The ambassador's best friend? Football as a geopolitical tool ft Arthur Snell

As the world game, how do diplomats relate to football? And how is football being used by states around the world to advance their global interests and influence? To discuss these questions, co-hosts Guy and Francesco talk to former British diplomat and now geopolitical commentator, Arthur Snell, about his experience of working for the UK Foreign Office in Nigeria, Trinidad & Tobago and other countries, and  whether the beautiful game played a role in his diplomatic career. Arthur also explains how football is central to Britain's soft power, which English team is surprisingly popular in Iraq and how football found its way into his podcast, Between the Lines and book, How Britain Broke the World, published by Canbury Press.

Transcript

The Ambassador's Best Friend? Football as a Geopolitical Tool, ft. Arthur Snell

Guy Burton 00:05
 Hello and welcome to another edition of the football podcast. I'm your co -host Guy Burton and joining me down the line from Derby is my co -host Francesco Belcastro. Hi Francesco. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 00:15
 Hello Guy, how are you? 
 
 

Guy Burton 00:16
 I'm doing well, thanks. So you know what we're talking about today, don't you? 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 00:20
 I'm very excited for today's episode. We got a great guest. You get to share with us who the guest is. 
 
 

Guy Burton 00:26
 Yeah, we're going to be talking about football and geopolitics and to join us looking at how football has affected the politics around the world, you know, how various political regimes are using football to their own ends and how people have responded to that. 
 
 

Guy Burton 00:43
 Joining us is a very interesting guest, Arthur Snell. Arthur is a former diplomat at the UK Foreign Office and so, you know, during his line of work, he has come across football in its various shapes and forms, but then he left the Foreign Office to become a geopolitical analyst in his own right and commentator and he's appeared on a number of different podcasts over the years, including The Bunker and before that Remaniacs. 
 
 

Guy Burton 01:12
 Today, he has his own podcast behind the lines in which he has actually looked at football and politics as well. So, welcome to the show Arthur and thank you for joining us. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 01:22
 Well, it's great to be here. Thank you, Guy, and thank you, Francesco. 
 
 

Guy Burton 01:25
 And so listen, it's, as we sort of said, we've, we're interested in talking about the politics of football and particularly at the global level. And one of the things that's been very much the case in recent years, we've seen states become using football to buy, buy clubs or whether by investing in the game, almost recently by trying to host mega events, obviously Qatar last year, Saudi Arabia this year. 
 
 

Guy Burton 01:48
 And we're going to come to that. But before that, what we thought would be interesting would be to sort of hear from you as a former diplomat and specifically a British one about the relationship between football and government. 
 
 

Guy Burton 01:59
 And obviously in Britain, you know, football, government doesn't have a direct link to football in quite the same way as some of these states that we're going to be talking about. But I wonder to what extent football has played a role during the time that you were in the Foreign Office, which would have been, I guess, from around 97, 98 through to just before Brexit?
 
 

Arthur Snell 02:21
 That's correct. Yes, so I served from 98 to 2014 as a British diplomat and obviously remain very engaged in that world. But to answer your question, Guy, I think football is the ultimate sort of soft power arm of British culture. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 02:39
 We could talk about popular music, we could talk about the BBC and so on. But football is still in ways that are sometimes intangible in some and in other ways, very tangible, intimately collected with Britain and perhaps even England. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 02:55
 Clearly, there's the fact that the game was originally, you know, the rules of the game at least were laid down in this country. But I think more important than that is the fact that major British clubs, not just in the area of the premiership and the Premier League, but going back into the sort of 70s and further back into history, clubs such as Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, you know, Ipswich Town. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 03:19
 These are clubs that were known all over the world and football is that global language. So you could be a British diplomat in the most obscure place on planet Earth. And if you have a smattering of knowledge of football, and in my case, I'm afraid to say it is normally just a smattering, you have a point of engagement and people know something about your country. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 03:38
 And that's an incredible gift that the game has given us as a country and particularly as diplomats. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 03:45
 That's great. Could I ask you to give us some examples, perhaps based on your postings? I know you've been in Nigeria, there was clearly a sort of football -mad country and then in Afghanistan, so very difficult, different in terms of sports preferences. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 03:59
 How have you felt that British football is perceived? And does it, is it something that helps UK businesses? How does it practically translate into soft power, so to speak? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 04:11
 Yeah, well, I think so. If we let's talk a bit about Nigeria. When I was there, you know, Kanu was very much one of the great players active in English football. And the pride that Nigeria had in him, of course, Nigeria is a country that has generated a huge number of incredibly talented players. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 04:32
 And, you know, there may be discussions to be had about the nature of African football and the fact that often, you know, the national teams and the club teams aren't necessarily able to take advantage of the talent that they have, but they export that talent globally. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 04:49
 But I think Kanu, as a player, sort of put Nigerian football on a global map. And it was this amazing pride. But also, for example, I always remember Nigerians saying that, you know, that his so -called playing age and his actual, you know, age on planet Earth were different things. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 05:07
 And this was an example of sort of what a talented athlete that he was, that he could sort of claim to be, I don't know, 35 when he was actually in his 40s and still, you know, running up and down the football field. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 05:19
 And then to take another example, actually, from Iraq. So in Iraq, there's a very unexpected but fairly passionate sort of bevy of Ipswich supporters. And this is because apparently in the era when Ipswich was really at the height of its powers. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 05:35
 And I think you guys will be able to correct me but I think that's the 70s. Ipswich made a tour of the Middle East. And this was in a brief period when, you know, UK relations with Iraq were much better than they certainly were later. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 05:49
 So the sort of the memory of English football in Iraq was the memory of Ipswich actually coming to Iraq and playing a sort of exhibition game or something like that. So even when Ipswich, you know, hit the doldrums, I know it's sort of, it's coming back up a bit now. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 06:05
 But, you know, clearly it had quite a long wilderness period. There were, you know, in places like Kabbalah, Baghdad, Mosul, you would find people who were sort of passionate devotees of Ipswich. But to answer your slightly more serious question about what does it mean for Britain? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 06:22
 I mean, I think a lot of it is about it helps us project as a global country. And, you know, people talk about global Britain. And of course, I think that that branding was very damaged by cynical politicians, notably Boris Johnson, sort of making a rather empty set of claims. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 06:43
 But I think Britain as a cultural power is global. I mean, I think that's, and I don't think that's sort of vain glorious to say that. The football, popular music, the BBC, you know, there are a series of series of ways in which Britain manages to reach global audiences. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 06:58
 And of course, that that is an industry, an industry which is worth billions of dollars. And so it may not be the types of sort of business opportunities that you think of as traditionally associated with diplomacy, which is often to do with sort of things like, you know, sales of engineering, machinery and those sorts of things. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 07:16
 But of course, that, you know, the cultural reach, for example, of, you know, media and that sort of thing is still still drives a lot of economic activity in this country. So I think football plays a huge role in that. 
 
 

Guy Burton 07:29
 I wonder to what extent when you were talking - because we're talking about Britain - and yet it's also probably more synonymous with English football. Because I mean during your time as a diplomat, to what extent did the other British nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland really have any kind of awareness in your interactions with local people? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 07:52
 Well, certainly in the context of football, I'd say not very much. But I think, you know, there is this laziness of sort of England and Britain becoming slightly interchangeable terminology. And I say that with no disrespect, you know, to friends and colleagues from the other nations. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 08:10
 But I suppose when you have sometimes you'll have a great player who is seen as one of the great English players. I don't know. Let's think of someone like Ian Rush, you know, and it turns out he played for Wales, you know, so you get those sorts of, you get those exceptions. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 08:26
 And I'm not denying his Welshness, but I suppose there's this thing that quite often... one of... sometimes football is a way in which we try to explain to people who are rather confused by the odd constitutional makeup of this country. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 08:42
 You know, why don't you have a UK football team? Wouldn't it be a great team? You've got so many great players. Why are they splitting four different teams? You know, those sorts of questions. So I suppose football can can sort of help in kind of as a diplomat. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 08:54
 You're often trying to explain what your country is and why it is as it is. And that's one of the ways that you can do that. I think another aspect actually of of of sort of Englishness and Britishness. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 09:07
 I saw with when I was working in Trinidad and Tobago and that was in in an opposite direction. 
 
 

Guy Burton 09:12
 And you were the High Commissioner there as well. Yeah. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 09:15
 Yeah, I was the High Commissioner, which is, you know, for those not familiar, that's a silly word for an ambassador. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 09:20
 Trinidad and Tobago is the smallest country ever to have made it to a World Cup. That was the I think 2006. Yeah. And, you know, there's there's immense national pride associated with that with with that achievement. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 09:35
 And actually, you know, they they acquitted themselves really well in the tournament. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 09:39
 I think they played England, didn't they? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 09:40
 They played England. 
 
 

Guy Burton 09:42
 And I think they actually got a draw. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 09:43
 Yeah, exactly. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 09:44
 So, you know, that that is that's an amazing thing that remember, this is a country whose population is, you know, the size of an English county, roughly. So it's an incredible achievement. But the team that Trinidad and Tobago had was made up of some people who were born on the islands and others whose whose connection to the country was relatively distant. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 10:04
 So there was a guy, Chris Birchell, a fair skin, fair hair, blue -eyed guy whose whose I think grandmother had lived in Trinidad in some kind of expat situation. And he played for Trinidad and Tobago and he played very well. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 10:19
 And he, you know, made the team proud. And then you had Dwight Yorke, who was obviously one of the big stars of the English Premiership at that time, born in Tobago, as I recall. So it was a team that in a way, generated massive national pride for a small country that doesn't often get to sort of play on the world stage. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 10:40
 But actually, you could argue that it brought Britain and Trinidad and Tobago closer because it reminded us the degree to which multicultural Britain, you know, I'm sure a lot of people didn't think of Dwight Yorke as foreign. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 10:52
 They thought of him as black British. Multicultural Britain was actually made up of people who came from all kinds of other countries, you know, either in their own story or in the heritage of their ancestors. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 11:04
 So I think sometimes football gives us a particular resonance with other countries that we wouldn't otherwise have.
 
 

Guy Burton 11:12
 In your diplomatic career as well, you know, you worked in Afghanistan as well. And I think you were very prominent in working on the counterterrorism side of things. And I wonder to what extent there's a football is used or there's the way football might be used in terms of counterterrorism, either by specifically by the by the successful in using football as a means of countering these the problem. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 11:48
 Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And certainly, I know that there have been sort of projects. On the basis of football is this amazing sort of global language, it's the game that you only need an object that you can kick and almost everyone everywhere has had a go at some point. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 12:03
 And, you know, a lot of people spend a lot of their childhood kicking balls around. So in that sense, it brings people together. And it might bring people together who have extremely divergent, you know, ideologies, political views and so on. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 12:15
 So I know that there have been attempts, not normally direct from the British government, but certainly directly financed by the British government projects through NGOs and so on, to do just that, to use football, to try to draw together communities that might otherwise be at odds. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 12:32
 And I recall that I think that, including in Iraq, there were such projects, probably in Afghanistan as well. Now, I think the challenge with these projects is that, fine, you can get, you know, a bunch of kids or teenagers or whatever onto a football field and they can kick a ball around. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 12:48
 But that doesn't necessarily mean at the end of the day, this person decides that they're going to leave the Taliban or, you know, alter their views on sort of militancy in the context of Islam. So I think sometimes that there is a tendency when you have very challenging sort of security crises, perhaps, you know, not dissimilar to what we're now seeing in the Middle East just the week we're speaking, for people to say, well, we must do something and then resources are dedicated and entrepreneurial people, I'm not accusing them of anything dishonest, but entrepreneurial people say, well, look, I can bring together young people to play football. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 13:27
 And that's great. And the government's happy because they can then say, we're investing money in community building projects. But does it really change things at the end of the day? I mean, it's certainly true that in some contexts, very narrow contexts, I think people at the sort of militant extremes of Islam have said that football is un -Islamic. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 13:50
 I mean, I don't think anyone in the mainstream agrees with that idea. So perhaps, again, showing that it's just a healthy, you know, fun activity that no one should be threatened by is a good thing. But I think to some extent there's an argument about the utility of it. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 14:06
 And then there's another argument about, do you sort of, this is more of an academic one that might be familiar to you guys, that you sort of securitize sport and turn it into a tool of counterterrorism, which of course is very undermining of its sort of community and kind of basic athletic spirit. 
 
 

Guy Burton 14:24
 That's really interesting. It's showing in a way that both the opportunities and the limits of football, when we talk about politics, so it's an opportunity to start a conversation, have a dialogue, but doesn't necessarily transform. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 14:42
 Yeah, and I think, I mean, if we think about great football, footballing rivalries, you know, I'm of an age that one of the first sort of globally significant event, or well, is it globally nationally significant events that I recall was the Falklands War, right? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 14:55
 And so clearly that pitted Britain and Argentina in a violent conflict in which hundreds of people died. And flowing on from that, then the 1986 World Cup, which again, was one of the first that I followed, you know, sort of ball by ball, the Argentina were the villains. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 15:14
 And of course, then the way that Diego, the famous hand of God, you know, just confirmed this, this fact. So in that sense, did football bring us together not at all? I don't think I think it illustrated for the the English population, the degree to which you couldn't trust Argentina. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 15:29
 And I'm not saying that's a statement of fact, I'm saying that's how how it was perceived and how... 
 
 

Guy Burton 15:34
 No, and certainly on the Argentine side, I believe, you know, Las Malvinas was kind of a rallying cry of that team. But what's very odd... I mean, I remember that World Cup like you as well, Arthur, it was the first one that's kind of really seared in my consciousness. 
 
 

Guy Burton 15:46
 And what strikes me now looking back on it is how, you know, we were being... At least from the English perspective, it was sort of seen as, you know, we were the victims in all of this, right? And how cruelly we would, you know, sort of had things taken away from us. 
 
 

Guy Burton 16:02
 Whereas, you know, but yet it was the British who actually won the war. So, you know, odd sort of like juxtaposition of positions, I suppose. But... 
 
 

Arthur Snell 16:13
 Yeah, indeed. And of course, people, most, most British people took no interest in the experience of living in Argentina at that time, but it was, you know, a violent, vicious military dictatorship killing many more of its own people than it ever did of any British soldier, you know. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 16:28
 And so, again, that it's an illustration, I suppose, of how football becomes almost a caricature of what was a serious international crisis, but ultimately, you know, was not a sort of accurate illustration. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 16:44
 Yeah. Great. In your sort of second career as a commentator and a podcast host, you have looked at major issues, the Ukraine war, Israel and Palestine. But you've also looked at football. Does that mean that football is now a sort of mainstream geopolitical issue? 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 17:01
 And maybe does that mean that the Saudis have got it right in going for the World Cup? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 17:07
 Well, here, gosh, big question. I mean, I think football has become, has got dragged into geopolitics, and that's happened as a result. I think largely actually of the English game deciding that it would be entirely open to global money with no, with those are the guardrails. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 17:26
 So that, you know, we obviously saw the UAE as a state effectively. I mean, it was in the name of an individual. The UAE purchased Man City. Now that was different from what happened with Abramovich and Chelsea, which clearly Abramovich, we can all say this now, he can't sue us because he's sanctioned. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 17:44
 He's very, very close to Putin. It may even have been sort of Putin's money, but it's still, that was a private citizen, and that was the way it was manifested. It was all about Roman Abramovich. But the difference with Manchester City, that was basically the Emirates, the United Arab Emirates as a country, specifically Abu Dhabi, the chief emirate, buying a football club. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 18:05
 And then, and that becoming part of a global sort of football brand that the UAE created. There's a character called Simon Pierce, who's very important in all of this, who was almost the kind of the architect of this sort of project. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 18:20
 And you've got Melbourne City, which has exactly the same shade of blue now on its shirts. And it's part of this sort of global brand and there are other clubs around the world. And then of course Qatar followed. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 18:29
 But I mean, something that we can notice here is that it's Gulf Arab states that are doing this. So first the UAE, then Qatar, then the Saudis, most recently, obviously the Newcastle. And I think the other thing that we can notice is that it is, it's, it's, these are states that are, that are trying to fight against what is a fairly negative perception of their international profile. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 18:58
 So even if you take the UAE, which has become, you know, a very popular tourist destination in Dubai and so on, I think, I think the UAE still manages quite a negative set of global perceptions. You know, there are constantly stories about someone being arrested in Dubai for, you know, not dressing appropriately on the beach or that kind of thing. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 19:20
 And so I think in a way, the fact that, for example, you know, you don't see, I don't know, a state in Asia buying a football club necessarily or a Latin American country buying a football club might be because they don't have this sort of weight of negative perceptions around them. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 19:41
 Now, we can have a discussion about whether those perceptions are valid, but I think that's partly what's going on here. 
 
 

Guy Burton 19:46
 Do you think we're overdoing it a little bit? Because as you point out, these are primarily Gulf Arab states and it doesn't seem to be a phenomenon happening elsewhere in the world. So is there something about, does this tell us something more about, I guess, more sort of the geo -economics of global politics today that the weight of power seems to be sort of resting in this particular part of the world? 
 
 

Guy Burton 20:14
 Because let's be honest, I mean, Latin American countries, yes, they have a lot of footballing legacy and history and stuff, but in terms of the weight that they bring to global politics, global economics, it's not really there, is it? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 20:29
 No, it's interesting. And I suppose you have to separate this out into two categories. There's the the impact it's having on the sport of football. And that it seems to me that that is quite serious in the sense that you get a very small number of kind of you can't even call them mega clubs. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 20:43
 They're sort of ultra clubs and they can completely distort the game in terms of buying up the best players in terms of constantly being in the line for whichever trophy and certainly Champions League and English Premier League clearly at the top of that probably. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 21:04
 And that has a negative impact on clubs that are authentic representations of a community and are steeped in the history of the where they are whether it's you know in the Netherlands or France or Italy or does matter you know these clubs are all all getting sort of excluded from this sort of multi billion dollar game. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 21:23
 But in terms of the actual geopolitics of putting football to one side. I think in a way what it is more is is a symptom of something much bigger, which is the transition of particularly the the GCC states but most most particularly Saudi, the UAE and Qatar trying to transition 
 
 

Arthur Snell 21:47
 a history of basically being a sort of gas station for Western interest - and that's not to be dismissive or or disrespectful but that's how they were treated geopolitically - and, and now finding their own sort of authentic kind of foreign policy and global interest and of course often those butt up against the interest of Western state so just to take recent examples. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 22:13
 You know, both both the Emirates and the Saudis have not been, not chosen to be helpful around the issue of energy prices in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And that, that that would have been unimaginable, I think. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 22:26
 You know, a quarter of a century earlier. And then more recently you've got the... You know the situation surrounding Israel-Gaza crisis where again the the actions of, for example Qatar, in relation to Hamas. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 22:45
 You know, again, it's debatable whether or not that they've sort of that they've they've followed Western interest. Now of course something this because they were why should they follow Western interest that's that's a perfectly good argument. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 22:56
 But historically, you know, there was this deal where Western powers notably the US, but not uniquely, protected those countries both by supplying with weapons but also actually by putting their armies into the field where necessary in return for for kind of geopolitical alignment and that that deal seems to have broken down. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 23:16
 It's fascinating. Last week we had Professor Seungbum Lee and he was talking about the model of development that's been adopted in East Asia, in South Korea and in Japan. And this seems to be almost a parallel. And it seems almost that you can kind of say a lot about the foreign policy of these countries by looking at how they decide to develop their football. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 23:35
 And now they kind of place themselves in the global football market. In that case, it's kind of a, you know, a softer approach if you want. So it's really interesting. Sorry, Guy, you were... 
 
 

Guy Burton 23:46
 No, no, no. And I guess this kind of ties to what I was going to ask and what Arthur's like, get been kind of leading towards, which is of course that politics and football is not a new thing. And so, you know, when we think about politics and sort of football and how it was used in the past, and we think about sort of like the 1934 Italian World Cup win or, you know, sort of the Argentines in 1978 and how the leaderships of those countries, you know, the success of the national team's winning, it was very explicit. 
 
 

Guy Burton 24:17
 And, you know, now what you've been talking about Arthur, what Francesco's just been suggesting, is that actually it's not so maybe it's not maybe not as clear cut as that anymore, that it's moving towards a different kind of relationship between football and politics. 
 
 

Guy Burton 24:33
 I mean, would you agree with that? Or do you think there's actually something else beyond that? You know, it's not just about sort of the development model. It's not just about sort of, you know, being more independent in terms of foreign policy. 
 
 

Guy Burton 24:46
 Are there other things going on here that that, you know, political leaders are using football? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 24:52
 Well, I think there are. So I think one thing, clearly, if we look at the development, there are two angles to the globalization of football. One is the buying, the acquisition of clubs normally in Europe of historic football clubs, which are then pumped up with money and become very successful. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 25:13
 But the other thing is trying to create a domestic football culture. Now, that has different manifestations. So Qatar hosting the World Cup. Clearly, Qatar is a country with a tiny population. It's never going to realistically have loads of young Qataris becoming great footballers. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 25:33
 But it could host the World Cup and become a unique accolade in the sense of such a tiny country having hosted the first Arab country, so on and so forth. And then what you see now, there's a variation on that. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 25:50
 Now Saudi Arabia is very different. Saudi Arabia has quite a large population, over 30 million. And it is trying to create a domestic, well, it has a domestic football league, but it's trying to expand it, turn that into a really serious, sort of globally significant football context. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 26:06
 And clearly, so they're buying in the players, and most famously Cristiano Ronaldo, but lots of others, very, very serious, globally significant footballers, are going to Saudi Arabia. Now, there's been a lot of argument about whether this kind of works, that both the, just the climatic conditions and the wider context of, you know, does it really create sort of high quality, watchable football? 
 
 

Arthur Snell 26:33
 I mean, I think that others can give their opinion on that. I'm not sure that it does. But why is this happening? Well, part of this is this sort of over the horizon planning, that these Gulf States want to have a thing that is part of their economy, when they're no longer reliant on the hydrocarbon economy. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 26:53
 Now, where I feel that this sort of falls down is that, you know, it's almost a cliche, that if you want to lose, you know, a few hundred million pounds, you buy a football club, because that football clubs don't make you money. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 27:07
 And yes, it's true that a culture around football might be able to make money. And, you know, one could talk about, sort of, you know, Liverpool or Manchester as cities, that as part of their identity, they have football very much built into the culture. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 27:23
 But it would be very hard to argue that just, you know, they're just buying a football club and then pumping it full of money will transform a city. And I certainly think that it doesn't have to seem to me that there's a really incredible, sort of, plan for this kind of post -oil economy in the context of football. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 27:45
 And when you look at, obviously, the most recent acquisition, major acquisition in the UK context is Newcastle United. And it's clear that just as with the Emirates, the Abu Dhabi invested lots of money in Manchester, way beyond just, you know, building the stadium and the club itself. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 28:04
 And a similar process is underway in Newcastle. But again, I think there's a risk that this, there's a sort of boom and bust context. Because I think at a point when a post -hydrocarbon economy sort of hits the Gulf countries, I don't think there's going to be much interest in pumping money into Tyneside. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 28:25
 I was wondering whether you feel that the international system will somehow need to acknowledge the fact that football has become more important and whether we're going to see an international system that tries to adapt to that. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 28:37
 I think there's a crisis coming which, you know, I'm sure you guys have... are well aware that it's now confirmed that Saudi Arabia has got the 2034 World Cup. I think that is a crisis which is which is yet to hit public consciousness because I think that there are arguments about Qatar and human rights, particularly the rights of migrant workers, but it's a very different story in Saudi Arabia, which, you know, carries out huge numbers of executions every year, which of course the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the war in Yemen, you know, I think Saudi Arabia has a very tainted reputation and one could argue with, you know, that's justified. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 29:14
 I don't foresee it being straightforward, particularly for some sort of normal European countries, their participation and I think that will come from the public. The public will say, we don't want our national team to participate in this in this World Cup. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 29:28
 So, so in a way what's happened is that the FIFA, which you know is a very, very troublesome complex organization has made this decision on behalf of the people of the world and the people of the world, perhaps in large part, but certainly in certain important football in countries are probably going to be saying, Well, hang on a minute, you know, who asked us and and that's that gets really complicated. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 29:53
 So I think that's one angle. And I think then the thing about the money in football and the way in which it is, you know, cynically manipulated. I mean, I touched on Trinidad and Tobago earlier. Of course, the other big aspect of Trinidad and Tobago in the history of football is the personality of Jack Warner, a person I had, I met numerous times. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 30:10
 He was a politician in Trinidad. He was vice president of FIFA, monstrously corrupt. And he can sue me if he wants because I don't think there's any doubt about that. Monstrously corrupt individual who turned football into a self enrichment exercise. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 30:26
 And I think the way in which FIFA as an organization has been so troubled by these corruption stories is really difficult. 
 
 

Guy Burton 30:35
 And what's really quite striking about this particular awarding of the World Cup is how much in the last couple of weeks we've already seen people saying, you know, talk to your football association, your representatives in a way civil society is getting involved in football at the international level in a way that it didn't do, you know, at the time of the awarding of the Russian and the Qatari World Cups, right? 
 
 

Guy Burton 30:57
 We forgot to mention that, you know, Arthur is not just sort of a, you know, a podcaster and former diplomat, but also an author. And, you know, you've written the book, you know, How Britain Broke the World, which came out last year with Canbury Press and is actually now out in paperback this year. 
 
 

Guy Burton 31:15
 You know, it's quite striking that you were talking about, you know, how football complemented Britain's diplomacy. I wonder to what extent, you know, given the title of your book, you know, whether in some ways you might think that, you know, Britain's broken football. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 31:31
 Well, I was about to say there is a companion book waiting to be written, how Britain broke world football. And I think... And one of the chapters of my book looks at the ways in which Britain enabled, uh, very hypermobile offshore finance using our overseas territories. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 31:46
 Of course, we have these places like Jersey, the Isle of Man, Cayman and so on. And that made it easy for global kleptocrats, notably Russians, but many others as well, to launder their money, to, to, to steal money from their countries and launder it. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 31:58
 And of course, a lot of that money ended up in football, but in football itself, you know, so the, um, we all know that the, the football association in order to sign off on the acquisition by Saudi Arabia of Newcastle United had to make a blatant lie. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 32:14
 They had to say that, um, that the PIF, that the, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia was independent of Muhammad bin Salman. Well, Muhammad bin Salman is chairman of the PIF and it is absolutely undeniable. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 32:26
 He is completely in charge of what goes on. He may not be, you know, sitting in the room doing the spreadsheets, but he totally is, has overall control. So, and everyone knows that. And yet in order that this sale go through, we, we, we basically lied to ourselves about, about that structure. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 32:44
 So I think that that kind of willingness, which is, it seems to be a feature of Britain, if, if it's to do with, with sort of high finance, we're, we're willing to bend the rules or maybe just throw the rules out altogether. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 32:55
 Um, that ultimately I think is that has, has damaged our country's sort of integrity in terms of anti -corruption and so on. And it appears to be damaging football's integrity as well. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 33:07
 Thank you very much. It's been such a fascinating conversation. I have many questions, many more questions myself. I know Guy you do as well. You're trying to ask another question. 
 
 

Guy Burton 33:15
 No, I was just gonna say it's a bit of a... 
 
 

Guy Burton 33:17
 it's a bit of a downer to end on. But thank you so much Arthur for taking the time to talk to us about all of this. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 33:23
 It's been great. We'll let you go, but with the promise that you're gonna come back in a few months and tell us how it's going in terms of Saudi Arabia and some of the issues that we have discussed. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 33:34
 Well, no, thanks for the opportunity guys. And I suppose, you know, with every downer, there's always the upper that actually, at the end of the day, you know, every weekend, lots of millions of people all over the world watch football and just have the amazing sort of emotional roller coaster of sport at that high level. 
 
 

Arthur Snell 33:50
 And, you know, that hasn't ended. So thanks guys for the opportunity. I'm always happy to return. Thank you very much. 
 
 

Guy Burton 33:57
 So that was really good. So tell us, Francesco, what's we going to be doing next week? Who's coming up? 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 34:02
 So we got a very interesting episode. We're following up on some of these discussions because we got two Saudi academics, Eyad Alrefai and Aziz Alghashian. So they've also gone to watch the Saudi League couple of weeks ago. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 34:14
 So they're going to tell us how the atmosphere was, but we're going to be talking about the politics of Saudi football from their point of view, from the point of view of two Saudi academics and two Saudi football fans. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 34:25
 And I think something else we need to remind our listeners. 
 
 

Guy Burton 34:29
 Yeah, we need to do the obvious things, which is please, if you enjoyed this show, or even if you didn't, please review it, you know, give us a star or, you know, tell us what we're doing wrong and what you'd like to see changed. 
 
 

Guy Burton 34:40
 Also, if you could share the podcast, this episode or any of the other ones we've done with your friends, your family, with your other contacts, and if you really liked it, it'd be great if you could subscribe so you can get next week's episode straight to your mailbox, and so you don't need to come searching around for it. 
 
 

Guy Burton 34:58
 Also, I guess the final point we should also make is that, as ever, we are very open to hearing from listeners about topics that they would like to hear, explored potential guests that we should reach out to, because of course, you know, we have a bunch of ideas and we've been working through them over the last couple of months, but we'd be very, very keen to hear from you guys as to what we should be doing. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 35:19
 And we are on Twitter, X, Blue Sky, Instagram, Facebook, and it's the Footpol Podcast on all of them. So it's easy to find us. Please do get in touch. 
 
 

Guy Burton 35:30
 Yes, please do. And once again, thank you for listening up this week and Francesco, great talking to you. See you again next week. 
 
 

Francesco Belcastro 35:36
 Take care, bye bye, next Monday.
 
 

Guy Burton 35:37
 Bye, bye.