This is Early Kick Off from the Men in Blazers media network and presented by our great friends of the pod STōK Cold Brew Coffee, all your global football stories straight from the back pages of Europe's newspapers in around 10 minutes.

On today’s episode: We round up Thursday’s Champions League fixtures, which included an incredible double save from David Raya and Monaco inflicting Barcelona’s first defeat of the season; Pochettino shares his target for the USMNT in the 2026 World Cup; Gianni Infantino tries to drum up support for a FIFA Club World Cup amidst concerns for players’ welfare; we preview the big clashes in the Premier League this weekend, including Manchester City v Arsenal on Sunday, 11:30am eastern; and Marseille’s Adrien Rabiot has an interesting agent.

Football don't sleep, and neither do we.

This episode was made in the UK for Men In Blazers by…

Host: Sammy James 

Producer: George Cooper

Assistant producer: Elizabeth Barnard

Researcher: Jack Collins

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