Episode Details

Why does every dictator, sooner or later, want to host the World Cup?

What did a military junta that never wanted the tournament discover once the goals started going in?

And when a hundred thousand people are dancing in the street, who is that actually working for?

Peter Frankopan sits down with investigative journalist Karim Zidan, who has spent a decade tracking how autocrats turn football into propaganda — and who found his own way into the story as a teenager being dragged out of a stand by Egyptian riot police.

Mussolini wrote the blueprint in 1934 and nobody has much improved on it since: host the tournament, invest in the team, let the collective joy do the rest. Videla's junta inherited a World Cup it didn't want and got away with it. Putin raised the pension age while Russia were in the quarter-finals. Qatar ended a Gulf blockade without conceding a thing. Zidan's argument isn't that you should stop watching. It's that escapism and willful ignorance are not the same thing — and that the people buying your club are not your friends.

Karim Zidan's podcast series Power Plays, presented by the Human Rights Foundation, is at powerplays.xyz. His newsletter is at sportspolitika.news.

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[0:00] Why the world's game keeps ending up in the hands of people who don't much like the world

[4:14] Cairo, 2007: a teenager in the Ultras section watches the police move in

[8:36] Mussolini's blueprint, and why he preferred boxing to football

[15:33] Argentina 1978: the junta that inherited a World Cup it never wanted

[26:19] "A monstrous, cancerous, corrupt patronage system" — Zidan on FIFA

[35:24] A message for Newcastle fans, and everyone else who welcomed the money in

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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:

Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

Join Legacy+ for bonus episodes, early access, Q&A's, fewer adverts and more.

legacy.supportingcast.fm

Stay connected with Legacy:

Instagram: @originallegacypodcast

TikTok: @legacy_productions

Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas: Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com

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