It’s ten years since I reserved the Outside Write domain and bagged the social media feeds. It was designed as an outlet for me to chronical my groundhopping as I was travelling a lot with my work as a social media trainer and strategist for a global PR agency. A podcast soon followed. Ten years on, 233 podcast episodes and 332,000 downloads later, Outside Write has helped me secure three book deals, present university lectures, and make a lot of friends on the way. Here are some highlights, learnings, and future plans.
The Origins of Outside Write
Back in 2014, having returned from the World Cup in Brazil, I joined a bunch of Facebook groups for groundhoppers. I have been watching football in England since 1986/87 and abroad since 1996/97, when I was a student in Madrid and loved exploring new grounds. To find there was already communities of likeminded people was revelatory, and I decided to start blogging my own experiences, partly as an outlet for my groundhopping but also to practice what I preached in my day job by becoming a content creator.
In addition, I was a frustrated football writer, knowing there were few opportunities in the highly competitive field of journalism. I also wanted to explore the cultural, historical and political elements of football, which built on my degree dissertation – Regional Identity in Spain as Expressed Through Football (1998).
Outside Write is a play on words. The ‘Outside Right’ was the old-fashioned no.7 position, and I just swapped ‘Right’ for ‘Write’ as it was originally just a blog. The site has never made money; it’s a labour of love, but it’s also remained fiercely independent as I reject gambling sponsorship approaches. The podcast currently has a sponsor, Argentine matchday experience company Pibe de Barrio, which is on-brand and relevant to my audience, and helps me cover the cost of hosting.
It’s really rewarding to hear that people have been inspired to visit places I’ve covered on the blog or podcast, or have even written books after listening to my podcast guests and fancying having a go themselves.
Groundhopping highlights
According to the excellent Futbology App, I have now seen football in 19 countries. While many of my footballing highlights precede my blogging days – the epic Brighton v Liverpool FA Cup 4th Round Replay at the Goldstone in 1991; or Real Madrid v Real Betis in 1997 in front of what I am convinced I recall was a 100,000+ crowd; or Leo Messi scoring a peach at the Maracanã – there are several key memories from the last ten years.
Without question, my favourite three stadiums of I’ve visited in the last ten years are Estadio Tomás Adolfo Ducó (Huracán, Buenos Aires), The Oval (Glentoran, Belfast), and Stadio Renato Dall’Ara (Bologna). My matchday experience highlights include standing close to Boca Juniors’ infamous barra, La Doce (Twelfth Man); a fiery night on the mainly temporary stands of Brescia; and being ‘encouraged to leave’ our section by obnoxious Hungarian ultras at Euro 2016 in Lyon and going to the other end to hang with the wonderful Portuguese fans to witness the match of that tournament – Hungary 3-3 Portugal, featuring a backheeled goal from Cristiano Ronaldo at our end.
The podcast
I launched the Football Travel by Outside Write podcast in summer 2016. Podcasting is all about finding your voice, so it took some time to take off but at its pre-pandemic peak was getting more than 1,000 downloads per week. Podcasting has become more competitive since then with so many other podcasts in general out there (especially from already household names) and some others covering similar ground.
I’ve had some big names on the podcast who have been generous with their time, including Jonathan Wilson, Michael Cox (Zonal Marking, The Athletic) and political theorist Cas Mudde. The most-downloaded episode for a long time – and one of my personal favourites – was this interview on football throughout the history of Yugoslavia with Richard Mills. Balkan content is very popular; my second most downloaded podcast is this one on Hajduk Split. However, the most downloaded of all time is this interview with two academics on football in German society.
My personal favourite is this one on the matchday programmes of the former East Germany (GDR/DDR).
Content around Germany, the former Communist Bloc countries, Italy and South America seem to perform best. Which is just as well, as I have a ten-part series coming up on South America.
Being a podcaster also gets me invitations onto other podcasts, including The Brazilian Shirt Name Podcast, These Football Times (twice), FootPol (twice) and others. I am always up for talking football and politics or football history, so please get in touch if you’d like me to appear on your podcast.
The books
Outside Write has given me access to a whole range of experts and a platform from which to explore topics in football culture and history. My first book, Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World came out via Pitch Publishing in 2021 and is a country-by-country guide to how the game got started from first kick up to the 1930 World Cup in rough chronological order. My second book, The Defiant: A History of Football Against Fascism, also came out via Pitch in 2022 and was nominated for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, although it didn’t make the long list.
My third book is out in March 2025, and I can’t say too much yet, but it is part-groundhop/part-history, about discovering Irish football as an outsider. Irish football has barely been covered in books from outside the island. Stay tuned for more on that.
Having the platform has also made it easier for me to get writing gigs, and I have contributed to Football Weekends, Glory Magazine, and Halb Vier, among others.
What’s changed since 2014?
A few things have changed since I started out. When I launched the podcast in 2016, I was probably the only one covering groundhopping in English, as well as football history and politics. It’s way more competitive now; listeners have so much more choice, plus I have a day job (!) so I’ve scaled it back to series of ten, with one new release every fortnight rather than the manic weekly schedule I used to do.
‘Less of better’ is also the way for written content. Long reads and listicles perform best on search engines and get the most traction on social media, so I’ll be focussing on that.
While some challenges haven’t changed – people pinching your content word for word or sharing your photos on social uncredited, for example – the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has proved to be a double-edged sword. Sure, my work is now probably being used to train AI machines and some ‘writers’ may even be getting GenAI to create their posts for volume. However, I use AI to help me transcript interviews and podcasts, and to generate subtitles for video content, so you won’t find me saying AI is all bad.
Social media has changed, too. Twitter (now X) was vital to building my early following and network. I’ve made loads of friends and useful contacts in the industry through it but am now inactive on the network due to recent changes, and am trying to rebuild my community on Bluesky, which has suddenly taken off. Similarly, I am doing more short videos on Instagram nowadays.
What’s next?
Outside Write will remain a fiercely independent hub for football travel, history, and culture content. I have concepts for a fourth book but it’s all about time and money to be able to justify writing them, really. My books have cost me money (research etc.) rather than the opposite. If you’re keen to support my work, do please consider buying me a coffee.
My work has led to lecturing opportunities, such as my recent talk to University of Bath Latin American Studies students on football and national identity in Argentina and Uruguay. I’m keen to do more of that (football and social history, football and politics etc.) so please get in touch if you are from academia.
I am also cutting out flying for continental trips. It just means more planning ahead than catching a plane. (Thanks to Br*xit, my nearest Eurostar terminal, Ashford International, stopped Eurostar services due to the cost of passport controls, which weren’t required previously, so I have a more timely and expensive schlepp into London…). Trips to France and Germany are already slated in for 2025.
Thanks as ever for your continued support. Let’s see if there’s another ten years in this project…