The Sweeper Podcast

🇮🇳 What a rapid rise it has been for Diamond Harbour FC, who have achieved THREE promotions in TWO years to seal a place in India's Super League for the first time ever next term.

They won both the I League 3 and I League 2 in 2024/25 - a feat made possible by the timings of both tournaments - before gaining promotion from the I League in the current season!

📺 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗘𝗣𝗜𝗦𝗢𝗗𝗘 📺

🇨🇭 Thun's Swiss Super League fairytale 🇨🇭

🎇 Celebrations: Watch parties & fireworks
🧑‍💼 Management: Alpine dips & Serie A theses
🛣️ Players: Roadworkers, recoveries & rejects
⬆️ Style of play: Verticality & little possession
📉 Rivals: Poor season for Basel & Young Boys
🪄 Fairytales: Where does Thun's triumph rank?

Watch or listen on Spotify, Apple or YouTube! 🤩

🇸🇲 Incredibly rare for a team in a top-flight European league to end a season with a negative points tally, but Murata of San Marino have finished the league season with -2 points.

Murata were deducted 9 points due to administrative regularities and won only once all season - fortunately though, there’s no relegation in San Marino!

📺 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗘𝗣𝗜𝗦𝗢𝗗𝗘 📺

🇺🇦 Ukrainian clubs appropriated by Russia
🇪🇺 Shakhtar's UEFA Conference League run
📈 The rise of title challengers LNZ Cherkasy
🇦🇺 Heidelberg United’s Asian aspirations
🇲🇸 Montserrat’s Facebook coach advert

Thanks to Zorya Londonsk for research help!

Watch or listen on Spotify, Apple or YouTube! 🤩

🇲🇸 Right folks, own up, who edited the Wikipedia page of the Montserrat national football team and included our campaign to get them play a friendly match against India? 😂

You will find the entry in the very last part of the ‘History’ section. Let’s hope we can one day make the game happen!

🤩 A very warm welcome to the 10,000 new followers who have enjoyed our threads and joined us on Instagram over the last fortnight!

You may not know it, but we’re primarily a football podcast telling extraordinary stories from across the world - that’s all 211 FIFA countries and beyond, from Liechtenstein to North Korea!

You can find the show, presented by Lee Wingate and Paul Watson, in audio and video form on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and all the usual places by searching for ‘The Sweeper Podcast’.

We cover football across all six continents and release episodes every Tuesday evening, with extra episodes dropping for Patreon supporters on Thursday evenings.

If you want something a bit different from the standard focus on the Premier League and the other big European leagues, give us a try!

We have an average rating of 5 stars from more than 1,000 ratings across Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and tell stories that you will not find in the same depth anywhere else.

Thanks for reading and following!

🇧🇦 Bosnia & Herzegovina have qualified for the FIFA World Cup for only the second time in their history, after their appearance in Brazil in 2014.

That was also the last appearance at the tournament for their beaten opponents Italy, who last won a World Cup finals knockout match in 2006!

📺 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗘𝗣𝗜𝗦𝗢𝗗𝗘 📺

🇱🇮 Liechtenstein: Europe's strangest team
🇦🇼 Aruba's first international tournament win
🇸🇩 The 12th-tier player called up by Sudan
🇩🇪 The winger with a secret double life
🇮🇹 The coach who dressed up as a priest

Watch or listen on Spotify, Apple or YouTube! 🤩