Good morning, Hank, it's Thursday and the greatest ever Pizzamas, at least in terms of shirt sales, is about to come to an end. That's right Hank, nothing lasts forever, not even cold November rain and tomorrow marks the end of week daily videos, and soon you will be unable to get this shirt or any of the other amazing Pizzamas stuff available at pizzamas.com right now, but only for the next couple days now.
 
Listen, Hank, I don't want to end my part of Pizzamas on a bummer note, but I do have to take next week off from vlogbrothers because I'll be traveling with my family. Specifically, I'll be traveling to England to see my friend Mike Birbiglia perform comedy and my football team AFC Wimbledon perform tragedy, or at least that's what the betting odds would indicate. But you never know with Wimbledon, America's second favorite fourth tier English soccer team that most people in this community keep up with via updates on Dear Hank & John—our hit podcast that unfortunately has been on cancer hiatus for the last several months—which means that most of y'all probably don't know what's happening with AFC Wimbledon. 

Single sentence backstory for anyone who's new: My producing partner Rosianna and I sponsor a fourth tier English soccer team called AFC Wimbledon who play in South London and who are owned by their fans, each of whom pay about $25 a year in order to vote on the club's leadership. Because of that sponsorship, Wimbledon's Women's team play with a Partners In Health logo on the back of their shirts and the men's team play with a DFTBA logo on the back of their shorts in that liminal space between left thigh and buttock. The other thing you need to know about AFC Wimbledon is that we're bad, like there are other teams in the fourth tier of English football who are owned by major Hollywood celebrities or the Saudi government, but we are owned by our fans and so we never have any money.

So we've got a beautiful new stadium owned and built by the fans that's packed every week. What we don't have is, uh, money. So we're pretty bad every year. We used to be a third tier English soccer team, but then we got relegated down to the fourth tier because we were so bad and then we barely survived in the fourth tier last season and this season wasn't looking like it was gonna be any different except something weird happened, which is that, uh, we seem like we might be good? Like not to brag, but if you look at the table, currently AFC Wimbledon are narrowly ahead of Wrexam, the football club owned by Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, and we're several spots above the franchise currently plying its trade in Milton Keynes. Also, and this is even more surprising, we're fun to watch this season. We have exciting young players who score lots of goals and also a mountain of a man who rolls his shorts up so much that you can't even see our logo, but more on him in a second.

So our star players this year include our striker Ali Al-Hamadi, who left Iraq as an infant after his dad was imprisoned by the Saddam Hussein regime, and now has become an absolute superstar for both AFC Wimbledon and the Iraqi National Team. I just love him so much. Also, we have the mustachioed James Tilley, who scored seven goals in his first nine games for us. And out on the other wing, we've got Aron Sasu, an 18-year-old who's been playing for Wimbledon's youth side since he was 10. In fact, there are a bunch of great players emerging from our academy. Our fullbacks include my personal hero Jack Currie, who's also played with us since he was 10. And also Isaac Ogundere, who joined us at the age of 14. We're never gonna be the kind of football club that can buy big stars, so we're gonna have to make them and we've done a really good job of that. And then we have our central defenders: Ryan "Great Beard" Johnson and Mighty Joe Lewis. Joe Lewis, the Man with the Golden Shorts. Joe "Short Shorts" Lewis. Joe "Big Man, Small Shorts" Lewis. Joe "We're Only Here for the Shorts" Lewis.

Look at how aggressive this man rolls up his shorts. You cannot see our DFTBA logo and I for one am fine with it. The great thing about AFC Wimbledon is that if you love an underdog story, we keep on delivering because we're always going to be an underdog story. But the argument we've been making in the 10 years we've been sponsoring AFC Wimbledon and the 21 years since AFC Wimbledon reformed after being told by the English FA that there was no place for a football club in that community, community-held assets, communal action can work. It's not easy, it doesn't always work, but it can work. I know it's just a football club, but what I've learned from AFC Wimbledon—not just on the field—but also their local action group that seeks to address poverty in the community and the AFC Wimbledon Foundation. What I've learned from them, I've used and we've used in a lot of our community projects, including trying to get folks to lower the prices of TB diagnostics and treatments.

And I'll tell you what, I'm sure we're not going to be good all season. I'm sure we're going to lose a bunch of our best players in the January transfer window, etc., but oh my gosh is it fun when we're good. And holy crap I love Pizzamas. Thanks for coming up with this weird idea, Hank. I'm going to savor saying this since I won't get to say it for a year: I will see you tomorrow.