We caught up with the soundest man in the game and co-founder of MUNDIAL, Seb White, for a chat about football, second albums and repeating the trick.
Hi Seb, MUNDIAL is a massive inspiration for anyone wanting to do anything interesting or culturally relevant in the football space. What was the moment you felt MUNDIAL had 'made it'?
Thank you, it will genuinely always mean an awful lot when people say stuff like that about MUNDIAL. It’s a little easier for me to answer this question as I’ve had a lot of time to reflect recently - when you’re in the weeds and relentlessness of it all you don’t have much time to ever think anything other than what’s next on the list.. And if you do find time to even think you’ve “made it”, I think you’re not constantly pushing yourself to do better. Sounds a bit LinkedIn but even doing something as nostalgia heavy as MUNDIAL you always have to keep looking forward.
But if I had to choose moments where I was thinking “we’ve done something here”, I suppose the first night we put the mag on sale in 2014. Me and Dan Sandison sat in the pub watching the notifications ping on our phones for the orders. “Firstly, we have to make this good now. Secondly, get the beers in. The other time would be in 2016, when I realised I could actually make it a full-time job and work everyday with my mates and get paid for it. Within the first weeks the contract we’d signed that made me finally make the jump got cancelled, so then we had to actually ‘make it’. Then I eventually came up for air at the start of 2025.
After achieving success, how do you resist the urge to just repeat the formula?
Given I’ve spent the last few months reflecting and working out what’s next this is a very timely question as I try and work out what is actually next? It’s certainly hard to not just resort to type and think can I do a MUNDIAL 2.0, but whenever I think that I remember the real hard work and graft throughout the last ten years, and I’m at a different stage of my life. That isn’t to say I won’t be building on the contacts and connections I’ve built up over the last two decades in football though. It’s more of a case of feeling refreshed and energised to do something different that isn’t quite as demanding as being an independent football magazine in the digital age. Some irons are in the fire, but by all means please enquire within, as I’m all ears and very much available for the right thing.
Culturally, success can be inhibiting. Did it make you braver or more cautious?
The way MUNDIAL was, we had to be brave because cautious wasn’t going to pay mine or my mates bills. Of course there are times when you have to be serious and sensible but you can’t be too cautious in an industry that just never stops. Football is a 24/7, 365 days of the year industry, there’s very little time to stop.
How did your approach to storytelling change? Does more eyeballs on what you're doing change the kind of stories you wanted to tell?
Hopefully people will agree that our approach didn’t really change that much from the first few issues. Eyeballs were nice and kept the machine chugging along, but the quality and type of stories we wanted to tell remained the same across whatever format we were doing it in. Stories that could largely only be told by going there, speaking to the people, experiencing the place for yourself and packaging all that up in the best way possible. It’s harder work, costs more and requires a genuine passion for the sport but the story will be so much better for the recipient as a result. If you chase the numbers and more eyeballs at the expense of the story you’re doing it wrong, even if that’s what increasingly more people seem to be doing these days!
What's harder: building a unique voice or keeping the initial one intact once the world is reading?
The latter I think, mainly because “building a unique voice” as you put it wasn’t as hard or calculated as it sounds. We just put together a magazine that was just our natural and authentic voices, we wrote about things we like, in the way we’d talk to each other down the pub or in the office. It just so happened that all chimed with a lot of other people. Keeping that in tact was harder when there were your mates wages to pay, and people wanted to offer you cold hard cash so they could get a piece of MUNDIAL . We had the luxury at times, but also the balls to say “this isn’t very MUNDIAL”. In the short term that was riskier but in my opinion that’s why we kept going as long as we did, we never strayed too far from our original and authentic voice.
We know you're big into your music. Where do you stand on bands trying to repeat the trick? Everyone yearns for Arctic Monkeys to make another AM don't they?
I’m someone who still listens to Oasis’ ‘Be Here Now’ on a regular basis so maybe I’m not the best person to ask! Yes, I know it’s not as good as the first two, but music like football is all about the emotions it conveys. I was doing my A-Levels, doing things kids shouldn’t do, having the time of my life and all with the whole world in front of me. Be Here Now soundtracked that specific period of my life, and it’s why I keep returning to it. A good album is like a season or match you’ll always remember. A good single is like a favourite shirt you’ll always love all because it meant something to you for whatever reason at a specific time. That’s okay. Nostalgia is a wonderful drug, increasingly so in the messed up world we currently live in where people like Farage, Trump, Putin, Musk seem to be calling the shots.
On that note, let’s segue into favourite second albums quickly…
My current top 5 (always liable to change) would be: Verve’s ‘A Northern Soul’, Interpol’s ‘Antics’, ‘The Last Broadcast’ by Doves, ‘Only Forever’ by Puressence and Fontaine’s D.C’s ‘A Hero’s Death.’
Interpol is a lovely shout there. Print deadlines, interviewing footballers...did you ever get creatively stuck working in football? Where do you look for inspiration?
Creatively, we had a lot of freedom. Of course, like any creative you can get frustrated when a client brings you onto a project, but then doesn’t allow you to actually create. That was rare, because we quickly learnt to spot the red flags in the initial meetings.
The best work we did like the award-winning podcast series GIANT with Spotify was because they saw we were really good at what we did. They knew we could do something really good with some background support and we did.
Inspiration wise, for all its ills, it is still social media - once you battle past the algorithm gives you that every day. I’m as guilty as the next person at getting pissed off with everything that seems to be happening at the moment in the world. And I need to do it even more myself, but we should all do our best to make sure social media is a happy and exciting place. Crucially we need to support good people doing good things, wherever and whoever they are, and share their work, support the independents and hopefully inspire others.
Would you do it all in the same way again?
This is definitely something I’ve been thinking about lately. If I had to be ultra critical, I’d probably chuck a business plan at some point of the first five years when we were an independent business. It was great being agile and free, but sometimes it was to our detriment to a point, and a little bit of structure and forward-thinking wouldn’t have hurt.
I’d have loved to see what would’ve happened without the world shutting down for a year or two due to a global pandemic. Like for everyone else, COVID changed so much including MUNDIALs direction of travel.
That aside I’m extremely proud of what we did and how we did it. Whilst you do create most of your own luck, I still consider myself very lucky to have done something that people genuinely cared and still care about.
Is there an untapped intersection of football and culture?
I think football shirts might be the next big thing, keep an eye on them!
In all seriousness, I think actually going to the match and experiencing everything that involves feels like it’s become err…less tapped. In the digital age, people can consume, reflect and report the game via screens and usually in short sharp moments all tailored to the algorithm. The beauty of football is as much the stuff around the 90 minutes on the pitch. These days, most of the focus in homogenised coverage is relentless chase for clicks, and that misses so much more important things. Those things make football brilliant, and are underreported positive stories from the beautiful game. I genuinely worry we’re heading towards a game that is less fun, too, divisive, more toxic and one that is absolutely forgetting what makes it the best game in the world.
Is there still room for physical indie football publications in 2025?
I hope so, it’s a constant battle against the swathes of digital content out there. Indie publications as a whole have had a renaissance these last few years, just go to a MagCulture or a Rare Mags, and you’ll find a magazine for you.
The key thing for me is niche is fine and niche can work. Maybe, just maybe, a niche is actually a better way of doing things. You can’t always be rushing for the unattainable, and, or chasing big numbers that only look good on a google slide or on stage, at yet another panel with a load of people in suits. The priority should be to do stuff that actually has a cultural impact or legacy, to be authentic, and then make the very most and look after the audience you have, however niche.
What advice would you give to someone trying to force a career in the football landscape now?
Volunteer your services at a non-league football club. Whatever you want to do in the industry, I can guarantee you can add value somewhere along the line at the base of the football pyramid. It’s a level of football that deserves support, it feeds into everything above it. You’ll have a great time, meet amazing people and make a difference. Crucially, you’ll show to any prospective employers you genuinely have an interest and determination to succeed in an increasingly competitive industry.