The Athletic.

Hello and welcome to the Tefo Football Podcast.

I'm John Mackenzie and I'm not joined by my good friend and producer Mike Zimmerman today because today I'm

joined by a guest host Alex Barker. It's great to have you here.

That's a wonderful honor. Thank you for having me.

Yeah and we brought you in because we were lucky enough to talk to

Tom Williams who's just written a book about French football it's called vavavu the modern history of French football and you

obviously an expert on French football so I thought it was only fair to bring you in.

You just listened to that conversation, you've taken part in that conversation.

What did you make of it?

Oh, it was absolutely fascinating.

There were so many elements to it where even having read the book, even as you say, being one of the biggest lovers of French football, these public lovers, there was even so many points during that where you're making

so many connections between why we think Lee Gern isn't as good, why it hasn't been able

to cultivate a really rich history. yeah it was absolutely fascinated to hear

Tom Kowenet these dots and I guess understand why I love some parts of French

football and why some parts sometimes feel unfulfilling.

Yeah and I think it was fascinating because we planned the episode and we had like a running order

set out and I felt there's like we didn't really keep to the running order whatsoever because we spent a lot of time talking about this concept of

identity what is French football's identity and it's it has an interesting

back story and there's all kinds of

sociopolitical reasons for why France

didn't develop its football culture in the same way as other places

...