A full-on, three-day trip

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1:30Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new season of the Spanish Football Podcast. I'm Phil Kitramelidi, Sid Lowe is with me as ever, and he's joining me from a hotel room in Bilbao, starting the season as he means to go on travelling all over Spain in somewhat extreme fashion to bring you the best possible coverage of Spanish football. Hello, Sydney.

1:52Phil Kitromilides:Good morning, Phil. How are you? I'm good. I'm not as tired as you are. I haven't done quite as much as you have this weekend. I'm going to tell the listeners a little story. This is what Sydney got up to this weekend. He was on holiday, in theory, on the east coast of Spain in the region of Valencia. He got a train to Seville on Saturday to see Seville against Rio. Then on Saturday, he flew on Sunday morning, very, very early, flew up to Bilbao, from Bilbao, got a bus to Santander to watch Racing Santander against Villarreal. Then got a bus back to Bilbao to stay there this evening. This morning, Sid, what are you doing?

2:32Phil Kitromilides:Well, I'm currently writing, and then I will be getting a flight to Santiago de Compostela. From Santiago, I'll get a train to Acorunia to see Deportivo's first game back in the first division. and then I will get a flight back to the East Coast via Madrid tomorrow. A flight via Madrid? Yes, with a six-hour layover in Madrid. Wow. So what I'm trying to decide is whether it's worth leaving the airport, which is definitely worth leaving the airport, go somewhere that's not the airport, but whether I can actually get home and back for a couple of hours. Okay. I mean, once again, I'm just sort of left with the overwhelming feeling that I wish I loved anything as much as you love, covering Spanish football.

3:16So there we go.

3:17Phil Kitromilides:You sounded disappointed with me, you see. I felt I had to do this when I pointed out that the logistics of this meant I might not be able to do the free, the full-on three-day trip and it might have to stop at two. And you sounded quite disappointed with me. So that kind of spurred me on to that extra effort to make sure I could do this. I'm glad I still have that effect on you, Sid, after 14 seasons. This is our 14th season of doing the podcast. So if you've been along for the ride since the beginning, you're very welcome along. If you are a new listener, you're also very welcome along indeed.

3:49We'll be doing this every week throughout the season. Monday podcast, reviewing the weekend's action. Friday podcast, looking ahead to what's coming up, the forthcoming match day. I've got lots of stuff to tell you, dear listeners. It's the start of a new season. But I think we'll start off by going through what's happened so far in La Liga. Match day one, it's very much not a full set of results. These are the results that we have so far. The first game of the season, first game of the season, was Alaves against Getafe. Interesting choice. Alaves won 3-0. Impressive from Quique Sanchez Flores' side.

4:24Sevilla beating Rayo by two goals to one. Game that you were at, Cid, a game I desperately don't really want to talk about at all, but I'm afraid we're going to have to. Racing and Villarreal playing out a very entertaining 2-2 draw. You were there. And Espanyol beating Levante 3-0. Tonight we've got Deportivo La Coruña against Elche and on Wednesday we've got Atletico Madrid against Malaga Next week we've got Valencia Betis, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad, Celta Osasuna and Barca against Athletic Sid, why is match day one so shambolically incomplete?

4:58Phil Kitromilides:Essentially it's very simple which is that the rules of what would you call it I suppose the labour agreement and I love the way that Spanish football does this and it still talks about things in very kind of almost Marxist terms of the workers against the owners. Anyway, the Labour agreement essentially is that the players who've been in the World Cup have to have a certain amount of rest time. So rather than just waiting a week, which is what every other league did, Spain said, well, no, we're going to go ahead with it. But if you've got enough players who've reached the semifinal or onwards, you can be allowed to wait.

5:30Phil Kitromilides:What I do not understand, and I assume there must be a reason, but there actually isn't, is why Atletico Madrid have been forced to play their game on Wednesday. And Madrid and Barcelona and Atletico and Real Sofidat and everyone else wait the following week. There is a reason, Sid. Please tell me. I found it out last night. There is a concert at the Metropolitano next week. Ah, I did not know that. Who's playing? The weekend. The weekend, right. Yeah. Next week at the weekend. Is the concert at the weekend? Yeah. No, that's good then. Okay. I'd be disappointed if The Weeknd were playing in midweek.

6:08Phil Kitromilides:I mean, that would be very La Liga if that was the game. It would be a very La Liga way of doing it, wouldn't it? If The Weeknd were playing in midweek, that would be very much Spanish football's perfect identity. It does feel pretty strange to be starting the podcast with a very incomplete set of results. And let's, you know, be frank about this. The big boy's not playing yet. Well, I mean, one way of looking at it, Kittcher, and I don't want to do this, is that yesterday Real Madrid played a friendly and in media terms, that was bigger than the start of La Liga. And that's a problem. Yeah, it was.

6:41It was absolutely number one story on the web pages that cover Spanish football, et cetera, et cetera. But not the number one story here, Sid. A hundred percent not.

6:52Phil Kitromilides:I don't even know what Real Madrid did. All I know is I was disappointed that it didn't finish Schalke 0, Real Madrid 4 because then we'd have had a scoreline that said Schalke 0, 4, 0, 4, Real Madrid. you would have loved that and you and many other people uh as well with a particular form of ocd um we uh aren't going to talk about that but realmad did win their friendly barcelona also played a friendly yesterday uh against basel and they won it uh as well we are going to talk about the games that you were at but uh before we get to that um just want to you know tell you about our patreon because that's where you need to go to get more content about spanish football loads more patreon.com forward slash t sfp from just four euro 75 a month it's even cheaper with annual membership patrons get the monday and friday pods without any adverts plus the q a pod on a tuesday and a bonus pod on thursdays and we're launching a new bit of content this season the t sfp daily from monday to friday you will get a daily roundup of the biggest stories in spanish football so if You want to keep right up to date with everything that is happening.

7:58Monday to Friday, the TSFP Daily is what you need. Come and join us, patreon.com forward slash TSFP. All right, Sid, let's talk about the games that you were at. You went to Seville. You went to the estadio Ramon Sanchez-Piquan to see Sevilla come from behind to beat Rio by two goals to one. Rio were 1-0 up at halftime. They were the better side in the first half. Sevilla were really, really atrocious and slightly strange team selection from Luis Garcia, leaving some of his better players on the bench. Second half, they turned things around with with two penalties. How poor were Sevilla for a big chunk of this game?

8:39Because at the start of the season, you know, I was saying that they're in trouble. They've sold a lot of players. They've lost a lot of goals. They haven't replaced them with players that are as good. It's not a happy place it hasn't been there for a while and the first half just confirmed everything that I was thinking.

8:54Phil Kitromilides:Absolutely it did the first half you're sitting there thinking they are really in trouble and Luis Garcia the the coach had been saying in the pre-match press conference and I think it didn't go down well with everybody because it's not really the message that manager usually goes for pre-season but he came came up with what he described as very realistic message but it was seen as a bit of a pessimistic one he was saying look we have to recognize where we are we have to recognise the limitations we've got. Our squad isn't big enough at the moment. We haven't got enough players. That we have the financial limitations that we've got.

9:24Phil Kitromilides:He went on this discourse where he said, you know, it's not just that we go to a first division team and ask about a player and they say a fee and we go, ooh, can't pay that. It's that we go to second division teams and we ask about a fee and they tell us what a player costs and we go, ooh, can't pay that. So we can't compete with some of these other clubs. I think there's a recognition that they're actually doing reasonably good work in the transfer window given the limitations that they've got but those limitations are very significant and Luis Garcia was trying to say pre-game look we have to be aware of where we are we have to see this as a fight for survival from the very start we have to have that mindset because otherwise this will go wrong and in that first half you thought wow this is really really bad um they actually started for four or five minutes and I know four or five minutes isn't anything but there was kind of an impetus about them I thought oh here we go you At least at home, maybe they're going to have something.

10:16Phil Kitromilides:And then once Raya took control of the ball, Sevilla didn't get anywhere near them. Garcia said after the game that they'd actually been surprised by the way that Sevilla played. And in particular, by the way that Sevilla pressed. And he said they had a player, the structure of the way they pressed us was completely different. And we just couldn't deal with it. We couldn't get hold of the ball. We couldn't keep the ball. The way that Raya pressed. Sorry, the way that Raya pressed. Yeah, we couldn't get hold of the ball. We couldn't keep the ball. We couldn't hold on to it because they were coming at us from places that weren't the places we've worked on.

10:45Phil Kitromilides:And he said, so what happened at halftime is they made the changes of Robbie O 'err came on and Peke in particular, I thought was brilliant in the second half. Really, really good came on. But what that did was it changed the structure of the team as well. And they did start to get hold of the ball. It wasn't just the two penalties, the two penalties. Without those, they wouldn't have found a way through. But they were much, much better in the second half, Sevilla. And you're right, it is tempting, isn't it, to look at the second half and go, well, this was as simple as putting your good players on the pitch, the ones that weren't on the pitch at the start.

11:15Phil Kitromilides:Now, I think there's an element of truth in that. But, you know, the performance of Peke, for example, we've not seen that from him a huge amount for Sevilla. So, you know, you could understand why, all right, he turned out to be the best player on the pitch, but he wouldn't necessarily be. So Robbier came on and I thought played very well indeed and gave them something different as a centre forward, gave them a kind of a movement that they didn't have and a presence they didn't have and someone they could play to and play off. and I thought that was really, really important. But then, of course, it's natural that he didn't start.

11:42Phil Kitromilides:He'd only trained the night before. He'd only had one training session with his team. Yeah, yeah. He was in mid-season, though. Yes, I know. But what Luis Garcia put it quite nicely, actually, post-game, he said, you know, when you put someone on the pitch who's only had one training session with you, he said it's genuinely a case he doesn't know his teammates. And he said, so, for example, Joaquin Osser goes up the wing and you've got a centre-forward who doesn't know if this guy's going to cross early or late, if he's going to cut back, if he's going to put the ball in, when to make the movement.

12:09Phil Kitromilides:He said, so, you know, some of those mechanics that you need just aren't there. Although, actually, it turned out they kind of were there and he played pretty well. And I thought Sevilla was much, much improved in the second half. What about Rayo, who should have been 2-0 up? Randy in the second half missed an absolute sitter and then just didn't really do anything in the second half. No, nothing at all. He missed a sitter and, of course, you had the second goal from Missy Palathon as well, which was ruled out for a foul in the build-up. And I think that's actually a little bit harsh because basically Issy's running through the middle as the attack is building on the right-hand side.

12:45Phil Kitromilides:And the defender tries to barge him, tries to sort of push him out of the way. And Issy effectively throws him off. And that's the foul that's given. And I felt a bit sorry for Issy because it is true that he does put his arm around the shoulder or around the neck, almost, of the defender. I can't remember which defender it is now. But it's certainly not him. Quite iglesiasis. It's certainly not him that instigates the contact. So anyway, the point is that the Rio were in a position where they could have had the game really exactly where they wanted it. And you're right. They just disappeared in the second half.

13:15Phil Kitromilides:There was just nothing there at all, really. Nada de nada. Going to be a long old season for Rio. It is Monday morning. I fear it might be. Yeah, they have their first home game of the season on Thursday against Alaves. We have no idea where it's going to be played. There is no official news as to where it's going to be played. if you've missed the story their stadium which is owned by the local government who have revoked rio's license to be able to use it because of the deplorable conditions that they've kept it in and it's an absolute shambles but anyway more on that i'm sure in other podcasts tell me about your magical trip to santander sid racing santander racing into a two nil lead against Villarreal and playing really quite well for the first four.

14:03Well, they played well for pretty much the whole game, to be honest. But then they conceded two goals in a minute, right at the end of the first half. It finished 2-2 at the end of the first half. It finished 2-2 at the end of the second half. Sid, what was it like being there?

14:17Phil Kitromilides:I thought it was brilliant. First time back, as you say, in 14 years. In that period, they spent a run of seven years where they spent six of them in Silva which is Spain's third tier, which is always referred to here as being not professional football, because institutionally it's run by the federation, not by the league. So it doesn't count as professional football. Now, those players are professionals and they do get paid, although not always. This is part of Rayo's story that they've had players be unpaid. They had a huge debt. They've had two of their presidents have been to prison. A third president has been sentenced to prison, but didn't actually go.

14:52Phil Kitromilides:they've had this huge financial and institutional crisis basically as the fact that players people have gone to prison tells you um they've been run by crooks at times um they've been run by false idols and false saviors that that made things worse and then disappeared they've been on the verge of disappearance a few times there was that very famous cop of the ray game where the players walked onto the pitch and refused to play and the referee said you're definitely doing this yep and they walked away again they were supported by the fans in that because it was seen as a gesture of dignity you know that we can't carry on like this they have Jose Alberto is their their coach who took over four years ago and he's completely changed him but the thing that's changed him institutionally is the arrival of a of a new owner essentially a mathematician an Argentinian mathematician uh called Sebastian Theria and there is a stability about them now and one of the really important things and this this for me really brings back um a sense of what happened at Oviedo as well that those years of suffering actually make you stronger in the end partly because one of the things they've done is create if you like a mobilization of the city you know you feel that sense that the people feel like participants in this now they feel they've got a role and and that that makes them stronger I think and it and it means that you know everywhere in Santander yesterday everyone was wearing ryo shirts there was a real feel of occasion now I know you guessing what did I say?

16:16Rio.

16:17Phil Kitromilides:Did I say Rio again? Sorry. You get a real sense of occasion, real sense that the city's in there. And I know you get this with the first game back in the first division for any club, but I think that is part of Rathling's success. The atmosphere in the stadium was fantastic. It's very kind of old school, sort of 90s stadium, brick built, a perfect circle. And it was great. And they do play good football. And they're very keen to play front footed. They're very keen to go for you they use the ball well and i would actually agree with you because you said they basically play well for the whole game and that is to disagree with their manager and their manager said you know once once we tired we couldn't do it anymore in the second half we were under pressure a bit and it is true that in the second little bit yeah a little bit vrl started to make make things happen but i actually thought one of the things that was interesting for me was that in the second half even when they're under pressure they came away from that three or four times and had three or four good breaks where they could have created chances and in moments under pressure we then started to see the quality of a handful of players and in particular inigo withende and sergio canales who when the game was stretched and the players were tired canales's ability to hold on to the ball i thought was really striking i thought he played very well still got it sergio canales at the age of 35 16 years after he left harassing his back he said afterwards you know it's kind of surreal it still hasn't really sunk in that i'm that i'm back here but he is back and he was very good um tell you what their left back jorge salinas like the look of him and obviously A lot of other people like the look of him as well because he's been linked with the move to Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.

17:46People are keeping their eyes on him. He's only 19. And he's a very exciting looking player as well.

17:52Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, the manager said after the game, he said, look, it feels like every time people ask me about, there's a handful of players who potentially could be bought. He said, when you ask me about players who might leave, because I'm talking about them, it feels like we're trying to sell them. I don't want to sell them. He said, but there is a reality. They have a buyout clause that is eminently reachable for other clubs. And so, yes, there is a very significant risk that at least a couple of their players might go before the transfer window ends. Villarreal scored two absolute golazos, Papke, and a brilliant, brilliant one from Nicolas Pepe.

18:27First game under Inigo Pérez. Remember last season they finished third, but they were 17th in terms of average possession. They played a very different style under Marcelino. Inigo Perez's Ryo side were fourth in average possession. That's just one metric in which we expect Villarreal to differ this season. They looked like they wanted to press a little bit higher up the pitch as well than last season, which wouldn't have been hard.

18:51Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, and also they wanted to bring the ball out from the back, which is, of course, where one of the Rathen goals came from. Inigo was asked about this after the game. We know this is a risk that you're going to take. We know that you're going to keep doing it. How do you stop it happening? And he said, well, look, we'll analyse why it went wrong. He said, but I'm not worried about it, particularly because the mistake came from Juan Poiz. So this is a player that I'm sure if we look at his... I think the phrase he used was his index of mistakes will be very low. And so, you know, it can happen.

19:18Phil Kitromilides:I didn't think they were great, but I do think that even then they created a handful of good chances and Julen made three or four very good saves. I tell you what, yet again, I don't want to say the same thing that we always say, but when Gerard Moreno came on the pitch, what a lovely footballer he is. And it's just a pity that he's injured a lot and that you don't really anticipate him being a starter for most of the season because the smoothness, the vision, the kind of passes that he pulls out of nowhere, he's just a brilliant footballer. Certainly is. So that's racing to Villarreal 2 at El Sardinero, where Sydney was at.

19:55Phil Kitromilides:Now, our episode of TSFP today, Phil, is brought to you by our friends at NordVPN. Yes, it's a new season, but one thing hasn't changed. we and mainly you do a lot of traveling covering Spanish football yeah it looks it feels to be a little bit like I've only just got back from the World Cup because it is only just got back from the World Cup and this weekend there's games in Sevilla in Santander and in Acordunia when you travel the best way to make sure you've got access to all your content from back home is using Nord VPN for football TV shows movies for football mostly let's face it Nord VPN allows you to access your subscriptions from back home wherever you are.

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20:39Phil Kitromilides:I have actually proven this to myself. Yes it is very easy to use fortunately. It also helps with your internet security which is very important if you spend a lot of time using public wi-fi like you know train stations and airports and hotels like this one. You connect with just one click it's one of the fastest VPNs around and you can use up to 10 devices with one account. For more information this is really important you need to head to nordvpn.com forward slash t sfp and there's a 30-day money-back guarantee and you also get four extra months for free so if you could just tell me that link again philip i will write it down you can find it in the show notes nordvpn.com forward slash t sfp if your business runs on five different apps 12 browser tabs and one spreadsheet that everyone's afraid to touch, it's probably time for Odoo.

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