Hello, this is the game podcast from The Times and I'm Natalie Sawyer. Joining

Gregor Robertson and I today it is Jonathan Northcroft. Jonathan, good afternoon

how are you?

Tell us you've been in Lisbon,

you've been experiencing the different Champions League

should you say, and now you're back,

so you're obviously having to quarantine for two weeks but tell us about your experience in

Portugal first.

I am yeah it's all a bit surreal actually everything was surreal very much including the game but but yeah I mean I am well to start to start with sort of what I'm doing now I got

back yesterday which means I've got to do two weeks in in my house in Leicester again so being from Leicester this has just been like an endless year of restrictions

and stuff like that. So I'm going to do two weeks here because there's no air bridge between

Portugal and England.

And then the trip itself was, it was a strange trip

in so many ways, I mean, just the experience of flying

and being at airports and hotels again is it's weird and then you had a

champions league with all the this sort of COVID restrictions in the stadium

and really limited numbers I mean more limited numbers in many ways than in Premier League games

so each club only had I think 12 passes for journalists some newspapers didn't actually

get in and you couldn't cover any of the rest of the tournament you can

only cover the club you're attached to so I spent a couple of days watching the

other quarterfinals on TV in Lisbon and then and then going to the game and around that you

can do anything I mean usually on a trip like this you try and meet a few

...