Danielle, is there anything you would add or say differently about what John has said about England, Argentina?

I just admire that John is for the children, but he's not being specific about which children.

This has been a difficult tournament for me because generally, I'm a pro-Latin American no matter what.

Argentina, shall we say, has gotten the rub of the green on a lot of sort of controversial calls that I think have made it a little bit harder to take and a little bit harder to cheer for them.

Messi is an extraordinary player.

I agree, probably the greatest of all time.

I find myself... tilting towards England, thinking that they'll pull it off and also kind of weirdly rooting for them in a way that I find surprising and kind of personally troubling, making me question my entire identity.

What do you mean by that?

[laughs]

... around this stuff.

But yeah, I think you're right.

I will say this.

When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, I was a soccer snob because of this kind of personal family history, and I thought I knew a lot.

And I remember my coach, Coach Barrett, one day w- was like, "Why- how can I get these kids to stop bunching up around the ball?" And he gave us, he brought a duffle bag full of video cassettes, like VHS tapes, and he made us do homework by wa- actually watching European football.

And I remember taking home a game that was, like, AC Milan versus Juventus, like, 1989 or something, and watching this game on my VCR.

... had these moments, right, where you're like, "Wow, I didn't even know that I would feel this level of allegiance," and somehow weirdly the World Cup brings it out, Daniel?

No puedes pensar que es solamente un ejercicio de lo lúdico, que solo es un juego, ¿no?

Yo tengo dos, dos memorias muy claras.

Primero, a mí me pasó lo mismo cuando yo me mudé a Lima y entré a la universidad y me, me hice amigo de los artistas que estaban estudiando artes en, en, en la Católica, en Lima.

Y se horrorizaron cuando supieron que yo era futbolero o que me gustaba el fútbol, que iba al estadio a ver la selección.

Como que: "¿Qué es eso? Te van a robar.

¿Para qué vas a ir? Juegan mal, hace frío".

Pero en la misma medida en que mi amor por el fútbol era parte de mi identidad esnob, yo no soy como estos gringos, porque yo soy, soy auténtico y me gusta el fútbol.

Volvemos a un mundial después de treinta y seis años.

Yeah.

They paid great.

They paid so much money.

Uh, I had never written for a glossy magazine, I should say, until one of these editors who worked at one of these magazines called me up and asked me if I was interested in writing a profile of Lionel Messi.

And of course, I was interested, huge soccer fan, blah, blah, blah.

The problem is that I was about to be married and the reporting trip would be the n- the week after my, my wedding.

Um, so terrible timing.

Yeah.

Danielle adapted it for our show.

So, John, once upon a time, there were many, many magazines that were published in the United States and around the world.

As you know, I've written for many of them.

And magazines for our younger listeners are like very thin little books.

It's like Instagram, but text-based and printed.

Yes.

And there was a specific niche among these magazines.

Yeah.

Me oh my, the world looks so different from up here.

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Let's hear it.