Hand Of Pod

This week, Sam and English Dan look back on South American champions Argentina playing European champions Italy off the Wembley pitch on Wednesday night in the revived Artemio Franchi trophy match, look at the last sixteen draws of the Copas Libertadores and Sudamericana, and celebrate the fact that the long Argentine winter break is over after all of twelve days since the Copa de la Liga ended, because the Liga Profesional started a few hours before this episode was uploaded!

This week, Sam and English Dan look back on the semis and the final of the Copa de la Liga, which saw Boca Juniors lift the trophy but NOT, after all the fuss at the start of the competition about how it would count as a league title, being crowned the champions of Argentina for some very AFA reasons. We also look back (and into the present, as we were recording) on the final round of matches in the group stages of the Copas Libertadores and Sudamericana, and if you don't know how Boca did on Thursday night and whether or not they've qualified you'll want to keep listening after the end theme music.

The Copa de la Liga knockout stage has begun, and after Tuesday's two matches brought the expected home wins for Racing and Boca Juniors, who'll meet in the first semifinal on Saturday, Wednesday saw two shock results, as Argentinos Juniors outplayed Estudiantes before putting them out on spot kicks and Tigre took advantage of a howling defensive error to beat River Plate, in spite of a Puskás Award contender from Enzo Fernández. Sam, English Dan, Santi and Andrés are on hand to talk you through it all.

This week, Sam and English Dan look back on last week's action and (most of) the midweek Sudamericana and Libertadores results, as well as looking forward to this weekend's last group stage matches in the Copa de la Liga.

This week's HOP sees the return of a prodigal son, as Sam, English Dan and Andrés welcome Seba back to the studio, and it's an epic chat taking in Racing's fine form, the Estudiantes machine, racism in Argentina (including a very brief history lesson on the colonisation of Patagonia) and more.

We've got plenty of catching up to do now Sam and Dan are back from their (separate) holidays, and they're joined by Andrés, Tony and Santi to dive deep into the waters of the Copa de la Liga, including Racing's magnificent form, a surprising win for Talleres against River Plate and Independiente's deep, abiding, lustful love of a sweet, sweet draw.

This week, Sam and English Dan review the weekend of clásicos, which saw away wins for ... well, quite a lot of teams actually, including Boca Juniors over River Plate and Racing over Independiente. We then switch our attention to Thursday night's upcoming CONMEBOL WORLD CUP QUALIFYING FIGHT TO THE DEATH which, erm, actually probably won't finalise things, but Uruguay v Peru should be tremendously entertaining for the neutral all the same.

This week on HOP, Sam, English Dan and Andrés discuss last weekend's matches and look forward to this weekend's glut of clásicos, including most notably Saturday's clásico de Avellaneda and Sunday's superclásico.

In this week's episode Sam, English Dan, Santi and Andrés are back in the same room. We look back on last weekend's Copa de la Liga action, with Estudiantes dropping points for the first time. It's hard not to admire Lionel Scaloni trolling Italy and (especially) Spain by calling up a plethora of dual nationals for Argentina's final two World Cup qualifiers, too.

On this week's Hand Of Pod, Sam, English Dan, Andrés and Santi look back on a weekend which saw two all-Big Five clásicos both end 2–2: Independiente v Boca Juniors, which was played in a deluge of Biblical proportions (and saw some atrocious refereeing) and River Plate v Racing, which was a classic game of two halves. There's plenty of love for Defensa y Justicia and Estudiantes, as well, as their good starts to the season continue (Estudiantes made it through to the Libertadores third qualifying round shortly after we finished recording), and some Argentina travel tips for one of our listeners!