The World Cup, But Not Really

In this episode of The World Cup, But Not Really, Rune heads to a training camp to meet The Bilbies, Australia's women's blind football team, where five players plays in complete darkness, and he learns how the game is played. We meet the players and learn what it means to finally find their people, a group of vision impaired women who get it, after growing up isolated and without access to sport...

Chasing that feeling of football and home, Rune stumbles into the story of the Homeless World Cup, and the people for whom that feeling isn't a memory, but a lived reality. In this episode, Rune meets Kuda, who arrived in Australia in 2008 to play in the Homeless World Cup and never left. A career-ending injury and a childhood without parents back in Zimbabwe could have been the end of his story,...

How does one of the happiest jerseys in football, The Canarinho, become something some Brazilians can't bring themselves to wear? And how were iconic football jerseys from the '90s made? Those are the two topics Rune deals with on this part two of the jersey episodes. Rune tracks down Drake Ramberg, who spent 37 years at Nike and was in Europe in the '90s as part of a team designing jerseys we now...

Is goalkeeping the loneliest job on the pitch? You're part of a team, but you're also doing your own thing, separated from everyone else by a strip of grass and some paint. In this episode we find out. We meet Paul Izzo, an Australian professional footballer, and one of three goalkeepers named in Australia's squad for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, currently playing at the Danish Club Randers FC, where...

In this episode, Rune digs into the tale of Con Jones. Born Thomas Shortell, a Sydney bookie who fleeced a hundred punters on Melbourne Cup day in 1903, fled the country one step ahead of a mob, and washed up in Vancouver with a bag of stolen cash and zero history in football. Twenty-five years later he died wealthy, respected, and in a Soccer Hall of Fame. Rune talks to former ABC journalist, Tre...

Rune insists the only sport played with an actual round ball that you actually kick with your foot consistently should be called football. Stefan, who grew up calling it soccer and once won most improved, is not so sure. Joining them in this episode is Dr. Hunter Fujak, senior lecturer in Sport Management and author of Code Wars, to explain why Australia is unlike anywhere else on earth, a country...

What does a football jersey really mean? From a secret shirt swap in a Mexican tunnel in 1986 to a record-breaking auction sale of 7.14 million pounds, Rune explores how the humble football jersey has evolved from game day gear into cultural artefact, fashion statement, and serious collector's item. Rune meets Bryan Cush, originally from Northern Ireland and now living in Australia - a lifelong fo...

In this episode of The World Cup, But Not Really, Rune makes the case that football chants are among the loudest and most important things humans do together. Stefan finds them unnecessarily aggressive. Rune sits down with Jorge Knijnik, Brazilian-Australian academic and lifelong football devotee, to unpack why chanting isn't just noise. It's belonging, carnival, and controlled war all at once. An...

Meet two culture nerds, Rune and Stefan - one who has always loved football, the other who can't kick a ball - and find out why they're making a podcast together about the world's biggest sporting event. They'll be talking to fans and players about what makes the World Cup unlike anything else, the way it suspends normal life, defines eras, and pulls people together under one flag. And Stefan intr...

The World Cup, But Not Really is the football podcast for people who love football, and the people who don't. Host's Rune Pedersen and Stefan Delatovic dive into the fascinating world that surrounds the game: the chants and the emotions, the stories off the pitch, jersey culture, a blind women's team taking to the field, and so much more. From the weird and the quirky to the deeply human, each epi...