After Ashish makes Stefan listen to his experience watching Ghana hold England to a draw, they talk about how much managers really matter, with particular focus on England and Brazil at this World Cup.

After Stefan takes us back to the 1974 Poland-West Germany World Cup match, we talk about the fairytale story of Cape Verde so far, and discuss how far they can go in this year's tournament. We also talk more broadly about smaller countries like Portugal, Croatia and Palestine, whose teams have long overachieved based on their populations, GDP and global football experience.

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We discuss the latest games, the geopolitics around the Iraqi and Iranian teams, and the debate over who is gaining most from dual national players.

In our first episode since the World Cup we discuss some of the surprise results so far, and highlight the great start for the Socceroos and their young star, Nestory Irankunda - who like two of his teammates - was born in a refugee camp in Africa before he and his family were granted asylum in Australia. We debate whether the success of multicultural teams like the Socceroos and the US can change attitudes around immigration in their countries.

The World Cup is here, and we're here to preview it all. Stefan has done a mind-boggling 20,000 simulations of the tournament, and yet somehow there is still no scenario where Haiti wins it all. We also talk into the political backdrop, with Ashish and Stefan talking about their recent piece for The Economist, about how this could be the last World Cup. Link below:

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2026/06/08/this-may-just-be-the-last-world-cup

When Simon and Stefan first wrote Soccernomics, they predicted that the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey and Iraq were destiened to become the kings of the sport. That turned out to be wrong...well, so far at least. Instead, ove the last five World Cups, Argentina is the only non-European team to have finished in the top three. So what's behind Europe's (specifically Western Europe's) domination of the game?

Part two of our discussion from Tuesday, we discuss antitrust, player unions the differences between player unions in Europe and the US, and compare the transfer system to the NIL in American college sports.

Today we're talking football's transfer market - a topic Stefan is so passionate about, we've had to split it into two parts. In this one, he makes the case for why world football's transfer market is a form of human trafficking. Hear him out before you dismiss it as hyperbole...