Opinion | The podcast that shows why footballers are much more than actors in a soap opera
Graham Hunter’s Big Interview show is a must-listen for those who share his love of the game
Football has become such a soap opera – big baddy Mou back to resume his feud with Pep the latest exciting plotline – that it’s easy to forget sometimes why we actually love the game: the ball and the thrills those with mastery of it can deliver.
Hunter and his colleagues wondered why no-one was doing the same with footballers. If your preconception is that the average player is a monosyllabic halfwit concerned only with the latest Louis Vuitton toilet bag design, you'd be surprised with the fascinating insights the show has revealed from greats such as Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick, Graeme Souness, Harry Redknapp and many more.
About a year, and three million downloads later, it’s fair to say the idea was sound.
Though he “fanatically disagrees” with me when I suggest the likes of his employer Sky TV have turned the sport into a drama, he admits: “I think almost all media bear a degree of culpability in the current mood to seek headlines, polemic and to report football like politics: ‘He said this, what do you say about that?’
“We were sure that football had more, and different, stories to tell and we were optimistic that we would find the people who could speak for the football we loved.
