Heavy England shirts, absolute clinics & Club World Cup curiosity levels

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I'm sorry, you can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like.

Is Gascoigne gonna have a crack? Yes, you know. Oh, I stay!

Brilliant!

The G!

He's round the goalkeeper! He done it!

Absolutely incredible! He launched himself six feet into the crowd and Kung Fu kicked a supporter who was Iwip without a shadow of a doubt giving him lip. Oh, I say,

it's amazing! He does it, tame, and tame, and tame again. Break up the music, charge a glass.

This nation is going to dance all night long.

The England shirt weighing heavy against Senegal. A welcome refresher course on the correct emphasis for the word to describe the main person in a band.

George Hurst mixes his metaphorical goal scoring relief. Claudio Ranieri won.
Irresistible pre-World Cup narrative nil. Clubs eyeing potential transfer targets.
An unprecedented booing conundrum.

Cash vs. Curiosity as the Club World Cup looms.
Players putting on an absolute clinic. And Kevin Pressman's 1998 car chase.
Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts. This is Football Clichés.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry.
I'm joined by Charlie Eccleshare. How you doing? Very well, thank you.
Alongside you is David Walker. How are you doing?

I'm very good. Excellent.
I'm really excited for tonight, as this podcast goes out, in Leeds. Doors will open for clichés quiz live at 7 p.m.
The quiz will start at 8 p.m.

So plenty of time to get settled. Dave, we've got a great quiz planned.
We have. Yeah, really looking forward to it.

Good to return to Leeds, which is turning into something of a happy hunting grounds for us after a rocky start.

Really turned things around in Leeds. I think we're going to have a lot of fun up there.

And as we mentioned the other day, obviously we've got the live tour coming up, but we plan to do a lot more of these quizzes around the country. So

if you haven't made the cut for the full clichés live show, fear not, because you'll probably get a clichés quiz in your town. And as Dave mentioned, clichés is going live in 2025.

We're in Brighton, the Hackney Empire in London, Birmingham, Dublin, Manchester, Leeds, and Glasgow, and potentially Cardiff as well. We are in advance talks over that one,

which should be good as well. Documents being prepared.
Yeah. We're at that stage.
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But back to regular matters now, the adjudication panel. England won Senegal 3 on Tuesday night, Dave.

If you could assume your England pod hat and can give us a 20 20-second sincere rundown of what it feels like.

It's amazing just how quickly it's taken for all the usual suspects to kind of just slip back into the, oh, the shirt weighs too heavy on them.

I saw so much shirt weighs so heavy. It's insane.
Charlie, of all the games for the England shirt to weigh heavy, do you think it weighed heavy against Senegal at the City Grand

in the tiny amount of time between the season and the Club World Cup? I don't reckon it did. I reckon that's the lightest the England shirt could could possibly be.
Yeah, I think the opposite.

I think they just really didn't, really didn't want to be there. Yeah.

And that's fine. From a just desperate for the season to be done point of view.

I did have someone, a mate of mine, who was at the game, he messaged me beforehand and went, mate, I've lumped on Senegal that they don't look at it in the warm-up.

England, they don't look at it.

They're all just trotting about. Don't look like they can't be asked.

On that note, Charlie, one listener whose name I slipped my mind, sent in a summary of the games, and one pundit said that Senegal simply wanted it more, which you don't want to see that in an international friendly game.

That should never be cited as a thing. It's an indictment of England, clearly.
It's probably the time when it most is accurate, though, or does make a difference.

So there are going to be some friendly games where one team is really up for it, another just really doesn't care.

So the bottom end of sort of motivation should actually be more significant, do you reckon? Like, that's where the real difference will come in. Yeah,

exactly.

Who wanted it less?

You see, Tukal calling it a test match. Oh,

that was very Bob Bradley, wasn't it? Yeah.

That's not going to go down well. Is that it though? Have they got any more games? Is there another one on the weekend? Or is that

the camp over till the next game for England will be at Villa Park and Dora in September?

A classic sort of snapshot of the kind of slight futility of this really brief England camp at a stage of the season where nobody gives a shit, Dave, was the chat at the start of the second half about why he hadn't brought on Ivan Toney

in the second game of the two, so he hadn't had a a chance to see him out on the pitch. And I think one of the pundits said, oh, well, have you seen him in training?

And then the others went, well, what good is that? And then just thought, oh, the whole thing's so futile.

What are you possibly going to learn about Ivan Tony in any scenario over the last sort of week or so? I mean, it really just sums up the whole.

I don't want to say futility of international football, but just like it's the smallest sample size you could possibly imagine, isn't it? Yeah, you know, it just kind of doesn't matter.

The World Cup is literally a year or a year away.

One year, as we record today, the World Cup will start. So there's plenty of time.
Yes, we do look quite bad at the moment, but it's going to be all right, isn't it? Probably.

Given how much will happen between now and then, I wonder what chance there is, genuinely, of this game being referred to or there being any significance. I mean,

there could be, there could always be a, oh, it was actually the Senegal game, wasn't it, that we saw he didn't trust Trent or something. That's where it started.

Lots of tenuous bigger picture stuff going on in the fallout to this game, but I want to focus on this.

Charlie, you may remember a debate we had on this podcast a fairly long time ago about what circumstances a co-commentator might say, yeah, but he won't mind that, about talking about a player who's sort of scored a slightly scruffy goal.

So what would be the classic, he won't mind that? Yeah, we talked about, didn't we, in relation to Mbappe? Was it against City? He scored like a complete scuffle, but yes.

Which would have been in what, February? But he won't mind that. Yeah, I think it's one way you haven't caught it well at all.
It might even have just hit you.

You know, it doesn't look very aesthetically pleasing, but they won't mind about that. And is there an upper limit to this phenomenon, Dave?

I mean, like, let's say it's a cast iron-owned goal and it's completely ruined. You know, it's taken a goal off your tally or something like that.
Would that still qualify as he doesn't mind?

He won't mind that because, you know, he's still got the goal, or is that a little bit too over the edge? Well, it depends a little bit on the type of situation.

Jamie Donnelly's goal for Leighton Orion against Men City, like

he probably did mind that, that it went down as an own goal. He won't mind that.
He minded it a lot. Yeah, he couldn't use it.
Brendan Johnson in the Europa League final. Was that an own goal or not?

No one really cares. He won't mind that.

He hasn't caught that very clearly, but he won't mind about that. That's absolutely textbook, isn't it? The scenario, the execution, everything.

Anyway, here is Lee Dixon on England's opening goal after Edouard Mendy parried an Anthony Gordon shot straight to the feet of Harry Kane.

One of the things that will never go away from this game is the fact that he stays in between the posts and he picks goals like this up.

Same the other night.

Just right on the edge of being offside. The arms go up.

Save's not the best, but he won't mind. It's just on a plate for him.
It's not Harry Kane's job to mind about Edward Penby's safe. It doesn't come into it.

I don't want to pick on Lee Dixon, but this is an important point for us to classify. Charlie,

that should not be factored into the he won't mind that scenario. No, but you do quite often hear that with something like, you know, it's awful defending, but he won't care about that.
Oh, you know,

but you should, like, it's not, I don't, you know, why would he? But I do think this does this does come into it fairly, or like, oh, it's a, it's just awful communication, but he won't care.

Yeah, this was just my favourite bit of the game, Dave, to be honest.

Slim pickings. Right, moving on.
This came from Charlie Eccleshare, actually. It's from the Today programme on Radio 4, an issue first discussed on this podcast back in August 2020.

And here it comes again and I was actually really confused about what I felt about it again so good to have a refresher course.

Sting has announced a significant donation to the Baltic Contemporary Arts Centre in Gateshead telling the BBC the north east of England has been neglected by successive governments for decades.

The police frontman grew up near nearby Wall's End and in an email conversation with our culture editor Katie Rashid.

I mean Charlie you can see how this might have happened because it's obviously it's reading a script and if you see it in the one word you're gonna go for frontman aren't you really?

It really got me. Nearly spat out my cornflakes.

Police frontman. I mean, again, it's such a subtle thing, Dave, that I did have to question myself.

I had to ask at least one WhatsApp group. Like, is it, it is frontman, right? You would say frontman if you were ever to say it out loud, but but I don't know.

Frontman, I mean, again, you can see how it's come about here.

I like it. I like it.
Stick with it. You are frontman.
Are you the football cliche's frontman?

Yes, yes, I am. Thank you.
I own the intellectual property of the concept. Yes, thank you.
It's fine. It's right.
Anyway. Right, next up, Aiden McLaren and Joe Higgs got in touch about this.

Here is George Hurst speaking about scoring his first international goal in Scotland's friendly win over Liechtenstein. George, congratulations on the victory and first Scotland goal.

How does it feel? Yeah, great feeling.

One that's always nice to sort of get out of the way early early, I think, you know, sort of get that duck off the back. And,

you know, to get that first goal is massive for me. But again,

I love the melding together of clichés, Dave, and getting a duck off your back.

I mean, at this point, you can just say it, and we all know it. It's fine.
Where's the monkey in this situation?

He's often break his monkey.

And that's a euphemism I won't be using. I mean, this is the beauty of sort of these sort of decorative clichés, Charlie.

You can kind of just abuse them, and it's fine, because everyone will know what you mean. But the hesitation was perfect there, because it's like we've all done it.

We haven't been able to find the words, and we've just said what was uppermost in our brains. Yeah, I wonder if he then thought, oh,

is that right? That sounded a bit wrong. Or maybe he's just always thought that.

It works just as well.

Pretty difficult for a duck to be on your back, though, I guess, wouldn't it? They're not particularly grippy. Especially if they're on your shoulder.

Albatross round the neck. But this reminds me, Dave, of the French Open final.
tennis at the weekend. The BBC live blogger thought Greg Ruzetski had said, come with the moment, come with the man.

So this caused a real stir, you know, because... Susie Dent got involved.

Well, because Greg does like it he couldn't have been stitched up any worse because he does have a bit of a habit of doing this kind of thing so it was completely believable yeah

you timved tim eman the other day as well

don't leave us charlie

uh so yeah it was eminently believable and i was really i genuinely was really curious as to whether the blogger knew that what was being said was nonsense but just wanted to put it out out there and stitch him up, or whether he also thought it.

And it turns out it was a third option that Rozetzki hadn't said it, and this guy had thought that's what the expression was. Yeah, I mean, yeah, cause a right stir.

Laura Kirk tweeted this out and just thought, is this actually the way it's supposed to be said?

And then Sam Munnery took on the solemn journalistic duty of going to find the audio about a minute before I did, just to check that Greg Ryzetki had said it in the traditional way.

Either way, wasn't on the hour mark of either the play time or the clock. But let's not get into that right now.
Well, he went with moment, didn't he?

He didn't go hour um come he went cometh the moment cometh the man or yeah i mean i just wonder what did whoever wrote this think come with the moment come with the man meant like it's it's utterly meaningless live blogging's a stressful job it's literally transcribing sometimes so every everyone should get a break here um let's stick with scotland for a moment dave the bbc highlights of their win against lichtenstein inner friendly said um watch the highlights of scotland ease past lichtenstein additional tone says can you ease past someone if you're not heading anywhere?

Are you allowing this for a friendly? I mean, I know, again, this is very minor, but it's important.

I see what he means, but I don't think, far be it from me, to be to not go down a literal route, but I think it's fine.

You know, it's all part of the overall journey. Easing past them in the context of just the task in front of you, right?

Well, yeah, I suppose, yeah, winning the game, I suppose, is easing past them to win the game.

I think, Charlie, if they'd had been, if they said that Scotland had brushed Liechtenstein aside, I think I'd be all right with that.

That definitely works. I still think East Pass is fine, really.
I've never thought, I know what they're getting at. I've never thought of it particularly in that way.

Secured safe passage to a win in a friendly. Sticking with international football, I was really disappointed by this because I thought it would have been a, narratively speaking, very tidy situation.

But Claudio Ranieri, Charlie, has turned down the Italy job. I mean, for a World Cup story, for the preview writers, this would have been an absolute dream.

I want to see him at a World Cup with a big lanyard around his neck. It kind of blew my mind seeing that this was actually a story.

Like, you know, because him coming back to Roma was like almost crazy enough. Yes.
He's very old.

For them not to have a better manager

is kind of crazy. I mean, he's 73.
Had the biggest points per game towards the end of last season in Europe, though, or roundabouts. So still got it.
Yeah. Clearly.

We can be forgiven for thinking that Ranieri had just kind of sauntered off into a sort of late career career tour.

I mean, look, given the bloke had a ridiculous three-month spell at Watford a few years ago. Yeah.
So this is something of a resurgence for him. But yeah,

if he was at the World Cup, which obviously is the whole point of this thing, they might not qualify for the World Cup and they haven't qualified for the last two. But it would be great.

And it would almost be for him. You've finally completed everything.
Like, this is the only thing left for him to do. He's kind of really suited to doing an international tournament, Charlie.

I can see Ranieri having that kind of anchilotti, sort of sub-anchilotti kind of temperament to dealing with sort of anything that comes at him so even anchilotti in a major tournament feels absolutely fine to me so i think ranieri should follow suit i mean think how long ago even like he was at fulham and had a pretty disastrous spell there that was like six years ago there have been like many many iterations of him since like It's quite hard to keep up.

He's been an out of England job, I reckon. That's what it is.
Yeah, I mean, like, he's a managed Watford since this is his second spell at Roma since then. Like, this is, It's an incredible career.

There must be people in Italy going, they could do worse. They could do worse in Claudio Ranieri on Talk Sporty.

If his name was

Clive Raymond,

is Clive Claudio? I don't know.

Close enough. Claude.
But that's Clive. Clive.

Clive's better. Claude sounds too exotic.

Let's go. Oh, I'm the midweek communication panel.
Right. next up, this came from Jack Benyon.
Over to South America, we go.

Here is Luis Diaz scoring against Argentina and the world feed commentator squeezing in a very unexpected exclamation before continuing in a more traditional style.

Good ball through for Luis Diaz.

It's a good opportunity. Luis Diaz one on one with Romeno.
Luis Diaz. Still Diaz.
Diaz, Diaz, Blymey. Glory.

Now, you know, Charlie, I could go on about how incongruous the blimey sounds here, and it is truly wonderful.

But, I mean, I don't know, if you think about it, maybe it's a bit like sort of those English terms that have crept into South American football, like, I don't know, Newell's old boys or O'Higgins from Ireland or something like that.

I just, yeah, just a nice little touch. Alexis McAllister was probably playing that game.
Yeah.

Blimey.

Blimey. Yeah, no, I enjoyed that.
Is this becoming a thing now? Because we had the Italian commentary a few weeks ago. It was like, not Italian, but it was sort of like English, but with an Italian

in an over-the-top Italian sort of you know, manner of speaking. And this, this seems similar.
Are we getting these sort of like hybrid commentaries on the world feed now? Do a job?

They could just do a job for you on the world feed. But yeah, blimey.
Blimey. A footballer's names in Things Brace for you now.

This came from Theo Rowe, and I sense this player's name is going the way of Eddie Howe and being retired from this segment forever.

Which former England goalkeeper features in this guaranteed summer banger from Shermanology X Green Velvet.

Yeah, we can't have Joe Hart anymore, can we?

That's it. It's too easy.
But that's a triumphant final hurrah for Joe Hart in this segment. Let's rescue things.

This came from Sam Humphries, who was listening to the No Such Thing as a Fish podcast. And he asks, which US-born ace saved the life of Andy Warhol? But he was taken to hospital.

He had no signs of life. And there was a sort of vascular surgeon in the room who said, hang on, I quite like the soup cans thing.
I'm going to really try and sew this guy up. Not true.

The doctor didn't know who it was. They thought he was a random tramp.
Oh, they thought he was a tramp at first, and then they were told he was Warhol when they were operating.

Although I'm not saying he wouldn't have operated on the random tramp. No, Giuseppe Rossi was was the name of the surgeon.
What a guy.

This is enough.

I didn't heard that name for a while actually. I wonder what happened to him.
Nice. A couple of ACLs and he'd saved Andy Warhol's life.

Fair play. Right, this was just a classic, beautiful example of the subtle language of transfer speak right in the middle of this mini transfer window.

By the way, Charlie, can the mini transfer window that came before the Club World Cup slam shut if it's going to, if another one's going to open again? Is it the same window? Can we say slam shut?

or is it sort of you know, just but again, if you're if you're being literal about it, does slamming a window shut make it any harder to then quickly reopen? It doesn't stay more closed.

I mean, if it was like it's locked, if at the end we were talking about like locking a window and you know, really boarding it up in August until January.

But I think if you're being literal about it, it doesn't really, whether it's closed or slammed, you can still open it up again.

Unexpectedly, brilliant tribute to Keese's infamous tweet about that was, by the way, there was a half-hearted effort yesterday from Sky Sports, News, BBC to kind of make a bit of a thing about the Transer Window, but it's like, I mean, even they couldn't really be utter with it, could they, really?

I mean, it's like, come on. Yeah, it is disappointing when football sort of faffs around and fudges something.
It's like, come on.

It's supposed to be the biggest sport in the world here we're talking about.

Anyway, I saw this headline on ESPN. David said, sources.
Man United focus on Mbermo. I Gyokeris.

Wow. What is the difference between?

I mean, eyeing,

as I'm sure we all know, eyeing a player, that's non-committal, right? You're just interested. You're a suitor, which I hate, by the way.

From across the room, you know, just giving them the eyes from a distance. Yeah.

But all their efforts clearly are focused on on Burmo, Charlie. But

I mean, to the layman, there should be no difference between focusing and eyeing, and yet there is. Eyeing is a really good one because it's so vague.
It covers a lot, doesn't it?

Is eye-ing, Charlie, more intense interest than mulling over but i suppose if you're mulling over a bid that means you probably are interested in the player so i guess that's more advanced yeah if you're mulling over a bid that's that's like a concrete step whereas eyeing is just

yeah yeah eyeing's just they're sort of on your radar in a vague sense it's ridiculous like pathetic language dave

would eyeing as well do you ever hear it not like on its own i feel like it's always a supp uh supplementary thing so you're talking about the main target they're also eyeing a new centre back oh i see or so-and-so you rarely No, I think it can live on its own.

Yeah, I think it's all right to eye a player in that.

I think you'll probably find quite a lot of it in the BBC gossip column. You know, so it's not like a main story on its own, but it's like

a little line in a piece or something. God.

I saw one from David Ornstein the other day, which I don't think I've seen before. And he tweeted out a story about Arsenal and Zubi Mendi.

He said Arsenal regard the Zubi Mendi deal as done, which is quite a strange way of putting it. They regard it as being done, but does everyone else? Yeah, that's the subtext of that, isn't it?

Well, they think it's done, but little do they know.

I think it's going to be all right. But yeah, that's it.
We're all running out of ways to express a deal. I mean, that deal's been going on for fucking ages, Charlie.
Can they just do it?

I'm really bored of Zubimendi. I don't even know what he looks like.
I remember in January, it was sort of, it was almost being talked about as done. Yeah.
But for the summer. Yeah.

I think it's a PSR thing, isn't it? That's why it's going on till July.

Also, you know, La Liga's absurd little technicality, whereas if, Dave, if you pay a a player's release clause, you don't pay it to the club, you have to go and pay it to La Liga.

You have to go to the offices and give them the money to release a player from his contract. It's mad.

Yeah, don't you contact the league so that, and then the league tells the club, they're like, uh, what?

Yeah, sorry, don't know what to tell you. They've just come and paid it to us.

I'll look after that. Yeah, it's fine.
That's all right.

Yeah, I will. Let's leave it here.
Right. Get a receipt.
Nah.

Right.

This one came from Tom. It's superb.
He says, I saw someone half-jokingly suggest that Liverpool fans should boo Pep Linders for joining Man City.

How would a crowd go about directing booze at an assistant manager? Well, they step forward, don't they? Yeah, like there'll be a moment, especially some of the more busy ones. Yeah.

You know, like Tyndall or someone would be easy to do, wouldn't it? Yeah.

But it does need an obvious visual trigger.

Yeah. You can't just boo them when they sort of slowly walk out from a dugout.
It needs to be something a bit more... When they open up the laminated set piece folder, maybe.

Yeah, if they're giving instructions to a subs a substitute before they come on um

could they would they potentially i don't know what pep does in like pre-game does does pep go out onto the pitch or does he leave it to his assistant because if it's if it's if it's pep

is it linders or linders if the other pep is going out onto the pitch before the game maybe then but then there's not enough people in the stands to really

during a warm-up could be it's so it's so intangible like there's not a focus that everyone has it would be a really hard thing to convey i mean crucially, Charlie, the recipient of the booze is going to need to be

left in no doubt that he is the target. So

that's the problem. How is he going to know? Your best case would be: game's dead, and a sub substitution or something's happening, and he steps forward and is quite prominent.

But I don't know how often that happens. You sound like you're booing the sub then with your average assistant manager.
Might as well be booing the fourth official.

Yeah, exactly. What about if the ball somehow ends up at his feet in the technical area? Oh, that's good.
Yeah, of course. Booed is every touch.

Still got it.

Doesn't still have it.

Oh, we've done it. Tom, thanks for that.

Finally, for part one,

he's not blogging this summer. We know that.
He's sticking to it.

He's on hiatus, but his tweets are still gold. Richard Keys tweeting, £111 million spent so far this summer.
£4 million more equals £115. Spooky.
That's how many charges were levelled at City.

No, wait. It was 135 in the end, wasn't it? Expect more signings as Cities continue to thumb their nose at the PL.

Spooky, Charlie. Well, yeah, I was going to say, with this, do you think he thought it was going to be £4 million more and was going to be

£115? Was that, oh, that'll be perfect. Then it wasn't quite.
I was like,

it's fine. I'll still.
They won't remember. It's still fine.
Who are they going to spend £4 million on, Dave, to make this credit? John Macken or something? Get him back in.

Have they signed a goalkeeper to replace Scott Carson yet? A good deal of Linelli's come in free. Yeah, that's a shame.
Oh dear. I'd say four million is just about the least likely fee.

I can't who was like genuinely because like I can imagine like a one two or three for something like super cheap and like a 16 year old from scum yes tribe maybe yeah tribe situation yeah four million oh dear anyway this episode of football clichés is brought to you in association with saley a new e-sim service app from the creators of nordvpn listeners if I had a pound for every time I found myself in a situation in a taxi after landing at a foreign airport, when I've instantly wanted to 1.

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Right, that's the end for part one. We'll be back very shortly.

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The bartender already knows our order, Guinness and Fries. We laugh all night, catch up with old friends, and walk home with faces sore from smiling.
It's one of my favorite nights of the year.

That was my 30-second story with Guinness. Guinness Draft Stout.
Stout. Please enjoy responsibly.
Imported by the IGO Beer Company USA, New York, New York.

Oh, look at that!

That is wonderful!

Welcome back to Football Clichés. We are just mere days away from the Club World Cup.

Now, when we first approached this concept, Dave, it was very much in theory about what we might feel when it finally arrives. Well, Well, it is pretty much upon us now.

And why won't the Club World Cup feel like a proper World Cup? What are the obvious flaws here as we look ahead to kickoff? I think a big one is the time zone and the time difference.

Because if it was str the games were in a time zone where you could have the sort of standard kind of 1 p.m., 4 p.m., 7 p.m. kickoff or whatever, I could kind of get on board with that.

I could get on board with like having a novelty game in the middle of the day, maybe watching a slightly bigger bigger one in the evening.

That rhythm's nice and familiar, but because this one is going to be it's I think it's five five, eight, and one

and one or eleven and one. Well, that's like the Brazil World Cup.
Surely, surely a distant time zone, Charlie, lends it the kind of exotic appeal that it needs.

Brazil was a bit better, they didn't have many of those. There was that, I think, that first Saturday where they had like the only sort of

one, yeah, really late one. Um, generally, they were a bit better for Europe time zones.
I mean, maybe

my thoughts about this Club World Cup and why it won't have the same appeal as a World Cup, Dave, is that a World Cup has national intrigue.

There are countries that you're curious about and you're curious that they've, where they've got their players from and brought them all together for one tournament.

Clubs don't have that intrigue, I think. I think there's something inherently less pure about clubs versus countries.

And I think in the aggregate, that's going to lend itself less to a Club World Cup. It makes it less intriguing.
I think there is some intrigue.

I think think the only really the only thing it does have going for it is a bit of intrigue on some of the names some some of the bigger names of the more exotic clubs that we do you know like bocker juniors yeah flamenzi like clubs that we have heard of but almost everyone won't really have watched ever play with any sort of detail like how i'm interested to see like how good they actually are like what are they actually like is it going to be a big gap or is it going to be a bit closer than we think so i think i think there is some intrigue i mean that's a good point actually charlie i mean it is it it is good to benchmark sort of the levels of club football across the world and put them together.

And a useful one for the old, but he's the best player in Europe, perhaps even the world.

So

I'm saying that finally. But I mean, broadly speaking, isn't there? I mean, they're completely incomparable.
We're talking about the best competition in the world against this load of crap.

Isn't that? I mean,

they're roughly analogous formats, though. They're the best

formats in the world being put together in one tournament. But the World Cup is like rich with history and everyone, like it's basically the best thing in football.
This is a load of crap.

Yeah, but of course, but let's remember the motivation for creating this tournament. They're trying to transplant a World Cup into the club context.
And they also think that

club football's consistently better than international football in terms of its intensity and quality. So maybe they think it's onto a winner.
So they are essentially trying to transplant the format.

I realise there's no heritage. That's obvious.

I mean, you may think that, but we're not like FIFA stooges who need to big this up. This isn't a FIFA.
I can imagine like a FIFA podcast is saying, you know,

this is comparable with the World Cup. It's basically the same thing.
Yeah, well,

we maintain some editorial independence here. We're not part of the zone zero with Gohanger, by the way.

What highlights are we going to get? Auckland City.

But I think for most people, this is just, I mean,

it's so patently a money grab.

FIFA want to get a slice of the club pie and have put together this complete joke of a competition.

You're going to be talking about player fatigue in a minute. No, come on.
But surely, in this vacuum of heritage, Dave, what will get sucked in is just sheer curiosity.

Like, what is this tournament going to be like? And in its first edition, in its current guise,

that's worth something, isn't it?

Sheer football curiosity will take over for quite a few people. Absolutely.
And I'm pretty sure that come Saturday night at 1 a.m., Sunday morning, 1 a.m.,

because I'm going to

a mates 30th on Saturday. And I reckon when it finishes up, it's probably going to be finished at about half 12 or something.
I work in 1am, Al Ackley versus into Miami. Stick it on.

Why not?

I want you to document this experience watching that entire game. I don't see you sticking with it.

Laura Bradburn asks, Charlie, what's the most obscure matchup of teams for you guys in this Club World Cup?

I, for one, cannot get my head around the fact that Boca Juniors will be playing Auckland City. I mean, that, to me, is a selling point.
Boca Juniors has why would they play each other otherwise?

Argentina Vinusin is a very rugby World Cup.

That's the only other time these two nations.

Any interaction.

To put it another way, what fixture out of all of these 32 teams will be the one that's cited quite dismissively in the same way that we'd say like a football hipster is watching Freiburg Reserves or something like that?

Oh, what are you going to do? Go and watch Seattle Sanders versus Butterfogo, are you? River Play CF Monterey, Fluminese, Ulsan. Actually, that's interesting, Dave, on the back of that.

I think the biggest triumph of this Club Old Cup will be to shift the dial in terms of people who think they're actually called Fluminese and not Fluminense.

It's going to be a real learning curve for a lot of people.

Athletico situation.

But I think like Fluminense against Borisia Dortmund is like there are some real proper hipster matches amongst this, like Palmyra against Porto.

So like the glamour, you need the South American glamour. and the sort of vague sense that

they might be really good, even though they're probably not.

And then like a not elite European, like top, top European team, but just like Champions League regular, like, you know, Porto, Brucia Dortmund, even Atletico.

Like, you don't want, like, it's not PSG or Real Madrid, but it's, it's one of the ones from a step down. And I think that's, that's the sweet spot, I think.

But you know what I think that, but that's too mainstream, isn't it, for the kind of dismissive hipster. Like, if you're watching

a proper football hipster, you shouldn't be watching like Dortmund are quite a mainstream option in this conversation. Yeah, I know what you mean.

I think Monterey is a good shout, actually, because I can see people going, you know, Mexico, actually, you know, the crowds they get in that league. Yeah, football hotbed.
Yeah. Heritage.

It's an interesting point, actually, Charlie. I don't know if this is going to be sort of regarded as a football hipster tournament.
I think, I think the whole thing is too sprawling.

Like, it doesn't have that appeal. It could be cults.
I think it might have a cult appeal, weirdly, which I don't think FIFA wants it to, but I don't think it'll be a hipster thing at all.

Well, hipster, it doesn't sit that well with hipster.

Well, I guess it depends. There are some people who just love football and kind of, you know, and have views on people from all these different countries.

But hipster, there's a, with football hipsterism, there's an implied sort of left-wing,

kind of egalitarian vibe to it, which this absolutely isn't. This is the most corporate money-grabbed.

tarnished competition, which I don't think would sit that well with your proper football hipsters.

I guess the hipster element, though, could come a bit from the backlash against this very Eurocentric view, maybe that this is a corporate sham, and that actually, for these smaller clubs, this is amazing, you know, and stop looking at it through the prism of Man City.

You know, like Son Hughes for the Athletics done this great series with the Mamalodi Sundowns, and for them, it's this great thing. So, maybe that's where the hipster element comes from.

And that argument was raised in the old iteration of the Club World Cup. You know, this actually matters

to these clubs. So, yeah.
Try telling them that it's a corporate sham. It could be a huge try telling them tournament.
Yeah, it could be.

Dave, I do think, though, you know, for our purposes alone on this podcast i think we're a good sort of 12 16 years away from being able to do the pure club world cup 11 when as soon as that moment it hits it's won fifa should know in its marketing that that's the moment it matters i just can't think of anything other than how incredibly stressed you'd be after the the 16th well would be like the 18th cliché's live tour going on say

in 16 years time might go to newcastle by then

but i was thinking it was the it was the club world cup wasn't it that united some version of that in 2000? They were in with Nakaksa and Masco Da Gama and Ange Posta Koglu, South Melbourne.

I mean, that tournament did have a lot of moments, and that was what prompted that incredible Daily Mirror front page.

Remember that one of no one in the country wants it, and it had like Caprice, Tony Blair, Darren Day, just

99, 2000 just. captured so perfectly.
I'm excited, Dave, for the first story in a newspaper somewhere.

I feel like Martin Ziegler will break this in the Times about DeZone getting 14 viewers for Pachuca versus Red Bull Salzburg.

I feel like that could be the big story of the tournament in its early stages. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
But yeah, the football hipster thing is good.

I think we should do a Dreamland episode on football hipsterdom.

Because I feel like it has faded a bit as everyone else has come up to the level of the people who were there before. Let's do it.
Let's do a Dreamland episode on football hipsters.

Next up, bread and butter issue for you now, Charlie. Gentle hum of anxiety asks, what is an absolute clinic?

I've heard it referred to both in terms of team performance and for individual bits of play. Is it anything to do with being clinical or closer to being like a showcase?

Also, how does it relate to a masterclass? Asks Kieran.

Well, I think we've spoken about this before. We touched on it a little bit when we were talking about the Player X show.
Oh, it's been the Kevin De Bruyne show today.

But clinic is slightly different to that, would you say? Well, it comes from like a coaching clinic.

So the idea is that you've got someone, and I think, and you often hear this in individual sports as well.

Yeah, he's delivered a clinic. Like he has basically shown you how to play.
So, and that's how I think of it with football as well.

If you deliver a clinic, this is basically it's like a master because a master class is a similar thing, isn't it?

When you're kind of, this is, um, you know, you get those coaching voice masterclass things.

So you're just giving people a demonstration on how to do something perfectly. What you might hear it with an individual thing as well is like Kevin De Bruyne has put on a clinic,

you know, where he's basically just given the perfect display of central attacking midfielderism or, you know, it can be a specific to a position. Yeah.

This is how this is how to play as a number six or something. It's a technical thing though, isn't it? You know, as the term suggests, like it's clinical.

It's not necessarily extravagant or sort of boastful or showing off or particularly. It's fairly unglamorous compared to player action.
Yeah, right. I

so.

Yeah, I think that's right. There does have to be.
That's why I think De Bruyne is quite a good example because he isn't someone, none of it's for show.

It's just this is going to be incredibly effective. How broad can a clinic be, Charlie? Because De Bruyne could have a multi-pronged kind of clinic.

He could be doing passing, just have to run a game, sort of arriving in the box, something like that. But, I mean, Erling Haaland could put on a finishing clinic.
Yeah, yeah,

you can make it more specific. I think it does tend to be an attacking thing.
Like, I can't imagine you saying, like, like, Van Dijk's put on a clinic. No, I don't like defensive clinic.

No, I agree with you. Goalkeeping clinic? No, no.
There's no one out there to teach. They don't give a shit.

The other goalkeeper.

Bettinelli watching on from the bench. To harp back to this original question, though, Dave, I really love absolute clinic.
I mean, an incredible phrase.

And only football could summon absolute clinic. It's putting an absolute clinic out there.
Very Townsendian, perhaps. Now,

lest we forget, do you remember the hypothetical scenario someone raised a few months ago about how long it would take a player if he scored a hat-trick in every game to rise to the very, very top level of football?

Well, Robert Porter brings us news from Brazil of Gabriel Veneno, who sounds like someone Dan Walker would mispronounce on Classic FM.

He has become the first player in the history of Brazilian youth football to surpass the 80 goal mark in a single calendar year. He scored 93 goals in 30 games at the age of 15, Charlie.

He's going to do it. Yeah, we're next for him.
I mean, he is already at

Atico Minero, I think. So, I mean, he's already, it's not like he's playing in the background.

He's had a bit of a head start, I would say, but yeah, he's but yeah, assume a few hat-tricks in there somewhere. It'd be good to get the breakdown, actually, wouldn't it?

Just to see how neatly this fits. If he's drawn a blank in any of those 30 games, you twat.
You've ruined it. Yeah, but he scored 80 of it in one game, didn't he? Big count.

Flat track bully. Right, next up, a little voice note, actually.
Here comes Ross Jones with a question for us.

I work in country music, and there is a song by an artist called Morgan Wallen called 98 Braves. Now, this is in reference to a sports team in America and how

he can find the right words to say, but it's in comparison to the 1998 Braves team. And it got me thinking,

which team would be best suited to being in a song title Off the top of my head,

98 United, but would it have to be 98 99 United? Does that even work?

Thought I'd ask.

The first thing to pick up on here, Charlie, is that when you have to employ the kind of

sort of European football season format to this, it ruins the romance of it somewhat, having to put a kind of slash in there.

Yeah, I don't think anyone would, if you went United 99, I think even the biggest dick would not be like, um, technically 98, 99. 99, 2000.

Yeah.

The Club World Cup, yeah.

I think 99 would be fine. So which clubs and seasons would lend themselves to this perfectly? I think Ajax 95 is very much an established kind of mythical status here, Dave.

Brazil 70, if you're going to go international? Yeah, or Brazil on. Brazil 82?

Oh, yeah.

Denmark 86. Yes.
Very good. Club-wise.

Struggling. Clubs less easy in a way because not everyone loves the same club by definition.
Whereas international teams, like we can all get behind Brazil or Denmark because we don't dislike them.

Yeah.

Yeah, and everybody loves the IACS team, so it's all right. Exactly, yeah.

Certainly wouldn't work in English football, really. Well, yeah, unless there was like a particular characteristic you were talking about.
Arsenal 04.

Yeah, you're unbeatable.

You're unbeatable like Arsenal 04.

No one would say, imagine saying Arsenal 04, that great Arsenal 04.04 team.

I wonder if anyone in America, sort of soccer punditry in America, talk about European or whoever international teams like this, though, using that same convention.

So would they say, oh, you know, the 04 Arsenal or that famous 99 United team? Using their calendar. They might do.
But yeah,

it doesn't really sit right with us, does it? And yeah. I suppose you've got to use the business end.
for the year, right? You can't use the year that the season began. It's a tricky concept.

I'm glad we haven't had to face it before.

Overhyped and unamazing gets in in touch next, Dave, with a headline from the Lynn News saying that Kingslin Town have raided a Premier League club for their fifth piece of summer transfer business.

The player in question, he says, is Sam Collins, an academy product, an out of contract at Forest, having never made an appearance for the first team. Can this be a raid?

In general, can a non-league team like Kings Lynn possibly ever raid a Premier League team? Please straighten out this verb. Transfer silly season approaches.

I mean, you can see why it's been used here, but it's not a raid, is it?

But that's like if you get broken in, you return home to your house and you've clearly been burgled, but then bizarrely they've left all the valuables.

Actually, you know, I do have an example of this. In my first London flat, it got broken into, and all that was stolen, they'd emptied out my penny jar onto the bed and taken out the 20 P's.

And I was like, well, fair enough, to be honest.

Good luck to you. That's some good sifting.
But, yeah, I mean, could Kingslin ever raid Nottingham Forest, Charlie? I feel like they couldn't.

I Unless they signed, I don't know, Chris Wood under their noses. Yeah, raids are...
I mean, raid, because raid is, by definition, like a surprise attack. So in some ways, it dies.
Opportunist.

Yeah, I can see why it does lend itself to the smaller club doing it because

to be successful with a raid, it needs to have that surprise element. So you'd kind of employ that tactic if you were the underdog.
That said, in a football sense, what is a kind of...

You might talk about raiding a manager raiding his old club. Like, might Thomas Frank raid Brentford?

Yeah, funny you should mention that actually, because again, transfer raids, Dave, are something you would you never say out loud, it's very much a headline thing in certain publications.

But Martin Keown was on talk sport. Why have I not got the clip of this? It's at my fingertips, but I don't know where it is.

Um, Martin Keeran was on talk sport talking about Brentford and Thomas Frank and how it's the right time for Thomas Frank to leave because that team's about to get broken up.

And he was talking about Burmo and Wissow, and he says, you know, Kevin Schader,

I would raid Brentford for him.

don't say raid out loud you really don't oh god if you're Martin Keown and lose Frank he's gonna raid us he's gonna raid us for all our

speaking of Martin Keown the tweet that went round recently that I sent to you guys from why would a sentence ever start like that and not be good DMF V2 tweeted Martin Keown casually on my train in a suit with white trainers fine telling someone off for eating nuts on the carriage because people might be allergic is just about the most Martin Keown thing imaginable.

Really earnestly having a pop at someone for doing that. Hey, just you over there.

Someone torn in here might have a peanut allergy. What are you doing?

Just a sort of vigilante element of it. Hollow brow right in your face.
As Simon Jordan sits opposite him, just having a massive bag of nuts.

It's love that Keown would take it upon himself to do that with no particular skin in the game, by all accounts. I think he's one of the most fascinating people in English football.

I'm yet to read his autobiography. I wonder if it really sort of goes deep into just how quirky he is as just a human being.

But yeah, fascinating man.

I think he'd do a good MHD, Martin Keown.

Might be too serious.

Yeah. Would there be the light and shade of it? I don't know.
I think

that you want from a good MD.

I think he could let loose. A couple of items left.
Some elite pedantry from the depths of Reddit.

From the 28 Days Later subreddit, all about the film franchise and someone says that Andy wears a 2006-7 Real Madrid shirt in a film set in 0203.

I mean let's be honest with this that's such a terrible thing for a film to get wrong why would you do that get it right also I'm curious so the film is set in both 02 and 3 or we're just talking again in kind of football season language well funnily enough someone questioned this original poster saying how do you know the film is set in 0203 and they said well actually there was a tax disc on one of the cars and it's dated in 2002 which means it probably probably runs out in 03.

So there you go. That's incredible.

What a lovely little twist that is. But yeah,

this is the iconic Beckham. They finally win the league

scoring on the final day shirt. Just annoying.
Four years out. That's an eternity in football kits.
And it doesn't have to be of the year either.

Like, you've got all the shirts prior to 2002, 2003 to choose from. You can

go and get one from 98, 99 that's been worn in a bit. Though that would still be a big decision.
If you're being panicked, that would still be a big decision because this is a what 10-year-old kid.

And if you're, I think that says a lot about a 10-year-old kid. If they're wearing the new kit, they're a new shirt, they want the away, yeah, a programme, and he's chucking a hot dog.

I don't think that I don't think this kid would be wearing one from like five years early, unless he's just a very casual fan.

The 99 2000, I think it is Real Madrid shirt, or it might be the year before, but I had it and it's really shiny.

I think it might be that could have played havoc with the lights on set.

Saving grace, clawing back some credibility for the film crew there. Elsewhere, this is from the Football Manager subreddit.

Someone said, I'm managing a club in the Swedish team in the Football Manager 2024, and I just noticed something immersion shattering.

The electrical outlets in the staff offices and locker rooms are UK style with three prongs, rectangular, absolutely disgraceful.

I mean, imagine being at SI and just thinking, oh, for fuck's sake, no one did the electrical outlets. Gonna have to delay the game for another year.
That might be the reason they've been delayed.

That would really annoy you, wouldn't it? Oh, God, that would take you right out of it.

That's awful. Anyway.
Right, finally, this came from Matt Parsons. Now, we're all familiar with the story of Duncan Ferguson beating the shit out of some burglars in the early 2000s.
Yeah. Right.

As they tried to raid his house. Yeah.

Well,

if we call that the first taken film, let's call this the sequel. I'd never heard of this before.

It's a story about Kevin Pressman from 1998, who had his car stolen from his drive in the early hours of the morning. His 52,000 pound luxury black motor, in fact, it said in the mirror.

And he gave chase in his wife's Lexus for 15 miles. He sort of chased after this car, phoning the police from his car phone as well, Charlie.
So dangerous.

The thief eventually crashed that car into a ditch and then ran off and Kevin Pressman gave chase for a mile and a half and eventually cornered him. Wow.
Imagine being chased by Kevin Pressman.

That was the real situation. Oh, I regret this now.

Although, I don't know.

If you did see someone getting out of your car to chase them and you saw it was Kevin Pressman, you might think, oh, I've got a chance. I think I could outpace him.

Very surprising. He can move Kevin Pressman when he needs to.
Trust me.

But yeah, once he gets you, you're going to go down. He's taking me down.

Kicked you into the stanch.

The icing on the cake for this story, of course, was a Derbyshire police spokesman Charlie saying, Kevin is to be highly commended for his actions. He kept us fully informed of what was happening.

He cornered the man himself, but wisely waited for police to arrive before the suspect was tackled. This is obviously a case of the goalkeeper who wouldn't let anything pass him.

Yeah, it just about works, yeah.

With a little wink there, no. Yeah, it's like in the children's story.
Nice little flourish at the end.

You couldn't do any of this in 2025, could you, Dave? None of that behaviour is encouraged. I'm more worried about the the fact that his car is only a third of the cost of his entire house.

150 grand home. Different times.
Different times. On that note, thanks to you, Charlie Equishaire.
Thank you. Thanks to you, Dave Walker.
Thank you. Thanks to everyone for listening.

We'll be back on Tuesday. See you then.

This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

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