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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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LIVERPOOL vs CHELSEA is a modern classic, a rivalry born when Roman Abramovich bought the Blues into prominence and kicked off 20 years of tumultuous encounters: The Slip, the Ghost Goal, the feud between José Mourinho and Rafa Benitez, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard, Jamie Carragher and John Terry, Fernando Torres and Didier Drogba. There were transfer sagas, wars of words, Champions League semifinals.

But most of all, this one is an argument about what's important in football. For years, Liverpool fans would sing, "You've got no history," at their Chelsea counterparts, an ode to their many decades of trophy-stacking when the West Londoners were irrelevant. But now Chelsea have two Champions Leagues—some history, that—and have won enough to wonder whether it matters how they got there at all.

Joining us to preview this one is Beth Lindop, football writer for Reach PLC and a bona fide Merseysider. We got into all of the above and how Liverpool have changed in this young season under a new manager, Arne Slot. Plus: Jürgen Klopp's legacy, the Cole Palmer problem, and did you hear England have a new manager?

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It's a meeting of two old enemies in Guadalajara, two years before they co-host a World Cup, but this international friendly wouldn't mean much without big news on the American side: the U.S. Men's National Team has a new coach with serious pedigree at the top of the European game. Mauricio Pochettino took Tottenham to a Champions League final, he's coached Chelsea and PSG, and now he'll try to lead this young USMNT squad to the promised land—or at least a World Cup quarterfinal.

One man who knows a bit about all that is Kasey Keller, who represented the United States as a goalkeeper at four different World Cups. He was also among the first Americans to forge a serious career in Europe's top leagues, helping to pave the way for Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie today. Now he's an analyst at ESPN, and he took some time to offer his thoughts on Pochettino's appointment and the financial implications, including for women's coach Emma Hayes; the state of this U.S. squad and just how many more breakout players they'll need to compete in two years time; his own time with the national team and how the game has shifted Stateside over the last couple of decades; and how he nearly had his whole kit stripped off him during a pitch invasion at The Den, the cauldron where he kept goal for Millwall when he first arrived in Europe.

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This one's named for a region named after a road—the Via Aemilia—that the Romans built after they took this chunk of northern Italy off some Celtic tribes back in 189 BC. A bunch of towns grew up along the new thoroughfare, and now there are a number of football clubs scrapping over this turf. The two biggest and most decorated are BOLOGNA, from the medieval masterpiece known for its food, architecture, and the world’s oldest university; and PARMA, another ancient town that’s…known for its food. This is Italy, after all.

These two clubs have enjoyed very different histories: Bologna were a big deal in the early decades of Serie A, at a time when Parma were looking up at them from a league (or multiple) below. Then, in the 1990s, the Crociati (Crusaders) of Parma rose to the lofty heights of the Italian league when it was the greatest in the world, fielding a parade of famous names—Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro, Lilian Thuram, Hernán Crespo, Gianfranco Zola, Juan Sebastian Verón—thanks in part to some very rich and very volatile ownership. When the multinational dairy and food corporation with a controlling ownership stake, Parmalat, collapsed early on in the new millennium, it decimated the club.

Now Bologna are back on top again, playing Champions League football again after a fine season under Thiago Motta, now departed for Juventus. They lost a couple of key players in Joshua Zirkzee and Riccardo Calafiori, but they just played their biggest game in maybe 60 years at Anfield on Wednesday. You can hear all about that in this week’s episode with Christine Cupo, reporter and analyst on the CBS Sports Golazo Network and for Attacking Third, the hub for coverage of the women's game on CBS Sports.

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We’re headed over to Germany for an early Bundesliga title clash, and Derek Rae is our guide before he calls the game for ESPN. It’s BAYERN MUNICH vs BAYER LEVERKUSEN in a meeting of the perennial powers and the fresh-faced upstarts, with Bayern looking for a return to the normal order of things after Leverkusen posted a scintillating unbeaten domestic double last term, taking the Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal without losing a match. They nearly won the Europa League, too, but Atalanta was a step too far in the final in Dublin.

How have these two teams changed since last year, particularly Bayern under new coach Vincent Kompany? Have Leverkusen lost the air of inevitability that carried them through last season and helped them grab late goals to rescue results? Derek offered all that and much more from his vast reservoir of knowledge when it comes to German football. Plus, on EA Sports FC 25 release week, he offered up some of his favorite lines from his role as a commentator for the world-famous video games.

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There are few feuds like the 111-year-old dispute between Arsenal and Tottenham over who exactly owns North London. These two first met in 1896, but that was when Arsenal were in Woolwich, south of the River Thames. It wasn’t until the Gunners crossed the waterway in 1913 and set up shop in Tottenham’s neighborhood that the trouble began, and it hasn’t let up since. Though as an Arsenal fan, I feel obligated to weigh in on who owns what: the red side may be seeking a first league title in two decades, but Tottenham haven’t won the first division for 63 years. They’ve won two trophies in the last 30, and they were both League Cups.

There might be just a bit of Arsenal partisanship in this episode, because joining the show to preview this North London derby is Andrew Mangan—blogger, podcaster, and proprietor at Arseblog, the foremost Arsenal fan channel. We delved into his path to The Arsenal as a Dubliner, Arsenal’s rather disastrous injury and suspension situation coming into this one, those frightening times when Mauricio Pochettino threatened to win Spurs a trophy, his memories of the Sol Campbell transfer—an all-time North London flashpoint—and why he wants bad things to happen to Tottenham, everywhere and all the time.

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It's the battle of Glasgow, one of the most combustible matches in world football. CELTIC vs RANGERS is a fixture like no other, a vehicle for ancient blood feuds and sectarian strife.

In the beginning of the 20th century, these two sets of fans marked the final whistle of a cup final by attempting to burn down Scotland's famed Hampden Park. After the 1980 final, supporters from both sides rioted on the pitch, fighting hand-to-hand and flinging bottles and more at each other until mounted police charged in to rescue control of the situation. This is a match that carries questions of what it means to be Scottish, baggage tied up in The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the quest for Scottish independence from Great Britain. And it's also, partly, about football.

Joining us to trace this history and preview this Sunday's match is Chris McLaughlin, Sports News Correspondent at BBC Scotland and a man of Glasgow. He also covered the Scottish national team at EURO 2024 and offered some insight into a raucous atmosphere and an ultimately disappointing campaign.

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