Abdul Malik-Ahad arrived in England on Christmas Day 1979. He was seven years old. He hid under his auntie's poncho at Heathrow because he had never felt cold like it.

A few years later, aged ten, he found himself surrounded by football fans in Oldham on a Saturday afternoon before a match. A skinhead put a beer can on his head and smashed it. That was the backdrop to football for the British Bangladeshi community in the early 1980s. You watched from home. You kept the shutters down. But Abdul didn't let it stop him. He built something else.

In episode nine of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Abdul in the greasy spoon cafe to talk about belonging, community and what football does when the game that's supposed to bring everyone together isn't yet safe to attend.

They talk about the 5-a-side and 7-a-side tournaments Abdul helped organise for the Bangladeshi Youth Movement in Oldham - competitions that started as a way of finding a safe space and became fiercer and more meaningful than anyone expected. A community building itself from the inside out because no one else was going to build it for them.

In the second half Abdul talks about a career from community cohesion manager after the 2001 Oldham disturbances to CEO of Steve Biko Housing Association in Liverpool - one of only two Black and Racial Minority housing associations on Merseyside, built on the mission of homes and communities without racism.

He brings a Liverpool champions t-shirt to the table. The one his community couldn't celebrate in 2020 because of Covid. So thirty Bangladeshi Reds waited two years, got together at a restaurant in Oldham and finally let it out.

Jim closes: proof that the people who had to build their own game from scratch are usually the ones who understand it the most.

Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.

Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

You're right - Spotify is just the prose narrative, no chapters or emoji section headers. That's the YouTube format. Here's the Spotify version in the normal style:

Jane Hoskisson grew up going to Goodison Park with her dad in the early 80s, right at the start of the Howard Kendall years. She was a little girl in a huge crowd, too small to see over the bar, carried along by the noise of it. She still couldn't name every player. But she could always tell you what Everton means to her.

In episode eight of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Jane in the greasy spoon cafe for a conversation about belonging, memory and why being able to see yourself in the picture changes everything.

They start with her earliest memories of match day - the energy of the crowd, the police horses, being lifted onto the bar to see. From there the conversation moves through tribalism, banter at work, and how football became the love language she still shares with her dad, who sat just off camera as her live artefact.

Jane talks about her grandad Jim, who ran Saint Matthew's Football Club in the early 60s and gave a generation of local boys somewhere to go. She brings his engraved award to the table, and with it the line that runs through the whole episode: people die twice, once when they take their last breath, and again when the last person says their name. Football, she says, is how the people you love stay in the room.

In the second half the conversation widens out. Jane leads diversity for the global aviation industry, where her work has helped move female pilots from around 4% towards 6% worldwide and lifted women running airlines from 3% to 9% in six years. Her reason is simple: you can't be what you can't see. It's true in a cockpit. It's true on a pitch. They talk about the quiet decline of grassroots football, the disappearing community organiser, and the moment Goodison Park was named the home of Everton's women's team.

The result she'll never get over? Everton coming back from two goals down against Crystal Palace to stay up - watched on her phone in a car in Geneva, battery dying, refreshing the score.

A woman who knows that the most important work, in aviation or football, is making sure people can see themselves in the picture.

This is Football for Breakfast. Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.

Football for Breakfast is a production by The Good Companions, presented by OSS Security. New episode every Tuesday morning.

Jamie Carragher grew up in Bootle watching his dad's Sunday League team on a Sunday morning. His earliest football memory is Everton winning the FA Cup in 1984. His dad is an Evertonian. He still gets three football magazines delivered every month. He never stopped being a fan. Whatever else he became.

In episode seven of Football for Breakfast, Jim Johnson sits down with Jamie in the greasy spoon cafe for one of the most honest conversations about football, fame and what the game really means that you will hear anywhere.

They start on the brown at Marsh Lane in Bootle. From there the conversation moves through Bootle Boys versus Liverpool Boys, the schoolboy leagues that shaped his career, and what it means to grow up inside football before the academies get you early. Jamie talks about the 23 Foundation, his charity providing free football kits to kids teams, and why the decline of men's grassroots football is inseparable from the decline of the pub.

In the second half the conversation moves into punditry and media. He is withering about context being stripped from clips for engagement. Social media, he says, is not a barometer of opinion - it is full of cranks. Some fan podcasters who have never played the game are better prepared than most professionals who have. And when the camera stops rolling after a debate with Gary Neville, he is usually laughing.

He brings a bronze handshake to the table. The Athletic Club Bilbao One Club Man Award, presented to Jamie Carragher in 2025. Charlie Adam was offered it first and hasn't yet accepted.

The result he'll never get over? Champions League final. 2007.

Football for Breakfast is presented by OSS Security.

Cafes. Clubs. Communities. Culture.