Barcelona Rashford is go, plus the rest of the Champions League's first week

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1:28Ryan Hunn: Champions League Match Day 1 is over. It is. It was a good week as well. Welcome back to Friday's Stadio Podcast. How are you, Musa? I'm good. I loved Match Day 1, actually. Did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was so tired during one of the evenings, which I won't tell you, that I actually fell asleep at half-time watching the conference. No. And had to re-watch it all back. That is so funny. I was fighting so hard. You know when there's a kid who wants to stay up really, really late, and they clearly should just go to bed. falling asleep in their dinner. And that was basically me. I was just doing the nodding off and waking up again.

2:02Ryan Hunn: I'm like, no, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. There's all these videos on YouTube of like puppies with FOMO because, you know, puppies are afraid that if they fall asleep, they're going to miss the whole of life. That was basically me during one of the Champions League evenings. I was just like, no, no, no, I've got to, no, there might be a red card. Didn't it remind me of actually the Champions League? It felt like the old days of shopping for vinyl. Just sifting through and you need to go from shelf to shelf and genre to genre and you're just selecting elements and you're kind of finding bits that you enjoy you might listen to the eight minute tune a bit abstracted me like oh like i like nuggets of that and i felt like this match day one was like that i felt like i enjoyed some part of every game and i'm not sure i could have said that about this volume of games before do you know what i really love that analogy because much like digging for records you're not really sure how important any of it is and you won't realize until much later down the line how it fits into the wider context of your record collection do you know i love that because i think i'm taking i think because i didn't know exactly how everything fitted i made i think a conscious choice to just look for parts that were important to everyone so whether it was copenhagen leverkusen or brugge monaco just looking at what individual teams were doing in players and what those interactions meant and that i think is why i got a lot more joy from it i think i'm just watching the games differently to last year first of all before we get into the football we want to say we hope everyone's staying safe and well wherever you are and a couple of bits of admin london listeners tickets are on sale for our first ever show at the south bank center yes uh link is in the description go and buy the tickets when they're gone they're gone december 4th is the first one and then we're back special special but it's christmas adjacent it will be maybe we can do something we should have just done the stadios live there and that would have been great still can no no it's taken we'll save we'll save that for hopefully one day when we're big enough to do the royal festival hall and we'll do it as a proper proper stadios royal alba hall black tie do the o2 40 000 people turned up to listen to the catfish of the year award to watch Ryan Google Woke nonsense Oberliga results Woke nonsense Hey listen actually do you know what because A because it's a Thursday and B because the ticket prices is a little more than when we did the live shows at the social I promise that I won't Google where Julian Draxler is playing during this game during this live show but yes tickets are on sale now so go and buy them if you like they are available at the link in the description hope to see you in London at the Southbank Centre.

4:45Ryan Hunn: Other bits of admin, if you are listening to this on the free feed, why not join us as a Stadio member? Go to patreon.com forward slash Stadio. You can sign up as a podcast member where you just get every podcast in full, ad-free. Or if you want a little more for a few more quid a month, you can sign up to the Stadio Social Club. You get all the podcasts, access to the Discord server, which has been great through the Champions League this week. Live match chat thread in there, which is great. People just talking about the games. yeah if you want more chaos in your life join the discord if you want more chaos you may not but if you i'm not sure that's going to sell it well okay more innocent chaos yes yes okay fine yeah innocent chaos in the champ in the uh stadio discords uh you also get early access to tickets early access to all kinds of stuff a membership pack if you sign up for a year and many more perks so yes patreon.com forward slash stadio and thanks to everyone who's signed up so far we're almost at a thousand members already which is great excited but yes today we are gonna talk a little bit just in general about the the rest of the champions league games we did an episode about tuesday's games uh we will quickly wrap up wednesday and thursdays and then maybe just focus on a couple of a couple of things that caught our attention yes before we get on to the champions league and stuff like that let's just have a quick shout for jose marino back at benfica 25 years after it all began there uh interesting thing about this for me contract until 2027 break clause this summer that is absolutely wild absolutely wild you know he said this he said this about um fennibachi this was interesting i made a mistake going to fennibachi he said it wasn't my cultural level it wasn't my football level it wasn't my level and which is interesting only because when he went there he did make a big thing of i wear the shirt yeah the shirt my skin yeah yeah yeah like do you know what it is about that though you know like when marina we know when al pacino was transitioning from angry you talked about this in marina sense the the yeah every now and again he would come out with these incredible speeches yeah like any given sunday like later era pacino marino they're not as terrifying anymore they're making the transition and the thing about pacino what he's done successfully is he's managed now like he's achieved the transition and you see him in the irishman he's as good as he's ever been it's unbelievable right and i think i'm interested to see where mourinho goes in terms of his you know his management style because he's not the young provocateur anymore and that's fine and i think there is a path for him as the kind of like elder statesman who just coaches the hell out of games.

7:29I'm intrigued by the fit at Benfica. I'm intrigued by it. He's a huge name for them. He's still massive in Portugal as well. Yeah, he is. He is. And I wonder how much Mourinho, back in his cultural context, galvanizes this Benfica side. Because actually, I feel a bit for Bruno Villarreal because they were very strong. three wins and a draw in the league yeah and the first 20 minutes against Carabac they were flying they were flying like and he could have put this away and if they put them away is he still in a job maybe and the sad thing was the moment Mourinho was out of a job this is the thing the moment Mourinho was out of a job there are coaches all over Europe going yeah he's probably going to like we're going to get the bump at some point

8:17Ryan Hunn: Jose Mourinho out of a job is basically like The Quiet Place I love that yeah Yeah, very much so. Losing in football management is the equivalent of stepping on glass in the quiet place when Jose Mourinho's out of a job. There he is. You lose a game and the manager looks up at the assistant like they've just stepped on glass and they know what's going to happen. He's coming for us. And the next bit, gone, out of the dugout, it's Jose.

8:43I mean, who knows how he'll do it, Benfica. I think this is an appointment with an eye on the Champions League. No idea at all, but I'm here for it.

8:50Ryan Hunn: Look, I've never looked at flights to Lisbon quicker.

8:56Ryan Hunn: Anyway, let's talk about the Shampoos League. Let's do it. That refresh you've been putting off until the right deal came along? It's here. Wayfair's Black Friday in July sale is happening now, so you can finally get the style you've been waiting for for less. Get up to 80 % off area rugs and up to 60 % off outdoor and bedroom furniture. Shop Wayfair's huge selection of styles and find the piece to fit your style, budget, and space. Plus, free shipping. Black Friday in July ends July 27th. Shop today at Wayfair.com. Here's a tip for you. There's a podcast out there with fans waiting to be your next customer.

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10:14Ryan Hunn: Newcastle won Barcelona 2. Yes. This game actually, okay, look, this is a game that felt important for a couple of different reasons. okay well it felt very important in the first five minutes because the disowned commentators were legit laughing about how hyped the crowd was when the ball went out for a throw they were just like they were hyped about everything like wow the fans are really up for it and it kept like it kept cutting to fans that were just like fucking come on and it was like three minutes in and the ball had gone out for a throw it was the best it was the fan giving tactical instruction i saw that magical instruction like on the throw I saw that that was amazing I was crying down the line down the line down the line I saw that it was amazing I was incredible imagine getting caught on like TV that's great that's equivalent of like telling Kendrick when the drop is coming in the beat it's like hey Kendrick Kenny Kenny over here drop it amazing so this game felt important I think for Newcastle in terms of the profile of the fixture Foster and Asprea in the crowd and this is very much the kind of like we're in the big time against Barcelona.

11:17Of course, they played under Howe in Champions League before, but in terms of like a fixture that puts you on the map and the way they started this game and the intensity, I think I was talking about this before, but Pedri, they were not finding him at all. And he was like visibly frustrated where he was very often the outball and the players were kind of panicking. I mean, even, you know, Koundé, who's a fine player, was making some rash clearances, was playing the ball into crowds. They didn't, Pedri completed two passes in the first 10 minutes. That is an astonishing, like just in terms of how well they were marshalling him.

11:53But once Pedri got on the ball, and what would they call it? The passing carousel. Once Pedri got on the ball, he didn't get off it. He was exceptional.

12:01Ryan Hunn: 84 completed passes of 92, which is 91%. In that atmosphere. And that wasn't even the defensive work. The defensive work. He's just, it was another masterclass. But the person that's going to get the biggest headlines in this is going to be Marco van Rashford, who was out of this world. Like the first half, a difficult first half, actually. This is the funny thing. And I felt like, do you notice that thing where I've been watching a lot of tennis recently, as you can tell from my references in the podcast. And there's always a thing where a player, like an elite player, who doesn't let the match come to them.

12:38And when they settle into their rhythm, and as Rashford settle into his rhythm and stop trying to force it, it just came to him. And the thing about these goals that were so striking for me and impressive was that they came from the kind of like number nine areas, right? They actually, you see, the debut I think against the Arsenal when he scores twice and he basically looks like a full on nine. I haven't really seen the number nine Marcus Rashford for a while. And we saw it even to the point where after his second goal, he drops deep and hits a Harry Kane style cross field pass. And I'm like, this guy's locked in.

13:10And you know for a fact from the way they celebrated the first goal, we'll go back, we'll go to the goals in a sec, but the way that the Barcelona teammates celebrated the goal with Rashford, like knowing full well, this is the guy that we see in training. And if this guy takes off, because I think I said when he joined Barcelona, I was like, I think he can play as the nine here. Like, I think that actually that spot is there. I don't think it's going to be fair on Torres. I think that there is a number nine in him somewhere. And if Barcelona can unleash that, if they can unleash that, like over time, and that's my, it's always been my kind of hot take, but I think they are in dreamland with that.

13:45And I just, I saw that and thought, like take that last half hour and make that your gold standard. And this Barcelona team could really do something like exciting with him in that configuration, I think.

13:59Ryan Hunn: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting with Marcus Rashford, isn't it? Because whenever there's an impressive performance or an upturn in form, people immediately start thinking big picture, down the line, longevity, how long can this go on for? Or what is this going to look like in six months or whatever? I think the loan spell at Villa was really important for him because it proved that he could do it away from Manchester United. It was just psychologically quite important. And I think that his Villa loan was good. His early days at Barcelona, that we were talking about briefly after the Valencia game, when I thought he was actually quite good in the Valencia game.

14:32Ryan Hunn: I think he was definitely trying a little bit too hard, maybe. But I get that because it was his home debut for Barcelona. In this game, it felt a little more like, You could tell that he was the most experienced player playing at St. James' Park on the opposition side. That's interesting. He is so used to being on a Manchester United side that he's basically hated wherever they go. And quite often, it's the biggest game of the season for a lot of teams when they host Manchester United, right? It's the biggest home game for a lot of teams apart from derbies, and it has been throughout his career.

15:02Ryan Hunn: It didn't seem to affect him, I didn't think, as much as other Barcelona players. I don't think he affected the game massively in the first half. but I don't think he he wasn't making massively rash decisions he wasn't being careless with the ball like a lot of Barcelona players were as you mentioned there were a couple of like even Rafinha there was a moment in the first half where Barcelona actually I thought the Newcastle press in the first 10-15 minutes in particular was unbelievable but when Barcelona did get out they wasted their opportunities so many times and there was one where the ball gets played out to Rafinha who kind of drops back on the right hand touchline and he just swings a left boot at it.

15:42Ryan Hunn: Do you remember? It just looped. And it was such a nothing pass. And I was like, you don't make that pass if this is in the first 10 minutes at home against someone. You don't make that pass, even if it's the first time that you've played out from a press. And I think that the atmosphere and how intense it was for a lot of them affected them. And I don't think it affected Marcus Rashford that much. To the point where in the second half, if you want to get onto his goals, the thing that was really impressive, I think, was how different the goals were, but how easy he made both of them look. Yes, and actually I loved it.

16:12And so on that, Rashford's problems in the first half were nothing to do with the Newcastle crowd. They were to do with coordinating with his teammates and combination play because I feel like that, even in the Valencia game, the reason why I like Rashford coming centrally, specifically in this Barcelona attack, is it forces him to be involved in a different way.

16:38Ryan Hunn: Social Club, and more, you can join us at patreon.com forward slash stadio.

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