A slight rebirth

0:00So good, so good, so good.

0:02Phil Kitromilides:New markdowns up to 70 % off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Stock up and stay big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories, and more must-haves for summer. Join the Nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.

0:28Phil Kitromilides:This episode is brought to you by Fox One. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA World Cup live in 4K for just$19.99 a month with three days free. Build your own multi-view, choose up to three streams, and follow player spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox One. Offers a subject to change. Go to see fox.com for complete terms and conditions. Ready to soundtrack your summer? With Red Bull Summer All Day Play, you choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end DJ, a road dog, or a trail mixer?

1:10Phil Kitromilides:Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit redbull.com slash bright summer ahead to learn more. See you this summer.

1:32Hello everyone and welcome to the final edition of the Spanish Routle podcast for 2025. I'm Phil Kittrema ladies I'm here with Sid Lowe as ever we're recording nice and early on a Monday morning so we're both quite bleary-eyed and looking uh absolutely atrocious to be honest if you're watching us on YouTube because we are putting the podcast up on YouTube.

1:50Phil Kitromilides:Please don't yeah if you're for everyone involved. How are you doing, Sydney? All right, thank you. It's about nine o 'clock and I've been up for four and a half hours. Wow. You're trying to write a column? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you trying to write a column about? Well, inevitably, and I think... Not Rey Loviedo. No, of course not. Rationally, it had to be Villarreal against Barcelona. The biggest game in Spain at the moment. The best two teams in Spain over the last six or eight weeks. Both of them had come into this with six wins out of six for Villarreal, seven wins out of seven for Barcelona.

2:27Phil Kitromilides:Two teams that, in theory, could win the league, although I think we now realise that only one of them can. So, yeah, that was the one. Yeah, so Villarreal-Barca. Okay, well, we'll talk about the game in just a moment. This is what happened on Match Day 17. Friday night, you saw Valencia and Mallorca play out a 1-1 draw at Mestaia, which doesn't help either side that much. Saturday. So Oviedo draw 0-0 again with Celta Vigo. Seven goals Oviedo have scored in 17 games. What's the record low for... You know what? After you asked that on Twitter I went looking for it. I couldn't actually find it which was weird.

3:04Phil Kitromilides:I couldn't find it either. It should be a really obvious stat that should just immediately appear with a bit of Google searching and it didn't. You're right. It wasn't just me. I thought I was being... No, no, no. I was looking... I was looking and there's so many good stats about Oviedo. Do you want them now or do you want them later? Later, if at all. How about here, Son, just to get us going, right? Oviedo have had as many red cards as goals this season. No, really? Yeah. They've had seven red cards? Seven of eight. Yeah. Bloody hell, that's terrible. Somebody did tweet me saying, CeeDee Logroñez with 15 goals in the 94-95 season.

3:45Phil Kitromilides:OK. So, you know. We should get there, shouldn't we? We may not get there. Given what we've seen of the current evidence, you're not going to get there. Anyway, back to the results. Levante scored an injury-time equaliser to draw 1-1 at home to Real Sociedad. Osasuna scored some nice goals, three of them in the last 20 minutes at home to Alaves. Ante Budimir with the first. Absolutely a brilliant strike from the Croatian who scored a fantastic penalty as well. Raul Garcia putting the polish on the result. A big 3-0 win for Osasuna. And Real Madrid beat Sevilla 2-0. More on that in a second because it was an important win, but another poor performance.

4:23Then on Sunday, Atletico Madrid won away from home. Again, beating Girona 3-0 at Montelevi. Koke scoring an absolute thunderbolt. A nice deflected goal from Conor Gallagher. And Antoine Griezmann scoring a lovely goal to round things off. Barcelona winning 2-0 at Villarreal in that big game of the weekend. end. Raya losing 4-0 at Elche, Catafé losing 4-0 at Betis and Monday Night Football is Athletic Club against Espanyol. I mean, I was laughing at you, Sid, with Elviedo not scoring. Raya not much better. 13 goals all season in 17 matches is pretty pathetic. Anyway, enough of our respective teams' travails.

5:06A big thank you to everyone who supported TSFP by joining us as a patron in 2025. We really appreciate it. You keep the podcast going. So thanks for that support. And there's lots more to come in 2026. Patrons get the Monday and Friday podcasts without any adverts. Plus you get a weekly Q &A pod and a bonus podcast. And there's the newsletter and the TSFP diary and the Discord. And you can join us from just€4.75 a month, or it's even cheaper if you get an annual membership. That's all at patreon.com forward slash TSFP. So we start off with that big game of the weekend, the headline fixture from the final round of games of the year, Villarreal against Barcelona.

5:46Villarreal had actually dropped to fourth by the time this game kicked off. Barcelona were still leaders. They were only a point behind Real Madrid, ahead of Real Madrid rather. So there was a bit of pressure coming into this game for Barcelona. No Pedri as well. So potentially a difficult place to go. in practice it hasn't been a difficult place to go they haven't lost there since 2007 this fixture said we were building it up I was on commentary for this game we were particularly saying this guarantees goals guarantees entertainment last four games has averaged over six goals a game it's been absolutely extraordinary and it wasn't that it wasn't a particularly brilliant game in terms of a spectacle but it was a pretty solid job done by Barcelona and when we say a solid job done by Barcelona, with the caveat being that Joan Garcia is always going to have a bit of work to do.

6:41Phil Kitromilides:Yes, and he had a lot of work to do in this and I think there is a feeling off the back of this game that, I mean, I know this happened earlier in the season as well, but now very clearly that Barcelona have a real goalkeeper, that they have, if you like, their own Courtois, someone who will save them when they really, really need it. He made one absolutely astonishing save, which admittedly was offside anyway, although I must admit, I think had Villarreal scored, They would have gone back and checked it and it's very, very close. So I'm not 100 % sure it really is offside. So, you know, maybe that is an amazing save.

7:12Phil Kitromilides:I felt that this was an interesting game. I thought it was a 38-minute game and it ended with a red card. And I thought for those 38 minutes, Villarreal were comfortably the better side. I thought Villarreal created lots and lots of chances. They made it really hard for Barcelona to find a way out from the back. It was going something. I think that they weren't a goal up, let alone maybe even two goals up by half-time. In the one real run that Barcelona had, the first time they get a penalty, they score, then Rafinha hits the bar. But then Villarreal come back at them again and have more chances.

7:44Phil Kitromilides:There's a couple for Buchanan. There's one for Ayose. And there's the header wide at the far post. I think it's the header, is it? Or is it a volley? I can't remember now. From Nicolas Pepe right at the very start. And they just kept on coming at Barcelona. But then they concede the goal. They go down to 10 men. And I'm baffled, by the way, by how much controversy has been created around what for me is one of the clearest red cards I've seen for a very, very long time. Yes. In terms of a straight red, I mean, obviously you see others that are really clear, but, you know, this is the definition of the kind of challenge that should be given a red card.

8:18Phil Kitromilides:I quite liked Marcelino's response to this post-game. He was talking to whichever TV it was that showed the game, DAZN, I think it was. and he was saying, well, you know, it's more orange than red for me. Now, if a manager is saying it's orange, you're already admitting it's a bit more than the yellow. You're already admitting it. Yeah, it could be red. And then they show him a replay of it from a different angle and he kind of goes, oh, yeah, from that angle. Yeah. And I thought Villarreal were really, really good. Bear in mind that Villarreal had, I think it was nine players missing. I thought they did what they do really well, which is to transition very, very fast.

8:55Phil Kitromilides:But I also thought they took a step forward and played more front-footed than normal to try and take the ball off Barcelona and higher up the pitch. They broke into space, as we would imagine with Barcelona, I thought regularly. And I thought they were really, really unfortunate not to be in the lead or at least level at halftime. But of course, once they've gone down to 10 men, I would agree with you. I think from that point on, I thought Barcelona produced a really solid performance. But I'd be interested to see what it would have been like against Levin. Villarreal, who coming into this game, actually had the highest shot conversion rate in the league.

9:30So they've been very, very effective in terms of taking their chances. I think it was 15 % of their shots ending in goals. Ayose Perez had scored two goals from two shots on target. And our friend Buchanan had five goals from an expected goals of 0.9. So he'd been wildly overachieving. This is a team that had been good in front of goal. They had been clinical, had been efficient. and they failed to do that against Barcelona.

9:57Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, I'm really reluctant in part because of those statistics, in part because of the basic eye test of watching the game in which, you know, the one chance that really sums it up for me is Buchanan's clean through and he's one-on-one with Joan Garcia. Joan Garcia makes the save. It rebounds back off Garcia, hits Buchanan, goes beyond Garcia. You think it's going to rebound into that and it goes wide. And you just think this is one of those days where it's just not going to happen for you. And there's that as an image. There's the image of Marcelino sprinting up the touchline, celebrating a goal that was then ruled out for offside, an own goal from Jules Koundé, as it turns out, which is maybe kind of eloquent as well.

10:32Phil Kitromilides:The one they did get in the net was put in the net for them by Jules Koundé. And so I'm reluctant to go down this very simplistic route. But can I go back and say something that I've said a few times about Villarreal this season, which is that there feels like there's something logical about their results. Now, this game maybe wasn't logical, but they beat everyone they should beat and they don't beat everyone they don't beat. In the league. Yes, in the league. The Europe is a weird one and the cup was a weird result. But they've lost three times this season. Madrid, Atletico and Barcelona. Yeah.

11:01Phil Kitromilides:And I know that's oversimplistic, but I think there's something in it. Yeah, there is, there is, there is. What about Barcelona? Anything to take away from this performance? Yeah, I think three things or three players. Yeah. three players, I would say, rather than three things. And obviously the absence of Pedri plays a part maybe in the fact that this wasn't as fluid a performance as it sometimes is, but I thought it was a good, strong performance. So the three players for me are obviously Joanne Garcia, who we've already mentioned. Obviously Rafinha, who makes the run and scores the penalty that gives them the lead and gives them all of those things we've talked about over the last few weeks, the character, the competitiveness, the edge.

11:39Phil Kitromilides:And the other one is Laminia Malle. Now I know we're talking about Laminia Malle is not exactly earth-shattering and I'm not giving you anything really new, But here's something for you yesterday that really struck me. And it was the involvement, how often he was in the game. Not the great things he did, because there was a handful of really good things he did. And after he'd been taken off, injured, he came back on and immediately went past three players. As if to say, you want some. It really was like that. It was like, all right, you want some, do you? Then he scored a really nice goal in a penalty area scramble.

12:09Phil Kitromilides:It comes to him, rolls under his foot, and then there's a little toe poke through the legs of a defender. I'm not sure how deliberate through the legs is, but it's him finding a way through in a tight space. But for me, it's the volume, the volume of his involvement, how often he wanted the ball, how determined he was to make things happen. I thought this was a really, really good performance from him in terms of taking on, if you like, responsibility for leading Barcelona. Seven goals and eight assists this season in La Liga. He got nine goals and 15 assists last season. So he's well on course to better those numbers.

12:43Phil Kitromilides:and that's despite of course having had the the the what were we calling it the groin problem yeah having to manage that and i know we've been yeah i know i know we've been a bit doubtful about some of the management of that and some of the kind of the fight with the federation over it um but he's clearly in a much better place physically now than he was five weeks ago um i think he is getting better i thought that his decision making yesterday was really good there's a couple of times when he gave the ball away trying to play a pass that he maybe didn't need to but not very many not very many um and I think again look it's stating the bleeding obvious but he's a really really good player but for me it's that responsibility it's that leadership that's really interesting okay that's interesting I mean he I have to say it not often that I sort of disagree with you or don't concur with you but I he didn't really stand out for me in that game and I was much more drawn to Rafinha I'm always drawn to Rafinha but I think I would love to know that I actually haven't got the stats in front of me and and maybe maybe before tomorrow's Q &A we can we can find them I'd like to know the stats on touches because it felt to me like he wanted the ball a lot and he was involved a lot I'd be very interested to know what the what the ranking of touches was from yesterday's game ranking of touches I'm not sure I can tell you that Laminia Mao um he had the most dribbles in the match created the most chances won the most duels and yeah touches 129.

14:09I mean that seems like a lot doesn't it? I'm going to guess that's right up there yes. That feels like very good. But I was going to say I felt like he overcooked things quite a few times. He held on to the ball too long. He tried to do too much. He kind of went into sort of blind alleys when he was taking on an extra man when he didn't really need to. The outside of the boot ball wasn't working. That was the one.

14:30Phil Kitromilides:So when I said a minute ago there were a couple of times when he gave it away trying too much particularly that outside the boot ball he tried that a couple of times and he didn't need to but I thought there was a real kind of all right let's have these guys you know and I thought I thought that even even while it broke down on occasions I was really as I say I was really struck by his sort of I don't know if it was a sort of a revenge mission after the challenge or what but there were his sort of determination to to how do I put this in English I was going to say to mark the game that's not really English is it to stamp his authority yeah to leave his mark on game yeah to leave his mark um i thought uh francky de Jong was good in this yes really kept things ticking over particularly in that second half it was basically just sort of give the ball to francky and make sure that he doesn't lose it and he didn't 96 percent pass completion rate and first time he was in the starting 11 for five games as well uh in the yes and that's very very interesting in itself yeah he's lost his place to eric garcia which is yes he has yeah yes he has didn't see coming.

15:30But there we go. Barcelona are four points clear at the top of the table at Christmas after that important win against Lira. Where is Daredevil?

15:41Phil Kitromilides:A minor. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I feel liberated. We're going to take this city back. Over Medicaid. In an all new season now streaming only on Disney+. They're hunting us. it's time we started hunting them I can work with them this should be tons of fun Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again, now streaming only on Disney Plus study and play, come together on a Windows 11 PC and for a limited time college students get the best of both worlds get the Unreal College Deal everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs, eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller.

16:31Phil Kitromilides:Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Get business done with the new American Express Graphite Business Cash Unlimited card. With unlimited 2 % cash back on all eligible purchases, unlimited 5 % cash back on flights and prepaid hotels booked through American Express Travel Online, and a flexible spending capacity that can grow with your business, You'll have the confidence to keep building. Apply today and earn a welcome offer of$1 ,500 cash back after you spend$50 ,000 in qualifying purchases on your new card within the first six months of card membership.

17:06Phil Kitromilides:Terms apply. Learn more at go.amex.com. They're four points clear of a Real Madrid side who beat Sevilla 2-0 at the Bernabeu on Saturday night. I did like the first line in the marker match report, Sid. Real Madrid win again and Xabi loses again because this performance from Real Madrid continued. The doubts did not alleviate any of the suspicion around whether or not Xabi Alonso is going to continue about whether or not he is able to get any kind of reaction from his players. You and I, I mean, we've spoken about this with Al as well. They were awful, see? They were such an awful performance.

17:45I don't know if they're actually getting worse. This was as bad as it was against Celta, easily as bad. It's just Celta have a lot more firepower in the final third. They've got better attacking players than Sevilla. Sevilla should have scored three or four goals in this game. It was awful. And it was just the ease with which Sevilla were able to create these chances, repeatedly creating very simple, very easy chances.

18:07Phil Kitromilides:That's the thing for me, is it didn't take much, or it didn't feel like it was taking much for Sevilla to pick their way through them. And I thought what we saw, is this a bit cruel to say this? but well, I'm going to say it. I thought we saw an absolutely classic Isak Romero performance. Really busy, making really good runs, very, very generous in his efforts. You know, actually his touch is not bad, brings the ball down well, but can't finish. And it's really frustrating. There seems to be an increasing number of strikers, particularly in Spain, who are really good at everything else apart from scoring.

18:43Phil Kitromilides:Apart from putting the ball in the net. Yeah, I remember. Manipulate the sphere in between the rectangle. angle that's what you have to do yeah yeah yeah and and that was really striking um I mean as you say we're talking about this off air and and at times you you sort of and I include myself in this right well I absolutely include myself in this you sort of turn up and think turn up to the burn about I think oh they'll be all right they've got good players you know they'll get it right at some point and then you watch them play you think are we underestimating just kind of how bad they are. Now, bad is a relative term here, right?

19:17Phil Kitromilides:Because they're still second in the league, right? They still have brilliant players. They've now won three games in a row. But, you know, if we're taking the context of trying to analyse them, not just reading out the results, if we're trying to analyse and talk about how they're playing, not just saying, oh, there's three wins, that's okay. Those three games have all been awful. Yeah. I mean, they were good for the first 15 minutes at Alaves. Yes, I would agree with that, but it wasn't very long, exactly. The cup game, I suppose you could say they were good for the first half and really and truly it nearly slipped away from them because they thought they'd won it.

19:51Phil Kitromilides:Come on, yeah. But it's a cup game and it's at Talavera, right? And so this game is exactly that. It's how easily Sevilla found a way through them. It was watching them play kind of relatively simple balls through the channel and outrunning Real Madrid in space. being alert in a way that Real Madrid weren't. Real Madrid not getting to the ball first. Very, very simple things that sound cliché when I say them. And I almost can't believe I'm sitting here and running the risk of talking about things like, well, Real Madrid don't want it enough, or Real Madrid aren't, you know, aren't into your father, or Real Madrid aren't getting to the ball quickly, or Real Madrid aren't quick enough, or Real Madrid don't look fit enough.

20:33Phil Kitromilides:But all those things are true. You watch them and you think... And I think actually what it says is something about structure as much as anything else. You know, because there isn't a structure. There isn't a natural mechanism through which things work. I thought on this occasion, even Mbappé, I didn't like. No. Now, I know that's going to... I'm glad you've agreed. Right, good. Okay, so I now feel like I'm on some more steady ground saying this. Because, you know, it feels like he's the one that made things happen. He's the one that had the shots. He's the one that when things happened, it tended to be him involved.

21:03Phil Kitromilides:But I felt it was... Do you know one of the things about Mbappé is I think he's smooth. He wasn't on Saturday. Yeah. Exactly. He snatched everything. He had this silly record on his mind. I'm sorry. I think he did. I agree with you. I'm not having this record. Okay, he scored 59 goals in a calendar year. No one's ever done that apart from Cristiano for Real Madrid. So what? I mean, what does that mean? Yeah, I mean, I think it might have some significance for him. I think as a little detail, it's nice, but it's not a thing, really. It's been made into a huge thing. That's my problem with it. Exactly.

21:38As a little side note, you know, we could mention it. oh and by the way this meant but it was built up into such a big thing and obviously it was a big thing for him and you could tell I think I think you know he was snatching at chances that usually

21:49Phil Kitromilides:he has smoothly dispatched this season exactly and for me it felt like the whole performance was forced and it sort of felt like everyone else got dragged into it as well at risk at the risk of being a smart ass I'm going to say even the referee who gave him the second penalty which is laughable and you know Vardin took it away but it kind of felt like everyone was waiting for for Mbappé to score. And that was what we were there for. And it was strange because it felt forced. And I didn't think his performance was a good one. And that said, he's still the most dangerous player on the pitch. With Rodrigo.

22:23Phil Kitromilides:I thought Rodrigo had an all right game in an otherwise very poor performance. Yeah. I mean, in terms of sort of rays of light for Real Madrid, Rodrigo's... Slight rebirth. Slight rebirth. There we go. Slight rebirth. Sort of getting back to nearly what he has shown in the past, having gone almost an entire calendar year without scoring. He, in the league, he produced a really nice assist for the first goal from Jude Bellingham and won the penalty for the second. Cracking leather from Bellingham, to be fair. I was going to say maybe a bit of Bellingham as well. A bit of rebeldia from Bellingham in the first half, maybe.