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PODCAST

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

Philipp Gollner

The academic treatment for English-speakers who get that soccer is more than gamedays, stars and goals. Who wonder about the histories, subcultures and politics that make the game so different from many American sports cultures; and who care about a critical take on soccer as a global capitalist machine. A European-guided journey, with one expert "visiting professor" each episode.

sports soccer

All Episodes

44:00

1/2 England's State of Emergency - and Football's: ...

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

2025/10/27

I was a little starstruck when David Goldblatt showed up on my screen today. His books have done very well for very good reason. You may have read The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football or The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Football. David is a sociologist, has a part time academic home in the US as well, at Pitzer college in LA, and this one, Injury Time: Football in a State of Emergency, is a book for the moment. The thesis is simple: a lot of the spaces for c...

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69:21

No More BS: It's Boycotts this time, at West Ham

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

2025/10/13

It's a fall of unrest in East London again. Hammers United, the largest organized fan group at West Ham United, has so far refrained from calling on members of the board or the CEO to resign. Until now. They have launched the campaign "No More BS," targetted specifically at CEO Karen Brady, the B, and chairman David Sullivan, the S. Beyond leafleting, black balloons or protest marches before games, Hammers United are for the first time calling for a match boycott, at West Ham’s next home game...

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74:16

Behind the Scenes on a UEFA Conference League...

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

2025/09/29

Before the Conference League anthem came on in Celje Slovenia, one warm August night this year, today’s guest had a lot of work behind him already while I was was on my way via train, uber and rental car from Bosnia. He is Rok Gregoric, press and pr wizard of NK Celje, a Slovenian club that was long a middling in the league of an already small country but has made it to the group phase of the conference league last year and again this year. A remarkable feat for a really pretty quiet city bet...

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41:53

Ivica Osim, Open Wounds (2/2): Live from Sarajevo,...

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

2025/09/15

This is Part 2 of an unusual episode, on the move through countries, memories, wounds, war, peace and the beautiful game. Sturm Graz is and was a workers club when I came to the club in the 90s, one year before Ivica Osim arrived. We knew he was a mathematician, soccer player and coach, and he knew workers clubs, from Željezničar, in Grbavica, back home in Sarajevo, the city then under a yearlong siege in the Bosnian independence wars. But he added something else. To him, the game was discour...

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49:35

Ivica Osim, Open Wounds (1/2): A Roadcast through...

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

2025/09/01

Sturm Graz is and was a workers club when I came to the club in the 90s, one year before Ivica Osim arrived. We knew he was a mathematician, soccer player and coach, and he knew workers clubs, from Željezničar, in Grbavica, back home in Sarajevo, the city then under a yearlong siege in the Bosnian independence wars. But he added something else. To him, the game was discourse, it was beauty. He explained soccer to us in a way we’d never seen it. Professorial and sometimes grumpy, but always ex...

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85:47

Berlin, Berlin! Hertha, Union, Babelsberg, TeBe,...

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

2025/08/18

Damiano Benzoni, Italian journalist and seasoned groundhopper, has written a wonderful book - an "emotive map of football in Berlin," a rich portrait of a city through the eyes of football. And when that city happens to be the German capital, torn by wars, shaped by the dvide between two Germanies and various migrant influences, the texture of such a book happens to be particularly interesting. The book, for now, is available only in Italien, so consider this an English language exclusive. We...

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80:45

Why Everyone from Söder Watches Women's Sports: The...

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

2025/06/23

Daniel and Romina are dear, longtime listeners of the podcast. Back in April, I sat down with them at their kitchen table in Stockholm to work out the story behind the many images that circulated online last season: a stunningly large mob of active supporters in fine voice home and away, tifo and all. This wasn't just one big game in a big stadium for the sake of a record. This was organic, homegrown, ultra-themed. At most European away games, the Bajen supporters outnumbered home fans. What ...

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49:43

Summer Round-Up: Union St. Gill, Arminia Bielefeld,...

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

2025/06/09

With Ana Ascencao e Silva, Eva Lotta Bohle, Andy Payne, Alex Kirby, Paul Reidy, Wayne Gamble, Christopher Hylland - on their club's or cause's season, what happened since we talked, and what the outlook is like at the moment. Plus, each guest picked one song - well, except Eva Lotta, who picked two. Union St. Gill, Arminia Bielefeld, West Ham, Rayo Vallecano, Leeds United, Argentina NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or...

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69:59

A 98 Year-Old, Member-Run Soccer Club in America?...

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

2025/05/26

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 revitalization more recently. It also has a soccer club, founded by German immigrants...

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69:18

We're Not Playing for Fun! Organized Workers' Soccer,...

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

2025/05/12

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 soccer and sobriety intersected then, and what promise they can hold for the present. Our baseline is the ...

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60:09

Part 2 – The Heart of St. Pauli, or: What Should We...

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

2025/04/14

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 journey with no less than 3 guests: Celina Albertz, a researcher and also in the curating team of the F...

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57:15

Part 1 – The Heart of St. Pauli, or: What Should We...

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

2025/03/31

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 researcher and also in the curating team of the FC St. Pauli Museum; Sönke Goldbeck, Board chair and d...

en-us

56:58

Back to the Grassroots: The English Non-League Day on...

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

2025/03/17

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 football in England, a chance for those clubs to "promote the importance of affordable volunteer-led commu...

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87:05

Rush Omnibus! Behind the Scenes on the Recent Wins...

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

2025/03/03

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. Resistance formed at many clubs, but at West Ham, it seemed particularly organized, creative and social media sa...

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74:50

In the Way of the Chainsaw: Are Argentina's Famous...

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

2025/02/17

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 out since 2021, and he has just published a second one, a unique journey to the land where linguist...

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73:26

State of the Unions: In the Heart of the European...

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

2025/02/03

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 regular guest in European club competitions. And in a multinational, multilingual European Union, in Brusse...

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73:47

Norwegian Cruise: No VAR Spotted Up and Down the Coast

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

2025/01/20

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 leagues recently cast a majority vote to scrap VAR - a testimony not only to true concern about the impact of VAR on...

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53:29

Deck the Halls and Turn the Tables: TAPoF as the...

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

2024/12/23

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: an audio interview with me that I gave to a fairly well known German soccer culture podcast...

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87:15

SC Freiburg at 120: A New History Book, a New...

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

2024/12/10

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) 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...

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70:49

A Multi-Club Owner in Conversation: Matt Rizzetta,...

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

2024/11/25

NEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) 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 st...

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