Was PSG vs Bayern Munich the Greatest Game Ever? VAR Overlord's Haunt Arsenal vs Atlético Madrid: European Nights 05/05/26

0:00Roger Bennett:Okay, real question. If you're heading to an NWSL or MLS match this summer, do you have a pair of sunglasses that can handle a run, playing with your dog, a stop at brunch, and then heading to the big match? Because that's basically a perfect day and it's exactly what Gooder sunglasses are built for. I'm excited about this one because Gooder now has officially licensed NWSL and MLS sunglasses. So you can rep your favorite club all summer long, whether you're out being active or just hanging with friends before kickoff. They're designed to actually move with you. They've got a no slip grip. So they stay put even when you're sweating a no bounce fit that runners will appreciate and UV 400 protection for those bright afternoon matches.

0:43Roger Bennett:And there are tons of team color combos and frame styles so you can find a pair that matches your club and your vibe for all your spring and summer plans. I can wear these out to coffee with my friends on my big trips to New York and then straight to the Gotham game after to cheer them on. If you're ready to upgrade your eyewear, head to gooder.com slash MIB to claim$10 off your first order when you sign up with your email. That's G-O-O-D-R dot com slash MIB for$10 off your first order. You're listening to the Men in Blazers media network Suboptimal Radio Champions League semi-final second legs await and I don't mean to be hyperbolic but was PSG by Munich the greatest game of football human civilisations ever witnessed It was George Rog but it was no 2022 World Cup final How likely is it that English football teams do a full sweep of Champions League, Europa League and Beloved Confidence League?

1:34Roger Bennett:50-50 they'll definitely win two of three but I don't know about the Champions League Does anyone know what a handball is anymore? Absolutely not Rog

1:54It's Rog, it's Rory, it's European night ahead of the semi-final second legs. Marky matchup, of course, the one heading to Bavaria. Bayern, PSG, do I need to remind you, first leg finished 5-4. Oh, an exultant penalty shootout kind of scoreline. and the commentator called it wonderfully irresponsible. PSG manager and cycling obsessive Luis Enrique called it without doubt the best game he's ever been part of. Both PSG captain Marquinhos and Lord Harold of Cain said it was crazy. The nine goals record for a Champions League semi-roar. This game, more than any other in a long time, maybe since Messi and Mbappe, and before that, the Rooney overhead kick in the Manchester derby.

2:34I had people on the street who don't know anything about football coming up to me to say, wow, that was amazing. this one was poetry.

2:41Roger Bennett:Yeah, it was genuinely breathtaking, Roger. The highest form of praise that I heard was a friend of mine who said that it was the first game in years that had made him put his phone down to watch. Does none of us watch football without a second screen now? But it was the sort of game that you didn't want to be distracted. You wanted to kind of immerse yourself to bathe, to wallow in the glorious madness of it. It was certainly the best game of the season and probably the best game of the season by quite a long way. I want to give huge thanks to Bank of America, official bank of US soccer and the FIFA World Cup 2026 for supporting the Men in Blazers media network.

3:14Discover what's possible in sports and in life. What would you like the power to do? Barney René in The Guardian called this game, quote, a glimpse of the outer limits of what is possible. Two teams really at the peak of their powers, pushing the boundaries of human stamina and ability and technique. But it was also the product of a fundamental coaching choice. Both teams, both managers decided their best chance here was just to score. more and more and more to shoot out the lights. Bayern manager, Vonson Company, was asked after the game about the ignored art of defending and he said, what do you want?

3:47Well, Vincent, I want more games like this, to be honest. He pointed out that sitting back against a team like PSG would be self-destructive. Best chances to go for the juggler yourself. Neither team is constructed to be able to sit deep, to be honest. We saw this in the last half hour when PSG had a three-goal lead and tried to sit back to protect it. Bayern ultimately scored twice, could have had a late equaliser. And so a debate immediately reigned, Ru. Were we watching elite football at its peak? Were we watching two teams who've got such dominance in their own home domestic leagues that they've just forgotten how to defend?

4:21And in Manuel Neuer's case, zero saves. Forgotten how to, you know, keep out the goals.

4:26Roger Bennett:Probably both things are true at once, aren't they? That PSG and Bayern are two teams who are constructed by their circumstances as much as anything else. They are expected to win their domestic leagues. which means that all they face in the Bundesliga or in Liga are a team sitting back against them. So you have to have attacking talent more than you need defensive talent. You have to have an attacking strategy more than you need a defensive strategy. And I think company's right that to change that because you run into each other not only probably negates the things that make you good at what you do but also it invites the other team to cut you apart.

4:57Roger Bennett:We've seen this time and time again that when teams try and keep PSG out and the same happens against Bayern, they lose because they will find their way through eventually, you may as well have a go at them. I mean, so the question that then comes in is, why can't we see this kind of football every week in our Premier League? And you've already hit one of the reasons. These are both single-issue superclubs. PSG even get their bloody League One games rearranged on the regs to accommodate the Champions League ambitions, which is crazy. But Les talks about, Bayern have fewer games in the Bundesliga.

5:30It's just 18 teams that they play home and away. And that leads to them having something like, give or take, is it 87 straight league titles in the last decade? I can't remember. They can essentially rotate, rest, come to the Champions League semifinals at peak performance, box fresh. Which means PSG and Bayern are constructed to be top heavy. They need to break down the lower block domestic teams and to allocate all of their resources towards what we see, which is genius attackers. In our Premier League, we have an actual bona fide title race. Every game is a final for Manchester City and Arsenal is the cliche.

6:05That mid-table, hef, that girth, every team is an incredible challenge. Mikel Arteta said so much after the quarterfinals. He said the schedule takes the hell out of you. There is no rest. And it's no coincidence, both PSG and Bayern rested their stars completely this weekend. They're fresh. So, Roar, is this trade-off just football at its core? It's simplest. Football is a game of balance. How many resources can you dedicate to scoring the goals? How many do you reserve to stop them? You can either have the attacking football of Bayern PSG, or you can have the competitive title race in which even the middle of the table is a murderer's row.

6:42But you can't have both. Or is that a cop-out?

6:44Roger Bennett:I think it's a little bit of a cop-out, Rog. Just because for a long, long time, one of the reasons that we thought PSG and Bayern didn't win more Champions Leeds, particularly PSG, was because we said they weren't challenged by the domestic lead. So I'm not sure you can now say, oh, well, actually, we were wrong about that. And having a domestic league that you can walk through over the course of the season is a massive advantage. I wonder if there's been a little bit of a shift in the kind of dynamics of it. So we've obviously seen in recent years that PSG's recruitment strategy has changed away from just buying the shiniest thing they could find.

7:16Roger Bennett:They seem to be using their power, their wealth, their resources much more pointedly, much more surgically and targeting them exclusively at the Champions League. And likewise, I think with Bayern, that they have been able to adjust their recruitment strategy, so they're no longer just Bundesliga Select XI. They're also taking Michael Alise, Harry Kane, Luis Diaz from the Premier League and saying, OK, look, if you can't play for the top six in the Premier League, then maybe you could come and play for us and compete for Champions League titles. And at the same time, what you're seeing is, within the domestic context, those teams are being picked apart.

7:50Roger Bennett:Any teams that could rival them are being picked apart by Premier League money, which means they're maybe now in kind of a sweet spot where they can, and PSG have done this particularly this season, they can afford to basically rest their players for the Champions League so that when it comes to March, April, May, the business end of the season, they are not just fresh but kind of firing and ready to go. So what can we expect in this second leg? Vincent Kompany was asked that and he just simply and emphatically said more, more, even more. Marquinhos called for, quote, the same mentality, the same personality.

8:25Oh, yes, please. Roar, tell us, baguette or pretzel. Who wins this one?

8:30Roger Bennett:I'm not sure it'll be quite as thrilling as the first leg. Just because I think players learn and they will understand a little bit more what to expect. They'll be a little bit more cautious. they will both have spent plenty of time in the last week working on their defending because as much as both Luis Enrique and company enjoyed the game I don't think either of them would claim that their players defended perfectly there were mistakes, there were lapses of concentration they left themselves slightly too exposed it will still be a shootout, it won't be two teams sitting back feeling each other out I don't think we're getting another 5-4 I suspect what we get is a 2-all draw high quality, incredibly entertaining same again enough to send PSG through I'm making a bold prediction Manuel Neuer with a save just one I'm going out on a limb there that game Wednesday 3pm Eastern I cannot wait

9:28what you're watching is the sight of the Metropolitano raining rolls of toilet paper onto the field pre-game and it was humanly ecstatic. The game against Arsenal perhaps a bit more symbolic of the match to come than Atletico fans intended. If PSG versus Bayern was sumptuous footballing gelato roar this game a little bit more high fibre vegetables 1-1 grinder of a game essentially a barb rule sandwiched in between a couple of VAR decisions. Penalty apiece for Atletico and Arsenal third overruled by our video assistant referee overlords which we'll get to in a second. Call it a rock fight. Call it self-flagellation in football form.

10:09Or call it what Thierry Henry did, which was, quote, probably the worst UEFA Champions League game I've ever witnessed. That was strong. Or was it? Cue the backlash to the backlash. Dutch great Clarence Seedorf led it, came to the defence, pun intended, of the less attacking abled Arsenal, saying the backline is the best equipped to win the Champions League this season. Pep Guardiola, never one to insert himself into a media scrum, said when asked, quote, Football is all about styles. You and me are not the same. I'm more handsome than you. I just love that line. But then he said, there are different styles.

10:44So, Roar, where are you falling on this spectrum between poetry and prose? Was Arsenal Atletico an insult to our footballing eyeballs? Was it actually proper football? And PSG was the abomination, a game meant to be played on muddy pitches with black eyes and bloody knuckles. Are we just blowing these games and the contrast between them wildly out of proportion?

11:02Roger Bennett:Very much option C, Rog, on that one. And it reminded me of the quote from 30 Rock about how there's no such place as real America. It's all real America. The Bayern PSG was one style of football. It was two teams who take one approach. And Arsenal and Atletico was two teams who take a different approach. And they're both legitimate. They both count. They're both actual football. And to be perfectly honest, I actually thought in its own way, Arsenal-Atletico became as engaging as Bayern PSG. The first half wasn't great. There's no point pretending. But the second half I thought was really absorbing.

11:33Roger Bennett:been. It wasn't without chances. It wasn't without moments of skill, moments of wonder. It's just that you really had to work for them rather than this kind of never-ending buffet of incredibly rich chocolate cake that we had on Tuesday night. It was a little bit more broccoli, but sometimes that's good, Rog, and I think you need that contrast. Thierry Henry saying it's the worst Champions League game he's ever seen. I think that may be like the ultimate example of recency bias in that he just watched it. There have been much, much worse semifinals. There was a period in the Champions League relatively recent history, where that would have been regarded as an unnecessarily entertaining semi-final, to be perfectly honest.

12:11Roger Bennett:There were lots and lots of nil-nils, lots of really kind of dour Mourinho-esque performances. I thought it was okay. And what matters in that scenario is that both teams showed that their chosen approach to football, they are extremely good at. That's why they're here, because they've sort of mastered one approach. and yeah it wasn't quite as thrilling as as buying against PSG but it doesn't mean it wasn't as enthralling don't take away my recency bias roar it's all I've got so let's zoom in on Arsenal they were built like a bomb shelter made for survival not necessarily for your living enjoyment they play yes in our most competitive league in the world every single weekend no games and easy three points then they have to go to Europe to go again three days later sometimes they have to hang on, grind it out with their massive squad, absorb injury after injury and grab their goals however they can.

13:04Teter called Bayern vs PSG quote the best game I've ever seen, but then added the not so subtle caveat, when I look at the amount of minutes, the freshness of those players, I'm not surprised, the difference in the leagues and the way they're competing is night and day, same issue as we talked about up top raw, but aesthetics of the game aside, what do you make of this argument? Diego Simeone also said there was a moment in the game when he looked at his opponents and just thought how exhausted they looked and how his team could go for it. In the same way as Pep's Champions League winning football had that KDB-propelled midfield winning, it's Klopp's Liverpool had that signature Klopp style.

13:41Is Arsenal's style of play just the strategic choice?

13:43Roger Bennett:Yeah, it is, but it's not to do with the individual game, it's to do with trying to compete across the season. And we will find out, Rog, in the next three weeks, four weeks maybe, whether they've made the right call effectively. Their squad is built in a way and their team is built in a way to try and last in four competitions, deep into four competitions. And what Simeone identified is what we've all identified about Arsenal in the last couple of months, which is they are starting to look like they are tired. They are starting to look as though, not that the tank is empty, but that it is emptying.

14:14Roger Bennett:You can tell they are reaching the end of a really long season in which every single domestic game is a pitched battle. They have helped to kind of engineer and drive that change in the Premier League. But every single game is exhausting. I think if you put PSG and Bayern into the Premier League, they'd still win it, but they wouldn't be winning it by playing like that every single week. I don't think it's possible to maintain those standards for 38 weeks of a Premier League season. Week 5, PSG just long ball, long throw in, grind it out, corner kick merch. Well when PSG go to Newcastle on the 28th of December having already played on Boxing Day and get smashed into by Jolinton for 90 minutes it will affect the way they play football.

14:56Roger Bennett:But Arsenal made that choice. Arsenal made the choice that they wanted to be able to last over the course of the Premier League and the Champions League and they needed the resources to do that. So they've committed their resources not to star players in the way that Liverpool say did with not especially successful results last summer. They've gone for strength and physicality and also numbers. That's Arsenal's calling card. The question is, can all of those things survive just how draining a full Premier League season is, a full Champions League season is, a full Carabao Cup season is, and an almost full FA Cup season is?

15:29Roger Bennett:This is kind of the point where Arteta's decision, his gamble, we get to see whether it pays off. As promised, we now have to talk about what everyone watches football for. Not the generational memory making or the unrelenting drama or even that Atletico fan making his ham sandwiches consistently, which I just love. Say it with me, kids. We watch for VAR. And if you're a VAR fan like me, that's why I watch football. You are biting your knuckles with delight through this game. Two crucial calls overturned by the all-knowing eye in the sky and both went against Arsenal. the first Ben Whitehand ball in the box, given a pond review.

16:09A little more than a VAR amused bouche for the main dish. 78th minute, David Hanko, name him but don't shame him, appeared to step on Everett GSA's boot inside the penalty area. Initially awarded a penalty to Arsenal. VAR went all Lee Corso on their asses. Not so fast, my friend. Call rather inexplicably because it looked like the most penalty-ish one that a lot to me. Reverse, Arsenal players stunned. Arteta after the game called the decision. unacceptable. You can say what you want about any of these three penalties. You may have ultimately gotten the call correct by the absolute letter of the law, but I am reminded of the great JJ Watt.

16:46He said on a very Men in Blazers media network that the whole point of VAR was to clear up clear and obvious errors. It was not meant to make every single decision with a microscope be picked apart. These VAR decisions, particularly the SA1 Raw, seemed very microscopy. It was first implemented in the 2018 World Cup, VAR was eight years ago. Are we any closer to knowing with surety what a penalty even is?

17:11Roger Bennett:No, I think it's getting less and less clear. I've got to admit I don't think there was a huge amount of controversy over the handball and even Arteta said afterwards that UEFA have been consistent on that. If it hits your hand in the penalty area, UEFA will tell you it is a penalty. I'm not sure, to me, that the sanction outweighs the crime in those cases both for Arsenal and for Bayern the previous night. There was the Fonte Davis one. But that is UEFA's interpretation. it's an excessive interpretation to me but that is theirs and i don't think we can argue with that i have no idea why the sa1 was overturned just because the bar is meant to be clear and obvious and as much as you looked at those replays over and over and over again and it looked like on two they were inconclusive and on one angle there was contact that is not a clear and obvious error it's a difficult penalty to give it may or may not have been a penalty but the referee has given it and you are overruling him or giving him the opportunity to overrule himself by watching the incident to the point of meaninglessness effectively and i think what we have seen over the eight years of VAR is that it has consistently suffered from mission creep and it's consistently muddied the waters to the extent that i'm not sure this is not a parallel that will land rog for a lot of our audience.

18:27Roger Bennett:But when you watch rugby now, you will quite often see the scrum collapse and the referee give a penalty. And you can tell that the players don't know what it's for, the fans don't know what it's for, nobody watching knows what it's for. It's just a penalty. Some rule has been infracted and off we go. Football increasingly reminds me of that, that we are seeing offences given or not given. And everyone just kind of going, okay I suppose if that's the rules now and none of it sticks it changes constantly and the frustration I think is building to the extent that more and more people now I suspect would land on the idea that it's difficult it's not satisfactory but maybe we should just get rid of it.

19:10Guy you had me just at muddy waters I was just thinking god I love that man very quickly it's my obligation of a citizen of this great nation to mention the best Johnny since cash. Johnny Cardoso became just the fourth American man to start a Champions League semifinal, joining DeMarcus Beasley for PSV against AC Milan 2005, the great Tyler Adams, Arbe Lopesig against PSG 2020, and our lord and saviour Christian Pulisic for Chelsea against Real Madrid 2021. It means it's been an American starting the Champions League semifinals in three out of the last seven years. which dot dot dot transference of logic means we're winning the World Cup, right?

19:47Isn't that how it works?

19:47Roger Bennett:If it is, no one's told me, Rog. But I thought Johnny Cardoso played really, really well against Arsenal. I thought he had an excellent game against a very, very difficult midfield to deal with. So it was definitely a feather in Johnny Cardoso's cap. Not good enough to make our squad though, probably. All right, Rory Darmus, prediction time. Arsenal-Atletico-Thunderdome. Two teams enter, one team leaves. Who will it be? Arsenal. I think that as much as Atletico got the chance to rest all of their players over the weekend, to me Arsenal's preparation was perfect. A few changes, a nice easy win, confidence boosted.

20:22Roger Bennett:As we've seen so much in the Champions League this season, Arsenal look better when they're away from the pressure of the Premier League. They've beaten Atletico already this season, they beat them easily. I think they probably take it 2-0. Diego Simeone once said at the Champions League, Only God knows why he's not let us win it yet. I don't know when it will fall for us, but it will. And Diego, God may be looking down upon you, but she is saying not today. 1-0 to the Arsenal. None of that fancy penalty stuff in this one. Just a good old-fashioned set piece delivered to beautiful Big Gabby's waiting head.

20:54Cue Gunner, ecstasy. That game is today, 3pm Eastern time at the Emirates. Oh, like a footballing car crash, we will not be able to look away.