Hello, this is international football commentator Derek Ray, and you're listening to the Ranks FC podcast.

Hello, Ranks Squad and welcome to Ranks FC.

It's your favourite intra-continental football podcast.

My name is Jack Collins and I'll be your host today.

And joining me all the way across the water, all the way in San Diego, it's Mr. Dean Jones. How you doing, mate? Hello, mate. Yep, the sun's shining. The heat wave's over. I'm happy. Padre's baseball season starts this week, mate. I'll be there. I'm going. We got Detroit Tigers at Petco Park Friday. Look at me. I'm so embraced in the culture, mate, loving it. Haven't quite going to March madness, though. I've got to admit, like, I've tried. I just don't, I can't care yet. I'm trying, though. I think what's interesting is that, like, because we didn't grow up within the, like, university and college system, it's, like, quite hard to buy in. like whereas with professional sports team, you can kind of jump in at any given moment and going to start to work it out and

kind of not have the allegiances already pre-built, whereas obviously for a lot of people,

that allegiance comes first and foremost. So like, I get it. I do like the idea of just loads of

games on the screens and like four different screens at any given time. That's very much. get it. I do like the idea of just loads of games on the screens and, like, four different screens at any given time.

That's very mean.

It's fun. Yeah.

Like, I do like that wherever I go at the moment, there's just basketball one. And, like, it's like, everyone seems really into it. The games have seemed pretty intense. Like, I have watched some of it. I just don't really care on the outcome. and I haven't heard a half of the teams.

But yeah, I get it.

I get it.

Yeah, I mean, and look, as we say, it's a good time for sports season, right? Like, there's a lot of things going on as we build up. And obviously, we've got the World Cup on the horizon. This is the final international break of the year. Now, we were going to look at doing something ahead of these playoffs, but we realized that the time is didn't quite work. And by the time that this comes out,

the playoffs are going to start and things. So actually, I've been on a different podcast. If you're really interested in the World Cup qualifiers, especially the European ones, I went on the World Cup After Dark podcast with Austin Miller and Amit. And it was really, really fun. We had a real breakdown hour

and a half through all of these European games. I'm off to Prague first thing tomorrow morning

to go and watch Ireland play against the Czech Republic or Czechia. So I'm very, very excited about

this international break. But what we're going to do is next week once the qualifiers are over.

So that will be on Tuesday night. We're going to record on Wednesday and it will come out later on Wednesday than

first thing in the morning. But we'll rank the World Cup groups when they're done in their

entirety. So there's going to be an episode that comes out a little bit later, about 12 hours later

than it would do normally next week in order to look through those and have our go at the World Cup and do something World Cup. But we're going to do something different today, something a bit more evergreen, something that's going to be in there. And actually, as we come towards this kind of running of the season, I always feel, Dean, that especially in England, the Carabal Cup final, kind of marks the start at the end of the season. And I know this was a running joke on ranks for many a year. Where does the start of the season end and the middle of the season start and all of the rest of it? But it feels like we're right into the run-in when we come back after this one. So today we're going to do something different. We're going to look at some players who are under pressure, either from performances, either in terms of where their futures lie, with the World Cup in mind for some of them.

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