The Guardian. Hello and welcome to The Guardian Football Weekly, the Champions League, Liverpool and Manchester City make it through the group stages, incident free games without talking points.

Will Klopp and Pep please think of the podcast that have to feed off their scraps? Crisis in Madrid Said joins us to talk Zidane defeat to Shecter and the rest of La Liga. We'll look at Anton Ferdinand's incredibly moving documentary, Football, Racism and Me.

We'll go down Admin Alley to discuss the new Champions League plans and the impact of Brexit on the game. There's some love for Nevado. Has Barry got a new boiler and have any of us recorded this in good enough quality for any of you to actually be able to hear it? Hopefully you know that by now. Already your questions have been added.

As always, this is The Guardian Football Weekly on the panel today. Barry Glendinning, hello. Hello, Max. Hello, Natasha. Henry. Hey, how are you? Yeah, jolly good. Thank you. Hello, John Brewin.

Good morning Max. How are you? Yeah, marvellous.

So the second audio based apology of recent accounts. Barry, what did you what what did you do last pod? Well, I didn't do anything wrong. You the way you told it on Twitter was I was some sort of Luddite who had messed up my record, remerged everything perfectly correctly, and my SD card didn't save the file. So I have now got a new SD card at my own expense HQ for at least four to five minutes outside Argos in, uh, Atlantic Road, Brixton, yesterday in the cold and that they're the lengths I will go to to keep the people happy.

Now, I pressed the wrong button.

So the microphone I'm talking it didn't pick up the sound, but a microphone about five yards away did. But someone nicely pointed out what they really enjoyed was the sound quality on my apology was also bad because I had the folks close to my mouth, so it popped a whole lot.

David says, bring back the echo. Listen, as far as we know and we've done some tests, this sounds great to us. Hopefully it sounds great to you. Let's talk then about the English clubs who played last night. First will be Liverpool's group. First they be one nil. They win the group Curtis Jones goal in the second half. I challenged the three of you to come up with one interesting thing to say about both the Liverpool and the Manchester City games.

I think this is quite an unfair question to to launch on anybody at 7am. John Bruin, something interesting about Liverpool, IEX. You saw the way you celebrated at the end of this game, the relief on his face because they had been a victory over and he'd seen off someone or something that had been really causing problems over the years or in recent weeks.

And that was Dez Kelly so far. And it's the way he escaped after his three minutes with Dez, which were cordial but not exactly warm. There was no mention of tired muscles, although he was able to say about Andy Robertson getting a knock. But what he was able to do was enthuse about young players. And at this point, our pronunciation of Irish names runs into problems within Cuív.

Kuvin Cuív is what you called the young goalkeeper who had a very good game and made a great saves was the end of the match, and that if Nico Williams and Coach Jones, he scored the goal. You called it one of his favorite nights is Liverpool manager and you can see why it was a win through adversity and he and Dez Kelly were able to be. Polite to each other, so that that was a victory. Football was the winner last night, Owen Hargreaves compared Curtis Jones to Steven Gerrard.

This seems the right time to start building someone up to that sort of level is a tremendous player, isn't it?

Well, John, that was interesting. Natasha, to you, something interesting about this game.

I was going to say similar to John in the it it gave Liverpool fans a chance to see the happy and Klopp that they've bought into for a very long time. They were in denial about his. He's kind of passive aggressive nature that a lot of us have seen in press conferences. Don't get me wrong, I respect him a lot as a manager. But just because you say something, the smile doesn't make it any nicer than what it is to begin with.

And I think as Liverpool fans, they love young players coming through. They love to see this talent from the academy. So I think that's the best thing from the Liverpool game moving forward. And again, also like let's protect as Kelly, as a journalist, you know, he got a lot of grief for apparently within in his questions in a way that were antagonistic towards Yagan at the weekend. I don't buy that. I don't believe that's the case.

And, you know, if it makes 2020 easier for a lot of people to believe that Johan Klopp is this lovely, nice, friendly guy, then yeah, I'm happy for that. Let's have a nice December moving forward.

Barry Clendenning. Well, I've worked with Tess Kelly a few times, and I think it would be impossible to stay mad at him for long. Uh, he's urbane, sophisticated.

She smells lovely and, uh, a consummate professional. So I'm I really hope he and Yarragon are able to put put Saturday's contretemps behind them. And, yeah, I was impressed. McCreevy and Kelaher, obviously, your craft will be tearing his hair out again and thanking the gods are conspiring against him where the gods, BT Sport, the Premier League and UEFA are conspiring against him because Alison is now injured. He's he's done his hammy and well, it's felt felt a bit of a twitch and will probably be out for two weeks.

So, uh, Liverpool fans will be heartened by the assured performance of Cuív. That's the Irish for Kevin, by the way. So Kevin Kelaher, Kevin, who was born in Cork and educated by the presentation brothers.

So just a classic Irishman sorry, the presentation brothers.

Well, when I when I grew up, I was educated in up until the age of 12 presentation brothers. So they're not quite priests, but they are a religious order. Right. You know, kind of like Friar Tuck. He's not not a priest.

And then and after that, I was educated by Cistercian monks.

So all that religion may explain why I've turned out to be the twisted, bonkers, slightly unhinged individual that I am, but.

Yeah, I think Liverpool fans will they don't need to worry about Alison being absent and weirdly, you know, Yarragon Club has been complaining a lot with with some justification, I don't think a huge amount about the Liverpool fixture, congestion and all the injuries they've had, but.

Seeing Alison pull out with a hamstring injury or a soft tissue injury, you know, he's not sprinting around the pitch three times a week. He's sort of mooching around this penalty area most of the time and taking the odd kick out so that that does seem to be just down to bad luck rather than anything else. But. Yeah, good good win for Liverpool, John. Yeah, I did a bit of reading around within Kelaher, and it seems that as a young player over in Ireland, he actually was an outfield player.

And this was the thing that so we probably need to be aware that if he's going to play like that, he might pull his hamstring at a certain point because his Liverpool play. But it was interesting that during his date with Dez Kelly and Klopp talked about Adrian, but he said, you know, he's done a great job for us and kept plenty clean sheets way back when. But the Kealoha was in the team because of his ability to play with Ebola, his feet, which, as we've seen, it's not necessarily Adrian's strongest suits.

So in his favour, as well as making good saves, is his ability to play the ball out is going to make him Liverpool. Second choice, you would have thought after that performance for the foreseeable future.

Andy Lonergan, who had a spell as Liverpool's third choice keeper, he did an interview with some Liverpool podcast and said that Keleher is excellent with the ball at his feet. It's like he's a central midfielder. So maybe maybe he played as a central midfielder. I don't know.

Yeah, he did actually barrier over back in court. Yeah.

On this, you know, the kind of mask I dunno if it's the mask dropping from KLOP or just a sense that he isn't just the loveliest, best thing about football, just sort of this week. Do you get a sense that in a way that I don't know, some journalists can jump on that and suddenly go, aha, he's not as wonderful as we all thought and maybe go a bit overboard, like to defend Klopp.

He's been pretty bloody brilliant for the Premier League and I mean, I love Klopp as a manager.

You know, I think he's he's been great for the league. I think he's been great for Liverpool. But I do think that this whole tribal mentality that a lot of fans have is that maybe they don't always see what what others see in a they just see the questions or read the answers to what he said. I don't think it's a masterpiece. I just think he you know, he's no different from a Ferguson or Amerine. I, I just think, you know, the teeth and the glasses.

And I love rock music is maybe what made people you know, it was made people think that he's a nicer chap. At the end of day, he's he's a world class manager who wants to win things. You have to have that kind of skill, that kind of angry in a in a sense, in order to be able to do that. You know, as an Arsenal fan, I know what happens when you just stop being nice and stop being angry.

You know, he's he has that anger and that's why his team are going out there and getting the results every week. And, you know, that's why they're champions.

We all knew we had a bit of a temper on him. That's no secret.

We've always known as a bit of a temper and been interviewed five minutes after a game when you throw in a way, a lead, a game and you think you've been hard done by, you know, of course you're going to be chippy and that should be excused. I think it's not practical to give managers a 30 minute cooling off period before you interview them. They have to go and do all their media duties immediately after the game, starting with the pitch side reporter and then working their way through the radio or the TV stations, the radio guys, and then finally the newspaper boys.

So at that point, they've possibly had a bit of a chance to to simmer down a bit often. They haven't, but that's probably the part of the job many of them enjoy least.

I mean, I've watched him on YouTube play crown green bowls with some Scouse pensioners, and it made me melt. So I, I can't really hear anything bad about him. He's he's that worked for me. All I have to do is watch him just on the base, just rolling those little round things so calmly. It was a total delight also in that group.

Atalanta Drew with Mitchell and Alexander Schultz scored an absolute banger. Anyway, that point gives Atlanta the edge over IEX. They only need the draw to go through when they meet next week to Porto Manchester City. Then they both qualify for the next round. Porto xG was nought point nought three, which sounds fun. Cities with three point one five again ABARE. I'll come to you first as I went to third, the hardest role for the last one. Something interesting about this football match.

Well, I was unaware that there was a beef between Pep Guardiola and Sergio Concho, the Porto manager, until I read about Jamie Jackson, alluded to it in his match report, and apparently they fell out during the corresponding fixture at the yet. And the poor manager had accused Guardiola of trying to influence referees and took great exception to that. But further investigation reveals that the port manager is apparently a very difficult man to get on with and one of his own.

Backroom staff resigned because of the what he called an unbearable working environment. So I thought that was kind of interesting, but it must be fun at port or training sessions if if the road manager is constantly ranting and raving, he appears to have I don't think there's Kelly and he would get on particularly well.

But I was also hugely impressed with the portal keeper of Coston and who I had never heard of before, but he put in a magnificent display of goalkeeper John Bruin.

Yeah, I struggled a bit more with this game to find anything interesting. I suppose what you could say is Manchester City continue to have something of a problem in front of goal. You don't get to play Shaun Dishes Burnley every week as they did the weekend, though they probably should have scored the second half. The goal that was disallowed by Gabriel. Jesus, Jesus. I should say it was one of those where I watched it and I thought, that's a goal.

And I've got to confess this. I watched this the goal show, obviously, which is presented by dissident former football weekly panelist and presenter. And they seem to have lost why this goal of been disallowed. But it seems it was to do with phases of play and offside. And as it stands, it should have been disallowed. The thing that I took from that goal, the disallowed goal, is Phil Foden in joining the celebration. He's got great bande Lex Husaini, the way that he sort of bounces around.

And I think that's what makes him such a great young player. I remember in the old days we used to talk about sort of you Scottish playmaker. You're they always have bandy legs, didn't they? Like a street footballer? And that's what he looked like to me. And if you actually watch back the celebration of that, that those bandy legs, the way that he moves around during such a great demonstration of that. So all I can take away from that game is Phil Phonons legs.

So, so but Bande not but I mean, do they go down straight or you're not saying bow just.

Well they sort of bowed and bounds. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that's why because he's so comfortable in possession and I think that's a result of his physiology.

Natasha Henry. And so talking about Battlezone Legs Pappe is Bow-Legged. I noticed that at the at Sheppard. You like random fact and he's you know, he still dresses. Well, we still have. Yeah. This game probably won't go down in the history, but I think probably what he is is the key thing that I took away from this game, just him being the is it all perhaps new go to guy if you if you will call calling that.

And I think. Yeah. That they're struggling in front of goal. But I think perhaps maybe come in with the mentality if you can't score then we we just don't need to concede anymore. And yeah, it wasn't the best game and it was the highlights this morning. I can't lie and I'm guessing I didn't miss that much from what everyone else said.

Can I just mentioned gladiolas jacket? If you see this, please do. Please do. There's some sort of motif on the back isn't there?

And I just presumed it is the city crest. But I could be mistaken.

But it's it's Alan Partridge. Carceral dcx jacket is the the t bird's you don't you go to somewhere like Teekay Marks and you see like a jacket or something or a shirt and you think, well that's pretty good for the price you know. Well that's good.

And then you pull it round and you look at the back and it's got something, you know, like, you know, like Ohio Motorcycling Club or something like that. That's that's what that jacket looks like.

It looks like he's he still looks pretty slick from Fergie style or whatever, but now he's got this and this nightmare on the back.

Thinking about the Venn diagram. There must be one person who both listens to this podcast and is a member of the Ohio Motorcycle Club.

And if you're that person, please get in touch with us. Yeah, it was a terrible game. Also, that group Marcey be Olympiacos to won their first gold Marci's of this Champions League tournament. Dimitri Pietje with two penalties so well done to them. But there was no massive point in this game really.

And that'll do for part one. Seed will join us for part two as we talk about Real Madrid's meltdown against Shakhtar Donetsk.

Waggons Bartter, The Guardian, Footwell Weekly, let's say hello to say hello in Spain, hello, said Hi Max. How are you? Yeah, I'm excellent. Thanks so much. So Shakhtar to Real Madrid. Neil Duncan Alexander Zinedine Zidane has lost more games than Steve Bruce this season. Richard Jolley's start the last season. Real Madrid were not in the Champions League.

Knockout stages was so long ago that Roy Hodgson was in his 40s of the tenure man O'Sullivan with the goal.

Solomons was a great goal. I'm not entirely sure what Varan was doing for the first one. Said your thoughts?

Well, first things first. I'm disappointed with that first step because what I really want to know, of course, is whether Zidane has as many wins as Sam Allardyce because that would be the key to fixing challenges. Problems, as Sam has said many, many times.

My first thoughts, put bluntly, are that Ramadge are very good. And I mean, obviously, look, they've got a lot of very good players. They have shown on a few occasions this year that when they really needed to, they've they've you know, they've put good results out. So, of course, they won the Classico. They've beaten Inter Milan twice. Well, I think in the first one of those is not in not in Italy.

They were a bit fortunate to win, but they've had a lot of the problems that we saw last night. They've had all season that they're vulnerable back and they don't take their chances. They don't really convince they tail off after the 60 or 70 minute repeatedly. And as I say, the truth is they just don't look very good now. I still have a sneaking suspicion under about you that they'll get through and they might even win the group because it's a very strange group and it's set up in a way that basically anyone can go for it and no one can stop the group now.

But this I was about to say, this doesn't come as a surprise. Of course it does. I still thought they would they would go to Ukraine and win. But it does fit within the pattern of what we've seen so far this season.

Zidan quotes after the game. I mean, he could have rented them from any manager in the bottom half of the championship. So I said, I'm not going to resign. We're always going to have difficult moments. We're in a bad run, but we need to keep going. I have the strength to turn the situation around. I'm going to give everything to do that. So are the players. We played well and deserve more. We just need to lift our heads up and think about the next game.

Jeff, he didn't he didn't say Jeff.

I would like to say, Jeff, at some point, we really I mean, I'm also coming I mean, maybe I'll just show my age. But but saying, Jeff, I mean, it used to be Brian or Trevor. I think it was. Yeah, it feels wrong. That is Jeff doesn't how do you think he'll go? I mean, will he go? What do you think?

Well, last night he was asked directly, will you resign? He said, no, not at all. There is a huge amount of pressure on him from within the club, which he's well aware of. And I think one of the things you should always remember, Sudan, is when he talks about his future, always asked about his future. He knows how volatile it is. He understands the politics around it very, very well. And last night's El Mundo, whose reporter is is very well connected, particularly directly with the upper echelons of the club of the president.

And El Mundo ran a tweet saying that Ramjet Fontina better. The president is contemplating getting rid of Saddam. That tweet was taken down pretty quickly. Now, I don't want to over interpret something that I don't know for sure and I don't want to jump the gun. But that smell to me very much like a president who had a rant about Sudan post game and then saw this in black and white for hang on, let's let's back away from this.

But I don't think there's any doubt that he's under pressure and look to what's coming up. So they place over the weekend and then they play Monchengladbach, obviously, the Champions League next week with the possibility that they don't even get through. And I think that if if he was to lose those two, then then he'd be in trouble. The other thing is that you've got to look at this in the context. And Zidane has been on what the Spanish would describe as a match ball four times this year, and he keeps saving that match ball and keeps coming through.

And it even happened last. You remember, in October of last year, they went away to Istanbul and had they lost, he genuinely could have been sacked and he didn't. And he went through and they won the league. And it's happened obviously this year on the way into the game in Milan. And so I think that he's kind of permanently on a tightrope and he's, you know, a club like Real Madrid is always only three or four bad results away from kind of a mini crisis.

And so he's under enormous pressure, partly, of course, because Ramadan is a club at some level, at least always has a mentality that the manager is is at least partly expendable, even when it's someone like Zidane who has obviously far greater protection and credit, to use a horrible Spanish phrase, far greater credit than than just about anyone else would have you say that is good.

How good is it? Because you sort of look at the team and you go, yeah, they've got some good players. They just you know, when you imagine you look at a Real Madrid lineup and you you expect to see these ridiculous names and these amazing players.

Yeah, I think that's a fair question, actually. And it's one that's been posed a little bit because, of course, the renewal of the squad, the bringing younger players through the really good has been I suppose you could probably call it a partial success, because I think obviously there's been moments when Vinicius has played a very important role, very well. But he was very important. Last year, Meynard guard was called from a two year loan or also for that after just one year and hasn't really played a part yet.

But I think will be a really good player for Lemonde has played really, really well. But you do look at that squad and still think, well, but it hasn't kind of come all the way and this process hasn't come all the way through yet. And it does feel like there's quite a few older players and in particular in midfield where they've tended to be a little bit over all the more. So when Casimiro doesn't play and he didn't play last night, you know, she's still brilliant when he's good.

And Crucis is a wonderful footballer, but it does feel like there's maybe a slight lack of energy about Real Madrid.

Yeah, I had to vote for my top 40 footballers, you know, for the Guardian's top 100. Yeah. And I put Wes Hoolahan in and I was told I wasn't allowed him, so I had to put Modrich back in. But that's probably fair, Max.

I'm at this stage, I mean, because I haven't done my vote yet, as I'm at the understanding that you're playing, you can choose anyone you want. They don't need to be on the long list.

I was told Wes Hoolahan was not allowed. I said he's playing well at the moment, but it's been blackballed. Can you believe it?

I think that's appalling. I think it's right. You know what? When I when I submit my list and put myself in the number one I submitted.

Mine yesterday, and it's an annual tradition that I include somebody twice and have one incredibly glaring omission. So I double-parked Joshua Kimmich this year by mistake and I was about to submit it. And then I realized I'd forgotten to include Earling Brout Highland so that that prompted a major reshuffle. You see, that's the thing.

If you missed one out, if you mix one out, it's a nightmare because you've got to do it in order. So you missed one out and he's not in the 40. It's all right. So I'm going to put in that slight problem. It's like hard, but in know where you're going and let's say for yourself. Right, OK. Oh, there you go. Seven so that everybody else you've got go for a change. The plug numbers on all of them.

Six and a half. But you made a six and a half and just let the others be there.

It's interesting doing this. This because because I wondered where to put Ramallo Lukaku, because obviously you say this group is wide open because eventers, when he mentioned Gladbach and Lukaku, scored twice and is brilliant again. And I've got a question here, which is how many sense of forwards are better than him in in world football right now? I am not sure I mean it.

Robidoux, Damski probably. Yeah, Leventhal's maybe Kane.

I don't know. Ireland is his name. Holland. Yeah, but there aren't many. I mean I just thought it was. He's been brilliant hasn't he. Yeah.

It's called sorry. I was just very nervous. He was, he was curiously unable to have a huge impact against Robert. He's done, he's done around doing a massive favor in the Champions League. Actually, he missed the first game against Inter, wasn't able, obviously wasn't able to help him to win the second game, not least because Otto Vidal was was got himself sent off and was back in October without his liability mode. And now, of course, to score the goals, which gives her a chance.

Natasha, I was going to say this is like I have this big thing about footballers and sports people in general being human beings. I think Lukaku, even being in your top top ten shows how a happy player makes a happy player on the pitch. I mean, a happy person makes a happy play on the pitch because when he was at Monday night, you wouldn't think you wouldn't have been thinking about him even in your top 30. Now he's left there.

He's he's happy. He's living life. He's got better melanin. You know, it's just sun only skin. Vitamin D. I look at him now, we're talking about him being in the top ten of the world.

As you know, players can improve as well. But but yeah, it's a marked change in that football, isn't it?

He hasn't improved. He hasn't improved. He's just happy. Yeah, I think this is one of the other things that we sometimes forget. And the risk of stating the bleeding obvious. Right. The worst footballer you've seen play in the Third Division is bloody brilliant. And I think we sometimes don't always appreciate that. We very easily dismiss players. We very easily dismiss and say players aren't good enough. By the way, the people who are most rapidly dismissed, players most brutally dismissed by the players themselves.

You ever heard of what are talking about another footballer? He doesn't think he's good. My God. But but this is it. Yeah. The context is everything. The mechanics of the team, how happy a player feels, the whole environment around him. And Lukaku is really very good indeed.

We should go to Atleti by and won one by and rested a few players and he really should have won this game, which would have been useful for them.

Well, I really would agree to the point that the win would have been really, really important in a way. Well, no, not in a way. Mathematics tell you this or is it arithmetic? I'm not really sure what difference between two things. Every now and again, when I say maths, people say that's not necessarily my tickets or whatever it is, I can't do it. Atletico Madrid, really a draw of defeat was makes no real difference to them because they now go into the final game away.

And when they should have won this game against what was largely a by Munich team, but actually pretty impressive by Munich beating, given how young this team was, given the number of absences. And they had two 17 year olds in the solid last night, one of whom is English and an England international. And so you under twenty one level Akilu. I must confess, I didn't know hardly anything at all about a guy from Seattle who was one or two players who had joined by Munich from Chelsea, and he played in the middle of midfield.

And he looks like a really nice footballer. Very slim, very slight. His decision making is really good. His touches is lovely. He did a couple of really, really nice things. And and it was kind of quite exciting because you have a situation in which by Munich don't win for the first time in fifteen Champions League games, and it should be disappointing for them. But yet by the end of the game, everyone's everyone's a little bit, as you say, from athletics point of view.

Atleti really should have won this.

Yeah, they need a point of Salzburg next week to qualify after Arbi Salzburg one three one Lokomotiv Moscow. Can we talk about the new Champions League plan, everybody? Yeah. If we're going to hold talks this week on a proposed new Champions League from twenty twenty four, the Swiss system often used in chess and other sports, thirty two or thirty six clubs in a single division. They wouldn't all play each other but they'd play ten games. Five home and away, based on seeding the points from then going to a single league table where you pick the top 16 for knockouts, the ones below go into the Europa League just to, you know, throw it on that competition.

And it would mean four more matches, but it might make the group stages more interesting.

Barry is someone who hates the group stages. Does this seem more interesting or less interesting?

I quite like it, actually. I don't think it can be worse than the current system. I haven't given it a huge amount of thought to sort of come up with possible flaws. But on the face of it, I think it's quite an interesting plan.

So, yeah, I did see I think Miguel was stridently against Miguel Delaney.

Well, that's us in favor then. But I so I was expecting to think it will be terrible, but I actually think it looks all right. I don't I don't hate the group stages. I just find them quite dull. So this could also be quite dull, but at least it's a different kind of dull.

One thing's for sure, Juergen Klopp will not like it because it means Liverpool will have to play more games.

John Major.

Yeah, I was going to say it's good news for Desharnais, BBC Sport if they still hold the reigns. But this idea that it will be good because teams play big, there is more chance for teams to play big teams Manchester United, Barcelona or Liverpool.

Real Madrid might be played more often, and I'm not sure that that is the best thing in the world, because when those games are being pulled out in the Champions League or European Cup, as it used to be, those games felt special. So just because we've got this new Swiss system, why what you don't want and I think is for games like Liverpool, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Barcelona, you name any other great fixtures to become habitual way, you just think, oh, well, it's only Barcelona next week.

The European Club Association is, isn't it? They're the power brokers in this. They've been obsessed with the fact that UEFA got rid of the two group stages. What would it be six years ago or so? Because they like the extra revenue from those games? They didn't really seem to mind that those games often didn't really mean anything, particularly that first group stage. So this seems like a compromise situation. One of the things is, though, the report in The Times by Ziegler explained it and it seemed sort of simple, but the simplicity of working out the table in a group seems to have gone really with this system.

It's it's, you know, a group of four, you know, where you are. You know what? You've got to win. That's fine. But this sort of, what, twenty teams or 32 teams or whatever it's going to be sounds quite complicated. And it's a compromise. And as always, it's about the money. Said, can we talk about La Liga and how a Barcelona doing, I mean, that that massive tribute to Maradona was lovely in sports, photography can be amazing.

And that shot of Messi with the 10 perfectly aligned part Barsa, part newshole boys was beautiful, wasn't it?

Yeah, kind of a kind of fading and fading out, wasn't it? Was almost like a like a transition moment from Marianela into Messi, as if that's the two of them are at one. And I must admit, and this is showing my age and I'm not enough of a of a doctor who geek to be able to explain or know if it has a has a phrase by as soon as I saw that he was I think and this is when and this is how old I am.

This is when Tom Tom was his face, the one with the scarf. What's his name again? Tom Baker. Well, this is when Tom Baker becomes what's his face. Davisson and Peter Davison is that sort of face generation. Every generation is the word. I'm looking for a kind of reincarnation. And I knew that there would be some thought people. This is why I didn't write this, because I thought I'm going to get it wrong and I've going to get slaughtered by a doctor who finds it.

Was that it was that photo was perfect. It's amazing how well align the two. The two numbers were and it was it was a really, really nice way of doing it, I think will become probably the iconic image of of all of all of the the tributes to tomorrow that Barcelona had a really good week last week. They they they finally resolved an agreement with the players to make one hundred twenty two million euros worth of pay cuts. They managed to win it.

We can play very well. Messi scored a brilliant golf plays, not being score. I think it's only his second from the season. And so things look slightly better. But we're still in position genuinely where people in Spain now stop and think. Is it possible this year that Maduro don't finish and Champions League place?

Robert says. Question for said, is former rail Sociedad manager David Moyes getting attention in Spain for the magic he's doing with West Ham United? They're probably concentrating more on what Real Sociedad are doing themselves.

Yeah, I'm impressed with her playing lovely, lovely football and enjoy the week. And this was I drove up to San Sebastian on Sunday to see them play it were and we had our first against third finishes a one one draw had handrails with that one, it would have been seven wins in a row, which have been their best run in their entire history. They're really, really nice team loads of young players coming through. They play really good football.

David Silva was missing that weekend, but he's been brilliant. And it occurred to me that it would be great, wouldn't it, if where else I said I'd won the league. They have a former Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United and Arsenal player in their team. And it feels like a joke, although I haven't been able to make it work yet, which is obviously true of most of my jokes.

You know, it's a form of a form of Monday night City Osland and Newcastle player walk into a bar of the bar or something like that. Yeah, yeah.

It really does need work before we let you go, said get your thoughts and everyone else is on Brexit impact on the Premier League. The FAA has announced a radical post Brexit shake up. That'll mean Premier League and AFL clubs cannot sign foreign players until they're eighteen. All transfers from the European Union nations set to be subject to work permits will be allocated using a points based system. It could add Ahrons rowing. It could have seismic effects on the recent dominance of English clubs over European rivals.

Any sort of result of Brexit, I instantly think, must be a complete disaster because of what absolute bag of shite Brexit is.

But I don't intrinsically have a problem with taking back control.

Yeah, I mean, by the way, when you said earlier about the new Champions League, you said the Swiss system of, oh, this sounds like another one of these things they've made up to fix Brexit.

Don't worry, we'll lose the Swiss system.

And of course, like most unlike most of the plans to fix Brexit seems unnecessary, unnecessarily complex to me when everything worked reasonably well before and there was no need to break from it. But that's part of why I was also thinking about this Brexit impact last night, watching Muscala play for four by a minute, by the way, because of course, obviously I'm maybe sensitive to this being an Englishman who lives in Spain. But all the focus has has always been on closing Britain's door.

I'm giving it to look at it from a focal point of view, giving an opportunity to young British players. This would benefit the England national team. I don't think we we so rarely seem to look at it the other way round, which is you're closing the doors of twenty seven countries to English people and in a footballing case, to English players. So watching watching Shalabi last night, I thought, you know, what impact would this have on players like him who's in England under 21 International now, who at the age of 16 goes to by Munich?

Or presumably this will work the other way as well to him. Jaiden Sanco, who is the one I was thinking of, the doneness Bellingham's, another example, Younus Mussarat Valencia. And so I thought this is kind of the other side of this. I'm like you. I'm not intrinsically against the idea of trying to protect young players, maybe not allowing the. To move before the age of 18, although although obviously that's 18 is a labor market, age is of course, the football labor market is younger than that, as we've seen with the fact that these kids at 16, 17, 18 are already first team players.

One thing that is for sure. Just to just to get back to what you said from from ad R&D piece about the impact it might have on Premier League dominance of of particular of the young, talented player market, there is no doubt that clubs around Europe and obviously Spain, this is is the market that I know best. We're very pleased about this. Spanish clubs have long felt the English clubs had an advantage and could steal their best players at 16 in that hiatus between 16 and 18 16 when they could have professional contracts in England.

They're not allowed to till they're 18. Here, there was almost like a two year window of opportunity for British clubs to go and take their best players. It happened obviously, most famously, perhaps were satisfied with years ago. And so, yeah, some people in the rest of Europe are delighted about this.

Barry, you're waving your passport. Do you have it do you have it on you at all times, just in case you have to leave the country?

Is that now he's just there to pose, aren't you? Because I look, I can travel. You can't.

It's in a drawer at the back of the desk. I'm sitting out. But this could be huge for the League of Ireland. There could take over Europe.

Now, this could be like this could be like all those tech companies moving into Dublin. The same thing could happen just with football clubs.

So I was hearing actually that this doesn't apply to Irish talent. The English clubs can still sign Irish players at sixteen because Britain and Ireland still have a reciprocal arrangement going back several years. So an Irish friend of mine said to me. That's probably bad, bad news for British clubs, but a lot I think West Houlihan's over over 16, over 18, I think.

I think he's just about yeah.

Just theoretically riffing off the top of my head here.

Would it be conceivable, say, for a long four town or Shamrock Rovers and the League of Ireland to come to some arrangement with Manchester City so that long town signed the next Messi as a 14 year old from. Real battis and then sell him on to Manchester City, would that be allowed? My theory would be, if you thought of it, Barry, someone there will have thought of it. That's my guess.

And do you know what I think is going to happen? I think football clubs technically have some of the best lawyers in the world. We will see a lot of parents of talented footballers getting jobs in the region of the club and therefore get in, you know, being able to move here and then that that children will sign for the clubs. But I think it's brilliant that all these football fans who are like lads, lads, fans, rah rah rah rah, who voted for Brexit and now going to be maintained in a few years when they can't sign the most prestigious foreign talent.

I think it says it's the turkeys voting for Christmas, isn't it? Serves you right.

Well, I mean, the argument the conversation will be this is good for young English players. And I don't know what the answer to that intrinsically. I don't have a problem with young people not being sort of shipped to other countries when they're 15, 14, 12, 16, because young people should be able to be kids, because for every Lionel Messi there are so many that it doesn't work out. And then they sort of lose their childhood and they don't have the football career.

And so it's like my first thought about this was I want to hate this all because I hate Brexit. But there might be a tiny when it only works if it's global, I guess, anyway.

Well, yeah, one thing is that foreign talent will be able to come into the country, but it does seem to be that it's going to be assessed on a point system. Now, we've heard a lot about the point system over the last five years or so of this Brexit. Well, we call it shitstorm. So it's going to be interesting how players are assessed on this point system. And Natasha alluded to you might need certain clubs, might have to lawyer up in the assessment of how players are assessed by this point system.

As you said, Max, it all makes it very complicated and it's all just going to be a bloody mess again. So thanks for that. Thank you. Brexit said your hands up. Yeah, that's soon for you.

I mean, in a way, just just to say that this kind of process is already happening. There are clubs, the buying clubs in other countries. And this has happened. There is Spanish clubs, for example, have investors from outside basically as a way of bringing players in, giving them opportunities at a level lower than than the one that they would come to in the Premier League, for example, and then bringing them to the UK, at which point I think quite often we talk about players from outside the EU, particularly African players, at which point you've got to get them a passport and they would be eligible.

Now, of course, that process will change, but some of the basic mechanics of that can be maintained. You can use foreign clubs to do exactly what what Barry was, exactly what Barry is suggesting. And then on a kind of a broader scale. Yeah, you've got city city, for example. I'm Girona. And that obviously is a place where players can play and get opportunities, then come in. That's a slightly different set of reasons, but the mechanics can be probably similar.

I'm right.

That'll do for parts. Who said thanks for coming on to you again soon. Pleasure.

Cheerio will be back in one second. Welcome to Part three of The Guardian Football Weekly. Let's start this part talking about the Anton Ferdinand documentary, Football, Racism, and the impact of that incident with John Terry in 2011 on his football and his life on his family. I found it in incredibly moving and I found him sort of compellingly open and sensitive. And this whole idea that, you know, the victim in all this gets completely victimized and the fans boo him every time he went to a stadium because John Terry had lost the captaincy, him getting sent bullets in the post like the social media attacks on him and his family.

I know, Natasha, you were at the trial, the criminal trial for this case.

I wonder what that was like. And, B, what you made of this documentary.

I think for me, it was it was very early in my career as a black female. I found it very not Eye-Opening or surprising, but it was something that was very personal to me at that time. Just racism in general and racism in football. In regards to the documentary, I know a lot of the people that worked on it. I spoke to them prior to the completion of it. The thing that I've tweeted about and that hits me most is the fact that until the victim and I hate to call him that because he did nothing wrong, has been the person that has been most quiet about this situation since it occurred.

I think that is something that is a problem. I don't want to be political, but in wider society and in football in general, there was being at the trial. I mean, I actually wrote a piece for The Guardian at the time and to see Chelsea fans there poppin bottles of champagne when John Terry was found not guilty with it. I don't even know how to describe it, but it felt dirty, I suppose would be a good way of explaining that.

To see Anton and Leo's mum and dad sitting in a courtroom every day listening to the words that were directed at one of their children, for them to have to read in the paper, for them to be confronted every time they left the courtroom with cameras and and journalists and an unpopular media. But is I think it just shows the toxicity of and the lack of understanding, the lack of empathy for not just footballers in general, not just racism in general, but both together.

I was lucky enough to watch it before it came out. And I'll be honest, I got very emotional because it is a subject that is very close to my heart and I'm all for equality and diversity. And I think for Anton to come out at this point, the only the only positive of that is the fact that he's chosen to speak about it now is not a case of someone else putting words into his mouth is his words, his feelings, his faults.

But we only have to go on social media to see that really, truly later. Nothing much has changed. Hopefully the conversation is is now being amplified and people are being more honest. But when I see people saying, oh, well, journalists commenting on it now, we've learnt something. I'm sorry if it took you eight years to learn that something was unacceptable and racist. And I have no interest in having a conversation with you because you should have known that eight years ago I found some of the most compelling parts of it.

Anton Ferdinand, baby Rio, his cousin who works with Max and Antonio Warnock and other people. They were genuinely filming them, thinking about how they acted at the time, choosing to say something or not say something, and really wrestling with almost an impossible conundrum of of what to do. Like, what do you do? This is it's sort of nothing to do with you, but it's everything to do with you. You know, you haven't you didn't bring this upon yourself and really trying to work out what the best thing to do was an answer and sort of feeling like he let people down by not speaking out, but equally speaking out wouldn't have been.

Well, I don't I wouldn't it wouldn't have been easy for him and it wouldn't have made it any easier.

I don't think I think there's a there's a really sad part of situations like that where, you know, we it's his responses. It becomes his responsibility to discuss it, to bring up the conversation rather than the responsibility of those who who don't understand it, who haven't experienced that. You see a lot of people telling him, I will get over it. It's been eight years or, you know, it wasn't that bad. But how dare you tell someone how they should feel, how they should react to a situation that you've never experienced?

I'm not Anton. I know I got abuse for writing about it. I that is probably one percent of the abuse that him his embryo, his family got. I think we need to stop trying to victim shame that that's a general thing and trying to police how people react to situations that hurt and causing pain. And I think the documentary could've gone on for a few hours and there was a lot of people spoken to and a lot of honesty.

But I mean, really and truly, eight years later, has anything changed? If this situation happened in 20, 20, 20, 21, I don't think anything would be different. And I think that's the thing that really, really sticks with me. John, like you, Max, and and obviously, like Natasha was very moved by the documentary and some Ferdinand clearly is one to put this is it would appear to be a much more sensitive character than maybe the public image that we see of his brother.

Let's put it that way. And my memory of this, you know, at the time I was editing a website and it was one of those difficult stories to deal with for various reasons around legal issues. And because it was a court case that did go to court, of course. And the thing the thing looking back on it from, you know, the reporting point of view, it's how she makes a good point. A lot of people are talking about it now, perhaps didn't write about it at the time or didn't attend the court case themselves when maybe those that did should have the stronger voice on this.

The thing is, I'm thinking about John Kerry himself and the knots that the FAA got themselves into over this. Fabio Capello quit his job as England manager because the FAA took away the England captaincy from John Kerry. Now, at eight, nine years on, that almost defies belief that that was allowed to be seen as a valid reason for his departure. Well, you also forget or what I had forgotten is that for the euros that followed it in Euro 2012, it was Rio Ferdinand rather than John Kerry who was left out of the squad by Roy Hodgson for because they were worried about the aspects of the esprit de corps within the camp that so many years on still sends a rather worrying message about how matters were treated back then.

But as Natasha said, you know, we can't look on it and say, oh, things were different back then, because I look at the case of Jonathan Lacco and Kiko QCA quite recently, an incident which was not dissimilar. And the thing that stands out about that case is Jonathan Lacco saying that how he felt that he wasn't given any support when he was the victim of racial abuse by another player. So you can, as some people have done, is try and look on the Anton Ferdinand documentary as some sort of timepiece.

But it isn't.

It's contemporaneous, Barrie, whether the whole thing was quite fascinating. But Anton Ferdinand surprised when he heard what was, I think, a four minute extract of a longer interview when John Kerry was being interviewed by someone from the FAA to give his version of events. And that seemed like a friendly chat between two people, almost like they were having a drink together or something. Whereas Anton, we didn't hear his interview, but he said and no reason to disbelieve him, that he was more like a grilling or an interrogation.

That's why he was made feel the victim. And I think John Kerry's silence was quite telling because Anton, for anyone who hasn't seen it, wrote from an email, invited him to participate in this documentary and. Terry. Received the email and Redish, but didn't dignify it with a response and his is people, his representative said he wanted to sort of leave it behind him, but I think it would have benefited hugely from John Kerry's input.

It might even have helped rehabilitate John Kerry's image. And but. The fact of the matter is that his his explanation for what happened back then was so utterly implausible that it possibly he just felt embarrassed and didn't want to have to go through that again. What do we what? I don't know what you think that you know, John Kerry should do now, I think and this is something that is not just about racist views. I think a lot of people in the public eye need to be more aware of the fact that their supporters, their fans, maybe defend them in a way that is is unhealthy, that is aggressive, that is abusive.

I feel for me personally, it would not change my view of John Kerry as a person having having been in the court case, having listened to everything. But I do think that him engaging with Anton, even if even if he continues to deny it was meant in a derogatory manner, I do think him engaging with Anton and the documentary would have saved Anton a lot of the abuse that he continues to receive. I'm not expecting John Kerry to come out and say, yeah, I said this year I'm this person.

But he may be acknowledging the fact of the wider complications of that situation would have maybe diverted the conversation to more support for Anton as opposed to abuse. I think what a lot of people don't understand is Anton didn't go to the police until didn't report this. Someone independently outside of football saw it like we all saw the video and reported it. He was playing his game. He was doing his job. He was playing this game. And he didn't know what had gone on until he went upstairs and saw his wife and kids and his family and.

I think the biggest issue I have is that Terri is still the conversation, Anton is not the conversation. Anton is the one that experienced this. Anton is the one whose career, not just him, but Leo's career was affected by this. Their parents lives were affected by this. But yet you read articles and the first name, Mrs. Jones, her right to first comment you see on TV, the first opinion or defense you see is about John Kerry is it's not about John Terry.

It's about Anton for me until Friday night. And it's about football. And I think while football continues to pretend this isn't an issue and we're going to be in denial, we need we need to wake up. And that's all of us. That's that's not just black, white, male, female. We all need to wake up and stop pretending this isn't a problem, because until we acknowledge the fact there is still a problem, we will never be able to start to solve the problem.

A correction from the last pod we did on the Eddison Cavani case. I'd said he'd used exactly the same word as Luis Suarez in the Patris. Every case that isn't quite correct. Cavani has subsequently apologized, only going to soldiers as players from different cultures should receive education on racial issues. Social said he's deeply sorry for the mistake he's made. There was no malicious intent at all. He'll cooperate with the FARC briefly to go through Monday, Monday Night Football.

If you can remember that far back Fulham won at Leicester in the five thirty kick off, really going against the grain by playing well during a Monday afternoon five thirty game, which is not really acceptable. Tom says now that Fulham of one two brackets, two in letters like the Prince of Games, does the pod think we can prove Richard Keys wrong and finish above second Richard Chesed at his league table and have them finishing twenty second out of twenty other.

They played brilliantly in this game. John, if you want to give us a pithy fifteen second review of this.

Well yeah. I mean Scott Parker gave one of his now signature interviews in which he described piece by piece how hard his team worked to win the game. And I thought Fulham, particularly in the first half, were very, very good and.

If you would say anything about that game from a point of view, Scott Parker completely out tactics, Brendan Rodgers, who didn't look happy at all and rightly so, I was so worried that Fullam wouldn't hold on just because of how sad Scott Parker would.

Yeah, he would have been sadder than Tarik Lamptey when Lamptey was sent off. I just wouldn't have been able to cope with someone putting another Scott Parker monolog over the streets.

It would have suggested that there is a new one. There's only one anyway. Did they? Yeah, I feel for Scott Parker, actually, because he must be really self-conscious now that safe in the knowledge that every time he does an interview, someone's going to put the street over. But yeah, it was a pretty win for them. Textbook counterattacking display. I thought people were writing them off a bit too early. And we do need to remember they had practically no preseason at all.

I'm not saying they're going to stay up, but I certainly give them a fighting chance and hats off to them, although they've got man sitting next, which is a bit of a kick in the bollocks.

And they look at the fixture, this WRP villa to one. We don't need to talk about the Aronoff side today. We've done it before. Just go back and listen to an old pod, preferably one without an echo in quality audio. And you can hear what we all think on the subject of our Kevin says, I'm thinking of getting Barney Ronni's man United Penalty Monolog made into a kind of live life love ball quote thing. Can the pod recommend any good fonts that would set it off in a downstairs loo type setting?

Thank you, Kevin. You got to go comic sans comic sans Mike, says Himax. Since you retracted your wended read and get good segment, they've now won again. Please can you never say anything nice about them again? Brackett's commenting on how everyone is indifferent to us is fine. Lovely stuff. Thanks. I fear by reading this hour I have mentioned that you won. So this is a very difficult situation I've put myself in and we should congratulate Nevado, who won the eighties.

Football is aging badly. Twitter FA Cup. He's 29. He looks about 85. Is it? Absolutely. It's miraculous and have been some really good fun things on Twitter. Like the guy who did this, you know, supermarkets has football kits, but this one I really loved and, you know, thank you to Winston. I think it's the guy who did it and Henning Vaine who got involved. And it provided me with a lot of joy.

And I know you enjoyed it as well as he was fantastic.

Who was it who beat the final against the Scottish goalkeeper, Ernie McGarr? I thought early.

I felt for Ernie. I voted for Ernie Pyle.

Yeah, just the Nevada is in his twenties, 20s. Nevado Well, I got this great message from Kevin. I said I've supported Nevado since I was a boy and Kevin said, I'm not buying this. You glory Hunza. Where were you when he was shit.

Anyway, that'll do for today. We've banged on for long enough.

Thank you so much for your time. Don't change much. Thank you Natasha.

See you later, guys. Thanks, Barry. You're welcome. But back tomorrow. Tomorrow they come around quickly that night. Yes, we're back tomorrow.

For more great podcasts from The Guardian. Just go to the Guardian dot com slash podcasts.