Welcome to this week's Socially Distant Sports Bar with Mike Bubbins, Elis James and Steff Garrero.
This week we're taking a trip back to the golden age of television game shows, before heading into the tactical revolution that has changed football from the Champions League to the lowest reaches of the non-league pyramid.
Two very different approaches to sport. One involving meticulous tactical planning. The other involving Jimmy Tarbuck and a set of rules nobody appears to understand.
Steff: Full Swing
In place of the usual documentary, Steff has unearthed an absolute gem from the golden age of British television: Jimmy Tarbuck's Full Swing.
It's a glorious car crash of a golf-based, general knowledge-adjacent game show, featuring celebrity contestants, questionable production decisions and a format whose rules the audience are apparently expected to work out for themselves as the programme unfolds.
If the idea of Jimmy Tarbuck presiding over a golf quiz that appears to have been designed during a particularly long lunch doesn't make you want to watch it immediately, we're not sure this is the podcast for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6svRbCgDm8w&t=45s
Elis: The Spectre of Pep — How Guardiola Haunts Modern Football by Jon Mackenzie
Elis brings in Jon Mackenzie's fascinating examination of Pep Guardiola's influence on modern football.
From his tactical philosophy and obsession with controlling space to the way teams across Europe's biggest leagues have adopted versions of his approach, the book explores how one manager's ideas have fundamentally changed the way the game is played.
And it's not just the elite. From Manchester City to the lower reaches of non-league football, everybody now seems determined to play out from the back, regardless of whether the centre-half is entirely comfortable with the idea.
Has Guardiola made football better? Or has he simply made everyone believe there's only one correct way to play it?
Plenty for Elis, Mike and Steff to get stuck into.
Jimmy Tarbuck and Pep Guardiola. Two men who have approached the organisation of sport in very different ways.
Thanks for listening.
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