Hey there, welcome to Food Ball with Grant Wall.

Thanks so much for joining me.

Our interview guest today is Nick Ames of the Guardian who has written some incredible

stories, including recently on the Ukraine men's national team.

An amazing story ahead of this week's World Cup qualifying playoffs.

Before we get going, you can sign up for a subscription to my writing site at Grant

Wall.com.

It has all my writing, including magazine-style stories and on-site coverage of the men's

and women's game that's Grant Wall.com.

First off, let's have a little monologue.

Chris Wittingham is under the weather this week, so send some positive thoughts his way.

I did want to discuss the weekend, and obviously the big game of the weekend was the men's

UEFA Champions League final, Real Madrid won Liverpool NIL, while the game in the sense

that, yes, Real Madrid seemed like a team of destiny, and they were that way throughout

the whole tournament, really.

Look at the teams, they ended up getting past PSG, Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool in the

end, so you feel like Real Madrid certainly did enough, and yet even this final was just

a strange game.

You look at expected goals, 2.19 for Liverpool, 0.92 for Real Madrid, total shots, 24 for

Liverpool, 4 for Real Madrid, shots on goal, 9 for Liverpool, 2 for Real Madrid, and yet

it's Real Madrid that raises the trophy, and you look at this game, and Chibucortwa

tremendous performance in goal for Real Madrid, and the goal coming fairly early in the

...