Celtic, Juventus and when victory defeats you

0:22hi everyone welcome to your midweek studio podcast i'm Ryan that's Musa how are you I'm good. How are you? How are you? I'm right, thanks, man. I watched three games of football last night. Oh, goodness. And two of them went to penalties, which was fun. Oh, the Pokal. And the other one was a league game that ended up in a draw. Yeah. What were they? Well, I watched Eintracht Dortmund, which went to penalties and Dortmund went through. I watched Atalanta Milan, which was a one-all draw. And I was also watching St. Pauli-Hoffenheim, which went the distance as well. And St. Pauli went through on penalties.

0:53I'm glad they did because Hoffenheim were awarded an absolutely... terrible penalty decision. Oh my goodness. In extra time for a handball on James Sands. After St. Pauli didn't get one which was basically identical and then Matthias Pereira-Large got his first goal for St. Pauli to equalise and then they won on penalties. They needed that as well. They've had a bit of a skid recently so big result. They really have. How about you? Did you watch any games? Not live. No, no. I had to watch them back. I'm still adjusting to live back here but I did catch quite a few. I was very impressed by what Brentford did against the very strong Grimsby side actually.

1:29Andrew's doing some really impressive work over there and I know Brentford aren't the highest in the table but I think they've been coached very very well and they made they were very aggressive I thought you know we know what Brentford do pressing high up but they had to be at their best and that result you know 5-0 Grimsby going out I think it looks worse than it is just because I don't know it's really good to see sometimes teams that are like higher up really give them the respect they deserve and I suppose little comfort to Liverpool fans but Brentford are in the mood at the moment. They're on a hot streak so I think Grimsey just caught them in a bad night but that was the game I thought was the most impressive in terms of the outcomes, in terms of the fixtures.

2:10There's some other Carabao Cup games. Fulham went through against Wickham on penalties. Cardiff beating Wrexham 2-1. That's a good result for Cardiff actually. And the other game in Serie A last night was Napoli beating Lecce 1-0 away which meant they've opened up a three point gap at the top and Roma host Parma later today. So there's a full round of the rest of the Serie A games tonight. Juve host Udinese. We're going to talk about Juve a little bit today. We're just going to talk a little bit about Celtic. We might also talk a little bit more about Jabby Alonso. I think what we're going to do today is do a bit of a kind of general chat about some managerial stuff because literally just after we'd finished recording the other day, Igor Tudor was fired at Juve.

2:53Brendan Rodgers resigned. from Celtic and Martin O 'Neill is back temporarily as interim manager which is kind of wild Back to the future with Dyeship Forest as well yeah There was a really good piece by Mario Cortagano in The Athletic about basically kind of what we were saying about how important the Clasico win was for Real last week and some rumblings that have come out of the dressing room about Jabby Alonso's methods and it being very different to last year and found it quite an interesting read because you can see well I do think that it's kind of it's not completely related but it is semi-related to some of the stuff that's happened at Juve potentially at Celtic as well just about like denistic clubs who are either in a monopoly or duopoly dropping the ball a little bit and falling behind and how you can't really afford to do that so I think we're going to chat about that today and just have a bit of a general chat but a quick bit of admin first of all we hope everyone's staying safe and well wherever you are and if you're listening to this on the free feed why don't you join us as a member go to patreon.com forward slash stadio you can sign up for every single episode of the podcast ad free in full or you can sign up for the Stadio Social Club, which will include all the podcasts, access to the Stadio Social Club Discord, advanced tickets, other perks, membership pack if you sign up for a year, and Discord Hangouts.

4:05And there is one this Friday, Friday evening, 8 p.m. UK, 9 p.m. German time. We're taking advantage of the shortened distance between like time-wise between Europe and the States because the clocks go back in the States, I think, Saturday night. So I think that works out. 4 p.m. New York time, 1 p.m. LA time. on Friday. We were going to do it Saturday but there's so many games on Saturday and Liverpool play Villa Saturday night so it's just going to get in the way. So we're going to do that Friday night. So if you want to come along patreon.com forward slash stadio sign up for the Stadio Social Club and you can join us in there on Friday evening.

4:42Alright man so which one shall we begin with? Oh which sacking? Well no not sacking departure which departure? Which departure? I'm intrigued by starting with Celtic actually. go for it I tell you what so Brendan Rodgers after appearing to want to be sacked I say that only half in jest because comparing Celtic to Honda Civic that's wild when I saw him when I saw him do that a few weeks ago I joked in the chat half-heartedly for people who don't know what Moose is referring to Brendan Rodgers after look there was there was some much publicised discontent with some of Celtic's transfer business in the summer letting letting quite a few good players go and not being seen to replace them adequately enough.

5:32And Brendan Rodgers came out with a quote, which was, if you give me a Honda Civic, you can't expect me to drive it like a Ferrari. Which, I mean, I am no professional football manager. I do not think that that is a good thing to say for squad morale. No. It's brutal because for whoever's in the squad, whoever's arriving in the squad, it just puts a bit of a target on on you in terms of criticism and i said look this is the kind of thing that a manager says if they want out but he wasn't sacked he was due to leave well his contact contact was up in the summer but he left so the position became untenable from his perspective and he walked away he left money on the table which is unusual right um and it just really is a pride thing I think I couldn't do the job I'm out I think it's a pride thing I think it's also a bit of a legacy thing and I think it's an advert to your future employer as well because you're weighing things up and if you leave actually you can say look there's an integrity there the position became untenable I was not given the conditions to work with and you can say that there's a fairness in that in terms of the quality of play they lost in the summer and the way they went out in the Champions League You'd argue they should have made it anyway, but they would have struggled in the Champions League anyway.

6:52I'm one of these people who thinks that sometimes when a club narrowly misses out on a qualification for a big tournament, it's not the worst thing. It's not the worst thing because what you suffer in the tournament can be demoralizing. And once you get over the line into the tournament, you get cooked the first three, four match days. Look at Rangers, for example, right? It's not good. Rangers against Brugger. I think Rangers going into qualifying, I think it can be bad for you. So I think that he left not just for pride, but for the sake of future employment, actually. I think it's a better look that he goes than if he gets sacked.

7:30Especially when you see this statement that Desmond came out with, and Desmond is not known, he's not that vocal. But the statement he came out with, basically accusing Rodgers of contributing to toxicity in the atmosphere around the club, dishonesty and communication sitting with them at home for a few hours having conversations about how they can move forward and Rogers not being you know receptive this it was such a it's such a I think leaving the job allows you to control the narrative a bit more because no one can say that you were just greedy and sitting there and taking the money actually but yeah fascinating I think look we can talk about the specifics of the Rodgers departure, but I think there's this interesting thing that we're seeing.

8:17We've always seen with the owner-manager dynamic, obviously Mourinho and Abramovich, Mourinho and Abramovich working very closely for years at Chelsea and having that close communication. Ratcliffe and Amorim having a very frank and upfront conversation. But I think there's something about where Celtic are, and this is maybe a broader conversation we can tie Juventus in at a certain point where Rodgers did make a remark about everyone talking about sack the board because the lack of ambition and Rodgers saying actually in a situation like this the manager goes first I suppose the question the wider question is what what does Celtic want to be and what they want to be is not something which is solved by simply a new managerial appointment especially with hearts coming up on the outside rail and leading the league with all their new investment um so i think this i think this provides a really interesting right right like element to the celtic thing and i think that it's it's not echoing or mirroring necessarily but it is i think you can trace similarities to juventus as well i think just in terms of situation dynistic success in the league or dominance in the league creates quite a unique set of challenges because you then have to readjust the way that you operate essentially for a competition that you play in the least regularly per season because that's where you're really judging yourself compared to the opposition.

9:52And sometimes I think that it allows you to, well not allows you, but it can result in a bit of stagnation at a domestic level and then teams in those leagues as well kind of having to think outside the box because they don't have the financial dominance or the stability that you do as a club the size of Celtic or Juventus, for example. Because there was a point in Serie A when everyone else was literally miles behind Juve. And there was a point, for example, in the mid-2010s where you were wondering where the next non-Juve title was going to come from or whether it was ever going to happen. And I think apart from the Rangers' title a few years ago, in Scotland you had Aberdeen last season who started unbelievably I think they got 31 points from the first 33 available and then just completely fell apart but ended up winning the Scottish Cup beating Celtic on penalties so the thing that's interesting this season about Hearts is that you're getting someone who has had real I don't know whether this is too much of a segue too soon but we can go there if you want but I think you've got someone who's coming into the league in terms of Tony Bloom and his investment in Hearts bringing together bringing the analytics and the data side of it which is what has completely catapulted Brighton into their position in the Premier League the interesting thing about doing it in Scotland is that you know like Hearts they've had European experience recently as well and the scope for potential success is so high because well first of all you've had a long a long history of success or you've got a lot of evidence for the success of this analytics model in the package for other clubs that have had access to it.

11:37And you are trying to get an advantage because you don't have a financial one in Scotland, right? So the signings that Hearts have made in the summer have already made such a difference. I don't think it's surprising that Hearts are top of the league necessarily. Maybe it is, but I don't think it's quite as surprising once you kind of dig into realising why. And all the efficiencies that exist in football. Exactly. I think that the fact that it's happened so soon shows you sometimes how difficult it can be. And this might sound like proper first world problems vibes, but how difficult it can be for clubs like Celtic or if you want to talk about Juve.

12:13I know Juve, a completely different thing because of so much stuff that happened there. Some similarities as well, I will say. Yeah, but how difficult it can be sometimes when you're not actually being pushed consistently domestically. That was a preview of today's episode of Stadio. if you want to join up for ad-free podcasts, extra podcasts, access to the Stadio Social Club and more you can join us at patreon.com forward slash stadio