The problem with this stuff is that it is addictive. You will meet some people in your life who glaze over when you talk about football tours and how some floodlights just pop in a certain light, but they clearly are not to be trusted.
You end one season and tell yourself you are looking forward to the break. And then you are by a pool or halfway up a mountain and you are double checking the fixture release dates and wondering if there is a long read feature in the football club 20 miles from your hotel. Dear lord, what a sad little life.
Repeating the Doing The 92 project – my odyssey to every English football league club in a single season – was never going to be possible; not in 2025-26 at least. There are 13 days between the 2026 Champions League final and the start of a 48-team, almost seven-week World Cup. There will be about 18 days, at most, between the World Cup final and the start of the 2026-27 EFL season. It is all the football, all the time.
What am I doing?
We wanted to use the good bits of Doing The 92 and take them forward. And there were very good bits: the wider interest in detailed coverage of individual clubs below the Premier League was above any expectation. So too was the access, engagement and buy in from the clubs themselves.
So the project for 2025-26 is On The Road. The framework is relatively simple:
– 60 matches, from non-league to Champions League, in England and further afield
– 60 longer reads
– 60 reasons to be there
That last point is the crucial one. Matches will be chosen for the occasion (local derbies, finals), for the club (financial crisis, glorious rise, new manager) or for the experience. It is in this final category that we can hopefully have a little fun. Nothing should be off the table.
Not being committed to covering each of the 92 clubs in a home game does also create far greater flexibility than in 2024-25. I can far more easily change the schedule at a fortnight’s notice. I can go to WSL matches, to non-league, to Scotland and to Europe. That hopefully allows us to cover the stories that we think matter the most. The aim, as last season, is to provide insight from within football clubs but also to convey the supporter experience.
Your next read
Why am I doing this?
It is a line I ended up repeating far too often last season, but the football pyramid is the UK’s greatest cultural asset bar none. It attracts people in larger numbers, more regularly, than anything else. We are fortunate to have it but, because it is an organism of its own, it will only exist through care and cherishment. As writers and journalists, there comes a responsibility to play a role in that.
As such, On The Road will start with Sheffield Wednesday, just as Doing The 92 did. A year ago it was at Hillsborough against Plymouth Argyle, who are now in League One; now it is at the King Power Stadium against Leicester City, who were then in the Premier League. Then Sheffield Wednesday won 4-0 under Danny Rohl and there was an atmosphere made heady by hope; now Rohl has gone and the hope left long ago.
Our clubs are organisms, too; care, attention and continued funding must be non-negotiables. I have no intention in simply being a football club doom monger, not least because that is never the whole experience, but those social institutions in crisis deserve attention and their owners merit scrutiny. On the second weekend of the season I will visit Morecambe for a game that has already been postponed – how can the 90 minutes matter anyway when a club is close to the very end?
Finally, the best element of Doing The 92 (I am not just saying this, although I am an unforgivable people-pleaser) was the ideas that came from football supporters themselves. It is no exaggeration to say that 70 ideas became 92 with your help and the project was a success because you read and shared those pieces. More of that would absolutely be appreciated. Hopefully see you on the road.
from Football - The i Paper https://ift.tt/0xgaIZr
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