McKennie’s Moment, Napoli’s Reckoning, and the End of the "Big Gulp" Group Stage: European Nights: 01/26/26

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0:49Roger Bennett:Lovely intricate build-up play, McKinney emerges with it, McKinney again! In this competition, he is Juve's superstar!

1:11It's Rog, and you're listening to European Nights, the show that loves the Champions League, the Europa League, and your beloved Conference League nearly as much as Western McKinney loves ranch dressing and scoring big goals whenever his team's thinking about dumping him. I'm joined by a gent who always delivers in the big moment, but whisper it, he's better at restaurant recommendations. It's my mate and yours, it's Mr Rory Smith.

1:35Roger Bennett:Yeah, to be fair, I'd back myself over Weston McKennie on food. Yeah, you would. It's around stressing a bit of a clue that you fancy yourself feeling dangerous. Rory, as we heard in the intro though, McKennie, better at football than you are. Three goals in the last three Champions League matchdays. the commentator there calling him Juve's superstar. Gent has the second most Champions League goals of all Juventus midfielders in human history. Tied with Arturo Vidal behind just the great Pablo Nedved, and yet the rumours constantly swirl in the Italian broadsheets lately, saying that Juventus will ditch the player Cristiano Ronaldo dubbed Texas boy when his contract expires this summer.

2:16We're now in the January transfer window, no raw. Will we see McKennie pop up with a slew more goals to force a new contract, convincing us? Is it 87th manager who initially doubted him or might he jump early? Look into your ranch made. Crystal ball. Let us know how this one plays out.

2:33Roger Bennett:I think it's a great position for Weston McKennie to be in either way, isn't it? That either he earns a new contract at Juventus where he has won over yet another doubter where he's kind of ensconced himself in the team, established himself at what is still Italy's biggest club, or at the end of another creditable season, He gets to walk away for nothing and find a big payday somewhere else. So it kind of works out for Weston McKinney either way, I think. God, just pay him his own weight in ranch dressing and he will deliver for you great clubs in Europe. God bless Mighty W, undoubtedly an incredible footballer in that he finds unbelievable levels, often only when he's on the brink.

3:10If he could bring that focus to the calmer, you know, the more comfortable days of his career, would truly fulfil his undoubted natural talent, a la the true greats like Scott McTominay. Speaking of whom, well, today we'll talk the last match day of the Champions League group phase. They'll elegantly name Big Gulp Stage. Oh, the competition. We'll talk McTominay's Napoli. On the cusp of elimination, unless something changes against Chelsea, Bodo glimps. They may not survive to my horror and tears. Carabao's dream of qualification into the knockout rounds is at high risk of being shattered this week as they take on Liverpool.

3:47Meanwhile, all the British clubs look set to coast through. Most of them in the top eight currently. So lick the ranch off your top lip. Get set, let's go to the football.

3:58Roger Bennett:It's David. He scores. And Union Saint-Gilois lead in Eindhoven. That, dear listener, is the sound of CONCACAF on CONCACAF. Violence, European style as Union Saint-Gilois striker and Canadian international promised David slotted over penalty awarded off a PSV forward and son of Texas Ricardo Pepe shin kick in the box was also the very first goal of this year's Champions League Big Gulp group stage all the way back September 16th 2025 and today four months later we're raising those nearly empty Big Gulp cups in remembrance of the phase it was tucking those bottom table teams onto their proverbial Viking ship pushing them out to sea and then shooting flaming annals at them, because that's what we do.

4:49Ah, bidding a bittersweet goodbye to this year's group stage and a subtle sweet welcome kiss on the forehead to our new boo. Yes, thank God. It's a knockout phase. How we've missed you. Games that really mean something. Raw, we're in year two of the new iOS update of Champions League format. The group stage song Groups, a.k.a. the 36-team league phase, when this new format was announced. Many took it another way. for UEFA to pave the way for big clubs to reach the knockout phase, stack the decks against your little old plucky club Bruges and the like. But somehow we were told there would be real drama and kind of, I mean, debatable.

5:27Teams like Manchester City and even eventual champions PSG flirted with elimination before the knockout. So we'll touch upon here in a second. But this year it's been by contrast, I'm not saying it's been a snooze, but it's been kind of like the missionary position of group stages as we pod the top eight of the Champions League table was populated by five Premier League teams Manchester City's 11th but tied on points with spots 6-13 teams securing their positions have been kind of putting their proverbial feet up last week Arsenal playing Inter no less kept Declan Rice Gabriel Martin Odegaard out of the starting line-up still remained unscathed 3-1 win biggest surprise of all might be the bloody Tottenham are sitting in the top eight.

6:15They've got the opportunity to punch their tickets straight to the round of 16 with a result against Eintracht Frankfurt. A question that comes to mind, last year, was it the aberration? Did everything go according to UEFA's master plan this year? Or is it fair to say that the financial might always will be the greatest determining factor of success in the group stage now and in years to come?

6:38Roger Bennett:Yeah, it does look a lot like that, doesn't it? That ultimately the Premier League teams who are the richest teams in Europe, plus Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and PSG are likeliest to qualify automatically. And if one of them misses out, it'll probably be Barcelona who step into the breach. I had a bit of a wobble, Rog. I was broadly positive. Tell us about it. It's a safe space, Rob. Well, I was broadly positive about the big gulp group phase, the flyleaf table last season. And I think partly that was skewed by the fact that, as you said, PSG, Man City in particular, but also Real Madrid didn't find it an especially pleasant experience.

7:13Roger Bennett:And it did seem to add a freshness to the competition that I think had been lacking in the old model. This year's maybe not had those kind of headline crises, but I think if you look through the table, yes, at the top, the cream has risen, as you maybe expect, but there's an awful lot still to play for going into the last day, and there are a lot of teams, especially those kind of middleweight teams, who are still engaged in the tournament. and I think ultimately as much as this was a craven move designed to placate the rich I think it still has done that thing that we talked about a lot last year where it's empowered the middle class it's kept them involved it's given them something to play for that in a lot of cases they wouldn't have had in the old model Yeah I mean a year ago Raw only someone that had one too many sips of Calvados would have picked PSG as their title favourites heading into the knockouts this year though it does fill the tables right in itself The heavyweights have floated back to the top.

8:08But is there a team that no one's talking about that could make a PSG-esque run, suddenly hit their stride, become the best team in Europe?

8:16Roger Bennett:And is it Club Bruges? It's probably not Club Bruges. I don't know if there's a team that could do what PSG did, which was basically switch off for the first six months of the season, turn it on in January, and then go on a tear through the continent. But there are threats in that big playoff zone. I think Juve are starting to find a little bit of form, as they showed against Napoli at the weekend. I think Inter are a threat. They obviously lost to Arsenal, but they will not be the sort of team that anyone wants to come up against in knockout play. I think there are teams there who maybe have kept their powder relatively dry so far and might make a run into the quarters or maybe the semis.

8:55Roger Bennett:I don't think there's anyone outside the top 10-ish who can realistically expect to win it. And to be perfectly honest, it might even be the other way around. I'm not sure that Tottenham should be getting out their tickets for Budapest just yet. So I want to return to that 30 ,000 foot view of this tournament rule. This format change was announced and the promise from UEFA was more competitive balance, more intrigue and quote, more football. But what many of us have seen was a first round buy for the top seeds, which looked an awful lot like the wildcard weekend format used by the NFL, if I'm being honest.

9:28That wasn't all. UEFA's implemented the final match day 18 game battle royale simultaneous kickoff. Let all the fireworks off for once. Also announced in October that the 2027-28 tournament will start with a Tuesday night game played at the stadium of the previous year's tournament winner. An idea that was, would you look at that, also directly ripped off the NFL. I mean, this is on the heels of last year's unforgettable, not in a positive sense, Lincoln Park halftime show at the PSG Interfinal that for the second there made me think I was trapped in 2007 and it wasn't an unhappy place. But, you know, the whole concept of the performance was, again, can we say, inspired by the Super Bowl halftime show.

10:13Roar, two-part question for you. In this era, which is very NFL-ification of the Champions League E, what will be the next week? How long will it be until we hear Beyonce singing the Kazakh national anthem before Kara Almaty take the field? And part two, what should the next week be? Can you fix this? How can we in all seriousness make this quite, for me, a shapeless, formless, very narrative-less phase of the tournament? Read better, feel better, have a sense of stakes.

10:43Roger Bennett:Yeah, I think the big problem with this model is that each individual game contains less jeopardy. I think there is a slight danger of looking at the Champions League through the prism of the English teams and the elite, and Real Madrid, PSG, Barcelona, Bayern Munich. I think that if you spoke to Dalla Tassaray fans or Carabao fans or even like sporting Lisbon fans, they might give you a different perspective on how this model has changed the way they engage with the tournament, and that's important. But it does feel as though if you're a big team, you get enough goes that there's not really any actual jeopardy for you, that you can lose two or three or even four games and still qualify for a knockout where you may well be the favourite.

11:23Roger Bennett:There's no real punishment. Although, you know, at the same time, there will be big teams who don't make the last 16 because they get knocked out in the playoff round, the elimination round. That is not making the last 16. It's not making the knockouts properly. And I think that is something that's maybe overlooked a little bit. I think the next tweak, and it might be, to be honest, what I would do anyway, given where we are. They're not going to go back. just as they're not going to go back to the straight knockout of the 70s and 80s. They're not going to go back to the old-style group stage.

11:52Roger Bennett:I think you can make a case that you could expand it, add another four teams in, and set up two conferences of 20 teams each, so that it has more of a feel of balance, I guess. Because one of the issues that I have with this model is I'm not sure Tottenham in fifth and Chelsea in eighth, separated by a point as we record, I'm not sure they've had runs in the tournament that are the same I'm not sure they've faced opponents of the same quality I wonder if arranging it into conferences might make it slightly easier to understand it might make it a little bit more kind of integral as a product and crucially, and this is a big thing Rog I think 18 matches on one night is too many matches to follow I think having 10 on Tuesday and 10 on Wednesday would probably be enough Yeah, by the way, why stop there?

12:44let's have a thing called the draft and also a pro bowl a Champions League pro bowl I like where we're going by the way in 10 years whoever's doing this show will be like I think it's a great new innovation that the players are allowed to pick the ball up and throw it from the line of scrimmage with their hands essentially what I realise is football is just morphing into that other one it's all happening the great great merge soon the LA Rams will be playing Arsenal for real what will Kroenke do will he suddenly have multi-team ownership. Who knows? Don't go there. It's mind-bending. But Raw, it is time to dust off your clairvoyant crystal ball that you keep under your desk.

13:23Put your tarot cards on El Table. It's the Ouija board time. Prediction time. You are quite on the heater. You correctly predicted Manchester United's upset victory over City two weekends ago. You got Chelsea's 1-0 win over Paphos in the David Luiz Memorial Derby, right? I mean, you're quite good at this stuff. It is as if you are glimpsing the scripts. You're the earling Haaland of sentiment. So Rory Dormus, first, give us your one big prediction for the final league phase match day. And then tell us, what's about our entire life savings on at the roulette table tonight?

13:57Roger Bennett:It's not a spectacular prediction, Rog. It's not anything particularly outlandish or wild. I don't think Newcastle or Tottenham will qualify automatically. I think they will both drop out. One of the things about this mega match day at the end, as you mentioned, is that the teams in 6th and 13th all have the same number of points. Champions League again. It is a Champions League again. That is where the interest will be, I think, in seeing which of those teams can avoid that extra fixture, which is really important in a schedule that's really, really busy. I think Barcelona will make it. I think Manchester City will make it.

14:35Roger Bennett:And I think Spurs and Newcastle will both drop out of those top eight slots. At the other end, you know, the teams that are still trying to compete to get into it, I think it might be beyond Bodo and the alternative's not as romantic. But I have a feeling Athletic might make it. And that in itself is kind of quite a powerful advert for this model of the Champions League because after the first, like, three match days, they were done. They were absolutely out of the competition and they've put some results together and now they're currently 23rd. They play Sporting at home. I think they'll win and that will be enough to take them through.

15:04There you have it. It is written. It is known. and my personal prediction, Karabag take on Liverpool and those pesky Azerbaijanis will march into Anfield, pull off a Bodo Glimt and by that I mean a 1-1 draw that feels like a win or a Kalib, as I believe it's called in, Azerbaijanis. A late Karabag goal will be enough for them to sneak into El Knockout Round to Madness in the Azerbaijani streets. That game, like all games this weekend, kicks off tomorrow 3pm Eastern time in that UEFA or GEO Champions League football. We'll be back to check on Bellenapoli after a short break. It's Rog. If you haven't noticed, I absolutely adore New Balance and all that they create.

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16:28slash soccer.

16:32Roger Bennett:You've got the locks, you've got the swag, you've got the confidence. You're looking magnificent, sir. Yeah, my hair's a little bit longer now, so, well, yeah, to be fair, it's just the hair, really, to be honest. Obviously, it's summer holidays, and I've got a nice suit on, so I'm obviously going to look better than the other pitchers. So, yeah, I don't really see too much about it. That, dear listeners, is the key to success in life. Scott McTominay, the one-time Manchester United cast-off now Serie A winner player of the year at Napoli, explaining it's not the tactics, it's not the glow-up tan, it's not even discovering tomatoes, which he told one Rory Smith.

17:08Like Samson, the key to the Scots' resurgent successes, longer hair, and that's why I'm doomed. But it's not about me. Big Scotty, former Manchester United teammate, Rasmus Hoyland calls him, or Scott McKing, as he's been dubbed by the old Italian journos at Corriere della Serra. Recently bellowed, quote, this team will not give in or back down one millimetre, which is good news because looking behind them, there isn't any room to back up, lads. Napoli sit precariously 25th in the Champions League big gulp group stage with the dregs of the competition on the verge of being flushed out unless they can find a result against gulp.

17:48Chelsea, Wednesday, 3pm Eastern, in the last Champions League matchday, despite a towering McTomb header that drew 1-1 with 10-man Copenhagen. And manager Antonio Conte, always as deft and as tender as a sledgehammer, said, quote, We just need to be angry, very, very angry with ourselves. God bless. Bemoaning that they somehow took a downhill race and made it uphill work. And with Conte welcoming Chelsea, narrative, the team he led to their last Premier League title in 2017. Yes, before suing them for wrongful termination. but it's just business. It's not friend business. It's show business. It's uphill indeed.

18:28Conte has won five Serie A titles, the Premier League, the FA Cup, but the weird bug in his system, it's almost a kink, is this, that the ticking time bomb of a human being has never progressed. Incredible this past the quarterfinals of the Champions League. In his six attempts, his teams have crashed out in the group stage. R for them, three. Grouped! As Hercules Gomez would shout, Conte said, quote, in my heart, in my mind, in my ambition. There is the will to have success in Europe. But Roar, why haven't they matched the ambition? Where's the disconnect between Conte's unbelievable career domestically

19:06Roger Bennett:and his continental form? To be honest, Rog, I can't give you a definitive answer because it is a bit of a mystery. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense that there is this massive contrast between what he can do over a league season, which is pretty reliably, except when he's at Tottenham, perform extremely well. And this apparent inability, really, to compete in Europe, and that was summed up in that game against Copenhagen, where Napoli took the lead, saw their opponents reduce to 10 men, and then somehow still didn't win. And that felt very much like this is what Conte's teams do in Europe.

19:38Roger Bennett:They contrive a way to disappoint. I think the one bit of mitigating circumstances, the one bit that he might point to as not justification but explanation, is that in a lot of those campaigns, he's not been in charge of a Real Madrid, a PSG, even a Chelsea. You know, Juventus, which is where he had the bulk of his Champions League campaigns, they were a side that were focused very much on Serie A, and they didn't have the resources to go in two competitions. I think that would be his explanation for that. Chelsea, yep, I think you just have to own that one. But it was a club that was relatively volatile.

20:13Roger Bennett:Things were not easy for Conte at any point at Chelsea, I think. Napoli is an interesting one because obviously they weren't in it last season but he did in the summer come close to leaving and part of what persuaded him to stay was Aurelio De Laurentiis, the president basically agreeing to give him enough resources to compete in Serie A and to compete in the Champions League that was kind of the deal you back me, you give me the depth that I need and I will deliver for you and to be honest, although there are again there's a bit of allowance because they've got a lot of injuries Napoli Their performances over the course of this campaign, over the seven games so far, he's not really lived up to it.

20:51Roger Bennett:And I think this season, much more than the seasons at Juventus, he kind of had a fair chance at it because they've got enough players, Napoli. Yeah, but one of the main challenges, it's a very simple one. Everyone seems knackered. Our friend James Horncastle, the resident poet covering Italian football, pointed out Conte has had to do with, I think, plans A, B, C, and sometimes D, chopping, changing formation systems because Romelu Lukaku, Chelsea's one-time record signing. Now on Napoli, he's played 11 minutes total all season because of thigh injury. Kevin De Bruyne out until February or March with hamstring twangs.

21:28Looming over the January transfer window is a soft transfer embargo. And asked about it, Conte said, I don't want to touch on that as it's bad luck. I love that man. Looks like 6 '7 striker Lorenzo Luque is on his way to Nottingham Forest to loom over the trees there. Noa Lang could be shipped off to Galatasaray, which might open one or two spots. But transfers will not be enough for Conte. Quote, in calcio, doing your job is not enough. You need passion, enthusiasm, heart, he bemoaned, that he can't do heart transplants on his team, Roar. I'm sure he's tried, by the way, to prove it. He's done some amateur heart.

22:08You can imagine Conte actually backing that up by having bloody try. But Roar, how does Conte rejig this team on the fly with a limited budget, the transfer stuff, and possibly turn this season around?