The Athletic has built one of the biggest podcast networks in sports, with shows including The Totally Football Show and the Tifo Football Podcast. However, The Athletic FC Podcast is the flagship football show within that network.
The podcast combines the organisation’s large team of football journalists with experienced presenters and specialist contributors. It covers the biggest stories in the game but also goes beyond the usual match reaction, offering tactical analysis, transfer reporting and more unusual features.
It is now released six days a week during the football season, giving it the ability to respond quickly to breaking news and the latest matches. This results in a podcast that offers a steady stream of heavily informed football discussion.
Background
The podcast originally launched as The Athletic Football Podcast in November 2019. Although The Athletic is now responsible for numerous podcasts, this remains its flagship football production and has always been an in-house podcast rather than one it has taken over. Mark Chapman was the original host, while Dan Bardell and George Elek also regularly filled in before Ayo Akinwolere became the regular host. Akinwolere left at the end of the 2025/26 season.
The podcast won Sports Podcast of the Year at the British Podcast Awards in 2024 and claimed gold in the ‘Best Podcast – Organisation’ category the following year at the Football Content Awards.
The Hosts and Contributors
Introducing our newest signing… @MissEmmaPaton 🎯
Emma is joining The Athletic FC Podcast team for the World Cup as we bring you inside the biggest stories from the tournament — and an already busy transfer window.
Watch or listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts. pic.twitter.com/aFqfepD1YH
— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) June 5, 2026
Emma Paton is the newest major addition to the podcast’s presenting team. She is a highly experienced Sky Sports News Reporter/Presenter and joined as lead host of The Athletic FC Podcast in August 2026. She does most of the hosting, though Kate Mason takes charge for the weekly tactics episodes. While you are likely to hear one of these two on any given podcast, who they are joined by tends to change quite a lot.
The large number of episodes means the podcast needs a substantial pool of contributors. Most of the journalists involved have other responsibilities at The Athletic (or elsewhere), rather than being full-time podcasters. That is why the line-up can change significantly from one episode to the next.
Some names feature more than most, though. James Horncastle is quite a regular contributor, as are Rob Green, Adam Crafton, Cerys Jones, Seb Stafford-Bloor, Jack Pitt-Brooke and Matt Slater. You will also hear plenty of David Ornstein, particularly during and around the time of the transfer windows.
Six Episodes a Week
The Athletic FC Podcast is unusually frequent for a football podcast. As said, during the season, it releases six episodes a week, with a new episode dropping every day except Saturday. That schedule gives the podcast a major advantage when it comes to reacting to the latest developments. A big Premier League match on Sunday can be discussed almost immediately, while breaking news on a Monday or Tuesday does not need to wait until the end of the week.
Episodes generally range from around 30 minutes to 50 minutes, though they occasionally run a bit longer.
More Than Match Reaction
Recent matches and major news stories naturally make up a large part of the podcast. However, The Athletic FC is not simply a daily review of what just happened on and off the pitch. The Athletic’s journalists can go much deeper into subjects because of the work they do away from the podcast. Episodes can examine tactical decisions, recruitment strategies, financial issues and the wider direction of clubs.
That gives the show a slightly different identity from podcasts that mainly consist of presenters discussing their opinions on the weekend’s results. In terms of breadth of footballing topics, you would do very well to find many podcasts that do more than The Athletic. There are three areas they cover particularly well, as outlined below, although be aware that exact episode formats are liable to change in future.
Tactical Coverage
Every Friday, the podcast releases a tactics episode hosted by Kate Mason. Many of these episodes take the form of a tactical preview, looking closely at an upcoming match and where it could be won or lost. They might examine one team’s change in set-piece approach or how another is struggling to keep the ball when pressed. These episodes avoid becoming too dry or overly detailed, instead offering interesting insights into things you may have missed, particularly when covering teams you do not watch regularly.
Transfer News
Transfer news is one of the strongest reasons to follow The Athletic FC Podcast when the summer and winter windows are open. The Athletic has a large network of journalists who spend their time speaking to clubs, agents, players and other sources across the football industry.
Former BBC journalist David Ornstein is something of their transfer specialist. His name is particularly associated with breaking transfer stories, and his appearances become more frequent when the transfer window is open. Information from him is about as reliable as it gets, a stark contrast to much of the transfer speculation you will find elsewhere.
However, he is not the only well-connected reporter available to the podcast. The Athletic has journalists covering individual clubs and leagues across the football world, and these names are often the first to hear about dealings involving their club.
The ‘What If?’ Series
The Athletic FC Podcast has also recently introduced a weekly What If? episode, every Sunday, which gives the show another way to approach football history. Rather than simply discussing what happened, these episodes consider how football might have looked if major events had gone differently. One episode asked what would have happened if Pep Guardiola had never become a manager.
Another considered what might have happened if Roman Abramovich had bought Tottenham instead of Chelsea. These are the sort of hypothetical questions that allow The Athletic’s writers to explore football history from a completely different angle, producing some very unique content in the process.
The series is a good example of how the podcast attempts to offer something beyond the standard Premier League conversation. There are countless football podcasts discussing the same clubs and the same talking points every week, so finding different ways to approach the sport is increasingly important.
How to Listen to the Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic FC Podcast is available on major podcast platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Episodes are filmed in The Athletic’s well-equipped studio and uploaded to YouTube if you prefer watching rather than listening. The podcast is also available through The Athletic’s website and app, but you must have an account to access it this way.
If you are thinking about giving the podcast a try, you should know that this is a production unlikely to satisfy listeners looking for constant banter and in-jokes. That is not what it is designed to provide. Instead, it offers deeply informed and richly varied discussion from journalists who are often directly involved in covering the stories they are talking about.