Last month I sat down with the brilliant Pablo Bosque. With a combined following of over 100,000 people across various social media platforms, Pablo has gained a sizable audience through his witty and creative dialect between sport, current affairs and leftism. Across a wide-ranging and thoroughly enjoyable conversation, we covered everything from Irish sport to the exploits of Diego Maradona, but I made sure to start off by discussing the most infamous agitator in Irish sporting and political commentary.
I saw a recent post of yours featuring Eamon Dunphy. Do you have a personal favourite Dunphy moment?
Two spring to mind. The obvious is the one with Rod Liddle. If you watch it back, even the camera angles are so dramatic, the way they pan across to him as he’s defending Keane just before he says it. A more niche one is this time he was drunk on a radio show and the host is admonishing him, saying how he’s a disgrace for being drunk on national radio. And Dunphy just goes back to him, “I’m sober as a judge baby”.
How do you feel about the old punditry panel on RTÉ compared to the kind of thing we get on stations like Sky today?
I think that old crew of Dunphy, Giles and Brady were so great. Not just because of the quality of their analysis, but also because of the feeling of camaraderie between them. Then compare that to the pundits on Sky, where it’s far more reactionary. They probably have to think about the commercial aspect of the punditry. Now that so many people are streaming football illegally, clips on social media are a big pull for them. So, with the RTÉ guys, it’s endearing because it almost feels like an uncle talking to you in the pub, whereas with Sky it’s more social capital.
In terms of the commercialisation aspect, how do you navigate that aspect of sport, given your own political beliefs are far more leftist?
It’s difficult. Definitely in part by staying closer to home. The national team was my entry point into football, really, that qualification campaign for Euro 2016 and then the competition itself. As well as that I’ve been following the League of Ireland very closely in the last couple of years. I’m probably the quintessential casual Bohs fan.
What is it about the League of Ireland that’s appealing for you?
Probably a similar quality to the national team, where people are there for the love of the sport itself, rather than any commercial aspect – in terms of both the players and the fans. That way you can focus on the stuff on the pitch rather than the stuff off it, whereas with the Premier League sometimes you have to wonder how much of the conversation is based around stuff like transfer fees. Even for me, as a casual fan, I can take more pride in it in that way – there’s a great sense of community in it.
Do you feel as if that’s a quality that’s present in Irish sport in general, given that “community” seems to be a word that’s thrown around so often in this country?
Yes, and not just in terms of football. If you look at small, rural communities, they’re seeing population decreases in comparison to the major cities. Even compared to commuter towns, there’s obvious issues in terms of employment that are causing people to move elsewhere. Which is to say that what’s really pulling some of these places up is the GAA, not only the matches but also the social aspect surrounding the matches. It goes with League of Ireland clubs as well, the idea that sport can be a unifying thing.
Coming back to the national team, can you think of a moment where the team might have represented something larger than itself?
I think the existence of the team itself represents something larger than itself, just because of how it represents the populace of Ireland today. If you look up the makeup of the team, there’s players of different ethnicities, players who have parents or grandparents from other countries. What the team can do is hold up a mirror, and by providing this mirror it can serve to undercut some of the racist dialogue that’s so prominent online by showing the true nature of Irish society.
And what about individual players, not necessarily just with the Irish team?
I mean the obvious example is James McClean’s treatment regarding his refusal to wear a poppy. I think what that demonstrates is not only the lack of understanding in England regarding the situation in the North of Ireland but also a difference between the way the English media treats athletes compared to the Irish media. I can’t imagine the media here hounding individuals the way they do in Britain, especially the way they go after some of their own players. Beyond the Irish team, the obvious example is Maradona. There’s that clip of him going around social media at the minute where he talks about being offered the same award in America and Cuba and choosing the one in Cuba, for the obvious reason of him being anti-imperialist.
I’ve seen some of your posts reference the Brazilian footballer, Sócrates. For those who aren’t as familiar with him as someone like Maradona, could you talk about him?
He played in the 1970s and 1980s in Brazil. In football terms, people might know him from playing in the same team as Zico in the World Cup in 1982. He was one of those people where football seemed to be secondary, where a lot of his media interviews were very focused on the issues for working people in Brazil. Interestingly, the national team was the big thing for him in a sporting sense, which probably underlines how he was focused on representing the people of the country. I think it stands in contrast to the way most footballers seem to live their lives separate from the real world, where the focus seems to be solely on playing the game.
Do you feel footballers are somewhat complicit in the corruption that seems so widespread? I’m thinking of the players playing in the World Cup in countries like Russia and Qatar, and now obviously in the US.
I think the World Cup’s going to be played either way. And it’s probably wrong to go too hard on individual footballers when the issues are so systematic in the way FIFA conducts itself as an organisation, you know, giving Trump a phony peace prize and stuff like that. What’s probably missing is an individual player who’s willing to speak out themselves in a way that doesn’t feel tokenistic.
With that being said, do you think it’s possible for people to find their way into Marxism or socialism through sport, given that?
Most of the problems in our society can be traced back to the elephant in the room of capitalism. And in football, so much of the commercial aspect is seen at the forefront, be it the amount of money that’s passed around between clubs and agents or the owners so clearly acting as venture capitalist, it’s easy to start a dialogue over these issues due to the interest in the sport being so huge. And by posting silly little videos online, you make it easy for people both to see it and understand it. Especially when you don’t have some oligarch looking over your shoulder telling you what to think.
(Fittingly, this interview had to be paused midway through as a protest to save The Complex passed by the window, the noise forcing us to pause our conversation and watch the marchers pass).
