Third flight of 2025, but it doesn't mean I don't have time to talk to you about the Copa del Rey, if you're interested, and I hope you are.

Because the Copa del Rey in my time in Spain has transformed itself from something that was complacent and sluggish and heavily weighted towards the big teams,

except those sizeable historic clubs often didn't take the tournament all that

seriously. The rules have changed drastically now. In all the early rounds, including up until

this week, the team that's in the lesser category, the lower league, will always play at home.

It's a one-off game. Teams are bound by the rules to field at least

seven first-team footballers. That means that it's sudden impact. And what happened when

Barcelona started taking the cup really seriously and winning it was that Real Madrid did too.

They woke up famously winning it a brilliant game at Mastaya, a ball in, I think from Angelo Di Maria

to Christiano Ronaldo, a 1-0 classical win in Valencia, which was part of that three classical

in 15 days sequence in 2011.

It was an astonishing win.

And in the big parade afterwards with the cup,

Sergio Ramos, the captain, was so excited

that he dropped the cup at the front of the big double-decker bus.

The bus ran over it, called Celebrate, more Sergio.

Sergio being Sergio.

This week, lots of extraordinary matches.

We've had since 2018 seven different consecutive winners

and within that group of seven consecutive different teams

that won at only one repeat club, which was Barcelona. And there's going to be an extension to that record because athletic, the holders, such an

important win for them last season.

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