Eurovision has many things that soccer does - underdogs, spectacular collapses, bloc loyalties, political scores settled through performance, and a continent watching the same spectacle at the same time. And this year, the Eurovision Song Contest, a live-for-TV music contest with continent-wide public voting, is happening in Vienna, this coming weekend. Why there? Austria won it last year.

Here is a primer of, a short debate about, and a quiz about the Song Contest. And an outlook on how this year will go down. Plus many short clips of musical Eurovision highlights that came up in our conversation.

All with 4 fans, of the contest and of football:

Andy Payne (England - West Ham United, chair of the fan advisory board)

Justus Römeth (Germany - Union St. Gilloise, BeUnion fanclub)

Julia Gollner (Austria - Sturm Graz, and orchestra harpist in Flensburg, Germany, and my sister;)

Songs from the episode: Athena - For Real; Lordi - Hard Rock Hallelujah; Måneskin - Zitti e Buoni; Abor & Tynna - Baller; Kalush Orchestra - Stefania; Alf Poier - Weil der Mensch Zählt; Måns Zelmerlöw and Petra Mede - Love Love, Peace Peace; Let 3 - Mama ŠČ; Cosmo - Tanzschein; J-Ax - Italia Starter Pack

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Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind

Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/