Libero

So it all comes down to this. Maybe. After Arsenal lost at home to Bournemouth and Manchester City swatted aside Chelsea, the Premier League has a genuine title decider: Mikel Arteta’s stumbling set-piece merchants against Pep Guardiola’s passing drones at the Etihad on Sunday. On today’s Libero, James Horncastle asks Miguel Delaney and Rory Smith whether the momentum has definitively shifted, if...

SC Libero, the most important of the least important membership clubs, is now live! Join via liberopodcast.com. --- This time of year isn’t just about trophies and titles, it’s about trying to stay in the Premier League and this year will be the toughest route to survival in a generation. On today’s episode Jack Pitt-Brooke, John Brewin and Jonathan Wilson look at the survival battle, and the ques...

SC Libero, the most important of the least important membership clubs, is now live! Sign up at liberopodcast.com. --- What’s happened with the tickets for this summer is an absolute scandal but soaring prices is a trend that has an impact way beyond the World Cup. The exploitation of the match-going fan have seen tickets become tradable assets for the market to set the price for, all the while dim...

SC Libero, the most important of the least important membership clubs, is now live! Get on the bandwagon early, before broadsheet journalists start describing us as doing 'interesting things' at liberopodcast.com. --- From peace prizes to golden baubles, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has made it his mission to shower the US president in praise and treasure, while in the process inserting himself...

We are still in the soft launch phase of ⁠SC Libero⁠, but getting on the bandwagon early will give you the chance to lock-in a pay-what-you-want price for an annual subscription until we figure out exactly what perks we give to members. Take advantage of us now at ⁠liberopodcast.com⁠. --- Thomas Tuchel was appointed to the England job with one clear aim: to win the 2026 World Cup. The question on...

Join SC Libero! Our members’ only offering is now live, in a soft way. We're starting you off with ad-free episodes, but a host of other benefits are in what we call 'the pipeline'. Sign up now at liberopodcast.com and you get to pay what you want, because we’re suckers. --- All of football’s great nations used to have their own distinctive styles. Brazil meant Jogo Bonito. Italy meant defensive g...

SC Libero, the most important of the least important membership clubs, is now live! Get on the bandwagon early, before broadsheet journalists start describing us as doing 'interesting things' at liberopodcast.com. --- Chelsea’s fine for secret payments from the Premier League between 2011 and 2018 might have been a record £10 million but within the game that punishment and suspended transfer ban h...

SC Libero, the most important of the least important membership clubs, is now live! Get on the bandwagon early, before broadsheet journalists start describing us as doing 'interesting things' at liberopodcast.com. --- Sunday’s Carabao Cup final could be a historic day for Arsenal. It is their first final since they won the 2020 FA Cup and could mark the start of a glorious climax to the 2025/26 se...

For all of the Premier League's clubs financial advantages over their European rivals, they are facing a wipeout in the Champions League. Is it fatigue? Is it tactics? Is it a massive waste of resources? Or are Miguel Delaney, James Horncastle and Tariq Panja going to looking a bit silly on Thursday? P1: (01:36) P2: (28:26) Produced by: Tom Bassam Email in via getintouch@liberopodcast.com Subscrib...

Atmosphere is one of the Premier League’s biggest selling points to broadcasters, but ask anyone who regularly goes to games and they will tell you that atmospheres in English grounds are in stark decline. If we do accept that atmospheres are getting worse, why is that? On today’s episode John Brewin, Jack Pitt-Brooke and James Horncastle try to unpack what exactly we mean when we talk about a ‘go...

Libero might like knocking the Champions League, but even we know there's nothing like European knock-out football for compelling drama. But with six English clubs in the last 16 and Manchester City playing Real Madrid, again, is this really as exciting as it should be? Is this as good as it once was? This week on Libero, Miguel Delaney, Tariq Panja and Rory Smith ask when the Champions League was...

Every year football's rich and powerful gather at a West London hotel to do deals, shake hands and talk about the game in a way would be quite unfamiliar to anyone not in the posh seats at 3pm on a Saturday. Several Liberi were in attendance at the recent FT Business of Football Summit, so they found a quiet corridor to discuss what they'd overheard at the conference, as well as the detachment bet...

In recent years it has felt as if the Premier League was permanently stratified, with the poor teams unable to win and the rich teams unable to lose. But Tottenham Hotspur have the ninth biggest revenue in Europe and they are at increasing risk of going down. On today’s episode Jack Pitt-Brooke, John Brewin and Jonathan Wilson discuss the possibility of Spurs’ relegation from the top flight. Jonat...

It is – it turns out – quite difficult to pin down an accurate definition of what 'bottling it' means and, therefore, which teams can be fairly described as having committed this failure of will in the past. Miguel Delaney, Rory Smith and Jonathan Wilson give it their best shot at outlining the true meaning of the phrase and discuss the most famous 'bottle jobs' in football history. With the nerve...

Jose Mourinho will take his Benfica team back to Real Madrid on Wednesday night, trying to get through to the last-16 of the Champions League. It is now almost 13 years since Mourinho left Real Madrid but his three year spell there remains one of the most interesting periods in modern football. Never before or since has Florentino Perez handed over the keys to a coach so determined to work against...

It’s Champions League punishment round week, which means clubs who were among the biggest and best in Europe 10 years ago are slogging it out to make it through to the last-16. The question on today’s show is what these sides - especially Juventus, Benfica and Borussia Dortmund - can realistically achieve in a European game that is now stacked against them. Jack Pitt-Brooke, Tariq Panja and James...

In a world where Jack Grealish becomes 'The Rest Station' and Jürgen Klopp insists that no playmaker can be as effective as counter-pressing, it is fair to say that the game's creative geniuses are being marginalised like never before. Has systems football stunted players' ability to think for themselves? Do free spirits have no place in modern tactics? A trio of Libero mavericks, Miguel Delaney,...

Another week, another manager departed from the big chair at a traditional English heavyweight. It turns out Dr Tottenham does not have a cure for the club's own malaise and so Thomas Frank must go. Are Spurs trapped in a gilded cage of being the Premier League's sixth biggest club? Are the demands in north London unreasonable? Where will the Lewis family turn for their first appointment of the po...

Resisting the temptation to get distracted by VAR, John Brewin, Jack Pitt-Brooke and Rory Smith discuss the more immediate consequences of Manchester City’s win at Anfield. It was a result that leaves Arne Slot with no margin for error as he tries to keep his job, but does it also tell us something about Pep Guardiola’s future? Is his new-found activist streak evidence that he’s in his final few m...

There has been no bigger change to football in the 21st century than VAR. On today’s Libero, Jack Pitt-Brooke, Jonathan Wilson and Tariq Panja want to do more than just complain about it, and the harm that it has done to the modern game. They also want to explore how we got into this position, from Gianni Infantino replacing Sepp Blatter through to its introduction at the 2017 Confederations Cup....

In Libero’s lifetime, the panelists have regularly lamented the spectacle served up by the Premier League, but after a bumper weekend, Rory Smith, James Horncastle and John Brewin dwell on whether we’re actually a bit spoilt and if viewers standards have risen with the quality of the football on offer. Drowned out by the often negative online noise, Libero remembers to enjoy itself in this episode...

"In the middle area of the pitch, those 24 metres, we feel the game has become stuck, particularly in the Premier League. Everybody has so much information now.” These were the words of Anthony Barry, Thomas Tuchel's number two, back in November, when discussing the what England players face week-to-week in the Premier League. On this episode, John Brewin, Miguel Delaney and Rory Smith discuss to...

Wednesday sees the climax of the Champions League's 144-game 'league phase', a TV bonanza featuring 18 fixtures, after which we will know who made the top eight, who faces the punishment round and who goes home. It's thrilling stuff, we're told. On today’s Libero, Jack Pitt-Brooke, Jonathan Wilson and Tariq Panja discuss the second season of the new format and wonder whether the pay-off is worth t...

Thomas Frank may have delayed his departure with that surprisingly comfortable win over Borussia Dortmund, but that is only the tip of Tottenham’s problems. What is the club’s strategy? What do they want to be? Do they no longer have a sense of quest? To answer all of that are Jack Pitt-Brooke, Miguel Delaney and Rory Smith. P1: (05:14) P2: (29:21) Produced by: Tom Bassam Email in via getintouch@l...

It was supposed to be the smoothest running Africa Cup of Nations in tournament history, all the edges levelled off. Then came Sunday’s final and unbelievable scenes in Rabat: dodgy penalties, an even dodgier Panenka, Brahim Diaz’s tears, riot police and Senegal denying what had looked a triumph custom-designed for the Moroccan hosts. That Jonathan Wilson was there to see it - his 12th AfCon final...