TODAY - Putin accuses Ukraine of vetoing a signed peace plan with NATO, leaving it in the ’garbage of history'. Biden’s concern over the threat of Putin deploying ‘tactical nuclear weapons’, Dem Stacey Plaskett’s revelations about her solicitation of Jeffrey Epstein for campaign donations in 2018. PLUS our special guest is Simon Jordan talking Saudi money in sport and leadership in soccer.WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/v2vx8x2-putins-nuke-threat-plus-simon-jordan-on-money-in-sport-153-stay-free-with-r.html Watch Simon Jordan on TalkSPORT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92M6jQ1XlWg&t=2s My comedy special 'Brandemic' - premiers on June 25th June. Pre-order your tickets now at https://www.moment.co/russellbrand For a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here: https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to my festival COMMUNITY - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
Our Lord God he don't make trash he makes awakening wonders and that's what we're being joined by now in the form of yes you are we are here together it surely must be friday this is what we call it friday yeah that's it now you've done well that's my favorite one yeah that's my favorite one of the days all the different ones they're all just made up though i always come to you when i want to know what day of the week it is yeah i'm like what day of the week is it today Asked me if NATO vetoed a Ukraine peace deal and how did the US find an extra 6, 6, 6 billion.
They found sex where?
They found sex, sex, sex in a 6, 6, 6 billion dollars for military and no wonder they keep failing, that the Pentagon keep failing those bloody audits.
They keep finding 6 billion dollars and as Aaron Maté tweeted, Hello, darling.
We've got a fantastic show coming up.
We're going to be talking a little bit about Jeffrey Epstein and exactly... See if you can guess this.
Humour me.
Which congressperson do you think solicited donations from Epstein?
Let us know in the chat right now.
Let us know in the chat who you think.
Probably all of them.
They all like him.
He was very popular, wasn't he?
He went over ever so well.
All the ones that were on his list.
What?
Epstein's List.
What I think was interesting about sort of Epstein is it's comparable to the Black Rock story that we did the other day.
We know already, don't we, that this kind of corruption goes on and then a story like this breaks and it merely confirms what we already reckoned.
Is that how you feel about it?
Let me know.
If you're watching us on YouTube, we're only going to be here for about, I don't know, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, something like that because we're just absolutely We're actually a bit busy at the moment.
And also, we do our broadcasting exclusively on Rumble.
Why?
Because like RFK, we recognise that free speech ain't free if you ain't willing to fight for it.
That's why you've got to get over to Rumble.
If you're watching this on Rumble, give us a Rumble.
Hit that Rumble button now.
See that Rumble button?
What's she ignoring it?
Hey, what it done to you?
It ain't no little kid.
It ain't no orphan.
Don't neglect it.
What are you, Dr. Barnardo?
Give it a nudge.
That is the old rumble button.
Give it a push.
Okay, shall we get into some news?
Because I've actually got quite a lot to say, Gareth.
I'm one of the busiest journalists... No, I know you are.
...on Earth.
Barely get a meeting with you.
You know, you can't do.
I'm too busy journaling.
I've got a lot to do.
I know, I know.
In that room on your own, by candlelight, with that quill.
Doing the old journaling, baby!
That's what I've got to do.
Journal, journal, journal.
Hey, if you think we weren't about to mention killer aliens, you're mistaken, because we're going to be doing a deep presentation on those killer aliens.
You lot, do you think it's a distraction?
Do you think we're being used?
Do you think the CIA are meddling with us?
Because a lot of our sources, and we've got good sources actually, Say that the CIA, the deep state, don't want this stuff coming out and that it's epochal and it's seismic and it's paradigm shifting.
So if you think that they're just using this stuff as a distraction from, I don't know, did Joe Biden take that money?
Ding!
Allegedly.
Where's that button gone?
Or did, uh, or elsewhere, are they hounding Trump?
Thanks very much.
Thanks very much.
Are they hounding Trump instead of focusing on the contents of those boxes?
Is there a plan for a war in Iran?
Anyway, look, these are all questions that simply have to be asked and simply have to be answered.
We'll be doing that in our presentation on killer aliens.
Murderous aliens.
It's weird to think of an alien being murderous because that sort of places them within a moral framework that is literally terrestrial.
Maybe in their crazy old country, murdering is...
It's a little more than a sport.
Now, we asked you a minute ago which congressperson solicited Epstein for donations.
Hopefully it's not someone who's incredibly smug, pious, pompous, and willing to talk to groundbreaking, award-winning journalists like Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi like this scum of the earth.
Have a look at this clip.
Go guys.
This isn't just a matter of what data was given to these so-called journalists before us now.
Matt Taibbi all upset.
That reminds me of last night when I was with Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger.
I know, hell of a night.
What a night it was.
It was so brilliant, Gareth, to start this movement against the censorship industrial complex.
What a great, what great fun.
The fact that Tim Robbins came, magnificent.
I didn't see him, but that was good, yeah.
Didn't see him?
I didn't see him.
The way you spoke to him, Gareth, sidling up to him.
Shouldn't have done that.
Getting on his lap like that, saying, hey, what about if me and you I've always wanted to do.
Finally got to do it.
Think before you act.
Should've done.
Told you that before.
Think before you act so you wouldn't have this long litany of atrocities you've committed against Tim Robbins.
I liken you to that lady there we just saw out of Congress.
Stacey Plaskett?
You're a bit like Stacey Plaskett, gal.
Am I?
Am I?
In a way, yeah, because look what she's been doing.
Trying to get Epstein to give her a quid or two.
God rest his eternal soul.
She did this in 2018?
Is Epstein really?
We can't because we're still on YouTube.
Now, if you're watching us on YouTube, there's a link in the description.
Join us over on Rumble, right?
Join us there because we ain't using Rumble for hate speech.
I don't hate anybody.
I believe in love.
I believe in you.
I believe in your right to disagree with me.
I believe in our right to find new mutual systems of consensual governance.
What I don't believe in is calling Matt Taibbi and Schellenberger a couple of flyby nights and charlatans, which any of you that attended the show last night will know they simply are not and could not be.
And then, knowing that you yourself have solicited donations from Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates' former buddy, we can't even tell you what Epstein did on YouTube because we would get demonetized, but you know because you're an awakened wonder.
But also, you know, she was talking about Mark Tovey and Michael Schellenberg as releasing cherry-picked out-of-context emails, and basically, as you say, calling them so-called journalists, when she essentially is a lie, is a lying, she is lying!
She's a lie!
She's so happy.
"What are you doing, Stacy Peleskis? You're picking the bloody cherries yourself!"
She's basically said that she didn't know anything about Epstein donating to her campaign.
She didn't know?
But she actually did, because we've got emails that have come through this case of JP Morgan versus the Virgin Islands, which is going on at the moment.
JP Morgan versus the Virgin Islands?
Yeah, it's all about... Boring football match?
Still nil-nil at halftime!
So in 2018 she had personally requested that an invitation to a Bloomberg fundraiser be sent to Epstein.
I would be grateful for his support and the support of those that he may direct to assist me, she wrote.
Let me see that quote.
What does it say?
I'd be grateful for his support?
Yeah.
Is that what it says?
Yeah, it does.
I'd be grateful for it.
So these emails have only come up as a result of this lawsuit that's going on at the moment.
Let me know what you think in the chat.
It's only come up because of the bloody JP Morgan versus the Virgin Islands.
They should do it as a wrestling match, I say.
Do it as MMA.
It's the only way to get to the bottom of this.
It's the way you try to solve your differences with Matt Taibbi last night, after all.
I shouldn't have done that either.
Physical violence is ridiculous.
And in that singlet?
I know.
Outrageous.
Listen, let us know in the chat and the comments what you think about... Is it Stacey Plunkett?
That's good.
Well, nevertheless.
It's simply unforgivable, isn't it, to make those requests of Jeffrey Epstein?
And let us know what you think about his untimely demise.
Did he do it himself or did somebody else do it?
Is it so mysterious going on?
Because I'll tell you this, this is a bit of news that we're not supposed to report but we will because we love you, because we respect you, because we believe in your ability to discern truth from fiction, take a bit of a joke, have a laugh, recreate, create new systems of government, thank the old order for establishing commercialism, commodification, centralised media and government models, say your time is done now, we're going to decentralise, we're going to end this gargantuan experiment, this gigantist model that's gotten out of control, this tumorous Horrible metastasization of our value system that you have undertaken.
We're going to do it ourselves now.
Sisters, and in some cases brothers, are doing it for themselves.
Have you seen this?
Putin reckons, and can we trust him?
Well, it's on Russian state television, so you know, who knows?
Putin claims that he offered a peace deal.
Do you believe this Putin?
I mean, isn't he a criminal?
Well, no, he says there was a signed peace treaty with Ukraine.
They had one.
Yeah in 2022, in the spring of 2022.
We already know the situation with like Boris Johnson that was reported in Ukrainian newspaper that Boris Johnson went over in April 2022 to discourage Ukraine from going ahead with this peace deal.
So Putin's not saying anything that is like totally we haven't heard about before.
You could say so.
Are you willing to say that?
I would be willing to say that.
Yes, I would.
I'm gonna press that.
Just for safety's sake, if nothing else, Gareth, just for the sake of legal safety, join us on Rumble like RFK.
There's a link in the description to ensure that your free speech is protected.
Let me know if you think that Putin is a war criminal.
He is, isn't he?
He's a war criminal, come on.
But also do you think he did have a peace deal and that the West scuppered it?
But let me ask you this simple question.
What possible motivation could Western governments and their commercial sponsors in the military-industrial complex have for prolonging a war?
It's not like there's recently been a war in Afghanistan that went on for ages and ages and ages and basically achieved nothing and that we now know was basically an attempt to siphon taxpayer monies into the hands of the military-industrial complex.
We don't know that.
In fact, hold on a minute.
Like, when we're talking about surveillance and all that stuff, and we're saying how the deep state has turned in on itself like a souffle made of corruption, what we often say is that the reason it's done that is because they've solved the problem of terrorism, right?
They've solved terrorism now, because you don't hear about it, do you?
No.
You don't ever, like... Where are ISIS these days?
Where are they?
I never used to step outside my house.
I'd go out there, water in a can, just to do, you know, look after the plants by the door.
ISIS.
They'll be there.
Or the Taliban.
They were there.
They're a bit more old school, the Taliban.
They're not so bad.
ISIS, they're like, they're pretty on it, weren't they?
Those lads.
They were taking it to the absolute bloody limit, if you ask me.
Anyway, you don't hear about them anymore.
So perhaps that's because of the success of the Deep State.
Perhaps that's because of the success of the campaign in Afghanistan.
I'm not being the devil's advocate.
I just, I've got no time for the devil, Gal, after what he tried to do with Jesus.
It's because GCHQ took all your data.
That's why they got rid of ISIS.
It's because of that.
Once we got rid of all of our data, once that was all bundled up by commercial enterprises, then sold back to the Deep State, it's another story we're going to be bringing you soon.
It's going to knock your knickers down, mate, because what we found out is that the Deep State are using taxpayer dollars to acquire from commercial entities your private information.
But look, we've got so much to tell you, it's difficult, gal.
Stay free with Russell Brand.
See it first on Rumble.
The world is a complex place full of hypocrisy and contradiction.
Systems that atrophy around us can no longer be relied on and trusted.
Our leaders are fallen figures and our poets are all mute.
But football?
Football is nice.
Hello and welcome to a very special edition of Football is Nice with me, Russell Brand.
Today I've dispatched with Hull's favourite son, Gareth Roy, in favour of British entrepreneur, broadcaster, author, iconoclast and disruptor, Simon Jordan, who by the age of 32 had built a company from nothing.
He'd made it from nothing.
He sold it for $95 million, bought Crystal Palace Football Club, which is a type of football team almost in London.
He's the best-selling author of Be Careful What You Wish For, Well, now co-host of the Daily Show on Talk Sport in the UK, which I've had the great privilege of appearing on, where his opinions, views, willingness to confront the establishment and ordinary platitudinous orthodoxy has bought him legions of fans, many people calling him a kind of peroxide
Paxman, the Tucker Carlson of sport. Please welcome to Football is Nice, live on Rumble.
If you're a member of Locals, press the red button right now. You can join us on Locals,
you can pose questions to Simon Jordan. It's Simon Jordan, it's Simon, that's who it is,
it's Simon Jordan. Hello. 95 million dollars. Is that what it was that you sold your business for?
No, it was about $136 million at the time.
Oh yeah, well done.
What was it?
It was a little bit better than that.
Was it tech?
Um, it was mobile telephony.
So I was, the reasons why people are sitting there gawping at their phones and doing nothing else besides sitting in their mum's bedrooms with their pants around their ankles sending out rude messages over cyber optics is because of people like me.
As I voyaged out here into the country I saw a little signpost saying Medieval Jousting.
I assume that's not a metaphor from what I'm about to experience is it?
We're so deeply ensconced in rural Britain that Medieval Jousting is the frontier of entertainment here, the apex.
That's what we do out in the... It's an interesting little setup.
As I came wandering up here and saw the studio I thought it was Get a bit more on mic, it ain't as good as your radio.
I expected Felicity Kendall to come bowling out from The Good Life and get mugged by Richard Bryars on the way in.
You could get mugged by a cosy sitcom.
For the TARDISes, isn't it?
It's much bigger on the inside.
Yeah, that's right.
Indeed.
Like my mind, like your vocabulary.
I've got a little bit of that about me.
Simon, I'm really excited to talk to you.
Nice to be here, mate.
Thank you for coming into our show the other day, so I'm very glad to reciprocate.
It went pretty well, didn't it?
You were brilliant.
Thank you.
I enjoyed it very much.
What I enjoy about our... You were loved.
Loved, actually.
People loved you.
Which ain't... That's a rare treat, because I've always been someone who divides opinions.
I've accepted that, and as part of Because if you're dividing opinions it means you're moving across echo chambers, moving into different spaces where people can relate or disagree in equal measure.
I think that's good.
People that are successful tend to be a little bit Marmites.
Yeah.
Marmite, for those of you watching this in the United States of America, is a disgusting yeast-based paste that people- That you get to smear.
Smear.
Smear.
I can't think even of a US equivalent of Marmite, but certainly it's a divisive culture.
Vegemite in Australia.
Vegemite in Australia.
America, they care about Australia even less than they care- There was a brief moment with Paul Hogan, who you're not dissimilar to, let's face it.
In what basis?
Because once upon a time, I had the desire to make myself look like an Adonis in blonde.
Do you know what I thought?
It's grey now.
I was thinking about this from you.
A man from ordinary origins.
Indeed.
Ridiculous haircut when you first burst onto the scene.
Autodidact, I assume.
Ridiculous haircut.
It's like looking in a mirror.
Me the Dionysian, you the Apolline.
Nevertheless, we're in some ways similar people.
I pushed back against conventional wisdom.
I had a mother that was a hairdresser at Vidal Sassoon who said to me, the fuck are you doing that for?
And I thought, no, I will not go down that route.
I shall do precisely what I want.
Cause that was a Larry haircut.
It was a bob.
And it was, it was, it was a moment in time.
It certainly was.
You really captured the spirit of the, was it the nineties?
Well, no, it was the early two thousands.
Thank you.
But it was also, yeah, that was, that was, that was, yeah, that was then.
Yeah.
You look like a scarecrow with an ambition to model.
Do you think so?
Yeah, like specifically Worzel Gummidge.
Do I look like the Crowman out of Worzel Gummidge?
Yeah, somewhat.
Or, yeah, a cross between Catweasel, which the American audience will get no relevance to, with Catweasel and Worzel Gummidge.
But you can imagine rocking into the ballrooms of Premier League football clubs at the average age of a chairman being about 65, and that comes wandering through the door.
It must have been a wonderful greeting that I got.
Because you would have been talking to, like, sort of, Ken Bates!
Yeah, I would, yeah.
So, it was an anomalous time.
Since you've been involved in the game, it's metastasized into a global corporate entity.
It's no longer figures like Jack Walker who once owned Blackburn.
It's a global entertainment business.
I don't know about global corporate entity, but a global entertainment opportunity.
Which will then maybe morph as you suggest.
Why do you think that is an important distinction?
Because I think that your propensity to want to make everything about some corporate elitism isn't necessarily as prevalent in football as it is in other sectors, but there is an element of it and we can perhaps kick that around in our discussions, but I'm not entirely sure that your little revolution that you want to go on sometimes is necessarily as prevalent in football as you'd like it to be.
Where do you think the game is heading when we have more and more state ownership or de facto state ownerships of top flight clubs?
Do you not think that it is precisely the type of corporate gigantism that I'm describing elsewhere?
Particularly when contrasted to the time where a kid from South London with nothing but a blonde bob and a dream could march into Sellyhurst Road and start telling Mark Bright what to do!
Yeah, yeah.
Strange doesn't it?
Yeah, I mean the days of the cook, the candlestick maker, the baker owning football clubs are probably long gone.
But that's the world that we wanted to create.
Football was no different from any other parts of society that's susceptible to globalism and globalization and the opportunities that it brings because it's such a hook, a conduit, an anchor for so many different things that as much as I don't like it and the idea of nation states The subterfuge of people suggesting that the acquisitions of clubs like Newcastle United aren't nation states because they've got sovereign wealth funds that ultimately fund nation states needs to be debated.
But if you look at recent terms, if you look at America, they don't allow that sort of acquisition of what people would consider to be Societal and community assets ie sports clubs.
That's not allowed.
That's not tolerated It seems to be the case in Europe that we have a different attitude towards it.
if you look at recent times, albeit I think it's dressed up in, and again
subterfuge, the Premier League, the English Premier League have suggested
now that they're not going to allow nation-state ownership, which is a bit
like, you know, shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted because it's
already there and it's already very prevalent and how they're going to stop
it because without being overly melodramatic you've got a situation where nation-
states are using vehicles to buy football clubs and then able to convince
the village idiots posing as people that are running the Premier League because
it suits them because they'd rather have Middle Eastern money in the Premier
League than perhaps in the Italian League or the Spanish League or the
German leagues because that money will develop their leagues faster and then
they've been convinced for example The PIF Fund is not a nation-state.
It's a separate entity.
There's an arm's-length relationship between Mohammed bin Salman, who's the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and this sovereign wealth fund whose sole purpose in life is to advance the financial benefits for the nation is not a nation state yet you find out in
another realm in America that Live Golf which is funded by PIF has made the case that it is a
nation state. Yeah so it's interesting isn't it? Yeah there's a lot of things I want to pick up on Simon
and what you've told me mate. Firstly the PIF have taken over four domestic league clubs over
there in Saudi Arabia making them some national assets you'll be aware of that. That's how
they work don't they? Is it mate?
The moment a business in Saudi Arabia becomes successful what happens is the state requisitions
it. I see. That's how they work. And with the acquisition the de facto acquisition of a club
like Newcastle and with the you know the potential for United to become owned perhaps in a comparable
way by Qatar with City already owned by Abu Dhabi and this for me isn't about the geographic location
of the you know the fact that they're all Middle Eastern entities because I wonder what the
distinction is between state ownership and corporate ownership when it's a gigantic
corporation like you know FSG or comparable like entities.
But one has a commercial agenda the other has an influence agenda.
one is slightly more different than the other because if you're looking at the
Middle Eastern guys and neither one of us are sitting here from a xenophobic
position we're just questioning the validity and the motivation and the
methodology being deployed and so you look at someone like the middle and I
have no objection to anybody trying to advance their society anybody being able
to participate in anything like sport because we don't have a God-given right
in Europe or North America to suggest that we own sports and sports can't
evolve but when they're being used as a vehicle some would say for sports
washing to legitimize their their their regimes through parts of the world that
don't accept them or to go to your point to advance the industrial opportunity
because they want to turn away from having to be sort of funded by the only
thing that can be funded by which is underneath the sand which is oil and
turn it into a hub or a commercial vehicle for different opportunities
So that goes to your narrative about the fact there's a corporate agenda behind it rather than just an acceptance of embracing a different opportunity for a different part of the world to compete.
And whilst it's clear from your description that one of those propositions is potentially more nefarious and more vast, my perspective is a romantic one Simon and it's based on the, this is something I really would It's the idea that somehow football still encompasses a sense of deep community connection, that people feel like they own their football clubs, that they love their football clubs, and that football can present us with these moments of incredible romance, whether it's something as potentially trivial but yet beautiful as David Moyes giving his medal to his father after West Ham won the most important European Cup recently, becoming champions of Europe, one of the most important of the trophies available.
Like, what I suppose I'm saying is, is that it feels to me that even though a Super League was mooted, then rebutted because of fan outrage a little while ago, that if we see this kind of corporatism continue, does it become inevitable that the globalisation of the game will eventually...
It breaks the links between community values.
The next step of that dislocation will become games being played elsewhere, franchises being moved around as we see in the United States of America with their football teams and pocket teams or whatever.
At what point did it stop being the thing that presumably motivated you?
Because I bet for you, why did you buy Palace and not Millwall or Fulham?
Presumably it's a romantic connection to your father.
My father played for the Muppets but I'd grown up 100 yards away from the stadium and it was the club that I wanted to
own.
And also, Russell, it's because I saw a commercial opportunity.
Because, you know, nobody goes into football, no matter how philanthropic they feel about it, to lose money.
There will always be an end game, whether it's your exit strategy that gets you back the money you've invested and
maybe takes some money out of it for you.
And if you've done well and everyone else has done well as a result of it and the club has prospered, there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with people making money from football.
No one seems to have a problem with football players or managers or agents getting paid a king's fortune.
Anyone moots the idea that someone that actually owns a football club should get some money out of it, they should be flogged at dawn.
But the notion that you're advancing is that we are beginning to move into a territory where you're taking away the grassroots and the values of a football club that was built from years gone past when the factory workers used to turn out at one o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock kickoff times are put there to be able to meet the expectations of the people that wanted to watch football.
And then you've got the other side of the argument which is the romantic side against the reality of what fans actually want to see football become.
They want to see the best players.
They want to see the best way of watching it.
They want to see the best stadia.
They want to see all of these scenarios.
So with that comes a cost.
And then there's this sort of prostitution of the soul.
What do you want?
Do you want to have the earthy football club that Bob Lord once presided over in 1960s in Burnley when he was the town mill baron and everyone went to him with their cloth caps to watch the football team?
Or do you want this wonderful, dynamic, gold dust orientated, 360 degrees, seven day a week, 24-hour access to sport?
America's different.
I lived in America for two or three years and the tribalism, albeit it exists, it's not steeped quite so much in the culture and society of Western Europe in terms of specifically England where you've got a football club.
A town often thrives and sometimes survives By the very nature of having a successful football club into it because it reflects aspiration, it brings commerce in there, it brings people coming in to spend money in that town because the team's doing well or not doing so well and obviously the knock-on effects of that have a diametrically opposed effect.
But there is this balance I've often thought and I would disappear into your sort of romantic saccharine sentimental world of we should have a blue you know the blue plaques that we have celebrating grade two listed buildings above a football stadium suggesting that these things need to be governed by a different set of parameters.
But when you start flying players around the world in private jets to get their toenails clipped and you start paying people £500,000 a week the dynamics change and it's about trying to manage the evolution Alongside the aspiration, alongside the reality of what people see it to be.
I don't think anyone, I'm sure some people would, but the argument I'm advancing is not that there's anything with enlightened self-interest, a young man acquiring Crystal Palace both out of a sentimental attachment to the club and reverence perhaps for his father, love of the game, natural love of football.
Also wanting to be successful.
Wanting to be good in another field.
Exactly though, Simon.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And egotistical.
Anyone that buys football clubs often has an ego attached to it as well.
You buy football clubs for credibility.
You buy it for recognisability.
If you're Roman Abramovich, you once bought it for the most expensive life insurance policy.
But you do it for different reasons.
Yeah.
If ego is part of the qualification, then you should own the entire Premier League!
So what I'm saying, right, is, is there a point where the convergence of these two ideas,
one idealistic and about a love of the game, and sort of just the basic way that the free
market operates, return a profit from a business, become so sort of capsized, so overtly metastasized
that you can no longer discern the original community romantic connection?
At what point, like we experienced during the COVID period where fans were present and
the economic model still works, but does the ideological model still work?
That's where I'm trying to get to is...
Tell me what visuality it did was, because what you saw was this enormous rush to watch
television and it's enormous appreciation.
Ironically how important fans were and the moment they get back in the grounds is how can we control them?
Don't let them go on the pitches and celebrate with the players and ultimately players should be distanced from actually even engaging with the fans.
So there's this juxtapose of actually how football views what I consider to be the most valuable asset that it's got which is the people to watch it.
Yeah, and that, in a sense, we don't watch it just passively, we participate in it.
And the thing that I'm sort of circling around is, at what point does this process of sanitization that we see elsewhere in culture, commodification that we see elsewhere in culture, corporatization where, in a sense, the product, you know, if we're going to call it that, No longer has its original value.
At what point do we say, shouldn't we intervene?
Because we can see where this is heading.
This is heading to a global Super League, where games are played in the state of the highest bidder, where it don't matter if you're Luton or whatever top-flight franchise you are, you can be uprooted and planted wherever.
And what I suppose I still feel in football, Is it because it is a vehicle for community is a vehicle for sort of a version of tribalism that's safe.
It's a vehicle for romanticism, heroes, etc.
But it's also a way of plotting the way that the culture is changing and in a way that I think requires regulation.
And yet when we spoke before you talk about the player, you know, salary caps and all you know, I'll yield that I'm not bothered in a way.
You can't regulate emotional relationships can you?
You can't regulate the way people perceive the value that they attach to something which you know despite Bill Shankly's you know observations about football not being life and death it's more important than that.
People will engage with sport the way that they want to and there's one thing you can't do is control that.
The product itself, and the uniqueness certainly of the English game, is very different than any other part of the world, even other European countries.
You think?
Yeah, I do think so.
They're going all nuts with them ultras.
Yeah, okay, there's always exceptions that don't always prove the rule, but I mean, in Europe you'll get more of that relationship.
We start to move, and of course in South America where you've got absolute lunacy at times about the patronage.
You've even got in Colombia, people got shot because they didn't perform in a World Cup, so we're taking that a little bit too far.
But you look at the cynicism of certain things like, you know, I have no dog in the fight with Manchester City.
People turn around and say if you criticise Man City it's because you're jealous of them.
I'm not jealous of Man City.
I don't support Man City.
I'm not envious of anybody.
Never have been.
But I also believe that there's an approach to the way that football should work that Because it's a collective business.
The trickle-down economics that we often hear about in other parts of the world that are supposed to benefit societies really don't ever work.
But the trickle-down economics in football do affect it because what you pay people and what people cost at the very top end up landing at the bottom and the economics of football don't work that way.
That's why there's an element of cynicism.
About the Man City model because what they've done is precisely what you advocate for which is recognizing the community.
So they've gone in and they've regenerated the community alongside the football club.
The football club's been the hook and they spent lots of money in Moss Side and regenerated this and made it valuable.
Parts of the community feel more valued in terms of the investment into the structure and everyone goes how wonderful that is.
But the objective behind that is not because Sheikh Mansour wanted to wander around Moss Side.
It's because there's a vehicle here which indeed gives you legitimacy and validity and builds the relationships that they want to have by utilizing sports clubs and I'm slightly troubled by that.
I'm not as utopian as you.
And I'm much more, I'm sort of like a Tom Berrington character out of Platoon, I don't need reality, I am reality, I see things for what they are.
In terms of, look, let's look at it, let's look at the reality of what things can become, what things should become, and what they will become, and try and find a hybrid of the three.
Because I feel that the biggest obstacle, the only way to prevent this globalised model where it will impact the fans emotional connections with clubs because I think ultimately what will happen and we witnessed a touch of this... The fans where?
The indigenous to the location or this global audience that's now being brought around the world to see football in this country?
Because I would say a less cynical model would be to build grassroots clubs in all these various territories so there is a geographical connection between the fans that love the game.
Well tell me how that works then.
You've got 92 clubs occupying a very small country and you've got overpopulation in certain parts of the country in terms of football clubs.
Most parts of the country are represented.
You've got one example.
One example in 150 years of football.
of a football club being geographically relocated.
Half of that was my fault because I drop kicked them out of my stadium at, you know, Wimbledon.
Don't want you here anymore.
And they became AFC Wimbledon and moved out and became AFC Wimbledon and Milton Keynes.
But we've not got any other examples of it.
Your fear is that that's going to happen?
Yeah.
Well, you've got no basis for that fear.
Well I have a basis because only 14 Premier League clubs would need to vote for something like that and like we're approaching that number where we're going to have comparable intentions.
Explain to me the logic of XYZ club moving from XYZ location to another one.
Money.
Okay well give me an example of what that looks like.
Well, because there are these new emergent models, for example, it would be unthinkable a little while ago for the MLS to participate in the funding of the Messi transfer in the way that they did.
The league itself, commercial sponsors and the club come together to acquire a player because they all acknowledge that the benefits will be spread across the globe.
So as this model continues to evolve, capitalism doesn't go backwards.
Globalism doesn't go backwards.
It becomes more immersive.
They'll have more commercial partners.
The MLS model isn't particularly working, is it?
It's working for the owners, but it's not working for the sport.
And that's the only people it needs to work for, is the owners.
That's why, in fact, the argument that I am trying to undergird here, Simon, is that if we came close to creating a Super League, it didn't work because the fans bought it.
They're obviously not going to go away, as I've heard you say on the radio.
It didn't work because there wasn't enough money put up by JP Morgan.
But they'll refine it, and they'll find ways to make it work.
But did you think there was anything wrong with that, then?
I do mate because I think that what this is my I'm Are you happy with your team playing in Europe?
Do you know what I think this is where I think it should go it should move we should this is this is set in a broader cultural framework you're gonna have to let me explain this don't interrupt I'm interested in hearing from you I'm only saying this stuff so as I can make sure I want you to understand the nuance of what I'm saying so that I can get the nuance of your response what I think should happen is that there should be ownership, fan ownership of clubs.
In fact, this is a big political point I've been mulling over for ages. Like Germany. I'll take
you there, beyond Germany actually.
If I was running politically, no not if I was running, that's too dangerous. If someone was
running politically, here's something I would suggest as part of their manifesto. As the Saudis
have just re-nationalised those four clubs because they've become an asset, under our
administration we will re-nationalise all the 92 league clubs.
Those assets will be seized and they will be owned not by the state but collectively by the community.
Watford will be owned by Watford fans.
Arsenal will be owned by Arsenal fans.
Liverpool will own Liverpool fans.
I told you it's new.
Liverpool will be owned by Liverpool fans and it's going to be taken back by the state in the same way you could with municipal assets and then collectively owned by the community.
Vote for me.
Now what have you got?
You've got a mighty marching movement of people that are willing to go on the streets when they're dissatisfied.
Come on, it's a brilliant idea, Simon.
Think beyond the money.
You mean nationalise?
Because it's never been nationalised before, so we wouldn't re-nationalise them.
You'd re-nationalise them for the first time.
We'd be re-nationalising some addresses.
How would that funding model work for the football clubs?
What do you mean by the funding model?
Well, because you've got a situation now where the genie's out of the bottle.
The economics of football are at such a level, right, that ultimately, fan ownership, which I don't have a particular problem with, besides the fact that it becomes too emotive, too visceral in its decision-making process, and it doesn't make much commercial sense.
You want emotion.
You want it to be visceral.
Yeah, but you want it outside the ballroom.
I suppose this only works, but it's a paradigm shift, Simon.
I can't sort of go, here's my spreadsheet.
It's a bloated shift, yeah.
It's not a deluded shift.
It is a little bit.
What this is addressing is the fact that we have turned everything into a commodity and this is an attempt to redress that phenomena and reverse it.
You own your football clubs.
You own your electricity.
You own your waterworks.
We are rejecting this model.
We are reversing it and we are granting you, fans of Everton, you own Everton Football Club now.
You run it democratically.
Does that mean you're going to be our pay players as much as you used to?
Absolutely not.
What's going to happen?
There's going to be a seismic shift in the game.
I'm happy with that.
The world is going to alter.
Because that's really what we're sort of discussing.
I want to break the framework.
I don't want to operate within the existing framework.
In your reverse Davos mentality of the great reset, but going with the alternative way with it, what you're suggesting... It's democratic.
It's not Davos because it's voted for by the people.
You can never get it through unless the people vote for it.
In the reverse is what I said to Davos, right?
So it's democratic.
There's nothing wrong with that.
In your view.
And it's...
So we look at it and say that you believe this is a global order.
That every league will fall in order with this.
It doesn't matter.
This is quite isolationist.
Because all of a sudden your scabby little team won't be playing in Europe anymore because they won't be able to compete.
We don't want it anymore.
We own them now.
So we'd have this wonderful model in the UK which the guys on the bus with you would have this viewpoint that your sentiment has some validity to it.
No one else in Europe would perform that and then we'd be the sick man of European football on that basis.
Well, I can see where you might stand on an argument like Brexit based on some of the rhetoric.
No, no, I have a very open mind.
Well, this is just that.
This is simply that.
What this is suggesting is that in order to break down globalist models, you're going to have to take legislative and regulatory steps.
Why not confront this at the most populist level possible?
Football.
Sport.
Instead of going about it in things people don't really understand or care about or can't connect to, find ways that they actually connect.
Mobilise them there.
Mobilise them where it matters.
You own your community.
Why do you care about football?
Because of your father.
Why do you care about football?
Because of the feeling it gives you.
Why should your football clubs be owned by conglomerates abroad?
Just because of an economic model that doesn't serve you, that's never served you, that doesn't respect you, that wants you dumb and dead.
All that stuff.
But you're saying that, right?
You're saying it doesn't serve people.
Yeah, you've got a league in this country, in England, that's the envy of every league around the world.
And I suppose owning a football club is a bit like taking drugs, isn't it?
It takes all your money, gives you a headache and you wish you hadn't done it.
But the railings ain't suffered, you've still got lovely noshes.
Don't compare my experiences to yours, right?
This wasn't an intervention.
I look at the scenario and say, well, what's broken so far?
You're railing against the system and saying it needs to be fixed.
But what is it you think's broken?
We are seeing fans, we're seeing attendances... What do you think's broken?
You're the one saying cap the players.
What I think's broken is that we're losing the game.
Although we're creating an entertaining product, we're losing the connection.
We're losing the thing that's real about it.
That's what I'm claiming.
Do you think so?
I mean, do you think that the fans themselves, from what I see, are more engaged and more invested than they have been for some time?
They need to invest.
It's bloody expensive.
The merch is expensive.
The people that built the game can't afford to get into stadiums no more, Simon.
Are you an individualistic?
You're from a normal working class background.
What is the affinity you feel with that community?
What do you feel about just basic arguments that people from that part of South London won't be able to eventually afford to attend games?
They won't be able to participate except by watching Crystal Palace playing in, I don't know, somewhere in Malaysia.
I'm not sure that's right.
You think it's going that way don't you?
No, I think that the least amount of money generated inside a football club is by what people pay to get into it.
The broadcasters are the ones that bring the revenue in, the corporate sponsors.
So the geography is sort of irrelevant in a global way?
Yeah to some extent.
I'm not in the camp of wanting to see Premier League games being played in America.
I understand why other leagues want to do that because they need to do it because they can't keep up with the financial juggernaut that is the Premier League which by the way hasn't even scratched the surface of the opportunity it can present.
Or for broadcasting yeah because we've got a situation where you've got a product which is in demand you've got a model exists over here which is a VOD platform in Netflix which has got a market cap of 250 billion and you've got and built its business primarily on other people's content you've got the Premier League that could build the same model reduce the cost of football to people by the very nature of the volumes it can achieve worldwide and multiply its revenues by factors of six seven eight nine and ten And then what you've got is you've got a product which is delivered to people when they want it, how they want it, where they want it, at a price they're prepared to consume and everybody wins.
Then it goes against my argument then of course that I want football to suddenly suppress the expenditure on not what you call the poor hard done by footballers I'm targeting to get their wages brought down.
I'm just trying to get substance into the game and a game to be supported by its own merits rather than Daddy Warbucks.
Pop in with an agenda whether that be Simon Jordan 20 years ago because he made 100 million quid and wants to buy his local football club or what they buy Sheikh Mansour because he has it for a different reason.
It needs to be sustainability and at this moment in time we've got the wild west and that's why I have an aberration for the MLS model.
But I also have a bit of a disdain for it.
Because the MS Model is a group of owners getting together.
Because I put a team in America.
I put the first English team into America.
We played out of Annapolis in Washington State.
And I looked very carefully at the MS Model.
And to one part of my mind as an owner.
Yeah get it.
All the owners get together.
We work out how we're going to make money.
And then we work out how everyone else is going to make money.
And that has some resonance to it.
The other side of it, it makes it the world that you're advocating for, which is it loses the competitivity of it, it loses the objectivity of it, and it makes it all about money.
But is there already, Russell?
I may well be in the land of brand but I'm still slightly commercial in my thinking.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the entrepreneurial spirit.
I think there's nothing wrong with capitalism either but I think there's everything wrong with irresponsible capitalism.
Yeah and I think that's where we are and I think that we're going to see it play out in sport.
I've got a question that's on a slightly different tack now but I think you'll be well into it.
With the success of Wrexham based around like Ryan Reynolds acquisition and the way it's played out on Disney and again sort of tapping into the romance of the game and I think any Wrexham fan would say it's like the best thing that's happened to them and they love it and all that kind of stuff.
It's a moment in time isn't it?
It certainly is.
But did you see the other day they were playing like in America against the ladies team and all that kind of thing?
Do you know what it made me think of?
Is that now Wrexham, not because of the merit of their football club, although they've done very well getting into the league, but because of the paraphernalia of fame and celebrity, they've entered into a new domain.
Do you know what it made me think of?
And I know you know an awful lot about boxing and you're a big boxing fan.
It made me think of like 10, 20 years ago, if you're fighting in Vegas, if you're showcased as an elite boxer, you've earned that on merit and you've got the scars to prove it.
Well now you've got the phenomena of like Conor McGregor fighting Floyd Mayweather, you've got YouTube boxers fighting for millions KSI and Logan Paul and all that stuff.
Is there not a danger that the sort of almost the essence of sport which is meritocracy is being sort of eroded that you can create these Frankenstein clubs, these entertainment products, it's not an attack on Wrexham, it's in a sense I'm coupling it with that trend.
Because years ago you wouldn't have got a couple of like sort of people that were unrecognisable in the context of the sport.
It's a clever digital deal where they're using their reputations to enhance the opportunity and make a movie about it.
That's what they're doing, really, aren't they?
Netflix is going to fund them, I suspect, and they're going to build a television series out of it, and that will take them so far.
And then when, you know, you could watch Salford, you could watch The Class of 92 and all that went with that, and of course the stardust that goes with Beckham and gigs and Skolls and Gary Neville and that mob.
and see that Salford were manufactured into a situation but it doesn't alter the fact that the argument that you would make which is the community that they represent are delighted they're thrilled that their football club is back on the on the map now Brian Reynolds and his mate will go so far and when it eventually lands in their pockets that they've got put their hands in their pockets to go through the gears because meritocracy will still be the end game Wrexham will be the movie of the week right for a period of time And when it gets a bit tough in League One, if they ever get there, and you've got to start funding a football club properly, then that may run its course.
But if West Ham... Sorry mate, comparison between Wrexham and West Ham, not a good one.
If Wrexham were to find a different way of delivering an outcome, because Whether we're in a digital age or whether they're using other aspects of the opportunity available to them to build a football club, still at the centre of it is a football club and a community.
If that team were to go through the levels and get in the Premier League it would be another story, a different strand of the football story that needs to evolve.
We're in a generation now that consumes what it looks at and what it reads through things like this, mobile telephones.
Once upon a time you used to call the kitchen wall to speak to someone, you don't now do you?
Everything evolves.
If you lose something when you're evolving, which is your argument, is the trade-off good enough?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure that we've lost too much.
I still think you've got massive engagement.
You know, I do media stuff where you're dealing with fans and their emotional investment on a daily basis.
And I don't see it lessening, I see it heightening.
I also see the entitlement of fans heightening, which I'm not sure is a good thing.
I wonder if this is like a sort of a frantic and fearful twitching corpse as the sense that this game is being corporatized and owned elsewhere dawns upon the sort of collective unconsciousness that something is rotten in Denmark.
I've got a few things I want to like flesh out.
They're all starting to tie together a little bit now.
Because what, say like when Wimbledon went through the leagues, FA Cup Final, Big Liverpool, Culture Club versus the, you know, crazy gang.
Until I turfed them out of Sillis Park.
Actually, alright, you keep mentioning that.
You obviously want that followed up on.
But my point is this, right?
Outlaw words.
Off they go!
Dave Bessett and you loopy barnet!
Laurie Sanchez you can fuck off actually!
Yeah I'll teach you Harry Bessett to write me a letter to say piss off young Billy Whiz or whatever he wrote to me.
Is that what he wrote?
Yeah he wrote... Because you're Billy Whiz?
Yeah I fired... Get him out of the door, you're a pirate.
I fired Steve Cople and he wrote some article in the newspaper and I said I don't really have to listen to these dinosaurs from the past.
So he wrote me this letter... You evicted him?
No, his side that he used to manage and he wrote me this letter saying you know bollocks H you Harry Whiz should mind your own business.
How can I not mind my business?
It's my football club, it's my manager, I'll fire whoever I want, but yeah, on a tangent.
Go over to the old Bob, a little comb, and then out the fucking door, tack it, tack that up.
As opposed to the Jesus of Nazareth look, yeah?
Like, see, like, sort of like the Wrexham is what, like, you know, Wrexham and I, again, I'm not trying to diss Wrexham fans or take their money.
Well it sounds a little bit like it.
I know it does a bit, it's because I'm jealous of Ryan Reynolds.
But what I want to also acknowledge is that as a West Ham fan,
I'll acknowledge that a ceremony is created around a third tier European competition,
and yet the emotions feel real, because there's so much investment that you put in it,
it feels real while you do it.
When Wimbledon get to the top flight, only to be evicted by the old peroxide paxman over there,
like, it's like it's a real story.
But now, it's almost like, you know, a sort of a construction.
And my concern is this, is if it becomes, excuse me, a construction rather than a reality, it's going to lose the thing that it has in the first place.
That we're going to, it's not going to mean anything anymore.
We're killing the golden goose, to put it in a simple phrase.
Again, I think you're being idealistic.
How you get- Of course I am.
Well realistic is an alternate view right?
You've got to bring them together.
Your culture is clashing.
A Venn diagram that we meet in the middle of.
That could be part of the brand name of this series.
But it's still steeped in the values of Wrexham isn't it?
And it's still going through a system.
It's still got to abide by the rules that come to pass in terms of governance and the way that it can spend money.
It's just using its assets.
So what we're saying is is that Wrexham went through the gears by one methodology or another And this instance it's got two Hollywood superstars that can use their digital imagery to leverage the revenues that you can get from digital spaces like you guys are doing here.
And you build a club that goes there and lands in the Premier League.
Would that be less of a story than constantly watch Manchester City win the league with Middle Eastern money or Manchester United because it's steeped in 60 years of heritage and legacy and an ability to be able to print money for itself.
Would it be less of a diminishing or would it be diminishing the football story?
Would it be devaluing it?
No, I think that would be a great contribution.
And of the two problems outlined there, I'd say that the Man City one is the greater one, particularly with them 115 charges.
So why do you keep attacking Wrexham?
I'm not attacking Wrexham!
I'm attacking the commodification of the sport in various ways and seeing if it's somehow stripping away its essence, gutting it somehow, hollowing it out.
Every time you stick something on television, including yourself, you're making it a commodity for someone else's benefit.
You sit here doing your broadcast because a particular platform wants to give you an opportunity so they can monetize you.
So you're a commodity.
So you're quite happy with it, so why do you hypocrisy in?
Because there's such a thing called intention.
It depends what's behind it.
It depends what is the objective, what is the aim, what is the goal.
If the aim is always and solely to make money, and remember we've touched upon enlightened self-interest earlier in the conversation, Ideally, there's a kind of synthesis of, I have a purpose, I'm pursuing meaning, oh wow, I'm earning a few quid out of it.
That seems to me like that's not in the same domain as stripping away the meaning of something that's sort of valuable, and I would argue even possibly sacred.
And this is where I'm trying to get to.
Is this the end of fairy tales in football?
Could we ever have a little Wimbledon again?
Could we ever have?
Let's start with the We've just had it with Luton, haven't we?
We've just had Luton, the ultimate fairy tale.
You know, Eric Morecambe, great comedian, I'm sure you appreciate, has indexed Luton many years ago, a club that was always punched above its weight.
Boom!
Collapses.
Drops out of the league, gets put together by a fans group, have values like they won't attach himself to betting companies because they don't believe in the principle of betting money going into sport.
And they've built a club that's now got promoted with 10,000 fans back into the Premier League.
Are you worried that somewhere along the line they might change their agenda?
Are you suggesting that the criteria that you just outlined, it somehow makes it a worthwhile, valuable story that the connection to the fans that espouse in them values makes it better than a globalist corporate entity that won't confront its charges of illegal activity?
I'm saying it's a mixed bag.
You're sort of forecasting this dystopian future where football becomes something that is simply an end game for people with Nefarious motives or alternative intentions.
Everyone's got an intention.
Very few people have got an intention simply to do it for the love of football.
Everyone wants to get something from it.
So with that in mind, I've just given you a case in point where Luton, in our leagues, have proven the point that there's still the value of football being built in a certain way for the people, from the people, because of the people.
And we don't lose the vibrancy of football.
By the nature of ownership models that might have different intentions.
We muddy the messages sometimes and we allow the broadcast world to fulfill their outcomes when we're constantly being listening to broadcasters pumping societal messages through football.
You and I have discussed this on other platforms about the nature of football being leveraged for other people's agendas and how that should be or could be or would be or shouldn't be.
Yeah.
In my view.
I think the only agenda should be football.
I agree.
I think you should be really critically alert to the various ways that agendas play out, including financially, including the agenda of state ownership of these football clubs.
But money makes the world go round Russell.
It doesn't have to though.
It's a representative and symbolic system.
Don't you dare sit here and say you're doing this for charity or the things you've done in your life have been for charity.
You do them because ultimately money is the commodity that fuels the world.
So we all need to grow up a little bit.
The only word I would query there is the word ultimately because we are not yet at the point of fully understanding the many miraculous ways that I express my intentions.
More definitively then?
Maybe not ultimately?
No not definitively because like probably like you I do what I do for a variety of reasons and but I began doing what I do out of love, bloody vanity you know I mean there's a sort of a complex set of motivations but at this point in my life of course I require I'm quite idealistic.
I'm quite idealistic.
Hold on Simon, fuck you now. Like, like, you know, like I require a degree of financial security, but when I'm laying
in bed at night, and let me tell you it's a pretty sexy spectacle, I'm not thinking solely about my financial
security, I'm thinking about a set of aims, a set of goals, how can we contribute to the conversation. The reason that,
like I haven't got you on here and banged on...
Once you've achieved your financial stability, so you start with this communistic approach, which is I'll look after
myself first and then I'll build from there. And that's great, and that's, there's nothing wrong with that.
We've all got to get our own mask on first course we have we have to sustain ourselves to even to even participate and contribute.
What we want in life is a degree of idolism meets realism don't we?
And a fair proportion of representation.
Now where is this idealism going to be entering into the sport of football with the current trajectory?
But where's it been lost then?
You keep suggesting it's been lost.
Because of the commercialisation Simon, I suppose.
I suppose that's what I'm... Yeah but you love to watch football, dawn till dusk if you can.
And watching sport through whichever medium you choose, whichever way you want to.
And with that comes a commercial scenario because you're going to watch it through a medium that's commercially motivated.
So with that in mind how do you square that particular circle?
Well we're arguing sort of a lot about economics and I think in a sense there's certainly, yeah we're debating, there's a great deal of validity in what you're saying and there's no question... Is there a reason why you've taken your shoes and socks off while we're debating?
I got a bit unbothered didn't I a minute ago?
And also I really thought what I wanted to do... Does it help your thinking?
I want to really concentrate.
Call your feet down and your head will start functioning.
It's a double-ended approach, Simon.
Get your little trotters out!
Simon, no, this is what I want to say, is that those currently necessary commercial opportunities that are predicated on the emotion that football in particular solicits, cannot be allowed to kill the host, which is currently what I fear could Potentially happen so someone has to advocate for the other side the idealistic side of the argument which includes things like fan ownership investigation interrogation of ownership models and assurances that these clubs will remain connected to the communities that built them and ultimately the value of the fans will be respected.
That's what they're trying to achieve by the independent regulator suggestion in this country which I think is for the birds and I think any business any industry that's regulated in the end is Hmm isn't a particularly good industry to be in and we have now reached a point Russell whether we like it or we don't like it you and I and again I use the expression I don't apologize for the genies out of the bottle we're not going to unwind this we're not going to change the economic model all we're going to be able to do is perhaps halt it.
Hold it in its tracks but even then we've now got Saudi Arabia wanting to pay footballers 200 million pounds a year to go over there and play because they want to build their leagues up.
So again I don't share your concerns.
I understand why you think there's a validity in your thinking that there's a loss of the core principles of the game on what they were supposed to be.
But I'm not sure, when you see the emotion, when you watch Sheffield Wednesday, for those North American fans that don't know who they are, they're a club in Yorkshire that's got great heritage, when you watch Sheffield Wednesday play Peterborough in the League One semi-final with 32,000 rabid fans in a stadium and the emotions that outpour as a result of a game having a ridiculous outcome, Do you then still worry about the fact that sport isn't valued in the way that it should be, isn't going in the right direction?
I think that they value it and my fear is that it's that emotional connection has been parasited and that football means a lot about class, it means a lot about identity, it means a lot about geography, masculinity, unity, teamwork and all of those things are very real and very beautiful and I'd actually go so far as saying there's something sacred in it.
Okay, what do you mean football says a lot about That these clubs have a historic and real relationship with the communities that they come from.
But we've got gentrification in every town now, so the fact that people... That's not great either.
But that's the reality of economics isn't it?
The reality of economics is a political matter, it's not like, it's not meteorology, it's not happening naturally, it's happening as a result of decisions, consensus and a lack of democracy.
Gentrification is a good thing.
If you were living in America in certain times during the scenarios where people were in redline districts, they would have cried out for gentrification where ultimately the income streams could have gotten bigger and people could have improved their own social standing.
And so with that in mind, You're looking at a class structure of saying that football once upon a time was an old geezer with a rattle and a cloth cap going to the game.
And the next generation of football supporters aren't cut from that particular cloth.
We have a different generation following behind us.
I'm not entirely sure that generation doesn't send me screaming to bed at night thinking they're going to look after me in my dotage, but that's a different discussion.
But the class argument I think is becoming less and less prevalent.
Other parts of what you've just said might be relevant but the fact that football is still steeped in a working class mentality is probably not.
Rugby and other sports may be but we're not moving from football into cricket where cricket has a certain attitude or cricket into tennis but there is a different social classification now of football fans.
I suppose what I'm encircling and analysing is what is this value that football appears to herald?
What is this secular ceremony that appears to be able to evoke such deep feeling and such deep connection?
It's like alchemy.
I mean if you could bottle it and sell it you'd become a billionaire overnight.
They are bottling it and selling it and that's part of the bloody problem.
But that provides access.
So with the flip side of the coin is... I bet if we change the subject You'd still find me just as ravishing.
Now, Beth, we changed the subject to another commodity that you would alter your perspective.
Like if we start talking about, I don't know, entertainment or music or something, and I'm not going to, I want to talk about another aspect of football, but I feel that sometimes because of your personal involvement with the sport, you find peculiarities that prevent you applying your ordinary principles to this matter.
Not at all.
Also I think sometimes you're a contrarian.
I think you're a contrarian Simon.
The difference between you and me on the subject matter is I come from an educated point of view and you're coming from a hypothetical, idealistic one where you don't know the nuts and bolts of it.
You're looking at it from an idealistic point of view.
I have both sides.
I have the person that was a fan that bought a football club.
I have the reality of the experience and I look at it then from a slightly balanced point of view.
I try to find balance.
That's the The opposite of objectivity, that's a deepened subjectivity that's unable to consider a variety of perspectives and synthesize them.
Yes.
Now, the other thing that I want to talk about is the power of leadership.
I've seen you talk about it elsewhere on your excellent podcast, Upfront.
I loved the episode with Soones.
Thank you very much.
I'm a pro, mate.
The brilliant conversation with John Barnes was fantastic.
Brilliant, excellent.
We've had him on the air too.
He's masterful.
Did you read his book called The Unfortunate Truth About Racism?
I don't even read the books I write, let alone other people's.
Now, Simon, when I used to write For The Guardian, one of my mates noticed that I always ended up writing more about managers than any other aspect of the game.
And I think that somehow in managers we find, you know, obviously leadership in some ways, father figures.
And I wonder if you talk for a while on what the, what is the real observable, measurable power of a manager?
Once the Athletic did this piece, right, where they They said if you when you take out the super exceptional
the exceptions your cluffs your guardiola's, whatever They said that it results off an aggregate out almost the
same regardless if you have this manager that manager or no manager at all
So what are we talking about when we say like when we talk about greatness in managers? What are those qualities?
What are those abilities and who has it these days and what is it when they lose it?
What goes on when they they have it for a bit then lose it?
Well, I often have thought having spent time with lots of managers and sometimes listen to these so-called Churchill
Ian speeches that they give And found myself deeply unaroused by the very nature of
what they're saying I don't mean sexually, I mean in terms of a response.
That's not the intention.
It's a little bit like the Emperor's New Clothes.
I mean, there is players that can perform of their own volition.
There's a situation where you have a player that can get to this level himself, right?
Or you want to get him to here.
So you're not managing from here to here, you're just managing from here to here.
And that's where the managers step in.
And this balance between leaders lead, Russell, you know you can create better people and you can create people that can operate at certain levels but natural leaders have this ability to be able to communicate in such a fashion that inspires people.
to do things that they wouldn't ordinarily be prepared to do and that means operating at a high level all the time even when they don't feel like it and the more you've got footballers being paid what I would consider to be F off money so they can end up telling people to F off because they're in a situation where they can control their own destiny one thing you control people through is finances the other thing you can control people through is by motivating them fear cultures of of excellence But there's no one-size-fits-all for managers.
Guardiola, some people would say, could Guardiola manage Scarborough and get the same outcomes?
I think probably he could because I think he has the ability to be able to extract the very best from people by setting the highest standards, maintaining those standards, never deviating from those standards.
And being across the subject matter, being deep in the detail, being a constant evolver, not standing still, not believing that what he knew yesterday is going to be prevalent for tomorrow.
And I think people like Guardiola are real exceptions.
I think a lot of the football managers around, and I use this term and I throw it around quite regularly and people don't particularly like it, but I think a lot of charlatans get away with murder and we do reward in sport too much mediocrity.
There's too much of that going on.
But I think Managers are they're not often you know the funny thing you will think is that these managers are the strongest people in the world and often they're not they have the same doubts and the same need for support as anyone else does and there'll be people that say who motivates the motivator and that's where people like me that own football clubs come in and support managers there's a lot more of that going on than you would believe a lot more of owners that will provide that prop because in football
It is this perverse, reverse sentiment of success in life has many fathers.
But in football, success is an orphan.
It has one person that's responsible for it, whereas failure has many fathers.
So if you're successful as a football team, it'll be the manager, no one else.
It'll be the manager that created that success.
But if you fail at football, it'll be bleeding everybody that did it.
The manager's not me, it's the players, it's the owner, it's the Lack of support from the fan base.
So there's that unique phenomenon.
But it's just the ability to be able, like anything, if you're not doing it and someone else is doing it for you, it's that ability to be able to impart to them the desire for them to do what they need to do to be successful.
It's like that, again, to use a movie analogy, which I know you'll appreciate being a big movie star.
It's like that scene out of The Untouchables where Sean Connery is talking to Kevin Costner about what are you prepared to do to get Capone?
One of his, one of his guys brings a knife, one of your guys brings a gun, one of his guys goes to hospital, one of your guys goes to the morgue, what are you prepared to do to do to get Capone?
And I would say what are you prepared to do to be successful and to be a top class manager whatever it takes and whatever you need to do whether that's managing up to the guy that you work for to get from him what you want Or it's managing down to the charges that you're responsible for or whether it's selecting people that work with you that are actually better than you at certain things and you have the comfort in your own space to be able to be the leader of those people even though they're better.
I remember having a finance director work for me in one of these businesses that I owned and I said to him you know about doing something he said you do realize I'm a higher form of life I'm a qualified professional and I said that's wonderful But you fucking will work for me and I'm the Managing Director so we'll debate about what's a higher form of life in a different discussion.
But it's all about giving people a reason to want to be successful and that may well just be by the very nature of the rewards that they get or it might well be by the nature of the pride that you're invoking them or the motivations that you give them to want to improve or keep changing the circumstances or have basic disciplines that you will not Acquiesce, sorry, you will not move from, you will not change, Pep Guardiola will not change his view about how he wants a player to play.
David De Gea will go and make a mistake and the next thing he'll do is no longer play out from the back, he'll be launching balls up from the front.
Pep Guardiola would not accept that he would make David de Gea perform at the level that he wanted to until such a time as he could and if he couldn't then it'd replace him you have to be ruthless you have to be fair you have to be equitable you have to be honest you have to be authentic you have to communicate with people you don't duck responsibility all of these things are the natural Attributes of a leader and there's not many of them about because people don't like to deal with confrontation because that's part of it they don't like to deal with being able to to be able to communicate in a way that sometimes means that you've got to find the balance between what you believe and what you need to say to somebody to get to where they need to get to and it's all of these things and it's sort of again alchemy that out of it comes a leader and it's about leadership when you walk in a room you go
That's the leader.
That's the guy.
That's the guy we go with.
That's the guy that we go over the trenches for.
That's the guy that we want to play for.
And even more, it's even more difficult in this day and age when you've got players like we've just discussed.
I like what you described about there being a necessity for a vision and a refusal to compromise on that vision.
That's pretty exciting.
When you talk about being an identifier leader, it's exciting to me that there ain't a uniform set of immediately identifiable external characteristics that it could be someone that's relatively Conservative there's not always an immutable concept it morphs you know what I mean it's about what it you know a leader in one environment because there's different tools required if you're if you're the elite manager at the top of the Premier League you're managing guys that are all on 20 million pounds a year so you can't pull that trigger you've got to pull a different lever
So your skill set is no less or no more than say Neil Warnock who managed for me in previous incarnations at Crystal Palace managing further down the pyramid and achieving an outcome of relative success by getting a group of disparate sort of hobo Hobo footballers being able to perform at a very high level
and find themselves running through the pyramids.
Taking a relatively recent and localized example, how do you get a situation where Roy Hodgson is able to
return to Palace for the umpteenth time and get more success out of
Palace than Vieira, who to all intents would look like the very model of a new emergent manager that's going to
succeed?
And can you fold into that answer because God knows you talk fucking long enough,
how you get a moment where it looked like our tech- Am I getting paid by the word?
and we can't afford you at that rate.
If we pay you by common sense...
And what about writing it with the Hodgson Vieira one?
Could you fold in like, you know, there was a minute where Arteta and Nunes were like neck and neck.
It was like, which one of them is going to get sacked out of North London?
And Arteta stays and now is the, you know, the next big thing.
So what is that thing that's sort of unquantifiable about it?
How do you track it?
How do you get Hodgson to come in and revitalise Palace in that way?
I think it's just sometimes it's nothing more simple than timing.
I think there with the Vieira situation I think there was a dissatisfaction with certain coaching methods of the player to stop listening if you want to be specific and explicit about Vieira and there was a lot more of the Emperor's New Clothes in that appointment.
It looked good for a period of time and when the reality of it becomes more prevalent and the players start to go Um, and Roy comes back in, he's comfortable.
He says sensible things, he does sensible things with players.
Um, and he had a better squad of players than the one he left.
The reasons why Roy Hodgson left Palace was because it needed to evolve.
And the brand of football had gotten a little bit boring.
It's like night and day, currently.
Roy Hodgson's version of Crystal Palace this time round, version two, is a completely different Palace side.
Attacking and forward thinking and ambitious.
How's he done that?
Because I don't think he's had the same challenges as he had once before.
When he was at Palace he was there to make sure that Crystal Palace achieved the constant pursuit of staying in the Premier League with a season in front of him.
This time around he was coming in to fix someone else's mess with a group of players that needed a different voice and he just let them go, pointed them in the right direction and let them go.
Sometimes less is more.
um and in the situation that you use of Arteta and Nuno Espirito Santos they were just the Tottenham appointment by Daniel Levy who's someone I get on quite well with it's a surprise that we do because we had nothing but confrontation when I was involved in football because he was constantly trying to do things to my football club that I didn't appreciate um but over the years I've seen both sides of the argument and I can appreciate some of the things he does but his appointment with Nuno Espirito Santos which is a bad appointment Our Teta was a moment in time.
He'd lost his way.
And he'd moved from somebody I thought had the chops to do something to somebody that was all theory.
And he was falling in between two stores.
He didn't know whether it was Arthur or Martha.
Didn't know if he was having a shit or a haircut.
And he got lucky by beating Norwich in a game and all of a sudden the world changed again.
And then he got some balls and then he got rid of a Bamiang and said to the director, here I am.
Then all or nothing comes along and everyone starts to get a different point of view.
TV show.
And he's off again.
And some of it can just be you know Russell you've been successful and unsuccessful in life at times more successful than unsuccessful and I've had a combination of both and again more successful than unsuccessful but there's sliding door moments and sometimes it's got nothing to do with how good you are it's just you know it's just a moment in time.
I lose 50 million pound in a football club because a player that I bought from my academy in a playoff semi-final hits the post on a penalty Changes the direction of travel for me.
I'd go and do some deals that eventually caused me a lot of problems.
The same player pops up two years later, Ben Watson, God love him, come out of my academy, and scores the winning goal in an FA Cup Final for Wigan.
And these moments in time that sport throws out, that takes you back to the sentiment we started with.
That's a beautiful way to begin to wrap this up.
As you know, I'm a big fan of your show with Jim White over on TalkSport.
I love coming on there as a guest.
Yeah, we love having you on there.
Yeah, I really like it.
No, come on, mate.
I want to do this thing.
God, look, we're late, look.
Don't do this, right, because I had all this bullshit from Martin Keown, what you're about to do here.
Martin Keown?
Bring in a word of the week.
You're saying that I'm suggesting an item that you rejected from Martin Keown?
I didn't want it from Martin Keown.
I didn't want a word of the week.
What's next, that Steve Bould came up with my argument that corporatisation has a bigger influence than player wages?
Dean Windass brought it forward.
God love you Dean, he's from Hull, I know one of your producers is from Hull.
Dean Windass is his favourite player as a matter of fact.
I like Dean, and his son Josh has done wonderfully well for Sheffield Wednesday.
He said what Keown said, right let's try and get these words in.
some of these I've heard you say. Superannuated I've heard you use. Apostiori, Fatuous I've heard you use that.
Sophistry you could drop that in. There were some of the ones I'd really like.
You used that the other day Sophistry. Yeah I did I've been reading my words thing.
I don't share these with many people these are my favourite words.
Is that because nobody wants to hear them? I get I've got a lot of pushbacks on them.
I'm either victim of this one. But while you're here the door's locked you'll sit and listen.
One I would like to hear on Talk Sport, and then what I would rather like, because I watch most of your stuff on YouTube, right, you know, that's when I watch your clips.
Jordan and White striding forward in their trousers in this... The Coliseum of Confrontation.
I don't like that, you know, that moniker that they give it, the Coliseum of Confrontation.
It makes you look like a one-trick pony.
I would prefer the Coliseum of Common Sense.
Things of that nature.
It's not a... Not this adversarial position.
Here, this is good.
Constral understanding or perception.
That's an interesting constral, you could say to Jim.
That would be good.
Uh, you could say, uh, reify.
Look, I'm not gonna sit here and reify Mikel Arteta.
He don't know if he's having a shit or haircut.
He's gonna get consequenced.
He needs to have his mind concentrated.
And I need this, why?
Or how about apotropaic?
Apotropaic.
I mentioned that to you when I was in there.
Apotropaic.
That means good luck charm.
Yes.
Could you please just get apotropaic in tomorrow and then we'll use that clip.
It'll be good promo for this.
You can listen, if you can bear it, to Simon every weekday on TalkSport.
That's not much of a plug!
If you've got the guts, if you've got the stomach, you can listen to Simon Jordan every weekday on Talk Sport or on YouTube before he gets banned in the UK from 10 a.m.
to 1 p.m.
BST.
On the show next week, we've got Jack Dorsey coming on.
There he is.
Look, he's got a touch of the dinklage, I'd say.
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Until then, thank you Simon Jordan.
Pleasure.
Nice to be here.
Until next time, because surely there will be a next time.
There's so much more to cover.
I want to come back and learn some more words.
Not just words.
How to construct an argument, Simon.
How to open your mind.
How to stay loyal to your roots.
How to use your power to galvanise a new movement.
How to listen to platitudes.
They're not platitudes!
These are the roaring anthems of a new and emergent movement.
