:06] personality, right? And obviously we know superstars
[18:08] have that, right? There's a reason why people love
[18:11] Jordan, Ronaldo, Messi, peak Tiger Woods, like all these
[18:15] people, right? There's just this cult of
[18:17] personalities people have now. It exists because of their
[18:20] excellence in the thing that they do, right?
[18:22] That has to be the first thing looking for sports and right?
[18:25] They have to be very good at the thing.
[18:27] And then it turns into this thing as the Internet and social
[18:30] media, all things evolve. The cult of personality, you get
[18:33] the parasocial relationship between the fans.
[18:35] I mean, we have this experience, right Sid?
[18:37] Not us individually, but within Real Madrid, right?
[18:40] Where you have player FC, right? Which if we say something about
[18:44] a player critiquing them, their FC crew comes into our mentions
[18:47] and goes crazy on us. And it's like, dude, we care
[18:50] about Real Madrid and we like all of our players.
[18:52] Critiquing or saying where someone can get better is not us
[18:56] hating on them. But that's not how cult of
[18:58] personality fans think everything must be.
[19:00] Person must be awesome and glowing about their favorite
[19:03] player. And if it's not, they're coming
[19:04] for you, right? This is the economy in the world
[19:06] that we live in. Yeah, agreed.
[19:08] And last thing I know, you have a hard stop, so I want to touch
[19:11] on it. I just want to let you know,
[19:13] Jerrod, there is no Club World Cup in Chicago.
[19:15] There's no World Cup in Chicago. And I am disappointed, but I
[19:18] just thought I'd let you know I'm don't.
[19:20] So we talk about all this monoculture.
[19:23] That's, that's bizarre. You got sold, What are they
[19:26] called the Bears Stadium now because of all Soldier Field.
[19:28] You got Soldier Field, you can't play there.
[19:30] So apparently my understanding is Soldier Field might just be
[19:34] too hard to get in and out of. And no, we don't play in Soldier
[19:37] Field. That's not the, that's not the
[19:39] Chicago team stadium, that's the NFL stadium.
[19:42] So I think the MLS team stadium is okay.
[19:45] And listen, though I don't fully get it.
[19:47] We just went over how nobody pays attention to anything
[19:49] anymore. Why would you miss out on one of
[19:51] the biggest cities in the USA? Is the USA so big that you can
[19:54] skip out on Chicago? I mean that math just feels
[19:57] weird to me cuz listen guys, this is the cleanest.
[20:00] You're in New York. It's not as clean if Gerard
[20:03] wants to have a nice stroll. New York is congested and it's
[20:06] not like Chicago. Chicago has cleanliness to it.
[20:09] I've spent many, many times in Chicago, many weeks for business
[20:14] month. Yes, for a big city, it is among
[20:17] the cleanest big cities in the United States.
[20:19] Now, it has considerably less people than New York City,
[20:22] right? New York City is 8 and a half
[20:24] million people, right? Like that's just, it's just far
[20:26] more people than Chicago. But in terms of cleanliness,
[20:29] doesn't even compare. Last thing here, soccer and NYCI
[20:37] think Messi beat. I believe Messi won in New York
[20:41] City. Let me double.
[20:43] Confirm here I think so that was cool.
[20:45] Went away to New York City, 5/1 destroyed them.
[20:49] Did not score. Got his teammate a hat trick,
[20:51] probably set him up on a plate. I haven't.
[20:54] I don't watch the MLS. We're not.
[20:55] I'm not an MLS tactico. But how's soccer?
[20:59] How's soccer in the how's soccer in the city?
[21:01] Is it popular? Is it growing?
[21:02] Because you'd think as such an international city, it's
[21:04] something that's growing. It for sure is very popular in
[21:07] the city. You have your pockets right?
[21:09] Obviously, New York is a heavy Spanish speaking population.
[21:13] There are a lot of, as you would imagine, Real Madrid and
[21:16] Barcelona fans in the city for all the all the reasons that
[21:18] that you think there are. But there are also a lot of fans
[21:22] of clubs that don't play in the US big 5 league, right, A lot of
[21:24] Flamingo fans, a lot of right, like River Plate, like a lot of
[21:27] just a lot of MX Mexico's top league, right.
[21:32] A lot of fans from of of clubs in those in in that league.
[21:35] And so soccer is extremely, extremely popular in this city.
[21:38] You can walk down any St. and it will not be longer than a block.
[21:43] You'll see somebody with some kind of soccer jersey on right.
[21:45] Like it's very popular. That being said, it'll be
[21:50] interesting to see this summer when the World Cup is here, how
[21:54] that juxtaposes with what happens, what potentially could
[21:58] happen with the New York Knicks this summer.
[22:00] Because then I maintain as a lifelong was a New York born and
[22:04] raised person is a lifelong. Well, not like I lived in
[22:07] California for a bit, left New Jersey for a bit, but but as a
[22:10] resident and A and a native of New York City, nothing captures
[22:15] this city like when the New York Knicks are good at basketball.
[22:18] Like the Yankees can win 8 million roll series, like Giants
[22:22] can win The Jets, Rangers, None of that shit matters when the
[22:25] Knicks are good. Oh my God, it's nuts in the
[22:28] city. And they've been good for a
[22:30] while now, right, in terms of, you know, making the playoffs,
[22:33] deep playoff runs, conference finals, etcetera.
[22:35] So it'll be very interesting to see in an E that might be more
[22:38] vulnerable this year. It'll be very interesting to see
[22:41] if they make a finals run, what that will look like juxtaposed
[22:44] to when the World Cup begins. Yeah, yeah.
[22:49] It's not like the NYC economy needs any of this.
[22:51] It's always doing well. It's a, it's a strange place.
[22:54] It's. Just it's bizarre place.
[22:56] It is a bizarre place. With that being said, I know I
[22:59] initially put the banner up as soccer and NYC, but I, you know,
[23:02] on the instructions of our own president who is really funny, I
[23:05] will give it to him. But whatever you think of him,
[23:07] he said he was, he was asking why we call it soccer and he
[23:11] said it, it said it is football with the feet.
[23:14] And a lot of people are now asking for him to be impeached
[23:16] over this. So that is a big concern
[23:18] internationally in the United States today.
[23:20] But you know, it's funny. I thought that was really funny.
[23:23] But yeah, listen, soccer, football, I just, I just bring
[23:26] that up because we are an American podcast like from, of
[23:30] people from America, but we do cover Real Madrid.
[23:32] We are interdisciplinary as we, you know, as we showed today,
[23:35] we're just interested in all the different spaces of, of sports,
[23:38] how people build power, where money comes from and all those
[23:41] things. And it's interesting.
[23:44] Sports is always interesting and it's only getting more
[23:46] interesting. It it's something I always say
[23:48] said, which is sports is a microcosm of the larger society
[23:52] in which it inhabits. So nothing that happens in sport
[23:56] should be a shock to you because you've already seen some version
[23:58] of it happen in quote UN quote the real world, right?
[24:01] Like it's no different. It's no different.
[24:03] Same thing, just a smaller subset of the real world.
[24:07] Yep. Well, everyone, thank you for
[24:09] joining us for this special episode today.
[24:11] We will have plenty of more beta testing style content out this
[24:14] month and we're rebranding so on.
[24:16] Make sure you check out our other episodes like subscribe,
[24:19] leave a comment. We need your help to grow as
[24:21] independent creators, so please help us out if you can.
[24:24] Thank you. Yes, Sir.

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