Hello, this is international football commentator Derek Ray, and you're listening to the Ranks FC podcast.

Hello, R Squad and welcome to Champions League Takeaway here on Ranks FC.

Your look back at all of this week's Champions League action as the final eight sides picked up their spots in the last 16 to meet the teams that came first to eight in the league stage.

My name is Jack Collins and I'll be your host today.

And joining me across the water all the way from San Diego is Mr Dean Jones.

How you doing, mate?

Yeah, I'm good, mate. Yeah, pleased I'm not a big fan of Seria, I guess.

That's probably the big takeaway.

It's been a bad, bad week for Italian teams, isn't it?

Literally, yeah.

At least they've still got pizza and pasta.

And inter.

I didn't see it.

Pizza, pasta and inter enter in that order. It was a bad couple of days, wasn't it?

Unless you're into, in which case you've got a lot of gloating to do.

So that's good for them.

But yeah, the playoffs didn't go well for them in that sense.

But I think the playoffs have been a success.

I think you could look back at the way that they've rejigged this tournament and got,

okay, yeah, this is more excitement than we've ever had at this period of a Champions League campaign.

We don't normally get games, you know, like the one that's happened at the Bernabar tonight.

You know, Kate Abdo said, actually, the buildup, she's like, the Bernabelle's hosted just about every big event you can imagine in football.

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