The Athletic.

Hello, I'm Dan Bardell.

And I'm Flo Lloyd Hughes.

And welcome to the Athletic Football podcast, where every Wednesday, Flo and I pick out one article from all the brilliant writing available on the athletic and put the authors under the spotlight.

This week, as the Premier League gears up for Chris Charanado's second debut at Manchester United,

our United correspondent Laurie Whitwell is back on the show to talk about

the 3pm blackout and how unlike in 189 other countries around the world, fans here in England

won't be able to watch the game legally. Yeah, we're also going to hear from our resident EFL expert. My

Friday co-host, George Ellick's going to drop in and tell us a little bit about things from an EFL perspective. Plenty for us to talk about with this flow. It's a really, really interesting story and stuff with a lot of nuance to it, much more than I realised, actually, before we prepped for this podcast. But let's quickly talk about England. Let's start with Jude Bellingham. He's quite the player, isn't it?

Yeah, he was brilliant on Sunday night. I've really enjoyed the game. I love Jesse Lingard. I just think he's so fun to watch. I think he looked like he was having such a good time. And that's so great to see. A player doesn't get a lot of game time, just really enjoying every single time he steps on the football pitch. and I know everyone always says it and it's such a cliche with Jubillium

you know, he's only 18, blah, blah, but the composure and the confidence of a player that young, and to just sort of boss the midfield like he did, is just so impressive. And I'm so excited to see even more of him over the next few years. Yeah, it's an absolute joke and I know it was against Andorra, but I really think that Bellingham can do that against elite opposition as well. So I'm looking forward to seeing him develop in the next few years. We probably won't talk so much about Trent Alexander Arnold in midfield. I don't think we'll be seeing that happen again for England. But remember,

there's plenty of England stuff going on on The Athletic, because obviously the Poland

games coming up tonight as well. If you aren't already subscribed, then you can sign up today

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Laurie, welcome back, a regular on our podcast now, second appearance.

How are your excitement levels around Ronaldo's big debut on Saturday? Yeah, I feel quite privileged because I'm going to the game. I'll traffic it. It was actually a last minute substitution with Carl Anka. We had originally arranged for me to do the West Ham game away, which is the next weekend and him to do a Newcastle home game. But then I realised I had a wedding the day before the West Ham game so I said

can we swap

and then

Rinaldo signed so I feel quite lucky to be in the stadium as we'll discuss because it's a 3pm kickoff so it's not on TV but yeah excited. He's obviously in Manchester I'm going to start training with the team I think tomorrow so yeah and I'm sure he'll be wanting to start that game.

We'll see if Solshar picks him,, I think, tomorrow. So, yeah, and I'm sure he'll be wanting to start that game.

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