Soccer Against Fascism: A Guided Tour through Europe with Chris Lee

The Assistant Professor of Football: Soccer, Culture, History.

Today, I am talking to Chris Lee about the role that football and particularly football fans have played, and are playing in the fight against fascism on and off the field. Chris is from England, and runs the football culture blog “Outside Write.” He is an active groundhopper and has visited many historic stadiums across Europe. He does really good historical research, and his book “The Defiant: A History of Football Against Fascism” just came out in October. We spent half of our conversation on soccer’s role in the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s and footballing resistance. In the second half, we moved to what antifascist soccer and supporter culture looks like today, its challenges, what the regular consumer of soccer can do - and Chris gave out a few travel tips as well.

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1. Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
2. If you could leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice, that would be particularly helpful. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

HELPFUL LINKS for this episode:

Chris Lee’s Outside Write project and podcast

Chris Lee, The Defiant: A History of Football against Fascism on Amazon

John Foot, Calcio: A History of Italian Football

Tobias Jones, Ultra: The Underworld of Italian Football

Clapton CFC

Dulwich Hamlet FC

Tennis Borussia Berlin

FC St. Pauli fans abroad, from the New York Times

The Gentleman Ultra

When Saturday Comes

Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook.
f you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, please

• Recommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help.
• Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.

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/