The Money Behind Modern Football With Miguel Delaney
It Was What It Was : The Football History Podcast
The Overlap
4.9 • 667 Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2024
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week’s episode of It Was What It Was, Miguel Delaney discusses his new book: States of Play: How Sportswashing Took Over Football.
Jonathan, Rob and Miguel assess how mega-rich investors and state-backed owners have transformed clubs and competitions around the world. The trio explain the impact of sportswashing on our modern game - where nations and corporations have used football to enhance their public image and gain global influence.
Join us for a compelling insight into football's new landscape - and find out what the future could hold for clubs, players, and fans.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to It Was What It Was, the Football History Podcast. |
| 0:09.1 | Today we're joined by a very special guest, somebody who's really led the way in investigating |
| 0:12.8 | the money behind modern football, somebody whose book, States of Play, is out this week. |
| 0:17.9 | So a big welcome to the Chief Football W supervisor of the independent, Miguel Delaney. |
| 0:22.2 | Thank you for having me. Welcome on the show. I've been reading your book over the last |
| 0:26.6 | couple of days and I have to say I've really enjoyed it. It's a seminal work. It's something that |
| 0:32.3 | I think the game needs, but I am also a little bit depressed at the end of it all. Yeah. |
| 0:37.1 | I still want to sell it to |
| 0:38.8 | people, so please go read it even though, you know, it does paint quite a bleak picture. So do you |
| 0:45.0 | think that there was a golden age of sport before the money and the powers got involved, or has it |
| 0:51.1 | always been like this? I don't think it's always been like this. In fact, I suppose a line that's in the book, |
| 0:56.4 | an executive in football now |
| 0:58.4 | who's worked in at a quite senior level since the late 80s, |
| 1:02.3 | one of the lines that stood out to me that they put in it |
| 1:04.4 | was basically the only moral complications used to have |
| 1:07.2 | were worrying about a few bungs, |
| 1:09.1 | which I suppose just that sentence alone actually says so much in terms of also just the smaller scale of football. And I suppose in terms of that question was there a golden age, I suppose there's a few different elements that you could kind of, you know, separate that through. In terms of, put as simply as possible, I suppose, in terms of a golden age where fans can go to a game, they can feel a fairly close connection to a club. |
| 1:32.8 | And I think pretty crucially, given what we're talking about, feel they have a chance they can win or actually do something exciting. |
| 1:39.5 | And it's not just going to be the same old, same old, or they're not just fixed in position. |
| 1:43.4 | Probably the closest we've got in English football is, I would say, 1959 to 1976 when there was that period |
| 1:52.1 | where no one successfully retained a title. So there's a different winner every season, |
| 1:56.3 | and 11 different clubs won it. Now, I suppose there is an irony to that, given that era started |
... |
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