Episode 9 - The UEFA Champions League

The lights are bright and the anthems roaring. From the Faroes to France and Cyprus to Spain, they come. They face off against the best. In Europe's greatest theatres they duel. The Camp Nou, the San Siro, Anfield and the Estadio de Luz. One by one they fall until two remain. But there can be only one. Die Meister, die Besten, Le Grande Equipe, the Champions. They walk in footsteps of legend. Of controversy. Of miracle. Of genius. of awe and heartbreak contained in

a single moment. This is the Sporting Almanac Podcast. morning Ben yes good morning good morning yeah bright and early on the morning after the night before where Arsenal won the Champions League yes in the ladies yes it was it was good actually I watched it yeah rear guard it was uh I say rear guard rear guard but comfortable it wasn't a backs against the wall you did what you have to do to win yeah yeah and also fuck

Barcelona ladies Fair enough. Well, they're like dominant at the moment in European women's football. Them and Lyon. And we've done them both. Yeah. And when you deal with Chelsea at home, who are just as dominant in the domestic game, it's nice to have a different name on the trophy. Exactly. Leah Williamson just adding to the trophy pile. You'll love to see it. It's like the female version of Tony Adams, that woman. Mrs. Arsenal. to go with Mr. Arsenal. Anyway, sorry, I could do that

all day. As much as, yeah, I was going to say, as much as we'd love to talk about that all day, that is not the Champions League competition we're here to discuss. We're here to discuss the men's competition, formerly the European Cup. Yeah. Yeah, the men's final being this coming Saturday and it is Inter Milan or Internacional versus Paris Saint -Germain PSG. Inter versus PSG. Yes, to give them their full title. Which is easy to say. Somewhere between there, there

were two teams. We're in a bit of a purple patch of the footballing calendar, aren't we? All the European finals come thick and fast. Obviously, begrudgingly, congratulations to Spurs having won the Europa League. And then you've got Chelsea coming up in the Conference League. Not commiserations to Man United. That's just funny. And then he goes straight into the Champions League final as well. And also all the seasons crescendo at the same time. There's been some good ends to

that. But yes, we've got the champions of France going up against, they're now runners -up in Italy. Only just, but yeah. They got done by Napoli, but they were the champions last year. McSource. putting the sword to Inter, but yes. Who'd have thought Scott McTominay would be one of the best players in Europe? But here we are. But yeah, so yes, just a couple of days, like the build -up, yeah, it's a good patch for the footballing calendar. And this is the cherry

on that cake. yeah and just to add to that congratulations to Aberdeen for winning the Scottish Cup yesterday and congratulations massive congratulations to Sunderland for getting promoted I'm delighted by that yes I forgot this has been a good weekend of football actually and we're actually recording this as the Premier League wraps up so we can't comment on who is in the Champions League next year with certainty yet But it looks like it's going to be... Other than Arsenal and Liverpool.

Yeah, five... Probably Manchester City. Yeah, it's going to be five from seven, by the looks of things. So, yeah. It's about the only exciting thing left in the Premier League to decide. Indeed. But, speaking of the Champions League, shall we dive into that? Yes. Formerly known as the European Cup. Straightforward. Head first. And you're our historian, our resident historian, so... I do have some history on this, yeah. Why

don't you just introduce us? So I am going to apologise, first of all, to our non -English listeners today for the approach I'm going to take here, which is going to be really Anglo -centric, but that's deliberate and it's not necessarily in defence of England, Britain, English football, the Football Association and various other things. So I'll apologise further to our English listeners for what I'm about to say,

because I have. Many opinions on it. But essentially, the history of how the European Cup came to be stems heavily from British exceptionalism and how the game developed at home after its initial creation. Is this because a lot of it's pre -war? Because the European Cup only came about after the post -war, right? Yeah, 1955. Because we were colonialists and empire builders. I imagine that we had a world championship that consisted

of an American style. you're uh you're getting ahead of me ben but you are absolutely spot on oh really so yep go on then uh first of all i'm going to be i'm going to refer interchangeably a little bit to british exceptionalism and english exceptionalism today you can essentially assume they are one and the same thing for this context the british press will lord a Scottish team when they win something or a Scottish player when they win something so see Andy Murray for that

in tennis generally speaking the prestige of the nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has generally rested in the press's eyes at least and the powers that be's eyes with the England team English teams and the England national team in this case First of all, I'd like to give a heads up to the Sporting History podcast, just calling out another podcast because I got a lot of this information from one episode of them with Aaron Hicks speaking

about Wolves and Arsenal playing European teams, which is quite interesting and I'll get to. But yeah, just a shout out to them. It's a very good podcast if you like your pure history. And we do here on the Almanac, as people have probably gathered. We do. I very much enjoy their podcast. It's a good endorsement. It's quite intellectual, but it is good. As we know, and anyone who listened to our FA Cup episode will know, the sport of football as we know it was sealed in England

with the foundation of the FA in 1863. And from that point forward, the FA and the men in charge of the game in England and the press and the powers that be could not bring themselves to hold any belief other than English superiority for the best part of the next 100 years, no matter what the evidence showed. 100 years, Jesus. The

best part of, yeah. So, as you correctly mentioned, there were a number of matches and events declared world championships in the early days of the sport, involving English and Scottish clubs competing. and we wonder where the Americans get it from. I was going to say, I was literally just about to say, for all my castigating of the NFL and world championships, perhaps I should have looked

closer to home in the first instance. Well, there's a lot of parallels you can make about modern American exceptionalism and British exceptionalism around the early 1900s, the last vestiges of a waning empire perhaps, but let's not get into that. The most notable of these world championships was an 1895 match between Heart of Midlovian, better known as Hearts, and Sunderland. Oh, nice. Topical. A lot of people who are Sunderland fans are probably quite hungover at this particular

moment. The state of Trafalgar Square would suggest so. Excellent. You'll love to see it. That match was won by Sunderland, 5 -3. Both of those teams were the respective champions of their nation, so it was the first time the two champions of two European leagues met officially, which is obviously relevant to this story. Different competitions developed from there, most notably the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy. which was held in Turin, involving clubs from Germany, Italy, Switzerland and England.

Twice in 1909 and 1911 it was held, funded by Sir Thomas Lipton. I think I read about this. I'm sure you're going to summarise some of them, but there was quite a few multi -state cross -championship tournaments, weren't there? But none of them were official. Yeah, there was a few early on. So the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy was an invitational. held in Turin, as I say, so teams from Turin. There was a Torino team originally. Juventus took part in the second

tournament. The FA, establishing a pattern they would maintain until both wars had passed, pretty much, refused to send a team. I personally speculate, in my cynical nature, that was because they were worried about losing that air of superiority they had by losing to Johnny Forerunner, essentially. That sounds probable. Yeah. Instead of the FA

sending a team from the Football League. They, for some reason, which are completely unclear even to this day, West Auckland Town FC, a Northern League side from County Durham in the north of England, were sent to represent English interests in that tournament. And as it turns out, the FA needn't have worried. This plucky group of amateur coal miners defeated a team from Stuttgart in the semis and Vinterfer from Switzerland to

win the trophy. And two years later, they went and won it again, this time defeating Juventus 6 -1. in the second and last final of the tournament. So that's a boss story, but it kind of is a shame that it endorsed the views. I know, it is, isn't it? However, I'm never unhappy about a bunch of amateur coal miners going halfway across Europe on their own buck as well. They paid their way there and winning a tournament. Exactly, it's

a hell of a story. Obviously, this is very early days of Italian football, 20 years before Italy were one of the best teams in the world, which we'll come to. So further pan -European competitions followed. The Mitropa Cup, which started in 1927 and actually ran until 1992, which included teams from Central and Eastern Europe, including Italy. These were teams, this competition started in 1927. I don't think it's any coincidence that 1934 and 1938 World Cups, teams from this competition,

these countries, dominated the World Cup. two of the early world cups italy won 1934 and 1938 and beat czechoslovakia and hungary in those finals and having this go very far to explaining why uruguay did so well early on though well uruguay did so well early on because barely any teams from europe went to uruguay for the first competition because it was about you know three weeks on the boat and a large expense to get there so i think it was Belgium, France, Romania

and Yugoslavia were the only teams to go there. Egypt were supposed to go there and miss the boat. Oh yes, good knowledge. Anyway, digressing into the World Cup. They went out 16 teams, only 13 teams took part. Nevertheless, so actually it was in 1930 at the same time as the first World Cup in Uruguay that the first proper pan -European competition for league champions was made called the Coupe des Nations. Coupe des Nations? Coupe de Nation. My French pronunciation

is terrible, so I apologise. It was held in Geneva. I bet you got the coupe right. I got the coupe right. So it was hosted by Servette FC, a Swiss club. And as I said, held at the same time as the 1930 World Cup, which only four countries went to. I didn't just pluck those names off the top of my head. I did have them written down. So not that much of a smart arse. So it was won

by Uyepest. FC of Hungary, and I think I've got the pronunciation of that right because I had to Google it, winning out of 10 European nations competing, notably absent, this will shock you, were the home nations, as England had, unsurprisingly, quit FIFA in 1928. Well, you know, there's something to be said for that if they did it now. Indeed. So, the FA were reluctant to initially join FIFA

when it was formed in 1904. with the new organisation's state of purpose firstly being to promote international football, which the FA weren't keen on, save the Home Nations Championship, between England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, later Northern Ireland. And secondly, their state of purpose was to help standardise the laws of the game, which the FA considered their job. Yes, well, that's not surprising.

This has been ongoing. That's still something that actually happens in cricket, very, like, influentially. With the MCC. Yeah. I think they're still the lawmakers, technically. Yeah. Or if they're not, they certainly think they are. Anyway, I won't get into how it works in football, but nevertheless. Eventually, the new organisation, FIFA, clearly was going to become powerful, so it made more sense to be in it than out of it.

So reluctantly, in 1906, they joined, the FA joined, and as was the custom at the time, brought the other home nation FAs with them, because they all acted as one body pretty much in the early days. However, this accord didn't last. In 1928, a dispute over amateurism. FIFA wanted to relax it to allow better players to play in

the Olympics, which they were in charge of. The FA being run by probably the children of the original founders of the game, the inheritors of the estates and the lordships of the original founders of the game, weren't so keen on distilling amateurism because they believed in the principles of sport being for bettering yourself. Cracking the whip. The amateur system suited their needs.

We can call it what it was. Yeah, I mean, the fact that the professional players were largely made up of working class men, obviously nothing came into it. The opportunity for working class men to bear themselves obviously wasn't a disgusting concept to them at all, but let's not get too

political about it. So as a result of this, they left FIFA in 1928 and they also... believed continental football at this point, as I mentioned before, to be inferior and tactically lacking, which was fairly rich coming from a nation whose only real tactical development in the past 40 years had been to put a centre -half in defence rather than midfield, courtesy of Herbert Chapman. That was about it. I mean, that's still about it. Pretty much, yeah. It's an awfully English thing.

I could go off on a tangent. Yeah. about english tactical inflexibility the oh if anybody wants to know our genuine opinion on this is that there's a reason that england have been unsuccessful internationally and if you look into it even like a you know paying a fucking passing notional amount of attention then you'll realize that it's because we're completely and utterly inept like functioning as a strategic tactical footballing structure. As an elite sporting outfit. Yeah,

exactly. We're not unlucky. This idea that England haven't won anything for a long time is not born out of luck. It's because we are arrogant and think that our way is the best way. The amount of criticism Alf Ramsey got for his wingless wonders system. in the 1966 World Cup for not playing the quintessentially English setup. So this is all linked. Honestly, this is all linked.

So this English exceptionalism and the... the early struggles of the England national team and these English teams in continental competitions and the later development of the English team firstly the England national team into world champions and English clubs into the dominant clubs in Europe in the 70s and 80s came off the back of being involved in these competitions and seeing more ways to play the game and learning from it it's no coincidence that I'm going to

go into this about these friendly matches soon these friendly matches between the likes of Wolverhampton Wanderers and Arsenal and Soviet teams and Eastern European teams and seeing different tactical setups and teams mimicking that essentially.

So famously, Dom Rivi, who later had fame as Leeds United's manager, I think he played for Man City, although I will apologise if I'm wrong on that, but they started utilising him as essentially a deep -lying forward, like a false nine, what we would call today, having seen the Hungarians do it. in both the 1954 World Cup and when they came over and played Wolverhampton Wanderers, a Hungarian team, in 1954. And they got a lot of success from doing that, from playing in a

different way. And it just broke this tactical rigidity. But only in individual form. They were still criticised in the press for not playing the British way. They were still criticised by the FA for doing so. English sides or England has had any success is effectively outliers bucking the trend temporarily. Yeah. Like there has been no systematic evolution or change in the way in which like English football and England, it plays. It makes the league kind of exciting sometimes.

But anyway, I know I'm taking this down like rabbit holes. I just want to quash this idea that it's bad luck. I think this is a good rabbit hole because I don't think we're going to get a better opportunity than this to just slag off the English establishment. Which is, it needs to be done because they've held the England national team and English teams generally backed by their rigid conservatism and their unwillingness to appreciate the fact that other countries are

doing it better than us. Way better. And they always have. And the reason that we're good at the moment, if you can call us good, and I think, you know, two finals and a semi is worthy of, like, you know, it is good by our standards at least. It's also because we have a series of talented managers from around Europe who have come over to the UK and developed... Precisely. Yeah, and Arsene Wenger changed Arsenal's academy and its culture and produced, obviously, a lot

of good players. Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola are two of the greatest managers possibly ever. Yeah. And that's the reason that we've got these good technical guys. And yet we still try and shoehorn them into a fucking traditional English style of play and wonder why Spain turn up with some technical ability and some tactical nous and do the same with Italy. God, it drives me mad. I would highly recommend for anyone who is into football history and football tactics.

I would highly recommend Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson. It is the best book on football I've ever read in my life. It's fantastic. But one thing from that book which always stood out to me is that there was analysis done by, I've forgotten his first name, but a man whose surname was Reap, that it was into, it's basically statistical analysis of football. And he worked out that 91 .5 % of moves in the game he studied had three

passes or fewer. and logically took that to mean that 91 .5 % of all goals would come from moves with three passes or fewer. However, his analysis, and I'm sorry, this is very statistically heavy, but some people might find this interesting. His analysis also showed that fewer than 80 % of goals came from moves with three passes or fewer. Therefore, his own work shows that moves with three passes or fewer are less effective than those with four or more. But the top line

was the one that was taken. I mean, these figures don't even take into account goals scored after long chains of passes have led to a breakdown or a corner or something like that. But nevertheless, it is... I'm just going to quote Jonathan Wilson entirely. It is frankly horrifying that a philosophy founded on such a basic misinterpretation of figures... could have been allowed to become a cornerstone of English coaching. Anti -intellectualism is one thing, but faith in wrong -headed pseudo

-intellectualism is far worse. And he's talking about the long ball game that became the norm in the English game on the basis of this analysis. You saw it as recently as the last FA Cup final when in commentary, Sean Dyche, like... Because Palace knock it up to Matetu, holds the ball up and play it out to Munoz and he whips it across and Eze scores. He's sat there waxing lyrical about the long ball game because it pays off

very occasionally. And don't get me wrong, there's a time and a place for switching up your tactics, but this notion that you should be wedded to it, it's a self -fulfilling prophecy if you always look at it after the fact and say, oh, it worked this time. There's a reason Man City are more than Palace. It's not because they're both playing long ball. Obviously, there's other factors,

but tactically speaking. The reason the long ball game and that type of football went out of popularity in England, at least in the Premier League and the Championship, the higher levels of English football, because it is still more prevalent the lower you go, is because the Premier League, obviously... led to more money coming into the game. More money coming into the game led to more opportunities to make money through the Champions League, through European qualification.

And as a result of that, these private companies, Premier League clubs, started hiring the best managers for the job, which was Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho and the like that had preceded them, obviously Klopp and Guardiola and many, many others. These managers who had a completely different way of thinking. Anyone who's managed Chelsea, basically, as well. Yeah, I mean, the launch list of... Yeah, Ancelotti. They've had a lot of very good managers for not a whole lot

of success unless Mourinho was in charge. Conte. Conte, yeah. Who did win a league, to be fair. And has just won the league again in Italy with Napoli. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. I dragged us onto a pummeling England, practically. It needs to be done. Anyway, just to give everyone who's not English a laugh, this idea of British -English superiority was dealt a very heavy blow. Having rejoined FIFA in 1946, England went to the 1950 World Cup and lost 1 -0 in one of their games

to the United States of America. Yeah, shocking. Anyway. But you read the press reports on that. They're blaming individuals. They're blaming referees. They're blaming poor pitch conditions, wherever it might be. They're not blaming the dated tactics and the approach that's being defended all the way through. It's this notion of we do it right because it's our game. And this exceptionalism is just present for everything. I'm going to get on to why this is relevant to the European

Cup soon, I promise. Go ahead. Anyway, 1948. In fact, I'm going to do it now. 1948, South America brought out their own continental competition, which was called the South American Championship of Champions, which is an excellent name. Obviously, that's translated from the Spanish. Is that now the Copa Libertadores? It's now the Copa Libertadores. The Copa Libertadores. God, my penultimate...

I really... Anyway, a French journalist at Le Keep, a sporting newspaper, called Jacques Ferrand, who, very interestingly, bear in mind this is 1948, only actually died six years ago. He died in 2019 and he was, I think, 98 years old. So he became fascinated with the idea and obsessed with it being replicated in Europe. He had a colleague named Gabriel Hano, who was a very influential man in early European Cup football. They began making inquiries about this becoming

a thing. But it was events in 1953 and 1954 which saw this accelerate due to, as always, British exceptionalism pissing the French off, essentially. Well, fair enough, yeah. Yeah, and I don't blame them. I actually quite like the fact that the French have got a long -standing history of doing these weird things in football as well, like the Ballon d 'Or. Yeah, so I think they get it in a way that English authorities don't. I think the French culture is a bit less... Challenges

the status quo frequently. Yes. shall we say not concentrated in a small number of individuals who are all wealthy and have a similar mindset they love a rebellion or a revolution no matter how trivial in fact yes they got rid of a lot of those people in one fell swoop in the late 18th century so So at this time, it wasn't uncommon for, as I mentioned, teams across Europe to play high -profile friendlies against opponents from other countries, these often serving as diplomatic

occasions as well as sporting ones. So after the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union became a bit more open about playing these sort of games. And notably, Arsenal went on a tour there in 1954, post -Stalin's death, with the British government very openly questioning the FA on their choice of touring side. Because Arsenal's reputation at that point exceeded their ability at the time. Because they had been the predominant team in the 1930s. By the 1950s, they weren't

quite as dominant. And perhaps unsurprisingly, they ended up losing 5 -0 to a Dinero Moscow team. The Foreign Office was disgusted. They put out a memo beforehand requesting Arsenal not to participate too heavily in the pleasantries that hosts put on for them. Essentially, don't get drunk on vodka before the match. But even then, the English papers were quick to blame Arsenal being sluggish from travelling rather than worse than their opponents. Basically, Arsenal

were tired and bad. Their opponents weren't good. It repeats itself every time. The two played again in England later that year with the result a closer one. It was 2 -1 to the Russians then. And this time the papers blamed the referee. The idea that a foreign team could simply be better than the English never crossed their mind, obviously. That's an absurd proposition. Absurd. Yeah. And now here's the other side of reporting because the best team in England at that time

in 1954 was Wolverhampton Wanderers. They just won their first Division 1 title with two more to follow later in the decade. They had a remarkable run of success in these foreign friendlies beating a South African XI wrestling club of Argentina and Spartak Moscow and then most notably played Honved of Hungary in a televised game. Honved had a lot of Hungarian international players who were the best team in the world at that time.

albeit they had just lost the World Cup final against West Germany, but were considered unfortunate to do so. And they had beaten England 6 -3 at Wembley the previous year, which was probably the single... Yeah, Ferenc Puskas being the key player in it, but many other brilliant players too. That was the single probably biggest blow to England's feelings of superiority in the history of football. So in appalling conditions at Molyneux, Wolverhampton Wanderers' home stadium, Wolves

won 3 -2. And all of a sudden, the English press cared about the result of these games, praising Wolves as the champions of the world, lauding English football as dominant and failing to mention the fact that the pitch was a quagmire, which suited Wolves' long ball game and not Honved's passing game. And there was a couple of dodgy penalties given as well in that game, which of course is irrelevant when it's the English team winning. So headlines went out, Wolves champions

of the world. These reached France. And in France, two French journalists who have been previously mentioned saw this. thought it was intolerable and it provided the last straw. Hanno wrote, Before we declare that Wolverhampton are invincible,

let them go to Moscow and Budapest. And there are other internationally renowned clubs, AC Milan and Real Madrid to name but two, a club world championship, or at least a European one, larger, more meaningful and more prestigious than the Mariposa Cup and more original than a competition for national teams, should be launched. They took the idea to the Congress of the newly formed UEFA in March 1955 and approval was given. The first tournament, the first ever European

Cup, was planned for the 1955 -1956 season. So there we go. There is the path from English exceptionalism to the European Cup starting in 1955 -56. It's only taken us about 25 minutes to get here. I mean, can I keep the tone low then and keep whinging? Do it. I have a bit of an issue with the Champions League, less so the European Cup as it once was, but the Champions League. But let's compare it

to the FA Cup. The FA Cup we wax lyrical about because of its romance and how it gives everyone a route to the top and how you can get there if you want to with enough drive, determination, resource and talent. There is a trophy that can be won by anybody in the footballing system. I think the exact opposite is true of European football. I think it is designed and manipulated to ensure that a handful of clubs retain stranglehold over football. I think FIFA is exactly the same

as well, just to throw that in. As in the world competitions, the World Cup, and this World Club Cup that's coming up as well. But I digress. No, it's true. These things are designed to ensure that certain clubs always have a seat at the top table and always have a shot at... well, not just a shot, like basically have almost a monopoly on winning it, subject to a few anomalies. Yeah. Not to defend the European Cup, but that was true from the beginning as well, which I'll

come to, but carry on. Well, no, I was going to say like the European Cup, like the first 10 years, the 70s, and you'll probably want to talk about some of these, but like that was dominated by... um sorry the first 10 years for 55 or whatever it was through to 65 and then the first half of the 70s are dominated by basically like five clubs they like they win all all of the all of the tournaments but after that yes yeah and after that you have 13 different winners from the from

the other 21 tournaments before it comes to champions league so you're getting like a different winner once every other season essentially with the with those if you remove those exceptions and i guess yeah and some Some not well -known winners as well, quite often, like Red Star Belgrade winning it. Yes. At a time when Yugoslavia was going through, shall we say, quite a lot of troubles, which was a good story. But yeah, anyway, carry on. No, no. It was in about 1990, I think, 1989

maybe. 1991? Sometime around there. Yeah. It was, I think it was, oh, was it 1991? When did

Marseille win it? marseille won at 92 93 and red star beat marseille two years before that so 1990 91 it would have been red star okay 91 yeah the reason i know that about marseille is because i want to talk about marseille later and how they're a bunch of wrong ones but um please do but like 33 there's been 33 tournaments of the champions league this is by comparison 154 teams have entered the Champions League and

it's only had 15 winners. That's less than 10 % of the teams that have entered it have ever won it. And that is not an accident. That is by design. And one other thing... Go on, sorry. I was just going to say, I think you can only really point to a couple of them where it was, I would say, shock wins, like Porto. Winning in 2004 was probably a bit of a shock with Jose Mourinho in charge. And then, I don't know. I don't think Borussia Dortmund was that much of

a shock when they won it. Or Marseille for that matter, especially given Marseille's circumstances, which obviously you'll come to. Other than that, it's a laundry list of the biggest and best clubs in Europe. Yeah, no. I can tell you who's won it. Basically, it's Barcelona, AC Milan, Manchester United, Inter Milan. Chelsea, Bayern, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Man City, Borussia Dortmund, Ajax, Juve and Porto and Marseille. Oh, Ajax maybe. That was probably a good one. Ajax was a very

young team. They won it in the mid -90s. The thing that really starts to stink though is that since the emergence of the oligarch era, You basically have to either be state -funded, the richest team in your league, and therefore by default Europe, or lucky enough to essentially have... like one of the greatest managers or best players in like the world's ever seen in order to in order to win it because since since 2000 i've taken an arbitrary date of like 2005

because chelsea were brought out in 2003 i think then since then barcelona have won four and they had the greatest player the world's ever seen and the greatest manager um the world's ever seen for three of those several of the greatest players the world's ever seen actually yeah well they had one in particular Yeah, so... Xavi and

Iniesta as well. AC Milan won one in that period, but in the late 2000s, I say late 2000s, mid to late 2000s, but that AC Milan team was one of the great footballing teams of Europe and they haven't won one since that club. So read into that what you will. Manchester United have won one and they had a generational manager and were the richest club in the world at the time. Or... Yeah, off the back of that wealth, at least. Into 1 -1, and they have Mourinho. He's one of

the greatest managers of all time. Chelsea have won two, and they're an oligarch -backed state. Bayern have won two, richest club in Germany. Real Madrid have won six. They're just state -funded. Like, let's get that right. Same with Barcelona, like, for different reasons. But it is true. Like, let's just call it what it is. Like, they're very rich. Nothing's changed. Real Madrid won the first five in 1956 on to 1960. And there's a lot of links between them and the

Franco regime at the time. It's obviously a dictator in Spain at the time. A lot of preferential treatment being given arguably to Real Madrid over Barcelona, for example, or Athletic Bilbao, who are these regional clubs that were calling for more autonomy for their regions. And obviously, therefore, very much disliked by the Castilian -supporting Franco regime, of which Real Madrid were their

biggest, most worldwide brand, essentially. And stuff like Alfredo Di Stefano, when he was moving from, I think he was playing in Colombia, but he's an Argentinian player, moving to Europe for the first time. Real Madrid and Barcelona both had separate agreements to sign him. And they went to FIFA and they arbitrated basically a sharing system where you'd play for one year for one team, one year for the next team, until

they could resolve it between themselves. And apparently the Franco regime put so much pressure on Barcelona, they just were like, this isn't worth it, sold up their share. And he went to Real Madrid. And between him and Ferenc Puskas as well, ending up at Real Madrid, they were the best team in Europe by a mile. At that point, won the first five European Cups. So nothing changes, really. This is it, right? This is exactly

the point. The politics of some of these clubs is obviously more complex than me simply saying that they're owned by a billionaire. But nonetheless, they have an enormous advantage over their competitors. And that's the point that I'm trying to articulate. And then to finish off this list, you've got Man City, Oligarch. And then, well, not oligarch, but state oil. And then the only team, to be fair, that bucks the trend is Liverpool, built off a longstanding history, but you still needed

a buyout to get there. Yeah. I think that was a question less of wealth and more of competence in our owners, but nevertheless. I agree completely. It's not like Liverpool are a poor team. No, Liverpool are not. One of the richest clubs in the world. No, right. That's the only asterisk that I'm bringing to that table. I think Liverpool are there on merit. Still won the 2019 Champions League with a £75 million centre -back and a £63 million goalkeeper, etc. I'm not saying Liverpool

didn't spend a lot of money to get there. No, and nor am I trying to diminish the achievement. I'm just saying that... In order to get to this top table, you need to have an excellent manager, which you had, and a very, very strong playing squad that can normally only be built by very heavy expenditure. And then if you want to, like, so this year you've got Inter versus PSG. I want Inter to win for all of these reasons. Me too. Because if PSG win it, it's just another oligarch

state, like, run. sorry, a funded side that are going to go and, everyone's going to claim this romantic story because they've never won it before. They've spent as much as Arsenal spent under

Arteta in two and a half years. and and like that like so arsenal like people taking the piss obviously and i get it like don't get me wrong like it's you know part of the the discourse and it's just normally fun and games and things but people just like suggesting that arsenal spent so like crazy amounts of money and like look at the lack of success or what have you like arteta's going into his seventh season is it or his sixth season i can't remember off the

top of my head something like that yeah and he's you know he's spent x amount uh i think it's like 650 mil maybe 700 mil which obviously is a heap of money, don't get me wrong, but it averages at like 100 million a year. PSG have spent that in two and a half years and in doing so, we're replacing Messi, Neymar and Mbappe. It's not a fair playing field. It's this fairytale they've reached their first Champions League final having failed to do so, having spent hundreds and hundreds

of million on Neymar, Messi, Mbappe. Like, it was only a matter of time. Even all these youngsters that they've got, like Due and people like that that they brought in, they spent like 40, 50 million pounds on each one. Like, they are not a romance story. Like, it's symptomatic of the problem with this tournament now. The problem with it is, while a lot of teams have money, more so than... I think women's football is a

good comparison. Because there's a smaller pool of players, there ends up to be less dominant teams, so you end up with Barcelona and Chelsea and Lyon really dominating. Whereas, at least the good thing about men's football is that pool of players is spread more thinly and there are more rich clubs, so you end up with this almost... a bit of balance by the fact that they're all rich, but that just excludes anyone from below it from realistically having a chance of winning

it. There's not really any chance of anyone from Scotland or Belgium or even the Netherlands nowadays having a chance of winning it. Although Ajax did get very deep in the competition in 2019. The Spurs to somehow beat them. The only one -time winners of the Champions League, I'm including sort of The European Cups as people having already won one. Otherwise, you'd include Ajax in this list for that reason. But the only one -time

winners of the Champions League. So the people that have won their first trophy, Porto won the European Cup as well. So they've won two. Oh, did they? Yeah, they won it in the 80s or something. But this is the point. The only one -time winners of the Champions League. The only people who have made their debut victory. in the European Cup or Champions League, since the Champions League came into fruition, are Marseille, who we'll talk about, Chelsea, and Manchester City.

So, like... Yes. So, when people sit there taking the piss out of sides for, like, not having won this stuff, they're just... It's willful blindness to the problem. Willful blindness. Like, you're only... The irony is you're not serving your own interests by taking the piss by doing that.

Like... if people really want their club to have a shot at like the top table and they really want to experience some of the glory days then they should really take a look at what the actual fundamental problem is which is it's a completely inaccessible tournament now there's lots of good things about it and we'll talk about some of those soon but like again like just sorry i know i'm off on one here but basically in the premier league era the only um premier league champions

that haven't won the Champions League, Arsenal, Blackburn and Leicester, right? No other club has qualified without winning. No other club who's qualified for the Champions League from England has ever won it. So like basically anyone coming in those positions, second, third, fourth and now fifth this year, who haven't won the Premier League at some point have ever won the Champions League. So getting into it's a waste of time. You're doing it for financial reasons

only. So therefore, if you remove the Oligarchs, it's only Liverpool and Man United that have ever actually won it. Because Chelsea and City are the other two. And those two clubs have obviously got a very long -standing, rich footballing history in England and in Europe. And so that makes sense. Spurs, Villa, Leeds and Newcastle are the other sides to qualify. And out of the ones that I've mentioned, so that's Arsenal, Blackburn, Leicester, Spurs, Villa, Leeds, Newcastle, five of them

have been relegated in England after. after qualifying for this tournament because it fucking cripples you. Two of them. Two of them ended up in League One as well. I think Leicester did as well, didn't they? Yeah, yeah. I'm not wrong in saying. To be fair, not after they won the league. That was before they won the league. So ignore that comment. But Leeds ended up right in the doldrums in the third tier of English football and have built themselves back up a bit and will be in

the Premier League again next season. Yay for Leeds. And if you think I'm being partisan about this because I'm an Arsenal fan and it serves my interest to say other stuff and because I'm just trying to endorse what Wenger said and this and the other about like qualifying for the Champions League being impressive. I think it's absolutely astonishing that Arsenal and Spurs have been in this tournament multiple times repeatedly having not won it and not having had the resources

of some of their competitors. Like I think it's to their credit. I don't think it's anything worthy of mockery. I think it's a thing that, yeah, sure, from a pure sporting perspective, it's disappointing when you can't go over the line and you're always looking like, how can

you take the next step? But both of those clubs in the last 10 years and longer for Arsenal have been in and out of the Champions League, being competitive in the Champions League, both made finals in the Champions League, haven't quite got over the line. But look what you're up against. Why is it a surprise? I know. So, I mean, just to provide some balance here, I'm a Liverpool

fan. There's no competition. I mean, obviously, the Premier League, First Division, Liverpool have a proud history of winning, but there's no competition that Liverpool fans pride themselves more on than the European Cup slash Champions League. Won it six times, more than any other English time, something like fourth on the all -time list of winners overall. And I agree with every word you're saying. I think it's a wholly

inaccessible competition. realistically there's only about 10 clubs any season who win it I would love to see a team from smaller nation. Porto winning it from Portugal was fantastic. That's about the level. Portugal's not a small league. Portugal's probably about the 7th or 8th biggest league in Europe, if not higher than that. And they still needed Mourinho. With three really good clubs. And they needed Mourinho to do it,

exactly. And a relatively fortuitous final in the Monaco with their opponents in the final. Again, a good team with loads of good players at that point, but not quite the same as playing Barcelona at that point. Chelsea or Arsenal at

that point who were very strong teams. That's the one that got away for us I think in all seriousness because we went out to Chelsea, Wayne Bridge and then Chelsea got dumped by Monaco and that was the season that the Arsenal went invincible so we were good at that point and we should have probably won that one but yeah. It's absolutely insane. I was just looking at the stats and it just started to enrage me more than I thought it would because I already knew I had my suspicions

about this tournament. But I didn't think that they would be so emphatically proven to be right if you just look at the stats. It's no way a criticism of these leagues when I say teams from the Romanian league won it in 1986. As we mentioned, Red Star Belgrade won it in 1991 from Yugoslavia. Dutch teams won it, PSV Eindhoven in 1988, as well as Ajax three times in a row in the early 70s, as well as Feyenoord, who won it in 1970

as well, and Celtic winning in 1967. Not a criticism to these leagues, they have a lot of history and a lot of good teams, but realistically, can you see a team from maybe the Netherlands, but you're not going to see a team from any of the old Yugoslavian... any of those countries winning it and you're not going to see a team from Scotland winning it anytime soon it's just closed ranks as a competition because of where the money is and it's it just compared to the FA Cup it doesn't

have that level of romance what's the equivalent of a Crystal Palace winning it in Europe that would probably be an Ajax winning it hasn't happened for 30 years and I only really got close once. And this leads on to the point that you were making, mate, earlier when me and you were just chewing the fat generally like we do outside of these podcasts. When you were talking about how the impact of the expansion of this tournament and how it's only served to fuck people over

even more. It hasn't made the situation better. Say that to a Spurs fan, to be fair. Well, you explain why, because I think it's a very good point. And again, there's been a lot of criticism about, obviously, Spurs and Manchester United, their position in the English League. They are 16th and 17th in the English League, bearing in mind that 18th, 19th and 20th get relegated. It just so happens that the three teams who got relegated this season have had very bad seasons.

So there's not really been any risk of Spurs

or Man Utd getting relegated. But nevertheless, they ended up as the Europa League final and got a lot of probably fair criticism for the competition and for... themselves in doing so the problem I have with the Champions League continue being expanded it's 36 teams currently it's in a format where it'd be very easy for them to expand it further and I thoroughly expect them to do so it just keeps watering down the quality of the Europa League for a start making

the Champions League this top tier competition obviously you've got a bit of control over who plays who and you end up with these high profile games where you've got these top teams PSG play Man City or whatever else in the big group stage and there's always a game for UEFA to put on and sell stuff but it makes the Europa League a worse competition makes the Europa Conference League an even worse competition still with Chelsea facing very little competition to reach the final

of that realistically speaking you've lost you've lost four four teams that would have been in the Europa League now in the Champions League for no reason. And they're not just small teams because you've expanded the qualifications of the big nations. So you've lost four big teams, arguably, from going into the Europa League. You also don't have the third place teams from the group stage in the Champions League dropping into the Europa League anymore. So you lose another

eight teams. So you've lost 12 good teams from the Europa League. And people are like, oh, isn't it amazing? No, it's not amazing. No. I understand how much of an old man this makes me sound like when I say this, but I'm at the point now I believe the Champions League should be for champions. I think it would make it a better competition and it would make the Europa League a better competition. You should have a Champions League much smaller. I would say 12 teams, two groups

of six, something like that. made up purely of people who've won something so i've got no problem with the europa league winners getting in it in that context obviously the previous year's champions league winners getting in it and then the rest just being champions of their countries with some of the lower ranked nations having to qualify for it and if they fail to qualify for it they then drop out into the europa league further further strengthening the europa league

i'd also make it so if you come fourth in you two groups of six or something like that, you'd still drop then out into the Europa League. Further strengthening the Europa League and making it a real achievement to win that and worthy of its spot in the Champions League. You end up with a great concentration of teams still. Exactly.

Next season it would be Liverpool in it, it would be Napoli in it, it would be Bayern Munich in it, it would be PSG in it, it would be Barcelona in it, it would be maybe Inter in it if they win the Champions League. Spurs in it, just to undermine my point. No, but there's a serious point to that, which is firstly Spurs wouldn't be in it if the system that you're saying it would be in place because they wouldn't have

won the Europa League. But without being sour about that, even if they had, they would be there on merit because they would have won a very hard tournament. Absolute merit. It used to be, mate. It used to be. And I know you know this. There used to be three European tournaments. People make out like the Conference League is like some novel idea. There used to be the Cup Winners' Cup, the UEFA Cup and the Champions League or the European Cup. Cup Winners' Cup, you had to

win your domestic cup to get in it. So everyone who was in it had won something. The UEFA Cup was exactly like... For the most part. For the most part, sure. Unless they won the double. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, yeah. When the runners -up were getting it. But still, I mean, you still got to the final. You still got to the final of a tournament, exactly. And then your point about the UEFA Cup was true. The UEFA

Cup was really fucking hard to win. Yeah. Arguably harder than the Champions League because you'd have two or three teams from England, from Spain, from Italy in it. And in the Champions League, the European Cup would just have one team, just the champions. And then the Champions League or the European Cup would have been exactly as you say it is, which is it's really hard to qualify for because you have to win your domestic trophy.

But if you do win your domestic trophy, then you get a shot at being considered the best. Yeah, and it's this other argument that how many of the teams have won it in the past 30 -odd years since it became the Champions League have actually won their league the year before. Chelsea did it in 2020, Liverpool did it in 2019, 2021, sorry, for Chelsea. Well, Chelsea didn't win the Premier League in 2020. Liverpool didn't

win the Premier League in 2018. I'm sure there's plenty of other teams in that list that were the same. Real Madrid, one, two, three, four, five times they've done it. AC Milan twice. Liverpool twice. Barcelona twice. Chelsea, both of theirs. Bayern Munich once. But look at the names of those clubs. That's my point about being exclusivity. There's nobody that's qualified. Like, Brest didn't win it this year, did they? For fuck's

sake. The level of bad season that Real Madrid would have to have to not qualify for the Champions League is just almost... I mean, almost... The worst season Real Madrid could realistically have with the relative strength of them compared to other teams in Spain is coming third. Maybe coming fourth if someone like... Athletic Bilbao had a cracking season. It's just not going to

happen. They'll still qualify for the Champions League, which always gives them a chance of winning it because they can focus their resources towards it. And they've obviously got plenty of resources.

I just find it really disappointing. I just think that if you really want to dream big and you want your side to have... chance like you know winning the major trophies and getting in the mix then like then then start getting on board with the argument like put aside your own concerns that your rivals might go and win this tournament if it is to be like loosened and start focusing on the fact that the only way your side is going to win it is if that happens as well like stop

being so self -serving about it like All football fans seem to feel so much more comfortable taking the piss out of their rivals for not having won something than they are concerned with when their team's going to go and win something next. The same argument applies to refereeing decisions as well. We talk about this all the time. The Premier League referees aren't going to get any better whilst fans are more than happy for a bad decision to go against their rival or a team

that aren't them. overrides the you know actual benefits it would have to the league as a whole or to your team in question football fans were just collectively behind positive change and things not being about money things about being sporting you know the ideals of sporting competition

then maybe things would actually change. But the irony in this as well, though, and this is the reason it won't change, is because the clubs that I've just been mentioning, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester City, Paris Saint -Germain now in particular, all of these huge clubs that have a monopoly on this, Chelsea, they're also the best supported. Yeah, and therefore

the most hated as well. there's always going to be one or two of them every year who get screwed over or lose or someone can take their schadenfreude about not winning but there's always going to be one that ends up winning it as well and yeah I think the collective of football fans just need to This is the thing. These people have the most influential boardrooms and they have

the biggest fan bases. And so the people who are in the boardrooms can go into these meetings where they might have the opportunity to open this forum up to a wider pool of clubs. And they're able to fall back on, but look at all these fans that actually support the current status quo. And so it's just a circular, self -fulfilling

issue. Meanwhile, whilst your club's in the championship or whilst it's in the mid -table, like the lower end of the premier league you don't give a shit because it's not currently affecting you but then you're leicester city one year and you qualify and then you realize you don't have a fucking hope in hell and you're like really disappointed about it for a whole 12 months and then you get relegated three years later and you forget all about it again it's like imagine if you could

have won that like leicester why couldn't leicester have won it No reason whatsoever. But they had a 0 % chance. They had a 0 % chance. And they'll sit there going, oh, we made the quarterfinals. We had a great run. We played Atletico Madrid. All true. Don't get me wrong. Well played you. Good effort. But you could have actually had a shot at this tournament if it was actually accessible. You wouldn't have had to have sold

Riyad Mahrez and N 'Golo Kante. You could have kept them and said to them, one more year, let's go for the Champions League. Mate, drives me insane. Drives me insane. And it all started with fucking Olympic Marseille. All started with... Go ahead, talk about Marseille. You've been threatening to do so. Yeah, well, the reason I've picked them out to bully them is because I think that the timing of it is just so ironic. It was the first... They won the first Champions League

in its newest format. And it was shrouded in controversy because basically there was a huge bribery scandal that broke after they won Ligue 1 in 92 -93, which is also this. They also won the Champions League same year. And in the lead up to the final where they were playing Milan, was it Inter or AC? AC. AC, when they were playing. So they were in the lead up to the final where they were playing AC. It was a great, great AC Milan team. With Maldini and co. Yes. They were

playing Valenciennes. I think that's how you say it. But I said it with a Spanish accent rather than a French one. And accent is a generous interpretation of that. I'm mispronouncing it. Everybody probably knows who they are. They were playing them in the final. Not the final game of Liga, but like, oh, it might have been actually. Up to the game preceding the final, the Champions League final. But importantly, Marseille still needed to win

that game in order to win Liga. And in the build up to it, their president who had bought out Marseille and was a modern day billionaire. So he was a millionaire back in the relevant time,

I think. you know much of a muchness same very rich man yes financial power he approached his captain who knew who previously played for Valenciennes and told him like you need to make sure that they don't basically play us properly and they throw the game and let us win and very long story short I think about three players are offered a bribe one of them refused it two of them accepted it and I I think by extension, influenced some of their other teammates. And in the game, Marseille

won, I think they won 1 -0 or 2 -0. But anyway, the upshot of it all is that the referee became quite suspicious because two of the players for Valenciennes, who normally give him quite a hard time, were like not, like we weren't talking to him at all. and weren't complaining about decisions. That is suspicious. You know anything about footballers? Yeah, it's a bit like saying Roy Keane was really polite to me. That would

be a red flag. And so he was suspicious, but obviously didn't have any reason to believe that the game was necessarily being chucked. He just thought it was odd. And then there was one player who was running around like a headless chicken trying to prove a point, who was the guy who refused the bribe. So he was clearly trying very

hard. Props to that guy. Yeah, he went to his manager at the time, Boro Primaric, who went on to be Arsenal's assistant for like six years or something under Wenger, and told him at halftime that he'd been offered a bribe and he had refused it. This then set the wheels in motion. The game finishes. Marseille win. But obviously the police then go enter into the Marseille dressing room at the full time whistle. They're like interviewing

people. I don't know if anyone was arrested on the day, but it obviously turned into a big breaking scandal. Marseille win the league, but it remains under investigation. They then go and play the Champions League final the following week and they win 1 -0 and they win the Champions League. But this thing rumbles on. Investigations become... more and more intense, more and more forensic. And the police find like 250 grand in one of

the players' back gardens. The president of Marseille tries to say that, you know, he offered it to him as a loan, which, you know, yeah, because we all keep our loans in our shed. And then it's essentially proven. against Marseille at a domestic level. They are relegated. They're stripped of the title. It gets offered to PSG, who came second. They refuse it. I think they refused it because they had a big viewership with Canal +, maybe, and they were worried about profiteering from

someone else's title. It all stank a little bit. But basically, there's no official winner of Ligue 1 in 92 -93 as a result. But the reason it's interesting is because as the years have gone by, as these things tend to, More and more people come out of the woodwork and they start telling you about suspicious things that happened when they were playing or goings -on around them that they became aware of but didn't really have

enough to substantiate. But obviously once Marseille get convicted, they start coming out of the woodwork. And Rangers were fucked hard in the group stages by Marseille. They lost out by a goal going through to the final. I think it actually is a point in the end because the goal changes the results. But Rangers drew with Marseille maybe twice in that group. I can't remember the precise results. But anyway, it all came down to the results against CSKA Moscow. Rangers beat CSKA Moscow and then

drew with them. And CSKA Moscow drew with Marseille and then lost 6 -0 in the return game against Marseille. 6 -0. If you look at the results in the group, mate, they're all like 2 -1, 1 -1, 0 -0. And then CSKA lose 6 -0. And yeah, again, long story short, there's been basically allegations that the CSKA Moscow players were bought off

in order for Marseille to get through. And then in the lead up to the final, so between the Valenciennes game and the AC Milan final, there were reports that certain Marseille players were given suspicious injections to get them through the final. So there's a doping element. Some vitamin injections, classic. Yeah, there's a doping element to it. In inverted commas. There's a bribery element to it, but not just a bribery element at a domestic level. There's allegations that it was happening

in the Champions League as well. And just to sort of complete this circle, you mentioned Red Star Belgrade. They beat Marseille two years earlier on penalties and there were allegations in the lead up to that game that the same president of Marseille had offered the Red Star players money to chuck the game so that Marseille could be European champions. And thankfully, Red Star said, go fuck yourselves. Which you would in a European final. You might not in a group stage

match. Exactly. Such as CSKA. Just to speculate. Nothing to base that on. Just to speculate. I'm aware, right, that my tone has struck a frustrated one throughout this episode. And I've spoken about this competition in a very negative light for a little while. And I would like to talk about it positively at some stage. But before we do make that transition, is there anything... Do you want to mention Heysel and other aspects of the Champions League? Refereeing issues? Yeah,

refereeing issues. I'll get into this early, because early in the competition there was a few question marks around refereeing of Real Madrid games for a start, perhaps unsurprisingly. The 1957 final, Real Madrid -Fiorentina, there was a penalty apparently awarded to Real Madrid, where the player who was fouled being both offside and outside the box when the foul occurred. The line's been flagged for offside and was ignored by the referee. Di Stefano scored the penalty.

which is the opening goal in a 2 -0 win. Speculation, obviously, around political interference by Franco in that. There's a couple of other... The famous one that's been doing the rounds recently of a very, very soft penalty given to Real Madrid in the 1960 final against Eintracht Frankfurt. That being said, I think that made the score 4 -0 or 4 -1 or 5 -1 or something at the time and ended up being 7 -3 to Real Madrid that day. So I'm not sure it would have necessarily affected

the result, but nevertheless. There was other controversial refereeing in the competition. There was a 1965 semi -final Inter Milan versus Liverpool. Liverpool's first foray into the European Cup, having won the league in 1964 and, you know, only promoted just before that under Shankly. Yeah. So Liverpool were 3 -1 up from the home leg but lost the second leg 3 -0. Two of the goals were controversial. The first sort of free kick goes straight in, allegedly having been

given as indirect. And the second was Liverpool goalkeeper had a ball in hand. He was bouncing it, ready to kick it. And he got barged off the ball and the ball was tapped in, which was even in the 1960s. That's a foul. That's a foul. But it was given as a goal. And Liverpool also had an Ian St John goal disallowed controversially for offside as well. All that on its own. I mean, we know what the English press are like. Always quick to blame. when an English team loses to

defend English honour. But that being said, there's no smoke without fire in this case because Italo Alodi, the Inter Milan secretary at the time, was repeatedly linked to match -fixing scandals during his career. An Italian match -fixing? We haven't heard that before. Oh, yes. So Derby County got to the 1973 semi -final and played Juventus and that was the away leg in Italy was marked with controversy there. A quote from... One of our favourite managers, Brian Clough,

who was Derby manager at the time. I'm not going to do the accent, although it's a fantastic, immutable accent, but the lousy stench still fills my nostrils when I think of the attempts at corruption. UEFA later carried out some sort of inquiry, but the truth has remained somewhere, swept behind the carpet in the corridors of power. And this is another problem with the Marseille. I was going to say this as well. I bet UEFA probably, quote unquote, investigated. and deem there not

to be enough evidence. There's no will for these governing bodies to actually fight any of this. We've investigated really thoroughly, but there's just insufficient evidence on this occasion. Oh, that's convenient. It's always insufficient evidence, regardless of the fact that that implies there was some. There should be no evidence. I mean, I guess no definitive evidence, I guess they'd say. As you mentioned, Italy does have something of a reputation for match -fixing.

The Calciopoli scandal in the 2000s, Juventus ended up getting relegated for that, although not as far relegated as they were initially done. They only went down to Serie B on appeal and quickly re -established themselves as... dominant team in Italy after that. Isn't it AC Fiorentina and someone else got a points deduction as well?

Yeah. So Liverpool ended up, it was 11 years, no, sorry, 12 years later, Liverpool finally won a European Cup, 1977, winning their first, which they followed up with four more until 1984, in a period where English clubs were completely dominant in Europe. They won six competitions in a row, English teams between 19... 1977 and 1982. We have Liverpool winning three of them, Forest winning two, and Aston Villa winning one. So yeah, very dominant time for English teams.

And Liverpool won again in 1984. One more refereeing controversy, because my dad would not forgive me if I didn't mention this. The 1975 final by Munich versus Leeds United. The referee was Michel Kitabdijan. He was a French referee. Just to put a bit of balance into it, there was some controversies both ways in the match. Early in the match, Leeds' Terry Yoroff broke an opponent's leg but was not sent off. But more importantly than that, in this case, there was two penalty

appeals for Leeds which were ignored. One for a handball and one for a foul. Franz Beckenbauer being involved in both. And then Leeds had a goal disallowed. Peter Lauren was scored, but the referee disallowed it after Franz Beckenbauer spoke to him. And the referee cited passive offside against Billy Bremner and watched the goal. It is available. It is nonsense that that goal wasn't given. And the linesman had not flagged for offside. The referee just overruled it after Franz Beckenbauer

spoke to him. The match restarted, obviously. Bayern capitalised and won 2 -0 in the end. And Leeds fans rioted, unsurprisingly. There was a lot of poor fan behaviour. Yeah, there was a lot of poor fan behaviour from English teams at the time, from English fans at the time. Spurs had some incidents as well. Manchester United, I think in 1977, played, I think 1977, sometime around there, played San Etienne and there was big crowd trouble around that time as well. So

it was very common for English clubs. Hooliganism generally. In the 80s, late 70s and the 80s, it was like at its peak, wasn't it? I would say. Yeah, so it wasn't a solely English phenomenon, but English teams were probably slightly disproportionately punished for it, but also probably slightly deserved it for being worse than others. The socio -economic situation in the United Kingdom during the late 70s and early 80s was not exactly a positive

one. No, and again, I don't want to get into another... I don't think we've got enough time to go off on another tangent. but the way the Thatcher government particularly, there was this concept of the enemy within, which was largely

linked to the miners' strike. So the miners' strike, which was around a sort of similar time in the early 80s, that the idea that these working class people who were against what Britain stood for and against the direction Britain was moving in or wherever else, and another sector that was largely... or heavily put in that category as well were football fans with the hooliganism

that was going on. Albeit it was obviously a minority of fans who were making a lot of noise but all football fans were sort of thrown in together and it was a political thing by Thatcher. She was a very, very, very smart politician and knew probably ahead of her time if you look at sort of the modern age of divide and conquer politics or behind her time if you look at the

past age of divide and conquer politics. Whatever way you look at it, she knew how to divide and conquer, and football fans were thrown into that particular mould as well. But anyway, I'm getting slightly off topic. I'll talk more about that when we get around probably April next year, talk about Hillsborough. Made a big impact on that. But Leeds got banned from Europe for it. Obviously, there was massive negative media portrayal of English fans, as you'd expect, and politics

as well. And this all leads to... The darkest day in the European Cup's history and certainly probably the most shameful day in Liverpool Football Club's history. Liverpool have been involved in two tragic events in the mid to late 80s. The second one being Hillsborough, which was simply not the Liverpool fans' fault in any way, shape or form. I don't care what anyone says

about it. That was a game that was... poorly policed and no matter what happened afterwards eventually the truth was found due to a lot of incredible work by the families I'll get into that in more detail one day but Heisel was a very different story for Liverpool it's something that to the club shame I would say hasn't been acknowledged enough or certainly wasn't acknowledged enough until maybe 20 years later when Liverpool and Juventus next played in 2005 Champions League

when Liverpool made some acknowledgement of it happening. But 1985, Liverpool, Juventus, European Cup final. Liverpool at this point had won three out of the last eight competitions, hadn't ever lost a European final. still one of the best teams in, well, were the best team in England and still one of the best teams in Europe, were expected probably to win on balance. But they were playing at Heysel, a stadium which was, it had already been deemed, it was fundamentally

unsafe. It was fundamentally unsafe. It's a very interesting case because I don't want to, the last thing I want to do is sound like I'm making excuses for Liverpool fans' behaviour that day, which wasn't good. Obviously, it was very, very bad. But if you're going to attribute blame for what happened at Heysel and why those 39 fans died, I think there's other people that should certainly be looked at and who were looked at. The stadium had already been condemned, essentially,

before this final even took place. Arsenal played in the 1980 Cop Winners' Cup final there against Valencia. And there were complaints from both teams, from the Valencia and Arsenal boards, about the condition of the stadium, about the way the fans were treated and how unsafe they felt in the stadium. The Arsenal fans called it a dump. I think that's being generous. It was falling apart. Yeah, it was dilapidated,

yeah. Yeah. So before the match, both teams pled to UEFA to change the venue and it was ignored. The Liverpool chief executive had written to UEFA and the Belgian FA and asked them, please, could we change the venue of this stadium? This is not safe. And he got ignored, got no response to his letters. Yeah, so it was in severe disrepair. The game just should not have been played there. It shouldn't have been played there. So UEFA

went and inspected the stadium. The inspection lasted 30 minutes and the venue was not changed. The placement of fans was questionable, so the stadium was divided into six blocks. Three of those blocks were given to Juventus, two of the blocks were given to Liverpool, and one of the blocks was given to neutrals, but the reality was that that block was mostly full of Juventus fans, or heavily full of Juventus fans, and because

it was deemed a neutral section... The policing that was present between the Liverpool fans and the Juventus fans wasn't present between the Liverpool fans and the neutral fans. And that had been brought to light by the chief executive beforehand as well. So the day had been a warm day in Brussels that day. And a lot of English fans, the consensus was that European beer was weaker than English beer. And so those men who was quaffing pints in Belgium. Sorry, in Belgium?

We well know. Yeah, that is fundamentally inaccurate. Yeah. So quaffing what they thought was beer, the strength of sort of mild, like 3 % beer, which actually turned out to be about 7 % beer because it's Belgium. And were very, very drunk as a result. So around 7pm. Fans began throwing objects over the fence, separating X and Z. Sections X and Z. Section X was Liverpool fans. Section Z was the neutral section, which contained largely Juventus fans. Liverpool fans then charged the

section. And again, I'm not defending the actions of the fans at all. The Juventus fans fled. Largely Juventus fans. Juventus and neutral fans as well. A lot of Belgian fans in there as well. And I believe one fan from Northern Ireland was killed as well. So they fled towards a poorly maintained wall, which crumbled under their pressure and collapsed upon them, causing the fatal crush injuries and killing 39 people and hundreds more were injured. Juventus fans retaliated, as you'd

expect, clashing with police for two hours. The kick -off was delayed, but authorities decided to proceed with the match to prevent further violence. It's always the case, isn't it? Both teams' captains went out on the pitch to appeal for calm and eventually... Juventus won 1 -0 via a Michel Platini penalty. The Liverpool players only learned to the true scale of disaster after

their match. They departed the stadium under heavy police protection and on the 30th of May, UEFA observer Gunther Schneider blamed Liverpool fans solely for the disaster, as you'd expect, which is fucking disgusting. I cannot abide that, given everything that happened before the game.

I appreciate a knee -jerk reaction. I appreciate that would be in the best interests of UEFA to do so, but to blame it solely on Liverpool fans after they were warned repeatedly that this was going to happen and then it happened is disgusting. So, an investigation found shared culpability between the fans, Belgian police and UEFA. Belgian police captain Johan Machu was charged with involuntary manslaughter. Multiple Liverpool fans were charged with the same. Many of them acquitted. Many of

them found guilty. Some served proven sentences. Some had suspended sentences. Stricter rules were implemented in English football post -Heisel, which had contributory factors towards Hillsborough happening three years later. The reaction was political. It was political more than it was practical. It was, again, an opportunity to paint

fans as thugs. And, you know, in a sporting sense, the most notable outcome, obviously insignificant compared to other aspects, but in a sporting sense, English clubs were banned from European competition. For five seasons after that, Liverpool were banned for six, which had obviously an effect. Many teams missed out on the opportunity to play in the European Cup. Arsenal missed a couple of opportunities to play in Europe. Everton missed an opportunity because they were champions that

year. and they missed the opportunity to play in 1985 -1986 when they had a very, very strong team, including Gary Lineker up front. And after the UEFA coefficient rules meant that it took a long time up until the late 90s before England regained the coefficient points they lost, meaning other teams then subsequently missed out on European places that would have got them. So the impact from a sporting sense was pretty vast. Like 15,

20 -year legacy, wasn't it, really? Yeah. I can't abide the amount of warnings that were given and that being UEFA's initial reaction. That's the thing that really disgusts me. I mean, football stadiums were unsafe. All of them were unsafe

by modern standards, but some were. particularly unsafe and Heysel was the chief unsafe stadium so to speak out of all of them so like yeah it was a disaster waiting to happen it should have been anticipated as well like 1984 final Liverpool were in the final as well in Rome against AS Roma so effectively an away game for Liverpool and there was a lot of crowd trouble that day from both sides and included I think a Liverpool

fan got stabbed by a Roma fan as well. So it wasn't so much that Liverpool fans were out for revenge as much as they were... I think the consensus was that they were going to be on the front foot and not allow themselves to be put in a weak position and throw some beer into the mix and throw a crumbling stadium and it should have been anticipated. The point for me would be, yes, well... The Liverpool fans caused obviously the panic which led to the wall collapsing and

that could happen in any stadium. There could be unfortunate situations with mass crowd movement in any stadium, however safe or unsafe it is, especially when terraces are involved. But if that had been played in a safe stadium, those fans wouldn't have died. at least the vast majority of deaths and injuries would have been avoided. It's not to forgive the Liverpool fans what they did, but to say they should have been aware of their surroundings. They're just two separate

issues, aren't they? They're just two separate issues. Yeah, I think so. You have a fundamental safety issue in terms of the integrity of the building, and then you have a behavioural issue. And it is not okay to say, if you weren't behaving badly, the stadium wouldn't have collapsed, because the stadium shouldn't collapse. In the same way that it wouldn't be okay for Liverpool fans to say, well, if the stadium was safer, then our

rioting wouldn't have made a difference. The point is you don't take one without the other. You look at it holistically and the building should have been safe. And they knew it was unsafe. Yeah. It was institutional failing in UEFA and the Belgian authorities to not allow the final to play there. which was unforgivable, and especially in the light of the comments afterwards. And yeah, that's all I'm going to say on the matter.

But there's also an institutional failing of Liverpool Football Club to acknowledge it afterwards. And Juventus fans in 2005, Liverpool unveiled a banner basically saying friendship in Italian. And a lot of Juventus fans just turned their back on that. I don't blame them. Liverpool as a football club. had not stepped up to the plate and apologised and made amends anywhere near as much as they should have done for platitudes,

doth butter, no parsnips. Exactly. So, yeah, not a proud day in Liverpool Football Club history, but there's been a lot of... There have been a lot of proud days in Liverpool Football's history. Tragedy chanting and everything like that that goes along with it is disgusting and it's a whole separate matter and I'm not going to dive into that, but... Should we try and be uplifting? Disappropriation of blame, shall we say. I tell you what, I can be... Can we pivot from Heysel?

I think we need to go back in time a bit and talk about one more thing involving an English club in Europe. And it's not uplifting, but it leads to something uplifting. And it's a team that neither of us particularly like, but it's a wonderful part of it. Well, a terrible part of English football history, but a wonderful recovery from that. And that is... Yeah, so as I mentioned, no English clubs took part in the

first competition. The first English club to take part in the European Cup was in the 1956 -57 tournament. The 1956 and 1957 league champions, Manchester United. So they reached the semi -finals, I think, in 1957, but were knocked out. I think by Real Madrid? Or was that 1958? Anyway, they reached the semi -finals, a very good team, but didn't quite get all the way. 1958 tournament, they were considered the favourites to win it.

They started at the canter and had advanced to the quarterfinals and they won their quarterfinal and were on their way back from their quarterfinal match where they played the away leg in Belgrade and they had to stop off in Munich on their way back. British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on its third attempt to take off from Munich Reim Airport in West Germany. The signs, Jesus Christ. Killing 23 people on board, including multiple Manchester United players, officials,

journalists. 21 people survived the crash, some of whom were seriously injured, some of whom never played again. Due to being seriously injured, Harry Gregg, goalkeeper, was a hero that day. Rescued many people from... the from the wreckage saved a lot of lives the takeoff attempt so it was the third attempt to take off two attempts were aborted due to engine boost surging The third attempt was made despite the weather worsening

to that point. Snowfall caused slush to form at the end of the runway, which when the plane's wheels hit, it slowed it, prevented reaching takeoff speed, but also prevented, obviously, they were over a safe speed to stop. Just look at the photos of the weather conditions and ask yourself, would you try and take off a commercial airliner in those conditions? The answer is just no. So the initial investigations blamed the...

Captain James Fane, I'm not saying he's not to blame for this in any way, but it wasn't his fault entirely. He was originally blamed for failing to de -ice the wings. But a later inquiry cleared Fane, concluding the crash was due to runway slush, which it should have been the air traffic controllers who reported that. I was going to say, air traffic controllers decide who takes off and who doesn't, don't they? Exactly,

yeah. And a captain could make a decision, but maybe I was harsh, attributing some blame to him, but ultimately he's in charge of those on board. I'm sure some of his judgment was contributory, like maybe attempting it a second and a third time, but people don't have to be culpable to acknowledge that something went wrong. Survivors included. Matt Busby, who was severely injured, but later went on to rebuild the team. Bill Fuchs and Bobby Charlton were also survivors of that.

Unfortunately, many, many players lost their lives, the most notable of which being Duncan Edwards, who survived the crash, but died a few weeks later. Oh, a few days later, later anyway. Two weeks later, 15 days. Was it two weeks? Yeah,

thank you. Obviously superlatives are easy to come by when someone has lost their lives especially in tragic circumstances but the consensus is and I think this is a fair consensus from the depth and the range it comes from that Duncan Edwards would have been one of the greatest English players of all time had he lived long enough to be so. Was he 21 when he died? 21 and he had already played 151 times for Manchester United

and scored 20 goals. Yeah. There is a consensus that thinks as great as Bobby Moore was, as great a captain as he was, had Duncan Edwards been alive in 1966, it would have been him captaining that England team that won the World Cup. I'm sure his presence would have only strengthened that team. He would have been 31, so that makes

sense. And again, if you want some... context of the superlatives or you know what might have been he had already got 18 caps for England and scored five times yeah yeah playing seven and a half sorry yeah yeah Manchester United obviously with a severely weakened team lost the semi -final I think that one was the one to Real Madrid but ten years later Matt Busby rebuilt that team and rebuilt the team into one of the best teams in England 10 years later with a new generation

of talent but including survivors Bill Foulkes and Bobby Charlton at the heart of that team Manchester United at Wembley Stadium they played Benfica and they won the European Cup for the first time in the history the first English club to win it Celtic had won it the year before being the first British club to win it but Manchester United in 1968 were the first English club to win it, winning 4 -1 against Benfica in their famous blue kit and bringing home the trophy.

So Matt Busby is a legend. That team, the recovery afterwards, I hope that's a happy story for us to probably finish on at this point, but obviously it's based on a tragedy. I'm skimming through a lot of it because their success even before that. how quickly they were able to bounce back to be. I think they finished runners -up in the league in 1959 is how quickly they bounced back.

I think Wolves might have won it, but I think United finished second, which is obviously hugely impressive and has a lot to do with their manager and the leadership in that team. So it is, as much as Manchester United became sort of the bane in our existence when we were young because of how good they were under Sir Alex Ferguson,

who I respect more. at my age now than I did perhaps when I was 13 years old and watching United win their sixth championship in seven years or whatever it was at that point give or take maybe fifth in seven but yeah yeah Busby was a legend and that team it's a hell of a story he convinced convince Bobby Charlton to come back to play because I think Bobby Charlton nearly retired off the back of the Munich air disaster.

Well, I don't blame him, yeah. And yeah, I think, I might be, I might be, there might be slightly dramatized, you know, in time, but I think Bobby Charlton obviously found that very difficult, understandably. And... Yeah, his friends have died. Yeah, yeah. Simple as that. And Busby, I think. Let alone the PTSD involved. Well, right. And Survivor's Guilt. Is attributed with having convinced him to come back to play for United. I really doubted our ability to pivot from Heysel

to something positive. But you transition from one disaster to the other. And then seamlessly articulated how it at least had a... a happy ending in some ways if a plane crash can. Yeah, I mean, we've covered a lot here. I wondered if just before we go, we had any personal favorites for finals or goals? I have one. Yeah? This may shock you to know what my favorite final of all time is. Can I have a wild guess? Have a wild

guess. Istanbul? So Liverpool will find themselves 3 -0 down at half -time, for those of you who don't know, and I'm sure many of you do, against just an incredible AC Milan team. This is a team of... The back four alone, like Maldini, Yapstam, Nesta, Cafu as a back four, is obscene. I don't think you can name a better... Other than the early 90s AC Milan team, which also had Maldini in it, such was his longevity. Yeah. Seedorf. Seedorf, yeah. Kakka. Kakka. Shevchenko. Shevchenko.

Inzaghi. Crespo. Did they have Inzaghi at that point? Maybe on the bench? Did they have Inzaghi? They definitely had Inzaghi in 2007 because he scored twice. Who was coach? Ancelotti. It's just... Yeah, Ancelotti. It was a ridiculous team. Found themselves 3 -0 up at half -time and Liverpool dead and buried. I didn't watch the first half. No. Because if you remember,

we were... We didn't get out. school until late for various reasons and the second half of that game I just watched because I literally made myself watch it because I was like well we might never be here again and Liverpool scored three goals in six minutes Steven Gerrard, Vladimir Smita and then Jebby Alonso penalty rebound and by 60th minute it was 3 -3 absolutely mad extra time period including a crazy double save by Jesse Dudek and then a slightly dodgy penalty

shootout win because Dudek was off his line a couple of times but never mind I think the winning penalty save is basically a six yard box by the time he saves it Perlo's one was the worst he literally was but regardless if it doesn't get blown up it's not a foul so yeah Liverpool won on penalties and I literally was bouncing off the walls with joy it was a wonderful moment for me age I was 17 at the time. Yeah, no, that was... I nearly got through the whole episode

without mentioning that, so thank you, Ben. You're welcome. How about yourself? Because my team's never won it. You can burst my bubble if you want by talking about Gareth Bale. No, so we're just going to get on to two goals very briefly, but before we do, just... All of my favorite finals, even though I've not been happy about necessarily the winners of the majority of them, have predominantly been English clubs because I think they just have been the best finals in

the Champions League era. So grudgingly, United, 98, 99, it was remarkable stuff. Incredible. Like you, I did not appreciate that at the time, but I do now. Absolutely insane. I think this is it. So do you want to explain it? Oh, yeah. Bayern Munich took the lead in the fifth minute or something, dominated the entire game, were just going to win. Sheringham came on in the 70th minute, Solskjaer came on somewhere in the

late 80s, I think, or early 80th minute. And then basically just fucking pandemonium and United scored two goals in stoppage time to win. to win it and come back 2 -1. First one being from Sheringham with a flick on at a corner and then Sheringham again with a flick on at a corner but with Solskjaer at the back post just stabbing a foot out and lifting it into the roof of the net and yeah, or as they say, the rest is history

and like that, the scenes. And they did that without Rukin as well because he got suspended in the semis. So yeah, yeah. It was a shock. Insane, insane final. And one of my favourite. Favorite football quote of all time, which I didn't appreciate at the time, but I do now, from Sir Alex Ferguson after that, which was football, bloody hell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. And then I would have picked Liverpool, but I

didn't need to because I knew you would. I also really enjoyed the 2007 -2008 All -English final, which was the first All -English final. And the Terry slip, just because it was... John Terry didn't. Yeah, because it was funny. Couldn't happen to a nicer man. It was actually quite a good final as well. I've only finished 1 -1, I think, but... But yeah, went to penalties. Terry had a chance to win it, slipped as it started raining. And then Anelka missed and United won

their second Champions League. Obviously, I think it's a third European Cup overall. But yeah, that wasn't the only all -English final. I was surprised by how many there had been, actually. Like Liverpool, Spurs, 18 -19, 20 -21, Chelsea City as well. Yeah. I also really enjoyed Chelsea's one at Bayern, just because it was in Bayern's backyard. Didier Drogba with a big header. Yeah, I have a big soft spot for Drogba, even though I didn't really like Chelsea all that much at

the time. I can't not like Drogba. Yeah, it was. Great player. I mean, I'm whinging about the oligarchy era, and this is the epitome of that. But nonetheless, Bayern were at home, and Bayern were great. took the lead in like the 83rd minute or something. And everyone thought that was it. And then Drogba scored a powering header from a corner right at the end. And then it went to penalties. But the only other one before we get into the goals, because I'm chomping at the pit

to mention the goals. Like the other recent final that was outside of English clubs is that Real Madrid versus Atletico won in 2013, 2014. And Ramos equalized in the 93rd minute. And then... Ramos. Yeah, and then Real just went stratospheric in extra time and won 4 -1 in the end. Yeah, Gareth Bale scoring a header, I remember that. Yeah, so this is the thing. Not his last Champions League final goal. No, and shall we, just briefly?

There's been two Champions League goals. Let's start with 2001 because I know you're going to mention 2001 as well. There are only two. 2002, sorry. Yeah, there's only two goals that I wanted to mention because I don't really care about goals. Like, other than Arsenal goals, I don't really care about goals in the rest of the stages of the tournament. Obviously, I could bang on about Henry in the Bernabeu, in the San Siro, you know, everywhere because the man's a king.

But Zinedine Zidane. Bay of Leverkusen. Thing of beauty. Thing of absolute beauty. It's insane. It's not even a good cross. No. Bounce straight up in the air. Carlos, was it? Oh no, it was the hook straight up in the air. Yeah, yeah. And then... Had an age to watch it down onto his weaker foot. And he just... I don't even know how to explain it. It's almost like... It's like a martial arts move. It's a work of art.

You could hang it in the Louvre, honestly. The way the leg comes round, just dead straight. Bang. It's hard to put... So anyone younger who didn't see Zidane play in his time, it's hard to put into context how much our generation here worship him and how much we revere him. I guess it's similar to Messi and Ronaldo in a sense, but a bit less in your face as it tends to be nowadays. Yeah, more of a... Oh, like how would

you explain him? He's a flawed genius, which therefore immediately endears him to you and I. But yeah, like a classier operator, more graceful, more effortless, I would say. He's a magician. Yeah. Anyway. That goal. You could hear that in our voices there momentarily, couldn't you?

If you haven't seen that goal, just watch. 2002 Champions League final Zidane goal versus Bayer Leverkusen it was at Hampden Park in Glasgow a thing of beauty right on the cusp of half time bang yeah such a good goal and then the other one is Bale just because I think this is the best goal that's ever been scored possibly like incredibly didn't win the Puskas award that year which is an award given to the best goal of the season which is incredible because the goal that

won it and I love Mo Salah Did not deserve to win that. It should have been Bale. Just a bicycle kick. It was a game with two goals, one of which scored by Bale, one scored by Benzema, which were just horrendous goalkeeping errors. Unforgivable goalkeeping errors, other than the fact that he was probably concussed at the time, Karius. I feel sorry for Karius. He was brilliant at times that season, but those were two horrible, horrible, horrible errors. But then the other

goal. Bale's goal was... Worthy of winning anything. Anything. I don't care what you call the tournament. I don't care the prestige you give it. If this goal is scored, it should be the winner. It's a bicycle kick in the Champions League final. And again, it's not even a good cross. It's a better cross than the Zidane one, but it's behind him. It's fairly flat. It's definitely not a cross that you look at and think, oh, I'll just bicycle kick that into the top corner. It is

an absurd goal. Absurd. Yeah, and call this a bit of English exceptionalism that Bale often isn't called this as much as he should be, but in my humble opinion, Gareth Bale is the greatest British player of all time. Agreed. Perhaps didn't take advantage of his ability as much as he did, but it's ridiculous. The amount of Champions Leagues he won, the goals he scored in the finals, the amount of goals he scored for Real Madrid and for Spurs. Yeah, he's... He's incredible.

And what he did for Wales as well. He dragged Wales to a European Championship semi -final. That is ludicrous. A tiny, tiny principality of just a few million people. It's incredible, honestly. What a player. He is incredible. I think he's played four Champions Leagues and I think he's scored in three of the finals. And it's not even his favourite sport, football, which is incredible. Wales, golf, Madrid, in

that order. Anyway, I think we need to bring this to a close because we are going long, but it's been a good chat. It has been very fun. For all our whinging, the best thing about the Champions League is that it pits the best players against the best players and the quality of the games never disappoints. It's just a shame that it's become so elitism. However, elitist, sorry.

If you tune in, then you'll get to... You'll get to watch PSG versus Inter Milan and support Inter Milan because of all the reasons we've said. Hopefully we've persuaded you. I mean, we haven't had any French listeners yet. We've had a lot of listeners from around Europe, but so far none from France. So I think we can get away with saying that for now. And I guess, where are we going next week? You can watch the 10th. Sorry, very quickly. Sorry, Jack, but I know

I asked you there. You can watch Champions League everywhere. Literally everywhere. It's on YouTube, isn't it? I don't know. Am I wrong in saying that? Anyway, regardless, just Google it. I don't know why we say this. Google's a thing. Next week, we are at the NBA finals, so basketball, which is, honestly, we're going to do our best, but it's not our... Of all the American sports, it is comfortably the one that I am least knowledgeable

on. that I frankly enjoy the least unless it's a tight game late on where it frankly becomes the best sport that maybe even in the world or one of the best sports can be incredible. But nevertheless, the NBA finals is what we're previewing next week. Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to that mainly because it gives me an excuse to talk about MJ. Yeah. Which is fair. Yeah. Very interesting man. He is. Another floor genius. That will be a lot of fun. We will do our best.

We've done our best with ice hockey, so I'm sure we can give you something that will hopefully keep you engaged. Until then, then. Yeah. Until then. Ciao. Thanks for the chat. Au revoir. I'll see you later. Ciao. Au revoir. I see what you're doing. Clever. Yeah. See you in a bit then, mate. Tschüss. Because it's in Germany. Bye. Bye. Thank you again for listening to and supporting the Sporting Almanac podcast. Can't say that enough.

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And until then, stay curious. Sport is nothing without the stories that make it. Goodbye.