It’s everywhere. There’s at least one match on television every day, up to half a dozen over the weekend. The newspapers that used to devote a page to football now devote three. Radio5 Live exists, like Sky Sports, to broadcast football to the people who clearly want it. But, the panel ask themselves, is this media domination a good thing for the game and its supporters?  If less is more would they really swap life in today's saturated market for the rationed football coverage in the media of their youth?  

And at the end of this episode, Jon, Paddy and Colin remember Franz Beckenbauer who died on 7th January 2024.

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Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay are

joined by a long-standing Chelsea fan – the writer and broadcaster Andy

Hamilton – to discuss his lifetime of support since the late 1950s. He shares

his frustration that some of the less attractive developments in modern

football have significantly diminished his passion for the club although, like

the panellists, he remains dedicated to the game itself.

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As the first year of Football Ruined My Life

draws to a close, the panel read out a selection of their favourite emails

which have been received from listeners all over the world. They include

trenchant observations on the panellists’ manifold failings as well as the

writers’ childhood reminiscences and their reaction to the podcasts they’ve

heard as well as suggestions for future subjects.

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It was a most remarkable year.  It started with the Big Freeze, ended with the assassination of President Kennedy and included the emergence of the Beatles and the Profumo Affair. On the football field (as soon as the ice melted in April) it was equally notable with Alf Ramsey’s first game in charge of England, Leicester City missing out on the Double (sorry, Jon), Manchester United winning the Cup but just avoiding relegation (sorry, Colin). And off the field, it the famous Eastham case which liberated players from the shackles of their clubs.

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The former Chairman of the FA, David Bernstein, joins Colin, Paddy and Jon for an honest discussion on the failings of governance in football. He tells of how his attempts at reform of the FA were constantly thwarted and how the FA lost any battle they tried to fight against the overwhelming power of the big clubs once they had divested themselves of the old Football League. The discussion ranges from the days of Alan Hardaker and the great figurehead for thirty years, Sir Stanley Rous, to today, when the FA’s influence over its own Premier League is so drastically reduced.

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It is the moment every footballer dreads – the day when he finally accepts that his career on the field is over. Jon tells Patrick and Colin that even those who have made a spectacular success of life after football like Gary Lineker can never recreate the joy of scoring a goal. Retirement is supposed to be much better for players these days because of the money they have earned during their careers and the plans put in place by their clubs. But is it? And what happened during retirement to those footballers from fifty or sixty years ago who had earned so little in their playing days?  

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All three panellists are fans of clubs that have suffered the indignity of relegation from the Premier League in the 21st century. There is a fear that the ever widening gap with the Championship will see clubs doomed to wait indefinitely in the purgatory of the footballing equivalent of Siberia. Yet Manchester City and Fulham bounced back to the top tier the following season and Leicester look as if they might be promoted spectacularly early this season. Jon, Patrick and Colin discuss their feelings about life in the Championship and whether it is different from life in the old Second Division.

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Any devoted watcher of the BBC Television series Lovejoy would have noticed the East Anglian antiques dealer’s ubiquitous Manchester United coffee mug and Manchester United travel bag. The actor who played Lovejoy, Ian McShane was the son of the Manchester United outside left Harry McShane who won a League Championship medal at Old Trafford in the 1951-2 season. In this podcast Ian McShane explains his long commitment to Manchester United and his friendship with Alex Ferguson and many of the United players since the days of the Busby Babes.  

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We all know what it’s like to have too little of it and though it’s probably not anything that most of us have experienced we can understand that having too much money doesn’t always lead straight to Happiness. At the top of the pyramid, football is drowning in the stuff, at the bottom too many clubs are struggling to keep their heads above the financial waters that are closing in. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay discuss how the game got into this mess and what, if anything, can be done about it.

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When we watch football as youngsters it is the goals that catch our eye, not the vital defensive midfielders or the manager’s clever/stupid substitutions. A Gary Lineker tap in is less spectacular than a Bobby Charlton thunderbolt but in a vital 1-0 victory it counts for as much. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay discuss the scorers of great goals and great goalscorers from Ted Drake and Dixie Dean to Harry Kane and Lionel Messi.

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