If you are in England on the nice Spring weekend of March 22nd, I hope you didn’t book the trip to see a Premier League game. Because there are none. It’s a dreaded national team break again. But on the other hand, that weekend may also be one of the best to soak in English football culture, because it’s the Annual “Non-League Day," an annual, grassroots-led spotlight on non-professional football in England, a chance for those clubs to "promote the importance of affordable volunteer-led community football," for fans who don’t follow the big clubs across the country to show support for their local amateur side - and a chance for the educated soccer fan to look into the bottom of the English league pyramid, and find there is a lot of vibrancy, passion and sacrifices there.
Today, in preparation, we are highlighting that day and the work and volunteers surrounding it, with James Doe, who founded the Non League Day in 2010 as a kind of social media experiment, and has overseen its growth to something that is now supported by the Premier League and Football League clubs, MPs, celebrities, media organisations, charities and most importantly the non-league clubs themselves
HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:
The English Football League System explained on Wikipedia
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Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind
Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/
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