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

as the Aloa Star Gordon Kay once said. I'm Rory Smith of The Observer and Men in Blazers,

and before we get to today's episode, this is the bit where I have to remind you to leave us

nice reviews and positive ratings on whichever platform you choose to listen to us on.

We recently reached the ditty heights of 80th among all podcasts in the UK, and some of those

are truly dreadful.

It's gone to our heads a bit, and now we're aiming higher, because that's how market

forces work.

On with the show.

The show which today involves what Jack Pitt brought, one of our own,

described on our WhatsApp the other day, as both our smuggist and most chin-stroking line-up.

I might leave a little gap there, so you can guess which people he might be talking about.

And maybe that's why this is the first time this lineup has ever actually done Libero together.

The lucky winners of that description are James Horncastle of The Athletic and Jonathan Wilson, author of the recently released book, The Power and the Glory, The History of the World Cup, which I'm actually meant to be reviewing for The Observer, but haven't got around to yet. I'm sure it's very good. You should probably buy it anyway. It is available in order of bookshops, right, Jonathan? And several bad ones as well, I'm sure, and Amazon and all that kind of place.

Don't have to sell it, but it probably is the best book ever written or sold.

It is one of two World Cup books that have recently been public, and I would, having read neither of them,

recommend that one.

Given it's a World Cup international break, as you'll have noticed, and Wilson's got a book

out on the World Cup, we thought we'd ignore that completely and do something else entirely,

because we're not here just to advertise Jonathan's other revenue streams.

So instead, we're going to talk about a subject that's become a bit of a theme for us as we kind of plan episodes.

And that is what counts as cutting edge tactics in what increasingly looks like football's post-Pep Guardiola world,

...