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Football for Breakfast

Football for Breakfast

By: The Good Companions
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Football for Breakfast is a weekly podcast hosted by Jim Johnson, filmed in a purpose-built greasy spoon cafe. Not tactics. Not transfers. The real side of football. Every Tuesday, Jim sits down with footballers, business leaders, entrepreneurs and cultural figures for honest conversations about identity, trust, leadership and what the game truly means. From Premier League dressing rooms to the boardroom - Football for Breakfast explores what football teaches us about life and business. Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture. This is where the game gets honest.The Good Companions Football (Soccer)
Episodes
  • Martyn Potts | Collecting Pop Bottles for a Football, the 1966 FA Cup Final Ticket and Poetry of the Wirral
    Jul 14 2026

    Martyn Potts grew up in Blackpool in the 1950s. His dad was at the Matthews Cup Final in 1953. In 1959, aged nine, he and his mates on a cinder-surfaced cul-de-sac had no football. So they went round collecting empty pop bottles, claimed the deposits and pooled the money. Two days later they had enough for a ball.

    He wrote a poem about it for his 70th birthday. He reads it at the table.

    In the season finale of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Martyn in the greasy spoon cafe for a conversation that stretches from the 1950s to the present day.

    They talk about the 1966 FA Cup Final. Martyn was 15. His Uncle Bill was honorary secretary of the London Society of Association Referees and got them tickets - not just for the match, but for the eve-of-final dinner the night before. A surprise appearance from Tommy Trinder - chairman of Fulham - who told blue jokes to the all-male audience that a 15-year-old Martyn was not supposed to hear. His dad said don't tell your mum.

    The next day, Everton beat Sheffield Wednesday three-two from two nil down. Derek Temple scored the winner. Martyn brought the ticket stub and the dinner programme. He's kept both for sixty years.

    He is a retired headteacher. He still plays 5-a-side every Sunday - not walking football, actual running football. And he has just published a new collection of poetry about the Wirral called Sandstone and Sea.

    Jim closes: proof that the best football stories aren't always about football, and the best poets never stopped paying attention.

    Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.

    Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

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    37 mins
  • Anthony Parker | George Best's Testimonial, Wayne Rooney's Hat Trick Debut and Finding Your Rhythm
    Jul 7 2026

    Anthony Parker's first ever football match was a Matt Busby testimonial. George Best was on the pitch. They moved the goalposts to the 18-yard line so he could play. He had bags and bags of skill. Anthony was five or six years old. He never forgot it.

    In episode eleven of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Anthony in the greasy spoon cafe to talk about Manchester United, the weight of history and what it means to be a fan of a club built as much on tragedy as triumph.

    They talk about the Busby Babes, Duncan Edwards - probably the best player in the world at 18, with virtually no substitutes available - and the way the Munich air disaster created something mystical about United that even their rivals can't deny. They talk about 1992-93, when Anthony's dad turned up on the Sunday with scarves out the window, a cake and a bottle of champagne. Twenty-six years. Worth every second.

    Midway through the conversation, Man United call. He answers. He tells them he's recording a podcast. He hangs up.

    In the second half Anthony talks about a career that started at 17 in an accounts department that happened to be in the gates and barriers industry and ended up, thirty-odd years later, with him as managing director of Country Gates and Barriers. He didn't plan it. He found his rhythm. He found something he was good at and let it take him somewhere.

    His object is the ticket stub from the Fenerbahce game in 2004. Wayne Rooney's Manchester United debut. A hat trick. Anthony was there.

    The result he'll never get over? Agüero. QPR. The last minute.

    Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.

    Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

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    30 mins
  • Harry Davies | You'll Never Walk Alone as a Lullaby, Inheriting Istanbul and Whether Youth Culture Is Over
    Jun 30 2026

    Harry Davies's dad sang him "You'll Never Walk Alone" as a lullaby. Every single night. Instead of anything else.

    Harry is 21. He found his dad's Istanbul 2005 tracksuit top in a wardrobe one day and quietly claimed it. He wasn't even there in 2005 - he was one year old. But he wears it now to every big game, including the 4-3 win over Spurs when Jota scored the 96th minute winner.

    In episode ten of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with the youngest guest the show has had so far to talk about inheriting football, inheriting music and what it means to be young and obsessed with both in a city that's given the world The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and a song that started as a chart hit before kick off and somehow became Anfield's emotional centre of gravity.

    They talk about Bath City, the grassroots club Harry adopted at university, and going to see the Oasis reunion twice this summer - shaking with excitement for a band he was only four or five when they first split.

    The conversation turns properly interesting in the second half. Is youth culture over? Can social media ever again produce the kind of unifying cultural moment that gave the world Britpop, Merseybeat or punk? Harry says he has to believe it can. He's an optimist. He thinks somewhere out there is the next Liam Gallagher, even if nobody's found them yet.

    Jim closes on him: proof that the next generation of football fans feel it just as deeply. The game is in safe hands.

    Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.

    Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

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    29 mins
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