Hello. Hello listener I'm Carl Anker, football writer at The Athletic and today we have a special

podcast and last Sunday we published an article with the headline, Why Football Crowds So White?

The piece got a strong reaction with numerous comments from subscribers and people on social media.

This was a big media. This was a

collaborative work. I did with Ryan Conway,

our Derby County writer, Rachain Thomas,

I'm a Sam writer, and Dan Barnes,

who is one of the senior editors at the athletic as well.

And this piece took us the best part of 90 days to go over the line,

talking to academics, football fans, stewards, ex-players and football agents.

We managed to start what we thought was a very, very valuable conversation and on this

podcast we're going to explore that just a little bit more.

Hi Rishang, can you just tell me a little bit about your football in history and your background?

I study sports realism at the University for the Creative Arts.

My final year at uni had about 10 workplacements. I went from everywhere from like Peter

Briar United, Brighton. I even had the workplacement at Hello and magazine. I mean

that's how serious I was taking it. And yeah, I had loads of work experience,

I talked sport in particular, and he offered me a job

before I graduated, which was great.

Also volunteered for the voice newspaper.

That was great.

I able to attend a lot of Premier League games.

...