Hello and welcome to Libero, the podcast about the most important of the least important things,

as Cesar Luis Menotti once said. Now we're going to start with our usual begging bowl approach here.

We need your help. Please tell other people about Libero, particularly if you're enjoying listening to the

podcast as much as we enjoy making it. So whatever you're doing this week, whether you're going to

Wimbledon, going to Lords, going to Women's Euros, or maybe you're redirecting a family holiday

to take in the first round of the Champions League qualifiers. Perhaps you're going to Ludigurett's

Rasmagrad against Dino-Mintz or Zalgiris Vilnius against Hammer and Spartans. Please just

let people in the ticket queue know all about the Libero podcast. My name's Jack Pittbrook and from The Athletic. Joined today by The Athletics, James Horncastle and the observers, Rory Smith, who's coming all the way from New York City. Hi, Rory. Hello, how you doing? I'm good, thanks. Rory, you might need some antibiotics because it looks to me like you're coming down with a serious case of Club World Cup fever.

What no one else will know, it took you three tapes to do that gag. I'm not sure it was worth it, to be fair. I've got a, yeah, full-blown case. Do you've probably go to a Woolgreens or a CVS to get some? There's a CVS on every corner.

The CVS City.

Yeah, I've got Gianniitis, I think.

Delaney has been saying this in our,

what he refers to with that the production group. corner, the CVS City. Yeah, I've got Gianniitis, I think. Delaney has been saying this in our,

what he refers to with like the production group. It's just a WhatsApp thread. I think he's

referred to me in Horncastle as the Gianni Boys. But like, I came into the Club World Cup.

Basically, my thing with it, do you know what it is? I actually think the Club World Cup is just a really

interesting thing that's happening. Like there's, it kind of joins together there's so many the strands and the threads of modern

football that lots of it doesn't work they've clearly messed up certain elements of it the ticketing as

adam crafton your colleague has reported comprehensively that the ticketing's been a bit of a disaster

they'll have to learn from that i think the kickoff times don't work and they need to stop trying to appeal to Europe whilst being in America. But like the basic concept to me is a valid one. Like there should be a like a club world championship. That's not a ridiculous thing to want to hold. And just seeing kind of all these different bits, all these issues that we talk about and we think about in a lot of the ways we cover football kind of through the year. Seeing it all like crystallised in one place, just journalistically, I think is really interesting. So yeah, I'm not anti-club World Cup. I wouldn't say I'm like feverishly pro it. I just think it's interesting watching it unfold. James, do your experience to tally with Rory's?

Yeah.

I think we've seen to hold new competitions to higher standards

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