Hi, I'm James Richardson, with a quick word on the audio treats, the Athletic have in store this season.

Three times a week you get the award-winning Totally Football Show with the likes of James Horncastle, Raphael Honexine, Carl Anker and

Rory Smith and me. Mark Chapman hosts the Athletic Football

Podcast are flashy four times a week with David Ornstein, Adam Crafton and

many others. The Athletic Women's Football Podcast will

have all the women's Super League coverage off the back of their brilliant euros and

the offside rule is back too with weekly episodes. That's not all. There are

eight dedicated club shows. There's

Adam Hurry's Joyous Football Cliche show. Michael Cox's insightful

Athletic Football Tactics Podcast, the Offbeat Tefo Football Podcast and a revamped Football Manager show too.

Ooh, you can get all of these shows wherever you find your podcast or listen

ad free on the athletic. The athletic. Welcome to the Athletic Football Podcast, I'm Ian Irving and this episode is all about

FC Barcelona. It's been the most enduring story of the transfer window no doubt a crazy summer of

spending of claim and counterclaim of economic levers and new and weird and

wonderful ways of running a football club it seems. We're going to explain it all

over the course of the next hour. You don't want to miss this one. It's a difficult

one because La Liga are doing something I think that's pretty brave actually in modern football

to stand up to your own clubs and say you guys can't be trusted to run yourself.

The French club will pay his 198 million million release clause of Barcelona, more than doubling the existing

record of $93 million that Manx United paid for Paul Pogba last summer.

Barcelona as well is a club that is kind of a mood, like the country tell

have to feel that Barcelona is like contagious. We're eating today and we might starve

...