The 3rd Circle

Jamie and Martin delve into the details of Paris Saint-Germain's historic 5 - 0 victory over Inter in the 2025 Champions League Final in Munich.

What were the tactical aspects that allowed arch-controller, Luis Enrique to claim his second Champions League trophy in such emphatic style?

How and why did the game's tactical dynamics play out and how could Simone Inzaghi have responded to help his players?

Our hosts discuss the impact an...

Jamie and Martin take The 3rd Circle's para-academic football research unit down to the deepest level of the game's atomic structure.

Forget the God's Eye View, the truest creative forces are inside football's base matter.

To investigate these most unstable of phenomena, our hosts channel the spirit of Dennis Quaid and fling themselves headfirst into football's Inner Space.

What will reveal itself down at this microscopic level?

What w...

Jamie and Martin get meta in this episode of The 3rd Circle as our ever-intrepid hosts try to sketch a more detailed outline of the dominant tactical paradigm.

Could it be that the reality we perceive as real is nothing more than a simulation? Are we all living in a box?

If we are, what is its nature? Why are we living in it? How might we escape?

The 3rd Circle offers up philosophical musings from Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and ...

It's who we are, mate. So, who are you? Who are we? Who made who? Who's next?

In this episode, Jamie and Martin tackle one of the most prevalent concepts in contemporary football tactics - Identity.

Ralf Rangnick proposed that coaches need a video of the perfect match in their heads, but is this really true?

How do pre-defined, idealised models of play cash-out in the real world of playing and coaching?

Our hosts fire off on multip...

In perhaps their most complex assignment so far, Jamie and Martin enter The 3rd Circle to interrogate how Time constrains the reality in which football is played.

Our hosts find themselves in a race against the clock and must channel their inner Dennis Bergkamps to find ways of progressing through a seemingly endless entanglement of temporal contradictions.

So, if you're ready to find out how teddy bears, Jason Statham and The Frenc...

William S Burroughs wrote that "'Never go too far in any direction' is the basic rule on which England is built". Could it be that Burroughs' observation is as pertinent now as it was back when it was written in 1975?

Pep Guardiola has alluded to a break in the established norms of the modernised English game.

But how can we understand the nature of the different forces that are pushing football beyond the confines of static tactica...

In this first full length excursion into The 3rd Circle, Jamie and Martin try to make sense of the complex tactical landscape that we find ourselves in today.

Our hosts trawl through obscure old newspaper articles and match reports as they sketch out a timeline of football's recent tactical history.

Pep Guardiola's 'superhuman' Barcelona, Carlo Ancelotti's Milanese diamond and Roger Schmidt's taurine powered Red Bull Salzburg machi...

Jamie Hamilton and Martin Rafelt venture into The 3rd Circle to explain what this mysterious new space means for the football tactics-sphere.

In this short introductory episode we find out why Thomas Tuchel once told Martin to 'just fool around', we're treated to a surreal Oliver Kahn impression and our hosts get into the linguistic significance of alien symbols in Denis Villeneuve's movie, Arrival.

Half-spaces, needle players and Bo...