He got a foot into the soccer world blogging the 2006 World Cup for The New Republic. “When I hear my kids’ accents, I never get tired of that,” says Bennett, who officially became an American citizen in 2018. Very, very quick.” They’ve got four kids now, all effortlessly American. ‘When they met, it was murder.’ I met her at a bar, and that was it. (His firms have been hired for jobs ranging from chasing down the riches of Saddam Hussein to digging up dirt on a Harvey Weinstein accuser.) “Have you ever seen Hart to Hart?” he asks, referring to a detective-romance show from the early ’80s. “When I was working - that was all just trying to find the thing.” If you’re a famous American and you want to show off your love of the game, you go on ‘Men in Blazers.’Īt a bar in Washington, he met his wife, Vanessa Kroll, the sister of the comedian Nick Kroll and daughter of the corporate-intelligence billionaire Jules Kroll. “It took me a long time to work out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be,” he says, switching from black coffee to a glass of Chianti. When asked about the years he spent working with Bronfman, Bennett demurs. The billionaire also co-founded Birthright, the Zionist organization that pays for members of the Diaspora to visit Israel. Still, he did all right, working his way up to a position as vice-president for Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, the charity wing of Charles Bronfman’s business empire, which once included ownership of Seagram and the Montreal Expos. “I’ve never been a very good long-term planner,” he says. In 1993, Bennett flew to Chicago without any objective other than to make it in America. In his best-selling memoir, (Re)born in the U.S.A., Bennett recalls an ’80s childhood during which he was so obsessed with American pop culture that he had the Stars and Stripes painted on the wall of his bedroom, an unusual choice for a middle-class Jew growing up with a conservative father in Thatcherite England. According to Bennett-family lore, his great-grandfather was a kosher butcher in central Ukraine who boarded an ocean liner thinking he was headed for New York, only to disembark in the sooty heart of England. It’s a mistake of history that such a champion of U.S. to become a mainstay in this country, Roger will be a big part of the reason,” says Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff and a guest at a recent live show in Washington, D.C. “When historians look back to see how soccer went from being a ‘foreign’ sport in the U.S. For the U.S.-versus-England stream, Matthew McConaughey, the co-owner of the MLS team Austin FC, signed on to push the guys to “find their frequency.” Power brokers stop by, too. They’ve got fans in high places: If you’re a famous American and you want to show off your love of the game, you go on Men in Blazers. But if you have someone guiding you, it’s so illuminating and life-affirming and innovative and all that crap.” “If you just wander in, you won’t last very long. “It’s a Star Wars cantina, football,” says Bennett, who even in person is a font of pop-cultural references that attempt to close the gap between the sport and entertainment-addled Americans. “A hero’s welcome,” he says in a flourish of British self-effacement.įor 12 years now, Bennett and his co-host, Michael Davies, two bald guys in their 50s, have been the poster children for soccer’s growing popularity in the States, English-splaining the extremely lucrative Premier League to American audiences while evangelizing for the U.S. Between the cleanup, the bath, and preparation for the three episodes he needed to record that day, Bennett managed just a couple hours of sleep. He was hoping to get some rest at his home in Westchester, but upon arrival from Austin late the previous night, his dog, a Lagotto Romagnolo named Martin Scorsese, took a dump in its crate. men’s team’s breaking into the elimination stage for the first time in eight years. He’s back for a 36-hour window between stops on the show’s tour for the World Cup, rejoicing with fans across the country over the U.S. I’m humanly falling apart,” says Roger Bennett, co-host of the soccer podcast Men in Blazers, who is sitting in a red leather banquette in a train station turned pizza bar next to the Metro-North stop in Mount Kisco.
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