The Assistant Professor of Football: Soccer, Culture, History.

Fort Wayne is a city of around 260,00 in the very east of the northern half of Indiana. Like many mid-sized midwestern cities, it has been shaped by the industrialization of the late 19th century,  immigration waves from Western, Central and Southeastern Europe until the 1920s and from the rest of the world today,  deindustrialization after World War 2, the decline of urban America as well as revi...

Gabriel Kuhn is an Austrian writer and researcher who works for the Central Organization of Swedish Workers - and sat for an in-person interview (he has been on before when we talked about his wonderful book Soccer vs the State in 2023.) In this episode, we time travel to "red Vienna"  in the 1920s, to talk about how antifascism, organized workers' sports, the professionalization of...

This is the second part of a two-part episode - the first part is here, episode 54, from March 31. We will start at FC St. Pauli, now in the German Bundesliga, at the club’s museum which has very active researchers, and we’ll end at Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and the bigger question of what right remembering looks like in professional soccer - and what it can look like. We will take that journe...

This is the first part of a two-part episode. We will start at FC St. Pauli, now in the German Bundesliga, at the club’s museum which has very active researchers, and we’ll end at Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and the bigger question of what right remembering looks like in professional soccer - and what it can look like. We will take that journey with no less than 3 guests: Celina Albertz, a resea...

If you are in England on the nice Spring weekend of March 22nd, I hope you didn’t book the trip to see a Premier League game. Because there are none. It’s a dreaded national team break again. But on the other hand, that weekend may also be one of the best to soak in English football culture, because it’s the Annual “Non-League Day," an annual, grassroots-led spotlight on non-professional foot...

Note: This is an unusual episode, in reaction to the events unfolding Thursday and Friday, with little time to edit or the usual setup. All sounds fine and is audible, but not as nice as usual. My apologies! Back last Summer, many Premier League clubs announced they would change, or do away with, "concession tickets" for seniors and youth, as well as a price hike on season tickets. Resis...

There is a lot to say about Argentina and football that we are not saying today. There is a lot about Argentina and football that we are saying today. We’re even saying things about saying things about football in Argentina: Christopher Hylland joins me, an English author and educator with a Latin American past and a Norwegian present. His football-centric travel report Tears at La Bombonera is ou...

The EU, Europe's great post-war peace project, can feel beleaguered today. Global and continental uncertainties collide, and things are complicated in Brussels, Belgium, the heart of the European Union. Two clubs from that capital survived in the Europa League, though none bear Brussels’ city name: RSC Anderlecht, with the beautiful color of purple, and Royal Union St Gilloise, a recent regul...

Norway is regularly listed among the "happiest countries in the world." It is one of the wealthiest too, and its not a country with revolutionary fervor. It’s not France. It’s not even Germany. Yet the Video Assistant Referee, known widely as VAR, has raised Norwegians' hackles. Organized fans have mobilized enough, and in enough forms, that the country's two professional leagu...

Thank you for making 50 Episodes of The Assistant professor of Football possible! Whether you celebrate anything this season or not, I hope these days are refreshing for you, hold people and emotions if you want that, and space to breathe in if you prefer that.  Last year at this time, I read Michael Foreman’s classic picture book War Game as a Holiday special. This December special is me. That is...

SC Freiburg, a former yoyo club from a pretty progressive town on the very southwestern edge of Germany is now firmly established in the Bundesliga. The club is 120 years old this year, and just a few days ago published its first investigation into its own history during Nazi rule in Germany. It’s one of the German clubs that paid attention early on to football for women, is a pioneer in the estab...

I've said something like this before: I believe the means of global soccer production should be controlled by fans, players and the community the club is in, collectively or cooperatively, and not by firms and companies based half a world away from the clubs in question. So, this podcast is not a natural avenue for an American multi-club owner of European clubs to share his story. In an excep...

Martin Luther (not the King) nailed 95 protest theses against the Christian church of his day to a church door in Germany on October 31st 1517. And Protestants , properly understood, have been protesting ever since. As we near "Reformation Day" again, David Kilpatrick, a Professor of English and Sports Managment, channels that spirit of protest to the world of soccer. His playful, bold a...

Today, we are taking a Fall break trip to Vallecas, a working class neighborhood in the Spanish capital Madrid. La Liga - the Spanish first league - holds global appeal chiefly due to its two dominators and their massive global following. However, there are wonderful and many layered stories of politics, local pride, past glories and regional conflict below that shiny surface. Rayo Vallecano, the...

The McDonald’s on Elland Road in Leeds, near the stadium of Leeds United, is, apparently, the only McDonald’s there is that has removed any element with the color red. Because Red, that is Manchester United, the rose of Lancaster in the badge of Manchester City. And roses, as well as soccer shirts, in Yorkshire are white… except until this Summer, when two red bulls, the logo of an Austrian energy...

In a bit of a parallel episode to Episode 24 ("The Footballer who Defied the Nazis? The Myth of Matthias Sindelar"), this is the story of Hakoach Vienna. A child of central European Jewish emancipation movements and of the "muscular religion" fashionable at the time, the Jewish club became Austria's first professional champion in 1925, subsequently lost its important playe...

To critique the state of our world, our communities, to critique what is wrong with soccer in late stage capitalism is one thing. It actually isn’t a hard thing. But to dream, think and even plan for a better world, and a better football, that is something different entirely. Alina Schwermer, a young and extremely talented German journalist, has done just that, on 450 pages, in her book Futopia: I...

Gent in Belgium. Rasgrad in Bulgaria. Mostar in Bosnia. Borås in Sweden. Tiraspol in, well, Moldova. Or Differdange in Luxemburg If you know where these places are, have some sense of what it looks like there, what the vibe is, perhaps it is because of the early UEFA club competitions' qualifying rounds. It is for me. If it isn't for you yet, it's time it was. I know I’ve often said...

If you follow a club that plays in the English Premier League, you may have gotten wind of it: over the Summer, quite a few clubs increased their season ticket prices, and phased out - or partially phased out - discounted tickets for kids and seniors, so called concession tickets. And for once, English fans seem to get organized and cooperative in resistance. Wolverhampton, Tottenham and West Ham...

The end of Season 2 of The Assistant Professor of Football is nigh, and we check in with guests from the last year to hear how their club, cause or research have been doing. Here are, in order:  Peter K Wagner on Sturm Graz’s sensational champions league and cup winning season Fabio Schaupp, also from Graz, on the promotion of Graz’s other team, GAK, to the Austrian Bundesliga, so regular Graz der...

Goshen, Indiana is home to a private college without an American Football team - and, most recently, a semi-professional soccer club that serves as an - albeit unusual - case study for how grassroots soccer in the U.S. can thrive and build a community. The overarching theme of The Assistant Professor is that football is not merely about goals and stars. It is, done properly, a participatory cultur...

Today's episode is a mix between soccer detective story and true crime podcasting. British investigative journalist Paul Brown is our Visiting Professor for the day. He and his colleague Philippe Auclair have piled up pathbreaking research on the backstory, money trail and flat out baffling activities of a group called 777 partners. Their activities in the insurance and airplanes business wou...

We begin with the Eurovision Songcontest and end with Sturm Graz's cup win, but consider, most of all, FC St. Gallen. Saint who? True, if I would ask you who invented club football in Europe in continental Europe, would you guess that the answer is the same as to the Ricola cough drop question? The Swiss did! Well, technically English students living in Switzerland, but nevermind - the year w...

The excesses of global soccer capitalism are well documented on this podcast. Perhaps no footballing country is more affected than England, the birthplace of the modern game and home to arguably the wealthiest clubs and league. To take it up one notch, six of its big clubs attempted to join the breakaway Super League while, around the same time, historic club Bury FC collapse and fell under admini...

Kay Bernstein was elected the president of Hertha BSC, then in the 1st Bundesliga, in June 2022. He died at his home near Berlin on January 16th of this year, with Hertha being in the 2nd Bundesliga. What sounds like a short and - on the pitch - unsuccessful presidency is in fact the most significant shift and opening up of possibilities in club leadership in German and, possibly, European club le...