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

as Artilio Lombardo once said. My name's Jack Pitbrook. I'm from The Athletic. I'm joined by

Jonathan Wilson and by Tarrett Panda for The New York Times. And you can find us all on Instagram at

Libero Pod. And the link to the Instagram page is on the episode description, wherever you

are listening to this podcast.

Now, today, we are hoping for the final time, I think, to talk about the Club World Cup.

And amid all of the politics, you know, Donald Trump, Jenny Infantino, Saudi Arabia,

Desone, FIFA, UEFA, all of which I think Rory and Miguel and James discussed on the really, really

interestingly on the last episode. There is another story here which we didn't really touch

on last time, which is the new world champions Chelsea. Jonathan, this has been an amazing

season really given that they looked like they were going nowhere in the middle of the season

and they ended up finishing fourth in nowhere in the middle of the season,

and they ended up finishing fourth in the Premier League, winning the Europa Conference League,

winning the Club World Cup. Is Enzo Moreska getting enough credit?

I think he's beginning to, but the problem is finishing fourth in Conference League,

they're pretty much par, right? And, you know, they had a very good autumn, a very bad winter, and then they picked up again in the spring. I think there was signs towards the end of the season, they really were playing quite well. I think the second half of that conference league final, they were excellent. The problem with the Club World Cup is, it remains entirely possible that brilliantly as they played in the first half of that final. it was just somehow a bit of a freak because of the heat and PSG suddenly ran out of steam and the fact that they played their semi-final 24 hours after Chelsea in two months we could look back at that and go what don't know if it happened there how did that game happen a little bit in the same way we look at Arsenal beating City 5-1 and think, oh, maybe that wasn't the sort of crushing demolition of city and the elevation of Arsenal it appeared in the moment. But I think you have to give

him a rest of enormous credit for that final. Perhaps he was, you know, he did benefit from

the climate and the timing of the games but the way that he closed

the way he closed pshg down the way he he stopped akimi getting forward by using pedro netto as a sort of left

wing back out of possession just popping the ball in behind nino mendes which led to the first goal and made Numa Mendes drop deeper, which leads to the second and third goals, you sort of think, why has nobody else tried to do that? And maybe that's the advantage having Robert Sanchez, a goalkeeper who's actually very good on the ball if you give him a bit of time. This was sort of a dreamer-eska performance. I guess the question is how replicable it is,

was it to do with very specific circumstances? But PSG in two seasons of Luis Enrique,

have only lost by three goals twice, once to Enzum Oreska and wants to Eddie Howesley Castle.

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