Why are English teams dominating the Champions League? Football Weekly Extra

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:30Only Arsenal are having a brilliant season locally. Nevertheless, we'll discuss Marseille's lack of a draft excluder, another great goal from Harvey McBarnes, and what we're learning from Liam Rossini so far. We'll round up the other results before looking ahead to the Premier League weekend. Arsenal-Liverpool jumps off the page. Slots men one of only two sides to beat the Gunners this season. Then Paul Watson can do some Greenland. Lars can do a Bodo glint minute too. We'll answer your questions, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

0:59well you know two of the panel welcome last hivinson hello hello max uh hello paul watson from the sweeper pod hi max there was no bit in the intro for you johnny lu i mean there was a bit but i took it out because i didn't quite understand it i thought we might not have time for it but we might have time for it but i didn't put it in the intro i apologize morning max yes thank you so much okay then with one game to go in the champions league all the premier league sides are in good positions. Arsenal are through, 100 % record. Top Liverpool have 15 points. A point at home to Carabao will probably be enough to get them into the top eight.

1:31If Spurs win at Frankfurt, who are out, they'll get in the top eight. Newcastle do need a win at PSG to get into the top eight, so that's not straightforward. A win at Napoli for Chelsea will probably get them in the top eight, and Man City will probably be in the top eight if they beat Galatasaray. So, it doesn't mean, Johnny, that a Premier League side are going to win this competition, but how should we feel about this kind of, inverted commas, domination? well um it's an unbelievable night for the coefficient uh not not a classic night for for the competition not a classic night in terms of drama but the coefficient is being hoisted around the room uh on on the shoulders of its teammates yeah i mean this is this is obviously just uh it's a recurring theme i think it's one that that we've you know we talked about on this pod before that is talked about i think a lot of the corridors of power and the boardrooms of European football that you see so we'll come to PSV later but PSV are a team that haven't lost away from home in 10 months they're 16 points clear of the aerodivisie and Newcastle were not just better than them but but really kind of humiliatingly better than them we've seen this again and again you know the the Champions League is making Tottenham look quite good which we know that they're they're not so I think that there is a the standard of the Premier League in this competition, I think is finally a bit of a product of the financial dominance that the league has enjoyed for quite some years.

2:54Is it hypocritical, Lars, to criticise the power of the Premier League when that is our bread and butter? Or can we have our cake and our bread and butter? I mean, I think there are separate discussions almost. I mean, criticise. It's the reality of the situation. This is a league where the teams have much more money than everyone else. I mean, Newcastle's off the top of my head, I'd say Newcastle's wage bill is probably about three times what PSV's is. I can Google that, but I'm pretty sure it's something like that. And so you would expect them to win. And it's not always going to be the case.

3:27There are market inefficiencies, as people would call them. And you'll have exceptions. We had a glorious one last night. But I think whenever an English team beats a team from one of the other leagues in Europe, then that's more of a sort of dog bites man than mine bites dog kind of story. And the real shock really was that PSV went away to Liverpool in one. I mean, that was Liverpool mid-spiral. And I was, because PSV are coached by Peter Bosch, who for a long period of time was this kind of pan-European banter figure because he's kind of like a Dutch Ange Postekoglu in the sense that he's a genuine football romantic and his teams have often been good to watch but often fully chaotic at the back.

4:13I mean, Dortmund and Leverkusen and Lyon fans will testify to this. And he's gone back to Holland. And as you said, they're doing phenomenally well in the league. But you are kind of expecting them to come unstuck when they go abroad to the big boys in the Champions League. So for them to rock up at Anfield and thump Liverpool was a baffling state of affairs. And I was even texting some friends yesterday, like when they'd spontaneously gave away two goals for no reason against Newcastle. I was like, ah, there we go. That's the Peter Bosch we know and love. You know, normality has been restored, which is a little mean to him he's probably on a pretty good sort of redemption arc with him running away with the Eredivisie and all that but it wasn't completely unexpected but that way and I think actually having rambled on I want to add one more point I do think there are quite a few European teams who struggle more with Newcastle than some of the English teams do because Newcastle are a very physical team they're a very direct team they're a very intense team and and they're they are physical in a way that a lot of I mean this is a cliche but I'm sorry it's true they are physical in a way that a lot of the continental teams don't enjoy playing against.

5:15Böder Gleimt had much more trouble with Tottenham in the Europa League last year because they actually just thrashed them physically. They had a real, like, when they lost and lost badly to Spurs in the Europa League last year, they actually changed the way they trained on the back of it because they were so outmatched physically over those two. They do gladiators? What did they do? No, but they were, like, an example, their centre-house were, like, not used to the striker just bashing into them like before the ball even gets there when there's a high ball coming up like there was a level of physicality to Tottenham's play that they were just like what what is happening here and we're gonna actually have to train differently and play differently if we're gonna hold our own against these European teams and I think while Newcastle are not having the best of seasons in the Premier League they have a lot of like intensity there's a lot of guys who run there's a lot of like powerful dudes in there and I think PSV are probably one of the European teams are not super well equipped to deal with that.

6:05Paul, we're sort of at the, this is the second of the Swiss model 36 team league. And if you look at like the number of teams that could get in the top eight, I think you could probably, I haven't checked all the permutations, but like Dortmund have 11 points. If they win, they have 14. That could possibly get them into eight. So you've got a lot of teams going for that. At the bottom, I suppose last year, there were some big sides that were in jeopardy i think psg and man city might have been in jeopardy at the end it's not quite the case but still you've got all the way down to ajax in 32nd that could make it into the playoffs so does does year two like that gives us two years to look at make you feel like this is this is working or not it's a really good question and here i have to battle my old man yells at cloud instincts because i have to admit i do i miss the old format in terms of just knowing where you stand in terms of the the narrative and having teams coming back to play against each other a second time i i do miss the old format i also have just an instinctive thing that when i see a team listed as being in 26th place or 33rd but my brain just will not compute it's like i've been transported into a sport i don't understand or yeah i would think paul that your instinct would be that you want to manage them somehow well if the caravag job comes up you know but but yeah this is this is the thing right um instinctively i take against this format but i do have to admit it does maintain the drama and it maintains the opportunity for teams to to to get you know in or out of of contention up until the very end so i'm really torn i can't say whether i like this or don't like it i'm still instinctively against it and i'm trying to work out which bit of that is just me rejecting all attempts at change in football because i am old yeah but i guess johnny like there is does lead to this drama on the final day but it doesn't mean it's been that dramatic up to that point i think they've probably been good nights and last night wasn't that fascinating so maybe this is real recency bias there were there were really interesting games and results the night before so maybe that's just why i wanted to go down this road before we talked about the games yeah i mean i haven't really looked at the table that the whole competition i looked at it this morning before coming on trying because because it's really hard to contextualize it's like well oh just four points separating the middle 19 there just it feels unwieldy so i you know i think there's been plenty of interest in the games themselves the whole product still i think suffers from from context there's there's such a deluge of of stuff every night most of it obviously mediated through through social feeds that it's hard to get a grip on on the competition as a whole i mean maybe that's the point maybe nfl fans don't you know they don't know what's going on in the the conference west conference you know they're just looking out for their team and they don't conceptualize the thing as a whole but yeah it all does lead to this this 18 game chaos next week which i thought i think it's still too many i just i think it's a it's a it's a mate it's like it feels like a game show it feels more like a like a television game show than a sporting event hey speak for yourself i'm on the pod on the next day good god that's gonna be nightmare yeah i think you can probably feel both right one is well this is quite fun because the as it stands table is sort of ridiculous every five minutes at the same time this is too many football football wasn't designed to watch nine games or 18 games at the same time or whatever it is the question of has it been a success i guess we have to define success because i've i i have this i think everything these sporting authorities do i i i assume it's going to be stupid until proven otherwise because that just seems to be the way i have found myself mostly enjoying the football the two years it's been on there's been very few like match days or weeks that have been just a complete dud and there were no games i enjoyed and everything was boring like there's always been something and i am enjoying the greater variation of matchups i think the way that the groups worked before with the four team groups you had two pretty strong teams in each group, one medium and one sort of just happy to be there, that you ended up with quite a lot of lopsided games, and the games between the two teams that were good in each group tended to be just kind of, yeah, we're happy to take a draw here.

10:20They weren't all that dramatic. So it was a structural problem with those groups, I will concede. So in terms of enjoying the football, yes. But also, yeah, I also haven't looked at the table. I think this idea of making the table super exciting, I feel like that isn't really hitting home. but we are in a situation where Ajax are 32nd and could still qualify which is at any point in time where the team that's 32nd in the league could still get somewhere that's that's an interesting situation to be in I guess yeah I think so let's talk about the Liverpool win then it was comfortable for them wasn't it I mean the the first goal Paul the absent draft excluder and the the unison with which the wall jump is is a thing of beauty and it's really clever from Sir Bozla isn't it yeah Yeah, and I've seen this goal quite a few times now.

11:02And every time I see it, it doesn't look like it should go in. It just doesn't look like a hard struck free kick that goes in. But as he said, you know, he was very quick to point out how clever he had been afterwards. You know, he saw they didn't have the draft excluder in. He thought, I'm going to put it under. He did. And it was brilliantly taken. He kind of saw the keeper was too far over. Yeah, so it's a brilliant free kick. And as you say, this Marseille game, I actually thought this was going to be a really difficult game for Liverpool. It looked daunting on paper. You know, Marseille are doing pretty well in Ligue 1.

11:33They're the top scorers in Ligue 1. Not a nice place to go, particularly Liverpool not looking very good at all for quite a while. So it was quite kind of alarming almost how easily really Liverpool won this. There were maybe a couple of moments where Alisson made really good saves. He made a couple of great saves to deny Pavard once and to deny Greenwood once. He made some really good saves. But really, Liverpool could have even won this more convincingly. And I think, you know, tying into that conversation we had about the disparity between different leagues, it was another one to put in that column because, yeah, by all rights, Liverpool should have struggled here.

12:09and they really didn't. They played excellently. The draft excluder is interesting, isn't it, Johnny? Because it's sort of like, what is it like? Home insurance? It's like you don't, like, you never notice you need it. You think it's bullshit. They unticked a box, Max. They had a box that's always ticked to them. Just take that one off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that. Like, obviously, once one's there, no one can ever try this. So it really does its job. What's the point I'm trying to make? Do you know what they call the draft excluder in France? What's that? Le crocodile. The crocodile. That's really nice.

12:47You know, obviously it is a different tactic. I want to read like a 4 ,000 word athletic long read on how a coach chooses the draft excluder. How do you choose the player to perform that role? Do you do it on length? Do you do it on girth? Is it, you know, robustness? I think it is length, isn't it? It is length. but I think what I quite like to it's quite nice when you see you know somebody like the quality I want to see the best ever player to have been the draft excluder I think Messi has been there I believe Messi has been in there has Messi done it I think so there you go like that's great that you put Lionel Messi literally on the floor like lying down you've got Messi and you're just like that's where you put him but he's got he's got great range for a small man on that is true yeah A big wingspan, hasn't he?

13:36What did you make of the Liverpool performance, Johnny? I thought it was very, very good. I think Slott has had a... There's been a lot of disrespect towards Arnaz Slott recently, I think. A lot of it from Liverpool fans, actually. And some of it from the media, which increasingly seems to take its cue from the online world in terms of trying to capture snackable content and gotcha moments. So he gets asked about Alonso, Javi Alonso before the game. And he gets asked, I think, by TNT, whether he needs to prove something to Liverpool fans. And he quite rightly says, I've been in the job for 18 months and won one title.

14:10So, you know, I think I'm doing okay. But, you know, to the doubters, this was actually a really, really smart tactical performance by them. You know, he knows how De Zerbi is going to set up Marseille. He gives them the ball. I think they've got, they have something like 39 % possession in the second half. And he waits for Marseille to kind of try and load up, to double up on the flanks. he plays that diamond or sort of a box of four in midfield and they just keep getting through the lines they they keep having a man spare in between the lines shobbas lie and graven birch you know and and vietz just just slipping in and and creating so many chances so i think it is obviously the sort of style that the style of opponent that that you couldn't choose a better style to suit liverpool away from home in europe but the way they executed it uh i thought was was really really encouraging I did think that formation was super interesting and it left me wondering like is this something we're going to do going forward because if you look at the Liverpool squad and you think of like you would like to find a way of playing with two strikers because you have Eketike and for now you have Salah who you want closer to goal and you don't want him having to track any fullbacks and in the long run you want to find a way where both Eketike and Iza can play together you want to find a way where Wurz can play in quite a central role but you still have enough midfielders in there that that doesn't become like a weakness.

15:31You have very, very attacking fullbacks who you would like to see released up the flank. There's a lot of things that you need the Liverpool system to be that seems to be solved by this sort of the 4-2-2-2, the box midfield thing. But it's also not a formation that you see successfully applied very often by a lot of clubs. I don't know why that is. Leipzig have played like that a fair bit. but Ragnik famously tried it at United without a lot of success. Very interesting to see if that's something that continues, because so far it's a lot of the... I think Slot has kind of wrestled a little bit with all these new players and all these new components he has, and to find out what's actually the best system for all of them, and that seemed quite logical yesterday.

16:13It might be interesting to see against Arsenal, won't it? And look, Florent Virts, as soon as he got here, Paul, you could tell he was really good, even if he wasn't doing anything. And now he's good and he's doing stuff. Yeah, he's a good example for just sticking by players you know who will come good and just keeping on saying, yeah, but wait, he is going to come good because he has massively come good and Marseille could not deal with him at all. yeah like a little note on Marseille as well Marseille are a weird team I've seen a bit of Marseille and you just never have any idea which Marseille you're going to get I don't know whether this is a fair test of them for the reasons we've outlined you know this was a very different kind of match for them but it seems like Marseille blow hot and cold so frequently that Dezerbi himself doesn't really seem to have any idea what's what's going to happen I saw he's a very emotional guy Dezerbi I saw him do a press conference where he was effectively in tears earlier in the season because he just, I think he said, I cried in the dressing room.

17:10I think it's just because he doesn't understand how this team can be so good one week and so poor the next. And yeah, I still don't know what I'm getting any time I watch Marseille, which does make them very entertaining to watch, especially because they are generally very good going forward and not always so solid at the back. Interesting that De Zerbe's been sort of linked to Manchester United amongst others and a return to the Premier League. There was a, the Beatles' Tifo was quite exceptional for Marseille. these seem like i mean fair play to the people that make them because that's it's the whole it feels like the sort of thing a whole town need to do on record breakers they're just enormous um and steven gerrard did the davos tnt goal show double probably best that he did it i was trying to think could you have a scott besant dave besant crossover could that work maybe maybe they could not not dave besant isn't doing a lot of punditry but i wouldn't mind seeing him in the u.s administration newcastle psv look we've talked about this quite a lot but like given johnny that they've got PSG away last game.

18:07And given the PSV hammered Liverpool at Anfield, this does feel like a significant victory for them. Yeah, on paper, I guess to a neutral, it looks like a, you know, you look at the fixture and think, okay, well, you know, there's not too much there. But I think if you're a Newcastle fan, this stage, you know, this part of the European journey still feels quite kind of giddy and exciting. They don't take these European nights for granted yet. You could tell there was a real noise and intensity to them. You know, you contrast that with Stamford Bridge, for example, where you would think they would be pretty up for that.

18:39But Stamford Bridge is rarely up for anything these days. So PSV, I think the big difference between this and the Liverpool game was that at Anfield, they were basically able to take control of the game. They were basically able to seize control of it early on. And here it was basically the very opposite. I have to admit, I don't watch a huge amount of them in the aerodivisie, but they're 16 points clear. and I doubt they've been tested like this. I doubt that they've had this much kind of pressure put on them and I think that it shows in those defensive mistakes that let Gordon and Wisser in for the opening two goals.

19:15There's a really high line there. Obviously, Bosch has them playing a really high line but it didn't seem to me that there was enough pressure at the other end of the pitch. So Newcastle were just able to keep playing through them again and again. Probably could have been more. I don't think 3-0 flattered them. I think the injury to Bruno, Bruno Guimara, is a bit of a worry. Miley comes into, you know, Lewis Miley comes into deputise for him. But, you know, Joe Linton had a really good game. So I think, you know, it really sets up the last game really nicely for Newcastle. Because I think if they beat PSG, I guess there's a bit of a revenge mission there from how they went out a couple of seasons ago.

19:54So yeah, it sets things up really nicely. Yeah, and it's not a free hit, but it sort of has the feel of a free hit to go to PSG and go right you know go out there and win and it would be a massive statement oh look at last players get injured right but but we'd be quite critical of Newcastle in their Premier League and yet you sort of think if Whistler had been fit from the start of the season they might have I don't know six more points and then they would be fourth in the Premier League you know he's he is clearly like the way they want to press he's great at doing that yeah and it's just a general disruption they had at the start of the season with the Isak saga dragging on for as long as it did, and you go into the season with your striker situation not settled, and then Vissa gets injured.

20:37You're right, they only won one of their first six games in the Premier League, and the league table, yeah, they're eighth, which doesn't seem great, but it's still so tight, so six more points, they would have been fourth, or six or seven more points, that would have been good. I guess there's something there, which is, I think in general, clubs are more aware of than they used to, but the importance of actually getting business done early-ish in the summer and then trying to go into, because those first games of the season, you can't just go into August and say, yeah, we're almost there. We have a few moves that should happen and then it'll be fine.

21:11But the points you drop early on cost you as much as the ones you drop in April. So I think they maybe suffered a little bit from the fact that the Ezek Zaga dragged out as much as it did. and when everyone's fit and ready, they're a very different team. Yeah, Harvey Barnes, every time I see him, he seems to score like a goal that makes him look like a brilliant footballer. I'm fascinated to see if Scotland take him to the World Cup and Lewis Hall, I thought, was really good again. That is an open position in the England team, I think, and I think Lewis Hall could make a name for himself there.

21:41PSV fans took over Pop World Newcastle in the afternoon and looked like they were having a lovely time. Now, I don't really know what Pop World is. I can sort of hazard a guess. This is the Simon Amstel, the Simon Amstel, Mikita Oliver. So did PSV fans take over T4 on a Saturday morning and undertake arch interviews with unsuspecting American pop stars? It's a show. You've got yourself a show. I did like it. Pop World was good fun. Apparently it's a nightclub chain a la Vodka Revolution. That's far less interesting. I thought it was some sort of karaoke type affair where they sang, yeah, pop hits from the night.

22:17They sang bewitched songs. or hang on probably like donna air songs just geordie pj and duncan and donna air songs is the only things they're allowed to sing in pop world if i had my way anyway that'll do for part one part two uh we'll begin at stand for bridge

22:40welcome to part two of the guardian football weekly chelsea won pathos nil can somebody give a more interesting uh review of the game than the game was itself paul sorry to throw you this uh hospital pass no i mean i guess i was watching this slightly from a a minnow centric angle but i do think huge credit to pathos here and specifically their goalkeeper uh who is one of those goalkeepers who always has to be called by both names jay gorter so you kind of hear him get called jay gorter every time you're like is that is that his surname is he someone jay gorter or but no So Jay Gorter, the Dutch keeper, made, I mean, I don't know how many saves it was.

23:18It was somewhere between 50 and 70 saves. But for all that, Chelsea didn't look massively dangerous for quite a lot of the game, considering, you know, you'd expect them to come and win this one fairly easily. Just for the scale of comparison, Paphos is, I think their entire squad is worth about 26 million. So the disparity between the two teams is just absolutely enormous. and Paphos having this kind of incredible rise. They've only existed in this form for 11 years. They were like the merger between two other clubs and they've kind of shot to their first league title in 2024-25. And yeah, it was an amazing effort from a Paphos perspective.

24:00From a Chelsea perspective, one of the most frustrating games you could probably wish to see. And until that goal, I think it was Casido in the 78th minute, until that point, it looked quite possible Paphos would grab a point, which I think would have left Chelsea fans pretty livid, really, given the balance of the game and the expectation. But I do just think, yeah, we'd have to pay a huge amount of credit to Pafos. They came to try and pull that off an incredibly unlikely point, and they almost got it. Yeah. What, Johnny, have you made of Liam Resenia so far? Yeah, I mean, well, what we've learned is that I think he likes to pronounce it Liam Resenia, which I don't think I'll be doing that.

24:39No, I think he said he wants, I think his dad said it's Resenia and he said, actually, just call me Resenia. That's what I've said. Yeah, it's not. I'm sorry. I mean, I know it's their name, but it's not actually up to them. It's a bit like when N 'Golo Kante joined Chelsea and obviously his name is Conte, but they were managed by a Conte. So, sorry, mate, you're Kante. We're going to call you Kante. I don't think we can bank on Resenia seeing out the season. I don't think the fans are having him. I think he needs a run of wins and he needs a swell of goodwill that he's not necessarily going to get.

25:16Unlike a lot of his predecessors, I think he starts from a position of weakness. There's no shade on him as a coach. I think he's clearly a very bright coach with ideas and who has earned this chance. I just think the knives are out for him a little bit. You can see that there's an itchy finger on the trigger. People want to ridicule him. People want to sort of, I think, pick holes in him. I think there is a narrative being built already that the job is a little bit too big for him. And look, this was not a great performance, but I thought Liam DeLapps struggled up front. They didn't really have any kind of space to play in.

25:59They didn't really have too much invention. Paphos basically, you know, kind of a 5-4-1 off the ball. If you have the talent that Chelsea have, you know, you can get Gittins off the bench, you can replace Rhys James with Estevão at halftime. That, you know, injected a little bit of energy into them. They were, what was it, 12 minutes away. You know, Paphos were 12 minutes away from claiming a famous point, ultimately. So, you know, they were really starting to kind of tug on the heartstrings. you began to feel a real sort of overwrought, effective, almost a dramatic sadness for them. Oh, sorry, that's pathos, isn't it?

26:38Very nice. Let me try that again. I'm going to do it again. I'll do it again next week. I mean, it's worth a go, you know? It's not the first time Johnny's done a good joke and I've been concentrating on something else like what I'm going to ask you next. And I haven't been doing what I should be doing is listening intently to the intelligent joke and getting it before Tony has to explain it. But, you know, it is not the first time he's been met with that reaction. My apologies. Pathos sounds like pathos. A lot of us worry that because there's so much talk of XG in the game now, people are not encouraged to take on, like, difficult shots and, like, long shots and wonder goals are essentially going to die out.

27:16I think the same is true with podcasts. You know, we have to encourage the creative players to really go for these sort of low XG jokes. maybe sometimes i actually think the xg on that is actually quite high it was just you know it's just the audience you know he just needed a better audience is is what i think rosenia needs more time lars clearly and there's the chelsea squad is we've talked about this before it's a hard one to work out so if you just wandered in there you need like time to work out who you like and who you don't like and what your bomb squad is and what you know who's going to play where it's such an odd cultural fit, I feel, and I wonder if this matters.

27:56Because on paper, they have quite a young, ambitious squad, so maybe a young manager is good. Maybe he will find a good sort of common ground with that group of players. But there's something about the vibe of Chelsea. This is sort of the house that JT built, for better or worse. This is a fan base who are used to strong, rugged men who kick the ball very far and elbow people in the head first and ask questions later. And you're used to having Mourinho on the touchline, like this sort of roaming war criminal in a football sense, just kind of always causing aggro. I'm not sure if they're sort of culturally set up to accept an intelligent, softly spoken, well-meaning coach with fresh ideas.

28:42I think he's going to... This shouldn't matter, but I feel like it ends up mattering. Like, the vibes matter. and I think it's very, very important that he gets some early wins to get them onside, rightly or wrongly. And I also just wonder, is it... My sense is that there is an increasing resistance among the Chelsea fanbase to their own ownership, to the Bluco lads, to Eguvoli and Boli and the boys and their whole methodology. And I'm not sure it helps Strasignan that he's so clearly the company man in here, that he's sort of the blue co golden child who's been uh who's been parachuted in with all his linkedin speech and all his sort of clever ideas this seems like the opposite of what a lot of chelsea fans want and again shouldn't matter to him in terms of him just trying to do his job but i feel like it gives him less leeway to screw up and i think it's very very important that he gets a lot of results very quickly there was a paradox in that chelsea keep wanting these young principled ideological no compromise coaches and the reason it so rarely works is that going to Chelsea is in a sense the first compromise.

29:47So what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, it means they're trying to attract a kind of coach which is completely anathema to the culture of the club, but they keep hiring them anyway. You saw it with Potter. But that sounds like a motivational quote in itself. Going to Chelsea is the first compromise. That sounds like something you put on LinkedIn. It's a tea towel. You're saying that's a tea towel. It's what you have on a breadboard. We'll see how he gets on. and he's actually what's he only lost one he lost the Arsenal game but otherwise you know he's won all his other games even if they've looked a bit streaky Elsewhere Carabag big win for Carabag here Paul wasn't it limbs in the last minute Yeah it was it really was it didn't look at all likely they were 2-1 down to Eintracht Frankfurt at one point turned it around with a a last gasp goal from a name that I'm going to actually butcher he's called Berl Mustafzadi I think but I I apologise to our listeners who understand that name better than I do.

30:46But yeah, first Azerbaijani player to score in the competition, which is quite an amazing thing. It's not that they hadn't been scoring goals. It's just they've mostly been coming from Camilo Duran, who's Colombian. But yeah, this was a remarkable achievement. I think Carabag are the surprise package of this whole phase. And the fact that they are now well poised to get a playoff place is an amazing achievement, really, for them. I think they've been written off by a lot of teams. One thing that I think people maybe, one of the reasons they're underestimated is people don't realise just how many European games they've played.

31:19I think it comes from being in a league where they can dominate for quite a few years. They've played so much European football, so they're not kind of fresh-faced newcomers in that sense. But this is definitely new territory for them. And the scenes at the final whistle, well, the scenes after that goal went in in the 93rd minute. Yeah, it was so good. Just brilliant to watch, weren't they? See, that's what it is all about, really. Barcelona 1-4 to Estadio Prado. What did you make of their win, Lars? Just that it was very typical of this Barcelona, which is that they conceded two set-piece goals.