Shows
Football Ruined My Life125. Our Most Depressing DefeatsColin Shindler asks Jon Holmes and Andy Hamilton to relive their football related nightmares. They are forced under forensic questioning to remember what they had hoped they had buried forever in the deepest recesses of their memories. In other words, those defeats which evoke the very darkest of thoughts. They don’t have to be 9-0 thrashings to do
that. They can be games when you’re 1-0 up and coasting and then two stupid, stupid, stupid goals in stoppage time turn victory into defeat. There can be narrow defeats in important games or games decided by the insanity and incip...
2026-01-2347 minFootball Ruined My Life124. Those We Have Lost In 2025This week Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White pay tribute to some of the players who died in 2025 plus two journalists and one referee. As most of our listeners are probably in their 60s and 70s, the deaths of players like Billy Bonds, John Robertson and perhaps above all Denis Law bring to the surface fears about our own mortality. If you loved the football and the footballers of the 1960s and 1970s, when our love for the game was sealed, you probably find, as we do, these deaths to be particularly poignant. Those we are talking about in...
2026-01-1652 minFootball Ruined My Life123. Are Modern Refs Too Fussy?Anyone who watches The Big Match Revisited every Saturday morning on ITV4 will notice that referees in the 1970s and 1980s used to wave play on so much more often - which meant that the game flowed and wasn’t constantly hauled back for yet another free kick. You also pretty much had to amputate an opponent’s leg below the knee before you could be sent off. A sending off in the 1960s and 1970s was a big deal and the player was usually embarrassed and upset. Squads were of course much smaller so losing a key player for 28 da...
2026-01-0950 minFootball Ruined My Life122. Club LegendsThis week the Colin, Jon and Omid are talking about those players beloved by the fans but usually underrated by fans of other clubs. In other words, club legends - usually players who play for one club for the
whole of their career who do not appear to be tempted by a transfer to a club more likely to win trophies… and who certainly wouldn’t leave the club just for the sake of increasing even by a significant amount their weekly wage packet. Have such players entirely disappeared from our game? That loyalty was quite prevalent at one time in t...
2026-01-0248 minFootball Ruined My Life120. Is the Game More Exciting Than it Was?Following on from the last episode (the special on FIFA and their Peace Prize that was awarded to Donald Trump), this week Jon Holmes, Andy Hamilton and Colin Shindler ask themselves the question: “Is the game more or less exciting than it was when we first started watching football in the late 1950s/early 1960s?” It certainly seems to be more exciting to judge by the hysterical radio and television commentators and the ludicrous goal celebrations we have to suffer. Back in the day a goalscorer might have his hand shaken, his hair ruffled and on occasion his bottom fondle...
2025-12-1950 minFootball Ruined My Life119. Has FIFA Ruined My Football?This is a shorter but very special edition of Football Ruined My Life. It was recorded three days after the sickening and humiliating farrago of nonsense which was the draw for the 2026 World Cup. It contained, of course, the sickening sight of a convicted felon being awarded a Peace Prize. The sheer inanity of the exercise made it entirely nonsensical. Within minutes of the draw starting, our producer Paul Kobrak, messaged Jon and Colin saying he was sickened by the spectacle that was unfolding on television. Jon was feeling exactly the same and we jointly wondered how the game...
2025-12-1231 minFootball Ruined My Life118. The One with Steve CoppellIn this episode Colin Shindler and Jim White are delighted to welcome one of the few Economics graduates to play for England and manage successfully in the Premier League. Steve Coppell’s potential career as an
economist was somewhat overshadowed by 360 games as a right winger for Tranmere Rovers and Manchester United, despite being forced to retire at the age of 28 because of a bad knee injury. Incidentally he also had a subsequent career of over a thousand games as a highly successful manager of a number of clubs but principally Crystal Palace and Reading. Now at the age of...
2025-12-0554 minFootball Ruined My Life117. The Players We Most FearedThe panel discuss the players they most feared because they were really good players and always played well against their own team... or players who were basically hatchet men who set out cold-bloodedly to injure their best player. When we talked about goalkeepers Pat Jennings came into the former category and you have to say nobody could dislike Pat who always seemed such a pleasant self-effacing bloke – unless you were trying to score past him. Don Revie’s Leeds United on the other hand were both feared and disliked. Various teams of course have made us wonder whether there is any...
2025-11-2839 minFootball Ruined My Life116. Giant KillersRonnie Radford was a workaday midfielder playing for such legendary clubs as Worcester City, Bath City and Forest Green Rovers but in January 1972 he was playing for Hereford United in an FA Cup third round replay at Edgar Street on a quagmire of a pitch in front of a capacity crowd. With less than ten minutes to go and Newcastle comfortably 1-0 ahead Radford won a tackle in the Newcastle half and played a one-two. The return pass bobbled on the muddy surface but sat up nicely for Radford, and he unleashed a 30-yard strike into the top corner tha...
2025-11-2141 minFootball Ruined My Life115. International BreaksNow that England have already qualified for next year’s World Cup finals, this makes all the remaining matches in the group completely pointless from an England perspective. The November international break seems to have arrived 25 minutes after the October one. These tedious autumn and spring international breaks also extend the football season which now starts in the middle of the Test match series and ends as the following season’s Test match series begins. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White discuss, sometimes with a sense of rage and frustration, their feelings that the traditional rhythm of a footba...
2025-11-1441 minFootball Ruined My Life114. The Team of the 1960sIn this episode, Andy Hamilton, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes resume their role as selectors as they choose the best team of the 1960s from the English Football League as it then was. That’s not one individual club or national side but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as team players. Players like Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews are ineligible as their greatest days were in the 1940s and 1950s even if their careers continued into the...
2025-11-0750 minFootball Ruined My Life113. Football in the 1960sColin Shindler tries to convince Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville that the 1960s was English football’s most glorious decade. Not just the world cup triumph of 1966, though that obviously features significantly at the heart of the decade. Secondary school was dark, depressing and alienating. Football by contrast was light, colourful and inclusive. All it asked of you was to enjoy playing and supporting your team. As a teenager in that decade, Colin had no wife or children to demand attention as they would in later years and in the 1960s football seemed to offer a cheap and readily available...
2025-10-3153 minFootball Ruined My Life112. Short Lived ManagersWe all remember Brian Clough’s infamous 44 days as manager of Leeds United, a fractious period of time which compared favourably with Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister of the UK - and of course the lettuce that lasted longer than either of them. Colin Shindler recalls with ghastly clarity Steve Coppell’s 33 days in charge of the disaster that was Manchester City in 1996. Both these short-lived phenomena have been beaten very recently: not just by what last week with Ange Postecoglou’s departure from Nottingham Forest but also by what happened at the start of this season – the sacking...
2025-10-2440 minFootball Ruined My Life111. No HopersOn the first day of every season nearly all football supporters experience the same surge of pride and expectation. When they get to the ground it looks gleaming. The grass is green and the white lines stand out in marked contrast inviting the arrival of our heroes and stimulating thoughts of promotion and championships and European football. This emotion for most supporters doesn’t even last ninety minutes as the wretched disappointment of a 2-0 home defeat brings them back to the grim reality. They are not going to win the League or the FA Cup (or get promotion or even a...
2025-10-1745 minFootball Ruined My Life110. Who Runs The Club?It’s an increasingly pertinent question in football. In the days of Shankly, Clough and Ferguson it was blindingly obvious who ran their clubs. But as the manager’s role has been split between the Head Coach and the Director of Football, that vision of total authority has become increasingly blurred. The Head Coach might pick the team on Saturday afternoon (or possibly Friday night or Sunday lunchtime) but bizarrely, and to his utter frustration, he might not have bought any of the players he is selecting. That could well have been the responsibility of the Director of Football and a commit...
2025-10-1043 minFootball Ruined My Life109. Team of the 70sFollowing on from the previous edition, Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes set themselves the task of choosing from the English Football League as it then was, a team of the 1970s. That’s not one individual club or national side, but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as team players. It is with evident relief that all our regular listeners will realise that we can start proceedings knowing that Jamie Vardy wasn’t born until 1987 and th...
2025-10-0342 minFootball Ruined My Life108. The One From The 70s… with Jon SpurlingNot unusually for this podcast, we look back – with quite some affection – to the 1970s. Many of our listeners will also no doubt remember the decade through a haze of nostalgic introspection… but of course it was also a tumultuous ten years that not only laid many of the foundation stones for the modern game, but also witnessed the English national team twice failing to qualify for the World Cup Finals after their heroics in the competition in 1970. Bringing a younger, but no less well-informed perspective, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by Jon Spurling – whose book Get It On: Ho...
2025-09-2643 minFootball Ruined My Life107. Falls From GraceJim White was astonished to find that Andy Carroll is now turning out on Saturday afternoons to play in the sixth tier of English for Dagenham & Redbridge. So it’s Jim who leads the discussion (with Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes) of players who once strode purposefully at the summit of the game but ended their careers in far less salubrious circumstances. Bobby
Moore finished his playing career in the Danish Third Division and George Best turned out for Dunstable Town when he was good enough to have still been playing First Division football. Further back in history Wilf Manni...
2025-09-1940 minFootball Ruined My Life106. The One With Daniel GrayThis week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the author Daniel Gray to discuss his 2013 book “Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters” – a fascinating travel book about England as seen through the less glamorous clubs of English football and the communities that support them. It’s time that clubs like Crewe and Chester and Bradford City were given their due air time and Football Ruined My Life is glad to accord it to them. Daniel proves a witty and poetic chronicler of the distant outreaches of English football. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...
2025-09-1247 minFootball Ruined My Life105. Football in 2050Jon Holmes, Jim White and Colin Shindler speculate (if present trends continue) about what football will look like in the year 2050 when it is very likely that none of them will be around to feel embarrassed by how badly they got things wrong. Colin mischievously teases Jon to consider what will have happened to Leicester City in 25 years time. Will there still be a Premier League such as we currently know it or indeed will there still be a Leicester City or might it be swallowed up in the East Midlands side competing against Alsace Lorraine and Outer Mongolia on a weekly...
2025-09-0544 minFootball Ruined My Life104. You Don’t Win Anything With KidsIn this episode Colin Shindler, Andy Hamilton and Jon Holmes examine Alan Hansen’s notorious observation that you don’t win anything with kids. It’s rather a shame that his reputation as one of the leading pundits has been slightly tarnished by the fact that he said those words on Match of the Day on the day Manchester United had been well beaten by Aston Villa at the start of the 1995-96 season. United went on to win the double that year and we all know what that group of young Manchester United players went on to achieve. Karen B...
2025-08-2947 minFootball Ruined My Life102. Why Don’t the Top Six Just Bugger Off?We all know that that’s what the foreign owners want. Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the reasons why we shouldn’t just wave bye bye to the top six elite clubs in the Premier League and let them all just bugger off and join what nearly every football supporter fears will be the inevitable European Super League. For them there would then be no fear of relegation but instead there would be trips to Milan, Madrid, Rome, Munich, Paris and Barcelona every other week instead of down the M3 and
the M27 to Southampton or up the...
2025-08-1542 minFootball Ruined My Life101. Do We Give Too Much Credit to the Game of our Youth?This is a particularly emotive topic. Do we on this podcast give too much
credit to the football of our youth and not enough to the Modern Game? We probably do – some might even argue it’s not the football of our youth we want back but our youth itself. And they could be right. Who wouldn’t want to be 20 years old again with a body that actually worked properly? But one reason Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes are always happy to talk endlessly about football in the 1960s and 1970s in particular is that there’s a distressing t...
2025-08-0847 minFootball Ruined My Life100. PostbagWe can imagine no better way of celebrating our century of podcasts than by dipping into the postbag containing your emails. Every week we encourage you to write to us and you do so in comforting numbers. Once again, the tone is largely positive with people wanting to contribute their own memories to the topic they’ve just listened to or correcting our very fallible memories. We look forward to these occasional episodes because it enables us to connect with our audience and we’re very grateful that you take the time and trouble to write - if only because it re...
2025-08-0146 minFootball Ruined My Life99. Leaving GroundsPrompted by reports of the last men’s game to be played by Everton at Goodison Park, the panel discuss the emotions that fans feel when they leave their traditional home for pastures new – the nostalgia for times past and the excitement mixed with some trepidation at what lies ahead. Jon and Colin have experienced this sensation as Filbert Street and Maine Road closed their doors for the last time and now the Old Evertonian Jimmy Mulville joins them to discuss this particular phenomenon. As football grounds modernise it is an emotion likely to be shared by the majority of fo...
2025-07-2550 minFootball Ruined My Life98. 1985Was 1985 English football’s darkest year? There could be a number of nominations for this much coveted title but 1985 contained the tragedies of Heysel Stadium and the Bradford City fire. Weeks before these events the sixth round FA Cup replay between Luton Town and Millwall degenerated into a shocking riot. The average attendance at a Division One match in 1972 had been over 30,000. By 1985 that had slumped to just 18,374. No British team had qualified for the Euros in France in 1984 so no British television channel bothered to cover it, so low was the interest in the game. Football in 1985 said the Sund...
2025-07-1846 minFootball Ruined My Life96. PunditsAndy Hamilton returns to join Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes as they discuss the contentious subject of football pundits. By pundits, they mean those know-it-alls who are either very wise after the event, are outstanding at stating the bleeding obvious or are as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to predicting the future. Yet somehow, they have become increasingly important in the broadcasting of football on radio and particularly television. Indeed the BBC Director General, guided by the new BBC Head of Sport, recently told us that audiences would prefer to listen to the pundits rather tha...
2025-07-0444 minFootball Ruined My Life95. Is English football still recognisably English?This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by Omid Djalili to ask the question, “How English is the English football pyramid?” Of course, football reflects society and since we all began watching football, British society has changed out of all recognition. If you look at old football matches on The Big Match Revisited on ITV4 on Saturday mornings and other archive film programs you can see how different it was 40 years also ago and how widely British society has changed since then - not just off the field but also on the field. There is no question that many...
2025-06-2737 minFootball Ruined My Life93. Onfield BehaviourIn this edition of the podcast, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes are joined by Andy Hamilton to talk in a very headmasterly tone about Onfield Behaviour which quite frankly is bringing the good name of the Football Ruined My Life school into disgrace. In a Champions League quarter final this season two Real Madrid boys in the Lower Sixth, Rudiger and Mbappe, were shown on television after a fortunate win over their rival boys school Atletico Madrid making obscene gestures. Rudiger was appearing to make a throat-slitting motion, apparently towards the Atletico crowd, while Mbappe was shown seemingly making a crotch-gra...
2025-06-1338 minFootball Ruined My Life92. Fan SentimentWe’re all fans. That’s why we make this podcast and that’s why presumably you all like listening to it. Fan sentiment is something we suspect we all feel strongly about but probably in our different ways. It’s not just foreign owners, ludicrous transfer fees, and (present company excepted) cynical agents taking money off both their clients and the clubs. Today’s panel (of Jon Holmes, Colin Shindler and Jimmy Mulville) consider how fans like all of us are being slowly alienated from the clubs to which we’ve given a lifetime of devotion. Colin even has sympathy for...
2025-06-0651 minFootball Ruined My Life91. England Managers After Sir Alf Part 2In the first podcast Football Ruined My Life has done since the untimely demise of Patrick Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the Daily Telegraph sports columnist Jim White. Forced to restart the episode because the Producer had failed to press the record button first time round, eventually the panel turn to the “the poisoned chalice”. They consider the story from the sad night of defeat on penalties in Turin to the singularly appropriate day in 2000 when Kevin Keegan resigned the job in the toilets at Wembley Stadium after a 1-0 home defeat by Germany. In between ca...
2025-05-3050 minFootball Ruined My Life90. England Managers After Sir Alf Part 1It’s commonly known as “the poisoned chalice”. The only England manager to win the World Cup was Alf Ramsey in 1966. Nobody has done it since though a few have come close. In this, his last ever podcast, Patrick Barclay, along with Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler, analyses why that has been the case. Paddy and co. take the story from 1974 when Sir Alf was dismissed by the FA to the end of Bobby Robson’s unlucky regime after the defeat by Germany at Italia 90. Gazza cried, we all cried but we comforted ourselves with the thought that the next manager...
2025-05-2336 minFootball Ruined My Life89. 1968This is the penultimate podcast in which Patrick Barclay appeared. In it the original Football Ruined My Life panel of Paddy, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler analyse the year 1968, as the latest in their periodic examinations of one particularly memorable year. In football terms 1968 was the year that Manchester United followed Celtic to become the first English club to win the European Cup but even that landmark occasion was only one of many. It was also the year of the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the riots in Chicago, the Soviet invasion of Cze...
2025-05-2140 minFootball Ruined My Life88. The One With Omid Djalili (reposted episode)This is the first of the last three episodes recorded with Patrick Barclay. We are re-releasing the podcast he made with the original Football Ruined My Life team of Patrick Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler because it was previously published the day we heard of Paddy’s tragic death and we removed it out of respect as soon as we heard the news.
Stand-up comic Omid Djalili was born in Chelsea and has been a passionate and regular spectator at Stamford Bridge from an early age. Forced out of London by the impact of the pan...
2025-05-1948 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe Return of Football Ruined My LifeBack in February, when we learnt about the tragic and shocking death of our friend and colleague, Patrick Barclay, we suspended the podcast and took time to consider if and how it can continue. Replacing Paddy is impossible; the breadth of his knowledge and his infectious (and mischievous) sense of humour made him unique. But here we announce our return with roster of stars who will make irregular appearances to join the regulars Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler. Also, we reveal a special week-long series of releases of the last episodes Paddy recorded with
Colin and Jon.
...
2025-05-1604 minFootball Ruined My LifePenalty!!Twelve yards away, the keeper can’t move off his line until the ball is struck. How does anyone ever miss a penalty? Well, as we all know they do miss and frequently it’s crucial in a match. So it can be too for the award in the first place of a penalty for handball with no intent to handle by the defender and for fouls when the forward has cleverly tripped himself up but made it look like it’s a deliberate foul. Plenty for Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay to get their collective teeth into her...
2025-01-3141 minFootball Ruined My LifeRIP (including Denis Law)A change of pace for Football Ruined My Life this week. In this podcast we’re looking back at football players and managers who died during 2024. Clearly we can only deal with a handful of the many who left us last year but what follows is the choice of Jon Holmes, Paddy Barclay and Colin Shindler as they discuss the lives and careers of the football men who meant something to them and whom they wish to honour in this brief tribute. Not so much a eulogy but a celebration… so still pretty upbeat. That...
2025-01-2447 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe One With Ian Storey-MooreThe prolific goal-scoring winger Ian Storey-Moore turns 80 on the day this episode was published... and Football Ruined My Life has chosen to mark the occasion by giving him the greatest present a footballer of the 1960s and 1970s could possibly want - a guest appearance on the podcast with Paddy Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler. A star forward in the nearly great Nottingham Forest team of the late 1960s but forced into early retirement by a bad injury shortly after his controversial transfer to Manchester United, Ian stayed in the game as a scout, particularly with Martin O'Neill d...
2025-01-1740 minFootball Ruined My LifeChristmas GamesColin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Paddy Barclay wish all our listeners a very merry Christmas and we do so by recalling Christmas time matches from long ago. With far less choice on offer, both on television and on the dining room table, football at Christmas provided a fabulous feast of entertainment, the climax to which came on Boxing Day in 1963 when to everyone’s astonishment a record number of 66 goals were scored in the 10 First Division fixtures alone. Has the mass globalisation of the modern game in recent years had any impact on the distinctive Englishness of Yuletide matches?
2024-12-2043 minFootball Ruined My LifeUtility PlayersColin Shindler, Patrick Barclay and Jon Holmes examine the value of utility players – the player who could fill in anywhere on the pitch from right back to outside left. There is a marked tendency by current managers to favour specialisation over utility yet we all remember, usually with affection, those players who could “do a job” anywhere on the pitch – the perfect player to bring on in the days when there was only one substitute. The panel pays tribute to the Paul Madeleys of the game and explore the reasons for their gradual disappearance from the game. Learn...
2024-12-1340 minFootball Ruined My LifeBrits AbroadColin Shindler, Paddy Barclay and Jon Holmes discuss the phenomenon of Brits Abroad, those British footballers who made the transition to the sun, sangria and shenanigans of playing for foreign teams. Jon of course became a one-man Lunn PolyTravel Agency for his clients in the 1980s but the phenomenon of British footballers travelling to foreign climes began early in the postwar years with the Bogata bandits. With the exception of John Charles and Gerry Hitchens, English exports to European clubs in the 1950s and 1960s were generally not a great success. But after Kevin Keegan went to SV Hamburg in...
2024-12-0638 minFootball Ruined My LifeScreamers…… is the word frequently given to goals scored, usually from outside the penalty box, like drawings in a Roy of the Rovers cartoon that bring the crowd to a fever pitch of excitement. Unless of course the goal has been scored by the opposition. In which case the spectacular goal will be suffered in a mute and somewhat resentful silence, one in which the unfairness of Life in general and the existence of God in particular is contemplated. Jon Holmes, Paddy Barclay and Colin Shindler discuss whether there are fewer screamers about these days than in the days of their...
2024-11-2941 minFootball Ruined My LifeIt was the year of the Sky revolution in football but for Jon Holmes it was also the end of Gary Lineker’s career in England as he prepared to move to Japan and ultimately into the television studio. Leeds United won the last First Division and their manager Howard Wilkinson was the last English manager to win the championship. It was the year that saw an unfancied Denmark team win the Euros and John Major return to Downing Street by beating Neil Kinnock. It was a year that provided Paddy Barclay, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes with much to di...
2024-11-2241 minFootball Ruined My LifeFavourite GamesPaddy Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler talk about their favourite match and, to help them to do so, each of them invites as a guest on the podcast a player whotook part in that match. If we could all take 8 matches to a desert island populated only by RoyPlomley and at some point you would be asked: “If seven of your matches were washed away which one match would you save from the waves?” Today the panel attempts to answer thatquestion. Although, inevitably each of the games are won respectively by Dun...
2024-11-1540 minFootball Ruined My LifeWingersWhatever happened to outside rights and outside lefts? You remember those speedy tricky wingers who beat their full backs on the outside, got to the dead ball line and centred so that their centre forward could charge at the ball and force it into the net. The men ploughing those lonely furrows seem to have disappeared. Why has this happened and what has replaced them? Paddy Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler puzzle it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2024-11-0844 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe One With David PeaceDavid Peace, the author of The Damned United, joins Jon Holmes, Patrick Barclay and Colin Shindler to talk about his latest novel. Munichs, details the story of Manchester United from 6 February 1958, the day of the plane crash that killed 23 people (including eight players) to the team’s appearance in the Cup Final in May 1958. He talks about what a novel can do to intensify the drama of that tragedy and his description of the dark cloud of despair that descended on football and the country, as well as the city of Manchester. Learn more about your ad...
2024-10-2543 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe Football PyramidThis week the Paddy Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler ask each other how the Football Pyramid has changed over our lifetimes of watching the game. Our first memories were of football in the mid to late 1950s when life was bounded by the First and Second Divisions and the Third Divisions North and South. Of course, there was no Premier League but more crucially to lose Football League status was to consign your town and your community, as well as your club, to Stygian gloom. Which is why we are delighted that at least Jon can explain the intric...
2024-10-1838 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe Football PyramidThis week the Paddy Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler ask each other how the Football Pyramid has changed over our lifetimes of watching the game. Our first memories were of football in the mid to late 1950s when life was bounded by the First and Second Divisions and the Third Divisions North and South. Of course, there was no Premier League but more crucially to lose Football League status was to consign your town and your community, as well as your club, to Stygian gloom. Which is why we are delighted that at least Jon can explain the intric...
2024-10-1835 minFootball Ruined My LifeSubstitutesThe use of substitutes began in the English Football League at the start of the 1965-66 season. After years of the Wembley “hoodoo” it was initially a simple system of ensuring that matches were not spoiled by 10 men playing against 11 because of a bad injury. From that sensible position in 1965 we seem to have arrived at a situation today when an entire second team is sitting on the bench waiting to come on. Does anyone think that has been a change for the better? Jon Holmes, Paddy Barclay and Colin Shindler discuss. Learn more about your ad...
2024-10-1140 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe One With Frank FoerThis is football as seen through the eyes of an Arsenal supporter, living and working in Washington DC. Frank Foer, a staff writer at The Atlantic and a former editor of The New Republic, is the author of the much respected book “How Football Explains the World”. It’s fascinating to hear the views of a man who genuinely understands and enthuses over English football but sees it with a very different pair of eyes. With Frank Foer joining Colin Shindler, Paddy Barclay and Jon Holmes, we present two nations which in this case are united bya common lang...
2024-10-0447 minFootball Ruined My LifeRitualsIn the days of our fondly remembered youth which we can still see as it becomes ever smaller in the rear-view mirror of life, football matches kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. And part of the joy of the experience was what we did beforehand, how we met our friends, how we got to the ground, perhaps even what we wore in the false expectation that it would help our club to win. From Dundee through Manchester to Leicester, Paddy Barclay, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes recognise that they had many elements in common but there were va...
2024-09-2741 minFootball Ruined My LifeNumber TwosThere are two distinct variations on the theme of Number 2s. The first is that he is the one who sits next to the manager when he is going berserk, berating the fourth official and kicking water bottles. That number 2 is there to calm him down and offer sage advice in moments of extremetension. However, the other number 2 is the man who himself goes berserk while his boss maintains a forced calm as the number 2 rages. Jon Holmes, Paddy Barclay and Colin Shindler consider the pairing of Murphy and Busby, Taylor and Clough, Allison and Mercer, Howe and Me...
2024-09-2050 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe One With Gary LinekerIt’s been coming, hasn’t it? We all know that the relationship between Jon Holmes and Gary Lineker started about 45 years ago and we’ve heard many stories related by Jon about his most famous client. However here is Gary talking about himself, his career as a player and his transition into broadcasting. Together with with Colin Shindler, Paddy Barclay (and of course, Jon Holmes), here his views on the game are presented uncensored by any broadcasting or publishing empire. Listen and see if any of them surprise you. Learn more about your ad choice...
2024-09-1448 minFootball Ruined My Life61. Chairmen Vs. OwnersThis week, the panel looks at old fashioned Bob Lord style Chairmen of football clubs as against the current fashion for billionaire owners from oil rich nation states or American hedge fund managers. Bob Lord at Burnley and Joe Mears at Chelsea, Louis Edwards at Manchester United and the Hill Woods of Arsenal were all rich men but their wealth did not compare to that of the current owners of Premier League clubs. When we talked about the game in the 1960s and 1970s we talked about players and managers, rarely about Chairmen and never about boards of shadowy direc...
2024-08-1646 minFootball Ruined My Life59. We're Back Once Again (Series 3 Trailer)After our computer-enforced summer break Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay return next week on Friday 9th August - just as the new football season kicks off. If you've not already done so, subscribe now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2024-08-0203 minFootball Ruined My LifeA Message From The Cabinet Room...Good morning listeners - here's a message from Colin Shindler.We'll be returning with the podcast in time for the new season at the beginning of August. Enjoy your summer holidays - see you in a few months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2024-06-0704 minFootball Ruined My LifeCricketing FootballersIn the days when the cricket season finished at the end of August and did not begin again until the first week in May it was perfectly possible to be a professional sportsman who played both games. Now it would be impossible to find a footballer who also played county cricket let alone Test cricket. Digging back, as ever, into the days of our youth, however, we can easily find plenty of them. Joining the regular panel, Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay is Michael Henderson, formerly Cricket Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph and a man who has...
2024-05-3148 minFootball Ruined My LifeIn the second of our occasional podcasts about specific years, we are looking at 1974 when Jon Holmes, Paddy Barclay and Colin Shindler were all in their early, mid or medium late 20s. It’s the year that began with power shortages due to a miners’ strike and the imposition of the three day week. Inflation was running at nearly 18% and of course ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest. In football, Leeds won the League and Liverpool won the Cup after which both their managers left. Brian Clough lasted just 44 days as manager of Leeds United and Harold Wilson won two...
2024-04-1948 minFootball Ruined My LifeCentre HalvesThis is the episode about those big lads with heads squashed flat and brains curdled into early onset dementia by the constant heading of old fashioned leather footballs that weighed the same as a cannonball after it had been soaked by rain and coated in mud. From the time that Herbert Chapman withdrew the middle of the half backs to play between the two full backs we always recognised the centre half as the bulwark of the defence. Paddy Barclay, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the way in which these immobile centre halves became more sophisticated until we go...
2024-04-0540 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe North EastThe North East of England has traditionally been referred to as "the hotbed of soccer". Yet compared to teams from Lancashire for example, Newcastle United, Sunderland and Middlesbrough have won very little in the way of trophies for decades. Middlesbrough won the League Cup in 2004, Sunderland won the FA Cup in 1973 and Newcastle won the Inter Cities Fairs Cup in 1969. Since then... nothing. Why then do football writers and supporters have such a respect for those teams? Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Paddy Barclay explore what’s so special about football in the North East. Learn...
2024-03-1539 minFootball Ruined My LifeSpecial Guest: Mike InghamHe was the third in the distinguished line of BBC Chief Football Correspondents and the first not be called Brian (as in Moore and Bryon Butler). His attractive voice gave us fluent commentaries from football grounds all over the world. Within months of doing his first commentary he was looking at 39 dead bodies in the Heysel Stadium. Mike Ingham joins Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Paddy Barclay for a look at the football he watched on our behalf and told us about in such clear and concise phrases. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...
2024-03-0844 minFootball Ruined My LifeFamily ValuesJon Holmes, Paddy Barclay and Colin Shindler explore the impact of nature and nurture on footballers from the same family. Is it genetic inheritance or environmental factors that accounts for the remarkable number of fraternal and father-son relationships in football over the decades? From the famous Charltons to the Schmeichels, from the forgotten Rowley brothers to the Redknapps, the Cloughs and the Summerbees the numerous examples of this fascinating phenomenon sends the conversation far and wide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2024-02-2338 minFootball Ruined My LifeGordon MilneJon Holmes, Paddy Barclay and Colin Shindler meet Gordon Milne who had a fascinating and long career in football. He was a player with Tom Finney at Preston, a key part of Bill Shankly’s first great Liverpool side and later manager of Jimmy Hill's Coventry City and Jon’s beloved Leicester before moving abroad and winning three successive league titles for Besiktas in Turkey. Now approaching his 87th birthday Gordon Milne has total recall of that career and tells stories of players and clubs that have never been heard before. Learn more about your ad choi...
2024-02-1655 minFootball Ruined My LifeWest HamWest Ham won the Cup in 1964, the European Cup Winners Cup in 1965 and, according to Alf Garnett, the World Cup in 1966. They were a stylish, attractive and at the time a victorious team in those mid 1960s but they never kicked on and those three World Cup heroes eventually left Upton Park in a disappointing anti-climax, not having won anything else at club level. For years though they were everyone’s second favourite team. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay try to explain that anomaly and whether in the Premier League era the old West Ham traditions are st...
2024-02-0940 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe MidlandsColin and Paddy attempt to make Jon feel better about the Midlands trophy desert. Looking at the Football League’s checkered history over the 135 years of its existence you can’t but be aware that the Midlands hasn’t pulled its weight. Half of the founder members of the Football League were Midlands clubs so there seems to be no logical reason why the whole of the Midlands has won so much less than those clubs from the one county of Lancashire. Jon attempts a spirited defence of his homeland. Learn more about your ad choices...
2024-02-0243 minFootball Ruined My LifeSportsmanshipColin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay wonder whether the concept of sportsmanship has vanished from the game. We all remember that famous photograph of Bobby Moore and Pele exchanging sweat soaked shirts after their titanic struggle in Guadalajara in the 1970 World Cup group match. It was iconic because it symbolised and personified the concept. But is that sort of behaviour still around in today’s world of football? Or are the three septuagenarians simply on an epic journey of nostalgia for the land of lost content where sportsmen behaved with a certain nobility? Learn more...
2024-01-2649 minFootball Ruined My LifePrint journalism v TV journalismBack in the dim and distant past of our youth, the coverage of football on television was minimal and we instinctively turned to local and national newspapers for the latest information and analysis on the game and our favourite club. In subsequent years, and particularly since the emergence of Sky Sports in 1992, we have all seen the decline of the print journalist and the seemingly unstoppable rise of the tv pundit. Patrick Barclay bemoans the decline, Jon Holmes revels in the power of TV and Colin Shindler tries to keep control of the game without recourse to VAR.
2024-01-1942 minFootball Ruined My LifeHas Football Become Too Big For Its Boots?It’s everywhere. There’s at least one match on television every day, up to half a dozen over the weekend. The newspapers that used to devote a page to football now devote three. Radio5 Live exists, like Sky Sports, to broadcast football to the people who clearly want it. But, the panel ask themselves, is this media domination a good thing for the game and its supporters? If less is more would they really swap life in today's saturated market for the rationed football coverage in the media of their youth? And at the end...
2024-01-1247 minFootball Ruined My LifeChelseaColin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay arejoined by a long-standing Chelsea fan – the writer and broadcaster AndyHamilton – to discuss his lifetime of support since the late 1950s. He shareshis frustration that some of the less attractive developments in modernfootball have significantly diminished his passion for the club although, likethe panellists, he remains dedicated to the game itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2024-01-0552 minFootball Ruined My LifeIt was a most remarkable year. It started with the Big Freeze, ended with the assassination of President Kennedy and included the emergence of the Beatles and the Profumo Affair. On the football field (as soon as the ice melted in April) it was equally notable with Alf Ramsey’s first game in charge of England, Leicester City missing out on the Double (sorry, Jon), Manchester United winning the Cup but just avoiding relegation (sorry, Colin). And off the field, it the famous Eastham case which liberated players from the shackles of their clubs. Learn more...
2023-12-2246 minFootball Ruined My LifeAdministering The GameThe former Chairman of the FA, David Bernstein, joins Colin, Paddy and Jon for an honest discussion on the failings of governance in football. He tells of how his attempts at reform of the FA were constantly thwarted and how the FA lost any battle they tried to fight against the overwhelming power of the big clubs once they had divested themselves of the old Football League. The discussion ranges from the days of Alan Hardaker and the great figurehead for thirty years, Sir Stanley Rous, to today, when the FA’s influence over its own Premier League is so...
2023-12-1542 minFootball Ruined My LifeRetirementIt is the moment every footballer dreads – the day when he finally accepts that his career on the field is over. Jon tells Patrick and Colin that even those who have made a spectacular success of life after football like Gary Lineker can never recreate the joy of scoring a goal. Retirement is supposed to be much better for players these days because of the money they have earned during their careers and the plans put in place by their clubs. But is it? And what happened during retirement to those footballers from fifty or sixty years ago who ha...
2023-12-0843 minFootball Ruined My LifeThe Second TierAll three panellists are fans of clubs that have suffered the indignity of relegation from the Premier League in the 21st century. There is a fear that the ever widening gap with the Championship will see clubs doomed to wait indefinitely in the purgatory of the footballing equivalent of Siberia. Yet Manchester City and Fulham bounced back to the top tier the following season and Leicester look as if they might be promoted spectacularly early this season. Jon, Patrick and Colin discuss their feelings about life in the Championship and whether it is different from life in the old...
2023-12-0139 minFootball Ruined My LifeMoney, Money, MoneyWe all know what it’s like to have too little of it and though it’s probably not anything that most of us have experienced we can understand that having too much money doesn’t always lead straight to Happiness. At the top of the pyramid, football is drowning in the stuff, at the bottom too many clubs are struggling to keep their heads above the financial waters that are closing in. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay discuss how the game got into this mess and what, if anything, can be done about it.
2023-11-1745 minFootball Ruined My LifeGoalscorersWhen we watch football as youngsters it is the goals that catch our eye, not the vital defensive midfielders or the manager’s clever/stupid substitutions. A Gary Lineker tap in is less spectacular than a Bobby Charlton thunderbolt but in a vital 1-0 victory it counts for as much. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay discuss the scorers of great goals and great goalscorers from Ted Drake and Dixie Dean to Harry Kane and Lionel Messi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-11-1047 minFootball Ruined My LifeScotland (& a brief tribute to Sir Bobby Charlton)Time was when there was scarcely an English top flight team without a few influential Scotsmen in it. Can you imagine Liverpool in the 1980s without Hansen, Souness and Dalglish, Manchester United’s 1960s team without Denis Law and Paddy Crerand or Revie’s Leeds United without Bremner, Jordan, McQueen, Lorimer and Eddie Gray? There are almost no Scottish players in the English Premier League, barely a handful in the Scottish Premier League and the crowds are embarrassingly small outside of Celtic and Rangers. What on earth has gone wrong with football in Scotland? Patrick Barclay helps Colin Shindler and...
2023-10-2752 minFootball Ruined My LifeGrounds - Old & NewSimon Inglis, author of books on the football grounds of Great Britain and the football grounds of Europe, joins the team to give his expert knowledge of the building of some of football's most iconic grounds - Highbury, Maine Road, Old Trafford, Craven Cottage, Filbert Street etc. Do the fans revel in the creature comforts of the new stadiums or do they still hanker for the ramshackle tumbledown grounds of their youth with their cosy sense of community? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-09-2959 minFootball Ruined My LifeLeague DominationBetween 1959 and 1972 ten different clubs won the English First Division. What has happened to that competitiveness? Is the much-lauded Premier League a better competition than the old First Division? Why has this pattern been repeated in so many other European leagues? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-09-2245 minFootball Ruined My LifeSecond Favourite TeamsThe panel are forbidden from praising their own teams and have to confess their admiration for other domestic and international teams. There are a few surprises… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-09-1553 minFootball Ruined My LifeSir AlfHe remains the only England manager to have won the men's World Cup. The FA sacked him when he was 54 and apart from a brief caretaker stint at Birmingham City his career was over. Is he loved or just admired? Was he a great manager? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-09-0851 minFootball Ruined My LifeCarlisleFeedback presenter Roger Bolton joins Colin and Paddy to talk about his home town team, their one season in the First Division and how to deal with what otherwise has been a football life of constant disappointment – plus his support for Liverpool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-09-0137 minFootball Ruined My LifeDerby GamesThe one fixture in a season that everyone is desperate to win. Is the religious origins of the Glasgow rivalry apparent elsewhere? Does the Merseyside derby deserve the title “The Friendly Derby”? Is loathing of the other team as bitter in Bristol and Norwich as it is in Manchester? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-08-2540 minFootball Ruined My LifePassion on the SidelinesWho can forget Jurgen Klopp stretched out full length on his stomach as he protested a refereeing decision in the manner of an enraged toddler? Followed of course by a goal, producing a triumphant fist pump, a race along the touchline and almost immediately, a pulled hamstring - sent directly one would imagine by his Mummy and Daddy telling him not to be such a silly boy. But of course, he was demonstrating passion which is obviously a Good Thing. We love passionate managers and players. Don’t we? But when is passion good and when is it bad? The...
2023-08-1849 minFootball Ruined My LifeBrian CloughHe was the one manager to whom nobody was indifferent. Love him or loathe him Brian Clough was a titan amongst English managers. Martin O’Neill joins the team to recall his time playing under him and to tell us how his own managerial career was influenced by time at Clough’s Nottingham Forest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-08-1152 minFootball Ruined My Life14. We're back! (Series 2 trailer)The new podcast about old football returns next week on Friday 11th August - just as the new football season kicks off. If you've not already done so, subscribe now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-08-0404 min
Football Ruined My Life13. Postbag and Holding EpisodeFootball Ruined My Life is taking a break for a few weeks so we can build up a new reserve of programmes for series 2. In the meantime, many listeners have made use of our email address - footballruinedmylife@gmail.com - and Colin Shindler dips into our postbag to share what you think of it all so far.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-04-2806 min
Football Ruined My Life12. England's Postwar Football CaptainsFrom Billy Wright to Harry Kane, the team discusses each captain and asks the overall question, "Has there ever been a captain to rival Bobby Moore? (Spoiler Alert: No!)Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-04-2142 min
Football Ruined My Life11. Dirty Leeds?Don Revie's Leeds United were one of the greatest club sides of the postwar era. The skills possessed by Giles, Bremner, Gray etc. were considerable - so is their "dirty" reputation unfair?Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-04-1444 min
Football Ruined My Life10. Have Football Crowds Changed Since the 1960s?We all lived through the gradual exacerbation of crowd violence. Why was it so bad in the 1970s and 1980s? Why did it become mixed up in Thatcherite politics? If we thought it had disappeared, the 2021 Euro final demonstrated that it hadn't. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-04-0737 min
Football Ruined My Life9. Great GoaliesFrom Lev Yashin to Bert Trautmann, from Pat Jennings to Peter Shilton the game has been adorned by great goalies. What makes them special? Are they all crazy? Patrick Barclay defends Scottish goalkeepers from calumny.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-03-3140 min
Football Ruined My Life8. Tottenham Hotspur's Double Winning Team 1960-1Julie Welch, journalist and screenwriter of the Channel 4 film Those Glory Glory Days joins us to talk about Danny Blanchflower and the golden team that won the first double since 1897. Why have Spurs failed to achieve similar success for the past sixty years?Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-03-2435 min
Football Ruined My Life7. Manchester United's DeclineThe team compares the club's decline in the early 1970s after the retirement of Matt Busby with its decline after 2013 with the retirement of Alex Ferguson.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-03-1739 min
Football Ruined My Life6. The Influence of 'Sports Report'It's been going longer than we have. That familiar Out of the Blue signature tune unites every football supporter in the land. But does it still have the same impact on supporters as it did when we first listened to it in the 1950s?Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-03-1045 min
Football Ruined My Life5. The Influence of Foreign OwnersThey money's better for the players, the grounds are more comfortable for the spectators but has the English game lost something of its uniqueness with so many foreign owners, managers, coaches and players in the top flight?Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-03-0341 min
Football Ruined My Life4. Great Players of the 1960s in the Premier League of the 2020sThe team examine the careers of Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, John Charles, George Best, Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton and wonder how they would fare in the modern game...Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-02-2447 min
Football Ruined My Life3. Politics & Football: Burnley FC with Alastair CampbellTony Blair's spin doctor confesses to his love for unfashionable Burnley, defends the notorious Burnley Chairman Bob Lord and surprises us with stories of David Blunkett's shrewd analysis of Sheffield WednesdayHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-02-1739 min
Football Ruined My Life2. England's World Cup Teams: 1966 v 1970Was the England team that defended the 1970 World Cup in Mexico better than the team that won it in 1966? (Spoiler Alert: yes!)Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-02-1045 min
Football Ruined My Life1. Our Childhood HeroesBert Trautmann, Alan Gilzean, Davie Gibson, and Colin Bell.Welcome to the first ever episode of Football Ruined My Life with Jon Holmes, Patrick Barclay, and Colin Shindler.In today's episode, Jon, Patrick and Colin discuss the first ever football matches they attended and the heroes who emerged out of them.Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2023-02-0339 min
Football Ruined My LifeTrailerFootball Ruined My Life is the new podcast about old football. Colin Shindler, author of the best selling Manchester United Ruined My Life, joins with the distinguished football journalist Patrick Barclay and the Super Agent Jon Holmes (think Gary Lineker, Peter Shilton, Tony Woodcock etc.) to talk about football as it used to be in the days before the invention of the Premier League. The podcast views those days fondly - though not uncritically - in comparison to today's game, which it views critically though not unfondly. We welcome everyone who wants...
2023-02-0102 min
MEI SpeaksMurder on an Industrial Scale: The Killing of Six Million Jews talk by Prof. Colin ShindlerMEI Speaks 30: Online Public Lecture, 'Murder on an Industrial Scale: The Killing of Six Million Jews,' delivered by Prof. Colin Shindler of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. This lecture was jointly organized by Human Rights Studies Programme, School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Middle East Institute, New Delhi, on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The session was chaired by Prof. Rajesh Rajagopalan, Director, Human Rights Programme, SIS, JNU. #HolocaustRemembranceDay #Holocaust #JewishHistory
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2021-02-171h 24