Hello and welcome to the 35th episode of Liberal.

I'm not quite sure when we're going to stop counting them

or why we're doing it, to be honest. But anyway, I'm Rory Smith of The Observer and Men in Blazers, and I'm joined today by the Independent and Navarra's Miguel Delaney and James Horncastle, who is from The Athletic and Hull. But before we say hello to them, a little reminder, you can follow us on Instagram at Libero Pod. We've been experimenting in the last few days with a communal story,

and we thought

you might like to see it.

Join us, follow us there, and obviously all of the lights, the ratings, the reviews,

all that stuff, we're grateful for all of it if you have the time.

So, James, Miguel, how you doing? Medell where are you? I'm in Zurich. I was in St. Gallen last night. It's nice and Gallen. It's a lovely town, medieval. I like stepping back in time. I once did an Everton Europa League game in St. Gallen the day after being in Naples for the Champions League and arrived, dressed for the Neapolitan autumn, which is very warm, and had to buy an extremely expensive hat. That's my memory of St. Gallen. It was very warm here yesterday. What kind of hat did you buy, worrying? Is it called Bart's? That is that quite fancy brand of skiing hat. Okay. Like I had to buy, like I had to buy a hat, and I think gloves, if I'm honest, it was really cold. Midd, how have the euro's been for you so far? Yeah, enjoyable, yeah. It's been good tournaments. I think it'll properly kick off now that we finally get to the knockouts. Because obviously the women's euros, it's like there is still this issue of there's quality gaps from resource gaps. And that sense got there's only six teams who could win it going in one of them ended up being i have to say really bad in the dutch and also like there's been

this whole thing where and you couldn't notice it and we're covering it it's the group stage has gone

at the same time as a lot of massive sport cricket like wimbledon uh the lions whereas whereas now

they're in the knockouts a little bit like in euro 22, have a bit of a clear run. And so like, you know, Thursday set a quarter final against Sweden, England, will be at primetime TV. And it probably feels like a will kickoff bit. But generally, my main impression actually is, although it obviously is not the scale of a men's tournament, so it doesn't have the same pressures, it really kind of exposes how dysfunctional both the UK and Germany are. Switzerland works so well, everything's so close together. Also, it's quite nice to be doing a tournament where you can basically just rock up to a game 45 minutes before, and everything's just very nice about it in that sense. You're having a nice time. That's nice. Miguel's having a nice summer. That's what we want. We were going to, but we are going to talk about the other tournament, football tournament that's happened this summer. The Club World Cup, the one that ended in New York, where I am on Sunday, with Chelsea crowned World Club Champions or Club World Cup champions, I'm not quite sure which,

I'm not quite sure what either of those two terms will actually mean over the next four

years. The whole thing's felt slightly unreal. It ended yesterday with Donald Trump and

Cole Palmer talking to each other, which feels like I said to Roger Bennett from Men in Blazers

last night, you know when you, like, you, you were arranged like a birthday party or a wedding or something, and you have to invite lots of different people from different parts of your life and you're not quite sure how they'll get on. It feels like that is how, like, Todd Bowley must have felt. Like it's my friend Donald and my friend Cole. And they have nothing in common. I'd love to know what they talked about. But on the more kind of serious... Is that a reference to the Wilton Wedding? A little bit, yeah. A little bit of reference to Wilson Wedding. But like, it was, being in the stadium, it felt remarkable that you saw that that that image, I think, that will now kind of be, you know, for however long Chelsea winning the Club World Cup is remembered,

the image that the club will put up,

that they'll have to put out on the socials that they'll put up at Stamford Bridge,

is Rees James holding a big trophy and Donald Trump standing right there.

And that, Miguel, I think, is a deeply weird image, right?

It's the escalation of the Bist, and the Bishter should stress an otherwise innocent,

honorable garments. What made it political was the fact that the Emir of Qatar gave it to

Leo Messe to put Qatar at centre of this, as you say, Immortal Image. This is exactly the same for Chelsea.

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