Thank you for making 50 Episodes of The Assistant professor of Football possible! Whether you celebrate anything this season or not, I hope these days are refreshing for you, hold people and emotions if you want that, and space to breathe in if you prefer that.

Last year at this time, I read Michael Foreman’s classic picture book War Game as a Holiday special. This December special is me. That is: an audio interview with me that I gave to a fairly well known German soccer culture podcast, Brennpunkt Orange. Its host, Danny, asked good questions about my football biography, about soccer in the US, about my research, and this podcast.
Quite a few of his questions I have gotten before, casually in conversations, or in writing from listeners. So 'tis a good time to turn the tables. I am the one being interviewed today.

I took the German audio interview and, with the help of AI, have an English version of the interview for you. The German speech to English speech - AI isn’t perfect, but it’s quite remarkable how well it worked, despite the tech being still at a toddler-stage. So the voices you’re about to hear are not mine and Danny's, but two AI voices, who say in English - as best they can - what we said to each other in German in the original interview. That one, by the way, is here.

Until after my semester break, in 4 weeks. And thank you, again!

(the photo of me for this episode is from Fall 2022 in Graz, at Sturm's old ground, before a derby vs. GAK)

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• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
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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/