Football for Breakfast

Martyn Potts grew up in Blackpool in the 1950s. His dad was at the Matthews Cup Final in 1953. In 1959, aged nine, he and his mates on a cinder-surfaced cul-de-sac had no football. So they went round collecting empty pop bottles, claimed the deposits and pooled the money. Two days later they had enough for a ball.He wrote a poem about it for his 70th birthday. He reads it at the table.In the season finale of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Martyn in the greasy spoon cafe for a conversation that stretches from the 1950s to the present day.They talk about the 1966 FA Cup Final. Martyn was 15. His Uncle Bill was honorary secretary of the London Society of Association Referees and got them tickets - not just for the match, but for the eve-of-final dinner the night before. A surprise appearance from Tommy Trinder - chairman of Fulham - who told blue jokes to the all-male audience that a 15-year-old Martyn was not supposed to hear. His dad said don't tell your mum.The next day, Everton beat Sheffield Wednesday three-two from two nil down. Derek Temple scored the winner. Martyn brought the ticket stub and the dinner programme. He's kept both for sixty years.He is a retired headteacher. He still plays 5-a-side every Sunday - not walking football, actual running football. And he has just published a new collection of poetry about the Wirral called Sandstone and Sea.Jim closes: proof that the best football stories aren't always about football, and the best poets never stopped paying attention.Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

Anthony Parker's first ever football match was a Matt Busby testimonial. George Best was on the pitch. They moved the goalposts to the 18-yard line so he could play. He had bags and bags of skill. Anthony was five or six years old. He never forgot it.In episode eleven of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Anthony in the greasy spoon cafe to talk about Manchester United, the weight of history and what it means to be a fan of a club built as much on tragedy as triumph.They talk about the Busby Babes, Duncan Edwards - probably the best player in the world at 18, with virtually no substitutes available - and the way the Munich air disaster created something mystical about United that even their rivals can't deny. They talk about 1992-93, when Anthony's dad turned up on the Sunday with scarves out the window, a cake and a bottle of champagne. Twenty-six years. Worth every second.Midway through the conversation, Man United call. He answers. He tells them he's recording a podcast. He hangs up.In the second half Anthony talks about a career that started at 17 in an accounts department that happened to be in the gates and barriers industry and ended up, thirty-odd years later, with him as managing director of Country Gates and Barriers. He didn't plan it. He found his rhythm. He found something he was good at and let it take him somewhere.His object is the ticket stub from the Fenerbahce game in 2004. Wayne Rooney's Manchester United debut. A hat trick. Anthony was there.The result he'll never get over? Agüero. QPR. The last minute.Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

Harry Davies's dad sang him "You'll Never Walk Alone" as a lullaby. Every single night. Instead of anything else.Harry is 21. He found his dad's Istanbul 2005 tracksuit top in a wardrobe one day and quietly claimed it. He wasn't even there in 2005 - he was one year old. But he wears it now to every big game, including the 4-3 win over Spurs when Jota scored the 96th minute winner.In episode ten of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with the youngest guest the show has had so far to talk about inheriting football, inheriting music and what it means to be young and obsessed with both in a city that's given the world The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and a song that started as a chart hit before kick off and somehow became Anfield's emotional centre of gravity.They talk about Bath City, the grassroots club Harry adopted at university, and going to see the Oasis reunion twice this summer - shaking with excitement for a band he was only four or five when they first split.The conversation turns properly interesting in the second half. Is youth culture over? Can social media ever again produce the kind of unifying cultural moment that gave the world Britpop, Merseybeat or punk? Harry says he has to believe it can. He's an optimist. He thinks somewhere out there is the next Liam Gallagher, even if nobody's found them yet.Jim closes on him: proof that the next generation of football fans feel it just as deeply. The game is in safe hands.Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

Abdul Malik-Ahad arrived in England on Christmas Day 1979. He was seven years old. He hid under his auntie's poncho at Heathrow because he had never felt cold like it.A few years later, aged ten, he found himself surrounded by football fans in Oldham on a Saturday afternoon before a match. A skinhead put a beer can on his head and smashed it. That was the backdrop to football for the British Bangladeshi community in the early 1980s. You watched from home. You kept the shutters down. But Abdul didn't let it stop him. He built something else.In episode nine of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Abdul in the greasy spoon cafe to talk about belonging, community and what football does when the game that's supposed to bring everyone together isn't yet safe to attend.They talk about the 5-a-side and 7-a-side tournaments Abdul helped organise for the Bangladeshi Youth Movement in Oldham - competitions that started as a way of finding a safe space and became fiercer and more meaningful than anyone expected. A community building itself from the inside out because no one else was going to build it for them.In the second half Abdul talks about a career from community cohesion manager after the 2001 Oldham disturbances to CEO of Steve Biko Housing Association in Liverpool - one of only two Black and Racial Minority housing associations on Merseyside, built on the mission of homes and communities without racism.He brings a Liverpool champions t-shirt to the table. The one his community couldn't celebrate in 2020 because of Covid. So thirty Bangladeshi Reds waited two years, got together at a restaurant in Oldham and finally let it out.Jim closes: proof that the people who had to build their own game from scratch are usually the ones who understand it the most.Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

You're right - Spotify is just the prose narrative, no chapters or emoji section headers. That's the YouTube format. Here's the Spotify version in the normal style:Jane Hoskisson grew up going to Goodison Park with her dad in the early 80s, right at the start of the Howard Kendall years. She was a little girl in a huge crowd, too small to see over the bar, carried along by the noise of it. She still couldn't name every player. But she could always tell you what Everton means to her.In episode eight of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Jane in the greasy spoon cafe for a conversation about belonging, memory and why being able to see yourself in the picture changes everything.They start with her earliest memories of match day - the energy of the crowd, the police horses, being lifted onto the bar to see. From there the conversation moves through tribalism, banter at work, and how football became the love language she still shares with her dad, who sat just off camera as her live artefact.Jane talks about her grandad Jim, who ran Saint Matthew's Football Club in the early 60s and gave a generation of local boys somewhere to go. She brings his engraved award to the table, and with it the line that runs through the whole episode: people die twice, once when they take their last breath, and again when the last person says their name. Football, she says, is how the people you love stay in the room.In the second half the conversation widens out. Jane leads diversity for the global aviation industry, where her work has helped move female pilots from around 4% towards 6% worldwide and lifted women running airlines from 3% to 9% in six years. Her reason is simple: you can't be what you can't see. It's true in a cockpit. It's true on a pitch. They talk about the quiet decline of grassroots football, the disappearing community organiser, and the moment Goodison Park was named the home of Everton's women's team.The result she'll never get over? Everton coming back from two goals down against Crystal Palace to stay up - watched on her phone in a car in Geneva, battery dying, refreshing the score.A woman who knows that the most important work, in aviation or football, is making sure people can see themselves in the picture.This is Football for Breakfast. Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.Football for Breakfast is a production by The Good Companions, presented by OSS Security. New episode every Tuesday morning.