Looking Back at the World Cup: Politics, Nations and Who Gains Financially

Now, Mehreen, I'll just get-- gotta come out of the gate here.

Last time you were on, you predicted Spain would win.

No one else who was on got it right.

Uh, I thought France would of course win, but they were beaten badly, not just once by Spain, but then again in the, uh, completely unimportant game before third and fourth place by England in a w- in a marvelous game to watch.

So, uh, looking at all the teams, having watched, I'm sure, all 106 matches or four or however many it was, did Spain deserve to win, Mehreen?

Ooh, deserve is always tricky because World Cups are not really about deserving teams.

Knockout football is more about variables like luck, judgment, timing, weather, injuries, national mood, all these sorts of things.

But in the end, if you had to think about a team that is perhaps the most technically proficient in the world, the team that plays football more like domestic football than any other international team, and I think I betrayed last time I was on that I love domestic football, which is why World Cups for me are usually a lower standard of football.

I enjoy them less.

Watching Spain as a sort of a c- a kind of throwback to the teams that I've been watching, uh, this year, like PSG, Arsenal to some degree, um, they represented more of a cohesive domestic type of team.

And in that end-- in the end, that proved to be formidable.

And the binary that a lot of people, slightly reductive binary that people have fallen into, is that the system won over the individuals, and this was the World Cup of individuals up until the last moment where you had, uh, an asphyxiating form of system, of closing down spaces, of creating overloads, of players that have been playing the same type of football since they were probably three years old, winning out ultimately.

I think it is a little bit reductive because Spain have fantastic individuals, and actually all football is about systems.

But yes, they did win.

Um, I didn't really have any superior knowledge when I predicted that at the beginning.

But often, if a team has a slightly, you know, I think, a, a, an irrum-- unremarkable start, which is what Spain did against Cape Verde, um, and they grow into a tournament, that's usually when momentum shifts.

You're only playing eight, maximum nine games in a World Cup, so you have to hit your stride at the end, and it, it was, it was, I wouldn't say inevitable that Spain would get there, but they were definitely gonna be close or, or close enough, and they were in the end.

Bobby, did you, uh, I mean, b-both same question to you.

Do you think Spain was the deserved winner? But then secondly, who did you think was gonna win, a-and why didn't they?

Well, I think, I think, uh, Me- what Mehreen said is exactly right.

I'm, I've been a lifelong Barcelona supporter playing-- Spain play like Barcelona, and, uh, so I was able to enjoy that aspect of their game that the f-- it, it seemed very familiar to me as somebody who follows Barcelona in La Liga all year round.

Uh, but I will say this, that was a very boring outcome.

I think from the quarterfinals onwards, the World Cup was very dull for me because it was all predictable.

It was all the big names, the big teams, and I, going into the World Cup for the first time in my life, was rooting for an unexpected result.

I wanted a Cinderella, uh, uh, team to win.