News & Views

Messi, Zlatan, Gerrard… what drives some of the modern-day giants of football? Who is the greatest player this century? 21st Century Football: A Complete Guide (So Far) is on a mission to figure this out. The new podcast will celebrate the best of the beautiful game this side of 2000, launching Monday 1st March.

Championing the greatest players of the last twenty years, the pod sees host Will Brazier, sports presenter and producer, joined by a regular panel of guests to dissect the career, honours, stats and stories behind legendary players. Regular guests include football analyst Statman Dave, YouTuber Stephen Tries and Radio X DJ Adam Brown.

The new podcast is produced by Manchester’s audio-on-demand network Crowd Network, and is the company’s first show to be recorded solely in its home city. 21st Century Football will be the network’s 12th podcast since launch in September 2020.

Crowd has recently signed a number of established podcasts as it looks to become Europe’s biggest podcast network by 2025, including Football Book Club, Le French Rugby Podcast, and The Fertility Podcast. Original Crowd titles include true crime thriller Murder in House Two, Geraint Thomas Cycling Club and We Didn’t Start The Fire.

Will Brazier, host of 21st Century Football, said: “Although the stars of each of our episodes are some of the biggest names in football, their legacies have been relatively unexplored as compared to the sporting icons that came before them. We’ve seen some of the best players of all time emerge post-2000, so we wanted to use the pod to finally figure out who is the greatest this century. We look at the insane stats and bizarre stories so we can really measure the impact they’ve each had on the game.

“The series has so much scope to grow, and we’ll be looking at the managers and coaches behind some of the greatest players this century as the pod progresses.”

21st Century Football: A Complete Guide (So Far) will be available for download on all major podcast platforms from 1st March, with new episodes released every Monday.