Nominated for RTS southern Best Factual Series award 2018

Alfie Allen is football mad. He played at Arsenal’s Youth Camp, regularly turned out for celebrity charity football matches across the country (until he wrecked his knee) and even sang backing vocals on Vindaloo! But being a child of the Premier League era, Alfie wants to find out more about the history of the beautiful game.

In this series, he sets off around the UK to explore the defining moments and turning points in the establishment and growth of football in the UK. It’s a journey that goes beyond his wonderful access to football stadiums and iconic personalities across the land, but takes Alfie to many unexpected destinations as the story unfolds.

In the first episode, Alfie gets to grips with the origins of association football as we know it. A story that spans five decades and sees the game emerge out of the industrial revolution and the new-found leisure time of the working classes, and boom into an entertainment industry unlike any before it.

The journey takes Alfie to Sheffield – the cradle of association football and the home of the very first knockout football completion, the Youdan Cup; to Ashbourne, to see for himself the rough and tumble of the medieval traditional game that came before, Shrovetide Football; at The Oval, the venue for the first FA Cup Final, Greg Dyke explains how the FA managed to capture global attention with a Victorian football competition; Alfie’s father Keith Allen takes his son on a journey into his beloved Fulham’s Craven Cottage ground to unpick how stadiums proved key to turning the spectacle into an industry; and a jaunt to Scotland reveals the incredible impact the game north of the border had upon many, many vital aspects of the English game, and gets to the heart of the origins of rivals Rangers and Celtic, with fellow Game Of Thrones star and loyal Celtic fan Daniel Portman. The episode draws to close with a moving and insightful look in to the near-mythical Christmas Day truce matches on the frontlines of World War 1 and the moments of peace found in the newly established game across the war-torn continent.

The second episode picks up where the first left off – the First World War – when football found itself on a markedly different journey from what came before: now a well-established industry and truly a part of everyday life, Alfie explores the twentieth-century power struggle that dogged football from post-war times into the modern era.

Starting with the extraordinary story of the FA’s 1920s ban on women playing football, Alfie discovers that control of the game was something everyone wanted but no one could hold on to for long: he explores the emergence and end of the era of all-powerful football managers with one of his Arsenal heroes Sol Campbell; the tussle for player power with the PFA stalwart Gordon Taylor; the rise and role of the Agent with Manchester United legend Andy Cole; the darkest days of football’s racism and struggle with crowd violence with one of the pioneering ‘Three Degrees’ Cyrille Regis; and concludes with a unique behind the scenes insight into the set-up of the Premier League and satellite TV to create the all-powerful financial alliance that now rules the global game today.

Sky History / 2x60' / Series Producer and Director Mike Christie for Woodcut Media