SoccerPod

Toto Schillaci died last year after a long fight with cancer. When I asked him what kind of cancer he was battling, he laughed and with a smile in his broken English loudly replied – ‘Yerrikay! (his pronunciation of Eric) I no longer have a rectum - I know that much!’ The translator did his thing for the small group that wanted to listen in, and all laughed – just Toto being Toto was definitely th...

Toto Schillaci è morto l'anno scorso dopo una lunga lotta contro il cancro. Quando gli ho chiesto che tipo di cancro stesse combattendo, ha riso e con un sorriso nel suo inglese stentato ha risposto ad alta voce: "Yerrikay! (la sua pronuncia di Eric) Non ho più il retto - questo lo so!". Il traduttore ha fatto la sua parte per il piccolo gruppo che voleva ascoltare, e tutti hanno ri...

As I talked to Steve Sampson, I was very much reminded of the coaches of my youth in the 80s and 90s. I smirked nostalgically as I heard words like: accountability, preparation, and culture. If you Google Steve Sampson, of the first 10 articles you see, 9 will be about one event he experienced - a moment where he was coaching the US National Team, prepping for the 1998 World Cup, and was faced wit...

Freeman Jones was a black, PhD-educated scientist in Jim Crow America, who was the lead of his team. However, when his company opened up the facility for tours for investors or the public, he was kindly asked by ownership to exit the facility and go wait in the yard with the other black employees, most of whom were part of the cleaning crew.  Freeman would go onto marry Mada Myers, who had marched...

Gary Mabbutt is a real legend of that historic club – Tottenham Hotspur of North London – but Gary was quite lucky to get that far as he nearly died as a boy while at his youth club.  He did not die of course, but was diagnosed with what was then a pretty unknown condition - that of type 1 diabetes – he was told by the doctor that his football career was over and he would have to take a lot of pre...

2025 Season, here we go!  A bit late, but hey - I'm a child of divorce.  Dean Windass was never really an elite player at the top flight of English football. He is a legend of Hull City – that Yorkshire club with great history - but Hull rarely find themselves in the top flight of English football.  He had many great moments at Hull – some of the best in that clubs history – and when Dean ret...

I always smile big when I get to speak to an old US National Team guy – of all the players and characters from around the world that I’ve sat with - they are my favorite lot, because they did it here and they did it first.  No player from any other country can honestly say: 'When I was a kid there really was no soccer in my country, there was no league, there was no national team, there were...

In 1984, John Fashanu, a black Englishman of Nigerian descent, signed with the British club: Millwall FC; an openly racist club at that time. The semi-official chant the supporters sing from the crowd is: ‘We are Millwall, No One Likes Us, No One Likes Us, We Don’t Care, We are Millwall, From the Den’. (The Den is the name of their home ground)  The supporters hated him, they abused him, they thre...

He was known as ‘the mayor of Rome’ – and he was such a great player that later in his career the great Pele would go on to say that he was the best player in the 1982 World Cup.  But Bruno Conti had a very humble start – his home village of Nettuno was actually known as the baseball capital of Italy.  It was the site of a major US Naval Base during World War 2 – and the Italian boys would watch i...

If you love sports and you love sports stories, then it is hard to do much better than Wes Morgan, and the absurd story of the 2015 Leicester City Silver Foxes.  They were 5000-1 odds against winning the title. But it may as well have been 5 million. It was not going to happen, no way, an impossibility. To bet 10 bucks on it, was to throw 10 bucks away.  They played Manchester City away late in th...

Gabriel Agbonlahor is the all time leading scorer for Aston Villa Football Club – he is a true legend there and we dive into his time there - but when I think of Gabby I think of this -  It’s an interesting time for a player when it comes time to retire.  They are still young – usually in their early 30’s – they're famous, have a ton of money, a ton of time, they don’t really know how to do a...

He was the best American soccer player when America could care less about soccer. Today, the most talented  21 year old American player – we know that guy. He is probably quite famous, rich and playing at a massive club. This was not the case in 1989 for John Harkes.  But his ability could not be overlooked, and as such he was able to play at levels no American ever had before: the Prem, FA Cup, W...

This is a really sad one for me – Andreas Brehme tragically passed away this week – at the age of 63 in his home town of Munich.  If you do not know of Andi, he is a true legend of German football - having scored one of the biggest goals in that nation’s history to win the World Cup in 1990 in Italy.   But I will always remember and have love for Andi as he was the first guest I ever reached out t...

Ray played 15 years for Arsenal. And he was there for the arrival of the great Arsene Wegner – and he would go on to bring some of the greatest players to ever grace the Premier League -  Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Patrick Viera to name a few.  In the 97-98 campaign, Ray was playing exceptionally well – maybe the best year of his career – and it was only natural that the national team – coach...

There are currently some 13000 players in the youth system of English premier league clubs. Of these 13000 players – the best youth players in the country - less than 1% - way less - will ever see the field for a premier league side.   Now if you adjust those odds for a 23 year old American – who plays in the English 9th division – who has to work odd jobs to make ends meet – well the odds – they...

If you are an American soccer fan of roughly my age – mid 40’s - you may remember a movie called: Victory, with Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine - directed by the great John Huston.  The film is set in WW2 where a group of war prisoners – captured from around the world – are forced to play a football match against the Nazi German squad – for propaganda purposes.   The filmmakers secured real foot...

Paul Merson is one of the most popular soccer pundits in the UK. And his voice and childlike enthusiasm serves as nice commentary to go with some of the biggest moments of recent English football.  He is a legend at mighty Arsenal as his runs down the right and crosses in were a mainstay of that era. He has his fair share of trophies - and he played in and won a game that in my view – is the most...

If you have children that play youth soccer, I hope you will give a listen to Bruce Murray.  He has a brain condition called CTE. In his 30’s he began forgetting things, he developed a sensitivity to light and began to develop a problem with impulse control. It really scared him - he went through dark times and ended up in some dark places.  He and his doctors have no doubt that this is related to...

The women’s game has come a long way in the US. The female stars of today make millions of dollars and play in front of sold out American stadiums.  But it was not always so. The generation prior to them – of which Tisha Venturini was one of the best – did not have a league to play in. They would go from winning World Cups to giving lessons to young girls for $25/hour to make ends meet. They were...

What do you call a Scotsman in the 2nd round of the World Cup?  - A referee.  Paul Gascoigne told me that joke in loving gest of his friend, Colin Hendry – whom he has  a bit of history on the pitch with.  Colin Hendry’s first job was delivering mail in the Nortwest Rolling Hills of Scotland. One pound fifty per week was the going wage, and it was always cold. But like so many – a ball was always...

When Pierre Littbarski was an infant - age one, the Berlin Wall was put up right behind his family home. He remembers as a boy going through ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ and smuggling food to friends and family who found themselves on the wrong side of that structure. Further, he talked about how he and his friends would play games kicking the ball up against that ‘wall of shame’ as it was known in West B...

The great Gaizka Mendieta on the podcast this week - we talk the curious refereeing at the 2002 World Cup, back to back Champions League finals, the superiority of Spanish cuisine over British, 1980's American heavy metal music and more... Thank you for listening!  If you’d like to support the podcast, we invite you to visit our merch store at www.soccerpod/shop . Orders ship the next day, an...

Mickey Thomas is my kind of character. He comes from a poor village in Wales where football was everything. As a boy, he dreamt of following in the footsteps of his hero – George Best – and he was talented enough to accomplish this – playing in front of 80,000 screaming fans in the ‘Theatre of Dreams’. And he immediately hated it.  Way too much anxiety for Mickey and after a short stay, when he as...

Jens Lehmann joined us for a sit in Munich right after his return from Doha and the World Cup. We rapped about one of the greatest derbys in the world in Dortmund - which he saw from both sides - his heroics at the World Cup, to the ‘Invincibles’ – he is one of the greatest goalkeepers in German and Premier League history and I hope you enjoy him laying it out for you on the podcast.  Thank you fo...

Kristine Lilly won 4 NCAA championships, she won 2 Olympic Gold medals, 2 World Cups and is in the Guinness Book of World Record for most caps played for country with 354. Her first World Cup was in 1991 and was hardly covered by any American sports media – even her home paper did not write about it. But some 8 years later in the 1999 World Cup, her and her teammates would go on to break the recor...