The Best Soccer Podcast In The World is a bilingual podcast that tells your soon-to-be favorite soccer stories. The host, Nando Vila, will crack open some of the most iconic World Cup moments, putting them in cultural and geopolitical contexts. From legendary players to silly hairdos, to heart-wrenching losses.
Ronaldo: The Phenomenon
Breathe. In. Out. That's what Ronaldo Nazário couldn't do during a seizure that nearly took his life and robbed Brazil of a World Cup.
This is the O.G. Ronaldo. You know, the guy who had a seizure and appeared out of sorts a few hours later in the biggest game of his career. The guy who blew out his knee and missed most of the next four years to injury before coming back to finally claim the biggest prize in the sport: the World Cup. This is the story of Ronaldo, the demi-god of goals.
The Maracanã Is Cursed
The stadium that has haunted Brazil for 64 years, caused grown adults to cry and led to more than one suicide.
This is a ghost story. Not about a person, but a place. A cursed stadium, actually. The Maracana has haunted Brazil for 64 years. Multiple people have killed themselves because of events that happened on its field. Want to know what was so traumatic about some soccer games? Well, you’re just going to have to click play, my friend.
Bulgaria '94
Bulgaria literally smuggled themselves into World Cup 1994, where they arrived brash, bald, and having never won a World Cup game. And then went on to make the semifinals.
Ever wonder why every soccer player nowadays is obscenely attractive? What have they done with the fat ones, the bald, the goateed? As a refreshing tonic, let's remember the mid-'90s, the time of mullets and overweight drunks as professional athletes. One elite defender drove a Soviet tank around. Freshly unlatched from the communist Soviet Union, Bulgaria was brash, broody, and temperamental. And they were World Cup semifinalists in 1994.
Zinedine Zidane
Zidane ended his career with a bang. A sternum-rattling headbutt, actually.
There’s a snide bit of symmetry to it: A World Cup final won by two Zidane headers, and a World Cup final lost after Zidane headed someone in the chest. He walked in silence past the trophy he would never hold again, down the tunnel, and into infamy. In between those career-defining moments, he played some gorgeous soccer. No one else made trapping a ball look quite so sexy. Maybe no one else ever will.
Mágico González
There was one player better than Pele or Maradona, at least according to Diego Maradona. His name was Mágico González, the best player to ever come out of El Salvador. Known as much for his ability to humiliate defenders as his tendency to sleep through training, Mágico spent most of his career in Cadiz. But Maradona and Mágico spent one summer as teammates on a U.S. tour for Barcelona. It’s a little-known story about when two of the sport’s most incorrigible geniuses teamed up.
That's a 'keeper!
A lineage of loco Latin American goalkeepers helped transform the role, straying from their nets.
The goalkeeper is a lonesome creature. Or at least, he used to be. In 1912, the FA limited goalkeepers to using their hands inside their boxes. Then a lineage of loco Latin American goalkeepers helped transform the role, straying far from their nets and scoring a bunch of weird, wild goals. Rene Higuita, Jorge Campos, and Jose Luis Chilavert delighted and terrified their own fans in equal measure. Also they wore retina-searing jerseys.