Listen Now: Foul Play

foul play, a new podcast series in which we investigate whether the CIA poisoned my

granddad and possibly lay a curse on English football. It's an unbelievable tale of sport, spies, and family secrets, and here's a taster. My name's Ed and I feel like I'm having a sort of out-of-body experience right now. Two small kids from Stoke on Trent in the English Midlands. I don't travel much.

“They have a little secret repository. Nobody knows.”

We missed this. So it feels pretty surreal right now to be in Mexico. In an old prison, digging through the archives of the Mexican secret police. Maybe we can find something. But you're putting Gordon Banks's name into a secret database. I'm here with Gabriel Gatehouse, an investigative journalist, and we're looking for evidence that more than 50 years ago, in the summer of 1970, spies were surveilling my granddad.

Yes, they have a photos of your grandfather. What? Yeah, can we see? Yeah. My granddad wasn't a secret agent. He had no links to Mexico. His name was got no business being in this archive. My granddad was a football player. Maybe you call it soccer. He was quite famous, actually. Gordon Banks, the world's number one goalkeeper. Gordon Banks, my granddad, was the

manning goal in 1966. The one and only time England have ever won the World Cup. Some argue my granddad was the greatest goalkeeper to have ever played the game.

“So what the hell is his photo doing in the archives of the Mexican secret police?”

They have more information. Oh my god. I know. Yeah, so that other voice you hear is me. And yes, I am a serious journalist. At least, I think I am. I've covered wars and revolutions, stories about Russian spies. For two days in 2011, a contact of mine at the body of the Libyan dictator Colonel Gadafi hidden in his fridge.

I've reported some crazy stories in my time. But this one, I've been dragged into against my

better judgment. Because, at first sight, it seems absurd. Couldn't have happened. Unless,

it did. In which case, it might just be the craziest story I've ever heard. It all started three years ago, when a stranger comes up to me. Your Gabriel Gay taps on you and he says, "I love your podcast." This happens to me from time

“to time. Ever since I did the series about conspiracy theories in America?”

Thanks, I say. Who you? It's me, Ed. I tell Gabriel, I've got a story from about football. Now, let me stop you right there. I say, "I'm not into football. I don't know anything about it." But Ed went, "Let it go." If you had heard of Gordon Banks, he asks, "Well, Gordon Banks, another trophy by his sideboard, John Mahoney that's after you." Goalkeeper, right? National hero from a bike on age. When the England men's football teams still won things. Yeah, even

I've heard of Gordon Banks. So, Ed starts telling me this story about his famous granddad and the world cup. But not 1966, the one we won. Now, the next one, in Mexico, in 1970. England were the defending champions, Ed says. One of the favourites to win. But granddad fell ill. Food poisoning apparently. Gordon Banks was too sick to play. He recovered a few days later,

but England crashed out. And English football was never the same again.

a curse had been laid on the national team. We're talking about the men's team here.

“The women are doing just fine. Anyway, Ed says his granddad, but we suspected his illness”

was no accident. I was nobleed, he'd say. He thought someone had got to him over his years ago,

for who or how to his dying day he never knew. Ed never really took it seriously.

“We would just sort of laugh it off and kind of, oh yeah, or write granddad one, two,”

many tacos for some dodgy street vendor or whatever it was. But after Gordon Banks's death, Ed says,

"Someone tells him, your granddad was poisoned to sabotage England. And the plot was masterminded by the CIA." The CIA? I may not know much about football, but I do know about conspiracy theories,

“and this looks like a classic. I mean, why would the CIA want to poison an English footballer?”

Something about the Cold War, supporting a military dictatorship in Brazil, Ed said, "It sounded kind of ridiculous. I told him I'd look into it thinking I'll debunk this straight away. Well, three years later, here I am, and the deep right dig, the stranger it gets." Follow foul play on the audible app or wherever you get your podcast. You can binge all episodes of foul play early and ad-free right now by joining audible in the audible app or on Apple Podcasts.