If you’re a fan of soccer in the US, chances are that you’ll have an opinion on the Men in Blazers. Often described, not always generously, along the lines of “the little podcast that could”, the irreverent soccer show has gone from obscure curio to a mini-empire within little more than a World Cup cycle, and in doing so has placed its hosts, English transplants Roger Bennett and Michael Davies, at the heart of the discussion on what a pop culture is, or might be, when it comes to US soccer.
When I caught up with Bennett this week he was taking time out from preparing for the Men in Blazers’ biggest public event to date — the first ever BlazerCon, running at Brooklyn Expo this weekend.
Featuring speakers from around the global soccer world, including the Premier League’s Richard Scudamore and his Bundesliga equivalent Christain Seifert, in a series of talks built around a special version of the Men in Blazers’ cheerfully absurd live show, and a screening of the USA men’s team’s opening World Cup qualifier, BlazerCon is intended to be, as Bennett puts it, “a thoughtful, serious, but also truly joyous celebratory conversation about the game and its growth in America.”
It’s a growth that Bennett has been able to observe first hand: he moved to the US in 1993 and witnessed the impact of the 1994 World Cup. And having come of age as a fan in a very different moment for English football, he watched the transformation of the Premier League years through the lens of his adopted home, punctuated by the occasional high water marks of local interest that seemed to occur around World Cups.
By 2010, with the domestic league maturing, the Premier League now a mainstay of bars in most major cities and another World Cup approaching, Bennett and his co-host Davies felt sufficiently inspired to try their hand at podcasting about the game they loved. If they weren’t sure exactly what they were hoping to do, they had some sense of what they didn’t want to do.
“For years, the traditional football content, where it existed at all, was often created by English people who came over here, talked with deep analysis, but when they talked about MLS or the US team, would talk disparagingly.
“But we love it all. I always react when people say: ‘Are you translating it for Americans?’ I feel like the opposite. I think it’s quite important also, that both of us have been in America for a long time, and there’s something deeply, deeply American about the experience.”
Despite their instincts, in the early days of the podcast, it wasn’t entirely clear who they were talking to, if anyone. Bennett describes the early listener base as “seven people – one of whom was my mother-in-law” but goes on to describe the tone of the show being forged by conversations with the American soccer fans who gradually found the show.
Those same fans sustained the podcast to cult success and a well-received series of comedic cameos for ESPN during last year’s World Cup, and then a further TV contract with NBC as part of their ambitious Premier League coverage. The mood in all these incarnations is light, though as Bennett puts it, able to adapt and get more serious when necessary.
“Our show has always had a high culture/low culture approach. The old saying is that football is the most important, least important thing in the world. At the same time, we can pivot, and we can have Jose Mourinho come onto the show and talk deeply about his philosophy; we can have (Southampton chairman) Ralph Krueger come on the show and talk for 50 minutes about youth development.”
Yet the interaction with fans was a constant, and as the pair began to produce live shows that consistently sold out, the idea for a more ambitious forum took shape.
Beyond that, part of the impetus for bringing such fans together at BlazerCon, and part of the reason Bennett repeatedly uses words such as “reveling” and “celebratory” to describe the phenomenon, is because of the particular cultural and geographical forces that have shaped the historical and contemporary American fan of the sport.
“Often the American experience of football is quite a solitary pursuit. Yes, a lot of people participate on Saturday mornings in pubs along the east coast, but on the west coast, for example, to be a Premier League football fan is to get up at 4.30 in the morning and have a Guinness in your pajamas.”
Bennett also argues that, historically, the American soccer fan has experienced other versions of isolation.
“When I first moved here in the early 90s, soccer fans were a hardy bunch. It was actively maligned in wider US culture and then there were existing fans of English teams who, well, you know the insult about ‘plastic fans’.
“I always say that in the past, American fans, if they tried to follow global football, were made to feel they were in a lecture theater they were lucky to be in, and they had to keep their hands down and sit at the back and be quiet. And I think what’s changed in the past 10 years – and our show has kind of captured this – is that American football fans feel much more confident. They feel deeply informed, they feel deeply passionate, their support has become a deep part of who they are. And when they come together they want to celebrate this joyous sense of connectivity to the game of football that they all share.”
Bennett notes the transformative effect of the internet (“you can follow the injuries, rumor and intrigue of, say, Leicester City if you live in a suburb of Indianapolis as well as if you live in the same postal code as the King Power Stadium”) and the current rash of TV coverage (“There’s more global football on television every weekend here than anywhere else I’ve lived in in the world”), but also says the interest from fans who now have easier access is only one side of the coin.
“It’s not just that America is falling in love with global football. Global football has also become deeply fascinated by America. And as our show has grown the big clubs that we’ve been covering for years, reveling in their narrative … their staff started to reach out to us offering their talent: their players, their coaches, their owners, in some cases. And we realized that they’re seeing our audience as a beachhead to winning the hearts and minds of a new generation of American support.”
The beachhead analogy is an interesting one, given the backdrop this weekend. While European delegates like Scudamore and Seifert, or City Football Group’s Ferran Soriano, are eyeing the US as a lucrative market to carve up, other speakers such as MLS commissioner Don Garber will be outlining his own league’s credentials and plans to compete in its own territory against the more developed versions of its own sport.
Those tensions shape the kinds of conversations worth having, insists Bennett.
“What will MLS look like at 40? We’re at 20, and it’s come so far so fast. You could see a path where, I mean, where was the Premier League 20 years ago? So Don Garber will be talking about that this weekend. But you can also see a case where Americans love the best leagues in the world and, you know, they’re looking at the Premier League, the Champions League, they never miss Real play Barcelona, they’re fascinated by Bayern Munich, PSG are definitely on the radar …
“So there’s a case you can make where football will grow and grow in this country but MLS is almost buried alive. The audience is cannibalized. In the women’s game, this summer was one of the most celebratory national sporting occasions I’ve witnessed in a long time, but the domestic league is fighting to form itself and sustain a fanbase. Can that exist? These are the questions we’re interested in exploring, with some of the more important people thinking about these issues, discussing them with fans who’ve traveled across the country.”
Bennett’s evangelical about the idea that the future of the sport is truly up for grabs, and while he appreciates those who have stuck with soccer in leaner cultural moments, he’s also fascinated by the ahistorical context a mass of new fans have brought since the 2014 World Cup.
“When I talk about the teams that are growing here, what’s beautiful and kind of hilarious is that so many new fans have been minted after the 2014 World Cup, and I always joke that they’ve only known Manchester United as an under-performing giant. They’ve never seen the dominant, swashbuckling, Manchester United. They have seen a swashbuckling Southampton. They have seen a thrilling Crystal Palace. They love Burnley. Many of them love Bournemouth – they’re quite taken with that story. So this final frontier – America – is wide open, and you can make a case that it’s not just open to the usual giant suspects.”
Whatever the future holds, don’t expect Men in Blazers to take it too seriously. Swept up in all this aspirational talk, I end the interview by offering that there might be something important in the fans traveling to attend BlazerCon to “see these kinds of reflections of themselves”.
Bennett pauses, with impeccable timing, before deadpanning: “That’s a frightening image, Graham.”
