This one's named for a region named after a road—the Via Aemilia—that the Romans built after they took this chunk of northern Italy off some Celtic tribes back in 189 BC. A bunch of towns grew up along the new thoroughfare, and now there are a number of football clubs scrapping over this turf. The two biggest and most decorated are BOLOGNA, from the medieval masterpiece known for its food, architecture, and the world’s oldest university; and PARMA, another ancient town that’s…known for its food. This is Italy, after all.

These two clubs have enjoyed very different histories: Bologna were a big deal in the early decades of Serie A, at a time when Parma were looking up at them from a league (or multiple) below. Then, in the 1990s, the Crociati (Crusaders) of Parma rose to the lofty heights of the Italian league when it was the greatest in the world, fielding a parade of famous names—Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro, Lilian Thuram, Hernán Crespo, Gianfranco Zola, Juan Sebastian Verón—thanks in part to some very rich and very volatile ownership. When the multinational dairy and food corporation with a controlling ownership stake, Parmalat, collapsed early on in the new millennium, it decimated the club.

Now Bologna are back on top again, playing Champions League football again after a fine season under Thiago Motta, now departed for Juventus. They lost a couple of key players in Joshua Zirkzee and Riccardo Calafiori, but they just played their biggest game in maybe 60 years at Anfield on Wednesday. You can hear all about that in this week’s episode with Christine Cupo, reporter and analyst on the CBS Sports Golazo Network and for Attacking Third, the hub for coverage of the women's game on CBS Sports.

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We’re headed over to Germany for an early Bundesliga title clash, and Derek Rae is our guide before he calls the game for ESPN. It’s BAYERN MUNICH vs BAYER LEVERKUSEN in a meeting of the perennial powers and the fresh-faced upstarts, with Bayern looking for a return to the normal order of things after Leverkusen posted a scintillating unbeaten domestic double last term, taking the Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal without losing a match. They nearly won the Europa League, too, but Atalanta was a step too far in the final in Dublin.

How have these two teams changed since last year, particularly Bayern under new coach Vincent Kompany? Have Leverkusen lost the air of inevitability that carried them through last season and helped them grab late goals to rescue results? Derek offered all that and much more from his vast reservoir of knowledge when it comes to German football. Plus, on EA Sports FC 25 release week, he offered up some of his favorite lines from his role as a commentator for the world-famous video games.

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There are few feuds like the 111-year-old dispute between Arsenal and Tottenham over who exactly owns North London. These two first met in 1896, but that was when Arsenal were in Woolwich, south of the River Thames. It wasn’t until the Gunners crossed the waterway in 1913 and set up shop in Tottenham’s neighborhood that the trouble began, and it hasn’t let up since. Though as an Arsenal fan, I feel obligated to weigh in on who owns what: the red side may be seeking a first league title in two decades, but Tottenham haven’t won the first division for 63 years. They’ve won two trophies in the last 30, and they were both League Cups.

There might be just a bit of Arsenal partisanship in this episode, because joining the show to preview this North London derby is Andrew Mangan—blogger, podcaster, and proprietor at Arseblog, the foremost Arsenal fan channel. We delved into his path to The Arsenal as a Dubliner, Arsenal’s rather disastrous injury and suspension situation coming into this one, those frightening times when Mauricio Pochettino threatened to win Spurs a trophy, his memories of the Sol Campbell transfer—an all-time North London flashpoint—and why he wants bad things to happen to Tottenham, everywhere and all the time.

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