Gab & Juls Show: Will Mo Salah start against Brentford?

21:26And because Grainger knows safety is always a priority, they're committed to being your partner in protecting both your people and your facilities. Call 1-800-GRAINGER. Click ranger.com or just stop by. All right, enough Liverpool. How about some quick hits instead? Let's go, Gab. Jude Belegham strikes to give Real Madrid a 1-0 win over Juventus. Jules, how are they looking in advance of the Clásico? And did Igor Tudor's side show you anything other than the ability to defend and be gritty?

21:54Julien Laurens:Well, let's start with Real Madrid. And I guess the fact that their best player was probably Thibaut Courtois with a couple of amazing, what, probably three really outstanding save. One, especially on the one-on-one with Vlaovic. and 0-0 has saved them. He saved them again. I think it tells you a bit of the story. It was not all Courtois because they still created enough chances. They could have scored another goal. 2.81 xG. Yeah, 2.81 xG. The goal is a little bit lucky because Vinny, he's the post and Bellingham scores the rebound. But we see also when Mbappe is maybe not on the greatest of nights.

22:31Julien Laurens:You say that. Yeah, the couple of... Mbappe and Kambiasso. The ankle breaker. This is straight from like, this is like Tim Hardaway or something. I'm really getting myself down. But in front of goal, he was not clinical enough. And you know what? I didn't mind what I saw from you, but considering how average they've been really, and they haven't won since, what, September or something. There were times where I thought they were really good for the money, not just defending, but played well in transition. It was interesting. Yeah, but he changed the team to defend by putting Kooten Miners deeper and McKenzie where he was.

23:07He's not going to do this against an average team, right? So then you start the question, what is this team's identity going to be?

23:16Guler, Bellingham, at some point, Valverde will have to stop playing right back because the right backs will return. It's midfield, four into three. Can you carry... We don't think Guler and Bellingham will play together.

23:31Julien Laurens:For me, this was too open. You can't play like this. in the Classico on Sunday, I would be very surprised if he put, again, those three midfields with Tua Mene, Bellingham and Goula in the Classico. It was part of our talking points on the website if you want to have a read of what we make of it and what we think of it. But it worked. I didn't think that worked that well with the ball yesterday on Wednesday night. And again, I thought they were far too open. It's a lot of individuals. Yeah, exactly. That's what it looked like. Exactly. And if you look at Bellingham's defensive numbers on the night.

24:04Julien Laurens:They're terrible for third midfielder. I think the best line about it is that this does not look like a team that's coached by Xabi Alonso. Yeah, probably, yeah. Arsenal beat up Atletico Madrid 4-0 on Tuesday. That's a remade perfect. Three wins from three. Gab, some haters moan that it was all set-pieces and counter-attacking. Do you agree? No. Come on. It's football. When you don't have Utegaard and you play against a team that comes in your house and defends well, and I thought Atletico Madrid defended really well in the first half. They picked their spots. They hit the woodwork. You have to find another way to win.

24:39It's not just Udegaard. Eze is just a different player. To do the Udegaard stuff, he's not on Udegaard's level. I think it's also we don't have normal Bukayo Saka yet. Whether he's still recovering or whatever, he can't put a Superman cape on every game. You get set pieces. you get counterattacks, but celebrate the fact that Martinelli's really fast in space and he's finishing. Celebrate the fact that I understand why Lewis Skelly doesn't start in the Premier League, but I can also understand Lewis Skelly can do stuff like this, like he did in setting up the first goal. I don't get the Giocheris hype still.

25:16Yes, he fills space and runs around and gets two goals in the end. I think were they both deflected or one was deflected, the other one was kind of... Yeah, one was deflected. Whatever. But it's working, and that's his point. and then let's judge him when Udegaard is back. Do not adjust your podcast device. This is not a hoax. Paris Saint-Germain put seven past Bayer Leverkusen away in a wild, wild game.

25:41Julien Laurens:Yeah, this was crazy. I mean, we said before that because Bayer Leverkusen play so open, so attacking football and PSG are PSG, we knew there would be a lot of goals, but probably didn't think there would be two red cards within the first half, two penalties as well, nine goals in total the pick of the bunch really probably the Alex Garcia incredible strike although you can make a case for Vaskelia hitting the two posts as well it was crazy but if you give PSG this kind of space and time they're going to punish you Eric Ten Hag is gone I don't think Leverkusen meant to be this open but obviously when you go a man down when you've got 10v10 the difference in individual quality becomes even greater because it's harder to bug the spots.

26:27Leverkusen really paid a price for it. Zobarni, let's hope this was a one-off brain fart. Yeah, I don't know what happened to him. Horrendous.

26:32Julien Laurens:Yeah, but Dembele coming back, the Ballon d 'Or winner should remind you all, scoring three minutes into his return. Inter, also perfect, Gab. Four goals away at Union Saint-Gilois. Were you impressed? They got the job done. I was happy. Esposito scored. Bonny did well. They're showing much more versatility. I think this year they're ready to push the defence higher up the pitch, even more so than they did with Inzaghi. But you've got to judge opposition. I mean, Inter have played Slavia Prague, Union Saint-Germain's, and Ajax. Ajax were horrendous, and we'll get to them. This is why those people who look at a table and be like, oh, look, all the big teams are nine points.

27:10Yeah. Inter's nine points are not like Bayern's nine points or Paris Saint-Germain's nine points. Simple as that. Not yet. Firmin Lopez backs a hat-trick as Barcelona beat up Olympiacos 6-1, which no doubt upsets Mr. Marinakis. Yes. But Jules, how angry must Mr. Marinakis be at that second yellow, which left his team down to 10 men just as they were getting back into it? Yeah.

27:34Julien Laurens:And to be fair, Olympiacos were good. Even in that first half, 11 v 11, even before the Fermin goal, the first one that came early for Barcelona, even after that, even when they came back to 2-1 at the start of the second half. and then that's a really harsh second yellow for... Can we call it cheating? Can we call Marc Casado a cheat? He made the most... Yeah, he makes a middle. Which is cheating, yeah? Yeah, yeah. It's not nice. No, I have to be consistent. If I'm going to slam Santi Jimenez, I've got to slam this guy too. Very similar. You're right. Very similar. Then obviously 11 v 10, Barca, Rashford, Hattrick, Laminia, Malle, a bit of a soft penalty, I thought.

28:14Julien Laurens:Yeah, sorry. Firmin, three goals. Rashford, two goals. Laminia as well. Of course, they're going to score goals. It's just, again, we saw against an Olympiacos team that is a decent team, but nothing special either. How quickly or easily this Barca defense could get done. Yeah. On the positives, we saw Drozdar, who I saw did better than Tony at the weekend. Marcus Rashford gets his goals. Just wonder, maybe could Rashford be the answer at center forward more so than with Lewandowski and Torresau? Yeah, definitely. I think, yeah. The vibe was definitely that, I think, of a team looking ahead to the weekend in the Classico.

28:51Julien Laurens:Bayern Munich destroy Bruges 4-0 and also stay perfect and not just in the Champions League have these 12 wins in 12 games in all competitions. Yeah, who needs Jamal Musiala? Who? Jamal who? Exactly. It is kind of, it's kind of wild when you think about it, where they were this summer, all like the, oh, we wanted to sign Drogen-Wertz and no, Volta Mata, so stupid for going over there. Too expensive. Ah, but we could have it could have become, no, bro, you don't need these guys. And then he signed Nico Jackson in the last day of the transfer window and it sounds like, you know, they've picked up somebody else's trash and they're 12 for 12 and they're playing well.

29:25And even when, yeah, they had some issues in the Classic or in the second half, I'm not going to deny that. But they didn't concede a single shot in the first half. I mean, and Leonard Carl, nice to see a homegrown guy, tremendous goal. 17 years old. Amazing. I enjoyed watching Olise in the hole as well. They're like, oh look, you don't need because sometimes it's Olysses, sometimes it's Gnabry, sometimes it's that Harry Kane guy who's pretty good and scored again. They're flying. It makes no sense to me, but they are flying. They're really good. Erling Haaland is held to just one goal, but Manchester City went away to Villarreal 2-0.

30:01Jules, what did Pep learn?

30:03Julien Laurens:The team that stood in La Liga is not very good, even at home. I'm not sure. Maybe they showed too much respect. I don't like this expression because I'm not really sure what it means. But the first half was so... It means they were too scared and too defensive. Really? It was far too easy for City in that first half. They went 2-0 up. And then after that, as we've seen, we saw them doing that earlier in the season as well, including at Monaco, where they take a little bit of the gas and Villa-Welw were a little bit better in the second half. But really, there was never nothing for City to panic of.

30:35Julien Laurens:Haaland scored 24th goal of the season already for club and country. It's just ridiculous. 12 straight games. Yeah, he scored eight of City's last nine goals. Bernardo is the other one. Bernardo scored a header too, which was nice for the little man. Yeah, this is not the way to play against Manchester City. Unless you're a team that specializes and plays super defensive all the time, don't change, go and attack City's back floor. That's the way to play. Napoli absolutely bossed away by PSV Eindhoven losing 6-2. Gav Antonio Conte is furious and says that some players are selfish and egotistical.

31:12Yeah. So first of all, Peter Bosch, we've given you a hard time. Credit where credit's due. Six goals is big. Now, two of those were own goals. Yes. A couple were sort of hit and hopes, great goals. Yes. A couple was a stupid counterattack where the Napoli players run into each other. But that said, it's a big, big win. And you came from behind. So much respect, Peter Bosch. That said, Conte, look, you're with the players all the time. You must know what buttons to push. you said, well, we had to integrate nine new players this summer. That's not easy. Upsets the chemistry. Sure. Liverpool also integrated many new players, I think seven in the summer.

31:54That's also might be some of the hiccups. Now, that said, when you call, say, some players are selfish and egotisticals, when you say the newcomers need to shut up and be humble, Kevin De Bruyne is a newcomer, and then you don't name names, and then people are going to think that, maybe you're thinking De Bruyne. it. Noah Lang is not helping himself, coming out and saying, well, Conte's only spoken to me once and I don't get to play. Conte came out and said, what do you expect Conte to say? Lang's going to play when I say Lang plays. Again, let's hope he gets this right. I think creating this idea where you're saying you're letting the fans down, you're disrespecting the fans, you've got to know what you're doing.

32:34Does he know or is this another second season Conte implosion? Time will tell. I like things my way, my coffee, my schedule, and my treatment. So I talked to my doctor about self-injecting with the Vivgard Hytrulo Pre-Filled Syringe, which contains F-Gartigamide Alpha and Hyaluronidase QVFC. It's injected under your skin subcutaneously. It means I can inject in my space on my time. It's my treatment, my way. Visit VivgardMyWay.com. That's V-Y-V-G-A-R-T MyWay.com. and talk to your doctor about Vivgard Hattrulo. Brought to you by Argenics. If you've shopped online, chances are you've bought from a business powered by Shopify.

33:15You know that purple ShopPay button you see at checkout? The one that makes buying so incredibly easy? That's Shopify. And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business. Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S. from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started. Shopify gives you a leg up with hundreds of beautiful, ready-to-go templates to express your brand style and forget about the code. Tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics and more.

33:52Spread your brand's word with built-in marketing and email tools to find and keep new customers. And did I mention that iconic purple ShopPay button that's used by millions of businesses around the world? It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. Your customers already love it. If you want to see less carts being abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash network. Go to shopify.com slash network. Shopify.com slash network. Harvey Barnes back. Two goals. And Newcastle beat Benfica 3-0.

34:32Jules. Jose Mourinho. isn't happy.

34:34Julien Laurens:No, not happy at all. Second defeat in a row for him in the Champions League. Three and three now for Benfica. They've got zero points. Some of the defending. They didn't start too badly. Looking back, you could have scored. It looked really threatening on that right-hand side against Bern. And after that, they defended. They're defending, sorry, let them down massively, especially on bounds. It was the second one. The second goal, yeah. Where the centre-backs are like vertical. And Pope just, it's a long, like... It's a long throw. Long throw with his arm, and it's just ridiculous defending, really.

35:07Julien Laurens:So, well done for Newcastle. It's a big win for them. They needed it. Nice six points off nine. For Mourinho, there's a lot of work to do. I'm still not sure, really, that he has changed that much compared to Bruno Laj. No. And shout out to Anthony Gordon. Another example of a guy I don't like, and I've been critical of before. And I don't like him purely because of the way he looks. But he's been really good, and I think he's scored in every Champions League game for Newcastle. Yeah, exactly. He's got four goals already. Only Mbappe and Ken, I think, have more. And Zomarescu makes 10 changes, and Chelsea beat Ajax 5-1.

35:38Julien Laurens:But, God, this game was over early, really. Yeah, 50 minutes in. Kenneth Taylor, you can't do that. Gets himself sent off. Crazy time. Zomarescu really opening the floodgates in this. That 10 changes is a little bit deceptive. But we saw your friend Jorgensen come back in for Santos. Yeah, yeah. Was he for fun at coming back from injury? Will he ever be a regular on this team? I have no idea. but it's good to see him back. Enzo Fernandez also back in the lines up. Moises Caicedo at right back. Manesca did the right thing in halftime. Three changes. You're 3-1 up at that stage. The other team's 10 men.

36:14Game is over. Got to see Reggie Walsh and people like that in the second half. Mark Gouille scoring. Mark Gouille scoring. Who would have thunk that? Yeah, Ajax have serious problems, and I don't know. Maybe Faglioli, despite the implosion of the last season, maybe that was a bit of a miracle. Faglioli maybe was not the problem. Witness how well Porto are doing. Tana Mothberg travel to Monaco and it finishes nil-nil. Jules, Thomas Frank needs to fix things quick, quick, quick. They're being rescued by kind Saint Vic.

36:46Julien Laurens:Not bad. They did well. Vicario was an incredible performance. Three massive saves. Your daughter Hutchinson thinks he's not good. Well, he was very good on this. To be fair, they've been good defensively in terms of not considering too many goals. I thought they were so bad in this game because this is a Monaco team with a new manager who only drew 1-1 at Angers on Saturday. And Spurs go to the very hostile, as we know, Stad Luido. Very intimidating. Very intimidating in the Glen Huddle derby. And then there's not much relief from Spurs with the ball or without the ball. Defensively, they were all over the place.

37:21Julien Laurens:Monaco really should have scored at least two goals. They should have won that game. It's a bit of a miracle. One point like they had at Bodo Glimt three weeks ago for Spurs. And yeah, of course, it's a decent style of the campaign. Five points, unbeaten, one win, two draws. But actually, those two draws were poor from them. Really poor. Is it wrong for me to have a man crush on Aklius? No, no. Paris Bonnebret Aklius, I mean, yeah. He's a player and a half. He's a player. You can keep your Golovic. You can keep all this stuff. I'm going to take Aklius. I know, I know. Enjoy him while he lasts with Monaco Shock because he won't be there for too long.

37:58Julien Laurens:Gab, your boy, Victor Ozyman, scored two and wins the ball back for the third as Gata Sarai defeated Bodoglame 3-1. You know what this means. The best is yet to come. He's doing it. You're seeing this. It's ridiculous. It is absolutely absurd. Left foot, right foot, wins the ball back, runs his heart out. There are teams that go and spunk a lot of money on Victor Yorchores on Benjamin Seska on Matthias Cunha and then there's this guy. Unbelievable. What can I say? Big win for Galatasaray. They're looking good. Igor Pachal's wonder goal gives Marseille the lead away to sporting and it was I can't I thought to myself this is the best goal of the weekend when I saw it and I said no it probably isn't because there were so many good ones more than 70 goals in total.

38:46Crazy stuff. Anyway then Emerson my boy Emerson Palmieri Italian international of course Emerson gets a second yellow for diving and they fall 2-1 needless to say our boy Roberto De Zerbi is fuming you down with RDZ yeah

39:03Julien Laurens:fuming I mean really Emerson with that kind of experience should know better don't try to con the referee because that's what he did really he knew exactly there was no contact on these days with VR and everything you're not going to get away with it you're already on a yellow for a stupid handball that you didn't have to do, didn't need to do, or to make, sorry. And now it's the second yellow. You're off and it's the whole second half with 10 men from Marseille with the Zerbe, I thought, messed up tactically. And then eventually they come back and beat you really. Bit of luck though in the second goal, I thought.

39:37Julien Laurens:Yeah, although it's a penalty anyway, I think it's given because his arm is just like that, a Pavard. But yeah, he deflects it with his arm. Pavard had a shocker. He covers on the first goal too for sporting. It's just not a good night. four because that's one point that's three points for Marseille in three games which they look great against Real Madrid could not get just a point then destroy Ajax like everybody does and then in this game they really needed something before some tough fixtures coming up but hey if we're going to pick on players cheating whether it's Santi Jimenez again and obviously earlier in the show we talked about Casado do we need to talk about Pavard as well?

40:21Or do we give him a pass because he won the World Cup? That was bad. That was really bad, yeah. That was embarrassing. Thank you, VAR, for that one, by the way. Yes, definitely.

40:29Julien Laurens:Big bounce, back away, win for Borussia Dortmund. Gab has the big Copenhagen away, 4-2. Is Niko Kovac better than you thought? Yes, he is. He is, because, you know, you're on the back of the classicker, you know, super negative first half. Felix and Metschek, that's the guy who's better than I saw. are certainly in this game. That was another tremendous goal. They've lost twice this year. They lost against Bayern. They lost against Real Madrid. They're two pretty good teams. Pretty good players. They're right up there. Can they compete with Bayern domestically? I don't know. I don't think so. Can they do something in the Champions League?

41:08I think they need to sort a lot of things out. But as you know, I'm a big Gerasi guy. Yeah. And it's okay. If you can't go and kind of out attack and be, yeah, exciting, blah, blah, blah, flying wingers type stuff, you can't do that. Then be solid. And I think the goals will still come. You'll get them in transition. You'll get them off set pieces. You'll get them when you play Copenhagen, who are, despite taking the lead, can't hang on to anything. But I have no issue. It seems to me there's almost, he's trying to be a bit Arteta-ish without the charisma and without the hair, obviously.

41:48Julien Laurens:I mean, shout out to Dadasan. I mean, great name to start with, but who scored for Copenhagen at 1 ,700 days or something like that. The third youngest ever player to score in Champions League behind. Le Mignot. And Ansu Fati. So well done to Dadasan. Icelandic international. Karabag traveled to San Mames on the back of two wins and scored first duels. But then Atlantic piled on 3.47 XG and 1-3-1. Is this a reality check for the team that, you know, I'd started so well? Yeah, we thought there could be maybe a bit of a surprise package and all of that. And just the Athletic club were just too good, too strong.

42:29Julien Laurens:Even with Nico Williams still not fully fit, you could tell. Without Inaki Williams too, it was just, they should have scored more than the three. I thought when they were gifted the early goal, I thought, okay, you can go and you can manage this. The problem is if you sit off of them, and to be fair, again, talk about great goals. Navarro strike. Yeah. Ridiculous strike. That put them 2-1 up. But yeah, you keep conceding chance after chance, and eventually you're going to capitulate. Atalanta, Huff and Perth. They can't blow down Slavia Prize castle and finish 0-0. Yeah, a huge game from the Slavia Prague keeper.

43:09I feel a little bit for, I feel sorry a little bit for Ivan Joric. When Ivan Joric looks sad, he has a face, he looks extremely sad. Yes, he does. He looks like a dog with glasses or something. Yeah, a little bit, I see. 2.59 expected goals. They had their chances. I think we need to stick with Krzysztof. We had a Skamaka sighting as well towards the end. That'll help. I think they'll be okay. I think not getting the three points in this game means that you probably won't finish top eight, but they probably weren't going to finish top eight anyway. Just keep going. They're on the right track. Pafos go down to 10 men after just four minutes away to Kaerat, Anmati, and still hang on for a nil-nil draw.

43:50Yes, they did. Jules, this is two points dropped. How stupid was Jacques Correa?

43:54Julien Laurens:I'm not sure if he's stupid because I think it's one of those where he's looking at the ball, looking at the ball and think that he can control it with his right foot except that there's Luis Matadar with his head you can't kick people in the head no no but that's not he doesn't want to do that he wants to control the ball the thing is once he turns and looks it's too late Sergio Mane did the same on Edison he didn't mean to cut his head off again there was somebody else the other day as well doing it it's just one of those things where yeah now that he knows he doesn't try to get the ball Luis Matadar gets it and he goes it's the fourth minute of the game you cannot put yourself in that situation in a game, which is pretty much...

44:32Well, he's on the pitch. There's 11 opposing players, right?

44:36Julien Laurens:He looks at the ball. He's going to control the ball. But he has no peripheral vision. He's got no idea. But on this case, he didn't scan or take the information before. He's just controlling the ball. Yeah, but it's not like he went for the player. He's just one of those... No, I'm not saying he went for the players. No, I know, but it's not... The referee had no choice to send him off. Oh, yeah, absolutely. 100%. And it's bad because you're right. steam down they still managed to draw they had the two best chances anyway to be fair even if then Cara hit the post on a lovely lovely little slalom but yeah it's four minutes in the second quickest red card in history in the Champions League the first one being Shakhtar against Bayern like 10 years ago or so after even less than the two minutes the three minutes or two minutes 45 that we had in this one Gustavo Hoffman and Alex Kirkland report that Hendrik is open to a lone move away from Real Madrid reading January.

45:27Julien Laurens:Yeah, this is a no-brainer, shorty. Yeah, considering how much he played in the Club World Cup, considering the fact that he's been an unused sub in La Liga five times this season. He has played zero minutes. Gonzalo Garcia seems to be ahead of him in the sort of reserve center-forward role. Yeah, you need to go somewhere else. You need to go somewhere else, hope that you can score some goals. Maybe you can get back into the Brazil squad for the World Cup. He's still ridiculously young. I don't think Real Madrid give up on him. No, definitely. But it's obvious that this coach, for whatever reason, doesn't want to give him minutes.

46:02And so my view is he should have probably moved before, moved in the summer. It should have been clear. I just have proper preseason, settled, play, and grow. Mr. Marinakis gets his man, Jules. It's the lovable, cuddly S &M man. It's Sean Dyche. He's a new Nottingham Forest boss. Right choice?

46:26Julien Laurens:I mean, yeah, that will have the return of the gravelly voice. Some people really like that. Yeah, yeah. Is he the right guy? I mean, he's certainly closer to Nuno and what Nuno built there than Ange would have ever been on that. Yes. It was not who I would have gone for, to be honest here. but you know I just think when you took such a risky call with Ange you go back to being like okay let's let's not mess this one up because this is gonna it's gonna work in the sense that it's gonna stabilize it they're gonna be more solid they're gonna go back a bit they will have a decent rest of the season they might just finish 12th okay but considering how bad they started that would do the job so a couple things first of all one of the first things he said he's gonna to ban hats and snoods from training.

47:20Yeah, he said that before. But he's going to allow white socks. I don't know if he wants to. Do you want people to think you're a caricature of yourself? Like, why should you ban snoods if players are... Whatever. I think the thing about Sean Dice, obviously there's certain things he does extremely well. Did really well to keep Burnley up all those years ago. Did the job at Everton as well. But the point is, unless you gave him a deal through the end of the season, and I think he has a longer deal than that, you have to think, am I in serious danger of going down this year? And you could say yes.

47:55Or should I take a little bit more time and appoint a guy who maybe can make me better and take me to the next level where Forrest want to be? I don't believe Sean Dyche is a guy to take Nottingham Forrest to the next level because it's not anything he's ever really done in his career.

48:13Julien Laurens:Can anyone do that? I'm not sure there's a next level for this team. I'm not sure you can do better than last season. No, no, no. I don't mean do better than last season. So what's the next level? You say you can't take them to the next level. Taking them to the next level from a relegation-threatened team to a team that's stable in mid-table and maybe can qualify for the Europa League. So last year, it was phenomenal. A lot of things went into place. You don't have to be a statistical nerd to understand that they outperformed it. They outperformed all the metrics. There's a lot of variance and stuff happens.

48:44but that was also not going to be sustainable. Now, you know, you've got this multi-club project. You have Edu. Presumably you're building towards something. With Sean Dyche, generally you build towards survival. You don't go beyond that. So maybe Sean Dyche, if you think, oh, we're going to get relegated, that's going to suck. So let me get Dyche. Otherwise you're in a position where, yeah, you stay up, you finish 13th or 14th or whatever. And then in the summer you say, okay, if I continue with Dyche, maybe I'll be in the same position next year but if I want to go further then I have to look elsewhere.

49:18That's all I'm saying.

49:20Julien Laurens:Good news and bad news for Barcelona, Gabi and the renovation of the Camp Nou. So the good news, in addition to some giant Spotify deal is they got authorization to play in front of 27 ,000 people at the Camp Nou so they can go back there. Except they're not going to. They said that they won't return until phase 1B, which is when they open up some more stands and the capacity rises to 47 ,000. Now we can be cynical and say it's about money. I choose to think it's actually a bit of respect for their season ticket holders because obviously Monjuic, if they went back when they could pass 27 ,000, they'd be losing money, but also those would be a bunch of fans who couldn't get the gun, right?

50:03But buried in the report is the fact that the full opening now has been pushed back to December 2027. That's more than two years from now. It was weird when Rangers appointed Russell Martin. It was weirder still when they were linked to everyone from Steven Gerrard to Kevin Muscat. Now they've turned to Danny Roald rules.

50:23Julien Laurens:Yeah, and it didn't seem too easy because they were in talks and then the talks broke down so then they went back to Kevin Muscat who seems to be doing a good job as a coach. Didn't really have Kevin Muscat as a potential really good coach, but hey, why not but then you kind of things got better with Daniel Roll and they appointed him we've seen with him certainly in the championship a nice philosophy I think he's got bright ideas I love his energy and the vibe again going back to Daesh Forrest is it what Rangers need after such a dreadful start of the season at least they will have they should have a clear philosophy which Russell Martin to be fair had in his way he's just were never able to implement it with his own players.

51:10Julien Laurens:So let's see what Danny Rule does. I think I like this appointment, really, but then I'm not sure if it's going to work. I'm going to use this as an excuse to tell my Kevin Muscat story. It's on YouTube somewhere. One of the teams that Kevin Muscat played for, I really don't know. I think it was like a preseason friendly. It might have been, again, I had no idea who he was playing for because I've forgotten. I blanked it out of my mind. But they were playing friendly against Milan. You and I both know Marcel Desailly. I think you confirmed that it takes a lot for Marcel Desailly to lose his cool.

51:46Yeah, yeah. There's a massive brawl at the end of the game, presumably instigated by Muscat. Desailly absolutely loses it. You know, he and Muscat, they're like literally at each other's throats. And you look at Marcel's face, it just looks like Marcel's like, all right, that's it. This is the end of Kevin Muscat.

52:03Julien Laurens:Yeah. All these players pile on. And then there's like a giant, and then it's like everything goes dark because this giant figure goes and blocks out the sun. And it's Zelko Kalach. Yeah. Remember the giant eight foot goalkeeper who was like Milan's third keeper at the time? He comes in and he pulls Musk. Musk, that's not a small man. He's very aggressive. Yeah, yeah. He's not a small man either. And he pulls them apart as if they were children. I love that. I don't know what Zelko Kalach is doing right now. No, interesting to know. I never met the guy, but I always really, really liked him. Are all batteries the same?

52:44That's like asking if all soccer players are the same. Take Messi, the most decorated player ever. Is there any other player who has achieved that? No, just him. Now take Duracell. Is there any other battery with power boost ingredients inside? No, just Duracell. Remember, goats only trust goats because they're built different. And Messi only trusts Duracell.

53:11This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

53:37Julien Laurens:Gab, how about some texter time? It's been a while. It's time. It's time. It's texter time. Yes. So our hero is in trouble once again. Or not trouble. He's getting some bad news. There's a commercial court in the UK. He's had a preliminary hearing. basically they say that he owes nearly a hundred million dollars to something called iconic sports now iconic sports are one of those funds uh one of those iconic funds yeah um they invested 75 million dollars in eagle football limited which you remember is was because i don't think there's many teams left in there is sort of multi-club uh ownership vehicle back in 2022 and they say that JT promised them that they were going to list on the stock exchange initial public offering and that if they didn't then he had to buy back their shares plus 11 % a year in interest which if you add it up comes out to$97 million obviously he hasn't done that Texter says he's going to appeal Texter says it's incorrect blah blah blah he's still going he's got court cases of course and back in Brazil with Botafogo as well it's always fun and games in the Texter household Always.

54:53Nominees are the African Footballer of the Year. Out Jules. Bones door. Yeah. On your department. You know who I would give it to, obviously. Yes, obviously.

55:03Julien Laurens:So who you got? So your boy, obviously, Victor Ozyman, is in there with Anguissa, with Buonga, with Girassi, with Lamliwi, with Mayele, with Ndi. Mosala, of course, is there. Always there. Papi Matassar as well. But the winner. And there can only be one winner. And there can only be one name, and you all know the one that I've left for the end. It's Ashraf Hakimi, who's been not just the best African player last season anywhere, but as we said, potentially in the top three or top five players all around the world. I'm less familiar with this Ballon d 'Or than I am with the other Ballon d 'Or. I always wonder about voters and criteria.

55:46if you're going to weigh the 24-25 season really heavily, you could probably make a strong case for Liverpool's Egyptian forward, right? For Mohamed Salah. I mean, there's some people who are saying Mohamed Salah was a candidate for the France football ballon d 'or.

56:05Julien Laurens:Yeah. A lot of people had him at third or fourth. I don't know where he finished, but a lot of people had him in the top five. Whereas you could say Ashraf Hakimi played for a super team, surrounded by a lot of other great players. Without Salah, Liverpool would not have won the title. Oh, I see. Without Hakimi. No, I'm not sure. I mean, Hakimi's numbers. Hakimi's scoring in the Champions League final, semi-final, quarter-finals. It's just an incredible idea. I think Hakimi would win it, and I think he'd be well-designed. If you waited on October and you count the start of this season, no question, it's Hakimi.

56:37Julien Laurens:God, remember that mysterious post from Turkey Alshak claiming that Manchester United were in advance talks over a sale. Well, according to the Guardian, it's partly true. Yeah, very partly. So Turkey Al Sheikh, for those who don't know, he is the minister or is the head of general entertainment in Saudi Arabia, which is a really big job. He covers everything from sports, the Saudi Pro League, the boxing, the WWE concerts, that comedy fest that they had. So he's important, and he's a big Match United fan. So if you remember, he sent out this tweet where he's like, congratulations to Manchester United's new owners who are in advanced talks and people saw this and they're like hey Turkey, what the hell are you talking about?

57:19It's like oh no I speak as a fan not in my official capacity. I'm like do you know something? Well no. According to the Guardian there's a group of investors they're not from Saudi, they're from UAE who are putting together a bit and they want to rope in all the former Manchester United legends. but this seems very much in its infancy. It's not clear that they've raised any money yet. And of course, it's going to take a lot of money to dislodge Ratcliffe and even more to dislodge the Glazers. We know that. Guardian was able to confirm that they spoke to Eric Cantona. I think frankly, it's because everybody's Cantona's number and he will talk to anybody at any time, especially if you put some money in front of them.

58:03Of course. Supposedly, they want to talk to David Beckham and Wayne Rooney. Okay. I think those are the ones that would probably move the needle a little bit more. David Beckham, if he could bring in some friends, he would attract investors. That's true. But yeah, it's extremely premature, so do not get too excited. Certainly, I think Turkey jumped the gun on that one a little bit. Arsenal have apologized to Madrid, who trained on Monday night at the Emirates Stadium and had to take cold showers as a result because there was no hot water. Charles, I have to say, I am shocked that a tough guy like El Cholo Simeone doesn't take cold showers by choice.

58:37Julien Laurens:It's not going to make us teens take cold showers. Yes, I see what you mean, Gab. You're right. I think, I'm not really sure about this story. I think it was nothing to do with Arsenal. Like, nobody switched off the hot water. Yeah, it was a fault. Yeah, it was a fault. I think that was in the kind of area or something like that. And it's not like they have, like, a team hotel that's 10 minutes away with nice warm showers. Exactly. It's not that big a deal. Exactly. And it's not like on the day before a game, you do a lot of hard training where you run and sweat a lot either. But it's never nice, I guess.

59:04Julien Laurens:I think it was cold and rainy, to be fair. Yeah, and it was right for Arsenal to apologize. But it's, back in the day, I sometimes wish that we had, I wish we had this podcast, don't you wish we had this podcast back in like the 1970s and 1980s when every European away trip, you had people banging pots and pans. Absolutely. They were turning up the heat, turning off the heat. You know, come on. It would have been fun. It would have been fun. It wasn't that long ago that 777 football had majority stakes in Erta Berlin, Genoa, Standard Liège, and Vasco da Gama, as well as minority shares in Sevilla and Melbourne Victory.

59:40Julien Laurens:They even had a deal to buy 94.1 % of Everton. And now, according to the FBI, it was a fraud scheme worth half a billion dollars. Yes, and because lawyers are watching, I'm going to quote here from the FBI's own release, quoting a guy named Christopher Raya. He says, he quote, fabricated lies of success and doctored financial records. that you can say, oh, it's a boring financial story, not my club. We need more oversight in football. We need more oversight. It's not just this. I mean, these are allegations of outright fraud. I don't think there are allegations of outright fraud towards John Texter, rightly so.

1:00:21But clearly, these multi-club ownership things, especially when the funding sometimes is there, sometimes isn't there, is what it is. There's certainly a lot of investigations there. there's the other guy the guy who was from um i'm blanking on his name conway uh who had uh some team up north in england i'm blanking on that one too but uh as well as teams in in different countries yeah we have to have oversight we have to have oversight where these teams are coming from what i would welcome personally but hey i'm excessive i would say you need to have upfront guarantees. Yeah. You need to have oversight.

1:00:59I would also frankly make it that I know, I know, say I know, like obviously Paris Saint-Germain and city and whatever, but if you're a sovereign wealth fund of a country, you should not be buying a football club. I think. Yeah, yeah. Obviously grandfather in the ones who've done it already, maybe, but we should have clear demarcation lines about this because this stuff's important. Yeah, no, you're right. Costa Rica and Jamaica have joined the USA and Mexico to host the 2031 Women's World Cup. Now, Jules, decision won't be made official until next April, but FIFA says they're the only valid bid, so I think we can kind of know where it's going.

1:01:40Yeah.

1:01:40Julien Laurens:Do you like multi-nation World Cups? I do, Gavin. I know it's not great maybe for your carbon footprint and all of that, which is absolutely fair. I just like the fact that football can go to Costa Rica and Jamaica as a World Cup host. I just love that. Those countries will never host a World Cup. Exactly. And they can't host the whole World Cup, obviously, for obvious reasons. So for them to have a few games, a bit like what we will see as well in the 2030 Men's World Cup, the year previously, which maybe is a little bit too many countries, but still, you get the idea of what I mean. So let's see, 2027 will be in Brazil.

1:02:16Julien Laurens:We know that, which is pretty cool too. And then I think I would love USM, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Jamaica to have. and we know most of it will be probably in the US, then the second best will be, or second most, sorry, in Mexico, and then a little bit Costa Rica and Jamaica. But still, I think this should be the spirit. Chelsea have added 33 players to the Champions League squad, Gab. 33, 3-3. Yeah, now this seems a little bit over the top, obviously. Yeah. Are you on the squad? You should be. Unfortunately, you might find this hard to believe, but I wasn't born after 2004. Okay. Because this is the Chelsea B list.

1:02:59B list, that's right. Now, for those who don't know, in the Champions League, you can register a maximum of 25 players. There are certain requirements for homegrown players. In Chelsea's case, I think they can register fewer because obviously we found they settled their breaches of financial fair play. But you can have an unlimited amount of players on the B list. Players on the B list are club-produced, homegrown players who are 21 or younger. And basically Chelsea went out and just registered their entire U18, U17, U16 team. Some familiar names. Jaco Silva's son. Michael Imanalo's son. Landon, who I'm told is like a serious, serious footballer.

1:03:38So yeah, they just have a ton of bodies there. This doesn't mean anything. Most of these guys, we're never going to see them. We're never going to see them this season for Chelsea. So yeah, Chelsea say it's purely administrative. And what you see sometimes when you look at the bench of your favorite team in the Champions League and you see these names that you don't recognize, this is because what normally happens is when clubs need to fill out the bench, they will register these B-list players. They register them game by game. Chelsea said, hey, let's just register everybody in one go. And, you know, saves us time to do it game by game.

1:04:14La Liga's game on December 20th in Miami between Villarreal and Barcelona won't be taking place. It's been canceled. Oh, such a shame. Now, this is after legal action. Also, this past weekend, we didn't report on it. But there was a 10 to 15 second protest by players, which, funny enough, La Liga's cameras did not show.

1:04:34Julien Laurens:No, in most of the games, they didn't show. Such a shame. We were all so excited to go to Miami on December 20th to really mess up the La Liga season. Because as we talked about integrity and all the teams having as many home games and away games, nobody on neutral ground, this would have messed everything up so funnily enough La Liga posted their statement or released their statement right into the in the middle of the Champions League while Villarreal were playing on Tuesday while Villarreal were playing as well not happy Villarreal not happy at all I think the right decision for me was made Gabi of not having that game played in the US yeah we're going to go on about it let's see what happens with Milan-Como in Perth now that is a legitimately different situation but yeah it's usually what relevant sports end up doing because they spent a lot of money on all their lawsuits right but now it seems that's all irrelevant see what I did there?

1:05:33Julien Laurens:Bagabi Tel Aviv said that even if their fans were allowed by local authorities to attend the Europa League game against Aston Villa we mentioned our Monday show next month they will not accept any ticket allocation anyway yeah I'm explaining this for people who don't know how it works when you've got games between, well, even club games, actually. You have a certain amount of tickets that the home team puts aside and they give to the away team to sell to their own fans. Typically, it'll be between 10 % and 15 % of the tickets. With Aston Villa, because the local authorities, which said, you know, this is an at-risk game, we don't want the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans here, which greatly upset the British government and the opposition as well, both Labour and Conservative.

1:06:21Clearly. You know, this became a big thing. But Maccabi Tel Aviv says, all right, guys, this is not safe for our fans, given the...

1:06:54Thank you.

1:07:34That's the sound of zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine, and the power to burn body fat. Storm, energy for life. Storm Energy Blend helps boost metabolism, which in combination with exercise and a healthy diet helps burn fat. This product alone does not produce weight loss. Individual results may vary.