John Oliver appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman on Wednesday, and answered every questions Letterman could conceive about English soccer and how it works.
Some of it was a little bit incorrect (19 Premier League teams?), almost as if Oliver is so busy putting together Last Week Tonight for Sunday broadcast that he doesn’t watch as much soccer as he used to, and Letterman seems to be deliberately playing straight guy to set Oliver up for a few jokes, but there are some genuine pearls of wisdom in there. Here are my seven favorite:
On teams of consequence: “There are soccer teams everywhere. Of consequence? Probably about five or six that could actually win something. The rest of them are trying their hardest, and we respect that.”
On relegation: “It’s a classic British thing; you want to make failure really hurt. So, you are relegated and … we’ve managed to get the class system in sport.”