The Assistant Professor of Football: Soccer, Culture, History.

Here’s a city that can’t agree on a football club. Seville has two, and they’ve been at odds since a falling-out among directors in 1907 gave birth to Betis. Everyone repeats that Sevilla is the posh side and Betis the working-class one, but Adam Winkel suspects the clubs just like the story. Adam, a Spanish professor from North Carolina, found Betis the way outsiders usually find a team: through people. He spent a junior year abroad in the mid-90s, had friends from the province who followed Betis, and learned that knowing the weekend’s results gave him something to talk about. Almost thirty years later he plans his weekends around the club and watches matches with friends in a small Andalusian town over WhatsApp. This conversation covers a stadium rebuilt while the team plays elsewhere, a club that has fallen to the third division and still won the league, and a Champions League run that the whole country seems to enjoy. Betis supporters turn up in every away end in Spain because the migration of the 50s and 60s carried them to every industrial town. Adam, a former president of the Sport Literature Association, also asks a question I hadn’t considered. How does a novelist capture a match when the replay always does it better?

HELPFUL LINKS:

Adam Winkel

The Guardian on Rayo Vallecano's current crisis

Copa90 documentary about Seville and Betis (YouTube)

Collin Millar, The Frying Pan of Spain

The Assistant Professor of Football Rayo Vallecano episode

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

New British prime minister Andy Burnham has said that his morals have been shaped by Everton FC, the Catholic Church, and the labour party. Perhaps in that order. And indeed, Burnham’s politics were forged on the terraces, long before Downing Street. Journalist Adrian Goldberg, author of Where’s the Money Gone? The Battle for the Soul of English Football, traces the line from an Everton-supporting kid who lived through Thatcher-era identity cards and police hostility toward fans, to the political advisor who discovered fan ownership at Northampton Town, to the minister who broke ranks at a Hillsborough memorial service to demand justice for Liverpool supporters. Goldberg argues that same communitarianism now shapes Burnham’s premiership, even as it collides with the Gulf-state money remaking Manchester. A conversation about what football taught a generation of working-class Britons about power, and what one of them is now doing with it.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR TODAY'S EPISODE:

Byline Times podcast, with Adrian Golderg

Adrain Goldberg, Where's the Money Gone? - book website

Alemannia Essen reporting on a streaker shocking children (in German)

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

West Ham are in the Championship, Millwall are back on the fixture list, and the Docker's Derby ended 2-2. Historian and lifelong Hammers fan Max Portman joins the show to ask whether relegation can be liberation, just as it was for 1860 Munich. He argues the club spent forty years chasing commercial success while the East End that produced it dispersed into Essex. What remains is the idea of a community strong enough to pull people back on Saturdays. That tension runs through everything we discuss: a relegation that feels oddly like relief now that David Sullivan is gone, a London Stadium that never feels quite real, and a crest that tells everyone what they already know. It even shapes a Millwall derby whose hatred Max dates to a 1972 testimonial. Along the way: Bobby Moore drinking in his grandparents' pub, why football is one of the last places where we still have to argue with people we disagree with - and FootyCon 2027.

LINKS:

Max Portman on LinkedIn, Bluesky

Sports in History podcast

Beautiful Guardian photo essay of the derby from Adam Isfendyiar

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

What happens when a club loses its right to compete — not through relegation on the pitch, but through a financial trapdoor built by the very man who was supposed to save it?

This summer, 1860 Munich missed a license deadline a few million Euros - and was dropped a division not for how they played, but for how they were run. Fans have long argued that 1860 needs to be liberated from investor Hasan Ismaik. They finally got their wish - via bankruptcy and forced relegation. While the Ismaik- controlled entity is dead, the club underneath isn't. It's, in fact, suddenly free.

What does it say about 1860 that their fans can look at demotion and feel hope instead of grief? And what does that say about German football more broadly — about clubs caught between fan ownership and outside capital, between the nonprofit "Verein" and the commercial entity riding inside it?

Claus, longtime 1860 supporter, club historian, James Joyce aficionado and our returning guide to all things Giesing, walks through the legal anatomy of the collapse — the KGaA, the debt, the broken renegotiation — and then makes the case that a club freed from a bad marriage, even a division lower, might finally get to build something real.

TSV 1860 History Section

TSV 1860 History section (Instagram)

4000 fans follow 1860 away to it's first 4th League game (Youtube)

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

... or: an Economist and a Tactics Nerd on what the last 6 weeks tell us about where the game is going. A spontaneous and incomplete post-final reaction.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

The recent CNN piece with me on why a draw "sometimes feels like a win"

Hörfehler Podcast, me on soccer in the U.S.

Florian Ederer, X

Dhruv Kapoor, X

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

The traditional The Assistant Professor of Football season round-up is back. I asked guests from this past year, and some from previous years whose clubs had remarkable seasons of one sort or the other how their clubs have fared, what moment stands out, and what song best embodies their club's vibe this past season. They are:

Medea Voegeli, professional historian and historian of FC Thun, from episode 76. Thun are the utterly sensational champions of Switzerland this year — after just having been promoted — so Medea has a lot of good vibes to share.

Then Paul Reidy, our English correspondent at Rayo Vallecano; that club portrait is episode 46. Rayo made it to the final of the best European club competition outside the Champions League, the Conference League. They lost against Crystal Palace, but this is their greatest success.

Another finalist: SC Freiburg, from episode 49. Freiburg made it to the Europa League final. They also lost against an English team, Aston Villa. Patrick Bucher from the club's history working group has a lot of stories to tell from his days at the final in Istanbul.

Next up is Alan McDougall, a historian at the University of Guelph in Canada who published a fabulous people's history of Liverpool and joined us in episode 72 — he's back to analyze a rather mixed season for them.

Then Stefan Wally, a political scientist and Austria Salzburg aficionado, on that club in the second Austrian league. They earned promotion last year and absolutely held their own — including a derby with the Red Bull farm team that tried to finish them off.

And last but not least: two teams who got relegated but also see some hope on the horizon, because their relegation has triggered — or at least coincides with — much-needed changes in ownership and leadership at their respective clubs: West Ham and 1860 Munich.

West Ham were relegated from the Premier League, as I'm sure you know. That is my club in England, and Alex — who is hard at work organizing supporters for change and for atmosphere at West Ham — gives us his take. And 1860… well, never a dull day there. The Jordanian investor withheld funds, the club was forced to drop out of the third German league, and it looks like that means — freedom, finally, for 1860. Claus Melchior from 1860's section on club history will give us the download.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Dubioza Kolektiv - I am from Bosnia, Take me to America(new music video, YouTube)

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

If you're old enough — what do you remember about the 1994 World Cup?

And if you're not, try to picture it. Soccer in the United States before MLS existed. Matches inside the Pontiac Silverdome, a domed football stadium in Michigan — humid, bizarre, and somehow full. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Record attendances that still haven't been broken. A tournament that, by most outside, European or Latin American accounts, had no business working as well as it did.

The standard story is that 1994 planted soccer in America. FIFA arrived, the world showed up, and a nation discovered the game.

Tom McCabe thinks that story gets it almost exactly backwards. He is a historian, a filmmaker, and the co-host of the podcast An American Game, and he currently teaches at the University of Notre Dame’s London Center. His documentary Soccertown USA follows Kearny, New Jersey — a small industrial town that produced three players on the same 1994 national team: Tab Ramos, John Harkes, Tony Meola. His argument is simple and unsettling: the game was already there. It had been there for a century. 1994 didn't plant anything — it just showed up late to something that immigrant communities had built long before FIFA came looking for a market.

And that matters now, in the summer of 2026, because the World Cup is back, and so this is a look back b7t just as much a prep episode for what’s about to happen here. I’m torn about this World Cup. But if we're going to understand what this tournament means — who it's for, what it reveals, what it might actually leave behind — we need a better story from then to now. And that is what this conversation is about.

Music throughout this episode are huts from 1994, some of you will feel nostalgic: Ace of Base. Weezer. Beck. Roxette. All from that year. And Bruce Springsteen, whose Streets of Philadelphia uncovered a very different side of America, in that year as well.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Soccertown USA (full documentary, Youtube)

An American Game (podcast)

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Phil Harrison, a former Visiting Professor on soccer in Albania before the fall of the Iron Curtain, and me are giving our take on the song contest in Vienna this past Saturday. A very helpful visual breakdown of all points - jury and public - is HERE.

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Eurovision has many things that soccer does - underdogs, spectacular collapses, bloc loyalties, political scores settled through performance, and a continent watching the same spectacle at the same time. And this year, the Eurovision Song Contest, a live-for-TV music contest with continent-wide public voting, is happening in Vienna, this coming weekend. Why there? Austria won it last year.

Here is a primer of, a short debate about, and a quiz about the Song Contest. And an outlook on how this year will go down. Plus many short clips of musical Eurovision highlights that came up in our conversation.

All with 4 fans, of the contest and of football:

Andy Payne (England - West Ham United, chair of the fan advisory board)

Justus Römeth (Germany - Union St. Gilloise, BeUnion fanclub)

Julia Gollner (Austria - Sturm Graz, and orchestra harpist in Flensburg, Germany, and my sister;)

Songs from the episode: Athena - For Real; Lordi - Hard Rock Hallelujah; Måneskin - Zitti e Buoni; Abor & Tynna - Baller; Kalush Orchestra - Stefania; Alf Poier - Weil der Mensch Zählt; Måns Zelmerlöw and Petra Mede - Love Love, Peace Peace; Let 3 - Mama ŠČ; Cosmo - Tanzschein; J-Ax - Italia Starter Pack

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Eurovision has many things that soccer does - underdogs, spectacular collapses, bloc loyalties, political scores settled through performance, and a continent watching the same spectacle at the same time. And this year, the Eurovision Song Contest, a live-for-TV music contest with continent-wide public voting, is happening in Vienna, this coming weekend. Why there? Austria won it last year.

Here is a primer of, a short debate about, and a quiz about the Song Contest. And an outlook on how this year will go down. Plus many short clips of musical Eurovision highlights that came up in our conversation.

All with 4 fans, of the contest and of football:

Andy Payne (England - West Ham United, chair of the fan advisory board)

Justus Römeth (Germany - Union St. Gilloise, BeUnion fanclub)

Julia Gollner (Austria - Sturm Graz, and orchestra harpist in Flensburg, Germany, and my sister;)

Songs from the episode: Sandie Shaw - Puppet on a String; Katrina and The Waves - Love Shine a Light; Abba - Waterloo; Erika Vikman - Ich Komme; Guildo Horn - Guildo hat Euch lieb; Dana International - Viva la Diva; Lordi - Hard Rock Hallelujah; Windows95man - No Rules!

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Babbel’s Intro to the Eurovision

5-minute interval act at the 2016 contest (in Sweden) that explains, in humorous ways, how winning the Eurovision “works.” Spoiler: love love, peace peace.

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Thun. Population 44,000. Located in the Swiss Bernese Oberland, where the river Aare meets a lake, with the Alps as a backdrop. Switzerland's biggest military town. Not exactly a place you’d expect to find yourself talking about Champions League football next season.

And yet. FC Thun — a club that just got promoted from the second division — is on the verge of becoming Swiss champions in their very first year back in the top flight. It is, on its face, one of the great Cinderella stories in European football right now. But as anyone who has spent time with a club’s actual history knows, Cinderella stories are rarely just that.

Behind the headlines of this sensational season is a club that has been through it all: an archive that burned to the ground in 1975, a Champions League run in the early 2000s that nobody saw coming, a pair of scandals serious enough to make their own timeline entries, financial collapse, relegation, and a president who took the job because, as he put it, nobody else would.

My guest today is Medea Vögeli, historian and FC Thun researcher — the person who has spent years digging through what’s left of the club’s records and building out their documented history to a great interactive version on their website. She’s a Bern-based historian who came to Thun through academic curiosity, and is a fan of the club as well.

We talk about what kind of town Thun actually is, how this club has always punched above, below, and sideways, and whether this time around, the success might actually stick.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR TODAY's EPISODE:

FC Thun - Geschichte (interactive history timeline, German)

FC Thun anthem (YouTube)

Italian Stallion - Thun City (YouTube)

FC Thun in the Guardian

FC Thun on the BBC

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Today's assistant professor has spent his career studying the forces that threaten liberal democracy — the far right, populism, nationalist movements that have reshaped politics from Hungary to the United States. He's one of the most cited political scientists working on those questions, based at the University of Georgia, originally from the Netherlands, and the kind of scholar who combines rigorous theory with an unusually grounded sense of how politics actually lives in people's lives.

But today we're not talking about Marine Le Pen or Viktor Orbán. We're talking about soccer.

Cas Mudde has been a lifelong fan — not of modern football, as he'd put it, but of soccer as community. He's visited something like 500 teams across more than 35 countries, and he brings to the sport the same analytical eye he turns on democratic erosion and authoritarian politics. Because for him, the two aren't as separate as they might seem.

In a recent chapter called "Soccer as Civil Society," Mudde argues that professional soccer is not just entertainment — it's a political space, one that sits squarely in the terrain between the state, the market, and the community. And like democracy itself, that space is under pressure: from the commodification of the game, from multiclub ownership models that strip fans of accountability, and from the slow transformation of supporters into consumers.

He's also clear-eyed about the limits of resistance — skeptical of the romanticization of fan-owned "punk football" clubs, even as he takes them seriously.

It's a conversation about soccer, yes — but also about power, community, and what it means to fight for something when the odds are stacked against you.

HELPFUL LINKS TO TODAY's EPISODE:

Cas Mudde on LinkedIn, Wikipedia, and the University of Georgia website

Cas’ groundhopping Instagram

Cas Mudde, Soccer as Civil Society - article as PDF

Tamir Bar-On’s 3 Discourses on Soccer, referenced in Cas’ article and briefly at the end of the episode

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Bodø/Glimt, the team from the town of Bodø north of the polar circle, counting around 45,000 inhabitants, made it to the round of 16 in the UEFA Champions League this season. After beating Atletico Madrid, Manchester City and Inter Milan, they got eliminated by Sporting, from Lisbon two weeks ago. All that comes on the heels of some previous runs in the Conference and Europa League. What’s even more remarkable however: this isn’t the Cindarella story with a rich sugardaddy in the background. It’s a longer story that speaks to regional tensions in modern Norway, a close knit community, and some very hard and deliberate work. It really is that.

Freddy Toresen is with us again. He is the journalist covering Bodo Glimt up close and locally, with a level of access to the club that’s hard to imagine for journalists who cover teams in bigger leagues - and he has a long history following the club as well.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Freddy Toresen on Instagram and Facebook

City of Bodø on Wikipedia

Bodø/Glimt in the New York Timeslast month

Club website

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

The day after he arrived back from his clubs last Champions League game this year, a loss at Sporting in Lisbon, Freddy Toresen, the local football journalist from Bodø, gives us a long view of the club and its identity. This is just the first part of our conversation, a reaction to this year's Champions League fairytale that included wins over Manchester City, Inter Milan, and Atletico Madrid. Watch for the long rest of our conversation on how this fairytale came about on March 30th, as usual.

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

What do Tottenham Hotspur, Ajax Amsterdam, Bayern Munich and Austria Vienna have in common? They all, for better, or for worse, have come to be seen as “Jew Clubs” throughout their history. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes the club embraced it, often it didn’t. "Jew Clubs" - not Jewish clubs, not founded as a Jewish sports society or anything like that. But clubs that have become a canvas for the performance of Jewishness, of antisemitism and also of philosemitism. What does that say about these clubs is one question. What does it say about Europe’s broader cultural and political discourse? That's another. What it says about Jews in those clubs is one question - what it says about how Jewishness is constructed is another.

Pavel Brunssen has written a fascinating book on it. He is a Research Associate and Alfred Landecker Lecturer at the Research Center on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University. There are a lot of voices from fans, from media, from online discourse in this book - and it’s an academic book as well.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Every time one of the big clubs show up on this humble podcast, the audience is a little larger - and maybe I should do more on the likes of Bayern or Liverpool. But I always shirk back a bit. Too mainstream, I think. And if you like Liverpool, wouldn't you have found another, more professional media outlet already? If that is you, I think you need to buy this book. And, first, hear about it: Alan McDougall has written what the subtitle says is a peoples’ history of Liverpool F.C. I would say it’s a global people’s history. Published by Cambridge University Press, the book is very readable and accessible, but with high scholarly standards. Not a straight up club history, always with an eye on culture, society and football more broadly, but never far from the club the author has grown up to love. It's a story of deindustrialization, migration, the tragedies of Heysel and Hillsborough, and Bill Shankly and Jürgen Klopp.

Alan McDougall is a professor of history at the University of Guelph in Canada, and he has been on before to talk about his fabulous older book The People’s Game about soccer in Eastern Germany. For this one, he has returned to his football home, and done what not many club histories do: a book you’ll enjoy reading, following its connections and learning about its world even if you don’t support Liverpool.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Alan McDougall, professional page

Dreams and Songs to Sing, book website

Hillsborough Law campaign

Heysel Stadium catastrophe, TV footage (warning, graphic imagery)

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If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

The phrase "go west!" was not coined by the Village People or the Pet Shop Boys, but by Horace Greeley, a famous newspaper editor a long time ago. And seen from Europe, all of the United States is West. So that’s what Luca Puster tells his young European clients who just finish High School and are considering college: Go west young man, and grow up playing football. Or soccer. How do they find American colleges? What makes them come here, what is attractive about this step in their football and study careers? How do they find the game here, the current crisis around immigration and politics, what do they take back?

Luca is the co-founder of Students Go West, an agency that helps bring European footballers into American collegiate soccer programs. He also played for the GAK in Graz, Austria, and for Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Students Go West, website

Percentages of international players in the top NCAA teams, 2023

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

This story is a journey to one of the original sins of commercialization in modern global football - the 2005 takeover of Austria Salzburg, a former Austrian champion, UEFA cup finalist and Champions League participant by a well known energy drink company that is now active in soccer around the globe, and its subsequent attempt to erase 72 years of footballing history.

But more importantly, it’s a journey to soccer’s original grace as well: community, persistence, humility, euphoria, belonging - the resurrection of Austria Salzburg in its original colors, purple and white, by fans and the return of the Austria to professional football in Austria.

Stefan Wally is the man to tell this story - a lifelong fan of the Austria, and the managing director of the Robert-Jungk-Foundation for Future Studies in Salzburg. He is a political scientist, has taught at different universities for twenty years, and regularly teaches Austrian history to an international audience.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Stefan Wally (LinkedIn)

SV Austria Salzburg, website

SV Austria Salzburg, Instagram

Union Ultras Salzburg, website

The Guardian article in English about the Austria after Red Bull

SV Austria Salzburg, English Wikipedia entry

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Welcome to the 3rd Advent/Christmas/Holiday episode this year. It’s a read of a children book again, and that book involves a time-traveling boy and his dog. They time travel, through goalposts, to the first organized football match under Football Association rules, in 1863, between Barnes and Richmond. The game was played at Barnes commons, in West London, across the river from Fulham’s FCs stadium, the Craven Cottage. And the boy and his dog (Kane is his name, no relation to Harry) mess up football history while there. Or, almost.

The book is by Adrian Lobley, and I don't want to give away the whole thing here - I'll read up to chapter 10.

Plus: some of the best Christmas-themed stadium chants.

Until January 19th!

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Adrian Lobley, Kane and the Christmas Football Adventure

"The best Christmas Football chants", YouTube

"Comfort Comfort O My People" in the opening piano version, from Road to Virtuosity Sheet Music, YouTube

"Comfort Comfort O My People," closing version with organ and drums, performed by the First-Plymouth Church in Lincoln, Nebraska

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

Thomas Melchior placed his first soccer bet in 2005. He was addicted to gambling for 13 years, and imprisoned for the crimes he committed in his addiction. Now, he stands in front of stadiums on gamedays around Europe to raise awareness for the problem that is gambling in football – and he’s using some controversial tactics.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:

Thomas Melchior on Instagram

Fox Sports, "From prison to social media star: How one man is taking on sports betting at German soccer games" (September 2025)

Deutsche Welle, "Gambling in German Football: Time to Quit?"

The Guardian, "I lost 10 years of my life’: how UK betting giant’s unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked"

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup)

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.

If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/