Are we living through a golden era of football diplomacy? ft Heather Dichter

Is the use of football in diplomacy a modern phenomenon? Or has sport always been used as a diplomatic tool? In this episode, co-hosts Guy and Francesco speak to Heather Dichter, Associate Professor at DeMonfort University specialising in sport history, with a focus on diplomacy and twentieth century Europe. Heather explains how the popularity of the game made it a unique diplomatic tool, and why the last decades have been a golden era for football diplomacy. Heather also discusses her research on sport in the Cold War era and in Germany, and the future of research in this field. 

Transcript

Are we living through a golden era of football diplomacy? ft Heather Dichter

Guy Burton 00:11

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Football Podcast, where football meets politics. I'm one of your co -hosts Guy Burton and this is my other co -host Francesco Belcastro. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:20

Hello Guy, happy new year. 

Guy Burton 00:22

Happy new year to you as well. It's great to be starting the new year with… well actually do you know what we're going to be talking about today?

Francesco Belcastro 00:29

 Is it a very festive topic? Tell me.

Guy Burton 00:32

 Well it could be, I mean there's going to probably be snow involved. But yes, we're going to be talking about sport and diplomacy and we're the particular focus I think on the Cold War, hence the reference to snow. And joining us to talk about these things is Heather Dichter, who is a professor over at DeMontford University, a specialist in sport history and she focuses on diplomacy in the 20th century in Europe. 

Guy Burton 01:00

So she studied history at a number of different universities - an American transplant - so University of Michigan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and then did her PhD at the University of Toronto. 

Guy Burton 01:13

And welcome to the show Heather. 

Heather Dichter 01:15

Thank you very much. 

Guy Burton 01:15

Well you're welcome. And so obviously you've worked on a number of different things over the last decade and a half. I mean the books that you've produced are quite plentiful, both solo authored and edited. 

Guy Burton 01:28

Just to sort of give the listeners a bit of a flavour of what Heather has worked on, she's looked at sport and diplomacy with an interest in the post -war occupation of Germany and during the Cold War. 

Guy Burton 01:39

So I think we're going to be talking quite a bit about Germany. The books that she's published include Bidding for the 1968 Olympic Games: International Sports Cold War Battle with NATO, Soccer Diplomacy: International Relations and Football Since 1914, Diplomatic Games: Sports, Statecraft and International Relations Since 1945 and finally Olympic Reform 10 Years Later. 

Guy Burton 02:00

I think we've got a fantastic person here to talk to us about sport and diplomacy. And Heather, once again, thank you for coming on. Can I just start? Because one of the things that you write in your work is about this idea of a quote, diplomatic turn in sport history. 

Guy Burton 02:14

I wonder if you could sort of explain what this means and what it means in regard to football. 

Heather Dichter 02:19

So when we think about diplomatic history, it's really some of the oldest history and kind of the most traditional kind of history that we had, like that and military history in some respects. 

Heather Dichter 02:31

How states relate to each other, this advent of diplomacy after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, it's so much of history in the last 200 years has been about diplomacy and around diplomacy and state relations with each other. 

Heather Dichter 02:47

Now, sport history is a much more recent field. It's really about, 40 to 50 years old, particularly in a North American and British and a little bit of Western European context. And with that, a lot of sport history has been social history and thinking about, you know, not just how these sports developed, but you know, their importance in society and culture. 

Heather Dichter 03:13

And then also in some ways, particularly in a North American context, where gender and race history on sports been very important and kind of at the forefront of those areas. And then diplomatic history really is kind of within sport, almost been non -existent. 

Heather Dichter 03:30

You know, when we think about sport and politics, it's often very much in a domestic context, regardless of what country it is. And in some ways, I think, you know, this idea of sport and diplomacy being separate is because for more than a century now, international sport leaders, particularly from the International Olympic Committee, but all of the international sport federations like FIFA, have always claimed sport and politics have been separate, when in fact they have never been separate. 

Heather Dichter 03:58

But so kind of those claims about sport and politics not being, you know, related to each other, they're completely separate fields, politicians should stay out of sports, sports is, you know, should stay away from politics has kind of meant there hasn't been as much of that and look at sport and diplomacy. 

Heather Dichter 04:15

And then I think also what has kind of slowed that work is that, you know, for scholars to go look in the archives, and kind of foreign ministry files tend to be some of the more classified or later declassified files. 

Heather Dichter 04:32

And so with modern sport being much more recent and thinking about sport and politics, particularly really coming to the fore during the Cold War. So after 1945, those materials have long been embargoed and still classified. 

Heather Dichter 04:47

So it's taken scholars longer to be able to get access to documents, then be able to write this. history and these kind of histories. And so as we now are in the 21st century, we've really had the ability to start gaining access to materials to really show that relationship between sport and diplomacy so much more. 

Heather Dichter 05:07

And so that's where I kind of talked about the diplomatic turn in sport history. There's been so many kind of turns in all sorts of history, you know, the cultural turn, visual turn, all of those kind of things. 

Heather Dichter 05:19

And so in many ways, what is kind of not seen as a turn because it's kind of standard traditional history looking at diplomacy, it's kind of taken a while to get to that in sport history. And so I think we really are seeing a lot more people looking at this intersection of sport and diplomacy. 

Heather Dichter 05:36

And so that's why I called it the diplomatic turn in sport history. 

Guy Burton 05:38

If I can ask, is there a difference between just the broader sport history and football history? So does this diplomatic turn include all sports, including football at the same time? 

Guy Burton 05:52

Or does football come a little bit earlier or a bit later? Or is there something distinctive about the diplomatic turn when it comes to football history?

Heather Dichter 05:59

 I'd say in many ways, because of soccer - and I'm gonna call it soccer because I'm an American - soccer's importance in so many countries, especially Europe, and so early on in the 20th century, it's actually some of the earliest kind of diplomacy you do see in sport with the diplomats posted overseas to whichever, you know, capitals across Europe, writing back to their foreign ministry, be it in Paris, be it in London, talking about, you know, the national team was here or whatever club team was on a friendly tour here, and talking about that experience and the reception of that team and letting the foreign ministry know. 

Heather Dichter 06:42

And so that's something in particular France was doing in the 1920s, that the French diplomats overseas were writing back to the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. And so that's why the edited book on soccer diplomacy starts in 1914, you see, because of that chapter about France in that book. 

Heather Dichter 07:02

So in many ways, soccer is quite early, as are the Olympic Games, although the Olympic Games, in its earliest formation, were not the big mega event it is today, but absolutely soccer plays a huge role in that, that role of diplomacy in sport. 

Francesco Belcastro 07:17

That's great. Focusing perhaps a bit more on the last couple of decades, would you say there's been a change or an increase in the way that soccer or football has been used as a tool of diplomacy? And would you say that there have been moments in which perhaps this kind of alignment has been closer or more evident recently or before that? 

Heather Dichter 07:38

I would say there's an increase after 1945 and in many ways that not just simply government's thinking, that soccer is more important, which they do, and really seeing it as a valuable tool within their diplomatic arsenal, if you will. 

Heather Dichter 07:58

But also, it's because of the increase in independent states and states that are members of FIFA. That whole wave of decolonization, 50s, 60s, 70s, one of the first things countries did was join international federations, and FIFA was almost always one of the first ones. 

Heather Dichter 08:19

And a country needed to be a member of five international federations to be able to be recognized by the International Olympic Committee. And it is that recognition. And even more recently, when South Sudan became independent in, I believe, it's 2011, they marked their independence with a soccer game that day. 

Heather Dichter 08:37

Finding and making a national team and playing a club team from another country. But that's still that importance of soccer to a country's identity in that moment of independence and then having that ability to be visible on the International stage is what soccer allows them to do and as the most popular sport It just keeps and being reaffirmed in in that sense. 

Heather Dichter 09:02

And so I think having more countries all playing - not that they weren't before but they're now more countries recognized by FIFA and participating in these these tournaments - to try to qualify for the World Cup and even you know regional continental tournament, you have just more soccer being played in there for it being used more often. And kind of as that also happened more governments recognizing its importance and and putting that support behind, and wanting either, you know the teams to play in certain places, or hosting tournaments and all of those kind of aspects.

Francesco Belcastro 09:36

You mentioned soccer or football's popularity and that's undeniable. But is there something specific you'd say about the game itself that makes it a good tool for diplomacy? 

Francesco Belcastro 09:45

Is it only the sort of most popular sports in the world or perhaps and compared to individual sports or to other kind of sports, that's something about the game itself that that makes it a good diplomatic tool?

Heather Dichter 09:56

I think it really is its popularity. You know, it's ease of playing. You know, where so many other sports do require equipment, a ,specialized field. I mean, yes, you need goalposts, but you know people kids playing wherever around the world, you know make make shift ball. Umm, you know, and, so I think, you know, it's ability to be played anywhere and everywhere and it's not whether specific like the way other certain other sports are as well and I mean, you might rather play it in certain weather than other weather, but it can still be played... You know, but I think truly it it's global popularity, you know as the world's most popular sport Along with it being a team sport, you know. It's not as easy to get behind your... You know kind of have that that sense of diplomacy with an individual athlete. 

Heather Dichter 10:49

Individual athletes are used in other ways within... by various foreign ministries within a context of sport diplomacy, but really that team sport, you know, getting the nation and everyone behind a national team, and you see that a lot more easily in a team sport, and that's the world's most popular sport, really allows it to be used so widely across the entire world, you know, and it's not just by the diplomatic and global, you know, powerhouses, the world leaders, the global, global elite states, it's not just the soccer powerhouses either, you know, it's every single state in the world has probably in some way or other used soccer within some element of diplomacy, we just don't know about all of them yet, we haven't had scholars do all that research yet, and but absolutely, and because of its popularity, it's allowed for so much. 

Guy Burton 11:43

If I can come in because you're one of the things. themes and sort of common observations that I would make about what you've been talking about is obviously we're talking about states and state actors doing diplomatic relations. 

Guy Burton 11:58

But of course, you know, what is the state? Often this is sort of tied to sort of an idea of national identity, right? So one of the things I'm curious about is, you know, to what extent these kind of national identities, you know, have either contributed or underplayed or, you know, countered sort of rivalries between nations, you know, into through the through the diplomatic pay... uhh, archives and documents that you've looked at. 

Guy Burton 12:24

I mean, are there sort of circumstances under which, you know, football has helped, you know, contribute to conflict or even kind of deescalate conflict? 

Heather Dichter 12:34

I think there probably are a number in both cases contributing to or deescalating... and it's impossible to say all of them, you know, and I think there's actually so many we don't know yet. You know, so much of the research and scholars have looked at has tended to be some of the bigger states from soccer side or from a kind of state power side of things, you know, to be North American, even though the U.S. 

Heather Dichter 13:01

isn't traditionally very good at men's soccer or, you know, really looking at Europe in this case. But actually, I think there's so much to be found in some kind of regional context, continental or even not even the entire continent, but, you know, smaller regions within a continent. 

Heather Dichter 13:20

And, you know, obviously there's what people kind of call the football war between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969. You know, and that wasn't a war started because of the soccer match. Obviously, there were massive tensions between the countries and it did kind of escalate and coincide with their qualifying matches for the 1970 World Cup. 

Heather Dichter 13:47

And so in that case, it probably, you know, those tensions and football didn't help what was happening between the countries and their own issues as neighboring states. And, you know, but then also soccer can be used as a way to I'm thinking about it as as friendly and a way to to overcome differences. 

Heather Dichter 14:08

And, you know, that's something that I looked at in the occupation of Germany. And when Germany was excluded from everything after 1945, you know, it wasn't a state, there was no sovereignty, it was occupied before different countries, the victors and from World War Two. 

Heather Dichter 14:25

And it meant they were outside of all of the international federations as well. So if you're not recognized by FIFA, you can't play any FIFA member countries or any of the clubs in that country really. And so the US in its occupation zone in the southeast of Germany arranged for some, or helped coordinate, for some friendly competitions with some Swiss clubs. 

Heather Dichter 14:52

They kind of circumvented FIFA's regulations by not having it be clubs, but actually city teams. So they like combined like two teams in Munich that you would normally never think would ever want to compete together, you know, playing against. 

Heather Dichter 15:08

And I think Munich played St. Gallen. So it was like two teams from St. Gallen combined their players. So they kind of got around it. FIFA ultimately did kind of sanction the Swiss, but not by much. 

Heather Dichter 15:18

And, you know, and this was an idea to help and resume friendly relations between Germany and Switzerland, help give, you know, the games, there were three sets of games and they were all played in Germany at first. 

Heather Dichter 15:30

They're supposed to have returned games in Switzerland that they couldn't have, but they were charitable fundraisers for, you know, youth and sport and recreation leadership school. And so that idea of using sport to overcome division. 

Heather Dichter 15:47

And obviously, the Swiss really like this idea because they maybe got like 6 ,000 fans again back then in the late 1940s and the Germans, even in 1948, where there's still rationing, blah, blah, everything, were filling up the stadiums 30, 40 ,000 fans. 

Guy Burton 16:05

Yeah, I assume they just wanted to get away from, forget about, you know, the austerity, right? 

Heather Dichter 16:10

Absolutely. I mean, it was that, you know, no matter how difficult it was in Germany, that was something to look forward to. 

Heather Dichter 16:17

I mean, even in Berlin in late 1945, early 46, you know, it started up soccer game matches against, you know, clubs all across the city. So it absolutely can help bridge some divisions as well. And so we don't, you know, I can't speak to all of them around the world, but soccer has absolutely been there with some inflamed tensions because of national rivalries as it is, but it can also help work to overcome tensions. 

Francesco Belcastro 16:43

So from an historian point of view, you, is it surprising to you that playing football at international level has become such a mark of statehood? Should we be surprised about this? Are there any historical precedents that can be comparable, you would say? 

Heather Dichter 17:01

I guess this is a sport historian. I say no, because this is what sports are so important. You know, it is, you know, people young and old can participate in sport. You know, the level that they can participate in what sports they might be able to do, you know, is always different, but it's something that people enjoy watching, people enjoy playing, and, you know, both men and women, boys and girls, enjoy sport. 

Heather Dichter 17:26

And so it's not surprising, you know, it's something... During the Occupation of Germany when the Allies would, you know, look at kind of membership in clubs, you know, music is limited to certain, you know, certain people or certain activities, you know, be it religious groups, there's divisions all around there. 

Heather Dichter 17:44

And that was one of the things the allies found is that actually sport was both young and old, boys and girls. It bridged so many divisions. And so in that respect, you know, we see that in kind of all countries across the world. 

Heather Dichter 17:58

So many sports and soccer absolutely gives that that too. While for a long time internationally, it was only the men playing. You know, what we do see much more recently is that, you know, women playing internationally also attracts huge crowds and, you know, can absolutely be used for diplomatic purposes as well. 

Francesco Belcastro 18:21

So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised if if one of these states have got sort of a national football team playing on international arena such so high in their list of priorities is something that kind of follows from the importance of the game, you'd say. 

Heather Dichter 18:35

Absolutely. 

Guy Burton 18:36

Can I take it back to Germany? Because one of the things that's striking is you're talking about in the American zone of occupation and the Americans weren't. Well, we've discussed, we kind of have to accept this that the Americans were not big football / soccer, you know, aficionados, particularly back in 1945 -46. 

Guy Burton 18:54

So it's striking that the Americans go for football as the sort of the way to encourage this interaction, you know, in their zone. But I wonder, was there were there differences in the other zones in the French, the British and the Soviet zones when it came to came to football? 

Heather Dichter 19:12

All right. So I definitely can speak about what becomes West Germany a lot more than what becomes East Germany when it comes to the occupation. And what I will say is the Americans did recognize that they should hire an English coach to come tour their zone and help teach the Germans new things about about soccer. 

Heather Dichter 19:29

They knew better than I think to try to hire somebody from the U .S. to teach Germans about soccer. They brought other coaches for other sports over, but they definitely hired an English guy for the soccer side of things. 

Heather Dichter 19:42

The British fairly early on were were focused on exchanges and bringing some youth, German youth teams to England to kind of tour the country a bit, gain some experience, interact, and that kind of person -to -person exchange. 

Heather Dichter 19:58

So absolutely, the English were seeing that. The French were a bit slower in their zone. The French were a bit more hesitant to kind of have the pre -war kind of sports structures return. And so they didn't have as many or as kind of formal elements like the Americans and British did, who were really focusing on soccer. 

Heather Dichter 20:22

I think the French tried to support a bit more in the individual sports and kind of bigger exchanges, perhaps between some French and German youth with skiing. They figured they both had, you know, Alps and mountains and could do that fairly easily. 

Heather Dichter 20:36

And so, whereas I can't speak as much to the Soviet zone because I didn't do research directly on their zone of occupation. But what I do know from a forthcoming, but a chapter that somebody has written in a forthcoming edited book on sport in Berlin is that very early soccer was happening all across Berlin, all four occupied zones. 

Heather Dichter 21:01

And that tournament, kind of a citywide championship was across all four zones. It was fairly early in the forties, in the occupation, mid-forties. And so there was still that ability to cross between zones and the teams in the Soviet sector weren't so restricted. 

Guy Burton 21:20

And in terms of sort of the West Germany and East Germany teams, what have you found in sort of the diplomatic archives relating to, I think there's only ever one meeting between the two, wasn't there? 

Heather Dichter 21:30

Well, obviously you have East and West Germany, they're two totally separate states. They're competing separately in some sports, but not all. International federations took varying approaches as to whether or not they'd recognize East Germany. 

Heather Dichter 21:43

Some said yes right away and then there were East and West German athletes competing at things. Some kind of said no or tried to delay things. And on top of all of this, the International Olympic Committee forced East and West Germany to have one Olympic team in the 50s and 60s. 

Heather Dichter 21:59

So that meant to qualify for the Olympics in soccer, they had to pick a team. They had to, they have qualifications for all German Olympic teams. For individual sports, great. Who are the, you know, two fastest 400 meter runners? 

Heather Dichter 22:13

That's an easy one. When it came to team sports, it was never let's pick the best East and West German soccer players. It was the East German team played the West German team and whoever won that had to head. 

Heather Dichter 22:24

That was the team that represented Germany. And so they did play each other, but not in that sense of thinking about it from like in a UEFA or FIFA sanctioned tournament. And so 

Heather Dichter 22:38

there was that sense of rivalry. But when it came to the World Cup in West Germany's success, particularly, you know, East Germans watched it onto the you know, they were they were still German. And so, you know, they were going to cheer for them over some other country, especially as they're then, you know, one Olympic year might have been the West Germans competing as Germany at the Olympics. 

Heather Dichter 23:01

But then the next year might have been the East Germans, but there was still Germany. So it's still that for them to cheer for. So whereas the East German government was not happy that everyone in their country was cheering for the West Germans in the World Cup, that was largely the case. 

Francesco Belcastro 23:17

It's an interesting approach because in other cases, other countries have decided to go for what we picked the best players from each country. 

Heather Dichter 23:24

It was the East German team or the West German team. Same thing with rowing. It was this eight or that eight. It was never mixed. 

Guy Burton 23:30

Do you happen to know whether this was something that was, you know, whether sort of the drive for that came from one side or the other? Because I would imagine that it... probably from the East German side, they would not necessarily want their players fraternizing with the West Germans and learning too much about what was going on behind the wall. 

Heather Dichter 23:47

It was partly that. It was also an effort, whichever side had more athletes on the team, that was the side that got to nominate the chef de mission. So this is one element that fueled all of that East German state sponsored doping program. 

Heather Dichter 24:02

But also, if you have all 15 players that are comprising the soccer team, that's 15 more athletes that the other side doesn't have. So there was also a numbers side to it too. And yeah, it was complicated. 

Guy Burton 24:19

Yeah. And if I can ask, because you also talked a little bit about how, you know, women's football is becoming more and more pertinent and important. But maybe in recent decades, but I wonder, looking at the diplomatic record, do we see exchanges or observations made about women's football prior to the last few decades? 

Heather Dichter 24:42

I really hope it's there in the archives. Unfortunately, the last 30 years is all still classified in pretty much every single country. And so this is something that I hope we will be able to get to see more and read more about. 

Heather Dichter 24:59

I think there's elements of it absolutely with wanting to host the Women's World Cup and, you know, seeing which countries, you know... Fascinatingly the early countries successful at the women's World Cup and international soccer were almost always countries that did not have the strength in the men's team, which is fascinating in and of itself. 

Heather Dichter 25:20

But, you know, in the more recent years, the push to host mega events and really seeing that now with the Women's World Cup, Women's UEFA, Women's Euros. I really hope it's there in the archives and for us to be able to talk about it. 

Heather Dichter 25:36

And I think there's elements of being able to able to see that in media coverage, to be able to talk about it more recently. But in that real sense of seeing, you know, how are the foreign ministries and the diplomats really talking about it, it's still going to be a while till we can get those documents, because it is such a recent phenomenon at that international level and thinking about it as a mega event. 

Guy Burton 26:01

Can I just ask another nerdy question? So it's about the archives. I'm getting a sense that a lot of the archives that you're talking about, that the classified ones, they're primarily the state ones, so the foreign, the foreign ministry ones. 

Guy Burton 26:14

But obviously we have the sporting associations themselves. And to what extent do they, are their archives open to historians like yourself? So I'm thinking particularly like FIFA or in the UK, the FA or, you know, the German Football Association, you know, to what extent are they open? 

Heather Dichter 26:34

Some of them are becoming more open. FIFA has seen itself as a library and archive. My challenge was that visiting them during my PhD was that they were just building a brand new headquarters and then having a World Cup. 

Heather Dichter 26:48

So I had to go back the next summer. But they absolutely let me use their materials and got a lot of great stuff from there. And I think quite a few scholars have used FIFA's archive. And national governing bodies see themselves as a sport organization and they don't see themselves as having an archive. 

Heather Dichter 27:08

So sometimes it can be a bit more challenging gaining access to their material. And the DFB in Germany really doesn't want to let anyone see anything from before 1945 or for that period from 33 to 45. 

Heather Dichter 27:26

We all know that sport leaders wanted to maintain their positions. They had to join the Nazi party, say certain things. We recognize that, but the DFB still doesn't really want people to see those things. 

Heather Dichter 27:39

And so it can be challenging gaining access. They don't necessarily maintain their materials in a way that is as easily organized as going to visit an archive and especially a national archive. The flip side challenge, and yes, seeing foreign ministry documents, other government documents is great. 

Heather Dichter 28:01

But there's also that aspect of people deciding what to keep and what not to keep. And at times there are people overseeing national archives who are like, well, it's not important. We can throw out these documents, which is a knife through my heart. 

Heather Dichter 28:17

But sometimes they've been able to be saved and are there, which is always great to see. So it is a challenge. And I think what's also really important is bringing both of those together. Because you can get one story from the government document. 

Heather Dichter 28:33

You'll get the complete opposite story from the sport organization. But it's bringing the two together. And that was the thing with those German-Swiss games in 1948. If I only looked at the American documents up to then, they absolutely took credit for the Germans being great at soccer. 

Heather Dichter 28:49

Let's be honest, the Americans did not actually teach the Germans how to be good in soccer in 1948. But then looking at the Swiss soccer federations materials really got that other side and that other view and how involved German individuals were in helping arrange those games as well as the Swiss sport leaders too. 

Heather Dichter 29:09

So it's really building that complete picture with both the sport people and the government people. 

Guy Burton 29:16

So the question.... So one thing I don't know, I mean, Heather, as a historian, I don't... You've obviously been following, I guess, the COVID inquiry that's been taking place over the last few months in the UK. And it's been striking last month seeing both the previous and the current prime ministers talking about how they don't seem to have their WhatsApp messages anymore. 

Guy Burton 29:38

And it seems that a lot of this kind - I understand that the COVID inquiry is focused on the here and now - but you as a historian, must be, you know, wondering how much this is relevant to, you know, your field. 

Guy Burton 29:50

If so much of work is for policymaking, decision making is made, you know, by these kind of more sort of ephemeral things like WhatsApp. Is that something you're thinking about in relation to sports history as well?

Heather Dichter 30:04

 I think it can be challenging for all historians, you know, going forward, you know, how much stuff is even just said on the telephone that you, you know, that you don't get from, you know, telegrams back and forth or long letters back and forth. 

Heather Dichter 30:21

There is what's called a telcon or memcon in, you know, government records where it's like, there's a memorandum of this telephone conversation, or here's a memorandum, you know, this person came, you know, the president of the FA came to speak with us here in the foreign office. 

Heather Dichter 30:40

Usually they all knew each other because they were all, you know, aristocrats anyway. And then they wrote, you know, a small memorandum of what that conversation was like and what might happen from it. 

Heather Dichter 30:50

And so, you know, as obviously telephone calls happen more frequently or, you know, Zoom, Teams, everything else, you know... I have no idea what historians of the future will do based on what may or may not exist as a result of these. 

Heather Dichter 31:08

But obviously that is something that archivists are always trying to, you know, deal with and, you know, preserving electronic materials of various kinds. And so that hopefully we will have these conversations and discussions as to elements about soccer and all sorts of other things in the future. 

Francesco Belcastro 31:27

Guy wants you to solve the problems of future historians.

Heather Dichter 31:29

 Well, and I think, you know, you know, I mean, how much of those discussions happen at FIFA meetings, at UEFA meetings? You know, that it used to be, you know, the representative would come back from that meeting and like write a long letter to, you know, the representatives, the leadership in their national governing body, you know, how much of that doesn't happen anymore. 

Heather Dichter 31:57

Some of my favorite materials, Because obviously you have official minutes, but those are very formal and brief and aren't going to say anything. In the personal letters about those meetings that you hear like the real truth about what happened and, you know, people's views and their opinions of other members. 

Heather Dichter 32:14

And those are always the really fun documents. I love those. 

Francesco Belcastro 32:17

Thank you very much. It's been a very interesting conversation. I was wondering whether I could ask you something more on the contemporary aspect. 

Francesco Belcastro 32:24

What would be, you'd say, the most interesting development at the moment in terms of the relations between diplomacy and politics. Listeners were interested in these. What should be their additional reading on? 

Heather Dichter 32:38

I think it's the use of women's soccer. I think that's something I'm really excited to see and concerns over who some sponsors might be or where some events might take place, particularly with those countries own records regarding gender. 

Heather Dichter 32:59

I also think it is the more regional relationship. That's something I'm really looking forward to more scholars researching into. It's not just what happens with all the states in Europe, but what's happening regionally in North Africa, in West Africa, all soccer is those contexts and those state relations. 

Heather Dichter 33:22

I think we have more scholarship on those areas in general. I think soccer will tell us a lot about those relationships too. 

Guy Burton 33:32

Yeah, no, that's fascinating. It's where international relations is going as well, I think, in terms of politics is more becoming regionalized. 

Guy Burton 33:41

Well, that's been really helpful. Thank you so much, Heather, for taking the time and talking to us. Francesco, let's just have a quick preview to what are we talking about next week. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:53

So next week is going to be Gary Al -Smith on the Politics of Football in West Africa, because there's a big tournament coming up, starting in a few days. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:03

You know what that tournament is, guy? 

Guy Burton 34:06

Yeah, the African Cup of Nations. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:08

Yeah, so we're going to have an episode dedicated to that with Gary Al -Smith. Then what else? What else do we need to remind our listeners? 

Guy Burton 34:14

Well, I guess I suppose we should just tell them if they liked the episode that they should like it, review it, share it, subscribe. Of course, if they didn't like it, they should get in contact with us and tell us what they'd rather we did. 

Guy Burton 34:27

They can do that on all the various social media platforms that we have, which are Facebook, Twitter / X, Blue Sky, Instagram. Other than that, Heather, we have to say thank you so much for coming in and taking the time to speak to us. 

Guy Burton 34:40

We really appreciate it. And best of luck with the work as you carry on doing it. 

Heather Dichter 34:46

Thank you very much. And thank you for having me on the podcast. 

Francesco Belcastro 34:49

All right. Thank you very much.