Totally Football Show, featuring more shocks and defeats than a Dutchman with cold toes.

As we take a break from the domestic game to discuss what's coming home,

who's reminiscing Le Coupe at La Maison and what happened in Arhus.

It's a totally international football show.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable. This is. Unbelievable Unbelievable

This

On board with another

Football show

In the pod today

We got Michael Cox

Hi James

Author of the Mixer Yes How's it doing All right. It's out in Polish now, if you happen to be in Poland. All right. Tom Williams, author of Do You Speak Football? Hello, James. Is there a Polish edition of that with a big chapter of English football saying? There will be. There will be. Yes. Polish, French and German. Which English football saying do you think they'll be most flabbergasted by? Bounce back ability. It takes a bit of explaining. You need to know Ian Dowie to really get it. I think you need to know Ian Dowie, full start. Yeah, yeah. And also here today, Daniel Story. Good morning. Which is a great case of nomadic determinism, given that

you too are now published author with an actual physical print book coming out. Yes, Gaza in Italy

is out on the 20th of September and can be pre-ordered now. Excellent news. All those books available

in all the usual places for books.

Anyway, speaking of promotion, it's one of the exciting features that you wafer have unveiled

in their brand new Nations League promotion and crucially relegation. I'm going to declare

this opening weekend a resounding success, A Tom. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I mean,

it feels like a novelty still because they have the feeling of one-off games and we're all getting to know the Nations League in its former. I think it will be later on as the autumn advances and we start seeing which teams are in contention for promotion and relegation that it really captures the imagination. But I think, yeah, very successful start. It's already captured my imagination precisely because from the word go, that threat of relegation, that thrill of a possible promotion, is there. Lose your first game and you're suddenly at risk of, well, here's what Ken Early puts. When you matches, you get to play more difficult and interesting games against some of the best players in the world, losing you might eventually end up in the same group as Ireland. Yes, that is true. Or maybe not Ireland might be going down themselves. That's true. That's true. But yeah, I mean, the shortened, the curtail, the compressed nature of the competition means that it's all to play for immediately. Yeah, I think it's quite exciting. The promotion and relegation aspect is just great, I think, and the fact that a third of the teams go up, a third of the teams go down, I think it's just going to be exciting. And people I've spoken to are just quite positive about it. I think there was a real kind of lack of enthusiasm for international friendlies. There are still some friendlies. but I just think giving international football more structure, more meaning is a positive.

And we're only one week in, but I thought,

you know, there were more exciting fixtures than we are usually accustomed to at this point

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