It may not be the very biggest game across world football this weekend, but consider one important factor: I’ll be there.

Yes, The Football Weekend will venture to Goodison Park on Sunday as EVERTON host TOTTENHAM in the Premier League. It’s been a strange few years for the home side, no doubt about it. Farhad Moshiri’s tumultuous ownership of the club has ended, and the Friedkin Group is coming in. The Sean Dyche era is over, too, and former stalwart David Moyes has returned to the manager’s chair. Plus, it’s Everton’s last season at Goodison, their home since 1892.

Joining us to trace all this—and tell me what I can expect to see in the Gwladys Street End this weekend—is podcaster and Everton fan Rodger Armstrong of Blue Monday, a production of The Blue Room podcast.

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The glamour tie of the FA Cup Third Round is ARSENAL against MANCHESTER UNITED on Sunday, but this stage is all about the clubs who tend to get less ink.

The beauty of the world’s oldest cup competition is that it offers TAMWORTH FOOTBALL CLUB from the National League, England’s fifth tier, the chance to host TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR of the Premier League at their 4,000-capacity stadium, The Lamb Ground. That’s the first match we’ve chosen to highlight from this weekend’s fixtures with the help of Jonathan Day, host of The Tamworth F.C. Social.

Then we move to MILLWALL, the club from South East London that for all their fame from depictions in film and TV have rarely featured in England’s top flight. They don’t look like winning promotion from the Championship this year, either—they’re 14th—but what would an FA Cup run mean to the Lions? Omer Ronayne of That Millwall Podcast joins to offer a view into second-tier life, and to preview their tie with fellow Londoners DAGENHAM & REDBRIDGE on Monday.

Soon enough, we’ll know who might be this season’s Maidstone United, who made it to the Fifth Round in 2024 as a sixth-tier outfit. That’s where the Stones were beaten by Coventry City, who came within an inch of defeating Manchester United at Wembley in the semifinal. In fact, I’m still not entirely convinced that Haji Wright was offside…

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This is occasionally—OK, almost never—called El Otro Clásico. It’s a bit of a nod to the fact that these two clubs, BARCELONA and ATLÉTICO MADRID, have a shared enemy that they each hate more than their opponent here. Barça’s beef with Real Madrid is the Clásico, Atléti’s feud with their crosstown neighbors is a proper derby.

This match is just a meeting of two of Spain’s great institutions, a fixture that’s spawned wild scorelines and decided league championships. In this case, it’s a meeting of first and second in La Liga, and they’re tied on 38 points.

Joining us to preview the festivities is Ian Darke, the legendary commentator who’s called matches across the world in the Premier League, the Champions League, and the World Cup. American fans might know him as the soundtrack to Landon Donovan’s famous goal against Algeria in 2010, but he’s also called some of the biggest matches in club football—like this one. He’ll be behind the mic for ESPN on Saturday at 3pm Eastern Time, but first he’s here with us to look ahead to the match—and look back on that time he and Steve McManaman stuck around the Camp Nou until 2 a.m. drinking beers with the locals!

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Have you seen the news? Manchester City are losing football matches. A lot of them. They lost to Juventus in the Champions League on Wednesday, their seventh defeat in 10 matches across all competitions. They lost to Bournemouth, Sporting Lisbon, Brighton, Tottenham (twice), Liverpool. They’ve won just once since October 27.

It’s almost unspeakable turmoil for a Pep Guardiola team, unprecedented in his career across the Premier League, the Bundesliga, and La Liga. On the question of how the champions of England can dig themselves out of it, the Catalan does not seem to have the answers. He was clawing at his own nose. Now he’s shell-shocked on the sideline.

Of course, no City scandal can compare to Manchester United's state of affairs. They’ve been a disaster for a decade, cycling through players and managers and—just recently—sporting directors without much to show for it. That FA Cup victory over these opponents back in May seems a long ways away now, and the decision to re-hire Erik ten Hag on the back of it has been confirmed as a calamitous one.

Now they’ve got another promising young coach in Ruben Amorim, but he’s fast discovered the scale of the task here. The Red Devils have lost two on the bounce and slipped to 13th in the Premier League. Considering the sheer amount of money spent, the players trotting out onto that Old Trafford pitch are simply not good enough. This Sunday, they’ll trot out across town at the Etihad, and their best hope is that their opponents are in their own kind of disarray.

Joining us to preview this peculiar Manchester derby is Adam Monk, a presenter for FourFourTwo, DAZN, and BBC Manchester who's a devout City fan.

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EVERTON host LIVERPOOL at Goodison Park for one of the great old rivalries of English football.

Liverpool are flying coming into this one—or at least they were. Top of the league (and the new Champions League table), they did have a blip in midweek with the draw at Newcastle. Everton are reeling as usual this season, though they did smash Wolves 4-0 on Wednesday. Can they take heart from that, and learn a bit from Newcastle’s approach against these opponents just a few days ago, to disrupt Arne Slot’s title-chasers and snatch the points for themselves? After all, it was defeat in this fixture seven months ago that derailed Liverpool’s last title challenge.

Joining us to muse on that question is Stephen Warnock, an analyst and co-commentator for the Premier League on NBC here in the U.S. and for Sky Sports and more over in the U.K. An accomplished left back at the top level in England, he also started his career in the Liverpool academy and broke through into the first team, so he’s walked out onto that pitch at Goodison for this very fixture. He shares some derby memories and some insight into how this one might shake out.

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A.C. MILAN host JUVENTUS at the San Siro on Saturday for a big-fish encounter in Serie A, though these two are currently sixth and seventh in the league table. Milan in particular need a result to ensure they're not left behind by a Top Six pack that's tightly packed: just two points separate Juve from resurgent leaders Napoli, but the Rossoneri are already eight points back.

Alasdair Mackenzie joins the show to preview this one and explain where it fits in a league experiencing remarkable parity from top to bottom. A writer based in Rome for TNT Sports, Eurosport, FourFourTwo and more, he also helps us trace the remarkable American influence on the fixture: Christian Pulisic has become a talismanic force for Milan, where he often shares a team sheet with Yunus Musah. Weston McKennie has played his way back into the Juventus team more regularly under new coach Thiago Motta, and Tim Weah could play up front as the #9 against the team for whom his dad, George, put in a decent shift back in the day. Plus, we kick things off with some chat about the turmoil at Roma in Alasdair's backyard.

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MANCHESTER UNITED host CHELSEA in a vintage Barclays encounter that happens to be the first Premier League match since Erik ten Hag's dismissal as United manager. The Dutchman is the latest casualty of the club's disorder and decline since Sir Alex Ferguson's departure a decade ago, but how much is down to his poor decision-making? How much is down to the players? And will the new ownership and football executive structure be the platform new manager Rúben Amorim needs to change the plot?

Of course, Chelsea have been a bit nutty too over the last few years, but they might just be getting it together under their own new boss, Enzo Maresca. Are the Blues from West London a bit of a model for United as they try to get back on track?

Joining us to answer that—and try to digest the madness of this week and the last few years—is journalist and United fan Usmaan Akhtar. We also took a minute to reminisce about the glory days of this rivalry, when these two English heavyweights were battling at the top of the European game.

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Arsenal-Liverpool, the Derby d’Italia, Le Classique…it’s a serious Football Weekend. But all that takes a back seat to the big one: El Clásico, REAL MADRID vs BARCELONA, the premier grudge match in world football. Nobody does technical quality and steaming spite quite like these two, and the storylines abound heading into this 258th meeting of Spain's great powers.

One Brazilian from each side—Vinicius Jr. for Madrid, Raphinha for Barça—scored a hat trick in the Champions League in midweek. They're two of the form players in Europe, with Vini a strong bet to take home the Ballon d'Or in a couple months' time, but there's also the 17-year-old sensation Lamine Yamal and some guy named Kylian Mbappé playing his first Clásico. It's an embarrassment of riches in the forward positions for both these sides—and in midfield, too: Barcelona have added EURO 2024 standout Dani Olmo to academy starlets Pedri and Gavi in the engine room, and could we see 39-year-old Luka Modrić in there on the other side next to Fede Valverde and Jude Bellingham?

The matchups everywhere are mouthwatering, and joining us to preview the match is Paco Polit of La Liga Lowdown. He explained how Barcelona have changed under new coach Hansi Flick and how the German has got Robert Lewandowski firing again, with 12 of their astonishing 33 goals already this season; how Madrid remain inevitable in the Champions League, if not La Liga, under Don Carlo Ancelotti; and why fans of Los Blancos aren't overly taken with Mbappé's performances after so many years of speculation that he'd join the club. We also spared a minute to discuss the reports this week that La Liga is angling to stage a Barcelona-Atlético Madrid match in Miami, and the unfortunate fate of Paco's Valencia CF.

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