The Latvian Football Podcast – interview

Opublikowano 10.03.2024
o 14:41
przez Rafał

The Latvian league is also of interest to many fans abroad. Latvian projects that write about football in English certainly help to achieve this, so that the content is easily accessible to everyone in the world. One of them is „The Latvian Football Podcast”, we talked with projects author about various topics related to Latvian football and the project itself.

Rafał Kobza (“Bałtycki futbol”): First of all, can you tell who you are, what you do privately?

Dmitrijs (The Latvian Football Podcast): My name is Dmitrijs and I am the, let’s say, author of the idea for the Latvian Football Podcast as well the creative director and producer. We started the podcast last year with Ēriks, whom I did not know prior to this but we followed each other on social media and, from that, I did know that he could speak English well and that he played for Mārupe and so probably knew some things about football. Because back then, much like now, I know very little about it. For this year, which will be the second year of the podcast, we also have Frank and Gustavs joining us. Frank is a Welshman who lives in Riga and he will be joining me as the new co-host and Gustavs will primarily work behind the scenes creating various visuals for our social media accounts. In daily life, I am associate professor of business and management and I am in charge of entrepreneurship education and competency development at my university, among a range of other things.

So why do you decide to be interested and talk about football, about which you have known little?

This is a question to which there are many answers and combinations of answers. On the surface level, in the words of Aristotle, teaching is the highest form of understanding. So, by giving myself accountability, however informal, to represent the entirety of Latvian football publicly to both local and international audiences, is really one of the best ways to really learn about Latvian football. Yes, there is still so much that I do not know or understand, but looking back at where I was last year – there is simply no comparison. Another answer would be connected with patriotism. As I mentioned before, I lived abroad for a very long time. Even though coming back was partly coincidental and might not have even occurred for many years were it not for the disgust with Brexit, it immediately became clear that Latvia is where I need to be and where my soul needs to be. My wife, naturally, knew this all along and did not want to stay there longer than necessary. Promoting Latvian football on an international stage is, thus, just one way of giving back and making up for the years that I spent away. I also act in similar ways in my academic career and in private life.

It is, I think, a somewhat interesting story how I learned about Virsliga and how I ended up supporting RFS and not, for example, Riga FC or another club from Riga, which is also where I am from. It was during early Covid days, we lived in Kuldiga at the time and all work was being done online, so I didn’t really need to drive to Riga unless we wanted to. I don’t remember what triggered it, but one day I remembered that football is played in Latvia and that I should take a look at what’s doing on. Nothing remained from the Virsliga that I remembered from before leaving, even the stadium of the team that I supported no longer existed and I could not even fully remember what it was called. So I put my scientist hat on and began reading about every club. Because of the name, ambition and them being based at the Skonto Stadium, Riga FC seemed like a natural choice but I just could not support their ownership model. It was the same with Liepaja. I thought that Metta was interesting, so I read up on them. And then I discovered that Maris Verpakovskis was the general manager at RFS, which immediately sparked significant interest, so I started to follow RFS closer and, over time, grew closer to the club. I think the faith in the image of Verpakovskis inherited from childhood as someone who could do no wrong to Latvian football allowed me to believe that, despite many things that I did not like about RFS at the time, the club will continue developing in what I consider to be a right direction. This proved to be true as the years had flown by. So, the way I discovered Virsliga is, I think, very different from how other Latvians do it. I think it is more similar to how someone from abroad would probably discover it, which also gives me some insight into the questions that people who listen to our podcast may have.

How did this idea that it is worth attracting foreigners to Latvian football come in your mind?

It wasn’t really a question of worth but of opportunity. Football is something akin to a global religion but once I began my journey to rediscover Latvian football, it quickly became obvious that there is very little access to information about Latvian football in languages other than Latvian. For me, having spent a significant part of my life living abroad, this immediately stood out as a major missed opportunity. Not least because I began to enjoy our football a great deal and genuinely thought that it could be just as interesting to many others. On the one hand, it has that rustic quality about it that the glossy and almost plastic game in the top leagues is missing. On the other hand, because of many reasons, primarily to do with decades of occupation, we are starting football from zero. I find this very interesting. It’s one thing to read about how historic clubs such as Sheffield or Everton survived and grew, or about how historic rivalries developed, such as the El Classico or the Milan derby, but it’s an entirely different thing to live through it.

How can you rate the interest in Latvian football from other countries? Where is the interest coming from the most?

This is difficult to say, especially because I don’t want to speak for entire countries which I may know very little about. From what we see through our podcast, there is significant interest from Great Britain and good levels of interest from the United States, Germany, Finland and Norway.

Why exactly podcast? Have you thought about other options, such as articles, videos?

Podcasts are fun and informal, whereas written word is often taken to be fact, despite the original intention. The premise of our project is simple – we are not a news outlet or a punditry team, we are football fans who follow Latvian football and offer our thoughts about it. I will admit that we are probably getting pulled a bit more into the 'media’ direction now in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons, but the core of the project is this informal aspect.

This is the main reason. Another reason is that I have many years of experience with podcasting in my area of work, so this format comes naturally, even if it is not what it used to be in the past.

What do you think about the Baltic League? Are you for or against? Would such a project be a good opportunity for Latvian football to get more attention from other countries?

Yes, certainly! When we came across this latest version of the Baltic league at some point during the course of last season, I was not especially enthusiastic. It seemed like a lot about it is either too complex or too artificial. Additionally, I could not care less for Estonian or Lithuanian teams, to be honest. Since the Livonian Winter League was announced at the start of this year, my position changed 180 degrees overnight. I guess this is a great example of 'don’t say no until you try’. Even though Livonian Winter League is only a small fraction of what the Baltic League could be, I still enjoyed it with all my heart. The best and most unexpected part was learning about Estonian teams and interacting with fans from Estonia – it was such great fun! So, while there are still questions about the format of the Baltic league and some hypothetical scenarios that are not really addressed, I am now completely in favour of it.

The enlarged market and increased international attention are also things that will only benefit our football and that of our neighbours.

The 2024 season of the latvian Virsliga started this weekend. What are your predictions? Will we see a title fight between RFS and Riga FC again?

I think there is a good chance that we will. Valmiera should be stronger this year, but will they be strong enough to meaningfully challenge for even the second place? I don’t think so. So, yes, I think we will have Riga and RFS contesting the title but I don’t think it will be like last year. My guess is that top 4 is going to be much closer in terms of points than last year. The fight to avoid relegation should also be red hot this year as I don’t see an obvious bottom team, such that was Super Nova. I do think that Riga FC will finally win it again in 2024, but only because RFS will get into another European group stage.

One of the problems of the Virsliga is that the difference in football level between it and the second division is as huge as two other worlds. Do you think there is any solution to fix this?

This is not only a problem between Virsliga and Nakotnes liga but even between top half of Virsliga and bottom half! But this is not unique to us – just look at the difference between the English Premier League and English Football league. The difference in one level of the pyramid is tenfold. Just like there, it also comes down to money here. Nakotnes Liga is semi-pro at best but mainly amateur. Of course there is going to be a tremendous jump from non-professional activity to professional, whether football or anything else. So the way to reduce this is to professionalise Nakotnes liga. But the market is simply not there and there is also limited interest or ability from clubs even in Virsliga, let alone below that, to explore innovative business models or alternative sources of generating revenue.

Latvian football: the main pros and cons.

The main plus is that it is Latvian football – it’s ours and nobody else’s, and that makes it special regardless of anything else. In a more objective sense, the football is of excellent value for money – it is of really high quality but also incredibly affordable and safe. The main minus is infrastructure – we have, at the moment, one and a half specialized football stadiums. One is Skonto, which is iconic but very outdated, and another is LNK, which is new but mostly under construction still.

Can you agree with the statement that the best way to get someone interested in Latvian football is not with what happens on the pitch, but with everything around it? For example, with stories like „Noah Jūrmala”, etc.

No, I do not agree. Cheap drama may turn heads, but it will not generate sustained engagement. I think this one is simple – the more visible our clubs are on the international stage, the more interest Latvian football as a whole will attract. Just look at the fairytale that KI Klaksvik offered to the world last year. Stories like that – of underdogs fighting and succeeding against all odds – will interest people. That, after all, is to romance of football that people love and crave!

If there was one thing you could change in Latvian football here and now, what would it be?

Stands full of fans for every game. Short of that, much higher quality of tv broadcasts. In both cases, what I think we need above all else is much higher levels of people engaging with football.

Do you think there are too few sources of information about football in Latvia? I’m not even thinking about professional media like Sportacentrs or Delfi, but hobby projects like mine or yours. I knew of only one such – „Pie Sporta Galda”, but unfortunately it no longer exists. In any case, don’t Latvian children dream of becoming sports journalists?

I think this is certainly true for non-Latvian sources. Outside of social media there is basically nothing available at all. In Latvian… there is Edmunds Novickis and his Patreon, there is the Futbolbumbas podcast, PPK and, like you mentioned, professional media. I suspect that the amount of sources is probably adequate for the size of our football market. What I would love to see and what there is completely zero coverage of at the moment is womens football and lower league football. Our team is too small to be able to follow that at the moment, although we hope to remedy this obvious gap sooner rather than later. Of course, I cannot speak about what Latvian children dream about, but I certainly would not dare call myself a sports journalist either. It has never been easier to create multimedia content than now, so as long as there is interest, ambition and willingness to put in some relatively hard work, why not? I think that not being afraid of being a neophyte is probably the key factor here – you don’t have to be at the level of Novickis, Suveizda or Birjuks in order to participate in a public conversation about football as long as you are willing to learn and to be honest about who you are and what you do. I hope that our amateur project might help others see that this is true.

Your funniest story related to Latvian football, anecdote?

Don’t have – everything is very serious!

All photos are from personal archive.

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