Welcome to Footy On The Med, the Mediterranean football podcast. My name’s Alex Wade and I’m a UK writer living in Menton, the last town on the French Riviera before Italy. The aim of this roving podcast is to give you a flavour of what football’s like here on the Med, taking in legendary football clubs close to Menton like Monaco, Nice and Marseille as well as those further afield in Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia and Albania. Names to conjure with like Barcelona, Napoli, AEK Athens, Sampdoria, Hajduk Split and... Flamurtari.

What connects them, as well as Slovenia's FC Koper, Sampdoria and Sanremo? They all play the beautiful game a stone's throw from the Med.

How does this affect them? Is there something that defines Mediterranean football? A way of playing, a delight in the joy of football that mirrors the warmth and light of the region? What of the cliché of Mediterranean passion - does it ever spill over and turn beauty into ugliness? What did Zinedine Zidane mean when he said: "A Mediterranean city is really my culture"? If that city happened to be Genoa, is it still, as Charles Dickens said, "the city of beautiful confusion"? And what have Stan Bowles and Graeme Souness got to do with all this?

My co-host is another Englishman abroad, John O’Hare. He's a lifelong Liverpool fan who, like me, lives here in Menton.

John and I love Menton. We love the Med. We love football.

So much for certainties. Join us as we find out what makes Footy on the Med.