Diaspora and the World Cup

EPISODE 398: Representation.

When we first asked Tim Weah if he’d spend a little time with us during the World Cup, I did not know that the interview would happen after the U.S. beat Paraguay, 4-1, in Los Angeles, and before beating Australia, 2-0, in Seattle.

The biggest reason we’d reached out to Tim is because of a remarkable biographical detail about the 26-year-old forward. A detail without any real comparison in sports.

Tim Weah was born in New York City but his father, in case you didn’t know, is George Weah — who, until just two years ago, was the president of Liberia.

Before that, by the way, George Weah happened to be one of the greatest soccer players of his generation, in the 1990s: playing at Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan and Chelsea. And so we will get to some of that.

But in that opener against Paraguay — and then again, against Australia — the U.S. watched Tim and his teammates do something special, on their home turf.

The U.S. men’s national team has never won the World Cup before. (Of course they haven’t.) But that win over Paraguay wound up being the most-watched telecast in the history of the team, averaging 18 million viewers.

So I wanted to understand this moment through the eyes of Tim Weah. And why he decided to represent America, in the first place.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Wu-Tang,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)