11. Talkin' Football w/ Big Jimmy Small

I sat down with one of my favourite comics and people in general, Big Jimmy Small. Jimmy imparts a lifetime of passion for football on me in just over an hour. I'd been wanting to have Jim explain to me the ins and outs of British football for the longest time, even more so now that I've gotten so into Ted Lasso. Had a great time chatting with Jim, the conversation mainly skewed towards the business and culture side of football, but he also told me a bunch of stuff about how the game is played. Definitely keen to get Jim back some time and have him explain more, I just enjoyed listening to him talk about football.

The game we had on in the background:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gyv2xh7qQw

You can follow Jimmy online at:
https://www.facebook.com/BigJimmySmall

Check out Jim's store Veg 'n Friends here:
https://www.vegnfriends.com/

0:00 Intro
4:50 Interview Starts
8:46 Game Starts
1:05:50 Life Update

Intro Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3tXX2XgjY

I've teamed up with a few other up-and-coming podcasts and we're all helping each other grow by promoting each other's show trailers.
Check out Beyond The Shadows Here!
Check out the Whine Time Podcast Here!

Get in touch with me!
@TaylorRuddleComedy on:
YouTube • TikTok • Instagram • Facebook• Twitter • Patreon • MERCH

Intro Music:
Funky Retro Funk by MokkaMusic

Transcript

Good morning ruddlemaniacs happy Monday to you your friend the Ruddler is back Taylor at all the cast is a very exciting one for me to release because this is exactly the sort of content that I got into making podcasts to do see I'm not like I've never really been a big Sports person I like the idea of following a sport but I was never really raised to watch any particular sport my parents were mad about rugby and netball but neither are those really resonated with me it seemed like it was the kind of thing that people just supported the Crusaders just because that's what you did and for the longest time I've always wanted to do a podcast where I bring an expert in something onto the podcast and then me as a relative Layman with very little knowledge in the subject gets to pick their brain and find out all the questions I've had about this particular topic so you can imagine I felt very lucky to know Big Jimmy small he is a fellow stand-up comedian and a very good friend of mine I've known Jimmy for oh going on three or four years now he's one of my favorite comedians to watch in Christchurch and to be honest even the whole of New Zealand he's a very very funny guy with some really creative premises so the topic of today's interview is going to be football now you're probably out there wondering which football is he talking about and this is exactly the sort of confusion that led to me not knowing which football Jimmy played well coached for the longest time we'd run into each other before a show and I'd ask him how his evening was and he would say he just got finished coaching football and for the longest time I thought he was coaching rugby because in New Zealand a lot of people refer to rugby as footy or football but as it turns out he was referring to British football or soccer to any any American listeners out there to be honest with you I called it soccer too I was very very careful in this interview not to refer to it as soccer to Jimmy's face list at least he fly into a rage and I don't know leap across the room I recently got into the TV show Ted lasso and so naturally my interest in football began to be piked peaked I think it's peaked my interest in football was peaked but the only thing I've tried to watch some games on YouTube but I don't really know what to to watch for and we get into this a little bit in the interview the tricky part for me for getting into sports as I as I don't know how to tell who's good at this Sport and who's not and I don't know what to look for when it comes to a talented athlete so I brought Jimmy over to my house and we put a game of football on the TV that we very rarely referred to I have put the link to the game that we were watching down in the comments but if I'm gonna be be honest with you probably a waste of time to have that going at the same time we only referred to it two or three times most of the conversation actually ended up being about the culture and the business side of football how ingrained in these communities a football club is which I found super fascinating to learn about I am really into the learning about the the business side behind running a football club I guess if you will so that kind of thing is of interest to you it definitely lifts them on but to be honest with you I while I was editing the interview I ended up getting carried away and just enjoying listening hearing Jimmy talk about football it's honestly a great interview I am definitely going to listen to it back to myself a couple of times and I hope you enjoy it I'm pretty sure you will Jimmy is a very knowledgeable guy about football and he's clearly really passionate about it and I just did my best not to get in his way and let him go off about football oh and quickly before we start the interview if you want to see what Big Jimmy small looks like you can check out my comedy special or my cover jokes on YouTube and watch towards the end of this Jimmy actually comes on stage and helps me for a segment where I needed a volunteer to demonstrate something so search up Taylor bottle comedy on YouTube if you want to check that out and give give my special a uh a thumbs up and a comment or whatever you're supposed to do to help the algorithm help me out here anyway let's get into the interview hope you enjoy it here is Big Jimmy small

hello Taylor how are you doing man I'm good yeah I'm really happy to be here me too I've been wanting to do something with you again ever since that one we did in what was Sonia at the time that's right that is called Vision friends there you go check that out on Lincoln Road if you ever in the area so today we're going to be talking about football which I understand you have a vested interest in yeah a lifelong passion from young age and mostly amateur but yeah hopefully I've got a few insights and you're a player yourself yeah uh I would still be playing now if my arthritic knee allowed me oh yeah I can understand that and but you have taken to coaching and when did you make that decision uh I have been coaching on and off for uh first time at coach well I coached Juniors when I was you know 40 years ago we won Under 12 Premier League in Christchurch um did seniors first time 30 years ago and been off and on coaching seniors every now and again I go I want a coach and then actually I just want to play by seniors you mean um like high school no no open grade you know the top Christchurch sort of game yeah what is your team called uh this year I'm coaching Western AFC oh cool uh and it's 111th season nice um won the Chatham cup four times uh back in the kind of 50s era um uh so one of the old clubs of Christchurch 111 that's years yeah one season wow okay so that's that's been going on for quite a minute and how is the season underway at the moment or it's just yeah I know we're we're we've been going a while it's been a difficult year haven't um started really from scratch oh you had to start from scratch yeah so what happens in its amateur amateur just football the most the people would be doing a day job as well yeah it's officially amateur in New Zealand so that clubs can access Lottery grants so there's definitely clubs that have got more money and they allocate generous expenses to players yeah um but that's not really uh our club yeah you're the um the the little club that could yeah I guess we're getting into it quite quickly but I'll give a little bit of background to the listeners so I really don't know anything about football um all of my knowledge is taken from me just having watched uh season one through three of Ted lasso and I got quite like to an outsider's point of view it seems like that show captures the heart of why people enjoy football and so I've known Jim was coaching football for ages and I thought this could be a good chance to do this podcast idea had where me as a not really following mainstream Sports person could talk to people that know about these Sports and find out why they love them and how to tell for the Casual viewer what to look for when you're watching this because like I've been watching professional wrestling for a long time and I've been watching stand-up comedy for a long time so I can watch people doing those and have a pretty good idea of whether they know what they're doing or not but watching football or rugby or basketball I have no idea who's doing well and who is not the only thing I kind of know is the scoreboard and I'm sure there's a lot more to the game than that so I thought let's get Jim on and what we are going to do is we're going to put on a game on the TV in front of us now we are watching uh we're yeah Manchester City versus Arsenal in the fourth round of the it will be the FA Cup yeah the Emirates FA Cup yeah so I'll put a link to this in the video description in the show notes you can watch it open on YouTube and we're going to push play now so we are going to do a kind of running commentary and I'm going to ask Jim because Jim was telling me a little bit before the show about the business behind how the clubs operate and all the leagues and I just found that super fascinating so so with Manchester City you've got actually the geopolitical as well because Manchester City were bought by significant interest from Abu Dhabi and they were kind of the first significant uh purchase for the purpose of soft power yep it Manchester City are looking to basically build the first Global Network of clubs all cities so there's Melbourne City there's New York City there's they've got they own I don't know probably close to 10 clubs around this around the world and they are um ran a year sort of using management techniques to join them up so they can transfer players between them they can um develop players in different things so that's that's a new strategy they seem to be doing it very well and and Manchester City is obviously the Pinnacle of that so they are almost they're setting up like a franchise around the world so if they wanted to get a young player to have a little bit of experience overseas they could just send them to any one of their clubs and they would play for a couple of years then come back equally they're harvesting so yeah a US player might make it into New York City gotcha um and then they would be in the system and how's it being received by the rest of because it sounds like just from what you were telling me before that sometimes when people try to change the institution of football uh it's meet with pushback due to traditionalism and things like that how is that being received by the other teams well this slips through really without people quite realizing what was happening there's been more awareness of the soft power element right yeah this is kind of developed slowly and basically I guess there's two sides of it people go yeah look at all this money changing the sport but [ __ ] that good you're like they're very popular they play such good football yeah okay because they're a bit of a they're one of the teams that I hear people mention the most that are into football yeah I mean Arsenal is another one are they um Welsh no Arsenal's one of the London clubs one of the big London clubs uh Chelsea Spears Arsenal the big London clubs and then you've got a number of smaller Arsenal uh London clubs and with Arsenal being so like is there an Undisputed Top Dog in the London clubs uh no uh over time Arsenal would have been the more successful but uh since since the turn of the century Chelsea have had more success they had um Abramovich come in and throw a lot of money at that and um yeah they they bought a lot of good players and they won a lot of stuff so you were telling me before something that was that I found a really really fascinating is the idea of um well I guess we'll break into the Premier League what's the league below it's like Championship League below Premiere yeah it's it's cool it is called the championship um so theoretically the four leagues below the Premier League are administered by the uh England fa yeah uh within the efl structure that's Football Association yeah and then like in the early 90s what was the first division of that broke away and made their own League called the Premier League and they got a great deal with but Murdoch's Sky Sports yeah and and labored that money to basically supercharge that League because you're telling me the difference in money between the championship league and the Premier League is huge right yeah and the what about the differences between the other leagues are they a little bit similar to each other uh they're they are closer there's the the biggest Chasm would be between um the Premier League and the championship um but it does progressively go down and you were telling me one thing that made me laugh is that you said you were telling me about how Germany they had the 5150 can you explain right so there's there's different rules in different countries but in Germany there's the 50 plus one rule which means that a club uh has got to be majority owned by the fans basically yeah so you can't have some Chancellor chumming chances are great word wide boy uh coming and and buying a club because either they have a lot of money or they simply say they have a lot of money yeah yeah which is often the case definitely you know with the lower leagues that are strapped for cash uh you've got someone coming and they say oh yeah I've got five million pounds it's uh it's just over there it's um oh and it's just it's just uh it's just about just about come in just waiting for the chick to clear just waiting for the check to clear meanwhile uh they buy the club uh and and then they buy all these players because they want to get into the league higher yeah and then it turns out uh that they don't know how to run a football club their money's not there yeah and um you know there's been clubs that have gone into liquidation as a result I can imagine Barry you know uh 100 plus year history um is in liquidation because yeah some guys can come in they're trying to put a stop to that they've got this um kind of test to see whether the owner is is valid or not yeah yeah and so when it goes into liquidation can another person um yeah well see that yeah you can liquidate the entity that was around for 100 years but you've still got the community exactly yeah and what happens then is the community say well we can't not have a football yeah exactly that is our lives yeah so then they start off like Wimbledon was a classic where um when Putin got uh bought by it might have been some Irish people anyway they decided wimbledon's in a in a location in London that's just too competitive we think we're going to do better in Milton Keynes oh okay so they shifted the club to Milton Keynes they could become like a big fish in a small pond yeah they became them MK Dons and their Wimbledon fans

so they started they started their own club called AFC Wimbledon nice and like 10 or 15 or 20 years later they they worked their way up from the very bottom and they ended up playing in the same league as MK Dons so so Wimbledon played Wimbledon yeah occasionally wow the one thing I always find quite interesting this is from the designer standpoint is you look at the American uh like NFL teams and all of the logos are like a fierce animal or like you know the Thunderbolts or right it's very bombastic and they have these these you know big muscular jacked animals as the logos but the logos for the uh for the what I what I've seen of um football teams are usually more like a Royal Crest kind of look um yeah well it's basically I think from where they date from yeah you know because they date from the NFL's relatively that's true a recent institution and it's and it's been done with the mindset of of marketing to um you know modern media yeah whereas this was this is just grown out of um

yeah and um I guess we should talk a little bit about what we're seeing on the on the screen now so we're watching we're watching say city in the light blue um so the other interesting thing about city is that they were kind of like there's Manchester City in this Manchester United and Manchester United is the you know possibly the biggest club in the world um it's definitely the one I hear the most men but United yeah but uh within Manchester uh more people support city than Manchester United it's more mentions I'm more of a global brand yeah um but mancunians tend to be more City so so possibly you could say that um United is uh like the the mainstream comedian and then uh man city is like the Stuart Lee or the davidel or something they were but now they're super chosen they've surpassed uh Manchester United in terms of play in terms of what they're winning in the in the football they're playing so Manchester City are coached by Pep Guardiola and he is the um best manager in the world really for for the last week what was that kick called uh that was the bicycle kick foreign

yeah that's right um that's that's a tactical foul uh we're just saying replay of Harland he's big he's super fast and he's a deadly finisher and he's also um quite intelligent and he's young and he's just come to City this year and it's a bit of a weird one because pip uh basically is successful by kind of having um 10 midfielders pep was a midfielder yeah and so he sees things in triangles and into passing yeah and he wants to wear people down basically playing small spaces and and just dominate possession in the Spanish sort of style um but it's actually from croith he really learned his stuff from um but we'll just pause there because just to make sure I have everything and maybe for the listen so in football you have three different positions right there is Strikers Defenders and then broadly speaking let's say yeah and then midfielders and the midfielders are the ones that need really good cardio right they've got to run everywhere and everywhere they tend to run uh more yeah they do they do they'll probably be running about 13ks in a match oh wow yeah uh and a lot of it's at top speed yeah um yeah so that's right but so pip will convert midfielders to Defenders because he wants his Defenders to be able to play football as well yeah yeah and then also for a long time he abandoned Strikers uh like the the notion of a false nine so in old school stuff you hit a big Target man a number nine Center forward you Loop the ball higher did win a hitter and and you'd play through them he'd be a Target man old-school Target man so he'd be like Jordan and basketball you just want to get the ball

but then so pip had um Messi in his prime at Barcelona and uh he played Messy as a false number nine he's notionally he was notionally the center forward but he tend to just drop into Midfield and leave a space where the scent where the center-backs want to defend someone they've got no one to defend and then they've got a swarm of midfielders coming at them passing all around them and then Missy still pops up and scores but he's not doing it from the classic center forward position so the idea of a striker is they would just kick it from quite far back is that why they were is that what they would do were they trying to disclosed uh yeah it was um so the center forward the role of the center forward the traditional number nine uh was one of his roles was to be the target for an out ball so rather than have to play through the Midfield where there's all this Jeopardy the the in the backs would lump at 40 yards up the pitch and this and the center forward would do enough that they can get possession up up there and then you're in the attacking third and you're a threat so the number nine wouldn't be in the muck with everyone he would be ahead of them and then they would be trying to get it to him yeah he would be he would play higher up yeah uh than most others yeah are there any any other traditional numbers or positions that are a thing and well numbers yeah numbers as a language now as it it didn't that didn't used to be like um you would tend to say a six is a holding midfielder and the 10 um 10 you know my handle was uh you might have seen it inside left yeah so uh in in the 60s uh the number 10 was the inside left where they actually had five forwards they had the center forward number nine and left them with the number 10 and right of them was the number eight gotcha um and the ten uh just something about that position became what they called the playmaker so so the most influential say the people that could make the difference between possession and a goal scoring chance with a Playmakers yeah people that could do the final pass to score the goal and they tended to be the inside left setting up the number nine and so number 10 is is known as a position and it would be playmaker number tens but now they don't they don't play in that formation but still if you're if you're the playmaker if you think you're the the the guy that's going to make the difference in the attacking uh you're gonna want the number 10 on your shirt ah okay that's really interesting so they would almost be like working in tandem the the nine and the ten yeah would be like but the 10 is linking up so he's a midfielder as well yeah so he he's he's basically you're orchestrating it more than the number nine yeah I see and then is there a typical position that the captain plays no they can play you know goalkeepers can be captains captains more about uh more about just um Mana just about yeah yeah and and performance uh it's definitely nothing you're not making those decisions on field the way a rugby Captain would or a cricket captain would yeah yeah do for any International listeners Mana is the Maori word for like Authority kind of isn't it it's uh yeah that intangible leadership Charisma sort of I'm I apologize if I'm getting that wrong but that's kind of the vibe we all yeah we all know it what it means but we don't really know how to attack I mean I'm sure people do but I don't um so we are 14 minutes into the game now and there's still zero zero is this typical for a Premier League game uh yeah this is FA Cup meaning a cup game means um uh means you can't have a draw basically oh so you have well actually in the FA Cup in the early rounds you can have a drawer and you then have a replay of this game to get a result um but Cup games is generally knockout so you might play if you end of 90 minutes it's a drawer then you play extra time yeah and if you draw after extra time you go to penalties so that's when you happen like the World Cup is knockout yes it's not a league you can't have a draw no in the world cup so the FA Cup is at once a year yeah yeah and that's and that's not that's Premier League teams it's all those four divisions below and also down down to the eighth ninth tier of English football will all enter the FA Cup some of them will play Early rounds they'll drop out so you've got the fourth round you've got two premier league teams playing um and these are two of the better performing well this is number one and two in the premier League this year trying each other in the cup and they do want to win the FA Cup yeah absolutely do they is there any kind of money bonus or is it just Prestige for being the FA cup holder yeah yeah it's the the money is not about the prize money it's about um the other the clouds yeah yeah and so with I remember you were telling me before just before we turned on the mics that so these are all English teams playing in the FA Cup is that right that's right do for example like Manchester City would they ever play a team from Germany or Italy or Spain right so that's the European Cup competition so there's a number of and and those are the those are the most prestigious so the champions league is um is played as a cup competition each year over over the course of the season from the from the placings in the domestic leagues the year before so the top uh four teams in the Premier League get to play in the Champions League the following year and that's different from the championship league which is yeah the championship is English yeah champions league is topped here and that's that's where everybody wants to get to they want to play in the Champions League because that's the biggest Prestige it's the it's the top clubs playing each other from all over Europe so I see Bayern Munich UVA Real Madrid Barcelona they're all there well they're trying to be there yeah yeah is there a team in the Champions League who are I don't know like the Yankees like they're the top there is there's Real Madrid I've heard the name a lot yeah so they they before the Champions League it was called um the European Cup yeah and that was started maybe 1960 the very early 60s and Real Madrid was strong at the time and they took it seriously and they won a handful to start with and they and they became very attached to it it was a big part of a big part of um Real Madrid's Mystique was that they you know had won the champion the European Cup these times and there's something now that they've like they have they've they've they've won something like five of the last eight Champions League which which which is uh disproportionate to the actual playing strength it's just that psychologically yeah it comes to the Champions League okay there's something extra when they come to the banaba yeah in Real Madrid in in Madrid there's an expectation yeah in the last few years they have done some of the most amazing comebacks you just sort of like look they're out they're gone and then suddenly over three minutes they've scored three goals and suddenly it's them again everybody's you just can't count them out so there's there's this psychological Mystique about them that they're very hard to put out especially over this last bit that's a little bit like there is a professional wrestler called The Undertaker and they used to always say that the Undertaker at Wrestlemania was like you know that was a different Undertaker and you know it's so the rest of it he's just playing around but when it's yeah but with WrestleMania he's he's he's Undertaker wrestling so so that was real Madrid at the Champions League they are like the they play like they normally play yeah there's there's just something else there's there's an energy um and a belief yeah there's a belief in the players yeah that they could be suffering they could be down to but they still think we're Real Madrid yeah yeah we're like almost having a home game yeah yeah yeah I I remember hearing a thing about playing against the New York Yankees it's something to do with the Pinstripes that is like intimidating or distracting or something like that and and I think probably more from their reputation than anything else is what people found so intimidating Real Madrid isn't all white they do they look quite this strip is all white oh just which is um well that was another thing there was not too many others look like that no I was going to ask as well like I've been what from Ted lasso it looks like the Richmond they've got about four different kits that they wear that are all different colors how many colors does a team tend to have and they would probably have uh two or three yeah because uh they need they would have a home strip so Manchester city is in their home strip here they're this is their main strip that's the red no no sorry that's the yeah light blue white shorts um and Arsenal are in their main strip because it doesn't cleanse contrast blue yeah but if it if they were playing a clashing one then the then the away team would be wearing one of their away strips I quite like that it's almost like you have to coordinate your outfits with your opponents you know you have to be I'm sure we're not you know oh yeah we don't want to get confused here the referees take great joy and sort of oh that's a bit close and I know you might oh sorry that's one of their jobs one of their jobs is to make sure that you know the shirts don't Clash so would they have two players standing in front of them and they'd be like oh I don't know about like this uh well let's not get into Christchurch football referees gotcha okay that's a whole different people yes um so we we're now about 21 minutes yeah and so yeah there's still no score but it's still an absorbent game because there's there's a number of things going on and it differs here from basketball you know if we'd been watching a game of basketball for 21 minutes they would be up like 200 points yeah there'd be so many gold baskets uh and you'd be going with is that one significant does that one matter yeah does that I don't what about that one does that that's it they're all they all become meaningless whereas a goal here would be significant well that was what I was going to say one of my theories as to why people love football so much is because the goals mean so much and players will have their celebrations they do like what was it was um who is the player that used to sort of jump into the air and do like a spin Winnie uh Ronaldo Ronaldo yeah I vaguely remember someone trying to explain that to me um but you see them do the big slide in the knees yeah they have trademark celebrations yeah that's true um and you the whole crowd screamed oh yeah it goes in and everything and yeah the energy at that point is is uh it's wild and the chance but the football seems to have the most creative chance out of any sport that I've seen apart from maybe professional wrestling or the professional wrestling is um the chance you could argue are pretty played out by this point like it seems like the English ones are quite yeah with the fans the fans do work at them um they yeah they they can create new ones they'll be use you know basically find an old tune there's some standard tunes that they'll be different words to

um I was uh so I'm Leicester city um that's your team yeah and and they had the you know they are the biggest Sports story of the century really when they won the Premier League in 2016. ah what what was so was it they just like were they were five thousand to one odds wow in a 20-team league five thousand to one to win it because it only just avoided relegation the year before gotcha um but they just caught fire they just did everything the magic came together they would they yeah and um I was enlisted at the time of their coronation when they finally won really um and yeah the chance there so they they had some good ones one was um one so when they're when they won the league they were still chanting we're staying up we're staying up which was the chance you say when you avoided relegation nice right yeah so they've won the league by 10 points and they're chanting we're staying up we're staying that's great yeah that's a pretty good statement that's English him a few isn't it yeah um the what was it gonna say you're Leicester city at Leicester city yeah what are their colors uh they they're blue and white they have darker blue than this I'll have to look that up yeah a little bit later on I was going to say as well with the I was quite surprised how full-on the game was the second the whistle blow like I saw a guy shoving another guy within like seconds of the game starting um I know you're not allowed to are you allowed up the other players yeah yeah there's um and so yeah it's the degree of contact that's the the question it's like often um no it just messed up curved wide the Broner yeah with his left foot from 25. um yeah that's referee's discretion a little bit you uh you're officially allowed to go shoulder to shoulder yeah um but then there's also whether you're within playing distance of the ball um oh yes have you got have you got sort of notional um possession of the ball have you got a right to it um there's that uh and then there's just the straight out physicality but you could do a very slight touch and trip someone up yeah and and that could be a yellow card because you've you've stopped them scoring a goal yeah yeah so how do the cards work two yellow cards and you're off and one red card and you're off that's right yeah do they happen quite a bit or are they fairly rare uh no it happens quite a lot um you would uh what do you reckon probably I don't know it could be like 10 of games uh no less five to ten percent of games you'd have someone sent off that's pretty low for compared to what I see in rugby it seems like someone's always getting sent off in rugby well they just have cinnamons I'll only go off for 10 minutes oh so it's just like yeah they go yeah that's the next game as well can they go home if it happens

imagine some football player just wants an early night he just shoves a guy oh well there was this thing with tactical yellow cards because yellow cards can accrue and then like you've had a certain amount then you'd miss the next match so if someone was uh in Jeopardy of missing you know a big match they might take a yellow card deliberately get a yellow card to clear the yellow cards before the big match oh that makes sense anyway there's a little bit that's that's fascinating I was going to say as well the um oh geez was something with yellow cards I was going to say as well the average age of the players is quite young because they're talking about this character and Ted lasso called Roy Kent and they talk to him like he's ancient but he's like 35 or something yeah is that considered old for us uh yeah that that's age is increasing age is increasing yeah um Ibrahimovic has been um playing top level stuff um into his early 40s but that is uh they take much better care of themselves now they're all the sports science and there's so much money uh and attention to it you you just the recovery yeah you're monitored so much more than there was a you know people used to smoke and drink before like Socrates Socrates who who ran the uh Brazilian Midfield in the early is that really his name Socrates yeah that's brilliant doctor he was a doctor nice but he chained smoked and a lot of doctors used to do that yeah that's right yeah very slimming yeah it's got a smooth pull yeah um yeah so they didn't you know and I love it you used to watch um like the Chicago Bulls in in the middle of the you know like half time whatever they'd be puffing on cigars and stuff right yeah but um yeah so they you're sorry I interrupt you they're taking a bit of care of them yeah and so they've got all this and so they can extend their um their productive uh year playing yeah and so um yeah Arsenal's a very young team actually they're the youngest in the Premier League right they've done pretty well uh they're still I think their average age might be into the early 20s oh yeah which is which is pretty young because you tend to need like players still peeking in their in the mid to late 20s yeah really gotcha I was going to say as well with um the idea of having like a star player like is that something that for like could a like was it actually David Beckham was he all he was cracked up to be or was that just kind of a um he didn't really he wasn't he was very good he and uh despite all the Showbiz stuff um he chained the house down like he was really diligently he was just a top professional yeah and he kept himself fit and so he was just really dedicated and he was very good at a few things he wasn't he wasn't the player that was gonna transform a whole team he would add to a team yeah at a high level but he wasn't like he wasn't like Maradona or Messi that could actually take a whole team and lift it several knots so you could do that with a really good player they could lift yeah well that I mean that's that's why Maradona is you know rated by many is better than Pele because I mean Palais it was a different era I have a lot of respect for Pele but but Maradona took a whole team to win the World Cup right and and you could have you could have taken any one of those players out of the team and he was still still would have won but not Maradona yeah yeah okay uh because because he yeah he's he's doing so many things for the team gotcha um in that up in the sort of flip side of that could a a team I'm guessing yes is the answer to this but is there a team that doesn't really have any standouts but they're all just so solid that they are able to stand up to a you know a team with a messy or something on it like a star yeah they'll they'll do that um yeah and that's often comes down to quite a really um rigid system right um there's only so far those teams can go yeah because um yeah it's it's all about the um the collective and yeah they can do quite a lot but uh if you you come up a team that can do all that but also have players that can change it up uh that's the difference I remember talking to a friend of mine about about we just send the money at the movie Moneyball have you seen them yeah so um there was a couple of couple of clubs that are kind of moneyballing Moneyball they're doing well Brentford and Brighton um what is the metric they use because moneyballers get on base what is the metric they'd use for football they I I don't know I think I think there's quite a lot to it yeah but um they they get their recruitment really good they know nothing miss out on recruitment but I think that was a big tackle there uh so they they have a plan for who they want or what what the team needs yeah they have a team um you know they have a team plan that kind of overrides any particular manager gotcha so the manager will come into the team plan yeah the recruiting will be for the team plan um and then they can you can there's so many great players around the world yeah you just need to be able to find them and and identify can they step up their level and and as long as you've got the support in place the experience in the league they'll they'll adjust initially they'll be crap you just give them some minutes here and there yeah but eventually they adjust and then they become a premium the league player gotcha I think um the UFC have been doing this a little bit lately and Dana White had this TV series where he would go to like you know Africa and Russia and all these other countries and he would watch amateur MMA fights and he would try and bring them to the UFC so right I kind of globalized as a as a um as a world now so yeah if you can see these players one other thing I was going to ask is well what is the structure of a team so you have all the players and then you have a coach and a manager and they're separate people uh you have you have trainers that might that might assist and and this is different in different places so uh more recently clubs have had a director of football that one responsible for the overall planning uh when it comes to recruitment it might be the manager and the director of football and some others who decide whether they're going to recruit a player or not gotcha uh you've got trainers a more low level running running sessions according to what the manager wants yeah the manager is like another name for the coach in English football gotcha um and then you've got medical staff um so the manager is sort of a general they decide on what the team is like what the team is going to do and what the team needs is that yeah they they in in English football they've been very powerful um the penalize that with uh with Fergie yeah um and uh post Fergie other clubs have been trying to get away from the all-powerful manager and put a little bit more sort of long-term planning uh structure a system rather yeah but still the manager in English football would um have a decisive say on recruitment generally yeah they would uh decide how they're going to train they would decide who to sell they would decide who to play and they'll decide on the tactics do you ever get trades in uh British football they don't seem to be trades they tend to be just selling or buying right yeah I always found that funny how an American baseball and stuff like that they can just like you just oh you just have to move to like Boston now and uh yeah like but I guess it's part of they sign up then and they know what they're signing up for so yeah yeah you were telling me something else quite interesting about it before about the idea of merchandising and you were telling me about the they wanted to make a world league where everyone could just play everyone at all times to try and get in because what were you telling me well it was more just there to so in European football which is basically in all football really it's just non-american setup it's not the franchise system it's a it's a community-based club that's grown up out of the Grassroots uh and it will be playing in a pyramid type League where there's promotion and relegation so there's Jeopardy you can go up or down yeah but the big clubs uh that are you know though in those leagues habitually but they're saying we need more money and the way to get more money is if we play other big clubs and really we would attract way more money if we just had like a super league yeah yeah and and that's what they called it they called it the super league and it was a bunch of clubs got together and said we don't need to do uefa's Champions League we can make up our only yeah and we can get way more money and we can keep it ourselves levels and um and that was the plan but it got shot down yeah but it will come again because the money is compelling interesting I was gonna say with how do the teams tend to make money do they win money if they win games uh well you come into Financial fair play here because not for a long time clubs weren't really in it to make money oh okay um they were there to win and you'd have a local businessman director who would sort of put some money and gotcha and make sure it worked but it was about the success then you got the big money uh came in with TV and it be which was more money you could spend on getting a great team yeah yeah so then at that raised the level so then you got more like billionaires coming up yeah if I threw a billion dollars at this I could get a really successful team and then the club becomes more successful more valuable yeah um but but then the administrator said we need to stop this we need to cap on it and their cap was the notion of financial fair play I was going to ask if there is a salary cap yeah so there's no nice salary cap except you're supposed to not spend you're supposed to spend a proportion of your football generated income so your football generated income is Your sponsorship yeah yeah advertising your um your profits on player transfers and your gate receipts or end your TV income or so they get to keep the money from the tickets they sell to their home games well and they give a proportion of their home gate to the away team as well oh okay that's that that's all I don't know the exact proportion yeah yeah that's how it works there's the sponsorship uh you can make a profit or loss on selling a player you've got the TV Revenue so it's like flip it you buy a player really cheaper than yourself yeah that's how listeners survive they've sold one of their best players each year yeah just to be able to play yeah and buy a few average players and so there's definitely that I love it um but the um so they're what they're trying to get away from is someone just throwing so much more money at it than is football related yeah and so then what Manchester city did they said well we've got all this money but we haven't got that much football related money so what we'll do is we'll get Etihad airlines to sponsor us like a hundred million pounds for um you know like just just over the top and so then there's still question marks whether what they've done is legal or not people are trying to take them to court and saying no you you breached Financial fear play It's funny how that works because I was talking to someone who's on a community radio station and they said they're because they're in I think it was a non-profit or something they're only allowed to make a certain amount of money through ad sales but sponsorship doesn't count towards that so right anything they could sponsor that's just you know like whatever it's it's on top of and so yeah I don't know yeah it's the same that's what they're doing here well it's the football related income is that is the catchphrase sort of thing yeah is that one of those things where people try to bend it a little bit to because football related could be quite a quite a relative term depending on who you ask yeah there's there's a lot of um bookkeeping uh Shenanigans going on yeah the um I was going to ask as well does each I think this has turned more onto a business behind the football we haven't talked a lot we've talked a little bit about football but I don't know I just find all this stuff fascinating so I hope you don't mind talking about uh the the business behind it um each team has a has their own stadium or their own grounds uh yeah um they will um but sometimes uh community-owned they might just be leasing them sometimes they'll own them or they'll leverage the hilt yeah yeah that's another thing of of to to tweak the financial fear plan I uh you you sell your stadium and you lease it back or oh no we're just renting our own yeah interesting that must be an interesting job to be bookkeeper for a big um because I presume they have to it'd have to be publicly available yeah the interesting one with Everton one of the oldest and successful clubs in English football it's the it's the other Liverpool team yeah um their accounts have been tagged this year oh because they've spent a whole lot of money but they're still in Jeopardy of being relegated and and and the accountants have said uh if this team is relegated we can't be sure it's a going concern because the financial implications of being relegated coupled with their current financial position would make it very hard for them to continue to exist that's uh so are they trying to be like uh oh come on don't don't us we're going to disappear if you do kind of thing oh no if they if they finish if they finish in the bottom uh they're out yeah yeah and the bottom of the three they're out there's no no no no pleading okay so you can get that gone you can't please your case not to the other teams well if you're not gonna go with you know we're not going because I'm not sure if we recorded it but they cut the bottom three teams in the Premier League and then does that mean that three teams from the championship league come up yeah oh that's cool I like that yeah so there's sort of like a revolving door of teams um yeah in and out of the leagues that's cool yeah and there's so there's teams that tend to be in the top half of the Premier League yeah they're big and they've got the money uh but sometimes they can slip down into the relegation and Everton yeah they've I think they've only had sort of maybe one year out of a hundred plus maybe one year out of maybe 130 that they haven't been in the top League uh right they are probably one of the two most successful teams for staying in the top league and it was one of the Manchester ones you said Liverpool oh Liverpool yeah um is there anything that they do special that is it just that they're so solid that they're not likely to lose enough games too yeah well they've got a pretty special ground they've got a really you know you've got hardcore fan culture which can contribute a whole lot like their home atmosphere is incredible so that probably has made the difference when when maybe you know they're in Jeopardy in the past and it might make the difference again this year okay um I wonder just just on the on the players here you're like how far a player can come up to get into Premier League the the thing about football is that um they're just like I just tackled two people in a row yeah but they were all good tackles um oh so that was legal yeah yeah no you got the ball so if he played the ball first and the other people sort of fell over them oh okay I had the momentum yeah if he would if he had kicked them out of the way to get the ball so to my untrained eyes it looked like he just sweeped their legs out from under them and then yeah no like nobody stopped me he tackled the ball the ball was there he hit the ball hard and went through so it's the kind of thing where if you touch the ball first and then it's like oh well that counts for a lot if you touch the ball first before you hit the man that counts for a lot like more recently uh there's another thing because it used to be so hectic you know like in in the old days um they just used to kick the most talented players like if you see the treatment that Maradona used to get they just used to hack him down because he'd just keep beating them they used to do it to Jordan as well from what I hear right yeah so so now um it's it's a lot um tougher and there's like you could make a challenge where you get the ball first but you clean out the man and it will still be a foul because you've taken an un an unreasonable risk right so they have player safety yeah you could still yeah so there's that aspect they're kind of doing that with the UFC is there's certain rules that they like cooking in the groin or something like that is if you I guess if you think about it the idea of uh if you want to know who's the best fighter in the world you would want to allow everything headbutts um scratching the eyes Etc but for the health of the fighters you know we can't have them gouging each other's eyes out and kicking each other on the groin and whatever so like I guess it comes back to the whole that they're trying to look after the players and get I guess it feeds back for them as well because the longer a player can go the better it is yeah that's right but the the the the yeah it's good for the sport if the top players play more yes yeah yeah so this guy on the ground now is getting checked on by the doctor yeah he's had a bit of an injury uh there's a little uh there's a little thing here because once the re once the ref says the medical people can come on and look at this person so there's an intrinsic delay here and sometimes it'd be tactical delays the rule now is that if the if the doctor comes on to look at you then you must leave the field with the doctor before you can come on and and you have to wait for the rift to say you can come back because otherwise in the old days they'd just soak up time here just run the pressure oh I've got a foul have you well are you really into it how can we tell um so so and then they would just get up again and start playing so now they've added a Jeopardy say well if you think if you say you've been injured you're going to go off and take some time on the sideline and your team's going to be with one man short for a little bit and yeah so so that we just saw it in slow motion it looked like he was grabbing his leg as he fell down does that look like a legit injury to you because they look like he may it was either and I didn't wasn't looking that close it was either a knee to the bet but it looked a little bit like a hamstring pull yeah he loses clutching as kind of like this the side in the back of his head so it looks like Benny I'm not sure where he's going he's walking okay yeah it might have has been a knee you know a little impact don't know we'll keep an eye on that yeah what I was going to say about that um the ability for players so you see all these players here and it looks all this pace if you saw an average player in here you'd see how much slower other stuff is I've heard they should do it with the Olympics just put a normal person on the races to see yeah because you always hear people talking at the pub and stuff about like oh [ __ ] idioto I would have done that and it's like you wouldn't have even been able to keep up with these guys you wouldn't get a touch you could be staying on the field for 90 minutes you wouldn't even touch the ball exactly because

um and uh you're just on the Olympics yes with having the World Cup recently I have one beef that they the New Zealand media well not you know I have many beats but yeah this particularly the particular one was the New Zealand media keeping on calling it the football World Cup uh like they don't call it the able-bodied Olympics right it's just the Olympics oh so they should be calling it The World Cup yeah is that everything else is the special World Cup the Rugby World Cup oh whatever else this is this is the original World Cup it's the biggest sport in the world yeah it's just the World Cup we don't need to call it the football World Cup like it's some diminutive yeah yeah I guess at least they weren't calling it the soccer World Cup though yeah that's true that would be this progress takes time yeah but but but yeah this is getting a little bit my my New Zealand slant here so um these players every one of them will have been playing football since they were like five or something yeah yeah because if you haven't been there's no way you can play to this level yeah because there's there's a whole spatial awareness there's so many different things like when the ball comes to you there's there's infinite things you could be doing with that ball compare that with rugby you're in a back line the ball comes to you there's kind of like about three things you can do right you're gonna hold the ball run into the other person you could kick it over the top you could pass the next person this is so there's just too many variables for you to be arriving at football in your teens and have to think of that if it's not already embedded you can't do it so there's no there's no professional footballer who wasn't playing football at the age of 10. really there's plenty of rugby players who didn't start playing till they're teenagers because it's so simple so that's one thing yeah the other thing that people in New Zealand you know they take they don't realize it's a way harder to be in all white than it is in all black oh okay yeah like like it's twice statistically it's twice as hard because there's more people playing football and there's Miss less all-white positions right are there more people playing football in New Zealand than rugby yeah wow yeah so it's like yeah I know a lot of people don't realize that oh yeah but it is um and and there's less positions because you know there's only 11 or 15 but also the always don't play that often yeah there's so many all blacks and there's and there's so many so few people actually playing rugby yeah so there's that there's the fact that if they went playing football from the age of eight or nine they've got no chance of making the all whites because they just just forget it you just haven't got it in there you can go so far but you won't you won't get there then the other thing is that you you can't there's no conveyor belt so for the old legs you're not allowed to leave the country you have to if you leave the country you can't play for the All Blacks well they might have changed that rule but it was ruled for quite a while to keep people so basically you just needed to be the best one or two players in your team every team you pay for and eventually you'll end up in the rep team canopy team the All Blacks oh that's all you need to do you just need to be the best player in your team to get there yeah it's just a conveyor belt yes okay football is the opposite you couldn't like like you couldn't play for the all whites if you hadn't gone overseas uh to compete with people who didn't want you taking their places to advance yourself to be good enough to be able to play for the always that's how hard it is and yet wow and yet and yet we you know that are on the weet-bix boxes yeah it's all the All Blacks and they've done they've done nothing compared to the always in terms of getting there when if you're a young football player in New Zealand and you wanted to go on an overseas trip how long would you go for to play before you so let's let's say you started when you were eight yeah played through through when would they leave they've got Pathways now that okay that weren't before so they you're getting better coaching in the academies here so if you get to the age of 16 17 yeah you you've had some pretty good coaching there in New Zealand then what what a lot of them would do is get into the United States college system because then they can train full time so you would apply to a United States yeah send a video clip of how good you are and you could get um a scholarship to the United States so that's that's Ryan Nelson did that yeah it was um he was kind of in that first thing where I I sure it was it was after my time yeah so he got a he got a degree from Stanford and he got professional football training wow and then from there he was able to jump into American profession football leagues and from there he jumped across to the English professional football team but Ryan Nelson one of our most successful players he's you need to recognize him as being a third generation footballer as well right you can't do it in one generation so his his uncles were some of the best footballers like they played for New Zealand um yeah and so he had football in his culture no kidding maradona's father didn't play rugby you can't do it in one generation you have to do like there's you have to have sort of the culture of it yeah yeah it's a little bit like I trained in a Muay Thai which is Tire kickboxing and you see the different the throwing the round kick you would think is something you could learn at any age oh yeah and like it's the same as well unless you've been throwing that round kick from yeah when you were five years old and like most people that I know that are really good at Muay Thai have been learning their father taught them when they were a kid and they just keep going up until they're adulthood and it's just the fluidity of how naturally they throw the round cake compared to when I was kickboxing here all of us straining and trying to Pivot right and your legs still stiff and you just see like the wet yeah yeah your foot might end up at the same place exactly but the ark has traveled and the power it looks so much nicer when um Thai people have been doing it for their whole life it is yeah like you say unless you start early enough I don't think you and you watch the footwork and certain MMA fighters it's super clunky and they just stomp around the ring flat-footed and they're trying to throw their round kicks and I think a lot of them come from wrestling and I think it's the same thing wrestling unless you rest sort of when you were yeah teen whatever whatever the age they start wrestling in school and if you look at a lot of the UFC fighters who are doing well it's all from the scuco Roman wrestling and it's all from oh yeah they've been training since they were you know 10 something like that and it's like you say it's all just in New York you can't deal with brute strength yeah exactly you have to be it's almost like you have to change the way your synapses in your brain yeah functioned because I guess if you I was going to ask this as well if let's say you are a midfielder in uh football and you've been playing since you were eight yeah do you think you could change position and learn how to play as a defender or a striker well yeah yeah that's what that's what pip does uh unless yeah players will shift positions um midfielders are more um more generalist and what they can do because they are defending and they are attacking as well and and they have the most difficult sort of space facial thing but the spatial awareness is different in different positions so it takes a while to adjust to how you place inner back in terms of you're often much more aware about your position on the field rather than maybe where the ball and the player is so you you so that they're different but you would adjust gotcha see yeah okay well we're basically coming up on about an hour there this has been a really fascinating chat do you want to plug your latest Venture before we uh before we go you're your store in your oat milk yeah um I yes Sarah oat milk would be um in the shop soon we've um been uh how do you spell that a lot of twists and turns um well I think I'm going to put it under the Sarah name s e double r a um currently I've got an oat Dairy one out but I am actually pretty happy with the oat oat one nice and uh surprisingly it's an easier sell uh so uh yeah hopefully in the shops soon and where can people find your shop yeah the um the cafe pigeon friends corner of Lincoln Road and parlane Street I uh Jimmy very good friend of mine I recommend you go and uh supporters his his Cafe and his uh Sarah oat milk you can also find them you've got a comedian page um facebook.com Big Jimmy small but I think that's about all the social media you have isn't it I wouldn't have done anything um active on there he was the last person the show at the old little Andromeda but yeah thanks for joining us Jim I really enjoy chatting to you thanks Taylor and we're back hope you enjoyed that interview I sure as hell enjoyed having it and I definitely want to get Jimmy to come back and talk more football sometime in the future I'm also interested in talking other sports like rugby basketball even baseball I loved Moneyball so if you'd consider yourself an expert on any of these topics and you're Keen to come on the podcast and teach me about it send me a DM on my Facebook page Taylor comedy one more thing before I let you go I'm starting a new segment of this podcast called ruddles Phantom files or Phantom files for short I'm a huge fan of Cryptids ghosts UFOs and all that spooky stuff so I wanted to create a segment to this podcast where the listeners can send in their own creepy stories and I'll play them on the podcast as I've recently learned over the last couple of days we have a quite active paranormal Community here in New Zealand so I'm absolutely sure there's some great stories out there and to me the best thing is listening to them in people's own words so if you've got a five to ten minute spooky story that you would like me to play on the podcast send me an email to ruddlesphantomfiles@gmail.com I'll have a link to that in the show notes the easiest thing you can do is record it as a voice note on your cell phone and then simply email that to me and I will take care of the rest aside from that as always give me a follow on all of these social media platforms except Twitter if you want to keep up with what gigs I've got coming up they are all under at Taylor rattle comedy at this point I cannot remember which ones we have announced and which ones we have still to announce so if you want the most up-to-date information follow me on Facebook as that's where most of the event pages will be we've got some really exciting stuff coming up some cool new venues we're going to play I'm really looking forward to it I hope the rest of your week goes well and thank you so much for listening