A Soccer Culture Playlist 2.0 - 12 Football-Related Songs from 8 Countries

Explicit content warning

02/19/24 • 38 min

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

Indie, Hip Hop, Punk, Reggae, Ska and Choruses- from Leeds to Istanbul, from Vienna to Mexico City, from Darmstadt to Buenos Aires. Your second soccer playlist is here - with some background info, and plenty of quirky football lyrics.
PLAYLIST FOR THIS EPISODE - links to videos:
Puma Hardchorus - England, France, Germany and Italy
Alberto Colucci - Die Sonne Scheint (SV Darmstadt 98)
Manu Chao (with Diego Maradona) - La Vida Tombola
Sultans of Ping - I'm in Love with a Football Hooligan
Luke Haines - Leeds United
Mono & Kreiml - Verteilerkreisflavour
Athena - Hooligans
Biberstand Boys - Unioner im Haus
Ky-Mani Marley's live rendition of Bob Marley - Three Little Birds
Maldita Vecintad - Fut Callejero Pura Diversión

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Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind
Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/

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

Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Previous Episode

How (not) to be a Premier League Tourist - with Felipe Tobar

If you are thinking of dreaming of going to England, seeing a Premier League game, dive into the atmosphere that you see on TV, or even have concrete travel plans already to finally see one game of the club you otherwise follow on TV, then this episode is for you. If you are listening from England, and have followed your club for years and decades, it's for you as well.

Felipe Tobar, originally from Brazil, is a scholar at Clemson University in South Carolina and has written about soccer tourism to England, Premier League related club museums, stadium tours etc. - all the stuff tourists do - as well as overtourism, its effect on local fans, and the danger it could be to the very product that the Premier League is trying to sell.

We begin by mapping what this tourism is, and how the combination of neoliberal capitalism, international TV and individual club’s initiatives have shaped a billion dollar business around the beautiful game in the Premier League. Then we talk about the negative effects. And then, we tried to give a little bit of advice: how can you go, and be a good tourist while there - what should you know before you go and what should you do and not do when there. The intent is not to bash tourists (almost all of us are, in some way, as we’ll make clear) but chart a more sustainable path forward for the game we all love, and international as well as local fans.

HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:
Felipe Tobar, website with links to publications (Twitter/X, "Football Studies" on Youtube")
"VisitBritain Discusses the Impact of Soccer on UK Tourism" - interview with a British tourism executive (December 2023)
The Enemy, "We'll Live and Die in These Towns" (music video)

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

Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

Next Episode

Rush Episode! German Bundesliga Investor Deal Dies Live on Air with Raphael Molter...

... of all people! Raphael is a German political scientist, whose book "Peace to the Terraces, War to the Federations and Leagues" is a pathbreaking materialist critique of "modern soccer" - the game as purely an entertainment market commodity. The book is only published in German so far, and we were in the process of rolling out his thoughts with the ongoing conflict between German fans and the German Bundesliga as a case in point (you know, the one with tennis balls and remote-controlled cars thrown on the pitch in recent weeks...). About halfway through, the bomb dropped: sooner than any of us expected, the Bundesliga collapsed and nixed the negotiation with the private equity firm that was interested. We let out a "holy shit!" and analyzed what this might mean, and what concrete solutions Raphael's thoughts provide for the future.
This episode was to air on March 4th - given what happened today while we talked, I rushed it live. This may mean no TAoF episode on March 4th then, check social media for updates. For now, you wont regret this window into a very german conflict with a lot of promise for soccer fans around the world - the fans to whom this beautiful game truly belongs!
HELPFUL LINKS :
Raphael's book, in German
Raphael Molter on X/Twitter
Protests in Rostock - remote controlled cars with flares on them

Protests in Dortmund - chocolate coins and tennis balls

Matt Ford, Bundesliga scraps major investment deal amid fan revolt (dw.com)

Gabriel Kuhn, Soccer vs. The State (an interview with him on TAoF from last year)

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

Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.