Viewed in 2026, Nathan Barley, Chris Morris’s 2005 sitcom, shows remarkable prescience about the last two decades of metropolitan life, from smartphone addiction and digital derangement to sheer existential vapidity. When Barley’s character referred to his occupation as “self-facilitating media node”, Morris and co-writer Charlie Brooker were way ahead on the creator economy. What the pair failed to predict was ex-footballers joining the sector in droves. These days, if you are a former footballer without a podcast or YouTube channel, then did you ever really play the game?

Setting aside the Gary Lineker Goalhanger empire, manspreading its centrist-dad agenda into issues way beyond guffaws with Micah Richards and Alan Shearer, there is Gary Neville to rule them all. Manchesterism’s second-most influential practitioner has been on heavy manoeuvres. Unlike Lineker’s productions, the Overlap’s output continues to stick largely to football; a rugby podcast was mothballed in February, though its cricket equivalent continues.

Having snatched Wayne Rooney from the BBC in the summer for a Manchester United-based two-hander with the YouTuber Mark Goldbridge, last week the Overlap went daily, extending the output to 4pm Monday to Friday. An online launch had Jamie Carragher baiting Goldbridge, real name Brent Di Cesare. The former policeman shunned a “no comment” approach during his interrogation, biting back during an exchange that had Neville choking on his Huel in laughter. Clipped up, the send button pressed, job done.

The Overlap has gained a TV family dynamic, a chorus line of familiar characters. Neville and Carragher are mummy and daddy bear, football’s Richard and Judy. Jill Scott is the dotty aunt, Roy Keane the irascible uncle, smirking along with Ian Wright in picking over the latest gossip. It has been highly popular, occasionally agenda-setting, softening Keane’s image, even making a cultish figure of production hand Kiaran Saunders, supplier of biscuits and blueberries. Neville’s empire-building, though, is boundless, his tanks bulldozing into the already packed football podcast space, with newsletters to follow. The Overkill, anyone?

The family has been extended. Mondays have Steven Gerrard reviewing the weekend’s action with Becky Ives, this week offering a defence of Florian Wirtz: “Don’t give up on him.” Tuesdays have Kelly Cates and Ashley Young in tandem. Tim Sherwood and Jamie Redknapp are Wednesday’s pairing. Not the first time the Sky mainstays, one-time Tottenham midfield partners, have diversified. In the mid-2000s, they ran Icon, a lifestyle magazine initially only available to professional players. A combination of high-end advertising, onanistic photography and Redknapp’s purring interviews with A-list sportspeople fell flat, even after it became available in airport first-class lounges.

Two decades on, such cologne-fragrant exclusivity has been swapped for the ubiquity of Bury’s most famous son piling it high. The quarter-zipped ex-Spurs duo are not alone as 1990s footballers taking the Neville shilling. Mark Crossley and Duncan Ferguson make an unlikely – but promising – pairing. Previously most famous for being the only goalkeeper to save a Matthew Le Tissier penalty, Crossley has made a successful after-dinner speaking career of Brian Clough anecdotes and “young man” impressions. “Big Dunc” completely refused to speak to the media when a player but he was a hit within ITV’s World Cup 2026 coverage.

On last week’s edition Ferguson suggested Gianluigi Donnarumma might be over the hill. “He’s 27, actually,” said Crossley before a classic game’s gone discussion of video assistant referees ruining the sacred art of smashing into the opposition at goal-kicks. Just what the listener came for, eating perhaps into the Under The Cosh’s market share of real football man podcasts. Whether Ferguson’s appointment as Glentoran manager breaks up the band is unclear, though management never halted Robbie Savage’s many media ventures.

Two further goalkeepers have signed up. Last week’s Friday edition had Joe Hart and Peter Schmeichel entering the Manchester City charges chat. While admitting to mistakenly burying the lead when Lisandro Martínez was willingly dishing the dirt on Manchester United while serving as CBS’s Champions League interviewer in Madrid last Tuesday, Schmeichel gave Hart a far harder ride. “It’s tough to be a Manchester City person,” Hart said. “I love the club … we’re in it together.” Schmeichel stayed insistent on City’s owners: “They’re letting Manchester down, they don’t understand what this place is. They have built a lot of towers and homes and all that but they don’t get this place.”

“I’ve worked closely with Khaldoon [al-Mubarak] and he does get this place, that’s my reference point,” said a hesitant Hart. “He’s an incredible person.” More good, strong, clip-up content.

The City affair will ask former players to intersect with uncomfortable issues for some while yet. That Neville’s further business interests include building projects running parallel to the Abu Dhabi-funded developments in Manchester is another example. Overlaps have become unavoidable in more ways than one.