Hello, this is international football commentator Derek Ray, and you're listening to the Ranks FC podcast. The Champions League is back, ladies and gentlemen.

It's so back.

Six games, 23 goals, some unbelievable late drama, a breathless thriller in Turin,

North London sweeping La Liga, an upset for the ages in Lisbon, and a pretty

special one in Eindhoven, too. We have begun in style in the world's preeminent club

competition, and there's a long, long way to go. Yeah, it's the Champions League takeaway

here on Ranks FC, the first of the new season. I'm Jack Collins and I'll be a host today.

And joining me across the water all the way from San Diego is the guru. It's Mr. Dean Jones. How you doing, mate? Yeah, I'm good. I mean, I say I'm good. I mean, so you just reeled off all of those goals. I watched two full games and saw three goals. I feel I've been a bit hard done by there. But nevertheless, at least one of my games was good.

One of them was a've been a bit hard done by there, but nevertheless, at least one of my games

was good. One of them was a bit so-so. But yeah, good to have the old competition back, Jack.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I will put it out there that you chose your games. I didn't. I was just like,

what would you like today, please? And off you went. So I watched

PSV against Union San Gilaire. I watched Benfica Carabag and then Yvesa,

Dortmund and Ramat, Marseille. And there were lots and lots of storylines across all of them.

You've got Athletic Club, Starsnell and Tottenham against V. Rial, which I imagine would have been

a lot of people's picks

at the start of the day. But alas, sometimes the competition throws up funny things. And we were

going to start with Arsenal. This episode is going to be the first championship take away

of the season. We're going to do another one a little bit later in the week looking back

at the action from Wednesday and Thursday. But this one's just going to be looking at Tuesday's action. And then at the end of it, in part three, we're going to do a little bit of a kind of more general Champions League preview, looking at who we fancy to go and win the competition this year from a very early stage, obviously, and also some dark courses and clubs to keep an eye on.

As I say, we were going to start with Arsenal, but I feel like Dean, I'm going to have to tell you about what happened in Turin. Yes.

Because just a couple of days after we saw that absolutely incredible Derby, the Italia, where Juventus came out for three winners over Inter, which we discussed on the postbox,

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