Hi, this is Jack. Just to say that this episode of Libero was recorded on Wednesday,

before the news about the tragic passing of Diego Jotta and his brother, which we are all devastated

by. When we speculate in this episode about the biggest sports stories of this weekend,

we were obviously talking before we heard about Jotter. We send our thoughts to all of his family,

friends, and everyone affected by the tragedy.

We will miss him.

Just before we start, as always, we'd like to gently remind you that if you enjoy this podcast

as much as we enjoy making it, you can really help us out by leaving a rating, a review,

all positive, please, on Spotify, on Apple, you can leave comments on YouTube.

We're trying to game the algorithm

to make sure that this, our little attempt to try and raise the level of football discourse,

gets to as many people as possible. But the best thing as well is word of mouth. That's how

everything has worked since time immemorial. So if you're going to a Lido this weekend, if you're

eating overpriced Spanish crisps while watching your children play on the swings, if you're going to a Lido this weekend, if you're eating overpriced Spanish crisps while

watching your children play on the swings, if you're leaving a question on an athletic

Q&A, why not mention the Libero podcast? Why not get the word out there for us? Why don't

help us to help you? Right, so welcome to Libero, the podcast about the most important of the least important things, as Fulgencio-Batista once said. I'm Rory Smith of The Observer, and I'm joined for now by the Athletic Jack Pitt Brut. Hi, Jack. Hi, Rory. And I was meant to be joined by James Horncastle, also of the athletic and athletic doubleheader. But Horny's not appeared yet. He might emerge at some point in the episode. We're not sure if he's like jetlanged from his time in Miami, whether he's on the phone to some slightly sinister Italian sporting director. There's lots of reasons it could be. We are waiting for Horncastle. We hope he turns up, but I miss him, but he might not, so it might just be me and you, Jack.

But we thought we'd just have a chat anyway. Okay. Let's do it. Is that all right? Yeah, let's do it. We're going to talk about sports that aren't football, which is a slightly weird approach for a football podcast to take. But we are going to be discussing them in the context of how they interact with football, which is a subject that we're both really interested in,

that you might be slightly better qualified than me to talk about. context of how they interact with football, which is a subject that we're both really interested

in that you might be slightly better qualified than me to talk about. Because you have a slightly

deeper sport in hinterland, I think. You're a cricket fan almost as much as you're a football

fan. Is that fair? Am I exaggerating slightly? Yeah, I don't think you're exaggerating slightly.

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