Hi, I'm Grant Wall. And welcome to the Planet Football Podcast, where I go in-depth with the most intriguing people in the world of soccer.

Just a quick reminder, it's a huge help if you subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.

Today, S.I.'s Brian Strauss joins me to talk about Real Madrid's uncanny way of winning

in UEFA Champions League, Mohammed Salah's insane goal scoring run for Liverpool, Toronto's

gut punch of a loss in the Kakaaf Champions League final, LAFC's remarkable start in

MLS, and the reaction to our annual MLS ambition rankings.

Oddward!

All right, let's bring Brian Strauss in from Washington, D.C. It's been two weeks since we've done one of these my

man so good to get it going again.

Well I guess we'll see about that.

Lots to talk about going on in the soccer world right now. I am just back from Iceland, which you'll see an

SI video story about this, our week in Iceland that just ended.

S. I magazine story too.

But I will say this about Iceland and this was a question I asked to a lot of people as I drove

around the country last week is how can a country of 340,000 qualify for the

World Cup while our, a country of 350 million, fails to qualify

for the World Cup.

And in addition to being a beautiful country, we drove around the perimeter of Iceland, we met soccer people along the way.

And I came away with this idea that there's a real virtue in the smallness of that country that

allows them from a soccer perspective to communicate more easily to make changes they get results more quickly.

And I feel like there's obviously advantages in having a big country in your

talent pool being larger.

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