European Nights End of Year Pod Special, presented by Verizon

0:00You're listening to the Men in Blazers Media Network, Suboptimal Radio. And I'll tell you something, I'll leave you with this. All the best television series. Season three is better than season two. For some football Are you ready for some football It's Rog and you're listening to European Nights, the show that now in its fourth season is just one year less than the historic and vaunted tradition of the Europa Conference League itself. Here we are, still going, bringing the sights, the sounds, the bruises, the bumps of the Champions League, the Europa League and of course your beloved Conference League.

0:48This is a very special year-end review episode, an attempt to look back, not in anger, but to revel in the big picture themes that capture what propelled continental play over the last 12 months of 2025. And to do that, I'm joined by a gent who sees all, understands even more and knows everything. Ageless in a perpetual peak. It's the Bard of Harrogate. Oh, it's my friend in the flesh. It's Mr. Rory Smith. It's lovely to be here in the flesh, Rog, but I'm not having it ageless. That's just, that's false advertising. Is it really? Yeah. You seem to get younger and younger and younger. You're always mogging me.

1:24What does mogging mean? Mogging means to be in the presence of someone else and look so much better than them. Do you think the fact that I don't know what mogging means, but you do maybe proves my point that I'm not ageless? I don't know, Rory. I think it might mean that you effortlessly mug people. We did just stop down and I had to explain to Rural what mugging was. And I used the example. This isn't a bit, I genuinely don't know what it is. I used the example, maybe an American word. I used the example of like when I interviewed Bakayo Saka and we're both wearing very similar sweatshirts. And when we took the photos, he looked unbelievably beautiful and radiant.

1:57And I looked like genuinely someone that dig me up from a tomb where I've been buried in a crypt for at least a century, warmed me up a tiny bit and flung me out to be by his side. The problem that I have is that Mog is a grumpy cartoon cat in children's books. Did you ever read the Mog books by Judith Kerr? She invented the term. It was all a parable. Like Animal Farm really wasn't about animals. I don't know this Mog children's book, but I think she was talking about self-confidence, poise, confidence. I think the Mog books are basically an advice column to not get a cat. That's the basic rule.

2:33Every English children's book is, don't do it, kid, it ends badly. Stay in your lane. Don't have dreams. They lead to shattered dreams, which is ultimately why I love the football. But, Ru, before we dive in and revel in the tectonic plate to the shifting and grinding under the surface of European football, start with your favourite memory of the past 12 months. From a European perspective, I think nothing will top the sheer undiluted mania of Inter Milan against Barcelona in the Champions League semifinals. One of the all-time classic semifinals. It's over! Inter is in the final! Inter is in the final!

3:15A little bit overshadowed by the fact that in the final PSG smashed Inter Milan. Mogged them. They did 100 % mogged them. But when Francesco Acherbi, a central defender who's been through so much, 37 but looks like he's in his 70s, scored the goal to take it to extra time that led to Inter getting back to the Champions League final, even as someone who had no horse in the race, it was impossible not just to be kind of blown away by the entertainment the Champions League delivers so reliably. If only there was some phrase in Italian, nothing can go wrong. Now, for mine, I'm going to go all the way back to the voice we heard at the top of the show.

3:50that was Big Ang Poster Coglu. That human inspiration turned quite sardonic care bearer of an Aussie doing a very short-lived victory lap after winning the Europa League with Tottenham Hotspur. This was a man who had been mocked, mercilessly slaughtered really, for pointing out that any club he manages always wins silverware in my second season, mate. And Big Ang only went and did it again. I love human beings who have word and action. I have huge respect for him. took a team that had been criticised, torn apart for turning the dial all the way to attack and forgetting the unimportant parts of football.

4:27You know, the defending, the pesky thing, what was it called, marking. And ultimately the final, it was dour. It was defensive. It was locked down. It was a 1-0 win at Manchester United and involved a scrappy bundle Brennan Johnson goal. And it turned out quite unbelievably to be Posta Koglu's last game on the bridge at Tottenham Hotspur, but a memory, actual silverware to keep. It was a genuinely wonderful moment, a really hilariously bad final. It's making it even better though, right? Like an amusingly terrible final. I mean, that makes it even better. There was no like rom-com, I'm shaking my hair down, I'm taking off my glasses, it was me all the time moment.

5:09It was like, no, this is how I look, this is what we do, it was dour. But the delta between how we look and how you all felt in that moment. But also you get your parade. Doesn't matter how you get your parade, you get your parade. And then he gets a piss off. Tottenham had a bus parade because they won their first trophy since 2008. It was an incredible moment. Before buses were invented. And even Mo Salah was impressed, Rog. Because Mo Salah, in the aftermath of that Europa League final, you don't see this very often, suggests how... What, he put a shirt on? How he decided that he wanted to track back.

5:41You don't often see players kind of acknowledging the football news cycle. But in the aftermath of that final, Mo Salah tweeted, he said he won in the second season and it just makes me think that most Anna was sat there consuming all the content keeping up with the soundbites he was invested in Ange Postacodd's story and that is not bad every human being from the time they are tiny wants to be a footballer and every footballer just wants to be an online influencer those are our standout moments but before we go any further we have to mention this episode is brought to you by our good friends at Verizon proud supporter of the global game and the players who inspire us on and off the pitch.

6:17As an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Verizon's honoured to help share the stories of the world's top players. Stay tuned for more on how Verizon can get you connected to the game we love. But to better look back at the year that was, we're going to break down four trends that felt fresh and new in 2025. Oh, let's get to the football.

6:46Trend numero uno, which is a segue from Spurs Europa League win. A grand total of six English clubs qualified for this season's Champions League. And I'm old enough to remember back when each of the nations only got four or actually, who am I kidding? I'm actually old enough to remember when the Champions League predecessor, the European Cup, was strictly the champion of every nation. And I've got to be candid, every nation, no matter what size, just got one. and it all felt so clean, so pure, so good. But forget that, because we're in the period of bloat and glut and more, more, more. And we've talked on this show about the emerging dominance of English clubs in world football.

7:28Last summer, the Premier League's team spent well over$4 billion in the transfer window, more than the next four leagues combined. That came after English teams won the Europa League, Spurs and the beloved Conference League, Enzo Mareska's first trophy with Chelsea. And as we pod, since the 24-25 quarterfinals, when English clubs come head to head with Spanish opposition, they've won 11 times and lost just once. And what all this dominance has not translated into, if you're listening still, you'll have picked this one up, is Champions League trophies. English clubs have won just once in the last four seasons.

8:04Manchester City's travelled in 2023. So, Raw, will this alleged dominance, financial might, coefficient heft? Will it turn into more Champions League wins inevitably? Yeah, what's really strange, Roger, actually, is I think you can take it a little bit further back. Obviously, Chelsea win it in 2021 in an All-English final and Liverpool win it in 2019 in an All-English final. But that's it since 2012. And given the financial advantages that the Premier League has had in that period, it is really weird that there are only three English teams who've won the Champions League in those, what, 13 years now, I guess.

8:37That isn't nearly enough given the economic advantage. what we've seen this season last season is that you're now getting kind of a a weight of of premier league teams in the champions league you are getting and it may well be the same never mind the glory just fill the width yeah it's it's very much kind of there's just a lot of them it's a it's a popular it's a numbers game effectively so there are six in there this season and i think to be honest it's a reasonable bet there'll be six in their next season because you have aston Villa who'd probably be among the favourites for the Europa League and Crystal Palace who shouldn't really be looking at anyone else in the conference league and thinking they're a threat so it may well be that you see another six English teams in the Champions League that might become standard but what they haven't been able to do is use the money the money they have to become so much better than PSG, Real Madrid, maybe Bayern Munich, maybe Barcelona that they are automatic winners of the Champions League.

9:35At the very, very top level, continental Europe can still mount a bit of a threat. But that said, I do think you might see English teams knocking each other out in the Champions League as we go into 2026. It's even better than them winning it, right? English teams inflicting pain on other English teams. That's why we watch. It feels like that might be the natural next step. And you had it a little bit in the kind of late, what Americans call the oughts, which is not a word I can use as an Englishman. It's not possible. When we mocked them in the Yort. What do you call Yort? The decade between 2000 and 2010.

10:08That's what we call it. Trademark. It's very catchy. The decade in which none of us will speak its name. But you had those famous games between Liverpool and Chelsea. You had finals between United and Chelsea. The English teams ran into each other a little bit more in that period. It hasn't really happened that much recently. I do wonder with the number of English teams in the Champions League, the fact that most of them look pretty set fair to qualify, certainly for the playoff round. You will start to date all English ties in the last 16, the quarterfinals. And that is a level of drama that we are yet to unlock.

10:35Yeah, but that's why we watch. I mean, an often quoted motif on this show from Steve Coogan. Like, who wants to win the Champions League? When Coogan said, if you give an English person a choice between their own success and your failure, they'll choose your failure all the time. And I do, I think, if Arsenal get to beat Tottenham in the round of 16, the joy that will be felt there would probably outstrip that if Arsenal won the whole bloody thing, man. I mean, that's just how we're wired. That's absolutely right. And the other factor is how that affects Premier League campaigns. They'd be so seismic, they'd be so draining, there'd be so much focus on them.

11:10The chance to deprive your rival of their European dream is a really potent thing. It may well have an impact on how the Premier League plays out, but I think the other thing that needs to be mentioned is that the more Premier League teams are in the Champions League, the more Premier League teams will be in the quarterfinals, the semifinals, the more they kind of reinforce the financial stratification of the game in England and in Europe, the more likely it becomes that you end up with more and more Premier League teams winning the Champions League. As I say, it is an oddity. It is weird that only three English teams have won it since 2012.

11:43That is really strange. At the end of the day, we're all just watching spreadsheets do battle, but I do love your image that at the end of the day, we're all just footballing Nelson Munces, pointing at the team we've just vanquished and saying, ha ha, just give us a quick blast though. The Rory Smith explanation, why we are so rich, why we are so dominant, why our squads have that depth, why we have the greatest managers, yet we've only won it three times. Succinctly, just explain to the people. Because it's a knockout tournament. Because over the course of two games, one game, Real Madrid or PSG or Bayern have the individual quality to stand up to the Premier League teams.

12:17Over the course of a season, I think they might not do. But in the current format, if you run into those teams in a knockout, they're just as good as you, but also they have that history, that they have that institutional knowledge of what it is to be there. It is central to their identity and the English teams maybe don't all have that yet. Remember again, we're all just Nelson Muntz. Ha ha, second trend. We've seen the stratification of Europe with England at the head become so entrenched. It's almost become its own baked in market and efficiency that we almost don't notice. Teams on the continent now though are finding success with a kind of counter strategy.

12:54They're winning trophies even by collecting Premier League cast offs. Most notable example, obviously, Antonio Conte's collection of broken toys at Napoli. Last year's glow up of Scott McTominay, so when Serie A player of the year, a more impressively develop an enviable bronze tan, joined by former Premier League players Romelu Lukaku, Billy Gilmore, and the last few strands of Kevin De Bruyne's hamstring on the reigning Serie A champs. One of the rivals for the Scudetto this year, AC Milan, led by former Champions League winner with Chelsea, one Mr. Christian Pulisic, heard of him, and his merry band of Chelsea cast-offs, Christopher Nkunku, Fikeyo, Tamori, Ruben Loftus-Cheek.

13:35And we've talked about Bayern Munich, have altered their transfer strategy from just buying up all the Bundesliga best players. They now buy Premier League stars like Sir Harold of Cain, who I now think of as German, as well as Luis Diaz, Michael Elisa, Barcelona, as Leeds United's Rafinha, Manchester United's lost boy Marcus Rashford, Manchester City's Julian Alvarez on Atletico Madrid. The list goes on and on and on. Rui, for a grandy continental club, is one of the most efficient ways now to build a roster is to figure out which Premier League clubs are discarding, knowing that those clubs would love to dispatch their refuse away from their domestic rivals, where it could haunt them on a weekly basis, offer them the chance also as a player to compete for titles.

14:15Yeah, I think there's two things. One is that it shows just how much churn there is in the Premier League. There are so many players. the Premier League teams get first pick in the transfer market. Occasionally Real Madrid and PSG might be able to beat them to players but generally the Premier League gets first pick. But they're also impatient. We've spoken before, Rog, about how short memories are. It doesn't take long before they see something shiny and new that they want more than what they've already got. And I think that the smarter continental clubs have worked out that just because a player doesn't fit in at a specific Premier League team mostly Manchester United doesn't mean they're not good.

14:49And that's what Napoli have done. Napoli managed to kind of pounce when United needed to sell McTominay for PSR reasons. And they've turned Scott McTominay into one of the best midfielders in Europe. They've allowed him to flourish. Rasmus Hoyland is the one name you didn't mention, who's doing really well in Italy. He's not tearing up trees, but he looks like a very promising, quite talented striker, which is what he was before he went to United. I think a lot of clubs now have figured out that just because a player has maybe not shone in the Premier League doesn't mean they can't shine in another context.

15:19and the other thing that's interesting I spoke to some people at Marseille this week who've done something similar if you go through Marseille's team there are quite a lot of familiar names not least the manager is Roberto de Zerbi formerly of Brighton but you've got Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang who's in his late 30s now you have Pierre-Emile Heubier the Spurs legend there are players with Premier League experience all through that Marseille team and speaking to them they've realised they can't compete with English teams for 22-year-olds. But what English teams don't want anymore is 28-year-olds.

15:52And for Marseille, it's quite important to have those cool heads a little bit more battle-hardened, a bit more wisened. They can cope with that cauldron at the velodrome, they can play in those kind of hostile environments, and they want to play in the Champions League. Marseille can offer them that, and I think what we've seen more and more is teams of that calibre, not necessarily Bayern and Barcelona, who are competing to win the Champions League, win titles, but teams like Marseille, teams like Villarreal, who have said, look, that player is a Premier League cast-off, but that means they can really do a job for us.

16:24They're only being sort of moved on from the Premier League, because they're a little bit too old. They're not too old for us. They might have five, six years at a high level left in them. We can't be picky. We can't churn through players as fast as the English teams do. We will find them. We will make use of them. We'll repurpose them, and we'll give them another chance. It's actually quite, it's kind of beautiful. James Milner is going to just be unbelievable. and Marseille in the 2030s. It's going to be just an exquisite cameo into that career. Real questions. I remember going to Shakhtar Donetsk when they were at their height and they just were plucking so much Brazilian talent.

17:00They almost built a little Rio for them, a compound where they could all live together in Donetsk, but they felt like they were on the streets of Brazil. Who will be the first big European club to start building an authentic pie shop, an eel shop, a chippy for their imported Premier League car style? to make sure they feel like they're truly in the peak performance natural habitat. Is there a world in which there is a Nando's in Naples? That's the natural. By the way, that is when we will know that football has genuinely eaten itself. Probably the modern sign of the apocalypse, a Nando in Naples.

17:36We'll be right back talking about the greatest club to come out of Azerbaijan, as you do after these messages from our favourite chippers.

17:59Do I need to even tell you, dear listener, what we're listening to? I bet you're already singing along word for word to the official Karabag anthem written in 2022. This version performed by the Azerbaijan State Symphony Orchestra and the state choir of the Azerbaijan State Academy Philharmonic. What a power combo. Do you want me to translate off the top of my head? I'll do it for you. Forward, Karabakh. We are always with you. Victory is yours. You are writing a history. And I know, I know, it's an earworm. And what a history they're writing. Winners of 11 of the last 12 Azerbaijan Premier League titles.

18:35Tactics, plus the first Azerbaijani club to advance to the European knockout rounds, reaching the Europa League round of 16 in 2024, where they lost by an odd goal to Bayer Leverkusen this year. They're in the Champions League proper for the first time. It's fitting. The anthem was written three years ago because it feels like this club has kind of come out of nowhere to become a European heavyweight. You called this trend the Ajax-Carabag axis. And while it's not quite caught on, it does make sense. Two teams that met in the Champions League big gulp group phrase in the last matchday of 2025.

19:08Lately, it's felt like the middleweight European clubs, Ajax, Red Star, Belgrade, the like, have been almost replaced by scrappy-doo giants from tiny leagues, your carabags, your bodos, your glimpse. Can you flesh this theory out for us, Rob? Yeah, I think there's been a bit of a shift. So, obviously, we've seen over the last 20, 25 years that the traditional heavyweights from middleweight countries, so the Netherlands, Portugal, they are gradually being left behind by the super elite, by the teams of the Premier League, PSG, Barcelona, Real Madrid. That's well established. I think what has happened in recent years is more and more teams have worked out that the Carabag model, which we maybe shouldn't name after Carabag because they weren't the first to do it, is quite a good place to be in.

19:55So if you are the team that wins the title in whatever league, whether that's Azerbaijan or Malta or Cyprus or wherever, you get a spot in the Champions League qualifiers. Big fish, small pond. You want to be a bit fish in a small pond because you can then go to players and say, we're in the Champions League qualifiers. You come here, we'll be in the Champions League qualifiers. The better you do, the better your players are, the better the players you can recruit, the more likely you are to get through the Champions League qualifiers. And eventually, like Carabag, because you've had a couple of good campaigns in the Europa League, you can then get into the Champions League.

20:30And once you're in the Champions League, you can say to them, we're in the Champions League, which means you can recruit even better players. so you end up with this for the club this virtuous circle where an upward draft yeah effectively so you keep winning the title which means you keep getting a shot at europe which means your coefficient becomes better which means eventually you might even get an automatic place in the champions league at which point you are golden you are made maybe not for life but certainly for kind of an extended period of time and there's lots of sides who've been able to kind of use that mechanism at various times to get into the Champions League.

21:05So, such glamorous names as Victoria Pilsen, previously, who were a relatively small team in the Czech Republic, who kind of leapfrogged Sparta and Slavia Prague, and were in the Champions League surprisingly frequently. It's a self-repeating cycle. Ludovic of Bulgaria did the same thing. Bate Borisov, everyone's favourite tractor manufacturer in Belarus. Karabag are... One drive another time. Loyal. Brad Loyal. Always But Carabao are kind of in that mould. But as they've risen, the teams that have fallen are the heavyweights from the middle in Leeds, yeah, the Netherlands, Portugal, places like that, who are trying to keep up with the elite, but can't do it.

21:44They don't have the revenues. And also they don't have a monopoly in their own league. Well, they don't necessarily have a monopoly. So in Holland, you see that you've got PSV and Feyenoord who are challenging nights. Also, I mean, AZ Altmaar this season as well. In Portugal, you have, it's split between three. It's Porto, Sporting and Benfica. You kind of need now to either be in a major league and be Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico, one of the Premier League sides, Bayern and Dortmund, or you kind of need to be in a country where you're the only show in town. You can't be in a small country where the money and the revenue and the attention is divided.

22:17So when Carabao beat Benfica in Lisbon, no less, back in match day one, it was their first win in the Champions League group stages, historic. First Azerbaijani win in the competition, historic. And it was an astounding achievement, one to cherish, one to savour, but also one that may not do much in the grand scheme of things because wins in this big gulp, kind of big mega format get sloshed away so quickly, almost instantly. They had two wins out of two. Karabek had then lost three, drew them one. And last season, may I remind you, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City were reputedly duking it out to see who could fail to qualify from the group stage, knockout reserved for only the top 24 of the 36 fighters.

22:58Through match day six last year, PSG had just seven points, somehow managed to squeak into the knockout round when they transformed into the fearless, peerless team. We remember them as they rope-a-dope Liverpool, side through, and not just your Reds, but Aston Villa, oh, and Arsenal, before stomping into in the final, which is to say, current form means exceptionally a little roar when it comes to predicting who will advance deep into the knockouts. Is there a team who's playing poorly now who could be this year's PSG and go on a run? 2026, Stiley? I think there's a decent chance it's PSG, to be honest.

23:33Heard of them? I thought you were going to say there's a decent chance it's Carabag. I mean, the other one, I guess, would be Real Madrid. But both of them, this is another pattern, I think, within the Champions League. And it's one that's more pronounced now than it was in the old group stage. Because you can effectively, if you're PSG or Real Madrid, or a team like that, And if you're prepared to tolerate the idea you might have to have a knockout round game, which is a bit of a risk because you might lose it, it's better not to. You can kind of allow the Champions League to be a slow burn. You can say we need 10 points to get through, 10, 11 points to get through to that knockout round.