Football Ramble Daily is committed to giving listeners access and insight from every corner of football. The team ensure that every episode of our interview series, ‘Ramble Meets’, is personable and intimate – they’re not chasing headlines or virality, only interesting stories from interesting people It’s a chance to show the audience a different, often unseen, side of the show’s guests.
To that end, organising long-form interviews with current professional footballers is a challenging endeavour. They can often be - perhaps fairly - very guarded about their personal lives and experiences of the game. Football clubs themselves are media behemoths in their own right; many of them would rather handle their players’ media engagements in-house, some would rather their players didn’t speak to the media at all.
Thankfully, because of the show’s broad reach and the continued reassurance to prospective interviewees that the show is not looking to catch them out or land them in trouble, players and clubs are often interested. Just this season, Football Ramble Daily has interviewed West Ham’s Declan Rice and Watford’s Will Hughes. Both these interviews were hugely well received by FRD listeners, as it presented two engaging stories from down to earth young men who love football as much as them.
When the team were contacted by the management company of another Premier League footballer about coming on the show, it served as an endorsement about the quality and respectability of their output. Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, the Southampton captain and Denmark international, is one of the league’s brightest young prospects. Andy Brassell, the FRD host who conducted the interview, was delighted to have him on the show:
We were introduced to him by his management company, and found him(andthem) great to deal with from the beginning. As you'll know if you've heard the interview Pierre is incredibly thoughtful, passionate and articulate, but more interested and keen than most players to follow up post-interview - how did we find it, when was it coming out? It was refreshing to spend some time with a player who had such an interest in engaging and in trying to work out how he comes across.