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02:05||Season 1, Ep. 0In May 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson retired from Manchester United after 26 years. His replacement, David Moyes, inherited a championship team from arguably the greatest manager of all time. One year later, Moyes was fired after United's worst season in over two decades.That story isn't unique to Manchester United. Not even close.Big Shoes is a narrative sports podcast about succession—what happens when the greatest coach or player in your team's history walks away. From Manchester United to Liverpool. From Nick Saban to Pat Summitt. From the Phoenix Suns to the San Francisco Giants. From Harry Kane leaving Tottenham to Jon Scheyer replacing Coach K at Duke.Eight teams. Eight legends. Eight very different attempts to replace the irreplaceable.Coming soon from Student of the Game and Cerebral Media. Hosted by Will Shingleton.
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1. Sir Alex Ferguson
42:03||Ep. 1Lightning doesn't strike the same place twice. Manchester United spent a decade learning that the hard way.Between 1993 and 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson won 13 Premier League titles at United. Then he retired, and David Moyes lasted less than a year as his replacement. Van Gaal came and went. So did Mourinho and Solskjaer. More than a decade later, the crisis still hasn't stopped.This is the story of how United went from world football's most storied club to a team that doesn't know what it is anymore. Featuring journalist Jim White, we explore the Busby era, the Class of '92, Ferguson's impossible shadow, and why building your entire structure around one person is a recipe for disaster.PATREON: https://patreon.com/CerebralMediaCo
2. Jürgen Klopp
31:40||Ep. 2When Jurgen Klopp announced he was leaving Liverpool in January 2024, the club had six months to replace one of the most beloved managers in their history.They didn't panic. They didn't try to find "the next Klopp." They built a structure.Liverpool brought back Michael Edwards, the sporting director who'd operated in the shadows during their peak years. They hired Arne Slot, a relatively unknown Dutch manager from Feyenoord. They focused on systems, not personalities.This is how you replace a legend the right way. Featuring journalist James Pearce, this episode is the counterpoint to Manchester United's failure—a blueprint for succession that actually works.https://www.patreon.com/CerebralMediaCo
3. Nick Saban
34:21||Ep. 3Nick Saban didn't just win football games at Alabama—he became, as one reporter put it, "the spiritual leader of the state." In this episode, we dig into what Saban actually built in Tuscaloosa, why it was so hard to replace him, and what it really means to follow a legend. Featuring AL.com columnist Michael Casagrande, who was there from day one (and got compared to rodenticide one time).
4. Steve Nash & Mike D'Antoni
30:56||Ep. 4In the mid-2000s, the Phoenix Suns were doing something nobody had ever seen before.They ran a high-tempo, small-ball offense so good that teams literally didn't know how to prepare for it. Steve Nash and Mike D'Antoni. Three division titles in a row. And yet, for all of that, they never won a ring. This is the story of how a franchise that had everything--a generational system, a Hall of Fame coach, a two-time MVP point guard--managed to talk themselves out of believing in it. From a trade that made everybody go "wait, what?" to a coach getting fired while Shaq was busy dancing with the Jabbawockeez, this is the Phoenix Suns: a team that caught lightning in a bottle and then couldn't stop poking holes in it.
5. Harry Kane
30:44||Ep. 5Harry Kane is one of the greatest strikers of his generation--a boyhood Spurs fan who joined the club at ten, was almost never given a chance, and then somehow became the most prolific scorer in their history. So how did Tottenham manage to waste nearly a decade of him at his peak? In this episode, I talk with Jack Pitt-Brooke of The Athletic about what made Kane so special, why Spurs couldn't capitalize on it, and what the club still hasn't learned.
6. Barry Bonds
26:18||Ep. 6Barry Bonds is one of the most feared hitters in baseball history — 688 intentional walks, a single-season home run record that still stands, and a statistical page on Baseball Reference that's roughly half bold letters. He spent 15 years as the face of a franchise that was, in a lot of ways, his family's team before it was even his. And when he left, the Giants didn't try to replace him. They couldn't. And that turned out to be exactly the right approach. Featuring sportswriter and Hall of Fame voter John Shea of the San Francisco Standard.