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When Football Ruined My Life started back at the beginning of 2023 it was the new podcast about old football. In it, distinguished football journalist Patrick Barclay joined with Colin Shindler, author of the best selling Manchester United Ruined My Life, 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. For over 80 weekly episodes, the podcast viewed those days fondly - though not uncritically - in comparison to today's game, which it views critically though not unfondly. And it welcomed everyone who wants to remember Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Charlton, Brian Clough and Bill Shankly and the days when you went to a Football League ground to watch your football and didn't wait for it to arrive on television. After the tragic and untimely death of Paddy Barclay in February 2025, Football Ruined My Life took a break to consider how (and if) to carry on. In May 2025 it has returned, with a panel of stars to make irregular appearances to join the regulars, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler. These now include writer and producer Andy Hamilton, television executive Jimmy Mulville, the sports journalist and columnist for the Daily Telegraph Jim White and stand-up comedian Omid Djalili. But the feel and raison d'être of Football Ruined My Life remains the same. Still nostalgic? Yes. Still well informed? Certainly. But above all, it continues to glory in the football of our youth when the game seemed charmingly innocent, full of skillful, good hearted, kindly men like Norman Hunter, Ron Harris and Peter Storey. Join us every week for a romp through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and beyond that will warm you like a cup of scalding hot Bovril. Produced by Paul Kobrak. Contact the team at [email protected]

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127. Which footballers have been influential, either consciously or unconsciously, in affecting or impacting their nations positively (or negatively)?

2026/02/06

Recently we had the Africa Cup of Nations with that absurd ending rescued by the grown up behaviour of Sadio Mane. During the course of the competition we were constantly reminded of how much Mo Salah means to the people of Egypt. However, Omid Djalili, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes also look at the downside. When Luis Suarez was sent off for biting for the third time in the 2014 World Cup after taking a mouthful from the shoulder of the Italy defender Georgio Chiellini – they wonder whether the people of Uruguay were sympathetic to the way Suarez’ assuaged his hunger pains or whether they were properly embarrassed. Football throws up heroes and villains on a regular basis. How much impact do their actions have on the perception of their country? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

126. The North-South Divide

2026/01/30

When the Football League started in 1888 there were six clubs from the Midlands and six from Lancashire. Now look at the Premier League. Of the current 20 clubs, nine come from the effete South of England, in other words almost half. Jon Holmes, Colin Shindler and Jim White discuss whether this is a North-South divide or a London-versus-the-rest-of-the-country divide. We know to what extent football is ruled by money and we know that the North-South divide is a slightly euphemistic way of describing the disadvantaged North versus the over privileged South. So much is self-evident. But is this increasing concentration of wealth in the southern half of the country a good thing or a bad thing for football?” Listen to the podcast and let us know what you think (and where you live!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

125. Our Most Depressing Defeats

2026/01/23

Colin 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 incipient blindness of the match officials. Either way you leave the ground wondering why you bothered getting out of bed and coming in the first place. The Football Ruined My Life audience knows exactly what that feels like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

124. Those We Have Lost In 2025

2026/01/16

This 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 this edition are many and varied, famous and unknown. They include a player who kickstarted my second career, a goalkeeper who made 5 appearances and spent nearly all of his 10 years at my club in the reserves and a centre half who scored an own goal in three consecutive games. Isn’t that worth commemorating? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

123. Are Modern Refs Too Fussy?

2026/01/09

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 days (which was how punishments were given then) was a serious blow to the team’s prospects for the next month. Now of course getting a red card is regarded as part of the day job and if you can get yourself sent off a week before Christmas and receive an automatic three match suspension you get a nice family Christmas at home. To an extent of course this isn’t really down to the individual referee. Referees are under examination from an official observer sitting in the stand and they can be overruled by VAR. They used to be the sole arbiters of what happens on the pitch. Now they aren’t. Jimmy Mulville, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes discuss whether or not this trend is good for the game and particularly for the spectators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

122. Club Legends

2026/01/02

This 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 the game. Every single listener to this podcast with a strong affiliation to one particular club could probably name a club legend who stuck around for years, never in contention for international honours, never sought by European clubs, rarely injured - a person who gave their all for the club even if they were less gifted than some team mates. They were what gave their club their unique image. They were players like Billy Bonds at West Ham, Harry Cripps at Millwall, Tony Dunne at Manchester United, Alan Oakes at City… the list goes on. Who is on your list? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

121. Postbag

2025/12/26

Every year at this time we ensure that we have a postbag of your emails to spread joy and happiness among the growing Football Ruined My Life community. We encourage you to write to us every week and you do so in comforting numbers. Once again the tone is almost entirely 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 even if only because it reassures us that we’re talking about the topics which you think and talk about. But also it’s a comfort to know that at least we’re not just talking to ourselves. So a merry festive season and a happy new year to one and all and do keep those emails pouring in. There’ll be another postbag in a couple of months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

120. Is the Game More Exciting Than it Was?

2025/12/19

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 fondled, albeit very briefly. Of course, what appears hysterical to fans of mature years might not appear so to someone fifty years younger. The game has grown, Premier League grounds are full, players are faster and more skilful. Surely that means that the game is more exciting. Listen and find out… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

119. Has FIFA Ruined My Football?

2025/12/12

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 we have all loved for almost the entire duration of our lives could possibly have sunk so low. The reason we all fell in love with with game of football was because it appealed to our better instincts of joy and romance. Football can give you those feelings. But that football has gone and if we needed confirmation then FIFA’s lunacy was the proof. As football fans we have the right to howl in protest. Let us know if you were also howling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

118. The One with Steve Coppell

2025/12/05

In 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 70 he has the perspective to compare football when he played and managed with the game as it is played and managed today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

117. The Players We Most Feared

2025/11/28

The 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 point in turning up to watch the inevitable defeat – Liverpool in the 80s, Manchester United from 1994 for the next two decades, perhaps Guardiola’s Manchester City from a few years ago. Do memories of Ron Harris, Peter Storey, Norman Hunter etc. evoke the warm glow of nostalgia? Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler fight it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

116. Giant Killers

2025/11/21

Ronnie 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 that left Willie McFaul the Newcastle goalkeeper helpless. It sparked a pitch invasion, and the images of that muddy pitch, Radford celebrating with arms aloft and the crowd invading the pitch, have since become immortalised in FA Cup history. If ever there was a single goal which defined the glory of the giantkiller this was it. Jim White, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler wallow nostalgically, as ever, in their memories of similar giant killing acts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

115. International Breaks

2025/11/14

Now 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 football season is being disrupted by these irritating international breaks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

114. The Team of the 1960s

2025/11/07

In 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 1960s. Some of the selections will undoubtedly coincide with yours but some of them might surprise you so press play and start luxuriating in a nostalgic wallow through the days of our youths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

113. Football in the 1960s

2025/10/31

Colin 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 entertainment. Of course, the decade also provided terrible pitches, small wages to most players even after the abolition of the £20 minimum wage, dilapidated grounds with no toilets and the danger of swaying on the terraces with those rolling crowds. It can’t just be nostalgia that elevates football in the 1960s, can it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Podcast reviews

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5 out of 5

7 reviews

★★★★★

The number four 2026/01/19

‘La Pelota no se Mancha’

In response to the episode on the pathetic spectacle that was the World Cup draw. The phrase in the title means, ‘The ball doesn’t stain’. All of the ...

★★★★★

Arthur King USA 2025/03/21

The Best

The boys talk sense Colin the romantic Jon the reality a great combination The best podcast on football

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