The So, Hi Ed here. Today's conversation is with the author and journalist Michael Calvin.

His new book is called Whose Game is it anyway and it's

really prescient. It's a look at football around the world. He's been to more than

80 countries and it's kind of deep dive into the greed and avarice we see, especially with

voucher capitalists like the glazers and private equity coming into the game, and then contrasting

that with community and what the game's really about fans.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Michael. It's an hour and we go into some really deep topics.

Hi Michael, thanks for joining us today.

Super, super book, whose game is it anyway?

Out now, I believe.

And let's start with your take on what the book's about and why you wrote it and it just seems very prescient at this time.

Yeah, it was certainly very personal probably the most personal book I've ever written, Ed, and

great to be here, by the way.

The, I suppose we've all in our various places around the world or, it's been a private process,

but we've all been through, I think, a degree of self-evaluation over the last year

15 months with the pandemic and the book was written at the height of the pandemic and I suppose it reflected my mood and I got to the stage where, you know, I've been blessed,

80 old countries, you know, watch sport at the highest level and it's been, it's enriched me

both personally and professionally, you know, sport in general but football in particular and on this occasion it was the death of my father-in-law through COVID.

It sort of gave me a bit of a reality check in a way because as I said I'd fallen out of love with what football had become at the highest level, you know, the hypercommercialization and the innate corporate cynicism at all.

And it took the death of my father and the reminders of how he how his relationship with

his father was fundamental. It was fundamentally affected by their joint love of football.

It was a bit of a family mystery

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