Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is Talking Politics.

The World Cup is reaching its climax. It has been amazing. England are still in the World Cup.

That is pretty amazing. We are going to talk about the politics of international football.

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I've got Helen Thompson with me, regular Talking Politics panelist and West Ham fan.

It's a pleasure to welcome back Mike Kenny, Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge

and Spurs fan. When I was watching the game last night, it's Wednesday morning, and Jordan

Henderson missed his penalty. I had this thought in the brief second that I thought about this

podcast before I just despaired, thinking, oh God, we've got to record this. It's going to be worse

than even after Trump's victory or the various other traumatic nights that we've been through. Because at least then, there was the excitement of thinking, what's the Trump world going to be like, but we know what a world is like where England have just been knocked out on penalties. So I am thrilled by England won, and we don't have to talk about England. That's part of the great thing. We can actually talk about what I think is part of the interest of this World Cup, which is,

it's been different, I think, from many people's expectations of it. I just want to go back to

what people thought a World Cup in Russia was going to be like. So one of the things that was said,

and Boris Johnson said it, I think, before

a parliamentary select committee, when he was asked about whether England should boycott this

World Cup, and I'm really glad we didn't boycott it, he said it's going to be like the Berlin

Olympics in 36 and that Putin is going to use this tournament for propaganda purposes like Hitler

did. And he also warned England fans not to go

...