ONE GREAT... PODCAST

Football Ramble Daily/The Blizzard

ON some Monday afternoons, it can feel like the internet is about to collapse under the sheer number of podcasts going live, analysing all the latest happenings in another Premier League weekend. No matter how insightful they can be, it is impossible to keep abreast of what all of them are saying about Chris Wilder’s tactic of overlapping centre-backs. It’s a case of picking and choosing. The Football Ramble has been one of the most consistently brilliant soccer podcasts since it started, with its feel of four lads sitting around in a pub, dissecting what happened over the weekend. They recently teamed up with the brilliant Blizzard magazine and its editor Jonathan Wilson to produce a weekly deep dive into some of the greatest football matches in history. Wilson is one of the UK’s best football journalists and one of the most dependable contributors to various podcasts, and the choice of games is never less than fascinating. There’s an episode on the 1974 World Cup final, with David Winner brilliantly dissecting the repercussions for Dutch football after they were upset by West Germany, and Gerd Muller, in that game. The most recent episode focused on Roy Hodgson’s Fulham side, that included Damien Duff, and their remarkable 4-1 win over Juventus in the Europa League semi-final back in 2011. Taking that as a centre-point allowed them to reflect on the Cottagers’ sensational run to a European final. Perhaps, this podcast’s greatest strength is their ability to pick some of history’s more obscure great games, but no less significant. One of my favourite episodes looks at the first Tel Aviv derby between Maccabi and Hapoel in 1928. However, arguably the best so far concentrates on the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the chaotic quarter-final between Peru and Austria, a match so controversial it is still talked about in the South American nation to this day. Even though Peru won 4-2, and had three disallowed goals, the result was declared void, with the game ordered to be rescheduled. It was never played. As a break from the latest controversy over VAR or what is going wrong at Manchester United and Arsenal, this podcast is well worth some of your time.