As part of our gift guide stuff this year we’re also doing something called “Our Favorite Things.” I think these things can be from all walks of life and not exclusively tech-y. In any event, one of my favorite things, then, is the World Football Daily podcast. I know I’ve mentioned it before in passing, but I guess this is my opportunity to say why it’s one of my Favorite Things™.
World Football Daily (here’s their Twitter) is a daily soccer podcast hosted right here in the US of A. Los Angeles, to be exact. It’s a premium podcast, so you have to cough up something like $40 per year to listen. But really, that works out to 11 cents per day. You couldn’t buy two drops of coffee for 11 cents.
It’s hosted by two fine gentleman, Steven Cohen, by way of England, and Kenny Hassan, by way of Scotland. I am in agreement with Cohen that this incarnation of FC Barcelona is one of the best teams in history. It’s certainly the best team I’ve ever seen. It’s kinda difficult to watch some random, mid-table Premier League game after having seen Barcelona over the past three years.
I guess I could consider myself a longtime listener, going back several years to its swinging bachelor days on Sirius.
The best is that it’s not just a podcast where the hosts blather on and on about their chosen subject, something endemic to many podcasts out there, but they actually talk to people. Proper soccer journalists—off the top of my head, you’ve got Phil Ball, Andy Brassell, Tim Vickery, Oliver Kay, and Neil Ashton—to talk about the sport.
If none of those names mean anything to you, well, that’s why you listen to the show. Trust me when I say these guys, and all the other guests they have, truly know their stuff.
Yesterday they had some English sports-business guy who tried to explain why Fifa picked Russia ahead of England to host the 2018 World Cup. Just as Formula 1 is now looking eastward to new markets, so, too, is Fifa. What’s so wrong about wanting to build up the game in Russia?
Same thing with Qatar. I laugh at people who think Qatar won’t have the most advanced stadiums in the world at the 2022 World Cup, or that somehow the tournament will now be an unmitigated disaster just because it’s hosted in the Middle East. Again, F1 says hi, and I don’t see Bernie Ecclestone complaining about the facilities over there.
More to the point, it’s the World Cup, not the Western World Cup. Spread that baby around! Spending a few weeks in a place I’ve never been before sounds infinitely more exciting than riding the Path train from Penn Station to Red Bull Arena again.
But yeah, World Football Daily is certainly one of my Favorite Things™ out there, and I highly recommend it.
Well met, traveler. From Parts Unknown, Nicholas Deleon has already run out of clever things to say down here. But this is his Twitter. It’s shiny.