Football Ruined My Life
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 footballruinedmylife@gmail.com
© Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes, Paul Kobrak · more info
Artwork and data is from the podcast’s open RSS feed; we link directly to audio · Read our DMCA procedure
This podcast may use tracking and attribution and dynamic content insertion
Stats: Statistics are produced by Megaphone and Podscribe to help Football Ruined My Life to understand how many downloads it is getting, or how many people are listening. Your device’s IP address and user agent is used to help calculate this figure. Megaphone is IAB v2 certified. Here is more detail about podcast statistics.
Tracking and attribution: Megaphone, Podscribe and Nielsen or their partners may connect the fact you listened to this podcast to an action elsewhere on the internet. For example - they may spot a device that downloaded an episode of Football Ruined My Life later visited the website of an advertiser; or they may track that a device that listened to Football Ruined My Life also listened to a different show. This form of attribution is used to measure advertising effectiveness.
Dynamic content insertion: Megaphone may use limited data that they know about you - the device you’re using, the approximate location you’re in, or other data that can be derived from this, like the current weather forecast for your area - to change parts of the audio. Football Ruined My Life may do this for advertising or for other forms of content, like news stories.
Football Ruined My Life is able to use the above tools since its podcast host or measurement company offers this service. It doesn’t mean that this individual podcast uses them, or has access to this functionality. We use open data.
Listen and follow
Apple PodcastsInformation for podcasters
- Podcast GUID:
98cfd204-6deb-55da-9029-e2e2cf8c54b0 - This podcast appears to be missing from Truefans and iHeartRadio. We list all the podcast directories to be in.
- See this podcast’s listener numbers, contact details and more at Rephonic
- Validate this podcast’s RSS feed with Livewire, Truefans or CastFeedValidator