From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is Adali.

Today,

the top secret creation and stunningly fast implosion of the billion-dollar European super-lead,

and what it may tell us about the future of the world's biggest sport.

A stead-hernded spoke with our colleague, Chief Soccer reporter, Roy Smith.

It's Friday, April 23rd.

Roy, how are you?

I'm pretty well, how are you?

I'm excited for this conversation, Roy, partly because I've been following your work for a long time,

and also I just think it's going to be a great introduction for folks who may not be familiar with it.

We should start off by saying, throughout this whole thing, I'm going to call it soccer.

You're going to call it football, but I know that you can see, I know you can see pass back and love me anyway.

So I'll call it soccer because I'm so used to writing in time style that I now use it interchangeably,

which really annoys most of my friends.

But that whole thing is like a weird European pretension, because we told it soccer until the 1970s.

It was interchangeable until the 1970s.

I had no idea.

That's not really.

Yeah, my dad calls it soccer, because he's obviously old.

I think that this has been a week that I know in soccer universe has been the biggest week in a very long time.

It seems as if we should start from the very, very beginning.

Can you just explain to us how the structures of European soccer and from a basic level, how does the sport work?

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