NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) To critique the state of our world, our communities, to critique what is wrong with soccer in late stage capitalism is one thing. It actually isn’t a hard thing. But to dream, think and even plan for a better world, and a better football, that is something different entirely. Alina Schwermer, a young and extremely talented German journalist, has done just that, on 450 pages, i...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) Gent in Belgium. Rasgrad in Bulgaria. Mostar in Bosnia. Boråsin Sweden. Tiraspol in, well, Moldova. Or Differdange in LuxemburgIf you know where these places are, have some sense of what it looks like there, what the vibe is, perhaps it is because of the early UEFA club competitions' qualifying rounds. It is for me. If it isn't for you yet, it's time it was. I know I’ve often ...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) If you follow a club that plays in the English Premier League, you may have gotten wind of it: over the Summer, quite a few clubs increased their season ticket prices, and phased out - or partially phased out - discounted tickets for kids and seniors, so called concession tickets. And for once, English fans seem to get organized and cooperative in resistance. Wolverhampton, To...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) The end of Season 2 of The Assistant Professor of Football is nigh, and we check in with guests from the last year to hear how their club, cause or research have been doing. Here are, in order: Peter K Wagner on Sturm Graz’s sensational champions league and cup winning seasonFabio Schaupp, also from Graz, on the promotion of Graz’s other team, GAK, to the Austrian Bundesl...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) Goshen, Indiana is home to a private college without an American Football team - and, most recently, a semi-professional soccer club that serves as an - albeit unusual - case study for how grassroots soccer in the U.S. can thrive and build a community. The overarching theme of The Assistant Professor is that football is not merely about goals and stars. It is, done properly, a...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) Today's episode is a mix between soccer detective story and true crime podcasting. British investigative journalist Paul Brown is our Visiting Professor for the day. He and his colleague Philippe Auclair have piled up pathbreaking research on the backstory, money trail and flat out baffling activities of a group called 777 partners. Their activities in the insurance and airpla...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) We begin with the Eurovision Songcontest and end with Sturm Graz's cup win, but consider, most of all, FC St. Gallen. Saint who? True, if I would ask you who invented club football in Europe in continental Europe, would you guess that the answer is the same as to the Ricola cough drop question? The Swiss did! Well, technically English students living in Switzerland, but neverm...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) The excesses of global soccer capitalism are well documented on this podcast. Perhaps no footballing country is more affected than England, the birthplace of the modern game and home to arguably the wealthiest clubs and league. To take it up one notch, six of its big clubs attempted to join the breakaway Super League while, around the same time, historic club Bury FC collapse ...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) Kay Bernstein was elected the president of Hertha BSC, then in the 1st Bundesliga, in June 2022. He died at his home near Berlin on January 16th of this year, with Hertha being in the 2nd Bundesliga. What sounds like a short and - on the pitch - unsuccessful presidency is in fact the most significant shift and opening up of possibilities in club leadership in German and, possi...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) "The era is brought to life by the accounts of Albanians who lived through it, which capture the importance of football to a populace starved of any other source of communal enjoyment. The otherworldliness and innate cruelty of the Stalinist regime provide a terrifying backdrop to their tales," reads the blurb for Phil Harrison's book The Hermit Kingdom: Football Stories from ...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) ... of all people! Raphael is a German political scientist, whose book "Peace to the Terraces, War to the Federations and Leagues" is a pathbreaking materialist critique of "modern soccer" - the game as purely an entertainment market commodity. The book is only published in German so far, and we were in the process of rolling out his thoughts with the ongoing conflict between ...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) Indie, Hip Hop, Punk, Reggae, Ska and Choruses- from Leeds to Istanbul, from Vienna to Mexico City, from Darmstadt to Buenos Aires. Your second soccer playlist is here - with some background info, and plenty of quirky football lyrics.PLAYLIST FOR THIS EPISODE - links to videos:Puma Hardchorus - England, France, Germany and ItalyAlberto Colucci - Die Sonne Scheint (SV Darmstadt...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) If you are thinking of dreaming of going to England, seeing a Premier League game, dive into the atmosphere that you see on TV, or even have concrete travel plans already to finally see one game of the club you otherwise follow on TV, then this episode is for you. If you are listening from England, and have followed your club for years and decades, it's for you as well.Felipe ...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) I thought today’s episode needed a long rationalization. But as I was writing it, I thought f*** it, I don’t need to be doing verbal gymnastics. I know human beings, there, and our guest does too. So we’ll just let these stories speak. About soccer, about trauma, about peace and coexistence, and about youth cultures both left and right of center in what is a divers...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) Just a few weeks ago, Poland elected a new parliament. The result was a change in power, from the national conservative camp to the centrist, pro-European one. And the campaign, yet again, highlighted, to use an overused term, the culture wars over defining the future of one of the European Union’s largest but also newest member states. Historically occupied by its neighbors o...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) A mini audiobook - for the time to think in the evenings after the presents have all been unwrapped, or for a listen with the children:As the story goes, on Christmas 1914, during world war 1, in the trenches of Belgium, German and English soldiers laid down their weapons, shook hands, and played a game of football in the no man’s land between the lines. Historians are unsure ...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) An arranged marriage of a Greek and a Celt began the settlement of Massalia, today: Marseille. Europe’s bellwether of multiculturalism, 2nd city of France, one of Europe’s biggest ports, migrant destination for centuries, cauldron of socioeconomic conflict, cradle of French rap music - and home of Olympique, still France’s only Champions League winner ever. A few days after th...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) FC St. Pauli is a 2nd Bundesliga team from Hamburg. That’s one thing. It is also "Germany’s original cult club," an "antifascist pioneer," the "club of punk and techno, or a "swashbuckling left wing club." The history behind these labels begin in the late 1980s, when punks occupied houses around St. Pauli’s stadium and antiracists found out that football grounds didn't just be...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) On Thursday, November 2nd, the second largest city of Austria, Graz, will see its second soccer derby in the last 16 years, in the Austrian cup tournament. Sturm Graz, currently leaders of the Austrian Bundesliga and Europa League starters, face GAK (Graz Athletic Sports Club), the city's oldest club, its first one to win a national title, and currently on the verge of r...
NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) Matthias Sindelar was, and is, the most famous Austrian footballer between World Wars 1 and 2. Known for his elegant style of play during a period when Austrian soccer was admired as an innovative model, he defined Austria’s national team, known as the "miracle team," and his club, Austria Vienna. Austria joined Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945. And when it arose as an indep...