This Football Life

Today we're joined Sports Coaching Science Lecturer at St Mary's University, Stuart Carrington. He is also the author of the brand new book Blowing the Whistle: The Psychology Behind Football Refereeing, which you can buy on Amazon. 

This is one of the most eye-opening books I've read this year. It's as if your best friend was a psychologist and broke down the different psychological theories and how they applied to refereeing. 

 

To switch gears a bit, last episode I mentioned I have a brand new podcast called Football Today. If you like this show, I promise Football Today will be better. It's going to be my full-time job so I'm putting my heart and soul into it. If you could listen to it, it would mean so much to me. 

Essentially every episode I'll be doing a deep dive on 1 topic that's in the news in roughly 20 minutes. Much like The Daily or Today, Explained. It'll have music, news clips and feel like a mini-audio documentary. So please have a listen. 

 

This show will still be going but the episodes may not be every two weeks. If you want more content like this I suggest the Training Ground Guru podcast which is monthly and is pretty similar. I also co-host and produce that.  

 

Today we're joined by ex-England striker, Emile Heskey. Everyone listening will know who Heskey is, but in case you forgot, he's scored 152 goals in 720 games as a professional, most famously for Leicester City and Liverpool. 

Those numbers do not include the 62 caps and two World Cups he appeared in for the English National team. He's also won the League Cup 4 times, as well as the FA Cup and UEFA Cup. 

 

In our conversation, we discuss: how he battling the media's perception, how he struggled to adjust to the dressing room at Liverpool, and the loss of team camrederie in the modern game. He also answers the question, can you build a winning mentality or do you have to recruit players who already have one?

 

You can read about these topics in much greater depth, in Emile's new autobiography, Even Heskey Scored.

 

For the book giveaway my email is: [email protected] 

 

Lastly, I have a brand new podcast launching on October 7th with Jon Mackenzie. It's going to be called Football Today and essentially, it's football's answer to the New York Times' The Daily or The Guardian's Today in Focus. Each episode will be a 20-minute audio documentary on a specific subject. So please subscribe to that.

 

Today we're joined by pundit, solicitor and Juventus forward Eniola Aluko. 

Eniola has won practically every honor possible in England, winning the League title multiple times with Chelsea and the FA Cup with Charlton. She's also made more than 100 appearances for England and was on the 2015 World Cup team that got 3rd place in Canada.

 

However, now she's more well known for being an accidental whistleblower having spoken up against racism and bullying within the England setup under ex-manager Mark Sampson. That idea of taking on an institution is one of the main topics we discuss in this episode. 

 

We'll also explore, faith within football, why women players are more outspoken and the differences in childhood experiences between men and women footballers.

 

If you enjoy this podcast, then you will absolutely love her new book, They Don't Teach This. If you want to reach out to her, her twitter handle is @EniAlu. 

 

And lastly, we'd really appreciate if you rate and review the show on iTunes like Hondafan18 did recently. It really helps the show and if you don't want to do that then please just tell a friend.

For more info and updates visit @ThisFootballLif