Kevin Williams on FC Barcelona Turmoil; Chris Wittyngham on Soccer News

Fútbol with Grant Wahl

Grant Wahl

Sports, Soccer

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2021

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Grant has an in-depth interview about everything going on at FC Barcelona (at 26:57) with Kevin Williams, who by day is the music and visual arts editor at the Chicago Tribune but who has also become an expert over the years on Barça on his Twitter feed. Williams, a Barça member, explains why he thinks Lionel Messi will leave after the season, how Barça got itself in massive debt, how the March 7 club elections will impact the institution, why he loves watching Barcelona's women's team, and whether he thinks Xavi will come back to lead the men's team as its manager. Before that, Grant has a column on U.S. Soccer's Athlete Council voting to remove member Seth Jahn after his remarks at Saturday's AGM minimizing Black American slavery and dismissing police brutality of Black Americans. Then Grant breaks down the soccer news with Chris Wittyngham, including Tyler Adams' big central midfield performance in Leipzig's win over Gladbach, which team (Man City or Bayern Munich) they think should be the favorite to win Champions League, which team is most likely to completely a Champions League Round of 16 upset (Porto, Chelsea or Atalanta) and why on earth Zlatan Ibrahimovic decided to go after LeBron James for not sticking to sports. This episode of Fútbol with Grant Wahl is brought to you by Fanatiz. Frustrated that you can't get games from Spain's La Liga on your cable or satellite system? Sign up to stream Fanatiz. On Fanatiz, you can watch all the action in La Liga and other international leagues and tournaments live and on-demand from your mobile phone, tablet or directly on your TV with the Fanatiz app. Fanatiz features channels you know, like BeIN Sports in English and Spanish, GolTV and many more. And it costs only $7.99 a month. If you’d like to try Fanatiz for yourself, you can get a free week-long trial by going to fntz.co/Grant-FZ. Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqIhXWUw0H4 Get full access to Fútbol with Grant Wahl at grantwahl.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there. Welcome to Food Ball with Grant Wall. Thanks so much for joining me. Today's
0:12.1	interview guest is Kevin Williams, whose day job is as the music and visual arts editor
0:18.6	at the Chicago Tribune. But he's also one of my go-to experts on all things FC Barcelona. So we'll
0:26.7	talk about that. We've had some great guests lately, including Jason Davis, Crystal Dunn,
0:32.4	and Wright Thompson. I also encourage you to check out my podcast series, American Prodigy,
0:38.4	The Freddy Ado Story. All eight episodes are out, and you can binge them all to your heart's
0:45.3	content. I do want to start this week with an audio column. Here goes. The U.S.
0:51.6	Soccer Federation had its annual general meeting over the weekend held virtually due to the
0:56.8	pandemic. In Cumban, Cindy Cohn ran unopposed for president and Bill Taylor beat out Kobe Jones
1:03.4	and two other candidates for vice president. But the topic that made the most news was the National
1:10.2	Council vote on whether to repeal the Federation's role preventing kneeling during the National Anthem.
1:17.2	U.S. Soccer's board had already withdrawn the rule last summer during the Black Lives Matter
1:23.2	protests following George Floyd's murder by police. But now was the chance for the Federation
1:29.6	membership to take the rule off the books completely. Before the vote, Seth John, a former U.S.
1:36.6	paris 7-aside captain and recently elected member of the Powerful Athlete Council,
1:42.8	got the microphone and delivered a six minute speech arguing to keep the rule.
1:48.8	In that speech, he minimized the enslavement of Black Americans and dismissed completely the
1:55.7	connection between police brutality and Black Americans. John has a right to his own opinions,
2:02.9	but he does not have a right to his own facts, and his position downplaying the monstrosity of Black
2:11.0	Americans enslavement has no place in the U.S. Soccer Federation, an organization that has
2:18.2	received deserved criticism for not being welcoming enough to the Black and Latino communities
2:24.4	over the years. In the end, the National Council did not support Seth John and voted to repeal
	...

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