The Football Weekend

It’s the international break, a chance to take a deep breath before the club season's crescendo and the massive summer of World Cup 2026. It's also a good time to take stock of the international game, its governance, and the social context in which the United States will host the tournament. Or should you just go to Mexico? That’s what David Goldblatt and I wonder in this week’s episode as the pod...

The Football Weekend is on tour this week with a first stop in Paris, France after a harrowing red-eye flight sat in front of the most formidable snorer in human history. More on that in this week’s episode — a quick one for a number of reasons, not least your host’s fitness levels. I initially asked ESPN and NBC commentator Jon Champion if he had a few minutes to chat about one of the stadiums I’...

We all spend a lot of time lamenting the cynical side of the modern game, but if there’s an antidote, it’s the weekend ahead of us. The FA Cup Third Round Proper is one for the romantics: the smallest clubs in the land can share a pitch with the biggest, and both sides can live a different football life for a day. Moss Rose was built in 1891 for Macclesfield Town, which was would-up in 2020 amid f...

New year, new weekend, and we’re off in an unconventional direction. The big match of the coming days for our purposes is in Paris, but it ain’t PSG. RED STAR PARIS travel to face TROYES on Saturday for a meeting of second against first in France’s Ligue 2. It’s a perfect opportunity to have a look at one of the world’s more storied — if off-beat — football clubs. Red Star was founded way back in...

David Novo from Lisbon's Record  newspaper joins to help us preview the Dérbi de Lisboa, as Benfica host Sporting CP in a battle for bragging rights in the Portuguese capital. Along with Porto — which hails from the town of the same name further north — they make up the Big Three clubs in this nation of under 11 million people that punches far above its weight on the global stage. We got into...

Brad Friedel played his college ball at UCLA and had a stint at Liverpool before a longer and seriously fruitful one at Blackburn Rovers. He also stopped shots for Aston Villa and for Tottenham Hotspur, where in his final season he ran into a guy named Mauricio Pochettino. The goalkeeper, who was capped 82 times for the U.S. Men’s National Team, got a front-row seat to the Argentine’s methods when...

The World Cup is a sporting competition between national football teams to determine the best of them. But it’s always been a vessel for so much more, not least the ambitions of political leaders ranging from the mildly ethical to the downright evil. Host countries want to tell a story about themselves on the global stage, the winners make the case for their own national greatness, and there are a...

There’s a big game down in Italy on Saturday, but there’s only one headliner for this weekend. It’s El Clásico , Real Madrid vs FC Barcelona at the Santiago Bernabéu, the biggest game in club football outside the late stages of the Champions League. This one is box office each and every time, even if we’ve descended somewhat from the interstellar days of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. We’ll m...

Club football is back and so is Germany’s biggest game. It’s BAYERN MUNICH vs BORUSSIA DORTMUND in Der Klassiker . The Bavarian hosts have returned to their formidable best with 11 wins from 11 matches across all competitions this season. Bayern have scored 25 goals in six Bundesliga matches, with Harry Kane, Luis Díaz, and Michael Olisé firing on all cylinders. They are once again among the favor...

It’s the second international break of the young club season, so we’re continuing our tour around the continents to see who’s doing what in World Cup qualifying. This week we head over to the Confederation of African Football to see who’s on their way to North America next summer, plus: How the expansion of the tournament to 48 teams rights a historical wrong with respect to how many tickets Afric...

Monaco and Nice are not the biggest clubs in the South of France — that’s Marseille — but they maintain a testy feud that carries the cultural differences between the two towns. The Principality of Monaco is fiercely independent from France but plays in Ligue 1 alongside Nice, a gorgeous but (somewhat) less glitzy destination than the champagne-and-caviar precincts of the Monégasques. AS Mona...

It’s the Madrid derby this Saturday as Atlético host Real Madrid at the Metropolitano, and ahead of the big game we’re getting into some La Liga history. There’s a thrilling story of how two Racing Santander players defied Generalissimo Franco’s fascist regime, a look at the man largely in Santiago Bernabéu’s shadow who did so much to make Real Madrid what it is today, and the tale of how a flying...

It's the Merseyside derby this weekend, and we get into that feud a bit with this week's guest. After all, Stephen Warnock came up through the Liverpool academy and has been to Anfield and Goodison Park umpteen times (and to Everton's brand new Hill Dickson Stadium once). But that’s not the marquee match of the round. Neither is Man United-Chelsea. The big one is ARSENAL vs MANCHESTER CITY at the...

The 2026 World Cup in North America is less than a year away, and while the club season has now kicked off in earnest, we'll have a number of international breaks before the big show. Each one is an opportunity to take stock of the various national teams across (nearly) every continent and see who’s on their way to the United States, Canada, and Mexico next summer. We’ll take those opportunities w...

The violence, the sectarianism, the proxy war linked to The Troubles in Northern Ireland and what it means to be Scottish — all of it is tied up in the Old Firm, Celtic vs Rangers, Glasgow’s white-hot derby. A particularly ugly Scottish Cup final at Hampden Park even saw alcohol banned from Scottish football stadiums. But what about the commercial side? Because from the beginning, all concerned ha...

Here's a proper Big Match Preview, and it’s a big guest to help us do it. Andrew Mangan is the proprietor at Arseblog, the preeminent fan chronicle of Arsenal Football Club, and he joins us to look at the true doozy ahead this weekend. The Gunners will head north to Anfield on Sunday to face Liverpool in the first proper title clash of the Premier League season. It comes on the back of a very acti...

Liverpool will travel to St. James’ Park  to round out Matchweek Two in the Premier League, and in another time it might merely be a rematch of last season’s League Cup final, or just a meeting of two major institutions of English football who’ve never particularly liked each other. But this one has a different kind of electrical charge, because the defending champion Reds are trying to pry N...

When Robbie Earle left Port Vale for Wimbledon  in 1991, he knew he was joining a cast of characters. John Fashanu, Vinnie Jones, Jason Euelle, Andy Clarke, Efan Ekoku and many more major personalities came together to make the ‘90s Dons one of the more charismatic sides in Premier League history. They welcomed Earle to the crew as only they could: By stripping him naked during a team run thr...

“Anfield is not the same anymore,”  commentary legend Clive Tyldesley  wrote on Substack  in March, because “our relationship with our football heroes has changed…It’s now up to them to give us something to get excited about.” But  when I asked  Liverpool fan and  prodigious observer of the game  Laurence McKenna whether he agreed with that diagnosis, he offered...

During Copa América last summer,  Alexis Guerreros of  The Cooligans  podcast and  Morning Footy  on CBS Sports Golazo came by the Weekend  to preview the Round of 16, and the standup comedian made a sharp point about Lionel Messi’s “elasticity” and his stunning physical resilience after all the kicks and hard tackles he’s taken in a long and storied career. That’s ju...

At the end of the 2023/24 season,  Jon Champion joined the show  just before calling the FA Cup final for ESPN. He’s also a Premier League commentator for NBC, and he’s been to all kinds of grounds across England and beyond over his decades in the game. So what are his favorite stadiums? Champion has a natural predilection for  old places with all their layers,  one laid atop a...

On the eve of Copa América last summer,  former U.S. Men’s National Team midfielder Stu Holden came by the show  to preview a competition that he would soon crisscross the country covering for FOX Sports. The tournament did not go well for the USA, and then-head coach Gregg Berhalter lost his job on the back of it. But it was also a great opportunity to take stock of the young Americans...

World Cup 2010 in South Africa, Group C. The United States Men’s National Team is headed for an early exit, unable to secure the points needed to escape a group shared with England, Slovenia, and Algeria. The clock is ticking down on an abysmal game of football in which the Americans did little to demonstrate they belonged in the knockout rounds. The incessant drone of vuvuzelas is like a hive of...

Carl Anka ’s Premier League time machine... The Athletic  staff writer covers Manchester United and  joined the podcast ahead of the derby with Man City in April,  but we also surveyed the wider landscape of England’s top flight. Carl is one of today’s great tactical minds, and he explored how Nottingham Forest thrived last season, whether their blistering counterattacking style was...

Born in Ormskirk, England,  20 minutes north of Liverpool, it was always Stephen Warnock’s dream to pull on the red shirt at  Anfield . He joined the Liverpool Football Club academy and worked his way up the ranks until he broke into the first team. Having stood on the Kop singing, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” he walked out on the pitch singing it with a tear in his eye. He lived the dream...