Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

I am your host Taylor Rockwell, Daryl Grove.

Not yet back from

boston hopefully will be soon so instead i'm going to be talking to uh graham ruthven of euro sport he covers

la leaguea for europe sports uh and is going to be talking about la league with me today um obviously we're

going to be talking about the big three such as they are right now of barcelona atletical madrid and then and then Real Madrid. But we start off this episode talking a bit more about some of the smaller teams, some of the teams that are a bit more exciting or that maybe if you're trying to get into La Liga, you might want to pay attention to. But then obviously we do cover some of the bigger stories, what will happen with Neymar, what will happen Gareth Baeil, how is it possible that both

both Ram Madrid and Barcelona are able to spend all the money? And I think a very interesting

one is sort of what Athletical Madrid are doing to sort of change their very identifiable style

into something a bit more pretty, which is not a thing that you usually think of when you

think of Diego Simeone tactics and ruthlessness. But we'll see what happens. So Graham has lots of great explanations for what's going to be going on in La Liga and what has already been going on this summer. So I will now turn it over to Graham explaining all those things. With me now, back on the show, I think making his second appearance is Mr. Graham Ruthven, who covers La L' La Liga for Eurosport. Graham, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me today. No problem. It's good to be on again. So I want to get right to it because time is of the essence. We've got La Liga right around the corner. Sidlow tweeted out today that no one has the rights to broadcast La Liga in the UK. He said the league decided that none of the bids were acceptable and effectively ditched the process.

I guess maybe talks are ongoing. the rights to broadcast La Liga in the UK. He said the league decided that none of the bids were acceptable and effectively ditched the process.

I guess maybe talks are ongoing.

From what you know or from what you've heard of the situation, is that La Liga like

having too high of expectations or is that just kind of broadcasters not valuing La Liga

in the UK?

It's a little bit of both.

I mean, it is an interesting situation.

So last season, there was a new broadcaster that popped up called 11 Sports. They wanted to do

the whole cord cutting thing that has worked in the US, particularly with ESPN Plus. And so they

bought the La Liga rights, which had previously been held by Sky.

And Sky, as I'm sure, you know, are the big dogs over here.

You know, they have the Premier League and so on.

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