Loconte and Sid preview the Barcelona game: What's going on with the referee incident at the moment? Will it galvanize the team or will they struggle? Then they get into the ideal setup for tomorrow's game, as well as Barcelona's absences of Lewandowski and Balde and how that factor in. We discuss various tactical wrinkles like Tchouameni's presence as a screener, the need to attack Gerard Martin down the right, and having Bellingham defend higher up the field.

Jarod Hector joins Siddharth Ramsundar in the aftermath of Real Madrid's loss to Arsenal to talk about Real Madrid's direction and tactical flaws this season, stats behind the team's successes, Ancelotti's struggles to give the team structure that helps them, Jude Bellingham's position, the team's inability to replace Toni Kroos, what needs to change at the club going forward, and a whole lot more.

StatsBomb founder Ali Elfakharany returns with Siddharth Ramsundar to preview the 2nd legs of the Champions League Quarterfinals. Do Real Madrid have a chance at upsetting Arsenal, and what would that game look like? We also look at the PSG - Aston Villa tie and the odds of Bayern Munich going away and winning in Milan. We also preview the hypothetical semifinal matchup Arsenal v PSG and wonder who Barcelona would rather face between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan.

On the first postgame episode of the new Real Deal, Siddharth Ramsundar is joined by Loconte and Jarod Hector to review a disappointing but not wholly surprising performance by Real Madrid at the Emirates. We go over the tactical mismatch between Ancelotti & Arteta in this game, the various things that went wrong on the pitch, the strategic flaws as a club that led Real Madrid here and the season-long issues that have shown in the data and eye-test. We then discuss hypotheticals like how we would do against PSG tactically, as well as how we may fare against Barcelona in the remaining matchups this season after this disappointing result. We even touch briefly on Dortmund v Barcelona at the end. Since this was the first episode with our new crew, we took a little bit longer to break things down than we normally will going forward. Enjoy!

Welcome to the new and improved Real Deal Podcast. On today's episode Siddharth Ramsundar is joined by Statsbomb founder (now HUDL Statsbomb) Ali Elfakharany to preview the Arsenal - Real Madrid tie & catchup about the state of European football. Catching up after a long time, we end up casually discussing all the Champions League contenders like PSG, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan and Barcelona, the relative strength of different leagues, the evolution of the game, Mikel Arteta as a coach, and a bunch of other miscellaneous technical stuff.

Expect more structure in future episodes, but here's a casual long special to mark our return!