
I remember watching Match of the Day with my Dad of a Saturday evening back in the 1990s. It was the quickest way to get a round up of the day’s football and hear some analysis – such as it was back then.
Today, I can jump on YouTube 20 minutes after a game has ended and find hundreds of reaction videos. Some even do live watch-alongs. I can also find behind the scenes coaching videos, interviews with players past and present, predictions, transfer news, people doing crazy football stunts and challenges, and so much more.
Football YouTubers are ten a penny. Everyone has an opinion, and they all want to share it, but not everyone is worth listening to. Some channels are way better than others, and I have collected the best of them here.
If you are looking for a new football Youtube channel to try then one of these is sure to float your boat. And no, F2 Freestylers are not on this list because that lad Jeremy Lynch is an absolute helmet.
The only criteria here is these are the football channels I watch and enjoy myself. They are all pretty big, but they might not be the absolute biggest.
Anyway, let’s get stuck in.
LDN Movements
If you wants, skills, challenges and street football, then LDN Movements is the one.
These guys are likeable, relatable, and really good at football.
The main man on this channel is Jamie Shawyer. He’s in a futsal team and films the games as well as the fights that often break out between his team and the opposition. You get to know his team mates on this channel as well.
Then he teams up with current and ex-players or other YouTubers like SV2, and competes against them in challenges like ‘Pro Footballer vs 10 Goalkeepers’, ‘Pro Footballer vs Robot Goalkeeper’, ‘Can I Nutmeg Manchester United’s Best Defender’, etc.
He loves a nutmeg does Jamie, a disproportional amount of his videos are nutmeg challenges.
He also ends up playing in 11 a side games and creates videos on that, usually featuring other faces you might recognise.
LDN Movements is a relaxed channel that is all about fun and wow moments. Nothing heavy here at all.
The Coaches’ Voice
The Coaches’ Voice is an amazing YouTube channel for football fans.
It provides direct access to coaches at all levels, from grassroots to elite. These people are the ones on the inside actually doing the job we all talk about. Their videos take you through the tactics, formations and decisions, explaining their strategies and their thought processes.
This channel actually exists to promote a paid online course, a bit like those Masterclass ones you might have seen with famous actors, directors, writers or presenters. However, they post 20 minute versions of these videos on YouTube for free.
Jose Mourinho, Brendan Rodgers, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Sean Dyche, Xavi, Kieran McKenna and loads of other names you will recognise have been on the channel, so it really is full of top quality coaches and ex-players.
The videos take one of the following forms:
- Coach Masterclasses
- CV Stories
- Session Trailers
- Ask the Coach
The Masterclasses are incredible. Each coach talks you through either a big game or philosophy they hold, using props to help visualise what they are talking about. These are incredibly insightful, there’s nothing else quite like them out there.
The CV Stories are coaches talking through their careers, how they got their start, key moments, lessons learned along the way etc.
The Session Trailers are fantastic. They are quite short, but they show a coach working with players during a training session, intercut with clips of that coach talking us through what they are doing and why.
Last we have Ask the Coach. These are question and answer sessions direct to camera.
If you are serious about the different theories and approaches to football or perhaps if you want to work in coaching this channel is a must.
HITC Sevens
If you like finding out interesting trivia about football clubs, players, and competitions, this is the channel for you.
It’s run by a guy called Alfie, and he makes videos running through the 7 best, worst, funniest, oldest, weirdest etc. of everything in football. He calls his channel:
“The home of short football lists and documentaries on YouTube.”
It’s a fair claim to make.
He has expanded his channel from ‘Top 7’ list videos to include commentary on big current stories (for example, he covered the David Coote story in 2024), ‘We need to talk about’ style videos, and standalone mini docs on all sorts of football topics.
Watching this channel I have discovered the most racist football club in the world, the most boring, been educated about the remarkable rise of Ipswich Town, and enjoyed an investigation into whether football has actually got worse over the last 20 years.
I think this is probably the most varied and interesting football YouTube channel on this list. Anyone can find something they would enjoy from HITC Sevens.
The Overlap – Stick to Football
Yes it can be a bit Manchester United centric, and yes you might not like Gary Neville, but The Overlap is nevertheless one of the best quality, most well produced football Youtube channels there is.
It’s produced by Sky so it has an unfair advantage, and also occasionally goes out as a feature as well as a podcast. The Overlap is actually a collection of channels in one. They have a few different formats including quick fire questions on location, staged one on one interviews, fan debates, and they even go on tour with a live audience which they film and put online too.
Their ‘main’ format is Stick to Football. This is essentially an interview programme but the style is more of a group chat. They have 5 regular ‘hosts’ if you want to call them that:
- Gary Neville
- Jamie Redknap
- Roy Keane
- Ian Wright
- Jill Scott
To begin with these five discuss all sorts but football is at the heart of it, and there is a lot of piss taking.
After a brief intro they are joined by someone well known, usually a footballer but not always. For example, past guests have included Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes, Ricky Gervais, Glenn Hoddle, Howard Webb, Eddie Hearn – anyone with an interesting perspective.
They talk about football past and present but it’s not based on tactics or deep analysis. They share opinions about performances, transfers, how the game has changed, why such and such worked so well in X team but not another, career histories, that sort of thing.
It’s thoroughly entertaining, with fierce debates and lots of jokes in equal measure.
Football Made Simple
I have learned a lot from watching Football Made Simple.
This is a no nonsense analysis channel which releases short videos explaining the tactics and formations for specific matches. They use short clips of the games along with whiteboard/blackboard drawings of what happened.
This visual representation of what the narrator is talking about makes everything blissfully easy to understand. You can see the various stages of play and how the shape of each team changes from one phase to the next – they really do make football simple!
There are longer videos too, detailing the changing tactics of a specific manager, or looking at how a certain team managed to dominate for a period of history, for example.
They are all produced in a similar style, but go into individual detail of the players involved. So it’s not just explaining how a formation works, but why it works well with that particular set of players against another set of players. How defenders might seek out one midfielder with a greater passing range over another in specific situations, or how a team uses a specific centre back to launch plays because he is more composed on the ball.
It’s comprehensive stuff but beautifully clear and easy to follow.
AwayDays
This channel is run by Ellis Platten, and he is a typical young football fan who has done something a little different with AwayDays. Instead of focusing on the football itself, he focuses on everything around it.
He’s a Leeds fan, and started off recording his away days, hence the name. He talked about the experience, the stadiums, the atmosphere etc. He still does this, but goes out of his way to find extremes in every category. The poshest football club, the most depressing football club, the most unsuccessful football club, the loneliest football club, etc.
He also seems to enjoy comparing hospitality experiences. He’s been to the most expensive and the cheapest hospitality ‘lounge’ in English and international football, and probably a fair few in between as well.
His other passion is retro football shirts. He has a whole playlist with these sorts of videos, where he is often joined by someone well known and they go shopping. Marco Reus, Mary Earps, JaackMaate from YouTube, even Fabrizio Romano – a real mix. I don’t watch these but lots of people like them.
The majority of his content is the stadium visits and football experiences though. They are always brilliantly edited and very entertaining. For example, one time he became the mascot for the Slovakian football team, he got a job as a kit man at Swindon Town, he flew to Argentina to watch one of the biggest rivalries in world football – you get the idea.
Ellis is such an affable chap you could happily watch him talking about pretty much anything.