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“The football it often becomes a war,” repeats Simon Cooper, journalist at the Financial Times and author of the much-discussed book World Cup Fever (Ston Pyretou tou Mundial, ed. Profile Books, 2025), which is released for the first time in Greece on June 7, exclusively in Kathimerini tis Kyriaki.
Just before he packed his bags for the tenth in a row World Cupthe of his life, in which he will definitely put headphones to listen to podcasts in the “dead” time of the commute, Cooper illuminates the political dimension of the institution, from its beginnings and Gilles Rimet, the former president of FIFA and “father” of the World Cup who initially collaborated with the Vichy regime, to the president of the USA and one of the three hosts of the event, Donald Trump, in which the first FIFA Peace Prize was awarded by Gianni Infantino. In his opinion, the favorites for this year’s competition are Spain, although he hastens to add that in a tournament where games are decided on one goal or penalties, everything depends on luck.
Born in Uganda to South African parents, Cooper grew up in the Netherlands and now lives in Paris having secured French citizenship. His team, however, remains the Dutch national team. Likening each World Cup to a Marcel Proust madeleine that evokes personal memories, he remembers his childhood football heroes, especially Johan Cruyff.
What will you definitely pack in your luggage?
My headphones so I can listen to podcasts in the endless lines of US airports as I fly from city to city and try to survive sheer physical exhaustion.
Which do you think is the favourite?
Spain, but World Cups are often decided by luck, which is inevitable in a knockout tournament where the most important games are decided by a goal or penalty shoot-out. My theory is that the luckiest team wins and then everyone pretends they were meant to win.
This will be the tenth World Cup for you. It is held in the USA, Mexico and Canada. What do you expect from Donald Trump? That he will get into fights with cities that have Democratic mayors? That will intimidate Mexico and Canada?
Yes, all of that. He will create controversy every day because he sees everything as a script, as a reality show, and he has to be the star. So, while in most World Cups the respective government wants the event to run smoothly and everyone to be happy, he doesn’t want that. He wants fuss, he wants conflicts. Traditionally authoritarian leaders identified with their national groups, such as Argentina and the generals in 1978 or Mussolini in 1934, because the national group embodies the masculinity and strength of the nation. The US soccer team, however, is not very good. So it’s not the right vehicle. So Trump will be a factor separate from the national team.
Does Trump like football?
He never showed much interest in the game. He likes American football. But he understands that football is a global spectacle because he is a media person. He is neither a good businessman nor an effective policy maker. But he is a media genius. Every new World Cup is bigger, and this time with 48 teams it will be even bigger than before in terms of the number of clicks, the number of views. So that’s what he cares about, not the game itself.
You refer to the paradox that immigrants, who are often victims of xenophobia, play in the national teams, especially in France and Germany. Is it because it is an easy way of integration and social mobility?
There are two reasons. One is that in countries like the Netherlands or France, if you’re a black boy you don’t see many role models who succeed as lawyers or journalists or accountants or politicians. You feel that these jobs are not for you. On the contrary, in sport there are no inequalities because in sport quality is indisputable. There are bad journalists who are successful because they know the right people, that counts for a lot. There are stupid people who become successful politicians. There are lawyers who join their dad’s law firm, but that doesn’t exist in football.
It’s purely a matter of quality. A bad football player is understood by everyone within five minutes. This makes sport a very welcoming field for people who are discriminated against in other areas. Then, many of these children grow up in small apartments, in neighborhoods where their parents don’t have much time for them. There is no huge pressure to read. Especially before the mobile phone era, they would go out and meet the other boys on the street, play football. In other words, it was a product of urban planning, the way poor neighborhoods in cities functioned.
I found the chapters on the German national team very interesting. First, the “Miracle of Bern” in 1954, which you describe as defining German post-war identity. I also laughed a lot at the way other groups associate Germany’s national team with the country’s Nazi past. Because even in Greece we often hear sportswriters call German players “punchers” – and all these clichés…
During the period from 1954 to 1990 the war was still very much alive in people’s memory, in Greece, France and Holland, almost everywhere in Europe. In politics we didn’t hear much from the Germans in the post-war decades – they kept a low profile. They were very kind. But in football the German monsters remained. They were ugly, the Darth Vaders of football. They were winning. Being a fairly physical game, in the post-war decades football replaced war as the field of European national pride.
We no longer saw European countries deriving pride from waging wars, perhaps the British a little over the Falklands. And so football became a war, with Germany playing the bad guy and beating the good teams.
We had Hungary in ’54, France in ’82, the Netherlands in ’74, and the Germans came and boom, they beat them. Of course, German football was often beautiful. Players like Mateus and Thomas Hessler and other good football players, the ’74 team was already playing good football at times. But for people like me, with all our prejudices, it was hard to see that. So the symbolism is perfect. This feeling somewhat began to wane when the Germans became happy, sympathetic losers, which happened mainly in the years after 1990.
I also remember that game you describe, Germany – France in 1982. Indeed, it is as you describe it, every World Cup is a Proust madeleine. I remembered watching the exciting fight in a Greek village in Macedonia, with most of the Greeks terribly disappointed that the Germans won in the end…
Yes, ’82 is the ultimate ‘Deutschland’ moment, especially Schumacher’s hard foul (by the German goalkeeper, which fell on defender Patrick Battiston, who was about to score) is where everything we’ve discussed comes together.
I was not aware of the details of that lunch between then French President Nicolas Sarkozy and UEFA President Michel Platini, which is considered pivotal in the latter’s change of heart in favor of Qatar’s candidacy. After all that, FIFA president Blatter and Platini were acquitted. Can you explain this to me?
The trial was only about one particular case: Blatter had paid Platini some two million dollars and they had no contract. It wasn’t an obvious bribe. It was part of their long friendship and complicity that they do “small services”. They didn’t want the World Cup to go to Qatar anyway. Blatter was very disappointed that the World Cup went to Qatar.
In one chapter you tell how you met Maradona at Oxford, it’s a hilarious story. I won’t do spoilers for our readers who want to read your book. Who is the most famous player you have interviewed and who you were most in awe of? I have a feeling it was Marco van Basten.
No, Cruyff was really my hero, he was everyone’s hero in Holland. We grew up in Cruyff’s shadow. I saw him for the first time when I was 12 years old, when he returned to Holland, so I experienced his last three seasons. I saw him play on the field a few times. He was also a great speaker about football. He was so bright. He had this bright mind. I think he is definitely the most interesting person in football in the last 50 years.
There can’t be many smart people in football, can there?
There are some. Messi is not. But Mbappe, even Beckham is quite clever in his own way. But Cruyff had an authentic, creative mind. He redefined football and created a new way of looking at the sport, the high pressure in which the team plays in the opponent’s half. Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Manchester City play the football he invented, with the goalkeeper acting as the eleventh player. Cruyff, therefore, reinvented football. He saw everything with a fresh eye and could explain it.
You mentioned Mbappe. What do you think of his recent feud with far-right National Rally (RN) leader Jordan Bardela?
The RN and the national team have been in conflict for 30 years. Each side represents a different vision of France: white or multicultural. The far-right Conspirosis may sound crazy for choosing to clash with the most successful national team in modern football but there is a logic behind it. The non-white, multi-millionaires who live elsewhere represent exactly what the majority of the French population probably abhors. As Jean-Marie Le Pen happily took on Zidane, so Bardela does with Kylian Mbappe, believing his side can win this battle. If the players do not play perfectly and behave perfectly, many French citizens will turn against them. Even if they are perfect, for some French people it is not enough.
How about Zidane, one of my favorites?
I have never met Zidane. Besides, he is not a man of words. He is not particularly interested in talking.
That moment you describe with the header on Materazzi (s.s.: in the World Cup final in 2006, when he was sent off)…
In a way it was such a beautiful gesture, the perfect way to say goodbye to football. He was absolutely himself. He’s decided he wants to head this guy and he’s a World Cup finalist. And he just did. There is something completely freeing about this movement.
And self-destructive.
She didn’t want to beat him anyway. It hit him in the chest, so it didn’t really hurt him. He didn’t mark his head…
*Simon Kuper’s book “On the fever of the World Cup” is released on Sunday 7/6 with Kathimerini.
