The Dynamo Football Bookclub

It's the 1980s, Maradona's decade. Who will win the crucial toss in the latest draft between Alistair and Johnny? Those two straight up don't like each other...   The 80s saw Italy win won, Argentina win the other, both of them beating West Germany in the finals of 82 and 86 respectively. Names are starting to get a lot more familiar and hell, we even remember some of these guys.    It's 2-2 in the series. Can Alistair take the lead for the first time?! Please tune in to find out. 

In continuation of our World Cup series 🌍🏆, we find ourselves in the 1980s 🕺 with the greatest team never to win the World Cup. At least, that is the contention of Stuart Horsfield 📚, the author of The Glorious Failure, a book about the Brazil 1982 team 🇧🇷 that was (spoiler alert 🚨) beaten by Italy 🇮🇹 and, specifically, Paolo Rossi in a weird round robin second round of that competition.   Tune in to find out what happened 🎙️👀. Oh wait. Well, tune in anyway 😅.   That Brazil team really did score some amazing goals ⚽✨ and we know a website that has them all 🌐. Oh, there is a competition too 🎁 — our first ever!   Please do listen, like ❤️, and subscribe 🔔.

It’s Injury Time 28 ⚽️ and we are immersing ourselves in the 1970s 🕺 with a draft of players from the World Cups of that decade 🌍🏆   Throughout the lifetime of the Dynamo Football Bookclub 📚, Alistair has tried to fit around 12 players on the football Mount Rushmore 🗿. But if there really were only to be four on such a landmark, there is a very real chance that three of them would have played in the 70s ⭐️. It was the decade that football embraced modernity 🎥, with matches broadcast in colour for the first time, projecting the beautiful canary yellows 🟡 and blood oranges 🟠 of that magnificent era.   With John leading the World Cup series 2 drafts to 1 📊, can Alistair even things up? Please do join us to find out 🎙️👀

In Episode 58, we continue our World Cup series 🌍🏆 with The Greatest Show on Earth - The Inside Story of the Legendary 1970 World Cup by Andrew Downie. The book is a recap of the most iconic World Cup of all — the Mexico 1970 tournament 🇲🇽⚽️   Downie’s 2021 book is a kind of oral history 📖, with the players involved describing each match of that World Cup in their own words, with Downie only jumping in here and there to provide some background and direction.   A bit like the Titanic movie, you probably know how it ends, but join us as we discuss the highs and lows of the first World Cup to be broadcast in colour.   Please do like 👍 and subscribe 🔔

In Injury Time 27, we continue our draft journey through the World Cups, focusing this time on the tournaments in Chile in ’62 🇨🇱 and England in ’66 🏴.   Al has been comprehensively battered in both our previous World Cup drafts, but he is on home turf here having lived in both countries. With his pride and reputation at stake, can he dig as deep as his heroes of ’66 ⚽ and claim his first victory in our World Cup draft series?   Please do like 👍 and subscribe 🔔.

In Episode 57, we take on a seemingly impossible task — getting to know the unknowable ⚽🔍. Bobby Moore was England’s World Cup captain in 1966 🏆. He is a colossus of English football, the first name on the all-time England XI and no doubt captain too.   But so great is the Moore legend that Moore the man is something of a mystery 🤔. But as we learn in Matt Dickinson’s biography Bobby Moore: The Man in Full 📖, he was a mystery even to many who actually knew him.   Please do join us as we try to figure him out — the World Cup win in ’66 🏆, the bracelet incident in ’70 💎, and many, many half pints of lager in a pub somewhere near Upton Park 🍺.   And please do like and subscribe too 👍🎧.

In Injury Time 26 🎙️⚽, we are doing our 1950s World Cups draft 🏆🔥   With the Nasazzi’s baton 🏏 securely in Johnny’s clutches after the first of our World Cup draft series, can Alistair muster the forces of the ’50s to wrest it from him? 💪⚡   Join us as we learn about some of the quirkier elements of international football in the 1950s (qualification by coin toss you say? 🪙😅) and chat about some of the players we knew — and a few that we didn’t 👀📚   The fifties was when the World Cup started to be televised 📺✨ and things really started to get sexy 😎🔥   Please do like and subscribe!

In Episode 56 🎙️⚽ we talk about The King of Football 👑, Edson Arantes Do Nascimento. That’s Dico to his friends and family 👨‍👩‍👦, and Pelé to the rest of us 🇧🇷✨   Tune in for some important pronunciation advice 🔊🗣️. Your friends may all be laughing at you behind your back 😂for how you pronounce this man’s name… Find out why Al thinks Cristiano Ronaldo is football’s real King 🐐 and learn all about Pelé’s one particular vice 👀🍾…   Please do like 👍 and subscribe 🔔 for red-hot football content.

⚽️ With the World Cup bearing down on us like a busy full back 💨, we are getting into the groove of things 🎧.   🏆 In Injury Time 25, we begin our own countdown to the summer’s festival of football with our first World Cup draft. In this episode, we are selecting the best players from the three World Cups that took place in the 1930s 📜. Lots of familiar names in there like… em… that one guy 🤔 and… ummm… that other guy 😅…   📚 But football facts ahoy, and the winner takes home the Nasazzi Baton 🥇.

🗽⚽️🔥 In Episode 55, join us for the story of the New York Cosmos, as told by Gavin Newsham in his book Once In a Lifetime 📖🎙️   The Cosmopolitans, to give them their full name, burned fast and bright ✨🔥 from 1971 to 1985, lighting up the North American Soccer League ⚽️🌍. They were — to borrow a line from the book — the best thing and the worst thing to happen to the NASL 📈📉.   They had Pelé ⭐️. They had Beckenbauer 👑. So how on earth could they be the worst? 🤔   Please do join us to find out 🎧✨ Available wherever you get your pods 🎙️⚽️

In Injury Time 24, we take Sean Dyche’s advice and play the lookalikey game 👀⚽️ — the game he once said makes the world go round. It may not be that integral to the earth’s orbit, but it sure is fun   Thanks Sean Dyche / Mick Hucknall / Chris Evans 🙏 Please do listen and like (in that order 😉) Available wherever you get your pods 🎧

🚀📉⚽️💷🎙️ In Episode 54, we review Keith Gillespie’s How Not to be a Football Millionaire.   A Class of ’92 graduate alongside Becks and co., Gillespie enjoyed a solid career at Newcastle, Blackburn, and a handful of other lower-league clubs. The book charts his rocket-propelled rise 🚀 and his lamentable fall 📉.   Capped 86 times for Northern Ireland ⚽️, Gillespie reckons he blew somewhere in the region of £7 million through gambling and slippery financial advisors 💷. I know, its amazing to believe Keith Gillespie earned £7 million...   🎙️📖 Please do give us a nice chunky rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

In our increasingly polarized world, what a tonic it is to think about where the footballers we so admire fall on the political spectrum. We can even go one further and consider who wins when the footballer conservatives take on the game's SJWs?  Tune in to Injury Time 23 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub and find out which ideology was best all along. Or at least best at football... Available wherever you get your pods. 

In our first episode this year, we review our first football novel, David Peace’s The Damned United 📖⚽   Having already reviewed both Clough and Taylor’s autobiographies, this was Alistair’s way of cramming in more Clough 😄   The book has been described as the best novel about football 🏆📚 — a fictionalised account of what happened during the 44-day reign of Clough (and don’t forget Taylor) at Leeds United ⏳⚽ It’s also been made into a film 🎬, which we discuss too.   🚨 Spoiler alert: the 44 days didn’t go well…   Happy New Year, folks 🎉 Have a smashing 2026! 🥂✨

To mark the festive season 🎄, we discuss some of the weightier religious and historical topics 📜✝️ such as the cause of Herod’s death ☠️ and the schism between the Catholic and Protestant churches ⛪️⚔️⛪️. Yes indeed, it’s a Christmas 5-a-side ⚽️🎅.   Join us as we find ever more tenuous and tangential ways 🧵🤔 to connect top footballers to the 25 December 🎁🎂 and find out if Al can get a nice early present for himself 🎁😬 with a long-overdue win in the ongoing Injury Time draft series 🏆.   And as it’s the season of goodwill to all men 🤝✨, please do give us a nice rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.   Merry Christmas, folks! 🎄🍷🎙️

Pour yourself a very very large glass of wine 🍷, sit back 🛋️, and enjoy Episode 52 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub.   This week, we are taking a lesson in humility from Big Sam Allardyce. 📘   The Premier League’s original innovator turned reactionary, Big Sam elbowed his way up and down England as a player before becoming one of the most noteworthy managers of the Premier League era. His Bolton team really were something back in the day ⚪️⚽ with flair, grit 💪, and no shortage of long punts up the field despite what Sam might say.   It was a management career that started with humble Limerick FC 🇮🇪 and hit some memorable high notes 🎶 before ending on the sour notes of England and Leeds 😬.   It was a heck of a journey for the Big Man Brute who is not, as it turns out, from the north of England 😂.   Join us for Sam’s rose-tinted view of it all. 🌹👓

We are skin deep in Episode 21 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub’s Injury Time looking at footballers’ tattoos. 🏉🖋️   From numerology with Sergio Ramos 🔢 to Richarlison’s tattoo tribute to team mate and all-around good guy Neymar 🇧🇷✨, there is quite a lot to talk about.   Will Johnny take up Al’s offer of a five-figure sum to get a tattoo of Al’s face? 🤔💰😬 And more importantly, can Al finally win one of these damn drafts? 🏆🤞   More important questions answered in Episode 21 of Injury Time. 🎙️ Please do likey and subscribe. 👍🔔

In Episode 51, we’re back with the Oranje 🇳🇱 as we dive into Basta, the autobiography of the one and only Marco van Basten.   The rather oddly nicknamed “Swan of Utrecht” 🦢 rattled in 242 goals and swept up everything in sight: three Eredivisie titles 🏆, four Scudetti 🇮🇹, two European Cups 🏆🏆, and not one, not two, but three Ballons d’Or 🥇🥇🥇   And he did all this before the age of 28. Amazing, football’s Alexander the Great ⚔️   Tune in to discover: Who slammed the door 🚪 in Van Basten’s face for treachery How deep his love ❤️ for Silvio Berlusconi runs What he really thought of Arrigo Sacchi’s revolution 🤯 And what is in the infamous Box 13 📦… If you enjoy the episode, please like, subscribe, and leave us a rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — it genuinely helps the show grow.

It’s injury time on Injury Time ⏱️⚽️   In Episode 20, we pay homage to all those fine fellows whose careers were brought to a premature end due to injury 🤕💔   From the most famous (David Busst) 😬 to some of the more obscure and unlikely — including the goalkeeper who ended his career up a tree while rescuing a cat 🧤🐈🌳   There is also the harrowing tale of the end of a Sprite-drenched Alistair’s fledgling career 🥤😵‍💫 Oh, what could have been…   Please do tune in 🎧, like 👍, subscribe 🔔, and tell your friends all about The Dynamo Football Bookclub 📚⚽️    

🎉 EPISODE 50! 🎉 We’re celebrating our half-century in style — that’s right, it’s Denis Wise’s autobiography 😏📖⚽️   Wise is one of the three musketeers of English football books. Along with Glenn Hoddle and Steve McMahon, he somehow appears in everyone else’s autobiography — and almost no one ever has anything nice to say about him 😬😂   But rather than just blindly swallowing whatever’s served up by untrustworthy footballers, we decided to go straight to the source. 🎯   Denis’ 2012 autobiography is a suitably short book 🪶 — written while he was still playing, and includes: 📖 The greatest ever FA Cup story 🥜 Vinnie Jones’ penchant for grabbing balls 💥 And all the amazing things we’ve apparently lost to “woke”   It’s Episode 50 — a milestone and a madness all in one 🎙️ Please do tune in, like, and subscribe ❤️⚽️    

🎶 “It’s not time to make a change…” 🎶 It's time to sit back, relax, and enjoy our Father & Son 5-a-side Draft!   Welcome to Injury Time 19 — the Scott Gemini Nepo Baby Special 👨‍👦⚽️😂   This week, we’re drafting the sons of footballing legends to face off on the pitch. It's rich pickings indeed 🤌💎 Turns out a lot of footballers are, well… footballers’ kids. Who knew?! 😏   Tune in for: 👨‍👦 Football father-son trivia 📚 The lively chatter you've come to expect from DFB 👀 A couple of controversial or perhaps ill-advised picks  😈 And the eternal question — can Alistair make a dint in Johnny's lead in the series...   🎧 Tune in and please do like and subscribe

  ⚽️ “Episode 49: Reboot – The Michael Owen Story”   Is Michael Owen football’s oddest ball of all? 🧐   From the helicopter highs of that goal against Argentina 🚁⚽️ to the hamstring horrors that followed (quite a lot of them 😬), Owen’s career was a tale of glory, pain, and lots of grudges.   In this week’s episode, we dive into Reboot, Owen’s attempt to set the record straight — revisiting his electric early years, his complicated later life, and his, er… unique way of remembering it all.   For reasons we didn’t quite expect, this turned out to be unlike any other football book we’ve read.   🎧 Tune in, have a laugh, and don’t forget to like, follow, and subscribe — your support keeps the hamstrings warm. 💪

☁️ The clouds have lifted over Old Trafford since the weekend with United’s smash-and-grab win down at Anfield — but has the storm truly passed? ⚡️   United’s failures on the pitch in recent years have only been compounded by the uncanny ability of their former flops to reach new heights away from the stifling drag around the Theatre of Dreams 🏟️.   In this episode of Injury Time, we see if United fan Johnny can put together a 5-a-side team ⚽️ of current United players that can beat United-hater Alistair’s team of cast-offs and rejects 🚷. Is Šeško better than Rashford? How does Dorgu compare to Elanga? 🤔   Johnny is ahead in the series — but only just. Can Alistair bring them level, or can Johnny put some space between the two? 🔴⚫️   🎙️ Note: This episode was recorded before United’s aforementioned victory over Liverpool 🏆 and Forest’s appointment of, ahem, Sean Dyche. 😬 Yikes.    

⚽️ Episode 48: A Season with Verona — Tim Parks and the Tifosi 🇮🇹   After the drama of our last episode, we’re staying in Italy with another unfashionable football club. This time it’s Hellas Verona, a club known as much for its tifosi as for its football 🔵🟡   Back in 2000, British author and horny English teacher Tim Parks embarked on a wild year with the Verona faithful, traveling the length and breadth of Italy as the club battled its way through 34 games to see if they could say in Serie A 🚆🔥   The result, A Season with Verona, is part travelogue, part meditation on fandom, and part fever dream — a portrait of Italy seen through blue-and-yellow smoke 🇮🇹💨   Can Parks match the magic (and madness) of Joe McGinniss’s Miracle of Castel di Sangro? 📖⚡️ Join us for Episode 48 of The Dynamo Football Book Club to find out 🎙️📚

🎙️ Episode Drop: Injury Time 17 – The Pig’s Head Derby: The Real Snake Draft It’s 23 November 2002. Luis Figo trots over to take a corner for Real Madrid against Barcelona. Moments later, a severed pig’s head sails onto the pitch — lobbed by a fan of the club that claims to be “more than a football team.”   Once adored, now despised, Figo had become public enemy number one for the Blaugrana, and the Camp Nou was baying for blood (and ham).   Inspired by this gloriously grotesque episode in football history, Johnny and Alistair host a snake draft of snakes — picking players who crossed the great divides to join their fiercest rivals.   Expect grudges, betrayal, and zero no-celebration celebrations from whoever wins this one. 🐖⚽🔥

🚨 Episode Drop! 🚨   Almost two years in, and on our 46th book, we think we’ve found the best one yet. Hold on to your hats, because Joe McGinniss’s The Miracle of Castel di Sangro is coming your way.   Alistair had never even heard of it (he blames the title). But have you? 🤔   Back in 1996, tiny Castel di Sangro — a town of just 5,000 souls tucked away in Abruzzo — pulled off the impossible. Against all odds, their Serie C1 side won promotion to Serie B, making them the smallest club ever to reach that level. That was the miracle. Or at least, the first one.   What followed — on the pitch, in the dressing room, and in Joe McGinniss’s unforgettable book — is a story packed with glory, heartbreak, and a gut punch ending you won’t see coming.   This episode has it all. 🎧 Give it a listen — and if you haven’t already, grab the book. 📚

⚽ Injury Time 16 is here! 📺🎙️   In this episode, we choose our greatest television lineups. There may be some personal and national biases at play as we pick the best presenters 🎤, pundits 💬, and commentators 🎧. Thankfully, 🤖 AI is on hand to settle the debate and decide whose lineup comes out on top.   Heated arguments 🔥, nostalgia 🕰️, and a few questionable selections 🤔 ahoy.   🎧 Listen now and let us know which lineup you think deserves the crown 👑!    

🎧 Episode 46 is out now — and it’s the most Alistair-esque episode yet.   That’s right, we’re doing our best to distract poor Al from events at the City Ground by diving into Psycho — the autobiography of his all-time hero, Stuart Pearce. ❤️🌳   The all-tackling, all-scoring, punk-loving left-back spent 12 loyal years at Nottingham Forest, sticking around even after relegation. Fierce, frugal, and forever Forest — Pearce is the kind of player they just don’t make anymore.   In this episode, expect: Some serious Forest fanboying 🌲 Tales of punk rock and penalty misses 🎸😬 A begrudging appreciation of Psycho’s sensible money habits 💷   💬 Drop us a comment and you’ll be in with a chance to win a copy of Jim McGuinness’ The Miracle of Castel di Sangro!   Give it a listen. Psycho would. 💥👊

🎧 Injury Time 15: The Mayor of Barnet Fair – Football’s Worst Haircuts 💈⚽ It’s a question as old as the combover: who had football’s worst-ever haircut? From tragic trims to peroxide crimes, we’ve gathered the very worst in a draft showdown that pits one smorgasbord of shockers against another. There are two routes to hair hell: Trying too hard 💇‍♂️ Not trying at all 🪮 In this episode, we explore both — and find out which is the fastest path to follicular failure. 🎙️ Tune in for: ✂️ Alistair’s own haircutting tips for the budget-conscious 🎤 Some unexpected hair/rap etymology 🍑 And a troubling impression of Ballon d’Or winner Bobby Charlton’s lovemaking… And of course, we find out whether Alistair can level the series and prevent Johnny from stretching his lead to two. The winner gets to graze his sheep on the common lands around ye olde Barnet Fair…

🎧 Episode 45 is OUT NOW! ⚽🐭   He’s King Kev in England, Mäuserich (Mighty Mouse) in Germany — and everywhere he goes, he’s a two-time Ballon d’Or winner, European Cup champ, and all-round lovely fella. We are talking of course about Kevin Keegan. Sure, he’s a bit hapless at times but in the words of Bill Shankly, Keegan is “everything a man should be.” In this episode, we dive into Kevin Keegan’s 2019 autobiography My Life in Football, ghostwritten by known Forest supporter Daniel Taylor. From humble beginnings to European superstardom, it’s the story of, in his own words or those of Daniel Taylor, a “mongrel who made it to Crufts”. But Kev, you are so much more than that - a whirlwind player, a plucky manager, a hair innovavtor, and a reasonably singer… 🕵️‍♂️ Tune in to discover: How many times he was savagely beaten 😬 What his grandad did to inspire a whole poem ✍️ What he really thinks of Andy Cole 😅 And… who in the world doesn’t know who Per Mertesacker is!? 🤯

Matthew Jarvis 20:16 – “So the last shall be first, and the first last.”    In this episode, we turn things on their head 🙃. We’re picking the worst players to notch up at least 100 Premier League appearances – that’s right, the aim of this draft is to lose. 🫣   Sure, if you’ve played 100 times in the EPL, you’re probably half-decent… but some of these lads were still pretty damn rubbish. 🗑️⚽   🎧 Tune in to find out who out of Alistair and Johnny assembled the em… rubbish-est.

📚 Episode 44 is here! This week, we’re diving into The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuściński 🇵🇱 — the legendary Polish reporter, a writer who happened to be a journalist (in his own words) and a man who played fast and loose with the truth, it seems.   ⚔️ The book centres on the 1969 war between Central American neighbours El Salvador 🇸🇻 and Honduras 🇭🇳 — a conflict that lasted just four days, but claimed thousands of lives, with most of the victims being civilians.   There may be a bit more war than soccer in this— and not just in Central America. From despots to desks, Kapuściński takes no prisoners. There’s also a surprise appearance by the lesser known author, Ted Stoves. 🎙️ Tune in to find out: Whether Al can pronounce Kap…Kapuś…Kapuściński 🫣 And whether Johnny can be trusted to buy a book on Kindle 📲📕

How do you follow a 5-time Ballon D’or winner? Well, with an 8-time Ballon D’or Winner of course. That’s right, its Part II of the Guillem Balague GOAT saga and our review of his biography of one Lionel Messi.   Originally published in 2013 but updated for the Argentina World Cup win in 2022, the book is a long one, covering the descent from heaven of the baby Messi to the unassuming city of Rosario, tucked away on the Rio Paraná, a few hundred miles inland from Buenos Aires.   With interviews from various people who touched the hem of his garment along the way, the book very extensively covers how Messi touched the lives of the earthlings who had the privilege of sharing the planet with him. The book also includes references to El Diablo, Cristiano Ronaldo, with a sterling supporting role from arch bean-counter, Jorge Messi. And of course, Messi’s grandmother.    As of some day last week, we were just two spots below Balague in the football podcast charts so please do have a listen and give us the chance of leapfrogging the Messi hagiographer. And if you like it, well please do like it…

It’s our 28th episode and we are starting the new year with the first part of the Balague GOAT saga. First up is his award-winning biography of Cristiano Ronaldo.   This player certainly needs no introduction but if you insist then 5 Champions League wins, 5 Ballons D’or, and seven straight calendar years in which he scored more than 50 goals will surely suffice.   We had initially planned to read Balague’s Messi biography first, but when we learned we had 7 days to get through its 796 pages, we pivoted and decided instead to read the mere 384 pages he wrote on his sworn enemy instead. But worry not dear listener, for Messi is up next (assuming we can finish it in time…).   Happy New Year folks. Please do listen, like and subscribe.

⚽ Injury Time 13: The Steve McMahon Windscreens Shield – a Wrong ’Uns draft ⚽   OUT NOW! 🎧   What makes a wrong ’un? Cheating on your wife? ❌ Not necessarily. Cheating on your wife for eight years… with your sister-in-law? ✅ That probably qualifies.   It’s hard to define, but you know one when you see one.   In Injury Time 13, we each draft our Top 5 Wrong ’Uns to go head-to-head — elbow-to-face — with Artificial Intelligence running the match simulation and delivering an unimpeachable result.   🏆 Is Joey Barton – the crème de la crème of the wrong ’un trade – actually good enough to make either team? 🤏 Has Dennis Wise been picked to pinch the hands of opponents as he hauls them off the turf? 👟 Will Michael Brown get his chance to leave stud marks where they hurt most?   Listen now to find out… and prepare for 5-a-side at its most petty, cynical, and gloriously spiteful.

🎙️ Episode 43 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub is out!   💆‍♂️ Massage parlour, 💅 beauty parlour… Ray Parlour.   That’s right — it’s only Ray Parlour’s autobiography, The Romford Pelé! 📖⚽   Fun fact: Parlour has played in the Premier League for Arsenal more times than any other player 🔴⚪  He’s also a cheeky chappie who stole potted plants 🪴, terrorised poor old Martin Keown, and torpedoed his own England career 🌪️ by failing to understand the importance of faith healing.   It’s Episode 43 of the 🎧 Dynamo Football Bookclub, and we’re diving into the book of the Parlour who brought the 😂light relief to those legendary Arsenal squads of the late ’90s and early ’00s 🏆👊.  

🎧 Episode 12 of Injury Time is here! 🎙️   It’s the Great African Draft Showdown — Johnny’s Danny Invincible 11s take on Alistair’s Orlando Pirates in a five-a-side battle to determine who really knows their African football EPL legends. 🇿🇦⚽🇪🇬🇨🇲   Our hosts pick their best five-a-side teams of African Premier League players and AI tells us who’d win.   With 33 of Africa’s 54 nations represented in the Premier League to date, the talent pool is deep… but that doesn’t mean it was easy, some positions are stacked (hello, strikers 😅), others… not so much (goalkeeper, anyone? 🧤).   Check out and let us know who you think were the most under-rated African players to play in the EPL. We’d love to hear from you.

🎙️ Episode 42 is LIVE! 📘 The Feet of the Chameleon – The Story of African Football by Ian Hawkey ⚽️🌍 An epic journey through the past, present & power of African football.   In this episode of the Dynamo Football Bookclub, we explore the rich, complex and utterly compelling story of football across Africa’s 54 nations 🇿🇲🇪🇬🇸🇳🇨🇲.   🦁 From apartheid-era pitches in South Africa… 🎯 To Cameroon’s unlikely rise as a footballing powerhouse 🇨🇲 🛑 And that unforgettable moment when a Zaire defender booted the ball away before Brazil’s free-kick in ‘74 🤯   Hawkey's book covers it all and more again.    🎧 Tune in now and take a trip across the continent with us.  

Having passed out Crouchie in the podcast charts a couple of weeks ago, we've decided to tackle more giants of the game 🤖   In Injury Time 11 🎙️ we tackle a question that’s baffled football fans for years: who are the greatest players standing at 6′5″ and above? 🏰   ⚽ Have there been any genuinely decent towering strikers beyond the aforementioned Peter Crouch ? 🛡️ Is Per Mertesacker really the best colossal centre-back we’ve ever seen? 🤔 And why on earth are there almost no giant midfielders?   Tune in and find out whether Al can make up more of the ground he has lost to Johnny in our draft series 🚀  

In Episode 41, we move beyond biographies and autobiographies for the first time and into the wonderful world of the language of football with Do You Speak Football by Tom Williams.  In his book, Williams takes us, Palinesque, on a tour of the world explaining how football is spoken about by fans everywhere. If you would like to find out where a defensive midfielder is known as a faecal plug, what To Zlatan means in French, or what sunshine and piano football means in South Africa, this is the episode for you.  Please do like and subscribe. 

🎧 Once more into the football-musical breach… 🎤⚽   We’re back with one final (for now) dive into the weird and wonderful world of footballers who made music. 🎶👟    Footballing genius doesn’t always translate to musical talent (spoiler: some of these are rough) 😬🎵 — but there are surprises. And its all good fun anyway...   💫 The players featured in this episode have won six Ballons d’Or between them. And one legend — whose music is probably the best of this particular lot — won zero, but only because the award wasn't open to non-Europeans throughout his career. (France Football later said he’d have won seven!) 👀🇧🇷 Can you guess who we’re talking about?

This week, we dive into Flight to Bogotá by John Leonard — the true story of Neil Franklin, the England defender hailed by Tom Finney as the finest defender of his generation… until he threw it all away.   In the years after WWII, Franklin played 27 times for England and had a ticket to the 1950 World Cup in the bag 🏆. But instead of heading to Brazil, he shocked the football world by signing for Santa Fe in Colombia’s rebel pirate Dimayor league — sacrificing his career for freedom, dollars 💰, and a new life beyond the FA’s reach.   We explore the post-war players’ rebellion 🛫🇬🇧, their fight against “slave contracts” in British football, and what awaited them in the chaotic, cash-rich world of Colombian football.   A story of risk, revolt, and thick, thick soup 🔥.

In this episode of Injury Time, Al and John dive into the chaotic, colourful world of the North American Soccer League (NASL) — the wild 1970s and 80s league that brought Pelé, Cruyff, Beckenbauer, and Best to America.   Each host drafts a 5-a-side dream team of NASL stars. We use this as a vehicle to tell the story - or at least some of the story - of a league where: Clubs wore cowboy kits 🤠 No game ever ended in a draw (thats right, game rather than match) And half-time shows featured live concerts and armadillo racing  And of course, the super computer decides whose team wins.   🎧 Available now — listen wherever you get your pods.

⚽ The Dynamo Football Book Club Podcast — Episode 39: Di Stéfano We kick off our rebrand as The Dynamo Football Book Club with a book about a real legend Di Stéfano by Ian Hawkey.   Alfredo Di Stéfano — the Blonde Arrow 🏹 — won the first five European Cups 🏆 with Real Madrid, played for three national teams 🌍, and lived a life packed with drama: a Venezuelan kidnapping 🕵️, 514 career goals ⚽, and a near-marriage to a woman 50 years his junior 💍.   This episode blends football history with Cold War intrigue, featuring cameos from a young García Márquez ✍️, Che Guevara 🧳, and a future King of Spain 👑.   🎧 If you like football books, wild biographies, and the golden age of the game — this podcast is for you. 👉 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share.

It is our 8th edition of Injury Time, and we return to the football musical canon. This time round, we are listening to football’s greatest rappers. No Ballon D’or winners this time, but one World Cup winner and lots of hits on YouTube and a lady somehow singing with a Liverpool winger’s voice. It’s not John Barnes; he has been banned.   Please do like and subscribe.

In Episode 38, we discuss the life – or rather The Three Lives – of the Kaiser Franz Beckenbauer by Uli Hesse.   Another of the faces on football’s Mount Rushmore, Beckenbauer is one of only three men to win the World Cup as a player and a manager and he is the only one of those three guys who also won three European Cups on the bounce with his club and who saw Grace Jones naked on a white horse in Studio 54.   Tune in to hear about a remarkable series of lives.   Please do like and subscribe.

For the 7th edition of Injury Time, we are picking the best and most interesting players who have received drug bans. From party boys like Diego to your boring performance enhancing types like Stam, we take a tour through the players who were caught with their hands in their wife’s medicine cabinet. This is also our first episode to feature an alleged war criminal.   Grab your methylephedrine and tune in to find out whether Alistair can narrow that growing lead of Johnny’s…

In Episode 37, we visit the captivating story of Gazza in Italy.    This rather short book by Daniel Storey really packs a punch. Having read so many of these books by now, this one highlights the most important element of all - an interesting protagonist. Gazza is one of the most interesting of all - gifted, haunted and poor entertainment gold.   Have a listen to hear about him slapping an elderly Agnelli on his bald pate, faking motorbike accidents, and sending poor old Jimmy Five Bellies to Rome via Cambodia. Good man Gazza.    Be sure to like and subscribe. 

In our sixth edition of Injury Time, we take times in a different direction, with something of a Football Top of the Pops.   Do you know which players have had songs in the UK charts? We give you a blast of the Top 5 and this is not according to our own tastes but on the basis of where they charted in the British charts.   Check it out, with songs from a Ballon D’or Winner, two European Cup winners, and of course Hoddle and Waddle…   But who is Top of these Football Pops? Have a listen and find out!

In Episode 36, we discuss Gladiator, the autobiography of Francesco Totti. With nicknames such as The Eight King of Rome, Totti had other much better possible names for this book. And yet he went for Gladiator… But what a career the man had, 251 goals in 619 appearances for his hometown team, Roma. He played his first game for the Giallorossi when he was only 17 years old. After becoming captain at the age of 22, he kept hold of the armband for 18 years. With a World Cup Winners medal in his pocket to go with one eternal Scudetto for Roma, he had a brilliant excellent career and an amazing life. Do check it out and be sure to like and subscribe.