Today's assistant professor has spent his career studying the forces that threaten liberal democracy — the far right, populism, nationalist movements that have reshaped politics from Hungary to the United States. He's one of the most cited political scientists working on those questions, based at the University of Georgia, originally from the Netherlands, and the kind of scholar who combines rigorous theory with an unusually grounded sense of how politics actually lives in people's lives.

But today we're not talking about Marine Le Pen or Viktor Orbán. We're talking about soccer.

Cas Mudde has been a lifelong fan — not of modern football, as he'd put it, but of soccer as community. He's visited something like 500 teams across more than 35 countries, and he brings to the sport the same analytical eye he turns on democratic erosion and authoritarian politics. Because for him, the two aren't as separate as they might seem.

In a recent chapter called "Soccer as Civil Society," Mudde argues that professional soccer is not just entertainment — it's a political space, one that sits squarely in the terrain between the state, the market, and the community. And like democracy itself, that space is under pressure: from the commodification of the game, from multiclub ownership models that strip fans of accountability, and from the slow transformation of supporters into consumers.

He's also clear-eyed about the limits of resistance — skeptical of the romanticization of fan-owned "punk football" clubs, even as he takes them seriously.

It's a conversation about soccer, yes — but also about power, community, and what it means to fight for something when the odds are stacked against you.

HELPFUL LINKS TO TODAY's EPISODE:

Cas Mudde on LinkedIn, Wikipedia, and the University of Georgia website

Cas’ groundhopping Instagram

Cas Mudde, Soccer as Civil Society - article as PDF

Tamir Bar-On’s 3 Discourses on Soccer, referenced in Cas’ article and briefly at the end of the episode

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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/