Hello, my name is David Ronsman and this is Talking Politics. The World Cup is reaching

its climax. It has been amazing. England is 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 dispaired thinking, oh God, we've got to record this. It's going to be

worse than even after Trump's victory or the various 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. We're England. There have

just been knocked out on penalties. So I am thrilled. We don't have to talk about England.

That's part of a 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

...