Right.

That's why

I thank you.

Lesley can thank you very much.

Thank you for coming and everyone hear me.

I'm always very loud in my head but
whenever

I hear my voice playback I think I
sound so much better in my own head.

What I want to talk about today is a long
term research interest of mine which just.

The soccer stadium the football
stadium and what I wanted to do.

To introduce that was to
give you a sense of how and

why it is that I'm interested in
the football stadium stadia are relatively

understudied structures in architectural
history in spite of their monumental

size and their relatively complex.

Roles in urban culture and likewise sport

is an understudied element of
the historical condition for

many people and what I'm interested in
is how the social practice of sport.

And the social practice of
architecture combine and

how to reinforce each other and lead to
alternate kinds of urban conditions and

I thought I'd start with this Galliano
quotation of the great writer who says

I go about the world hand outstretched and
the stadiums I plead a pretty move for

the love of God and one sort of actual
illustration of that kind of pretty move

is this sketch by the Dutch sculptor
a German gentleman of this moment

of tension on the pitch where
a perfectly placed pass can suddenly

radically alter the special
conditions on a fixed rectangle.

And so
I'm interested in those pretty moves.

Obviously as a fan of football but
also I'm interested in the pretty moves

made in the three dimensional
design spaces of the stadium and

how those in turn inform our
thinking about sport and

how sport is informed by those
conditions in which it takes place.

You might immediately think of
some recent study of projects that

some have commented on as as
having particularly elegant or

beautiful moves as physical
structures Allianz Arena.

Byron Munich's home stadium heard so
I can be wrong.

But whether one agrees with the kind
of formal characteristics of it

we can say this is certainly
designed to be a beautiful object

more to my taste as a as a recent.

Project that illustrates this kind of
idea of the study as a site of beauty is

it water suited him or a study abroad in
Portugal built for the two thousand and

four European Championships.

Situated in an old rock quarry.

But these are not the this is not
particularly I want to talk about today

although I'm These things are important.

What I want to talk about
is how in an urban context.

Study operate as sites for
a variety of agendas to take place and

play out there are themselves utterly
non-sporting right at the programme

of a stadium is quite straightforward it's
to house the pitch on which the game is

played and the spectators who wish to
watch the reality of what takes place and

studies are often something developments
that are totally non-sporting and

very interesting ways.

I'm reminded of Graham who said.

Football is the opener
kingdom of human loyalty and

this idea of the intense
capacity of sport.

To be socially transformative.

And in fact most of the narratives about
sport tend to focus on the capacity of it

to be an uplifting form of social
activity much of what we're going to talk

about today is very different
conditions where sport has enabled

certain particularly onerous practices and
the stadium has served certain.

Less then Graeme Sheehan ends but
part of how that can happen

is the fact that study you are places
of ritualized activity and

I was really reminded this quite
powerfully when I went to London a year or

so ago and I want to tour the newly opened
Emirates Stadium where Arsenal play now.

And I want to tour with Charlie George
who helped Arsenal win the Double in one

thousand nine hundred one and on that
too were were fans from the ages of.

To eighty five parents
bringing their children

husbands bringing their wives people
who have been in the stadium.

The old stadium Highbury as well
as the new and many many times and

the ritual of being in that space and

of knowing the history of that space
was really profoundly Illustrated and

suggests that these are spaces with
some some heft and merit consideration.

Now for me particularly this
is something I learned at

a young age in third grade most powerfully
in third grade in one thousand and

two my family moved to Honduras.

And wonderous had made it to
the World Cup that year for

the first time in the history of
the nation and it was unbelievable.

The level of intensity into the Gulf of

about the state of that what
this meant for hundreds and

everyone had their own
favorite player my hero

was that rebirth of El muchall figured or
I desperately wanted to be there but

the figured all I wanted very badly
to be a great footballer like him and

these were players who were not from
big clubs one hundred a small country.

These players played in hunter and
clubs in Costa Rican clubs and

here they were at the World Cup and
they played Northern Ireland first.

And they drew and everyone said
this is a you know a great start.

We didn't lose you know we
didn't embarrass ourselves and

next they had to play Spain.

And everyone's there's
going to be terrible.

We're going to we're going to lose but
they drew with Spain and

everyone said suddenly it seems possible
we could actually go some place and

then they had a third game in
the group stage against Yugoslavia.

And the game was scoreless draw into
the eighty ninth minute when the referee

controversially awarded Yugoslavia.

A penalty kick the referee was chillin.

And everyone in Honduras said
What have we done to Chile.

Why.

Why are they doing this.

The Yugoslavians converted
the penalty kick.

And wonderous was knocked
out of the World Cup.

And in that moment something
powerful happened.

For once to be an American was not to
be the most hated gringo in hundreds.

Suddenly it was to be
a Yugoslavian there weren't many.

But what Yugoslavians they were
would be well advised to stay put.

And I thought this is incredible.

Suddenly Americans are no
longer the worst Yankees.

But a second thing happened which
was throughout the country.

There was a sudden spike.

In suicides.

Whether it's correlation or causality.

No one would ever quite can say but

I was I was really struck
by this that a young age.

And I found out.

Well first I managed it.

My father managed to get rid
of the figure as autograph and

he came to the embassy to get
a visa to travel United States.

My father worked at the embassy.

And so I had this.

And it was like this little technical
emblem of this powerful moment.

And for years I would reflect on that and
think about how the capacity of sport.

To radically change.

The routines of daily life
was quite meaningful.

Years later I find out that in fact
this is not the most important

moment in some ways in
the history of football and

conflict in hunter in society in
one thousand sixty nine hundred S.

and El Salvador were competing for

the last spot for Central American nations
in the one nine hundred seventy World Cup.

And the US the Salvadorans came to go and

they played a match that
one hundred one one nil.

It was a match full of crowd
of incredible insults to

the Salvadorans among the hundred fans and
the story

went that upon hearing the news that El
Salvador had lost but a young woman named.

Her woman got up and ran to her father's
desk in sense of a door pulled out his

revolver and shot herself because she
was so despondent at El Salvador losing

her funeral was held a few days later the
president was in attendance along with.

Honor Guard from the military and
the El Salvadoran national team.

A week later at this stadium.

LEFFLER Blanca in
Sun Salvador Honduras returned

to play the second leg bent match.

The seventy one fans surround the hotel.

But the hunger and
team isn't They pelted with rocks.

They shine bright lights on it.

They play loud music they keep
the team awake all night screaming.

Horrendous epithets against the team
the team is brought to the stadium in

an armored convoy by the military to
protect them from the crowd the stadium

the track ringing the pitch is
surrounded by armed guards.

And before the game they raise
the Salvadorans take up the national

one hundred national flag as if
to raise it on the flag pole but

instead of raising the flag
pole they burn it.

And the crowd cheers.

And then when it comes time
to raise the hundred and

flag one hundred national anthem
they raise a dirty washrag instead.

And the game is played and
El Salvador wins three nil.

And as the Honduran coach said at
the time he said Thank God we lost.

Otherwise we would never
have made it out alive.

And one can say well this
is an illustration of

the capacity of sport to to incite.

Nationalist passion when one might look
at Benedict Anderson and say you know in

the anthropological spirit then I propose
the following definition of a nation.

It is an imagined political
community with a certain

ferocity Gilder makes a comparable
point when he rules that nationalism is

not the awakening of nations to
selfconsciousness it invents a nation.

Is where they do not exist.

And this particular poem in the context of
El Salvador keep in mind in the early one

thousand nine hundred sixty S. something
like ninety percent of the land in

El Salvador is owned by fourteen families
fourteen large land owning families.

El Salvador at this time has
the highest population density in

the Western Hemisphere.

And for twenty years prior to nine
hundred seventy because of this has been

relatively significant Salvadoran
migration into Honduras.

So Salvadorans who could not make a living

working the land in El Salvador
would migrate to Honduras.

So one would expect in fact that
if there were to be a great

expression of him that in the stadium.

It might be of the working class
Salvadorans who have been disenfranchised

from their own nation.

In the interest of fourteen families.

But this is not right that El Salvador in
this condition is not a political reality.

It's a landholding reality.

It's a real estate reality.

Why then would it be that they would hate
Hondurans after one hundred or so is

the place that many El Salvadorans went to
raise their families and to have a future.

And I would argue that sport plays
an important role in crafting that mission

that national consciousness but likewise
the stadium before more of it in this case

of a ball a ball which loops
all of the Salvadoran fans

into a unified whole where
divisions of class and of race.

Of gender age.

Of religion are obviated as a mass of
people in a continuous recursive loop.

Looked down at the spectacle
on the pitch but

the pitch is removed
separated by the track.

So that there is a kind of emphasis
on a dual spectacle taking place

the spectacle of the activity on the pitch
but the spectacle of the expression

of Salvador in this by virtue
of the expression in that easy.

Towards the Hondurans So

the Bowl Stadium in this condition while
an efficient and economical mode of

construction is doing more than affording
the capacity people to watch and observe.

It's putting them in a special condition
where they are more apt to identify

with their neighbors then with
the individuals on the pitch and

that sense of shared identity is part of
what that imagining of community is about.

After that game.

Hunter S. and El Salvador break
off diplomatic relations.

A final third tie is played in
Mexico City to find a neutral spot

El Salvador wins three two.

And goes on to the World Cup and shortly
thereafter begins bombing under us.

El Salvador which has never used its army
in any foreign action until this point

is that in essence invades Honduras.

Over the tensions that have been
raised via these football matches and

what happened what takes place is
what the so-called soccer war.

The Soccer War covered by a Polish.

Reporter Richard Kapuscinski who quotes
a friend of a saying in Latin America

the border between politics.

And football is vague and indeed it is.

Now as a child being told
about this by my father.

I had an immediate reaction which was.

There are many stupid reasons for
going to war.

This is not particularly stupider
than any other ones I have heard

to my mind and to a certain extent
I still have that thought today.

But what is interesting to
me is that the activities in

that space could lead to this outcome and
at that stage it was still there right.

And the ritual of sport that took place
in one thousand nine hundred nine

is reenacted every week.

Every year since then and that space.

Therefore is no longer free from those
associations that space always carries

a history with it and that every child
that goes to that stadium as a Salvadoran

would have been told at some point this
is the place where that game was played

that led to that war
where we bombed Honduras.

And that's a powerful thing for for

any physical space to be to be
the place that incubates a war.

The Bold and
its capacity to suggest a unified

identity emerges in other
contexts in the late

twentieth century in one thousand seventy
eight Argentina is hosting the World Cup.

And the generals who run
the mill military dictatorship

of Argentina at that time are quite
clear that the World Cup is

an important moment to
legitimize their government.

As in the eyes of the world.

And likewise as an opportunity
to stifle dissent at home.

There's significant left wing
opposition to the rule of the generals.

But the generals understand that sport and
football in particular transcends or

crosses political lines and the final.

Is played in River plate's
home stadium which is a ball.

They play Holland.

And when.

And at the time Argentinean dissidents
lament that because Argentina

wins the World Cup The rule the generals
extended by at least half a decade.

Maybe longer.

And it's a point that one of the generals
makes in retrospect where he said.

What the theme of the World Cup decided by

the generals was twenty five million
Argentinians will play in the World Cup.

Personally each individual.

Citizen to the activity of those
eleven on the pitch quite overtly.

And as one general recounted years
later when Argentina defeated Holland

at the study of Liberty's Bowl quote
There was an explosion of ecstasy and

histeria radicals embraced with
parents Catholics and Protestants and

Jews and all had only one
flag the flag of Argentina.

Now I would suggest that that moment.

Could not take place except in
a stadium of this particular design.

That that bowl which is
that simple geometry and

again with that track ringing the pitch.

So that there is that separation from the
experience of the spectacle of the game.

Which affords you a kind of critical
distance to the Imagine your relationship

not to the spectacle of the play but
the spectacle of your fellow fans.

And that capacity in that space for people
of wildly divergent political religious or

social values to imagine
themselves as one.

Is really quite profound.

And it's an experience that we spent very
little time in architectural history.

Discussing.

One way to test whether the bowl

does operate in this fashion
is to look at a moment where

a stand structure there are two basic
study of types the bowl and the stand.

And one way to imagine this might be
to look an example where nationalism.

And architecture.

Found themselves operating it at divergent
ends and the place I like the to turn to

for that is the experience of
Yugoslavia where under Tito

supposedly the great magic of Tito was
that he resolved the divergent tensions

between Serbs and Croats and Bosnians and
Montenegrins and he crafted a greater

Yugoslavia that transcended those ethnic
religious and cultural differences.

And of course.

And if you who are alive in the cold war
can remember that the Cold War practice of

sport was often thought of
as an analogue for political

conflicts at larger scales of course
this was the case in Yugoslavia.

Likewise.

The architecture of these
spaces was understood to be

an expression of Yugoslavia an engineering
proficiency of its maternity.

Of its nonaligned in this Yugoslavia
as is the nation that broke away from

the Warsaw Pact and exercised the kind of
alternate quote unquote alternate version

of communism socialism and so we might
look at the maxim your stadium in Zagreb.

Which is modeled more along the lines
of an English stadium with four

separate stands.

And we might look at a particular
match in May On May thirteenth

one thousand nine hundred ninety.

When Dinamo Zagreb played
Red Star Belgrade.

Is is the team most closely associated
with Croatian nationalism at the time

Red Star Belgrade is most closely
associated with Serbian nationalism

the game is played just three or four
weeks after the courts hold their first

referendums and
French of two German is elected.

And the seeing on that day takes place
in the study which at its inception

was meant to speak to a kind of
unified Yugoslavian identity but

something very interesting
takes place two sets of ultras.

Do the Mossad grabs ultras are known
as the bad Blue boys in English.

I don't know how they come
up with this name but

it was I guess close a bloop and they're
serious fans with the big banners and

the flares and
the songs are known as the bad Blue Voice.

Red Star their fans their partisans
are known as the delusion

which in Serbian means essentially heroes.

And they are led by a man's name
are Khan who will get to in a moment.

These two groups square off
in their respective stance.

You know already.
Because of the separation

physical separation.

Instead of having a unified
fan base in a loop one next to

the other no one knowing where the
beginning is where the end is suddenly and

stands and we have horizontal
hierarchies and vertical hierarchies and

the stands face each other which means
that no longer is the pitch the sole focus

but for the partisans the sole focus
really is the opposing partisans.

And the delicious thing songs
saying Belgrade Serbia.

We will kill you.

And things get quite heated and the bad
boys attempt to attack the delusion.

And the police.

The net who were from the National Guard
who were at the time accused

of being sympathetic to
the Serbs intervene.

Some fans stormed the pitch and
some some bad little boys Croats.

And the police begin to attack and beat
the fans in fact one fan was tripped and

fallen is sort of a set upon
by a number of policeman and

a player from the captain.

Runs famously runs and kicks
the policeman and then is chased off.

And the myth of the Yugoslavian
conflict is that the events of that day

were the first conflict in
the Yugoslavian civil war.

Within a year.

There is a real war taking place.

And what Bob on said later bumps but
his whole career plan for

Milan he was a relatively
elegant midfield player.

And not commonly associated
with with kicks of this kind.

He said.

Afterwards he said Here I was
a public face prepared to

risk his life career and everything
that fame could have brought all because

of one idea of one cause
the coalition cause.

So the social practice of sport here
Anderson is an implicitly a nationalist

activity taking place within the site
where the resolution over what is Croatia

and what is Serbia must be resolved and
this is broadcast on television.

And it's a defining moment
Boban is later banned

from the Yugoslavian national team for the
remaining eighteen months that it exists.

And the war takes place and
we might in retrospect.

Look back.

And say undoubtedly.

This was not the cause of the conflict but
merely an expression

of the political tensions that
created that with the underlying

real forces behind the civil conflict
that ask you think about a couple things.

One of which is or will famously referred
to sport as war without bullets or

without the gun the Kimber which one of
them in the case of the Yugoslavian civil

conflict the leader the leader of
the delusion was a man named Shelley go

let's not rest not to each A K R Khan
had been a thief throughout Europe.

He is promoted under

the Serbian regime to be the leader of
a paramilitary group known as the Tigers.

And he in fact is the Tigers are one of
the units most closely associated with

some of the most violent atrocities of the
Yugoslavian civil conflict he is part of

the military structure that fights
the Civil War So leader of the group of

violent fans then becomes a leader of an
arm of the state fighting the civil war.

So that the connections are not just
abstract but they're quite tacked on.

The long term impact of this
falls into the realm of myth

making in the sense that while political
scientists and historians of the US.

Conflict.

Suggests that this was an important
event but not the singular event

in the civil war are drowned out by
the reality that for instance if you go to

the maximum today you'll find a statue
of a handful of soldiers under

which a plaque has the following
statement to the fans of the club.

Who started the war with Serbia
on this ground on May thirteenth

one thousand nine hundred.

At the floor.
Blanca there is no plaque commemorating

the fans who started
the war the football war.

Here it is made literal.

It was not the faintest start of the war.

Most would recognize but the myth
enshrined in that plaque is more powerful

than any number of textbooks and
because this is a site that people

still go to because it is still
the home of dynamo Zagreb.

They learn that lesson every day but

every time they attend not just
view the plaques but also via

the songs about the event the songs about
those days the popular nerves of it.

The fact that this scene
is replayed on You Tube.

By Croatian young people constantly
if you go to youtube and

read if you recrimination.

You can read your comments
by people who were

children not even born
in this event happen.

Who whose attachment to it is
quite fierce and quite powerful.

Likewise the values political and

cultural and social associated
with Serbian nationalism.

Continue to animate in
study around the world.

So if you've got a lot.

C O.
Lots you Ultras who are right wing and

associate quite calmly would with
the right wing partisans of red

star routinely hold up banners
honoring our Can Tiger.

Even today many many years
later after that conflict.

So if.

The Stand.

Is the site where the architecture
allows the social practice of sport

to actually operate against the larger
narratives of national unity that have

had held firm for generations.

There are likewise moments.

Where those conflicts can play out in the
context of a civil war where the divisions

are not ethnic but
rather political strictly political and

one nine hundred seventy three in Chile
after the overthrow Salvadorian de.

Pinochet rounds up thousands possibly as
many as forty thousand students dissidents

alleged political agitators poets
musicians mostly young men.

And they are housed at the study
in the US you know in Santiago.

And he said in Arsenal is where
the where the great Darby and

Chilean football between university
that you live and all of polo

takes place called Local always thought of
as the conservative team and University of

Chile as a left wing team kind of
analogous to Real Madrid Barcelona.

And there is a curious moment
where the capacity the stadium to

accommodate large numbers of people.

Suddenly turns it into
a space of containment.

Of a kind of penitentiary and the
spectacle is inverted rather than the fans

in the stands observing the spectacle on
the pitch the pitch is filled with young

men with guns who are keeping the other
young men in the stands under watch.

People are tortured people are killed.

No one knows quite how many.

But suddenly this place of play and

of social conflict becomes
a side of physical and

martial conflict in a quite
powerful fashion and that.

Inversion between the pitch and
the stands is more difficult to imagine

outside of the context of that concrete
ball stadium which is quite adept

at containment in ways that
are very unexpected and again.

This is a place that still there.

Part of what's so interesting about these
projects is their money mentality and

the nature of the affinity for

football in these nations is such that
these places are not often torn down.

They do but it's rare.

So that this complex histories
are still imbedded in the site and

people routinely are performing their
own iterations of that in these

complex spaces this is
the the sendoff match for

Marcello solace the great Chilean
player whose nickname and

ironically given the context was much
of a bullfighter but also killer.

And so to to be a partisan of when you
go to the chili to be an eighteen year

old and to imagine yourself in opposition
to a dominant or had your moniker state

formation and to watch a game in that
situation knowing that partisans

who share your view forty years ago
were tortured or even shot there is

an incredibly powerful experience and
really powerful way to build coalitions.

And the architecture is certainly
deeply embedded in that process.

Finally I want to talk about the stadium.

As a monumental urban
project designed to displace

the urban landscape as it currently
exists and the example I want to use

is that of a stadium built under the
regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania.

You know anything about such a school
you know that he was obsessed

with modernization just like Tito were.

As nonaligned And so therefore was
commonly invited to United States and

was thought of in some ways as a good
a good communist even though he was

of the many Eastern European leaders
perhaps the most brutal and certainly with

regard to the physical landscape the most
brutal of the leaders of the era and

had a vision of a modern army and as a
moderate monument two things one it meant

demolishing the historic structures
both of the capital Bucharest but also

in small villages throughout the nation
and making turning villages into towns.

Areas on trial with his wife.

Alaina they were assassinated on Christmas
Day And if you go to Romania today.

You know people still don't
like to say the name.

And you don't have to because so much of
the country was transformed by Ceausescu

that the buildings silently speak
his name almost everywhere you go.

He was condemned by UNESCO and
many other organizations for

his wide scale the demolition of
old churches synagogues of any

kinds of architecture that might speak to
a celibate identity Romanians have a large

hungry minority German minority Jewish
minority buildings that spoke to

that sub identity were demolished in order
to allow for the creation of new structure

that spoke to a more dramatic remaining
identity in the kind of mode of Tito.

He builds the second largest building
in the world the purportedly

the house of the people
with the areas in dark or

the areas in Bucharest
demolished by Ceausescu.

And during his reign.

It is a state secret.

How many buildings he destroyed.

Thus making it impossible to know
the extent of the damage how minor or

how major and in most people's minds.

This of course means that you exacerbate.

And enlarge on that destructive.

Capacity.

Truck rescue is from a small village
small village scored a chesty.

This is scorned interested today.

It's a one road town.

The town of about ten thousand people.

He was born in this little house.

He moved to Bucharest when he's
eleven to become a cobbler

probably the last generation political
leaders were being a shoe repair man was

seen as a potential avenue to becoming the
leader of a nation and with its good or

bad he returns to school interesting and
he decides that what the city.

What the village needs is to become
a town he renames the village a town and

says towns must have buildings so
we're going to raise these little.

Houses and

the older structures not the one I was
born in of course but the other ones.

And we're going to build new
concrete apartment blocks.

Even though no one in
the village has ever lived in a.

Party walking dition they've
lived in freestanding

structures he says no no you will have
an apartment block because it's a town and

more importantly we will have a stadium.

The town at the time has a population
of twelve thousand five hundred and

they say well what's their protection What
size do you want the stadium to be and

has make it a stadium for
twenty five thousand people in fact if you

look you can just see this
is the stadium right there.

This is a village.

Huge.

The local team F.C.
Olt is magically by virtue of

the Ceausescu's interest promoted to
the First Division for many football.

The standard these stands
were never filled.

It's not possible that weren't enough
people but the stadium is there.

To serve a dual purpose.

One to establish urbanity and

were dirty as the hallmark of the new
scoring system but the other.

Is to oblivion it.

The older buildings and

the older urban forms that spoke
to a Romanian identity that was

such a screw thought antithetical to his
regime and possibly threatening to it.

So it's not just in the capital cities and
the major centers

of daily life that this kind of activity
takes place that architecture is yoked

to these kinds of agendas even in
the small towns and villages if you

go to school interesting today this is
what you'll find this is the stadium as it

stands now the team is now in
the sort of Fourth Division semi pro.

So the stands are never feel this is
this is an actual game taking place and

there are no fans.

But the fans are necessary because
the stadium is doing the work.

The stadium is still keeping
that legacy of Ceausescu and

his regime alive in a very instructive
fashion for those who might

wish to resurrect it would argue that
this stadium serves as a cautionary tale.

And for those who wish to never return.

Likewise this might animate.

That desire to engage in
further democratic reform

in in the remaining state.

Which is currently undergoing some of
the most significant social strife

in the post era.

Finally what I want to suggest
is that monumental projects

such as these important gain their
phenomenal authority by virtue of the fact

of the do something quite powerful which
is they outlast most often the clients and

the architects and
individuals who animated their creation.

And so therefore the agendas
they can serve are not

fixed that as historical conditions
change so too are the agendas that this.

Stadia can be seen as playing a part
of you might think of the redevelopment

of Highbury and London as the kind of
extreme counterpoint to scorn a chesty.

Where a club wants to move to a larger
stadium to increase its revenue.

But it's understood that the affection
that is held for the older stadium can be

yoked to diversion and so the stadium is
redeveloped into a series of apartments.

That surround the pitcher into the stands
now becomes an apartment block and

you can buy an apartment block an
apartment in the stand where you used to

go see the game with say your grandfather.

And the the value of these on
the real estate market corresponds of

course primarily to the larger commercial
real estate and residential real estate

markets of London but there is something
extra that is there in the advertisements

that suggest you can sit on your balcony
and look out on to what is now the garden.

As if you were still in the stands and

this somehow translates and
it takes takes an adaptive

reuse project that might at first sound
bizarre to turn a stadium into housing.

Not contained in the form
of university that

are studying us you now hear a very
different kind of contained.

So that.

Capacity.

I think is one that we should always be or
not just the study of but

perhaps with with many other
kinds of monumental architecture.

So with that.

I'll say thank you.

Quest.

Yes three.

Comments judgements Jute really.

OK You look at where you're from.

If you go to great paper clip about her

tell her about very interesting that

you actually wrote in cliche.

And they were great people on the other

or very late in my life and I grew up in

my own life in the face of October
eighth when everything and

everything that age in there
in the book or movie players.

Where are they getting harder and
you don't want to leave your hating

Harold in a new idea that

yes I don't want you know
any work because if you are.

Yeah I'm operator sort

of a disadvantage because I didn't
grow up in the United States.

So I came to United States.

You know to go to my last two years of
high school and you know go to college so

I have a kind of outsider insider duality
that's that's difficult to resolve but

it seems to me that what the U.S.
did above for many other missions and

this was missions was to realize that
the value of sport was as a commodity and

therefore was in rendering
as a spectacle more so

then housing a group of fans and
that by virtue.

Once again mistress one into a spectacle.

Then the expectations of it ever serving.

Any kind of civilizing quality becomes
secondary to the to the necessity

to extract the maximum amount of
revenue out of the spectacle itself.

And so therefore I you know I was struck.

I don't watch a lot of American football
but I did watch a little bit of the day

and a person got hit in the head by
someone else with their head and

the commentators were describing this as
you know one of the great things about

watching this game was the was the degree
to which they were really good hard hits.

It was not about technique
it wasn't no one scored.

You know like when I was I was I
was thinking where you like this is

you know what is the lesson here and

the lesson was that was the spectacle
of sort of contain barbarism.

And that exists because it's profitable.

I think primarily not
because it speaks to any war

I want to see underlined
meaningful social values.

It's transforming the idea of
be a feat Ivy League graduate

under University student who has to be
have to be assured of their masculinity.

So we start we start
having them play football

because football was
an ivy league sport right.

And so you know that it was at its core
about this question of masculinity and

the need to assert it in a way
that was unambiguous and

then that was transformed a spectacle
to make an ambiguous profit.

Yes yes yes.

Not the Middle East as of yet.

Obviously one of the dilemmas of
a project like this is that because

soccer is a global sport it's very
difficult to figure out how to bookend.

The the special context
the scope of the Middle East.

It's not.

Up until recently has not been
thought of as a very soccer

certainly compared to South America and
Europe.

So therefore it's an area as of yet
to be explored.

But certainly it is the case that the
study where used there in that fashion and

quite brutal fashion.

Right

right.

Yes yeah.

Right.

Right.

Yes.

Or

the capacity

of that to take place the United States is
depending on two things that are rare in

the context of the countries I was looking
at one of which is I was talking with John

about earlier John Walsh is in
the United States sports teams move and

what makes them move is a new stadium and
in the European South American context

teams are playing a study that were
built in the one nine hundred thirty S.

and one thousand a way you know they don't
build new study all that often they expand

upon them but so therefore the capacity
to even have that kind of spatial

segregation is much more difficult for
the United States where teams move.

You know and start you know are declared
to be out of date twenty years

after they were built and teams of cities
like Atlanta say well you know if we want

to keep the Falcons we need
to build a new stadium.

And one of the ways they justify the costs
that are funded by the municipalities

of the new star is they say well they
were generally a great deal of revenue.

So in fact there's a kind of
counterintuitive process taking

place where as musically funded
sites are funded by the public but

in order to generate the revenue
that will get people to pay for

the bonds that fund them they actually
have to be highly segregated in order and

generate the revenue via the seats that
will produce the tax base that everyone

says are but if you build this new stadium
it will produce all this tax base and

everything will be wonderful.

So the two principles operate in friction
with each other in a curious way.

So I think that's part of what's going on.

I mean there are other aspects as well.

Like because

we want

to do this right you know.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Harley Linden Belfour OK But

you know you're very

you

know you know

Catholic.

Yeah.

Is this right or not.

Yes yes yes

yes yes those right.

In this get curious thing that in the U.K.
the balls and

the ball is relatively uncommon in
till recently things like the Emirates

where the the use the ball because the for
profit reasons it's more effective but

you're right there are certain national
sporting traditions where the notion of

the ritualized enactment of sport
as a way to reduce the threat of

real not real but different more political
overtly political forms of violence

outside of the study is really quite
pronounced and it's speaks to those.

I suppose I'm on the highly in Grand
class divisions in operation but

also as you point out the religious
ones which in when the American context.

It's hard for Americans to conceptualize

in most cases I think a team is
having a religious identity.

I.E. I mean not religious in the sense
that people pray that you know

the Tim Tebow doesn't get hurt or
something like that but

the idea of a Catholic team versus you
know a Muslim team or or a Jewish team.

And what exactly are the impossible right.

Yeah yeah it would be it would be green.

So

you know.

Soccer travels in the nineteenth
century wherever English sailors and

merchants go right and this is why you
find you know things like in Spain

the coach is called the Mr the Mr Because
the first coaches were English and

they called him Mr Watson
you're not half it.

It's why there's a you know
a team in Argentina called

River Plate not you know
real black you know because

it was the English that brought the sports
I mean is the sport of the sport is deeply

indebted to colonialism in fact the notion
that there are national styles of play is

of course an expression of the same kinds
of philosophies that enemy colonialism.

You know the idea that there's an
appropriately English way to play one of

the great castigation of a team in England
is that if they play a continental style.

They don't get stuck in they don't
play the long ball or that you know

that Platini embodied a kind of French
approach to football that was esoteric and

cerebral but not particularly masculine.

These are.

John town.

Yeah.

I'm not not in in depth in part because

I have a hard time studying bullfighting
because I have sympathy for the ball and

tends to cloud my cloud my judgment and
now you know I most like to read

about bull fights and the occasions that
people get trampled and I think you know.

Now you've learned your lesson but
absolutely.

That is a an excellent example in part
because the violence there is not

abstracted through the filter of sport but

rather literal in
the form of bloodletting.

And the idea of the inflaming of passions

among the members of
the audience of this event.

And the political risk carried
in that is a distraction or

does it some point become a spark
that lights an unanticipated fire

the fuel of which was not known
until the flames erupted.

So Zoe in the short side.

OK.

Sure.
Of course.

Yes of course that's a yes

yes yes yes in fact perhaps more

important in many places than
any other elected position.

I would agree with you.

I think the difference to my mind is that
the the average rate of participation

in track and field in nations even
where those are highly privileged and

prized forms of athletic activity
is lower than with football and

in part that affects the people imagine of
capacity to put themselves in the place

of the player and therefore cast their
national identity in that fashion but

certainly I would agree different that
those are likewise experiences that

reinforce this idea of that ritual
in that space sort of Charles just

dressed stadiums in years.

Ation of the state as I was a year ago.

I mean look at this the music is

blaring that you know
it made its way to your

business and

your you were to use it.

I mean you think people at the jury don't.

Or are in some way over my right.

That's possible.

You're

right.

Yeah yeah I think it's the difference
between a kind of more passive consumptive

role and and
a more active role both are still

about consumption in some scale but
in a very very differently organize my.

Right.

In many European nations and
in South America.

It's quite common at this that the state
would be located in downtown in

the central part of the city that most
people would expect to arrive to it

on foot or

via public transportation not by car Joe
we don't have a sea of parking around the.

Allianz Arena in Munich is suggest
that there are emerging sort of

suburban izing trends for
them in some locales.

But I believe it's one of the things that
strikes me is if you go in many things.

If you if you go to the started you will
know you're approaching them because it's

on the map and you know you're walking
the right way but you won't see it and

then suddenly there you are because
they are located in space in

residential neighborhoods the Emirates
is located in this lanes and.

Largely residential part of town.

And many of these actually serve
interesting roles that aren't sporting So

Barcelona's can know has a chapel
on a study you have chapels in

them people will get married in
the chapel of this their team.

Many of them have parts of the pitch set
aside for you to sprinkle ashes of love

to relatives who have asked that when they
die they be cremated and have their ashes

sprinkled on the pitch some of
them actually have the sort of

kinds of social service functions in
South Africa they yoked the construction

of the a lot of the World Cup study it to
health clinics centers and things like

that with the idea that they would operate
three hundred sixty five days a year.

Not just the sporting venues but

as sort of venues of other kinds of
social activity but it runs the gamut.

But but the one or underlying trend
is there really suburban the suburban

study is surrounded by a sea of parking
that you can only get to by driving.

Is a North American reality and
most of the research I've done.

I wouldn't say exclusively I'm
sure there are exceptions but

that's a big difference.

Australia has an injured American

and I know you're

one of those you know.

It's a curious one there's two in Italy.

Actually there's a son Ciro
which is Milan and enter.

And then there's the study Olympic
go which is Roman law to you and

it's very confusing because you
never know who's playing home and

who's playing away except by the order of
the teams when they're listed in football.

Traditionally the home
team is listed first but

that's a curious condition what happens
in those situations you tend to find

possession of us of a particular area
of the stadium becomes critical.

So the North perv.

For the most serious fans and
so regardless of us home or

away the north curve in the study
Olympic go is the lots of fans and

then I don't know where the Roma
ultras go but that's so

it's an interesting paradox and
what I think it suggests is that neither

needed team possesses the space in quite
the same fashion and maybe that in

part explains why actually you know both
of those places the sun Syria and start

yelling to go routinely I very rarely
sell out and you watch a Syrian match.

You know one of the study and
they're often quite empty and

I think it's because the space
is too ambiguous and

it's not no no team and no sort of
fans can claim ritual ownership of

the space to perform their rituals of
fandom and with comfort and certainty.

Thank you.