How Bayern Munich rebuilt a juggernaut, and Marcus Rashford's Barcelona resurgence: European Nights 11/25/25

0:00You're listening to the Men in Blazers Media Network Suboptimal Radio. I don't think they're ready for a black superstar like that who can move like Jude's moving. You know, they can't touch him, like I just said. He goes out there, he performs, he does what he does. He says, who else? It's too uppity for these people. For some football Are you ready for some football For football It's Robsch and you're listening to European Nights The show that's ready, willing Please take me now to the Champions League The Europa League And of course your beloved Conference League Back in our loving arms And I'm joined by a gent equally prepared The calm in the storm.

0:50The Yorkshireman drinking a pot of Taylor's tea in the eye of a hurricane at all times. Not a strand of luscious hair out of place. Who says you can't have it all? It's my mate, Mr. Rory Smith. How are you doing, Rog? I just gave you a bit of the drories on the Rory there. I don't know if you noticed. Rory Smith. You went a little bit. We're all doing a little bit drory at all times. We are. I love that drory emotion. Drinking it. Roar. And at the top, let's do this. We heard something deeply poignant, to be candid. That was Mr. Ian Wright, the legendary Arsenal and England striker turned quite brilliant British footballing voice of reason.

1:26The moral heart almost of British football right now discussing really a deeply complicated issue. That of Jude Bellingham and the English media. England have romped through World Cup qualification without a speck of drama for the tabloids to get stuck into. I think was it a sum total of zero goals conceded? So they've got themselves into a furor around Bellingham's seemingly disappointed mood when being substituted in the last game. There's been an instant pile on. And Ian Wright spoke, I thought incredibly beautifully, about how England still isn't ready for a black superstar with confidence.

2:03Raw, as I said, this is such a deeply complex conversation. It does feel to me a bit like the media against Raheem Sterling all over again. As Wright said, if you're a black man who's outspoken at this level, it scares certain people. Yeah, it's an incredibly complicated question. And I think Ian Wright is much better qualified to talk about it than I am, to be perfectly honest. The confidence bit, I think, is maybe the key thing. There are plenty of black players in that England team who are celebrated as they should be. Bukayo Saka, very few people, maybe Spurs fans, particularly this week, not that keen on Bukayo Saka.

2:37But I don't think the fact that Bukayo Saka is black is held against them. I don't think it prevents him being a kind of standard bearer for his generation for the England team. I think with Bellingham, there is a perception of overconfidence. That seems to be presented differently when it's a confident black or mixed race player to a confident white player. And I think that is a live wire that Wright is completely correct to identify. the other slight weirdness and this is not to do with with with color or or race or creed the other slightly strange sort of circumstance around bellingham is that he doesn't have a natural constituency in england there is apart from birmingham city fans he's not not played for a major team here he's not he's not won an audience here he doesn't have a like a a section of loyalists who will fight his corner he's quite alien to a lot of english football fans not because of his skin colour, but because we don't really know him.

3:38He left when he was a teenager for Borussia Dortmund, went from Dortmund to Real Madrid. I think people are delighted to see an English player playing for, certainly for Real, one of the biggest club in the world. That's still something we feel is kind of an honour, to be honest, for an English player to be playing on that stage. But it does mean that he's a bit of a blank slate. He's slightly unknowable. He's very, I think deliberately enigmatic. I'm sure that's a conscious decision that's been made for various reasons. But it does mean that you can paint whatever you want onto him, either positive or negative.

4:11And so while I think Ian Wright's right, that we do treat confident black players differently to confident white players, I also think there is another element to it, which is the fact that people in Britain haven't really bonded to Bellingham. And I do wonder whether it's just a little bit, you remember they used to say that about Messi and Argentina? Yeah, I was thinking that. They used to call him El Catalan. And the greatest player in the world, undoubtedly, beloved everywhere, apart from Argentina, when he couldn't deliver. They were still suspicious of his inability to deliver for Argentina at the World Cup until he did.

4:41And it was because they felt that he wasn't one of them because there was no one who had seen him. You see in Brazil now that there are lots of players who are eligible for the Brazilian national team playing really, really well, who left Brazil at 16 or 17, who never played for Flamengo or Palmeiras or any of the big sides. and the Brazilian public are like, well, who's this guy? I don't want him playing up front for me. I've never heard of him. That's obviously not true of Bellingham, but it does mean there's not that familiarity, there's not that bond. To an extent, I think there's maybe not that much affection for Bellingham and it's not through any fault of his own or related to his character or what he's like or who he is.

5:17It's purely and simply the fact that he left when he was very young and there's a lot of people who maybe just don't have that connection to him. Amen. Who's that fellow? His name is Richarlison. That's always the answer. Happily for Jude Bellingham, but he's got a spell away from proximity to the British press for the time being. He's back with his club, Real Madrid, and they are next on the Bad Away gig, flying to Greece to take on Olympiacos, 3 p.m. Eastern, tomorrow, Wednesday. But on today's show, we're not going to talk about that. Or the Diego Simeone derby, Atletico Madrid, hosting last year's finalist, Inter, or how Liverpool will contort themselves into inflicting more pain on Paul Rory when they face PSV Eindhoven, a.k.a.

6:02Ricciardo Pepe United. We won't even touch upon Tottenham. Grateful they don't have to face Eberichi Eze in Paris against PSG. Instead, on tap, we've got Arsenal, Bayern Munich. Just how good are the Germans? The world's greatest scientific minds have yet to determine the answer to that one. But Mikel Arteta will find out 3 p.m. Eastern tomorrow. and whisper it. But is Marcus Rashford back? He's certainly back in England. Has Barcelona travelled to London to take on Chelsea today? 3pm Eastern, so let's not dally. Let's get to the football. Up go the heads. I think it came off Tom Bischoff. And the whistle goes.

6:38And Bayern have won again. It's 16 wins in 16 games in all competitions this season. When there's hype, please don't believe it. You're not that good. and when there's the drama of you've lost a game or you've had a bad performance, don't think you're that bad. You're not that bad. So that's something that I keep always with me. Now we've won 16. From tomorrow onwards, it's back to zero. That, dear listener, was the final whistle from last Champions League match week when Super Bayern Munich defeated little old Paris Saint-Germain to win their Czechs note 16th straight game to start the season.

7:15And the voice you heard was out of Bayern manager and friend of the pod, Vonson Kompany, old Vinny Ball caps trying to squelch some of the fanfare after that win, saying, quote, when there's hype, please don't believe it. Well, his pep talk worked because his squad only went out and snapped their win streak that very weekend, tying with Union Berlin 2-2. But as I think the great William Wallace himself once said, they can take away our win streak, but they can't take away our Bayern hype train podcast. That's because Bayern, well, they're bloody effing good, undefeated through 18 games all comps, And I promise this is true.

7:50They already have a plus 49 goal differential for all math wizards out there. That means they're winning an average game by nearly three goals. It's enough to make even the most emotionally repressed Bavarian man smile in his Leidehosen. Season highlights include your 6-0 stomping of RB Leipzig, 3-0 win over Bayer Leverkusen, 3-1 dismantling of a team you may have heard of, little Chelsea in the Champions League, plus that aforementioned win at PSG, despite playing down a man the whole second half. So, Roar, let's get straight to it. Just how good are Bayern Munich now? Historically, where does this start to a season rank?

8:27We've got a lot of football left to play, but are they Champions League favourites as it stands today? Favourites is probably pushing it, Rog, but they are really good. And I think there's a bit of a danger with Bayern that we've got used to them being a kind of their or theirabouts Champions League team, that we know that they'll get to the quarterfinals. they tend to be seen as being like a level below maybe the two or three best teams in the Premier League and Real Madrid and PSG but there is, there appears to be I can't say there is, that's a bit definitive at this stage but there appears to be something different about this Bayern in terms of the head of steam they've built up already the results they're getting how far ahead in the Bundesliga it looks like they will be by the time the kind of business end of the Champions League arrives the options they've got, the threats they pose the way they're organised, they look a little bit like they did in about 2020.

9:20And if you remember in 2020, Bayern ended the season with a treble that included the Champions League. So they might not be favourites, but if you're compiling a list of teams that can realistically win the Champions League this season, Bayern Munich are on it. 2020, my favourite year named after a Dutch football team. But this is undoubtedly a new type of Bayern. And they're no longer your German national team redux plus one or two cherries on top from, you know, France or the Netherlands or Spain like in days of yore. This is a very modern, very international buy and it's global. Nowhere is this more typified than in the attacking trio leading up the top, your father, son and holy ghost of ex-Premium League players.

10:01We all know which one is which. Luis Diaz, Michael Alisse and Sir Harry Kane. They have, watching them, just mind-bogglingly combined for 69 goals and assists all comps this season. Nice. That's if you count the Club World Cup, which I do because I just like the number. You know, America. At least they look magical since coming over from Palace summer 2024. The pen to Harry Kane's sword scored two goals and a whopping three assists this past weekend against Freiburg. Newcomer and Rory Smith's old Liverpool friend, Luis Diaz, is fresh off a Rory Keen hat-trick in that PSG victory. He scored two goals, got himself a red card all before halftime.

10:40Then there's the best German goal scorer since Gerd Muller, Harald von Koehn, Harry Kane, a man who hates goalkeepers almost as much as he loves his sketches. 27 goals in 22 games, all comps this season, including Club World Cup play, which again, should actually count for more. This is a gent thought to be sunsetting his remarkable career to trophy chase it by. And it was meant to be sad when he signed from Spurs in 2023, but the schnitzel and spetzel only diet have turned them into a footballing. Benjamin Burton needs to find age and physics, blast goal after goal. And this is also a younger Bayern team, trying out young academy products in a way they've never dared to before.

11:19Players like 21-year-old deep-lying midfielder Alexander Pavlovich, 17-year-old winger Lennart Karl Lallata, who got his first Champions League start against Club Bruges last month and made an impact almost immediately. Lovely start from Lennart Karl, who's searching away. Oh! Absolutely incredible! The 17-year-old on his first Champions League start has scored a glorious goal. So, Ro, what's caused this model change almost for Bayern playing their young academy products alongside Premier League cast-offs like Diaz and Kane? Why are they no longer fielding like that souped-up demand shaft? and ultimately is this a good thing for them long term?

12:04Well yeah there was definitely a period wasn't there where Bayern was basically a Bundesliga Select XI that the way German football worked was that you did well for one of the other clubs and then Bayern signed you and what's happened over the last few years is the rest of Germany has thought well we don't really like that because what happens is we sell the players and then they come back and they score against us and we'd much rather sell them to England because the English clubs don't play in the same league as us They tend to pay in cash upfront and often they'll pay more money. They see the Bundesliga as kind of the closest equivalent to the Premier League.

12:38It's their natural market. So instead of selling Florian Wirtz to Bayern Munich, we can sell him to Liverpool. And that means that Bayern don't get to benefit from his ability. and I think for a while Bayern really struggled with seeing that route that model shut down they didn't really seem to know how to function around it they were kind of getting the players they could get but they were often the kind of cast-offs that the English clubs had passed on effectively and then within the last two or three years they seem to have made a significant determined conscious shift to say we can offer players from the Premier League a chance to play regular Champions League football to be in with a shout of winning the Champions League and to play for one of the most illustrious clubs in the world where they will coincidentally earn quite a lot of money.

13:24And I think in a way the best example of that is Alise. That they went for Michael Alise when he might have gone to one of the big six Premier League teams from Palace. But instead he goes to Bayern because he's done a play in the Champions League every season. And Bayern can potentially, next summer, the summer after, sell him back to England at a massive profit. And I think that's their new model. And at the same time, as you say, that's kind of created space maybe for Bayern's own youth products to start coming through. Pavlovich was one of the first. Lennart Karl, this winner who, you know, made his debut in the Club World Cup against Auckland City.

13:59And now at 17 is a staple of matchday squads in the Bundesliga and the Champions League, scoring his first goal last time out. Looked incredibly kind of bold and daring and confident. That is the sort of player that Bayern used to produce. And to be honest, kind of stopped because they can almost outsource their youth production to the rest of Germany. Now they're starting to bring those players through again. And what you've got is kind of a Bayern side that feels, for the first time in a while, vibrant and urgent, like it's got something to prove, either because you've got youth players coming through or because you've got players who have been overlooked, is maybe a bit too strong, but who maybe have a point to prove to the Premier League.

14:41And that's given them this real kind of injection of energy. You can imagine the contract negotiation with Michael Alisse. You want to come to a club that can give you an opportunity for trophies, Champions League play and Oktoberfest? Bite your arm off. But let's step back in time for one second. because it does feel like a moment ago, let's say, we talked about Bayern as a club that were in kind of borderline identity crisis. There was a string of almost comedic firings, like when they rudely ruined former manager Julian Nagelsmann's mid-season ski trip, March 2023, to tell him, you've been fired.

15:18Or the sacking of CEO Oliver Kahn on the very same day they won the 2023 Bundesliga title, which is just classic German efficiency. Or the awkward, you're fired. Wait, please come back, Dan, they did with Thomas Tuchel at the end of the 2024 season, which brings us to the man. They did ultimately bring in in Tuchel's weight, Vunson Kompany. He'd only just led Burnley on a charge to the Premier League from the championship. And then, oh, right back down again. The reception of this hiring can best be described as, I'd say, warm golf clap. He was like their eighth choice, I think. But Kompany has silenced all the doubters.

15:54He's led by him back to their rightful spot atop the Bundesliga table last year, but a European performance still got room for improvement. Quarterfinals exit to Inter Milan last year, let's just say it fell short of Bayern Munich's traditional lofty expectations. This season, like a Teutonic Jason Voorhees, they're back and they're out for blood. Those questions of club instability, they feel like a distant moment in time. The 2024 third place Bundesliga finish is like a nightmare from which they have suddenly awoken, found themselves safe in their beds. Everything feels absolutely stirring. When you've watched Fonts on company raw, what's he done that others, deemed good coaches, Nagelsmann, Tuchel almost were unable to because at Bayern, you've got to do the football and the politics.

16:44And how has he turned this team into the unbeatable juggernaut that they have always been, been a beat, but now they look again? Yeah, you have two challenges at Bayern. One is managing a team of high profile players, most of whom are the best, certainly in Germany, some of the best in the world in their position, each of whom comes with demands and ego as any players of that quality would. And the other challenges you have to manage upwards, you have to manage the kind of the phalanx of former players who occupy official or unofficial positions in the club's hierarchy and the kind of firmament around Bayern.

17:20There's always a huge amount of noise, there's always a huge amount of rumour and politicking and machinations. It's a difficult job to do, as any of those kind of massive European teams are. And I think in company, there's no point pretending he was their first choice. He wasn't. He was somewhere between like six and nine on the list. And so to an extent, Bayern maybe have looked into it. But they've got someone who, like most of the best Bayern managers of recent years, are able to straddle those two camps. So I think he's close to the players. The players trust him. I think they liked the coaching staff he's built around him.

17:55It's not just him taking all of the burden. There are coaches there who they respect and admire and who they feel are improving them. And when you've got a young team, that's really important. But Vincent Kompany, you know this as well as I do, Rog, is a really nice bloke. He's a good person to have around. He's clubbable, he's good-humoured, he's charismatic, he's amiable, all of those things you need. And I think the culture he's created at Bayern is the real success. I think he's created a sense of unity where there once was a degree of fracture. I don't know, this is me speculating, Rog, but I do wonder to what extent part of his pitch has been, there's an awful lot of people out there who think that this club is kind of past it and you lot aren't good enough.

18:37Should we go and prove them wrong? I wonder whether that is an element in it. But he's turned them into a really kind of unified force by Munich. And there was a point, certainly a couple of years ago, where you'd have said that that was almost impossible. Yeah, I mean, they've done their dominant domestic start thing, but they've also been unbelievably unstoppable in Europe. 14 goals in four games. They've conceded just three. Wins over Chelsea and that little-known French club, you may have heard of them, Paris Saint-Germain. They're one of only three teams to a 1-0-4 of their big goal group stage games.

19:08And this week, they head to the Emirates tomorrow, 3pm Eastern time, to take on another of those unbeaten clubs, Arsenal. all. And if Bayern are fire, Arsenal are probably ice. Mikel Arteta's men have yet to give up a goal in Champions League play. Four matches, four clean sheets, four delirious nights at Anne Hathaway's house. In those four games, they've given up an average of 1.5 shots on target. This is the Champions League. I spoke with Mikel Arteta before the season. He compared his team to a volcano, ready to explode. People laughed when he said it. In reality, you could say they've been almost more like a hungry python constricting the helpless attacks at their opponents.

19:47But if Arteta had said that, we are a hungry python, I think people would have laughed even louder. But Roar, these teams are bloody good. You can actually say they're probably the best two teams in Europe right now. Footballing version of an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. How do you see the firepower of Bayern facing up to the Great Wall of Arsenal? Give us your prediction, even without Gabriel. How will this one play out? I mean, I think it's obvious to most people, Rog, that Nottingham Forest are the best team in Europe at the moment. but we'll leave that aside. It is a really interesting one.

20:15And obviously it's difficult because this Champions League is designed to make these games happen, but in a way, in a context that means you can't take them seriously as a guideline for anything down the road. It's Arsenal-Bayern. It's a potential Champions League final, except that it doesn't matter and both of them will qualify anyway. That is the problem with the Swiss model of the new Champions League. But that said, it will be fascinating because they are two of the form teams in Europe. They do have such distinct strengths, although Arsenal proved amply against Spurs, they can also cut loose and score some goals.

20:50My instinct is that home advantage will tell and that Arsenal will shade it just but whether that's proof of what might happen were they to run into each other in the semi-finals or even the final, I don't know. I think that you are looking at two teams who could both claim to be potential European champions. It's clear to me that the answer to what happens when these two teams collide it's a 1-1 draw that's how I see this playing out early King goal and the Emirates for old time's sake a late Arsenal equaliser off yes a set piece both sides leave dignity intact it is no and you'll have to hold on until tomorrow November 26 3pm Eastern time to watch the game we will be on live in the wake on YouTube with the great horny James Horncastle come be with us Arsenal fans Bayern fans but you can occupy your time until then by sticking around to hear about the man, the myth, the Rash Bean.

21:45It's Marcus Rashford time after the break.

21:54Yeah, you can tell them now. It's official.

22:03Let's do this. Vizca al Bassa. Oh, one of the widest, brightest smiles in football's back, baby. That was Marcus Rashford's announcement video at Barcelona, where he's on loan for the season, stepping out of a red telephone box in the middle of the Camp Nou pitch because nothing screams English like outdated technology. We are now a decade into Marcus Rashford's career, past the explosion onto the scene as an 18-year-old. God, those days, Manchester United and England's next great hope through the injuries, the loss of form, through the abuse, and happily now appearing to be entering the rash surgeon.

22:43So let's dive on in and break it down. Marcus Rashford broke through, it seems so long ago. It was February 2016. Anthony Martial, injured in the warm-up Europa League game against FC Mito-Land. Rashford started in his place, scored twice. Next day, he did what you do. He went back to school. Three days after his debut, started against the Arsenal. and scored twice. Within a few months, he'd scored eight times, won the FA Cup, scored on his England debut, was on the plane to Euro 2016 at the age of just 18. He was Manchester United and England's next big prodigy, a young local lad, unencumbered, untainted by past performances, seemed poised to unstoppably soar, a new generation almost all to himself, ready to revive United from their own expensive albatross slumber.

23:32And then COVID hit. still in his early 20s, showed himself to be an even better leader, a more compassionate human being than anyone else in the British are, immediately launched a campaign to feed those utterly reliant on school meals as he'd been growing up, ultimately leading an advocacy campaign that led to two million children being fed. In the pages of the New York Times, a young, precocious writer, you may have heard of him by the name of Rory Smith, called Rashford, quote, arguably the central figure at Manchester United, if not officially the club's captain, then to some extent an avatar of its sole rule.

24:09Poetry. But what kind of player, take us out, was young Rashford on the field and what did he mean to the club? He was thrilling. I was at the game against Arsenal where he scored twice. And as you say, he'd made his debut kind of unexpectedly against Michelin because Louis van Gaal ran out of strikers. And they just, in a Europa League game, they kind of gave a chance to this kid and he scored a couple of times. but it's difficult to work out kind of from that performance how good he might be. He wasn't, Rashford wasn't one of those who you'd heard the name mentioned for years in advance. There are certain kids who've come through, Phil Foden's one of them.

24:45People were talking about Phil Foden when he was 13. City were pretty sure they had a superstar on their hands really early on. Rashford wasn't quite in that camp. People at United would tell you, we've got a player coming through who we really like, but there's no surefire things in youth development. And then he scores against Michelin, but you're not quite sure how to place Michelin. You know, are they, is this a good Michelin? Is it, how hard is it to score two goals against FC Michelin? They're the Michelin of Michelins is what you're saying. They are the Michelin of Michelin. But you know, are they a good Michelin, a bad Michelin, a middle Michelin?