On Monday’s episode of the World Soccer Daily show, radio co-host Steven Cohen failed to apologize to Liverpool supporters regarding the inaccurate statements he made about their role in the Hillsborough Disaster that occurred on April 15, 1989.

The inaccurate statements made by Cohen on his April 13, 2009 episode of World Soccer Daily were that:

1. Ticketless Liverpool supporters were the root cause of the Hillsborough Disaster,
2. 6-8,000 ticketless Liverpool supporters showed up outside Hillsborough, and
3. Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium was used week-in week-out without incident.

Instead of apologizing, he softened his April 13 stance on his belief that there were 6-8,000 ticketless Liverpool supporters outside the ground. During the April 20, 2009 episode, he first said “There were several thousand who showed up without tickets.” But a few minutes later, when co-host Kenny Hassan gave Cohen an opportunity to retract the 6-8,000 number, Cohen replied “If it’s not the right number, it’s not the point. If I’m wrong on the number, then I’ll retract it and apologize. If it’s 25, 2500 or 25,000, my point is made for me. There were people there who shouldn’t have been there because they didn’t have tickets and they were hell bent on getting in. I’m sorry, those are the facts.”

Cohen is barking up the wrong tree when he claims ticketless fans contributed to the disaster. They did not. According to The Hillsborough Football Disaster paper entitled Context and Consequences, page 17, “[Lord Justice] Taylor surmised there was no substance to the allegation that ticketless fans caused the Disaster.”

And while there may have been some ticketless supporters outside the ground — as there are at any major football game or sporting event — “I have already found that there was not an abnormally large number of fans without tickets on this occasion,” said Lord Taylor in his interim report. “With one or two exceptions, the police witnesses themselves did not subscribe to the ‘conspiracy’ theory (of a large number of late-arriving ticketless supporters).”

Cohen has seemingly changed his tune about Liverpool — from the extreme opinion on April 13 that the ticketless fans were the root cause of the Hillsborough Disaster to a twisted logic on April 20 that insists on Liverpool fans admitting that they were part responsible for the disaster because some ticketless fans were hell bent on getting inside the stadium.

According to a report from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), “it was unlikely that the terrace exceeded 10,124 and that total admissions were approximately equal to the designated capacity of 10,100 people.”

So even if there were as few as 24 ticketless supporters who were hell bent on getting into the Leppings Lane end, it would have been impossible for those fans — who were vastly outnumbered — to have an impact on the more than 3,000 fans who were inside the central pen.

“The point is if the people [without tickets] hadn’t been outside, this never [would have] happened,” said Cohen. “This is a stadium that had no problems prior to this particular day. That’s a fact.”

Except that it isn’t a fact. It’s inaccurate. As I reported in Monday’s EPL Talk article, there had been several incidents at Hillsborough prior to April 15, 1989 — most notably a game in 1981 when 38 Spurs supporters suffered crush-related injuries in the same Leppings Lane stand.

It’s time for Steven Cohen to share the facts with us that he claims he has. It’s also time for Cohen to publicly retract his statement that there were 6-8,000 ticketless Liverpool supporters. And most importantly of all, he needs to retract his statement that Liverpool fans were responsible for the Hillsborough Disaster.

There’s no evidence to show that 24 supporters sneaking over the wall at Hillsborough were a factor in the death of the 96 Liverpool fans who died from crush-related injuries. But there are plenty of pieces of evidence that chronicle the list of mistakes that South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield Wednesday and the Football Association committed.

For Steven Cohen to not apologize on air and to carry on about the need for Liverpool to share the responsibility of what happened at Hillsborough is sickening. It’s time for Cohen to admit he was wrong, apologize to Liverpool fans and to read the Taylor Interim Report to better educate himself and his World Soccer Daily listeners.

If he doesn’t apologize to his radio listeners, I’m concerned that he may spread his misinformation about what caused the Hillsborough Disaster to the weekly Fox Football Fone-In TV show that he co-hosts on Fox Soccer Channel. Having a loose cannon like Cohen on live TV is a risk that Fox has to determine whether it’s worth taking.

EPL Talk readers interested in learning more about Hillsborough as well as the chance to see TV footage and interviews should watch the excellent BBC Football Focus video from April 11, 2009 which was a special tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster.

I should note that Kartik Krishnaiyer, from our sister site Major League Soccer Talk, had an interview previously arranged with Cohen for this Thursday, so feel free to post your questions for Cohen there. The interview is a golden opportunity for Cohen to respond to direct questions from you about his opinions regarding what really happened at Hillsborough.

You can listen to the segment of the April 20 episode where Cohen discusses the EPL Talk article below.

UPDATE: On May 18, 2009, Steven Cohen apologized on World Soccer Daily for his unfortunate and inaccurate statements he made about the Hillsborough Disaster.

UPDATE 2: The comments regarding the Steven Cohen controversy have been closed. It’s time to return the discussion to football.

Steven Cohen, co-host of the World Soccer Daily radio show, has been at it again.

While the rest of the world last week was paying tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Tragedy, Cohen was complaining on his U.S. radio show that Liverpool fans failed to take responsibility for Hillsborough as well as claiming that if 6,000-8,000 ticketless fans had not shown up, the Hillsborough Disaster would never have happened.

The problem is, he’s wrong. Dead wrong.

Steven Cohen’s Statements About the Hillsborough Disaster

So what did Cohen say that was so wrong? Here are three statements that Cohen made about the Hillsborough Disaster on his Monday, April 13, 2009 episode of World Soccer Daily (note, you can listen to the entire audio clip at the bottom of this post):

“People showing up without ticket, hell bent in getting into somewhere where they shouldn’t be going because they don’t have tickets, is the root cause of [the Hillsborough Disaster].”

“I’m yet to read anybody write in this weekend’s Sunday papers in England, where they’re all doing big commemorations about the 96, and why we should never forget and how it’s changed the game, nobody discusses the 6-8,000 who showed up without tickets and my argument has always been, if those people don’t show up, this never happens.”

“[Hillsborough] is a stadium that week-in week-out, Sheffield Wednesday used without incident.”

World Soccer Daily Playing With Fire

Hosted by Steven Cohen and Kenny Hassan, the Los Angeles-based show is broadcast nationwide each weekday on Sirius Satellite Radio and also available as a daily podcast, which is one of the top 10 most popular sports podcasts on iTunes.

Without a doubt, Cohen is the voice of soccer in America. Since the launch of his network in May 2002, Cohen has succeeded in growing World Soccer Daily into the must-listen show about soccer in the United States. Coupled with his weekly co-host slot on Fox Soccer Channel’s Fox Football Fone-In show, 46-year-old Cohen has built a sizeable following, many of whom are impressionable fans who are relatively new to the sport and hang on his every word.

That’s fine when it’s fun and games, but when Cohen (a Chelsea supporter) spews out misinformation about the Hillsborough Disaster, it’s dangerous. One, because his beliefs about Hillsborough are completely wrong. And two, because by making his beliefs public, he’s giving many newbie soccer fans false information and thereby spreading the wrong information about the cause of the disaster. With such a large audience on radio and television, he has a responsibility to educate listeners on what really happened on April 15, 1989.

The Facts About The Hillsborough Tragedy

To dispel his myths, here are the facts:

1. “The immediate cause of the gross overcrowding and hence the disaster was the failure, when gate C was opened, to cut off access to the central pens which were already overfull,” — The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 265.
2. “Planning apart, however, it should have been clear in the control room where there was a view of the pens and of the crowd at the turnstiles that the tunnel had to be closed. If orders had been given to that effect when gate C was opened, the fans could have been directed to the empty areas of the wings and this disaster could still have been avoided. Failure to give that order was a blunder of the first magnitude,” — The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 231.
3. “I have already found that there was not an abnormally large number of fans without tickets on this occasion. With one or two exceptions, the police witnesses themselves did not subscribe to the ‘conspiracy’ theory (of a large number
   of late-arriving ticketless supporters). I am satisfied that the large concentration at Leppings Lane from 2.30 pm to 2.50 pm did not arrive as a result of any concerted plan. There were, I accept, small groups without tickets who were willing to exploit any adventitious chance of getting into the ground. They, together with the minority who had drunk too much, certainly aggravated the problem faced by the police. But that main problem was simply one of large numbers packed into the small area outside the turnstiles,” The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 208.
4. “The police witnesses who most impressed me did not consider the number of ticketless fans to be inordinately large. This accords with two other sources of evidence,” The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 200.
5. “Sheffield Wednesday FC’s own admission count system showed the terrace did not exceed its 10,100 capacity (for the Leppings Lane end). As part of their analysis, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) counted the number of [Liverpool] supporters entering the ground, including those through the turnstiles, through Gate C and even those who climbed over the turnstiles. They gave three admission figures based on their analysis. Their first figure was 9,267, their ‘best estimate’ was 9,734, and their third figure was a ‘maximum estimate’ of 10,124. The HSE report stated it was unlikely that the terrace exceeded 10,124 and that total admissions were approximately equal to the designated capacity of 10,100 people. Taylor surmised there was no substance to the allegation that ticketless fans caused the Disaster,” The Hillsborough Football Disaster: Context And Consequences, page 17. Also watch video evidence of the fans walking through the turnstiles and walking into the tunnel.
6. The Taylor Report exonerated the Liverpool fans of any culpability. “The main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control,” The Interim Taylor Report, paragraph 278.
7. Leppings Lane stand was deemed unsuitable in 1981 after 38 Spurs fans suffered crush related injuries. Sheffield Wednesday never carried out the work required. In addition to the 1981 incident, crushes also occurred at Hillsborough in 1987 and 1988. In fact Liverpool played Nottingham Forest in the same stage of the tournament one year prior at the same ground where Liverpool fans were crushed. Liverpool filed an official complaint prior to the 1989 FA-Cup semi final to air their concerns about safety.

Cohen was absolutely wrong on his April 13th show regarding the statements he made about the Hillsborough Tragedy. There were not, as he claimed, 6,000-8,000 ticketless fans. Cohen was emphatically wrong when he claimed that Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough Stadium was used week-in week-out without incident. And the reason none of the English newspapers last Sunday discussed the “6-8,000 who showed up without tickets” is because they didn’t exist. The vast majority of English journalists and pundits know better because they’ve taken time to study the facts rather than to believe the lies told by The Sun and the South Yorkshire Police.

Sure, there were a very small minority of ticketless fans at the ground. And sure, some of the supporters were drunken (as at any football game or sporting event), but the fact of the matter is that Cohen is living in the 80s with the inaccurate statements he’s spewing out.

The Liverpool supporters were a victim of a combination of mistakes by the South Yorkshire Police (for failing to notice that the central pen was overcrowded while the pens to the left and right had room for more spectators, as well as not directing the Liverpool fans who came through the turnstiles away from the central pen), Sheffield Wednesday Football Club (Leppings Lane was ill-suited to admit the 10,100 fans, had too few turnstiles and the club failed to fix those and other issues between 1981-1989 even though they were well aware of them) and the Football Association (for deciding to play the semi-final match at Hillsborough despite previous crushing incidents).

Cohen’s History of Blaming Liverpool Fans For Hillsborough

Cohen’s comments last week aren’t the first time he’s created controversy on American airwaves regarding Hillsborough. On December 5, 2006, he appeared on the Fox Football Fone-In TV show on the U.S. network Fox Soccer Channel and claimed that Liverpool fans were responsible for Hillsborough. He then apologized on the December 12 episode of Fox Football Fone-In, but the damage was clearly already done.

In April, 2007, he again blamed the Liverpool fans for causing the Hillsborough Disaster, this time on his radio show.

He may have apologized on Fox Football Fone-In December 12, 2006, but his views haven’t changed one iota — rendering his 2006 apology virtually meaningless.

Comparisons to Kelvin MacKenzie

Cohen’s misinformed views about what caused the Hillsborough Disaster are similar in context to those of Kelvin MacKenzie.

On April 19, 1989, MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun newspaper published a sensationalized account of what happened at Hillsborough. MacKenzie’s newspaper that day alleged that ticketless and drunken Liverpool F.C. fans were responsible for the disaster, having supposedly tried to fight their way into the stadium by rushing the turnstiles and attacking policemen outside the ground.

It’s taken 20 years of education in the United Kingdom to try to get the public to understand what was the real cause of the Hillsborough Disaster.

Then in November 2006, just days before Cohen said basically the same thing, MacKenzie again claimed that drunken Liverpool fans caused the disaster.

“I’m still reading the same old stuff about who’s responsible. And it’s the police, it’s the stadium, it’s whatever,” said Cohen in the April 13 radio episode. Cohen then inferred that the Liverpool fans don’t take responsibility for their own actions regarding the events that led up to the Hillsborough Tragedy. Despite his December, 2006 apology, he obviously hasn’t changed his controversial beliefs and he continues to appear on the Fox Football Fone-In show week-in week out.

It’s fitting that on the April 13 episode of the Fox show, it was co-host Nick Webster who paid tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster in a pre-recorded segment at the end of the show. Cohen wasn’t included.

Conclusion

Twenty years after the Hillsborough Disaster, we’re still hearing the same old lies about what happened on that fateful day. It’s time for people to educate themselves about what really happened and stand up against those who fabricate misinformation. For our current generation and future generations, we owe it to them and the 96 who died to tell the real truth of what transpired in Sheffield on April 15, 1989.

To learn more about what really happened at the Hillsborough Disaster, read the Interim Taylor Report, and visit the Hillsborough Football Disaster and Hillsborough Justice Campaign websites.

Also, read the follow-up article to this one entitled Steven Cohen Offers Liverpool Fans No Hillsborough Apology.

UPDATE: On May 18, 2009, Steven Cohen apologized on World Soccer Daily for his unfortunate and inaccurate statements he made about the Hillsborough Disaster.

UPDATE 2: The comments regarding the Steven Cohen controversy have been closed. It’s time to return the discussion to football.

UPDATE 3: Fox Soccer Channel announced on July 29, 2009 that Steven Cohen’s position on Fox Football Fone-In has been filled by Eric Wynalda.

UPDATE 4: Steven Cohen announced on August 21, 2009 that his World Soccer Daily show that day would be his last.

Where it regards what BBC Radio 5 Live overnight presenter Dotun Adebayo has termed ‘Brazilian shirt names,’ Andy Brassell has gone by many in his professional career. ‘Top Brass.’ ‘The Lion of Lyon.’ ‘(Getting Down To) Brass Tacks.’ Even once, on a night when he was on 5 Live’s World Football Phone-In via ISDN from Newcastle, the ‘Frog on the Tyne,’ a play-on-words of Lindisfame’s second album.

All joking aside, though, the London-born Brassell, 32, has also amassed a strong portfolio as a freelance sportswriter, contributing to UEFA’s ‘Champions’ magazine as well as ‘When Saturday Comes’, Sky Sports’ website, ‘The First Post’ and portugoal.net. In 2006, he also made his authorial debut, releasing All or Nothing: A Season in the Life of the Champions League. On top of that, he and Tim Vickery have in recent months taken their show on the road, so to speak, signing on as the European and South American correspondents respectively for the World Soccer Daily radio program out of Los Angeles.

EPL Talk readers may recall Vickery’s interview with Christopher Harris for Episode 105 of our podcast, but with Brassell joining Tim on WSD in recent months, and also this week’s return of the UEFA Champions League, we thought it was high time we also formally introduce the ‘Brassanova’ to his newfound North American public.

See what I’ve done there? No? Good, let’s pretend that bit never happened. Now, though, let’s get onto something that actually did – The interview:

With London being the most linguistically diverse city in the world, did growing up in such a multicultural setting contribute at all to your interest in football in mainland Europe?
Brassell: I guess that would make sense – the idea of diversity never really struck me as a concept until later in my childhood, as it was just the norm. But really, European football just seemed so exotic to me when I was a child (and it still does!). We never really had the money to go off on overseas holidays, so teams from France, Germany, Italy, Poland or wherever just seemed as if they were from different planets to me. When I saw a non-English team on the TV, I used to dig out the atlas and find out where they played. The ban on English clubs in Europe when I was growing up just accentuated this feeling. Frankly, I would have given my right arm to have Spanish football on TV when I was a kid, and when Gazza moved to Italy and they started showing Serie A – when I was a teenager – it was fantastic. Today’s young folk don’t know how lucky they are!

You support AFC Wimbledon now, but followed Wimbledon F.C. before the club moved to Milton Keynes. Describe the mood around Selhurst Park in those final months, and have you ever felt any bitterness about what happened to the club?
Brassell: Well, I don’t exactly wish MK Dons well, that’s for sure. And of course I felt a great sense of loss when the move became concrete with the FA appeal decision, shamelessly buried in the midst of England’s 2002 World Cup campaign by the spineless people who allowed the decision to pass contrary to their own laws.

The final game we all went to as Wimbledon as was (v Barnsley at Selhurst Park) was surreal – protests went on throughout the game and some even cheered Barnsley’s winning goal, though a minority of others, unbelievably, were still moaning at people to just ‘sit down and watch the game,’ conveniently overlooking the fact that if we left the club to get on with it, there wouldn’t be a game to watch anymore. Fortunately the vast majority of the hardcore didn’t bury their heads in the sand, but fought the good fight from beginning to end in a peaceful and dignified, yet passionate way.

The positivity that the supporters created by mobilising in the face of such a bleak situation is what created AFC Wimbledon, so while I wouldn’t want any set of fans to go through what we Wimbledon fans went through in 2001-2, the protests that went on in that season were inspiring, and it’s actually hard to regret what’s happened since. Today we have a club that we can be immensely proud of. So much so that while MK Dons are a despicable creation, I don’t really share the revenge fantasies against them that others (quite understandably) do. They’re just not that important.

Are there any other clubs that you’ve encountered in your travels that you’ve taken a liking to and/or kept a lookout for their results?
Brassell: I feel a closeness to Lyon as I watched them every other week for a couple of years, but believe me, there will be no split loyalties when AFC Wimbledon play them in the 2021 Champions League final!

What made you choose to move to Lyon – and, later on, back to London – and what differences did you discover between living in England and in France?
Brassell: My wife and I had both talked about leaving London to try something else for a while – she studied in Spain and France and went back to Spain to live for a while after her studies, so missed living abroad a little. We already had friends who were from Lyon, so it was a good way to introduce ourselves to life in France. It’s also very close to Switzerland, which was handy in the lead-up to Euro 2008.

Coming from London, the pace of life was different of course. It was definitely a case of leaving my ‘London head’ at home as you have to be more patient. I actually chose which bank to go with on the basis that it was the only one that didn’t shut for a lunch hour! On a football level, the atmosphere in stadiums was much better than British people might expect, though France has singularly failed to embrace Britain’s number one sport, ie watching football in the pub. Nowhere near the same numbers go to watch games there and if they do, it tends to be specifically for that purpose, and when the game is over, people leave straight away. Though this is very handy if you want to take your other half out for a drink and watch the game at the same time, which would never happen here in the UK!

The bio at the beginning of your book lists you as having been living in Battersea, London, but you dedicated the biggest number of chapters in your book to Ligue 1 sides (Marseille, Lyon, Monaco and Saint Etienne), and covered as many Spanish clubs (3) for the book as you had English teams. What do you feel that the leagues in France and Spain offer that others don’t?
Brassell: The pick of clubs covered in the book was quite arbitary, as it was a project that evolved very organically. Whilst freelancing, I had the opportunity to go to Champions League games over Europe, so the idea of a running narrative of the CL season occurred to me, and I had to make the decision to go with it there and then. As I was doing a bit of work in France, I have quite a few French clubs in the first half of the book, though I wouldn’t have included them were they not relevant to the project as a whole and for this reason I left a few others out. Factoring in clubs from diverse countries in Europe was necessary as the book progressed to give it balance and shape.

That said, I do love French and Spanish football. Ligue 1 fascinates me because France has produced, and still produces, such fantastic players, and this is where they all start – think of the likes of Thuram, Petit and Henry coming from Monaco, and how excited the French media are at the moment that their ‘new Zidane’, Yoann Gourcuff, is following in Zizou’s footsteps at Bordeaux. It has evolved now into almost a finishing school for Premier League players, and you can see why. The technical level that players glean from their formation is supplemented by a really tough, physical league. The physical aspect isn’t always something that the French themselves appreciate – note Platini’s comments that ‘if I wanted to see athletes, I’d watch the Olympics’ – but it is the single biggest barrier to overseas players succeeding in English football, and players who’ve played in Ligue 1 first are better prepared than most.

Spain is still the best for me, I have to admit. I can understand why the Premier League tends to be the preferred choice of the world – the intensity, etc. – but there is a better balance in Spain between technical excellence and excitement, in my view. The overtly political side of it is fascinating, too, especially for an outsider.

Considering all the legwork that you’d done for the book, it wouldn’t have made sense for you to not be in attendance for that season’s final in Gelsenkirchen. What was the atmosphere like in and around the ground? Was there ever a feeling that throwing Chelsea and/or Deportivo La Coruña (that season’s semifinal losers) into the mix would have made for a more interesting final?
Brassell: The atmosphere was good, and I should know, as I got there four hours before kick-off! But it was more convivial and fun than passionate, mainly for two reasons. Firstly, one of the clubs, Monaco, have next to no fans and their allocation was therefore filled with a lot of ‘tourists’ as opposed to regulars. It was a pretty normal French sporting crowd, there for the spectacle rather than to roar their side on with passion and blind faith. Secondly. while the Arena AufSchalke is a very tidy stadium indeed, it’s completely isolated. It’s 20 minutes’ tram ride out of the centre of Gelsenkirchen (which is hardly Vegas anyway) and so there is the stadium, the training pitches, club museum and nothing else there. There was a fan park but of course this lacks the spontaneity of a normal working city welcoming a load of football fans for the day. I understand that a fan park is more practical, but it’s not the same.

Football-wise, I think the final was just right. It really was the year of the underdog in the competition. Monaco played the most exciting football, and Porto the most effective, so they both deserved to be there, and the better team won. Deportivo are a good microcosm of that season as a whole, going through all the highs and lows of cup football in the Champions League and agonisingly missing out on what was their best-ever chance.

I cannot imagine that irony is ever lost on authors when they are choosing what to put on their book covers. What was the reasoning behind choosing the cover photo that you had for All or Nothing – do you see it as equal parts Jose Mourinho kissing the trophy as well as his reflection?
Brassell: That he was kissing his reflection wasn’t actually something I noticed until after I’d chosen the photo and a friend pointed it out, but it’s no less amusing for that! I just felt Mourinho was the key figure in the competition that year. Porto weren’t a team of stars, but completely moulded in the image of their coach. As I said in the book, if you spoke to Porto fans about the team’s success, they immediately referred to the coach ahead of any of the players, which is quite unusual.

At the end of the book, you make an interesting point about big clubs bringing in big-name players over the summer months to help make up for any shortcomings in the season just gone. Do you think we will continue to see much of that in the coming years, especially given the stark changes to the economic climate even just since the book was published?
Brassell: I think so. Referencing the book, Leeds are a good example of what can happen when a club are trying to punch above their weight, as are Depor, who ran on a huge debt to finance their years of success and have been paying for it ever since, so I don’t think the global climate of the moment is the only reason clubs would get themselves in a hole. It will always happen. On the other hand, Bayern will always be Bayern – if they’re coming up short, they will go and buy the players they need. Last time they missed out on the CL, they went and bought Ribery, Toni, Klose, etc. And the real giants of the game will always get a degree of credit if they need it.

In recent months, both you and Tim Vickery have signed on as correspondents for World Soccer Daily out of Los Angeles, serving in similar capacities to your work with the World Football Phone-In on BBC Radio 5 Live. Does it feel strange to field questions about European football from a North American audience?
Brassell: Not at all. Unlike a lot of other popular sports (American Football, basketball, cricket. etc), football is a truly global game, and with more players playing abroad than ever before, people will always be interested in following the game outside their own shores, and particularly in Europe, with the concentration of the biggest clubs in the world being there. With particular reference to the US, they have a national team that’s done well in World Cups and regardless of the merits or otherwise of MLS, American players make important contributions weekly all over Europe. It’s nearly 20 years since John Harkes came over to Sheffield Wednesday and started doing away with those stereotypes, so we really should be over it by now.

As for questions from North American listeners, here’s another: Do you feel that many clubs are buying up young American talent before those players are ready to make the jump?
Brassell: It’s not just young American talent. This is an issue for a lot of countries, particularly South American ones, where the clubs rely on transfer cash to stay afloat. Conversely, for players to learn the ropes in the league where they’re going to play – be it in England, Spain, wherever – at a young age can make them develop more quickly in the case of someone like Fabregas, who is mature enough to deal with the lifestyle adaptation.

Looking at the US I guess Jozy Altidore is the player you might have in mind – I know Pellegrini and his staff are very impressed with him and are just biding their time with him. I certainly think Altidore will learn more alongside the likes of Pires, Senna, Cazorla, etc. than he would in MLS.

Between the WFPI, WSD and all your other work, what is the most memorable question you’ve ever been asked about European football?
Brassell: Tough to sift through them all off the top of my head but I loved the one I got on WSD the other week about Torino. Nobody ever asks about them and it’s great to reminisce over what was one of Europe’s greatest footballing dynasties, both pre and post-war before the Superga disaster. Because Juve have been so successful since, people often don’t hear about that.

I noticed that you also work as a DJ. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into that, and also, as someone who’s also a bit of a music buff, do you feel that there are many connections between football and pop music today?
Brassell: I started DJing at university, and putting on my own club nights, and have been doing it ever since. I do try to keep football and music separate, though sometimes it’s hard to resist, especially when you hear something like the bi-lingual single that Basile Boli and Chris Waddle did together when they were both at Marseille (look it up on YouTube, you won’t regret it!). It beats seven bells out of ‘Diamond Lights‘. Andy Cole’s two singles, however…..

As footballers are often big stars in wider media nowadays rather than simply famous amongst football fans, there seems to be a misapprehension that footballers are all on the same cool level as the likes of Kanye West, when if you think about, you know that if this was the ’80s, a lot of them would be driving a Ford Capri and listening to Phil Collins on a loop. I’m looking at you, Gary Neville.

Finally, in lieu of a more general ‘random facts about you’ question, there’s something that I must know: I have found in my research that you have a pet Valencian bat named Joaquin. At what point did you decide that dogs, cats, etc. weren’t cutting it for you?
Brassell: Joaquin is stuffed, and so doesn’t require the sort of attention that a dog or cat would require – and that I wouldn’t be able to provide, as I’m often travelling. He’s an independent kind of a bat, and he understands my football commitments, being a keen follower of El Che himself.

Brassell can be heard on alternating weeks between the World Football Phone-In segment of the Up All Night program on BBC Radio 5 Live, which airs on Friday nights from 9:30 p.m. EST, and World Soccer Daily – he usually appears there every other Thursday – which airs Monday to Friday from 1-3 p.m. EST. Both shows are also available via podcast on iTunes. All or Nothing: A Season in the Life of Champions League, which is out through Trafford Publishing, can be purchased on Amazon.com and also via the book’s website, www.allornothingbook.com.

EPL Talk’s ex-pat and Anglophile readers familiar with the classic British sitcom Only Fools and Horses will likely remember the program’s 1985 Christmas special, “To Hull and Back,” in which Del Boy and Rodney unwittingly end up in the northern English city of Hull on their way to picking up smuggled diamonds in Holland.  When it dawns on Del Boy that he’s ended up in Humberside, though, he angrily demands that his brother rush him back to London as “otherwise I’ll be saying ‘Hey-up’ and breeding whippets before I’m very much older.”

Now, Yorkshire accents, sighthound-breeding and shipping ports as far as the eye can see are all well and good, but OFAH’s depiction of Hull doesn’t give the impression that there’s much else going on in the town.  It’s a picture that many North American soccer fans following the English game probably presumed out of ignorance up until Dean Windass’ volley in last season’s Coca-Cola Championship promotion play-off final against Bristol City brought England’s largest city previously without having ever tasted top-flight football into the Premier League.

Now that Hull City A.F.C. is finally in the limelight, however, the Tigers are milking it for all its worth, and that apparently includes making inroads on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Following the lead of Oldham Athletic chairman Simon Blitz, Hull have launched a publicity campaign in North America in an apparent bid to build the Tigers’ name recognition abroad and, with any luck, also bring in potential new supporters.  The bulk of the campaign so far seems to be emanating from Los Angeles, where, in recent days, both manager Phil Brown and club chairman Paul Duffen have been interviewed at length on World Soccer Daily, a popular caller-driven satellite radio program that is also downloaded by approximately 290,000 listeners worldwide each weekday.

Bringing Brown and Duffen onto the show has been a major coup for WSD – which in recent months has been unveiling increasingly high-profile regular guests such as Robbie Earle, Tim Vickery and Andy Brassell – but it also stands to pay dividends for Hull City, a club vying for fans’ attention on two fronts: Not just abroad, but also even in its own stadium.

In terms of support, the Tigers face the same problem that Premier League rivals Wigan Athletic have been made to endure: They play in a city that is crazy about rugby league.  It is perhaps not such a big surprise, given that rugby league originated in Yorkshire, but have fun telling that to Hull City, who share the Kingston Communications Stadium with Hull F.C., the city’s Super League rugby side.  Both the Tigers and Latics play in multi-purpose stadia, which theoretically keep the football teams on par with their rugby league counterparts where facilities are concerned, but when it’s butts in seats that means more to the clubs financially – which is where the football clubs are getting the short end of the stick – it’s hard to blame either for branching out to recruit new supporters wherever they can.

Bearing that in mind, what Hull City have done in building bridges over the Pennines, across the Atlantic and into North America is perhaps as wise a PR move as we have seen from any Premier League side in a good while, and they stand to add to their fan base because of it. They probably would have had a little more luck with the campaign had they launched it earlier in the season when their place in the Premiership table indicated more feast than (the current) famine, but nevertheless, given the club’s apparent enthusiasm to embrace the North American market, new fans to the game on this side of the pond could do much worse than to hop onto the black and amber bandwagon.