 It's become something of a cliche to say the game's gone in response to everything from VAR to handball to too many or not enough red cards. But perhaps maybe this time Yadda might be right. With Sunday's announcement of a European Super League formed by 12 breakaway clubs, including the so-called Big Six's Premier League, people are starting to wonder if this might indeed be the end of football as we know it. And perhaps it's been a long time coming. Since Russian billionaires, Roman Abramovich's purchase of Chelsea in 2003, football clubs have become lucrative investment options for oligarchs, oil barons and super wealthy conglomerates. While the romance of the game remains tied to increasingly foggy notions of community, tradition and neighborhood, the reality is that in many ways football reflects the worst of the global economy. It's a marketing tool for fossil fuel giants and corrupt regimes, a revenue-generating machine for American corporate interests, and what was once the people's game has now morphed into something else entirely. And with me to discuss the Super League breakaway and how a sport created by the poor was stolen really by the rich is Lawrence McKenna, a podcaster, YouTuber and Twitch streamer. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks a lot for having me. This is great. I've been waiting to get more football on Navarra and this is just a flimsy pretext. I absolutely saw that. The message came through and I was like, oh, this is ideal. You are going to pretend that we're talking about politics. It's like, oh, she sent me this message six months ago saying, buy your time. Exactly, yeah. The moment will come. So I mean, I first saw you on the kickoff and there was that clip of you which went super viral recently, which was ripping into the greed and the kind of quite mercenary logics governing the modern game. So where else can people find you if they want to learn more about your work? To be honest, it is mostly the kickoff or just, you tend to just put my name into YouTube and some sort of offensive clip will pop up. I know how that feels. Right. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we can relate totally on that actually. And yeah, I've covered football for a very long time. So I guess I've been all over the place, but I also do a podcast with my co-host, True Geordie and just plenty of other things. So I'm sure if you can find me somewhere, then you'll find me on YouTube or on Twitch. We're all over the place at the moment. And so before we begin, if you want to see more interviews like this, then hit the subscribe button below this video. It's really easy and it's free. And you can also drop us a like if you're enjoying the conversation. It helps with the algorithm. So first question, super easy. What's going on with the Super League? Who's behind it and why is it bad? You know what? You go through stages of acceptance and I'm trying to work out what stage of acceptance I'm at. And it's a tricky one because we all know where the Super League came from, but I'm not actually sure that the genesis of the Super League is the people who are doing it now. This idea has been around for much longer than the glazes of Manchester United, than John Henry has owned Liverpool, than any of these people have even existed in football because there's always been this idea that there is always something better for football to do. That's exactly what FIFA sells you on every time that they sell a World Cup. You'll get all these great stadiums. The football will be better this year. We'll put a McDonald's in here and this thing will appear over here and everyone will be thrilled. And you kind of sold on that dream for a little while. But ultimately, maybe it's human nature or maybe there's something else in there, but we're always trying to upgrade things and we never seem quite happy. The grass is always greener in that sense. And I genuinely think that these guys who are doing this, the Joel Glazers, the John W. Henrys, even the Daniel Leves, kind of believe they're doing us a favour by making what they call a Super League. The word Super in the first place is ridiculous anyway. It just makes me think Super Mario. And it came from these guys wanting to make more money from the football clubs in a very crude sense. I don't know if you want me to go into the football side of it and the sports side of it because I'm also an NBA fan, so I'm trying to work out how conflicted I feel that an NBA model is being put onto football. And in a strange way, the American NBA model is maybe the most liberal thing that they do in the whole country. Well, I mean, there's a lot that I like about the NBA, but there's more that I hate about American sports in general. And I think one is the sense of being unmoored from place. I grew up with a football culture, which is so about place and neighbourhood, or at least that's the myth of it. Whereas in America, it seems like you can live anywhere, support anyone. And that's fine because everyone's got a TV, so it's all the same place anyway. And it's kind of the generation you grew up in a little bit as well. Like whether you are, definitely if you grew up in the Blair era, then you're a bit of a globalizer. And so you kind of, you know, if you grew up with Space Jam and that kind of thing, I was totally sold on that idea. I am still partly like my heart still wants to think that I'm linked with the San Antonio Spurs when I watch them on TV or, you know, whoever I'm watching over there. But the reality maybe is a little bit different from that. And I actually think that this is part of what we're contending with here is the romanticism of English football and continental football in Europe. Contrasted with what these Americans, predominantly American owners, you know, there's a Russian guy in there, there's a Spanish guy in there who's definitely not romantic, and plenty of other people. And those guys are basically saying, look, here's the reality outside of romanticism, we're just selling you back the reality of what's going on here. And that's what's sort of making me a bit uncomfortable at this point. I mean, so thinking about the way in which this does kind of entrench an American model of sport in European football is one of the ways in which it does that is that it fakes in this principle of too big to fail. So that's the big difference for listeners who are maybe a bit less familiar with the differences between the Champions League, which is already pretty unequal, it's pretty predictable in terms of who's going to make it into the semis. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know what, I get it. We all want it to be every year to be the Leicester City year. And we all want every year to be the Jürgen Klopp taking Dortmund to the final year or Liverpool in 2005, having a terrible side. We want to believe that that is the case. And in so many ways, it is the case. And in so many times, it is the case. But the point is, the Premier League is already uneven. The Champions League is already uneven. All of our competitions are currently uneven. We are partly just marketed the other way. And this is what I think, in many ways, the billionaires who are spending three and a half billion launching this and putting all the money into it. The last thing they thought of is how we're going to see it and how it's going to be marketed to us. And that's what I found most bizarre about it. I'm looking at the logo and I'm thinking, well, you guys put no thought into that. I'm looking at a press release that looks like it was done on Microsoft Paint. And I sit back and think, so is that because you're not serious about the idea and actually you're just jockeying for power here? Is that because actually you don't take us seriously enough to think that we matter enough to have a public facing idea of this yet? Or is it because you actually aren't thinking about this and you're just so brazen with this idea that, you know, we're the corporate guys, we know what's best, which by the way was totally the vibe from Florentino Perez last night when he was giving his interview. And they don't actually live in the world that we live in. They don't exist in the world that we exist in in football. I don't know if I actually share many commonalities with any of these guys who are proposing this to me. But I mean, let's talk about Florentino Perez for a minute, who's sort of been one of, you know, the backers of these ideas. Last night, he gives this completely bizarre interview from very perspective where it goes, well, look, younger audiences are turning away from football. We've seen the statistics. So what we need to do is make the matches shorter, because obviously anyone under the age of 25 has got the attention span of a Nats, they used to tick tocks. God bless them. Sure. Yeah, that's not true. But all right. And that you need to like access football content the way you would anything else on Netflix or Disney plus or any kind of streaming thing. So where do you think that comes from? Do you think it comes from like a crude understanding of how viewing habits have changed and like a level of denial about how much his own actions have corroded the game and made it something that's not worth watching? Oh, yeah, totally. Let's talk about what his actions have done before we get into where his thought process goes, because what his actions have done is kind of really, really says, yeah, okay, they've kind of run a brilliant institution, a brilliant institution, a brilliant institution into the ground in the same way as Barcelona in this, because they are running their own club into the ground. They're in so much debt because they put their cash in the wrong places that they need this. At least that's the way that they're marketing it. And that's partly why I don't think by Munich were invited to the party. And that's partly why I don't think other clubs were invited to the party because that would show up some of these guys who are very rich people, very wealthy, and not actually doing a particularly fantastic job sometimes. And then I guess the other part of your question was about how the genesis of this idea comes about from him. And I think it shows like there are think tanks out there. There are all these studies, you know, we see all the biggest channels on YouTube and the Google loan and those kind of things, giving us all these ideas that young people don't seem to want to concentrate. They actually want to just consume football as a, as like a passive thing. And it'll, you know, if we keep this 24 hour stream, we'll just dip in and out of football every now and again. And that's a good thing. And I don't quite understand that thought process. That's just marketing speak for we just want to make this appeal to more people. And frankly, I don't really care if it appeals to more people. I don't care if everyone around the world loves football or not. And there are already enough people around the world who love football without us, even marketing it to them, by the way, like football wasn't marketed. It just rolled into a room and someone went, that looks fun to kick. I might try that. And then they did it. And that's what I kind of don't understand about this is they seem to be missing the fundamental values of football because they're so in the marketing side of football. And I get it. Like I'm in the marketing side of football. I've literally got like a fake tattoo from a brand deal that I did on the weekend as a joke on my arm, because I have to pay my bills. And that's what I do with football. But it doesn't mean I don't remember where football came from or why I'm lucky to do my job or any of these things. And I just find the whole thing bizarre. I mean, I don't know about you. Like you're obviously you're a Spurs fan. Yeah, I don't enjoy football. I haven't enjoyed football for a long time. It's more like a bad boyfriend who promises he can change every year. And so I don't break up with him. But I still love it. Right. And like, you definitely feel that way because you guys got rid of Pochettino. And I understand. But I, you know what, I was literally just before this, I was like, looking at myself in the mirror, like, fix my hair. And I just looked in the mirror and I was like, I kind of want to like the billionaires. I think that's what's wrong with what's happening in my mind is I want to like the Premier League and the people who run it, because I like the Premier League and football. And I want to like John Henry because he owns the thing that I love. But I'm not sure whether I should. Like, I don't, those two thoughts are odds if that makes sense. Like, just because you are in my club doesn't mean I like you, or I have to defend you, or we have much in common. It just means that you see the value in me as a consumer, presumably. I mean, you know, there's so much in here. One thing that you're talking about, which is value and the sort of like, to put it in a very crude Marxist sense, but the kind of exchange value, which is supposed to only ever go up and up and up and is completely unamored from the kind of non financial, non exchangeable values of football around identity. And, you know, even in me saying like, oh, Spurs is like the bad boyfriend of my life. That's kind of part of the joy to be able to talk about in these terms of a relationship term, not a, you know, not a commodity. But let's talk about the financial backers for a second, because I was really astonished by the sums of money that have been poured into this already. So, you know, the American Bank, JP Morgan have committed 3.5 billion euros. And that's been lent against future broadcasting revenue. So there's an expectation of the sums of money, which is going to come back from this kind of venture. How unusual is an arrangement like that in football? And is it something which is maybe more common to see in American sports? Is that another import? That's a really good question, actually, isn't it? Because wow, that's, there are so many models where I think that happens, but we just don't hear about it. And there are so many times where I think people promise a lot in sport. And very often those promises aren't fulfilled. So I imagine there are a lot of people who back things and just don't mention that they put the money into it at some point. But having said that, I do think it is a very American model. You know, you look at the way that the NBA is funded, you look at the way that the NFL is funded, you know, you look at the, I'd say it's a lot more transparent than we're used to hearing. I've never really heard how much money the Premier League make, for instance, on like a transparent conversational basis. It's not like common knowledge. And suddenly three and a half billion is like, all I can think about right now. And that's a very unusual thing. Having said that, we know exactly how much cash was passing hands between FIFA delegates. We have no idea how much cash has exchanged hands between, say, certain countries that might be hosting the World Cup in the next couple of years. And people say who got excluded from the Super League, but are hypocritical enough to say that they think their club has value. But at the same time, deny slavery or things of that effect in another country say for a different person's cash. So there are many double standards in football. I think that what we're really discovering is some people are just better at A marketing them and be hiding them so that we just don't hear or know about them. And that makes me uncomfortable. I completely hear you on that. Because when you're looking for a good guy versus bad guy narrative and suddenly you're like, well, how do I have to side with UEFA here or FIFA? It's not so long ago that Michelle Platini was in custody having to answer questions on a corruption scandal. I remember when the name set bladder was a byword for receiving kickbacks. Oh, it still is. It will be for the rest of my life. Forever associated with bribery. In terms of where fans are supposed to put their energy and where they're supposed to put their loyalties, it's like, well, we don't want a Super League to happen. It's not competitive. It takes away accountability and further, almost like democratic distance from the fans. At the same time, I don't want to be siding with these really slimy, corrupt, untrustworthy suits. And it's partly because they've got our hearts in a way. They've got something that we really like. So we have to pick a side, in a sense. And also they're fronted by people that I like. Lewis Figo tweeted something the other day and I disagreed with it and I found myself genuinely trying to justify it. I was sitting there like, I liked you. I loved you as a player. And then I'll be honest. Really strange. I was out this morning and Everton tweeted and there was a statement and I read it and suddenly, because Everton had tweeted it, I found myself trying to justify what Liverpool were doing. And I thought, no, you know what? Screw you. You're not in this. You're not important enough. Like, you know, from a very visceral level, I was like, you know what? We're the most powerful and you're not important enough to be in this club with us. You're just jealous. And so I found myself like switching sides this whole time and like doing some mental gymnastics to try and work out how I feel about, by the way, something which is a competition, which is inherently about grading people and telling them, you did a good enough job within this 90 minutes. You're rewarded three points. So like, of course, there's a competitive element involved in this. But I think that's where some people are sort of wrong. And I kind of think that where the billionaires have gone wrong here, there's not just one kind of competition. There's not one way of framing competition that there's not one way of like grading people. There are multiple indexes for how you do well in sport. The NBA happens to be one of them. The Premier League happens to be another. The Olympics happens to be another. There are multiple ways in our multiple societies that we've worked out different levels of value. And the diversity of those is what is important in the same way as grassroots football is not judged in the same way as Premier League football and Champions League football is not judged in the same way as, you know, if I was to take my son to play football this afternoon, it's not the same thing. And they don't seem to understand that they seem to want to almost create like a new strata of football, which by the way, this is totally what it would be. It would become a different level of athleticism, a different level of like tactics. Anabolics is what I was going to say. To some extent, like whether you want to talk figuratively or literally literally. Okay. I mean, either way, you know, it's either marketing on anabolics or there's, you know, there's some accusations we need to make. So that's what I'm saying here. Like what these guys are trying to do is what they feel is progress. And strangely, I don't know why, but I'm always taken back to that. If you've seen the film Moneyball, Brad Pitt, he's beautiful in it. He's just perfect at his bone structure. And he goes from meeting from the Oakland days, who were this tiny team who had to do things on a budget. And you really invested in him and you really want him to win. And then suddenly John Henry, who's the owner of Liverpool now, gives him a call or gives him a, gives him a message. So he gets a message and he goes to Boston to go meet John Henry, who owns the Red Sox, and therefore owns their stadium. So he walked into this beautiful stadium. And John Henry talks to him in, it's not really him, obviously it's an actor, but it was a conversation that apparently happened. And he turns to me and he says, the first one through the wall always gets bloody. And I worked out, that's what they think they are. They think they're the first ones through the wall. They think they're innovating. They think that what they're doing here is actually good for us. It doesn't make them right. And it doesn't mean that they have like noble intentions, because clearly they want to make cash. But in many ways, I think it shows like the delusion of the world that some of our owners live in, if not all of our owners live in. And it made me feel a bit sorry for them, if I'm honest. It made me feel a bit like, oh, you don't get why I'm here. You don't understand why I cry if we win the Premier League, or why it was so important to me that I shared that with another member of my family. And it really made me just so distant from whatever Liverpool's badge means, and everything else. And to see in the echo today in Liverpool that I think it's Bill Shankly's grandson wants the statue taken down from outside Amfield. That's an iconic statue for a reason is because the club was built on his values. The club was built on what he wanted Liverpool to be, which was A, a bastion of invincibility that could beat anyone else, tick. And B, a place where everyone felt welcome, everyone could afford a ticket, and everyone could share an experience. And suddenly, we find ourselves in a place where that's probably not the case anymore. But that drift has been such a long time coming in terms of what you were saying, in terms of like affordability of tickets, being able to share in the experience, it being accessible to everybody, everybody who lives in the immediate area. I mean, you know, look at the Spurs stadium, which isn't that far from me. Its expansion also meant a certain level of gentrification, same for, you know, the Emirates stadium. You've got this active displacement. So just rolling back a little bit about when did this drift, if you had to pinpoint a moment or a set of moments, when did it begin in terms of football as an experience being turned into football as a commodity, which then became an unaffordable commodity to its kind of original customer base, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. I mean, you know, if you want to go back, you can go all the way back to the start of football when Liverpool and Everton were formed. And I think it was our John McKenna, we do happen to share a surname, John McKenna, who created the created Liverpool when there was some sort of business disagreement and Everton went across Stanley Park and set up Everton. And that was a competitive thing. And that was partly about money, because I think that was an argument over, yeah, an argument over how much they were paying him to rent the ground. So there's your first financial argument in football. It happened, I'll say over a century ago, because I can't do the maths off the top of my head. I want to say 1892. 1892, that was the Liverpool set up. So it was that year or just before, right? Fast forward 100 years, and we're into post thatcher Britain, which still holds a lot of those values. And capitalism is becoming more rampant. Globalisation is sort of becoming part of the idea. Britain loves the idea, by the way, that it can expand back out and sort of show everyone else how we can do this. Hence why it's the Premier League. And we create the Premier League. And let's be honest, I mean, it's interesting, I've got so many replies in my tweets today, I don't know if you get like similar things when you talk about this, like people being like, no, no, the Premier League saved English football. And I'm like, no, that was the branding of what they did. What they really did was an opportunistic thing and was quite shameless. But we just ate it up, because that's what we do when you have a conservative government and rich people do things. Like, it was all marketed that way. And they were just, by the way, they were just allowed to do it. There was there was uproar of a type, but it wasn't really like what we're feeling now. And people were sold this idea that things would be better, right? And for me, that's where it started. And I've got to be honest, I've, first hand, witnessed every other aspect of it. I've been in corporate boxes, I've flown on private jets with people. I've done all the things that you would, which now I look at myself and I'm like, you know, God, that was a great experience. But am I proud of some of those things? I've done like corporate gigs, all these kinds of things. And that all contributed towards it. But again, like, I don't know, sorry, I'm really rambling here. This is crazy. No, no, no, no, this way here, we want you to ramble. That's the Oh, then you pick the right guy. Then I also realized that like, it's okay to have some of these experiences, but it's just at some point, we have to give something back to the core fans. And it seems that every year, the experience gets lesser and lesser and lesser for the core fans and wider and wider and wider for the other people. It was okay when it was a couple of vloggers that were invited to a game or a couple of TikTok stars or whatever. But now it seems like they are the priority. And that's why they shouldn't be the priority in this. It should be the fans. I got a friend called Rory, and he was on another, he was on a radio station today and he was saying like, these people are just custodians of the club. They just happen to be the people who own it at this time. And they're lucky to have it. They're lucky to own our crest and our memories and all those things. But for some strange reason, we don't get treated as if they're the lucky ones. We are the lucky ones, apparently. But I mean, do you think that there's a certain naivety in expecting that it could be different? The minute you bring in billionaire ownership, the minute you have third party ownership, the minute you've got a level of financialization, which means that the glazes come in and they accomplish this astonishing debt loading raid in the takeover of Manchester United. Is it naive to go there's a nice way to do this? And then actually, if what you want is to have that return of a romantic experience, as I think the kind of thing you're talking about, where you do have value assigned to things like memory and to identity and to feeling, and it's the kind of value which you absolutely cannot quantify. Then you've got to start thinking about, okay, well, we can't get this by appealing to the morality of these owners, because what's going to win morality or their own bottom line is going to be their bottom line. Are we thinking in terms of legislation which imposes at a national government level something like the 50 plus one rule that has been somewhat effective in Germany in closing a gap between clubs and fans? I think that's partly why they didn't go to Germany, by the way. Because they realized that the fans would hear about it and then it would get out and then it would be a problem. And, you know, fine, the horse is kind of bolted in the UK. I don't know if you can suddenly go back and go 50 plus one, we're going to enforce that now, because I get the feeling that you, the Premier League, I think what's strange about it is the Premier League has gone to the government who at one time were really encouraging the fact that the Premier League was free business to just do whatever it wanted. And they were like, yeah, we're just free business, we just do whatever we want. And now when there's free business, we invited the billionaires in, it's just, they don't like it that the other billionaires are doing the other idea that they, which by the way, I think they always had in their minds. And I think they were always building towards, it's just that UEFA, FIFA, the Premier League, all these people were still making profit from the old model. So why bring the new model in when you're making profit from the old model? Like, we can wait on this, we can make this last another 10 years maybe, another 15 years, and then we'll bring it in. Because, you know, where else are these clubs going to go? Where else are the fans going to go? And that was part of it was like these, I think that the Premier League and UEFA and all these guys just didn't expect that this would happen. And I don't know why. There's what I'm saying, I think this is a clip that you maybe found me through was like, I don't know why we're siding with these guys, because they did very similar. And basically what they did was they bought our idea of the league system. They don't own it. They don't own the concept of it. They never own the concept of it. They basically just went, we'll take the top 20 of these and we'll pay more money. And everyone went, brilliant. Okay, yeah, absolutely. Fine. Cool. Okay. And for some strange reason, we just accepted it. And I don't know why. It's bizarre to me. I think, I mean, I sort of wonder if like, this is how, you know, this is the connective tissue between the conversation we're having now, which is like very much about football, and the politics and the economics of football, and it branches out into politics and economics. Right. By the way, most people want to deny that, sorry to cut you off. But I think a lot of people want to make that distinction. And I think you and I are probably the opposite kind of character that we are totally want to draw the lines out from football to politics to those things. Other people go, well, no, what happens on the pitch happens on the pitch. And what happens in real life happens in real life. And in many ways, I, you know, I think that is a reflective maybe of where you're sometimes where your politics stand is you want to pretend that there is this distinction between the two when actually that you can't really separate the two. I think what things tend to be also the most politically loaded when you're pretending the politics isn't there. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think I've actually heard you say that before, which is I should have heard that. Yes. Right. I am recycling old lines. But I mean, I guess the thing that I sort of want to talk about is like the branching out bit is that in Germany, you have still a social democracy where people aren't casual about questions of ownership. And you've got an idea of there are things which are for the public good. Obviously, you don't have in the same way a nationally owned health service the way we do. But you do have a sense of, you know, state ownership because here are things which if left to the logic of the market will deteriorate in some way. Whereas in, you know, Britain and America, two countries which were really, you know, they weren't the birthplace of neoliberalism, but they were the chief exporters of it. You know, we became really casual about the idea of we will interact with the world as if all we are as a consumer. And, you know, here's so much about consumer rights and customer rights. And I've always felt really icky about that. I just think that's a right to a refund. And that's kind of it. But you're sort of trapped. You still have to consume things so you need them to live. And the idea of an unalloyed public good, which shouldn't be in the hands of the market, isn't really there in the public consciousness. And it's not there certainly in terms of how our politicians are thinking. Are we also having different experiences to the Germans, I think, in terms of, you know, if you look at what happened with Dortmund, or you look at what happened with Bayern's statements, they just know that their fans wouldn't stand for it. And they know that they couldn't get away with it. Because they're different. It's a different culture. Culturally, they are different people. And that's partly why I think, you know, Britain was a particularly good place to do this, because we're very passive. We won't necessarily say things. And we'll kind of just let things happen. And then when it's too late, we'll sort of go, Oh, no. And that's not in Germany. I don't believe that's the same. I'm not being stereotypical here. I'm just saying like, when I've heard fans have problems before, when I went to Dortmund, Thomas Tuchel was in charge and it was post club. And I really want to club as Liverpool managers. I was going around asking all the Dortmund fans, like, what's Tuchel like? And they were like, Yeah, he's not club, though, is he? And I was like, no, I get that. And they were like, we just want club back. And we blame the club for that. And we hate the club for that. And I was like, Wow. But I was like, but Jurgen Klopp left under a cloud. And they were like, Yeah, we would have just put up with it. It was absolutely fine. We, we loved Jurgen Klopp. We wanted him to stay at the club. And I just thought, I'm not sure whether we'd approach that in the same way in England. I don't know if we get like the same truthful lines or whether it would come out in the same way. And they were just so unashamedly owning what was theirs. And in some ways, like, I think sometimes when we put our head above the parapet in England, like maybe my clip got online the other day, people are like, idiot, cuck liberal, whatever you want to call me. Can I say that? And you just get this. Yeah, you're allowed to do as much swearing as you like. This isn't overcome regulated. Okay, great. Yet. And I don't know, like, you know, we're all we're quite passive people sometimes. And I, I find that very strange. And I find it strange by the way that Real Madrid aren't voicing their thoughts, because when you go to the Burnabout, there is no set of fans who are better than voicing their distaste about what is going on on the pitch. And the same with Barcelona. I don't get it. I don't, I don't get why we're not hearing more. I mean, it's interesting to like hear you talk about these elements of almost like national culture and identity, because one of the things I'm hearing again and again and again is this move is being driven by global markets and global fans. And there is this idea that fans outside of Europe are bound to be kind of plastic fans, all they want to see is like, you know, alien versus predator again and again and again. You know, so it's just, we just want to see Liverpool versus Real Madrid. Why, why should we see them play a smaller team? Do you think that it's getting a bit pinned the blame on the foreigner? Or is there some truth to the idea of, you know, global fan equals plastic fan? I have direct experience of this. Like I keep saying, big fan of the NBA, big fan of NFL. Of course I'm a plastic fan. I've never been to San Antonio, but I really love what they did. And I really love what they do. But am I the same kind of fan as a fan that's local? No. But that's okay. I know that. But the problem is the marketing wants you to think that you are just as important as the local fan. And they want you to act just as important as the local fan. So they'll give you a Twitter vote, which means nothing. And they'll give you a Facebook vote and you can up a video or you can interact on TikTok. But that's not the same. I'm just, I'm just being honest here. It's not the same as going to a game. You aren't having the same level of geographic emotional, you know, visceral investment in this side. And something you can see physically, of course, it's different from something you can see on television. Why do you think people say the book is better than film? Because it's all happening in their mind. Like there's so many reasons why local fans are different to international fans. And of course, the international fans are being demonized. Why? Because we can't see them because they're a concept. Because, you know, I could blame it on this nebulous idea of, you know, some, you know, I'll use an Indian fan as an example, because I've actually got a literally got a friend who just texts me who is an Indian fan. And he was like, I don't know what the problem is here. What's the, what's the issue with this super league? And I was like, well, then let's have a conversation about it. But he saw it so differently because, because of course he does. And then when we spoke about it, and we spoke about Shankly, the history of the club, all these kinds of things, he totally understood it. But what they bank on is just us sort of going, right, we'll go on Twitter then and we'll tweet about these foreigners. And that'll be the problem. And they are the problem. By the way, totally, there are so many people who off camera say to me who are English, who love Manchester United, who love Liverpool, who love all the clubs that are in this, that go, yeah, actually, I'm kind of for it. I kind of want to see a bit of a mix up here. But they wouldn't dare say it in public. They wouldn't dare say this because they're sick of the Premier League. They're bored of the same turgid product. They're bored of COVID football. They're bored of all these things. And they're bored of football, not changing and listening to them. And at least they think, well, some change is better than arrest. I mean, do you think there's a little bit of, I mean, I was thinking about like, what are the analogies for this? Like, is there a bit of like Brexit in this, which is your torn between defending a really imperfect already existing institution, which is sort of presided over all sorts of drift. And it feels very distant. It feels very far away. And then there's a bit of you which is like, well, I'm just going to press the red button, blow it all up. And I don't care if what I get is better. I don't care if what I get is better, but it's just that what I have is bad. Like, do you think that there's some of that impulse operating for those people? Or am I reaching? Am I just reaching because it's a politics show and I'm trying to do a politics connection? No, no, I don't think you are reaching. I think like there is that thought process is very prevalent, right? And so you're talking about the process, you're not necessarily saying that if you're a Brexiteer, therefore you're against it. And if you're not, then you're for it. I think, actually, you're right. I think that the impulse, I think very often is to blow it up, right? The impulse very often is to start from scratch because we like to think that scratch exists. But there isn't like scratch, like you blow something up and then life just keeps moving. You don't just get to start, like Liverpool every season, don't go sell all the players and then we'll just see what happens. We'll just start from scratch. Do you know why? That's crazy. And you don't do that because it doesn't make any sense. And you have emotional attachments to these people. And the reason you're attached to the people is because they represent your club, because they represent you. Like it's much more complex than that. But again, like you pretty much nailed it. It was about the marketing of Brexite. And it's the same with the marketing of the Super League. It's the same with the marketing of the Premier League. We're sold on the marketing. And frankly, we've dug deeper within two days of this being announced and found that they haven't particularly thought this through. And that's bizarre to me. Like if you're going to spend three and I, I pitch to people all the time for cash to make videos. And it's much less than three and a half billion, believe me. And these people don't want to part with that cash. They're like, wait, hold on, that final scene, what's going to be in that final scene? So the fact that JP Morgan has pledged three and a half billion to a nebulous idea that all these clubs are going to be in there and the clubs just went, yeah, we'll sort of work it out as we go along. And we think that'll work because who knows? People still watch it, right? And JP Morgan went, sign it up, sign it off. Like that's crazy to me. But they don't seem like if I was launching a product, I would want everyone to know all the good points of it. You know, when the iPhone launches, I've got an iPhone, right? Or when an Android launches, they don't just go, trust us, it's a good phone. Because they know, they know that's not good enough, right? So then you have to start thinking, well, so what is it that JP Morgan gets out of this, which isn't just money, right? Which isn't just money. And JP Morgan is an interesting bank. I'm a boring person. I'm like, oh, let me find out what's most interesting about this bank. One of the things that they do is in order to try and sort of embed themselves and legitimize themselves, is they tie themselves to projects which are to do with infrastructure, which are to do with projects, which have some kind of cultural geographic significance and that kind of thing. So I sort of wonder if this is them trying to, you know, yeah, sports wash is, you know, people don't like banks. No one goes, what's my favorite kind of public institution? No one goes, you know what, a transnational bank, which has sort of been linked to, you know, the global financial crisis. So it's a way of going, you know, I know people like sports. I'm just going to dress myself. Right. Yeah. And all the corporates can come along and hold the t-shirt up or, you know, hold a flag or a scarf and God, they have Bovril at halftime and they're just, they're just like us, aren't they? No. It's kind of quaint. It's, yeah, like, oh, I can relate. Like that's exactly why, you know, that's exactly why I liked John Henry is because his wife tweets about the club and every time they win. And when we won the Champions League, she was like, oh, this one's for the fans. And I was like, it is for the fans, isn't it? And no. And I get it. Like, you know, of course, it's for the fans because we're buying stuff. But like that sports washing, but frankly, like, what's the reason we don't call it sports washing is because the people aren't from the Middle East. And it's just another brand of sports washing. And when Americans come in very often, we're like, yeah, of course, those guys are like, they like, they made America. So they must know how to make cash. And then when you get the Saudi Arabians or someone like that, then people go, let's just oil money. They didn't earn it, did they? And that's mad. That's racist. But before we start wrapping up, we've got, we've had a couple of super chats. We've got Flying Cloud with £5 saying, Burnley moves up to the top of Premier League result. I think that would be referring to if the big six gets banned. I mean, look, I think at this point, I think when you have to just resign yourself to the fact that you're part of the banter timeline, you're like, you know what, let the worst thing happen. Right. That part of me does want that, right? And it feels so counterintuitive. You're like, here's this club, which I love. And I'm almost praying like we get docked points, we get relegated, something happens. And do you think that this is a disconcerting experience that suddenly all your measures of success in the space of two days have been turned on its head? So now I don't think what would be successful for Spurs is to, you know, get a top four finish or whatever. What I want is to see us punished enough that we pull out of this horrible project. Yeah, that's actually, you know what, it's a really interesting one because I'm really conflicted over what, whether I want my team to be punished because do the fans deserve that punishment? Like do, I know me as someone who lives in London, not Liverpool, as someone who covers it and therefore needs like cannon fodder would be fascinated by it. But the people are in the cop every week. Is that what's best for them? And that's where I'm kind of like, I have like a morbid fascination with the whole thing. Because I'm like, we can really do something special here. But at the same time, I know that the Premier League doesn't want to punish their top six because then the top six will revolt and then they really will be angry. And then you are marketing Burnley who are top of the Premier League. And then your marketing doesn't work anymore. No offense to the Burnley fan who just gave five pounds like, you know, that's lovely. But your club is not marketable in the same way as Liverpool is marketable because globally they don't have the same footprint as Liverpool or Manchester United or any of these other things. And that take I think we've just lost Lawrence either temporarily or permanently. I think what happened there was the Burnley mafia stepping in and cutting his ethernet table. It just cut out. I don't know why it literally just this wheel just died. What I'm basically saying is, no, I don't want to see anyone punished because I think it will Liverpool fans will suffer. I mean, so I mean, all right, what is a good outcome of all of this? I mean, like we're starting to wrap up the show now. We've got to do an awful lot from financialization to sports washing to, you know, the history to do with tradition and romance and identity. What looks like a good outcome then? Because the status quo wasn't working. The future that's being potentially imposed on us is awful. What looks like progress and how do you think it might be achieved? How do you achieve? Like can I ask you a question? How do you think you achieve progress amongst a load of people who blatantly just don't financially don't need to benefit? Like they want massive benefits. All these people are millionaires anyway. Like John Henry, anyone who works for the Premier League is clearly a millionaire. How do you enforce change within them? How do you, like in your experience, how have you seen change happen? Because I'm kind of, I'm a bit lost on that. I don't really know how that happens. So I kind of think that we sometimes romanticize changing people's minds and actually what it's about is leverage. And it's leverage in terms of collective organization. It's about collective forms of ownership and financial clout. It's about somehow being equivalently scary or powerful to the set of interests which want to impose their will on you. How you then build that block which is capable of doing that. Well, that does take persuasion, that does take changing people's minds. But I think you're merely appealing to the powerful who already have a lot of money. They don't need more money and yet still want more money. Trying to convince them say, no, you don't need more money. I think it's clearly not going to work. But I can't get in the mindset of what it'd be like to have 100,000 pounds, let alone a million or a billion pounds. So if I had 100,000 pounds, I'd be like, what do I do? Yeah, what do I do with all this money? How many Freddos can I buy for this? Loads. Right. Okay. But is that like, I guess that reflects like our background compared to theirs and maybe why we don't own football clubs ourselves. You know, maybe why you want Daniel Levy is because if you've got 100,000 pounds, you think to buy however many Freddos you could afford. I think that's a good question. Is the sound investment? To be fair, I think you could probably field them and they might do a better job than the current Spurs Squad. That was mean and I'm sorry. The point is, I get what you're saying. Basically what you're saying is, there is an element of be cruel to be kind, but we have to find a way to hit the, it's the owners here. It's not the clubs. And we are somehow like putting the two together because they own our clubs. And obviously we want them to be right. Obviously we want them to do kind things for us. We want to believe they're benevolent and that they care about us. And so we will talk and act in a way as if they do because we think that that's making it happen. And you see that in football all the time. I get angry at Robbie Savage for evaluating Liverpool's title chances. Does that realistically affect Liverpool's title chances? No, but you'll be damned if I won't call that show and think that somehow I'm changing reality if I tell Robbie Savage that that's the case. And I have that on my football show all the time. If I say something people disagree with, they go, oh, I used to like you. And I'm like, well, I just said something. I was only evaluating what I saw, but and they think somehow that I'm changing the fabric of reality by saying that Manchester United aren't good or that Liverpool or that Liverpool's left back is tired. And that's kind of where we sit in this. But to finish here, there is a slight problem that we have, I think, sometimes in the discourse around football can be very heavily mass like masculine. I'm not saying that's a problem, although, you know, it comes with its pitfalls. But sometimes what it can lead to is a lack of positive outcomes, because there tends to be a lot of want for a the hero, which I don't understand why we're looking for a hero in this, it's only going to be collective action that will help here. There was very, there were sky asked questions of Jürgen Klopp last night. And then someone wrote an article, I'm not even kidding, they said he could have been the Winston Churchill of this. What do you even mean by that? Like Winston Churchill was not the man that we need in this scenario. First of all, because I don't think he'd like the Premier League because it's marketed to foreigners. But secondly, I don't think that he needs to be there. We would mean it's weird to think that Jürgen Klopp is going to fix this or that anyone is going to be the white knight in this. It's also Winston Churchill didn't defeat Hitler in hand to hand combat. That's not how things change. There were armies of millions of people thrown at each other. And not only that, but in that scenario, the Americans were kind of the good guys. So I don't, you know, none of it works in the analogy. But what I'm saying is there are there are certain tropes maybe that football fans act with. And we need the foresight and the forethought collectively that in this instance, Manchester United fans, Arsenal fans, Spurs fans, Chelsea fans, Man City fans are not our enemy. Collectively, we like football. I know this sounds incredibly care-bears, but collectively we like football for once. It's not about point scoring that Jürgen didn't give the right, didn't say the right thing. He's gone down in my estimation because of that. His mask slipped tonight, didn't it? Yeah. Oh yeah. But James Milner said it because he's a good football guy, isn't he? He just gets football and he gets footballers. Like we have this tendency to kind of go down that route of like cliche and what cliched men would say and therefore be heroes, therefore look for a solid solution that we must follow. This is not going to, like the whole point is these are a bunch of men who came up with a really bad solution for the current problem. Why we think we're going to come up with a better solution within three days isn't going to happen. So maybe this is a good lesson to learn, right, which is that if billionaire interests are acting collectively, then we have to as well. We can't go looking for individuals when we're not dealing with individuals. We're doing a really great set of interests. I said that in nine sentences whereas you said it in one. Yeah, I was just going off what you said, it was kind of playful. Sure, sure, we built it as a whole. But Lawrence, thank you so so much for spending time with us today. Thanks for having me, appreciate it. I love doing this kind of thing. I think that politics journalism is best when it's engaging with culture and engaging with things that people actually watch. And I also think that football commentary can also use a little social political analysis as well. So this was my dream. Thank you. And thanks to everyone for watching. And as always, if you enjoyed this conversation, you should drop us a like you can subscribe for more. You've been watching Downstream on Navarro Media. Goodbye.