For Our Sins: The Clichés Pod Archive

After three years and 262 glorious episodes for The Athletic, the Football Clichés podcast is moving to a new home. The back catalogue will stay right here for you to revisit but Adam, Charlie and David’s exploration of the language of football (and beyond) will continue here: https://lnk.to/kdWOMyTA Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and - in his final appearance - David Walker for the closing Adjudication Panel of the season. On the agenda: the Premier League's "Pure Referee's Name XI", a deep data dive on footballers' appearances on celebrity TV shows, the criteria for "waltzing through" a defence, a textbook end-of-season rallying cry from Sean Dyche and Richard Key...

The Football Clichés Quiz returns for its eighth edition, and the stakes have been raised for defending champion Michael Cox as his challenger this time is none other than Adam Hurrey himself, with past-winner Charlie Eccleshare stepping into the quizmaster's chair. Cox and Hurrey duke it out over another five rounds of niche footballing knowledge, including the Keys & Gray round, guessing the...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: What type of goal is the most "still had work to do" goal possible, the No 1 religious reference to deploy during a live TV commentary, the greatest recorded example of something other than a goal being "cheered like a goal", ambient household noise and the "Phantom Drury Effect",...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for a midweek edition of the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: some tense Serie A small talk with an Italian, the Russian football equivalent of being “on the beach”, the concept of being "the first name on the teamsheet", whether a goalkeeper can ever be "on fire" and some football-inspired language from the wider world....

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: stress-testing a “knows the club” coefficient model, the threshold for a club “going down with a whimper”, an exhaustive list of football’s “promised lands” and whether Michael Olise's latest assist was the epitome of a "ping". Meanwhile, the panel discuss Arsenal vs Brighton in t...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey, Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker welcome the listeners' May entries for Mesut Haaland Dicks, with the Clichés faithful nominating their niche footballing fascinations and irritations. Among the selections are the futility of fans trying to put off penalty-takers, the dying art of commentators just listing players’ names as they pass the ball, some niche observations...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: The managerial disciplinary tightrope, when old-fashioned No 9s first became “old-fashioned”, the subtle difference between "score" and "scoreline", the language of Erling Haaland not scoring a goal, an entirely understandable misconception of “at sixes and sevens” and tenuous foo...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for a midweek edition of the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: the spiralling language of Chelsea's meltdown, ChatGPT selects its Mesut Haaland Dicks, reducing Sam Allardyce's Leeds unveiling to its purest essence, how far into added time counts as "deep into added time" and what constitutes a title-race "twist". Meanwhil...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the latest edition of the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: Kasper Schmeichel's Monday Night Football punditry debut, Roy Keane spotted at the snooker, Rishi Sunak’s Northern Premier League Division One East play-off final rallying cry, podcaster Sam Allardyce returning to top-flight management and a 27-year wait for...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for a midweek edition of the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: More surname-based goal celebrations, football punditry's equivalent of a solar eclipse, Erling Haaland and the most “he’s got his goal” goal ever scored, destiny brings together two Clichés listeners on a dating app and ChatGPT attempts to compile a "Streets...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the latest edition of the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: a handball-appeal hat-trick at Ipswich, the most “left on the halfway line to defend when your team has a corner” player ever, a brand new option for shot-velocity metaphors, the quickest turnaround for a topical chant in Premier League history and the BBC ta...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and Michael Cox to compile a lineup of players whose myths, auras and internet legacies have eclipsed their mortal footballing existences. The selection process takes in cartoon goalkeepers of the 1900s, defenders who played on one leg for half their career, "Scholes, of Manchester", a midfielder who defined both an entire role AND sparked...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker on the Adjudication Panel for the 250th episode of the pod. The agenda includes: the new world record for keepy-uppies, Rolls Royces at the snooker, horses finding pockets of space at the Grand National, the least textbook knee-slide celebration in Premier League history, a Match of the Day viewer uncovers some bizarre aud...

With 249 episodes in our archive we thought we'd raid our back catalogue to bring you some examples of the purest essence of the Football Cliches podcast. This week we head back to episode 69 to identify exactly what elements a stadium needs to make it a cauldron, and from episode 84 we provide the boffins at EA Sports with a raft of suggestions as to how they could improve FIFA by including the m...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey, Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker entertain the listeners' April entries for Mesut Haaland Dicks, with the Clichés faithful nominating their niche footballing fascinations and irritations. Among the selections are being the self-appointed "shouter" at 5-a-side, the quaint radio practice of commentators telling you which team is playing "from right to left", the intric...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Nick Miller for the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: Whose hands the Premier League title race is actually in now, the threshold for a young starlet having “the world at their feet”, a listener's Sunday League instincts kick in at an office meeting and a quickfire Keys & Gray Corner. Meanwhile, the panel ponder whether "the stree...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: a potential new career option for Frank Lampard, "the most 5-a-side goal the Premier League has ever seen", stadiums that have their own famous "roar", and Keys & Gray tell (again) the story of the birth of the Premier League. Meanwhile, the panel decide what makes a team "too...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Nick Miller for the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: the need for a collective noun for manager sackings, some deluxe-level Peter Drury commentary, the mid-weekend shorthand language of title races and the most ‘on in the background during a pub lunch’ fixture of all. Meanwhile, the panel ponder the footballing verb "to stun" in a modern c...

With well over 200 episodes in our archive we thought we'd raid our back catalogue to bring you some examples of the purest essence of the Football Cliches podcast. This week we head back to episode 216 to discuss the threshold for describing whether Player X has Player Y 'on toast', and from episode 77 we uncover the origins of the famous Alan Hansen and Jimmy Hill clips from the start of Three L...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey and Nick Miller are joined by comedian and YouTube star Max Fosh for the latest edition of Mesut Haaland Dicks. Among Max's selections are the precise thought process behind a switch of international footballing allegiance, the late-1990s Premier League obsession with  Vicks VapoRub , the very modern power struggle between trained stewards and elite players when someone...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: the Window Cleaning World Cup, whether Harry Kane really has "smashed" the England goalscoring record, a very footbally reason why the second Persian invasion of Greece in 479 BC ended in defeat, the English football kit-manufacturer pyramid and the definitive hierarchy of silly f...

With well over 200 episodes in our archive we thought we'd raid our back catalogue to bring you some examples of the purest essence of the Football Cliches podcast. This week we head back to episode 109 for an extraordinarily detailed look at what constitutes 'unfinished business', and from episode 94 we rejoice in hearing all about Kevin Keegan's appearance at the 2021 Meat Management Industry Aw...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Charlie Eccleshare for the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: Marking the demise of Soccer AM by selecting its ultimate guest lineup, "The Messi of Maths" and his equivalent of the cold, wet Tuesday night in Stoke, some very alternative goal commentary from the archives and an unexpected footballing name pops up in Law & Order: Special V...

The Athletic's Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Nick Miller for the Adjudication Panel. On the agenda: The most punworthy FA Cup quarter-final in living memory, Nike vs Warner Bros in a Ted Lasso kit saga, the player eligible to play for the most different countries, tracking down the goalkeeper cited in an unfortunate dictionary definition and, once again, checking in with good old Richa...