Episode 96: Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan, Sports & Dictators Program Lead at the Human Rights Foundation, is an author and investigative journalist who focuses on the intersection of sports and politics. He is the founder of Sports Politika, a media platform dedicated to his niche, and host of Power Plays, a podcast examining historical connections between FIFA, the World Cup, and authoritarianism. He joins the show to discuss that history and the highs and lows of the 2026 World Cup on and off the field.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Okay, welcome back to On the Bob podcast from the Vanderbilt Sports and Society initiative. I'm Major Mariness, and really excited to have our guests join us from Vancouver today, Kareem Zidane, who is with the Human Rights Foundation, where he's the sports and uh dictators program lead. Uh, you may also recognize his name from uh as an author and investigative journalist. Uh I think I came across you first on on Twitter, probably. Um Kareem focuses on the intersection of sports and politics. He's also the founder of um Great Substack, Sports Politica Media Platform, uh, which is dedicated to all the issues that he enjoys uh looking into. And he just mentioned before we hit play that uh he's in the um final stages. He's got a book coming out in about seven months uh from Simon and Schuster called The Ultimate Strongman MMA and the rise of the new authoritarian right. So, Kareem, thank you so much uh for joining the show today.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Oh, Andrew, it's such a pleasure. Looking forward to our chat.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah, and I'll I'll just admit off the front end like I'm a soccer fan every time the World Cup rolls around. You know, like uh I feel the same way about ice hockey. Like if it's the Olympics, I get into hockey, but I don't really have a favorite NHL team, or um, I'm not the kind of guy that has adopted a Premier League team. Um I'm I'm I was at the Major League All-Star game last week, and baseball is is my main sport. My son and I were, I hate to admit this, we were kind of bored with the World Cup final for a while yesterday. We switched it over to the Brewers Marlins game. Like that I'm that much of a crazed Milwaukee Brewers fan. So with that as the backdrop, I totally um admire my friends who who get so in into soccer. And I realize like any other sport, it can tell us so much about the world and about politics and society. And so the podcast series um that you have led on examining sort of the authoritarian history of the World Cup um is really interesting to me. And I was wondering if you could talk before we get to discussing this year's World Cup, the roots of of this idea to pull this uh podcast series together.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Well, honestly, Andrew, it's it's funny because without this year's World Cup, we wouldn't have really considered this because we wanted to. My my producer and and partner who came up with the show with me, Ellie Blyer, we were thinking to ourselves, okay, we want to do this first season. What do we want to focus on? And a lot of what was happening around us was this idea that this upcoming World Cup was going to be joyless. All the various issues through Donald Trump's administration that was sort of uh corrupting and and destroying this event that we love so much. So we thought to ourselves, hey, well, shouldn't we try and tell people the little lone history about FIFA that sort of guides us to this point? Because it's FIFA's past that actually explains how we have gotten here. How FIFA's in this scenario where it not only just working with authoritarian regimes regularly, but even when it does work with democracies, ends up pulling off an event as corrupt as the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which is how we came up with power plays, and we divided the show into five episodes. This is a narrative documentary style audio series, and we broke it down into five episodes that each cover a different era or topic. So it starts all the way back in 1934, the second edition of the World Cup, which took place in Fascist Italy under the regime of Benito Mussolini. And it's a fascinating time in history in general, but it's also a fascinating time for FIFA, which was a very young organization at the time, very powerless as well, not wealthy, nothing like the FIFA that we see in modern times. As a matter of fact, football and this World Cup event used to take place in the Olympic Games, it didn't even have its own tournament. The 1930 edition, which took place in Uruguay, was the very first World Cup that was hosted by FIFA, and in 1934, that was the second edition, and it only took two editions of the World Cup for countries to immediately realize the potency of such a tournament and the soft power uh advantages, the nation-building advantages that can come from such an event. And I think the blueprint was truly laid out by Benito Mussolini. He understood that as he was trying to create his fascist society in Italy, that football could be a great unifying factor for the country. Italy wasn't the Italy we know now, it was split in many different ways. They had the north and south divides, and football became a source of unity. It became the modern church in many ways. I'm not trying to be blasphemous here, but to say that if if if church and religion was able to unify so many people and bring them together and take them to places like church, well, football stadiums suddenly became the new churches of this of this time and place. And Benito Mussolini really, really understood that he built these fantastic new stadiums, new roads, new public transportation that took people to and from. It was beyond just trying to build a football society. He was trying to show that post-World War One, when a lot of Western Europe was impoverished and struggling, Italy was actually thriving. Italy was the future, and football was a part of that future. So it was through the World Cup and football that Mussolini really helped sort of brand and promote fascism. So yeah, FIFA's uh history with authoritarianism goes back almost a hundred years now, and it was very important for me to tell this type of story to people. So that was just episode one. Imagine what we still had in store for the following episodes thereafter, Andrew.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Absolutely. Um interesting, that was in 34. You know, I wrote a book about the first US men's Olympic basketball team, which played at the 36 Olympics in Nazi Germany. And often that event is pointed to as you know the classic example of sports washing and uh Hitler using those uh Olympics to fool the world and to believe, you know, everything's fine here. It was a it was a great Olympics, you know, it was well run. And um, so are there direct connections between what uh happened in 34 uh under Mussolini and what the reasons why Hitler may have been interested in uh hosting those Olympics in 36? From what I had read initially, he was opposed uh to the Olympics, but um sounds like uh from a authoritarianist uh standpoint or from the sportswashing standpoint that Mussolini not only set out to do this but was effective, at least in in his mind, um came out the way he had hoped for in 34.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

He was extremely effective to the point that they were giving out these various different souvenirs at at the World Cup, much like they still do now, all these different trinkets that you still receive, although now they just are more like keychains and things like that. Back then in in 1934, it was one of them was this fascist tea set, and everybody was going home with this tea set from Italy with the fascist logo emblazoned on it, including journalists who covered the tournament. So I think that's a small little example right then, a little anecdote that shows you just how successful this is when even the journalists are taking home your fascist trinkets, right? So I think if Hitler had his doubts, even in the lead up to the tournament, what he saw in 1934 absolutely put all those doubts at ease. It was the level of normalization that occurred there, is what he was hoping was going to also occur and did occur in the 1936 Olympics. Remember, it got support from the United States Olympic uh organization at the time who said, I don't know what everybody's talking about, there's no anti-Semitism in Germany, which is just a shocking statement to say in 1936. So there was all these elements of normalization taking place then and at the 1934 World Cup. As a matter of fact, the only person who seemed to be concerned, really, was FIFA's third president who was in charge at the time, was Jules Rimé. And Rimé was this classic sort of romantic figure in sports. This is a man who truly believed in the fraternity of sports, that sports could bring nations together. It wasn't just a nation-building strategy, but it was a a peacemaking and a diplomatic tool that should be utilized as such. He really believed in this romanticized notion, and then he got to see that bastardized by Benito Mussolini to the point that he was once quoted saying, It seems to me that this World Cup wasn't run by FIFA, but by Mussolini himself. And he went out of his way to make sure that didn't happen in 1938. So in 1938, the tournament was actually again won by Italy, which I should have mentioned, also won the 1934 tournament. So imagine, not only are you hosting it, but you actually win the tournament in the end, so it could not have gone better. Italy actually won the 1938 tournament as well, but that took place in France, which was where Jules Remet was from. And now this is truly in the lead up to World War II. You can imagine the political tensions at the time, but he tried his best to make that the least political World Cup of all time. This is to say that every single World Cup has some element of politics. So to pretend that soft power only applies to authoritarian regimes, I think is unfair because every country wants to gain some sort of benefit. It's just, I think they're a lot less concerning for some countries than others. So France had the quietest World Cup in 1938, where there was no propaganda, there was no attempt to really promote France or its ideals. Remé really wanted it as much as possible to be about the football. That was his sort of victory post-Mussolini's World Cup in 1934, right? So that was the that was pretty much the limits of the rebellions that we saw then. There was nothing else that stopped these forces of fascism and Nazism in sports at the time.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

And then uh another episode focuses on 1978. Argentina, of course, just played in the in the finals here in this year's World Cup. Um, what was the story in 78 and Argentina? What was happening in the country and how was the World Cup used to further the aims of the regime there?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

So so the 1970s with FIFA had already at this point emerged into a much more powerful organization. They had just discovered the power of broadcast deals and rights and commercial revenue, and they were actually making money for the first time under this FIFA president named Joao Havalange, and it was a Brazilian man who was the son of an arms dealer. Now, Havalange himself was a fascinating figure because I'd say he's the father of the modern FIFA that we know, this corrupt FIFA built on this patronage structure. That's what Joao Havalange is doing. And interestingly, when the World Cup was awarded to Argentina in 1978, for the sorry, the 1978 was Cup was awarded, I think it happened six years earlier in 72, something along those lines. Uh Argentina wasn't actually under a military dictatorship at the time. There was no military junta, but two years before the tournament, the military junta takes over. And they were much like Hitler, not 100% sure they wanted to host this event. They understood what they were doing in the country. They're like, listen, we're disappearing, all these people, we're oppressing the hell out of these people. I mean, there were reports that they were just throwing dissidents off airplanes directly into the river plates. Like this, this was the horrific stuff that was going on, and they really didn't want the world being aware of this. So in the end, they decided, you know what, it's too late to change anything, let's double down on this event. And they did, and they embraced it and they supported their national team, they helped strengthen it and build it and fund it and gave it all the resources needed to go out and win the tournament. And there was apparently quite a bit of corruption involved in the tournament as well. So, what was really fascinating to me about this event, because it speaks to something that we continue to see in FIFA, in FIFA and the World Cup, which is this weaponization of collective joy. Now, Argentinians, like we spoke to an Argentinian journalist who his very first uh job was covering this World Cup, and he talked to us about his experiences covering this World Cup and how long it actually took him to realize that something really awful was actually taking place. The way he explained it was there there was this collective sort of bubble that had formed around the Argentinian population that as they were winning, they would take to the streets en masse in the millions just celebrating. And the government was terrified that this they had just unleashed what they call this monster in the streets, and how is this monster going to react? But this monster was so overjoyed with the victories and the sheer success of the team that they ignored everything else happening around them, to the point that there are stories from some of these disappeared people now that have come out in the years since then, because Argentina has done its job, and these journalists went out and sort of told the story of this World Cup in hindsight. There, the one of the one of the places where they were disappearing people, one of those awful prisons, was actually very close to Estadio Monumental, the main stadium in that that these World Cup games were being played in. And these people who had been disappeared could hear the games happening just you know, just across the street from them. So imagine you know the whole world doesn't know where you are, and you're right there. You can hear the cheering, you can hear them celebrating when you are in the worst moments of your life. Let's compile, let's compound that even further. There was one story from a woman who said that this this general put her in the car after the final and drove her around in this car, but the car got stuck in the streets with the amount of crowds and and masses of people that were there. And you know, she had her head out of the out of the roof of the car, and she's thinking to herself, if I just scream right now and say, I've been disappeared, I'm a prisoner, nobody's gonna take me seriously. They're all chanting, they're all celebrating, nobody's thinking about us. And she never quite knew whether this general did this and took her out into the streets as sort of a gesture of being nice, you know, you've you've suffered for so long, celebrate with the people, or was it another way to torment her by saying, see, all these people are here, you're here with them, and there's nothing that they can do to help you. That is the power of football. It can bring you en masse to the streets, but it can also sort of drop this veil over your eyes where you where you no longer actually quite understand what's happening around you. This would happen time and time again. Episode three, just so I can follow on this piece of momentum here. In episode three, we focus on Russia and the 2018 World Cup. And one of the things that Putin did as this extraordinarily savvy political operator, like he's a horrific human being, but a savvy political operator we cannot doubt. And this was one of those examples. While Russia was going on this unbelievable run to the quarterfinals and their home World Cup, Putin actually raised the age of retirement, the pension age in Russia, which had been a hugely uh controversial topic of debate in Russia at the time. But he realized hey, everybody's so occupied that I can actually pass this law right now, and nobody's ever going to be gonna notice. And by the time they do, it will be too late to do anything about it. And that's exactly what happened. This weaponization of collective joy has become a defining feature of the World Cup.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Unbelievable. Um, and then then the next episode, and I should mention the uh podcast is called Power Plays from Human Rights Foundation in Korean and is uh Qatar in 2022. And um a little fresher on on most people's minds, the human rights uh violations that occurred there, the deaths during the construction of stadiums. Um, are the issues really the same there in terms of the weaponization weaponization of joy, or are there other factors at play that are most interesting about uh 2022?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Oh, I think 2022 is interesting for for a few other reasons as well. I don't think, for instance, the argument of sports washing applies as as cleanly to Qatar. And there's here's why. It's not that I disagree with sports washing as a concept, but I think if we limit it to the idea of what it originally was, which is reputation laundering, this idea that you're distracting from human rights abuses, I don't think that necessarily applied to Qatar. Did any of us really know? Well, I mean, I'm I'm Arab, I'm Egyptian, so yes, I knew what Qatar was, but I can fair, I can think I can I can fairly say that a lot of people did not know what Qatar was or could place it on the map. So if that was the case, then did you actually know about its human rights? Did it have something to hide from you at that point, or was it introducing itself to you actually laying all those problems out in the open, which is what ended up happening for me? Qatar, what actually Qatar was trying to achieve here was nation building. This was a nation-building exercise for them and a big massive coming out party. They were introducing themselves to the world, saying, Hey, here, we are Qatar, we are here, and on our own, this little tiny nation you've never heard of before, we are able to host an entire World Cup. And they did so, and they did so successfully. As a matter of fact, one of the most memorable, you know, World Cup finals of my lifetime occurred in Russia, and sorry, in Qatar, and that uh is pretty much one of the most memorable things of the tournament, despite the countless human rights abuses that occurred uh in the lead up to the event. The biggest of them all is the treatment of migrant workers and the exploitation of migrant workers and the deaths of migrant workers that occurred for the sake of creating these World Cup stadiums that we would end up going and enjoying ourselves in, that we ended up going and experiencing collective joy in. Others suffered for that as well. So collective joy is still a factor in this and this uh corrupting erosion of collective joy through things like this mistreatment of migrant workers, and then forgetting them thereafter. Uh, nobody thinks about these people anymore. So, one of the things we chose to do for this episode was to speak to the Jordanian whistleblower Abdullah Bhas, who actually worked for the Qatar Supreme Committee that was responsible for delivering the 2022 World Cup. He actually worked as a media manager for them and for years was responsible for you know putting out a lot of the propaganda that the media entity was doing for Qatar at the time. But when he started to realize what was actually happening to migrant workers, he thought to himself, no, I really cannot be involved in something like this anymore. So he actually refused to spin those abuses, and for that he was jailed by the Qatari government. So while the World Cup was going on in 2022, he was in jail at the time. FIFA did not protect him. He actually utilized FIFA's whistleblower program and they did not protect him, which is something we should continuously keep in mind when we discuss FIFA that its most vulnerable people were people it refused to protect. Why? Because it would have interfered with their pursuit of profit at the time and their friendship with the host nation being Qatar. So he was stuck watching, being forced to watch the World Cup from his cell and from the mess halls in prison. So that's the sort of stories that we forget about the World Cup. And that was really a massive intention here for these episodes, as much as possible, especially these modern episodes. Like for the Russia episode, we spoke to Nika Nikolina, who was one of the members of Pussy Riot, who came up with the idea of running onto the pitch at the World Cup final and having that protest against Putin. They actually dressed up like police officers and ran onto the field. And the only reason they were able to access the field was because they were dressed like police officers. It was such a smart protest because they understood that in a country like Russia, a police state where police are so high up in the hierarchy that people would never question them if they were dressed like officers. So that in itself was a statement about what Russia was at the time. Now, for the Qatar episode, we thought speaking to Abdallah Phas would be a great way for people to resonate with this subject on a human level. I have no interest in shaming people out of watching the World Cup. I say this as a person who watches the World Cup, who derives enjoyment from this tournament, right? We'll we'll talk about the 2026 uh like edition, but Egypt was a big factor in that, and I most certainly enjoyed that experience of getting to see my team compete and actually do well for the first time ever at a World Cup. But I think it's important that we balance that out and at least be aware of what this World Cup is and the costs associated with it.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Um, you know, it strikes me that many of the issues that um can be discussed in the context of the World Cup. You could also have similar conversations uh regarding the Olympics. And I was wondering um from your perspective, is there something that that makes uh World Cup um unique in those discussions? Is it FIFA itself? Are there fundamental differences between FIFA and the and the IOC? Is it the fact that it's just one sport and that all the attention is is there? Um the power of of soccer versus other sports. Well, are they essentially the same issues or is there something unique about soccer and in the World Cup.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

There are very similar issues, but I think what is unique here is FIFA's structure is different to the IOC structure. FIFA truly now lives in this patronage system. We okay, so think of all the criticisms that FIFA President Gianni Infantino faces, right? Including things that happened at the 2026 World Cup, such as the Fuller and Balogun Red Card scandal, right? That should that questioning of integrity on that level, coupled with the dynamic pricing scandal as well for the World Cup, where people were paying outrageous sums for the tournament. You would think the anger associated with things like that and the integrity questions that come from it would lead to at least Infantino's position being questionable thereafter, that he could actually be challenged or lose office because of this. Well, during the World Cup, 200 federations from I guess 211 or something like that have already stated that they would back Gianni Infantino for re-election. Why? Well, the answer is quite simple. FIFA has actually announced that they're making more than $15 billion in profits and revenues technically for this event uh for the 2026 World Cup, more than they've ever done before. That money is then doled out to these federations. It's called sort of development funds, that's the official term. But what it really is, it's like you know, it's it's pay-to-play here. So you're gonna we're gonna pay you off and you're going to vote, you're gonna give me your vote. A lot of these federations are poor, they rely on this money from FIFA to keep themselves going, to fund their players, to get coaches, to do all sorts of things. So they are desperate and they need FIFA's uh help. And FIFA, every member state has one vote. So the United States has the same vote as Zimbabwe, right? So for Gianni Infantino, why would he focus so much on ingratiating himself to the most powerful federations when he can just hand money out to the poorest federations and get the same vote from them? So now he's in a position where through this patronage system, nobody can question FIFA's authority and its president's authority. All he's done is centralized power even more. Imagine it wasn't that long ago, a decade ago, when FIFA was being investigated by the FBI, right? That actually happened. And Gianni Infantino was the president who had come in as the reformer. He literally said, I'm going to restore football and I'm going to restore FIFA to its rightful place. Instead, he's made it a joke of an organization. He's killed any integrity that remains with it, and he's centralized power so much that nothing can challenge that. And what he rules over is the most popular sport in the world. Nothing, and I've said this in a couple of interviews already, but I think I think of Egypt. I think of the fact that millions of people took to the streets to celebrate our wins. And I think that the last time we experienced collective joy on that level was during the 18 days of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. It's been 15 years, and it seems like the only things that can make us experience that level of happiness and gather in such quantities is either revolution or football. That says it all, I think.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Wow, unbelievable. Um, what you mentioned these uh going back to the 34 World Cup and the journalists taking these fascist symbols home with them, you know. Um, I know that the the media for the most part bought into um to Hitler's facade in 36. Also, uh, you talk about the um the stories of whistleblowers in Qatar and these the what's the role of of the media in sort of uh complicity in what's been happening? It sounds like you know your podcast is revealing a lot of stories that maybe have been out there for the taking for 50 or more years, but are are still hidden stories. So um, is it just a case of corporate media being in bed with FIFA and the organizers of these games? What's why haven't we heard these stories before?

SPEAKER_00 26:03

I don't necessarily think it's being in bed with FIFA, but I think we have sports journalism has lost its way, not necessarily just as a fault of the sports journalists participating in the space, but when you know your budgets are being slashed to such an extent and there's no longer enough space for these journalists to operate or to do the jobs that they were originally hired to do and instead are required to do clickbait reporting, you don't exactly you know bring the best of the best into the industry anymore. And that's a lot of what's happening. We simply take FIFA's word for granted a lot of the times. The amount of people who I would call colleagues, but I'm very disappointed by because the vast majority of their role is regurgitating what FIFA tells them rather than going out and investigating and trying to critically think about these issues. That is a significant problem in mainstream media. We are more than willing to just publish the easiest version of the story because it's gonna get us the same clicks anyway. I'm not paying being paid more to put in more effort, so why would I put in more effort? I think this is a fundamental issue in the space right now, and we can make an argument that this goes beyond sports journalism, but sports journalism has been deeply impacted by the cuts to the industry over the past decade, I'd say. It tends to be one of the first to go, it tends to be the one that's taken least seriously, where people just assume you know you're just reporting on what happens on the field or in the cage or whatever it may be. When that's just simply not the case. Sports are a microcosm of the world around us, and it's a great way to understand what's happening. The ambitions, the political, social, and economic ambitions of a nation can all be understood through how it interacts with sports, and we don't give that enough uh importance, and until we do, FIFA is going to dominate the cycle because they understand how to manipulate the media better than the media understands how to get the true story out of FIFA. So that's a significant issue that we deal with. And then there's the side of the media that ends up being leans politically to the left or to the right and then embraces the narratives of that side. I can, you mean you see it regularly with lots of fields saying, Oh, we were told this was going to be a terrible World Cup, but look at them now. They've enjoyed America over the past couple of months. Well, I mean, you could be a little bit more critical than that, right? People did enjoy themselves, but they were also terrified that they were going to get arrested at the border, right? Like there was all sorts of issues raised there that just seemed to have fallen by the wayside. It was almost like the articles are written to prove a point. It's like, ha, everything you said was wrong. That's that's not journalism anymore. I mean, that's commentary, sure, but it's not journalism.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

That's right. Um, when you as someone that has uh you know examined the World Cup through this lens of authoritarianism, where does this 2026 World Cup fall on that spectrum?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

I think this 2026 World Cup actually is one of those that we can really use the term sports washing for. So, in many ways, at first, we could have said that this tournament should have been, at least when Donald Trump was first elected, and I was asked about this, what do you think about all these upcoming events? I'd say these are a credible prestige moments for Donald Trump, his administration, and his ideology. It is an excellent platform to present the America First uh narrative and to show its successes. That that argument fell apart in the last year as we went from sort of failure to failure on Donald Trump's part, you know, entering a war with Iran, tariff wars with the you know, his biggest allies, etc. None of these seemed like excellent decisions that sort of promoted America first in any way, shape, or form. So, and then of course, all the ice, you know, detentions and kidnappings and all these different things that we've been seeing. None of this, none of this seemed like a positive, there was no real positive spin here. So, what I am seeing has happened over the last couple of months is that this has been a great distraction tool. This has been a great way to reframe the narrative saying, see, everybody had a great time. This was an excellent World Cup, the biggest of all time, very successful, people had a wonderful experience. Look at all these videos of people, you know, experiencing and learning about the United States and visiting places like Dallas, Texas, and all these fine, all these fascinating inclusive elements are the things that the Trump re like the Trump administration has been relying on over the past while. Meanwhile, even though we feared that ice would be infiltrating stadiums, sure they didn't do that. People generally breathed a collective sigh of relief for that. What they didn't realize is that ice raids were actually increasing everywhere that wasn't a stadium. We weren't aware of that because the World Cup was taking place, or at least we didn't focus on that because the World Cup was taking place. This is sports washing to a tee, utilizing sports to distract from human rights abuses, and that's what the United States has been doing for the past while. So, whether wherever you fall on this authoritarianism angle for the United States, I still see this as a democracy with a free press that has significant elements of creeping authoritarianism within it. So that to me, in itself, is another good reason why we should always be critical about something like this. Why is the World Cup here and how is it being used? Donald Trump didn't appear at the World Cup until the final, and he appeared at the final because he wanted to use that as an as a moment for his personal brand and prestige to become the center of attention at the at the world's center of attention that day, which was MetLife Stadium for the World Cup final. He wanted to be part of that moment to remind the world that this world cup is happening because of him, right? It is a this this this connection between his personal brand and his political ideology is very significant here, and it was represented through the World Cup. At the end of the day, this was still Trump's World Cup, and the effects have occurred throughout the tournament, not just in the final. Think of the treatment of Iran's team. No matter how what people view, like how people's views on Iran as a country, Iran's football team should not have been treated the way they were, where every time they'd play a match, they'd have to leave that same day. This was the only team out of 48 teams that was given this sort of treatment. And it seemed, especially with the administration's gleeful responses following the event, following Iran's elimination, that this was kind of done on purpose to make them suffer. That's a horrible attitude and something that is unprecedented at a World Cup and generally at a major sporting event. It should disqualify the United States from hosting such an event again. But I highly doubt that's going to occur. There were referees, world-class referees who were denied entry into the country. A Somali referee in particular, Omar Artan, was denied entry into the United States. Multiple teams, especially the ones from Africa, were searched very significantly upon arriving to the United States, including on the tarmac. When FIFA promotes the sport saying that football unites the world, I still find it very hard to look at this World Cup, despite all the glorious moments in it, and say that this was a world-unifying event.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

At many of these um world events, there have been cases where athletes have taken a stand, you know, maybe literally on the metal stand, like we saw in 1968, or uh make statements knowing that the world press is there. Were there any notable examples of of players or coaches or officials um using this opportunity of the World Cup um to speak out for human rights? Or um was this uh is this always just like kind of a one-sided, one-sided story?

SPEAKER_00 34:01

I'll take a moment to bring up Egypt once again here and say that Egypt's coach Hosem Hassan, to everybody's surprise, actually, after Egypt's uh victory in the knockout stage against Australia, he saw a Palestinian flag in the stands and took that stand, took that flag and started waving it around the stadium in this moment of solidarity with the people of Palestine. And thereafter, in the press conference, on multiple sessions in the press conference, he focused a lot of his time on stage to talk about Palestine, to talk about the plight of the people in Gaza without making it all too political. He was really trying to resonate with people's actual humanity and saying, hey, you know, you might love Barcelona. These people who are dying are also wearing Barcelona shirts. They're not that different to you and I. I thought that was a wonderfully human moment because it wasn't a pointing the finger at people, or it wasn't even politicizing this the situation, it was really trying to s put out in a very important message of support to people who were not represented at the event to begin with, and whose treatment, in whether whether it be in the form of protests or of Palestinians within the United States, has been quite appalling over the past while. So that was a powerful moment that you might not have gotten had it just been, you know, the Western nations remaining in the World Cup, which is why a World Cup is so important to have representatives from all around the world, which is what this was. And once you do their concerns and their issues come to the forefront as well as Palestine did in 2026.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Looking ahead, what would the ideal environment surrounding a World Cup be? I mean, you could play devil's advocate and say, like, it's gonna take place somewhere, there's gonna be a leader wherever that that takes place, there's gonna be political issues wherever the World Cup might take place. Um if there were some sort of uh reform effort that was even possible, like what might that look like?

SPEAKER_00 36:07

There is actually a reform effort and an initiative and campaign that's taking place. It's called rebootfifa.com and it's and it's run by Fair Square, which is a wonderful NGO based in the United Kingdom. Uh, and I would highly recommend for your for your listeners or or viewers to go at least check it out and add their name to you know the the people who have signed this so far, including myself, because they really do believe in a complete restructure of FIFA. And without doing that, we will never change football because this is football's powerhouse at the end of the day, and this event, the World Cup, is its showpiece event. So if you don't do that, if you can't reform FIFA, then this is hopeless to begin with. The other thing we really need to do, because we can have an argument here about well, you should not host it in authoritarian regimes, great, but when we host it as in a democracy, look at the problems that emerged then as well. I'm 100% with you, which is why the thing that we need to do is every single host needs to give guarantees to FIFA that center human rights issues, that protect minorities. These have to be things, much like you sign contracts that are you know binding, this has to be a binding statement as well. That comes with the consequence that if issues are found, the the World Cup can be withdrawn from that host nation. Now I understand this complicates things and it doesn't seem too likely, but we have to start thinking about alternative ways to make these events uh operate without them coming at such a poisonous, cancerous cost to the host nations, the host cities that that that take them on. These mega events have become way too big and they're only going to get bigger. There's already talks about FIFA expanding from 48 teams to 64 teams. So soon enough we'll get to a point where any single country won't be able to host the World Cup unless it's an authoritarian regime that can just erect stadiums in the desert, a la Saudi Arabia in 2034. But that in itself is a problem. These events are getting too big. The Olympics are too big. FIFA is in the World Cup, it is just too big at this point. So, yeah, if you want to host it in a place that has democracies, that has rule of law, that protects its people, that amount of red tape and bureaucracy is not something FIFA wants to deal with at all. That just complicates their life and and cuts into their profits. So, of course, I mean we talk about conflicts of interest. FIFA right now has a conflict of interest with the idea of working with a democracy because that comes again, that comes at its own expense, and they certainly don't want that because FIFA only makes money on a World Cup year. It does not make money the other three years, so it desperately relies on everything that it makes in a World Cup year to keep itself going, to like fund this patronage system and to set itself up for success moving forward. So, what I think we should do is burn that down and then demand that countries who want to host this actually center issues that matter to humans, our socioeconomic issues, you know, our uh protecting human rights and minorities, these are essential things that we should not be, you know uh brushing under the rug just because we want to watch our favorite sport.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

Is this just a a right-wing issue at the moment? Um, or is this different than how uh left-wing uh authoritarian governments have operated in the past? Um is it happening in in some countries right now? I I think even there's books about how Trump has used sports, you know, um in ways that other politicians uh you know they have to some degree, but uh seem to be a bigger part of his strategy now. We've seen it. Um you mentioned Hitler earlier in 36 in that regime. Um how does this play out across a political spectrum?

SPEAKER_00 40:06

No, I'd say it's it's well it depends on the context of the sports, of course, in the country, but I'd say no, this is a universal issue. Everybody is going to be across the political spectrum, you're going to have people who want to take advantage of sports and utilize it for their benefits and for nefarious aims in general. I mean, I think of when you think of Latin America and its left-wing authoritarian regimes, you think a lot about the sports you love, baseball. I think of Fidel Castro and uh, you know, there's there's several there's several honestly examples of of leaders there. Hugo Chavez is another big one I can think of, with and then the use the utilization of baseball as a means of diplomacy, as a means of unity and connecting with the people and of soft power. Sports are just far too potent a tool to not be utilized. It's almost negligent of you not to utilize it to some extent. The question is, to what extent are we going to go with this? And at what expense are you spending all of your government budget on building a stadium instead of paying for public infrastructure? That's a problem, right? Like it the context matters here. This is why I'm concerned with Morocco moving forward. Morocco is by not the worst authoritarian regime of my region, the Middle East and North Africa, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is spending money on stadiums that it should be spending on healthcare, on education. And don't take my word for it, take it from the protesters who just took to the streets eight months ago, demanding that that Morocco re-evaluate its uh interests moving forward and start centering their concerns as well. Which, I mean, now that Morocco is setting itself up for the 2030 World Cup, will it do so? Will it not? Who knows? We have four years to find out.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

All right. Well, I'm gonna ask about your new book, but before we get to that, so for those who have been listening to this uh conversation or interested in checking out the full podcast series, how how can they do that?

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Oh, you can honestly check that out absolutely anywhere. You can check it out on my personal Substack, Sports Politica. There's all the episodes are up and live there. They are available on YouTube, they're available on your favorite podcast streaming app. So wherever you listen to podcasts, wherever you watch these things, you can just type in PowerPlays and you'll find us straight away.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Okay. All right. And uh your book, The Ultimate Strongman, MMA and the Rise of the New Authoritarian Right. How did how did this subject uh come across your radar? And I know in writing a book, I mean, you're every waking moment is spent thinking about it, even if you're not literally sitting down and writing it. Why did you decide this was worth uh the time that it would take to put a book like this together?

SPEAKER_00 42:51

This was the most challenging thing I have done in my entire professional life. And I've done I've done quite a few things, but this this this one takes the cake, that's for sure. And uh I uh I cut my teeth in the world of mixed martial arts. Like I cover a wide range of sports now, but I cut my teeth in mixed martial arts, and my story and experience in that takes me all the way from Russia and the North Caucasus to the Middle East to North America, and that's the story I try and tell in this book. I try and trace the evolution of mixed martial arts from this counterculture activity to this billion-dollar you know, enterprise to this vector for authoritarianism and the far right, which is what unfortunately the sport has really become. And I try and do so in part as a memoir, telling my personal story through this time and my experiences in different or in different parts of the world, and through the various investigations that I have gone through in that time period. So it's a it's a retelling of my 12 years in the space, and what it tries to answer is how do we get to this point? How do we get to this point where the UFC, the ultimate Ultimate Fighting Championship is a major cultural and political force in the United States, and beyond that, was partly responsible for helping Donald Trump return to the White House. This is not embellishment anymore. This has actually happened. And what this book tries to tell you is how we got to this point and how maybe we can avoid it moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Sounds like a fascinating book. All right, before we let you go, you mentioned you're from Egypt, the joy that that team brought you this year. Was that one of your was it your all-time favorite moment in sports? Uh, if not what was, but if so, like can you describe the feelings you had watching this team succeed on on this stage?

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Oh, it was it was special. Listen, I I I love sports, I've always loved sport, but there's been always been something special about football for me and Egyptian football. I grew up with that. My whole family grew up watching football from my grandfather to my mother to my father. Everybody watched it and watched it with passion. I love my local team in Egypt. And attending matches there and seeing the police brutality that my friends and I had to endure was part of my political awakening in the lead up to the revolution. So if football is a key part of my life, and yet every year, every four years, I tune into the World Cup, and even if Egypt is there, we do terribly, even though we've been part of the World Cup since 1934, like we've been around forever, and yet we had never won a game until the 2026 edition. So when we finally won that game, and it happened in Vancouver, I was out on the streets with the Egyptians. It was an incredible, incredible moment. I take it from somebody who just wrote a series about how awful FIFA is in the World Cup can be. I could not resist the moment for myself. And then they went on and they won another game. And then they went and played Argentina, and for 18 minutes were up to zero. I cannot express, I legitimately thought I was still dreaming. Never would I have all I was talking to everybody, and all we wanted was just to have a good game against Argentina, not to embarrass ourselves and to leave the tournament, you know, after the defend after losing to the defending champions with our heads held high. Instead, we ended up being part of one of the craziest controversies of the tournament, and at the same time, the whole world knows of Egypt and the way we play football now. And that that to me is just so special, and it's even more special when you think of how little joy Egyptians have had for so long. The fact that I could see people on the streets having a good time, my mother calling me and screaming. These are these are this is the beautiful part of the World Cup. And I'm so happy for a change. I got to experience it with my country involved, and I hope other people get to experience that joy from it. But also remember that the reason we fight for this and the reason we bring this up is not to shame you out of watching, but the more aware you are of this, the less likely these people can ever take away and destroy the sport that you love and end these moments of collective joy for us all.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

No, well said, well said. Uh the contradictions inherent in sports, and uh I you know, I feel like those of us who may be critical of sports, in some cases, it's not because we don't love sports, and oftentimes it's because we do love them so much, and we want to see them continue and to be proud of uh of what we're watching. So um, Kareem, thank you so much uh for joining the show. Uh, your podcast is terrific. Really can't wait for your book to come out. Uh, encourage everybody to check out your Substack. Uh, all the best to you. And uh let me know if you're ever interested in coming down to uh Nashville and and speaking here at Vanderbilt.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

Oh, I would love to do that. That's one of my passions, actually, speaking to students. So let's set that up whenever you want to. And thank you so much, Andrew. This was a wonderful time. Time flew by, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

Absolutely. All right, thank you so much.