The podders look back on the opening round of games in the Champions League. Plus, previews of Liverpool v Chelsea, the rest of the big games in the Premier League, and the secret behind Huddersfield’s successSubscribe and review: iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, AcastToday’s Football Weekly Extraaaa sees AC Jimbo, Raf Honigstein, James Horncastle and Barry Glendenning chew over the first round of Champions League fixtures. There were big wins for Leicester at Brugge and Manchester City, and even bigger ones for Barcelona over hapless Celtic, and Bayern Munich and Dortmund. No such joy though for Arsenal, who were lucky to draw in Paris, and Spurs, who lost 2-1 to Monaco in front of 85,011 fans. Ouch! Continue reading...
Barcelona and Bayern have already flexed their muscles and the chances of the leading lights not reaching the lucrative knockout stages are negligible, which is just as Uefa desiresIt is not exactly news that the Champions League group stage has become dull and predictable – chances are you might have heard the complaint before – but it is coming to something when the greatest spectacle as well as the only genuine surprise of the first match day were both provided by the weather in Manchester.The biggest clubs have long had it far too easy in the first phase. The competition is more or less drawn up to guarantee them safe passage to the post-Christmas knockout stage and Barcelona and Bayern...
Michel Platini may be banned from football but not from Uefa’s congress, where the election of a new president may not be quite the brave new world football had hoped for at its governing bodiesOnce more to Fifa, the Chinatown of sports governance, where you always end up just having to forget it. Dark and terrible things happen, but you have to move on unsatisfactorily. There is no resolution. The only thing you gain is cynicism.We begin with the organisation’s ethics committee, a body so relentlessly self-satirising that it would make a North Korean democracy committee look the less preposterous institution. Related: Aleksander Ceferin, Slovenian federation leader, elected Uefa president Related: Michel Platini declares he has clear conscience in Uefa...