The Best Scottish Football Podcasts Right Now
Scottish football has always had a lot to say for itself. A nation that produced Kenny Dalglish, Denis Law and Jimmy Johnstone, qualified for the 2026 World Cup for the first time in 28 years, and somehow still manages to generate an entire week's worth of argument from a single midweek draw — it was always going to be well served by podcasting.
Whether you follow the national team, live and die by the Old Firm, or care most about what's happening down in League 2 on a wet Saturday afternoon in Stenhousemuir, there's a show built for you.
Here are the ones worth your time.
| Podcast | Focus | Frequency | Spotify | Apple Podcasts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BBC Scottish Football Podcast | All of Scottish football | Daily | Listen | Listen |
| Off the Ball | Scottish football, comedy, opinion | Weekly | Listen | Listen |
| The Go Radio Football Show | Scottish Premiership, phone-in | Daily | Listen | Listen |
| The Scottish Football Show | All of Scottish football | Weekly (Tuesdays) | Listen | Listen |
| The Terrace | Full SPFL, lower leagues | Twice weekly | Listen | Listen |
| Open Goal | Scottish football, player interviews | Weekly | Listen | Listen |
| A Celtic State of Mind | Celtic FC | Daily | Listen | Listen |
| Heart and Hand | Rangers FC | Weekly | Listen | Listen |
| The Hampden Roar | Scotland national team | Weekly | Listen | Listen |
The big picture shows
BBC Scottish Football Podcast is the closest thing to a daily newspaper of record for the Scottish game. Updated constantly, hosted by the BBC Radio Scotland team including David Currie and Liam McLeod, it covers breaking news, match reaction and analysis across the SPFL. It updates daily Apple Podcasts and is the sensible first subscription for anyone who just wants to stay across what's happening without committing to a three-hour deep dive. The production quality is exactly what you'd expect from the BBC, even if the punditry sometimes plays it safe.
Off the Ball is a different beast entirely. Stuart Cosgrove and Tam Cowan have been doing this for decades and the show has the confidence of something that knows exactly what it is. Scottish football gets a kicking, presented with an Apple Podcasts rating of 4.8 and episodes averaging around 72 minutes. Apple Podcasts It's funny, opinionated, occasionally infuriating, and completely unlike anything else covering the Scottish game. It describes itself as the most petty and ill-informed podcast in the world. That is not entirely inaccurate, and entirely the point.
The Go Radio Football Show is the live daily phone-in that most closely mirrors what Scottish football arguments actually sound like. Hosted by Paul Cooney with a rotating panel including Barry Ferguson, Charlie Mulgrew, Mark Guidi and Andy Walker, it airs weeknights from 5pm on Go Radio Spotify and the podcast catches you up if you missed it. It's Glasgow-centric, Old Firm-heavy, and genuinely reactive — the kind of show where the news agenda shapes the conversation rather than the other way around.
The Scottish Football Show takes a slightly different tack. Andrew Slaven, Laura Brannan and Findlay Marks publish weekly on Tuesdays and bring a more considered, less partisan energy than the phone-in shows. They cover the biggest, the baddest and the daftest talking points from the world of Scottish football Buzzsprout, and have been operating long enough to have earned their credibility. Good for listeners who want analysis alongside the banter.
The Terrace is the one for anyone who cares about more than just the top six. A long-running, twice-weekly Scottish football podcast which prides itself on covering the fortunes and misadventures of teams throughout the SPFL. Spotify Shaughan McGuigan and Craig G Telfer cover the lower leagues with the same passion that other shows reserve for the title race. If you've ever wanted someone to break down a Dumbarton goalkeeping performance with genuine enthusiasm, this is your show.
The club-specific shows
Open Goal started as a YouTube channel and became one of the most listened-to football podcasts in the UK. Simon Ferry, Paul Slane and a rotating cast of ex-pros take the funnier side of the game seriously — genuinely great player interviews, solid Scottish Premiership coverage, and the kind of relaxed chemistry that takes years to build. Football stories, player interviews, insights and a bit of weekly chaos Apple Podcasts is how they describe it, and that's about right.
A Celtic State of Mind (ACSOM) is the gold standard for club-specific Scottish football podcasting. Hosted by author and documentary-maker Paul John Dykes, it's the award-winning podcast that offers topical Celtic discussion, debate and insight, delving into the culture of Celtic Football Club and its fans. Spotify It's been running for years, has over 2,000 episodes, and organises live events with players and managers. The tribal loyalty it has built among its listeners is a textbook example of exactly what this blog talks about elsewhere.
Heart and Hand is the Rangers equivalent — a long-running, fan-first show hosted by David Edgar that doesn't shirk the major issues at Ibrox and revels in being for Rangers fans, by Rangers fans. Spotify Funny, often controversial, and reliably consistent in a way that's earned it a loyal following over many years.
The national team
The Hampden Roar, hosted by Andy Bargh, is the only podcast dedicated entirely to the Scotland national team. It features interviews with former players and managers as well as debates and discussions on current players, squad selections and matches. FeedSpot With Scotland having qualified for the 2026 World Cup, it's become essential listening for anyone following the national side. Apple Podcasts rating of 4.5, episodes averaging around an hour.
A note on what makes these shows work
What every podcast on this list has in common — from Off the Ball to ACSOM to The Terrace — is that they were built for a specific listener and stayed true to that listener over time. None of them went broad to chase numbers. The ones with the most loyal followings are the ones that went deepest into their particular corner of the game and trusted that the right people would find them.
That's the tribal approach at work. It's the reason ACSOM can sell out live shows with former Celtic players, why The Terrace has a genuinely devoted lower-league following, and why Off the Ball has outlasted every other Scottish football broadcast of its generation.
Keep reading
Podcast Clips Are Your Real Growth Engine: Why Professional Production Matters from Day One Every show in this list uses clips to recruit new listeners. This breaks down exactly how that works — why clips account for 20–40% of new audience acquisition for video shows, how to structure a recording session so the best moments are actually extractable, and the AI tools that make distribution manageable.
The Podcast Asset Most Businesses Are Ignoring (And How to Fix It in Seven Steps) The Scottish football shows worth following all have one thing in common: they're findable. This covers the seven-step framework for show notes that actually rank on search — why hosting them on your own site matters, how to write timestamps that answer questions rather than just mark time, and why every episode you publish should be a searchable page that works for you indefinitely.
Should You Enter the Scottish Podcast Awards? The ROI Case for Scotland's Podcasters Scotland now has its own podcast awards — the inaugural ceremony is at Glasgow's Old Fruitmarket on 25th June 2026. Entry is free thanks to Spotify coming on as a partner. If you're running a Scottish football podcast, or any Scottish show, the deadline is 9th March. Worth reading before you decide.
Why I Started a Podcast (And What Most Leaders Get Wrong About Sharing Their Story) James Fleming launched The Success or Excuses Podcast to share the real, unpolished side of leadership — and it now has over 30,000 followers and clips that went viral on TikTok. A good read for anyone inspired by the shows above and wondering what it actually looks like to build an audience from scratch.
You don't need to go viral. You need to go tribal.
Most podcasters are measuring the wrong thing. They're watching download numbers, chasing algorithm approval, and giving up at episode six because the big audience never arrived. Mark Hunter has been podcasting since 2005 — long enough to have made every one of those mistakes, and long enough to know exactly why the viral mindset leads most business podcasters in completely the wrong direction.
