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.

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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?

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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 🍺.

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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 😎🔥

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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 👀🍾…

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⚽️ 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 🎧