Welcome to the Total Soccer Show and a show we're dedicating to the league that arguably gave us the most compelling and dramatic season-long title race of any league, Seria.

Milan are champions for the first time in 11 years. They pipped their rivals in Tehr to the Skodetto on the final day,

sparking jubilant celebrations in Em Amelia Romagna and sparking cigars in Zlatan's mouth. The third horse in the race, Napoli finished in third, and Yventa secured themselves Champions League Soccer once again in a season, but they might not look back upon too fondly. The Roman teams, will both be in Europe next year and the Venice

fashion brand. They're going to be down in Serebe once again. My name is Ryan Bailey. Joining me today

to talk Cautio is a Rome-based Seria journalist and a Scott who knows a lot about soccer. Finally,

we have one of those on the show. Alastair McKenzie, welcome. How are you?

Yeah, very good. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. And thanks for the wonderful introduction. Oh, you're very welcome, Alice. Very welcome to have you here today. You may have seen Alice's work in the Times and the IPaper, EuroSport 442, BBC, CNN. The list goes on and on and on. and Alastair, you're a podcaster too, is that right?

I am, yeah.

I mean, it're a podcaster too, is that right?

I am. Yeah. I mean, it's a club-specific podcast in my case. I co-host one called Latsio Lounge all about the first team of Rome, obviously, Lazio. So if we happen to have any Latsio English-speaking

Lazio fans listening to this, please

check it out. Why not? Okay, so a little bit about your story then, Alistair, before we get

going. We're in Rome. We're both in Rome. You're a Lazio fan, presumably. How long have

you been covering Seria and what brought you to choose the Dolce Vita?

Yeah, well, I mean, any UK-based people of my kind of generation will be familiar with a TV show called Football Italia that was on in the kind of 90s into the early 2000s and basically it was

showing free free to air Italian football

every weekend. I grew up in a household where my parents didn't watch any football so we didn't

have the paid subscriptions on Sky and so on so I couldn't actually really watch any football

other than Italian football in that period. And I eventually picked up last year

as my team, more or less, sadly to say, because they were absolutely incredible back then.

And I had a fascination with Rome as a city as well. And yeah, so that was where the kind of love

began. I mean, it is an incredible league. I do love it to bits. I would have given up

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