Media and interviews
Podcast hosts, producers, and editors: here is everything you need to book me. I am happy to talk football history, writing, and the books.
Short bio
Ryan Foley is a Massachusetts-based writer who strings together sentences about English football. He was an award-winning sports journalist before dabbling in magazine editing and music writing. He is the author of 1978: The Birth of Moneyed Modern Football (Pitch Publishing, 2025) and Manchester City: The Genuine Soap Opera Club (Legends Publishing, 2023). His next book, Avalanche in the Snow: The Story of the First Division’s ‘Game of the Century,’ will be available February 1, 2027.
What I can talk about
- The day the snow came down at Old Trafford. The story behind the ‘Game of the Century’ between Manchester United and West Bromwich Albion and why this match came to occupy such a lasting place in football’s memory.
- Why 1978 is the year English football changed. How the sport turned from the grand old game to Moneyed Modern Football. What changed, who changed it, and what was lost?
- The club that can’t help itself. Why Manchester City’s history is a genuine soap opera and why the club’s chaotic existence may explain English football more accurately than its trophies do.
- An American in English football’s court. Outsider, obsessive, and unapologetic: what it’s like to write about the sport’s history from a few thousand miles away.
- The case for International Pint & Pie Day. Why October 26 deserves to be a holiday and what a football-ground pint and pie says about the English game.
Downloads
Book an interview
Interview requests, review copy requests, or just a good steak-and-gravy pie story? Send me a message and I will answer.