An old-school Clásico

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1:46Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of the Spanish Football Podcast. I'm Phil Kitramelidis. I'm joined as ever by Sid Lowe. Hello Sydney. Good morning Philip.

1:55Phil Kitromilides:We had a busy weekend didn't we? We did indeed it was the Classico and do you know what it felt like an old Classico. It felt like there was edge, there was tension. I think the last few years has been kind of quite placid and this felt like a yeah a bit old school. Good all right much more Classico chat coming up for you but there were other matches in La Liga you know this is the Spanish football podcast we don't just focus on Real Madrid and Barcelona, so do we? We certainly do not. And we were mostly focusing on Alamau last night. We will probably focus on Real Madrid and Barcelona. Yeah, we probably will.

2:30But it would be remiss of us not to touch upon the other results from match day. At 10, Friday night, there was a big, big win for Real Sociedad. They beat Sevilla 2-1 at home, possibly saving the job of manager Sergio Francisco for the time being anyway. Saturday was an absolutely ridiculous game at Montelivi. It finished Girona 3, Oviedo 3. Oviedo were 2-0 up. Then Girona got themselves 3-2 ahead with a 91st-minute potential winner from Christian Stuani, only for Oviedo to equalise in the 98th minute. A wild rollercoaster of emotions for everybody, particularly Sidlow. You've recovered from that, Sidney, just about.

3:13I have, just about, yeah. Espanyol continued their terrific start to the season. It was their 125th anniversary as well, and they celebrated with a 1-0 win over Elche. Getafe winning at Athletic Club, a 1-0 victory for Los Azulones in Bilbao. It was an absolutely abysmal game of professional football. Sydney and I were commentating it. There were some interesting things thrown up from it, though, and we've spoken about it in this week's newsletter, which is out for patrons. Villarreal won the regional derby against Valencia 2-0 at Mestai, a pretty comprehensive victory for Villarreal, who didn't shine in this game, but they didn't necessarily need to comfortably better than Valencia.

3:55Then on Sunday, Mallorca and Levante drew 1-1, a brilliant goal from Pablo Macea to equalise for Mallorca in that game. Madrid beating Barcelona 2-1 en El Clásico, more on that in just a second. And a late goal from Pablo Duran, giving Celta Vigo their first win of the season. They had nine games previously. They'd drawn seven of them 1-1. Remember, we touched upon this ridiculous run from them. And they finally get a victory. A weight horse a sooner as well. Not an easy place to go. El Cedá, but Pablo Duran scoring in the 87th minute. And if you haven't seen the brilliant assist from Barry Aspas to set it up, go and watch it because it's a terrific pass from the 38-year-old.

4:36And Rayo beating Alaves by a goal to Neil in the really big fixture of the weekend. Alemão, I might have called him a big Eustace Brazilian lump, potentially on WhatsApp to Sydney for the last few weeks, popping up with his first goal for Rayo. A really well-taken header. And I would say, in my totally biased opinion, a well-deserved victory for Rayo. A 1-0 win against Alaves. Monday night football, decent-looking game. bettys against Atleti at the Benito Villamarine. Now, the season is shaping up very nicely indeed, so why don't you join us over at patreon.com forward slash TSFP. Membership starts from just €4.75 a month.

5:17That can't be right, Sid. €4.75 a month, just a pound a week, and you get the Monday and Friday podcast advert free. You get a Q &A pod, a bonus pod every week. There's the newsletter, the Discord, the WhatsApp community, the TSFP Diary, Zoom calls as well. Come and join us. €4.75 a month. Right, let's start with El Clasico, Sydney. Real Madrid 2, Barcelona 1. It was 2-1 at half time and it did not look like it would be a goalless second half. Let's put it that way after a pretty breathless opening 45 minutes. We'll talk about the game itself and analyse some of the many things that happened in just a moment.

5:56But just continue where you left off, Sid, your feeling of being inside the stadium and that notion that this is a really proper, edgy rivalry again.

6:07Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, I think for the last few years, we've had brilliant games. You know, that's the first thing to say. And I don't want to fall into the trap of, if you like, kind of glorifying the confrontation and glorifying the stuff that's not the football, because the level of football has been so, so high for such a long time. We were talking about this. You know, there's only one nil-nil draw in over 50 games. The last time there was a nil-nil, I think it was the first in 37 or 39 Clasicos. It's the game that always delivers. But it is true that over the last few years, and I would say certainly, you know, obviously the high point of the kind of the tension and the rivalry is the Mourinho-Guardiola era.

6:41Phil Kitromilides:But then you still have that a little bit with Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and so on. But it's kind of felt a little bit over the last few years like we've seen amazing games, but it hasn't had that sort of sense of, I don't know, vindication, that sense of revenge involved in each game. I think this was really, really important for Real Madrid because they'd lost all four Clascos last year, because they conceded so many goals. What was it? 17-6, I think, the aggregate score across the four games last season. Because of that... 16-7, I think. OK, 16-7, 17-6, very nearly. Because, I suppose as well, because it's Xabi Alonso, because they hadn't yet beaten a big team, because last year it felt like that, because of everything that was said by Laminya Mahal and everything that was said about Laminya Mahal, which in a way I think is almost bigger than what Laminya Mal himself actually said.

7:23Phil Kitromilides:And it's just kind of in the stadium yesterday, kind of for the first time in a while, it felt like this is, yeah, there's some tension here. There's a, I suppose with Laminya Mal, it's a bit easy, it's a bit pantomime, but there's someone to go for, someone to have a go at, someone to get kind of, if you like, wound up by. I know we've had the refereeing tension around these games, and at times that's been very tiresome, and at times that's been confrontational, but it's not really felt like it was about the two teams, if you see what I mean. This kind of did, and it felt like a real occasion at the Bernabeu.

7:55Phil Kitromilides:As I say, in an era in the last four or five years, well, actually, sometimes it's not felt like that. And on Sunday, I thought it did. That's interesting, interesting to hear. I mean, I'm not sure where to start with our analysis of the game because so many things happened. If you missed the game and didn't know what happened, Real Madrid took the lead through Kylian Mbappé, Then Fermín López equalised before Jude Bellingham scored just before half-time and there were no more goals. There was plenty of incidents. Real Madrid had a penalty awarded after five minutes and then taken away by VAR.

8:28I think they scored three goals that were ruled out for offside. They had a penalty given at the start of the second half to make it 3-1, but Kylian Mbappé saw it saved by Wojciech Szczesny. There were loads of things happening in this game. Also, Petri got a red card right at the end for two yellows. Andre Lunin also got sent off as well after a massive brawl at full time. I think the underlying thing, Sid, is that Real Madrid won 2-1 and they deserve to win. They were a better team.

8:59Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, I think so. I mean, one way of putting this is to say that, you know, let me give you the, if you like, not the biased point of view, but the selfish point of view. Let me give you the match reporter view of this. There was a period in this game, back end of the first half, where genuinely the chances were happening too quick for me to get them all written down. It was that kind of game. It was very, very intense. Madrid pressing very high. Barcelona also pressing very high. Lots of space behind the two teams. A lot of the attacks were starting in one area and then ending in the other. I thought that Real Madrid did a really, really good job of pressuring Pedri to not allow him to play, of doubling up on Lamin-Yemal when they needed to so that he couldn't play.

9:39Phil Kitromilides:And Lamin actually had very little influence on the game. They were, Barcelona's back line that we've talked about a lot, were leaving a lot of space for the run into. But I suppose if you say there's three goals disallowed for offside, you could argue that they timed that pretty well. Now, one of the three isn't really about the line because one of the three is a ball that drops off the goalkeeper and then it's saved and it comes back in from two yards. That's slightly different. But two goals disallowed. But the volume of attacks from Real Madrid, I thought, was very, very high indeed. By the end of the game, I had who scored opened, which I think they use Optostats.

10:14Phil Kitromilides:I think it was 38 shots by then in the game across the 105 minutes that they played. And it was a performance, I thought, actually, Real Madrid probably will feel they should have won by more than two goals to one. But that, of course, kept the game alive all the way through. And it meant that it was exciting to the very, very end, even to the point that the red card for Pedri, is him picking up the ball on the edge of his area and basically carrying it all the way to the Madrid area, thinking here's one last chance, and then losing control of it and lurching at the ball, desperately trying to get it back and get sent off.

10:45Phil Kitromilides:And even that was kind of the embodiment of the game. It was a bit imprecise. Technically, this wasn't the best Clasico. It was, wasn't it? Yeah, technically, this definitely wasn't the best Clasico I've seen. But in terms of that kind of sense of two teams really going at it for at least 65 minutes, then it's true that Barcelona got much more of the ball. And Madrid, I thought at that point, and actually did a pretty good job of containing them. Who played well in this game? Right, well, I think a handful of players really stood out for me. I think Jude Bellingham stood out. I thought that Chomeny was very good indeed in a kind of positional sense, you know, just being at the heart of the team and just kind of holding things together while others played.

11:21Phil Kitromilides:I thought Valverde from right back was very good. Obviously, Chesney made a load of really, really good saves. I thought Frenkie de Jong was the best of the Barcelona players in the middle of midfield, more so than Pedri, who, as I say, had a lot of pressure put on him and I thought struggled to influence the game as much as he would have liked to. Mbappé was very, very good indeed. There are some flashes from Vinicius, maybe not as much as with Mbappé and with Bellingham. But yeah, I think if I had to choose a man of the match, I think I'd probably say Bellingham. Well, he did score the winner and set up the other goal as well.

11:51Phil Kitromilides:It was an unbelievable... Yeah, and win the penalty. And win the penalty that was saved by Chesney as well, which is a really, really good run. I think the set-up for the goal, the assist is fantastic. The assist is absolutely extraordinary. elite world class um wasn't sure if it was on side that was the thing so and actually and actually the gap was quite big on that one as it turned out whereas on the other thing is when you're commentating a game like this and a team scores and there've been so many offside goals and offsides and you're not sure whether to give it the big oh i want a terrific goal blah blah blah and then hold on no it's it's off and it happened with it well the players the players are like that too.

12:29Phil Kitromilides:I mean, the one that's ruled out that it's put in from a metre, I think they kind of knew. They looked at the lines and went, yeah, all right. But the others, they really went for it. And of course, then you're thinking, oh, shit. All right, let's talk about some stuff that happened in this game. Vinicius, I thought he actually played really well in this game. You were less convinced that it was a really, really strong performance, but I thought it was one of his better performances. I thought he looked really, really dangerous. I thought for the second goal, he's absolutely vital. Yes, the cross isn't the best cross, but he manages to dig out.

13:01Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, we discussed this off-air yesterday because I must admit, I found it amazing that Barcelona conceded a goal from a cross like that because basically all he's trying to do is keep it in somehow and it loops the far post. I think a good goalkeeper goes and gets that, which isn't to say Chesney's not a good goalkeeper. What I mean is a dominant goalkeeper comes and gets that. But yeah, he made things happen because he went at them and Jules Koundé, I thought, on that goal, Vinicius went past him a bit too easily, actually. Koundé's not had a good season at all. There was a nice line in one of the papers there.

13:34Phil Kitromilides:I like this. It described Koundé as defending like a security guard at the Louvre. I thought, well, there you go. That's quite a nice one, wasn't it? I mean, there's a few things we could say about Jules Koundé, and I think I've commentated almost every Barcelona game this season, and he's just not been at the races for a lot of those games. No, he hasn't at all. There have been a number of times where he's lived. What's the word for empanado? dopey I guess in some of his play Yeah that's a good translation. Anyway I wanted to talk about Vinicius and his reaction to getting sent off not in depth not as much as has been talked about in the Spanish media and will continue to be talked about this was the main talking point potentially after the game but Vinicius was subbed off midway through the second half and his reaction was one of incredulity and very obvious fury and displeasure Yeah.

14:25Is this a big problem?

14:29Phil Kitromilides:That's a good question to which I don't have a really clear answer, to be honest with you. Now, I think what was interesting about this was that this wasn't player goes off and throws down a bottle when he sits on the bench, or player goes off and mutters something as he goes past the manager. This was player goes off and walks 30 metres, 40 metres across the pitch, doing it in everyone's faces. There's no way of pretending this hasn't happened. There's no way of saying this is a flash of anger. it's deeper than that. And I think that if we trust the lip readers, there's some footage of it yesterday in which they caught him essentially saying, well, I won't play then.

15:01Phil Kitromilides:I might as well not be here. It'd be better if I wasn't in this team. And I think that's where, and the reason I bring that up is that that's where it makes me, if you say, does this matter? If there's a part of him that sees this as a broader problem, it's like, well, it's always me. Something's not quite right even if he starts to play well i'm unhappy with this then yeah maybe it is a problem and xavi also did something which i thought was very similar to the way that he dealt with it when vinicius had a go at him i think it's the espanol game isn't it in which xavi also basically sort of lets it go says right i'll speak to i'll speak to him later and he says after this game he said look we will talk about it but i i'm not worried about it now i'm pleased with how we played i'm pleased with how he played i'm pleased with the performance the espanol game he said um his phrase was something like his phrase then was something like well I didn't want to speak to him then I left it a couple of days and then spoke to him and then he said a couple of days later Vinicius had a good game he said I like to see him smiling I like to see him happy but of course there's a bit of tension there and of course it's slightly problematic I think it in part it's just personality and you just have to accept it uh or not accept it if you decide not to but you know the performance level is good enough that I think you do and I think you live with it and I think you try and ease it out but then you you also learn how to manage it I wonder if we'd be getting these kind of reactions from Vinicius if he'd signed a new contract?

16:21Phil Kitromilides:Well, that's right. OK, so that's implicit in what I was saying about this idea of him saying, yeah, well, might as well go then. And that's, I don't know if that's really consciously on his mind at that point, but maybe at some subconscious level there is that thing, you know, his contractual situation isn't resolved. There is a feeling this isn't just a manager taking him off in a big game. It's something bigger. And I think that could be problematic. Yes, to be honest. I thought it was a desperately poor display from Vinicius in terms of his behaviour after a really good display in terms of football.

16:53And let's see how Xavi Alonso manages this. Let's talk about Barcelona and their overall performance, because we said Pedri wasn't particularly effective in this game. And if Pedri isn't effective and Lamin Jamal isn't effective and Lamin didn't look good in this game, He certainly, he looks, suggestions that he's not 100 % fully fit, coming back from that groin strain. It looks like he's not doing the things that he was doing last season with the speed with which he was doing them last season.

17:21Phil Kitromilides:Right, so let's go back to Vinicius, shall we? Because there's a bit of, there's a clip where Vinicius is saying to Laminya Mahal, you just keep passing it backwards. You just keep passing it backwards. And actually, you know what? I think that's not a bad analysis of the way Laminya Mahal played. There was a timidity about him that doesn't fit with, and I know this has been the focal point of the game, and I think it's natural, doesn't fit with some of the things he said pre-game, doesn't fit with that character that he has of, you know, putting the crown on himself and being very, very kind of happy to load the pressure onto himself and say, yeah, I'm the man, I'm going to take this on.

17:57Phil Kitromilides:And he sort of didn't do it in this game. And I think there's a whole series of reasons why that might be. One, as you say, is that he's not fully fit. And I think for certainly since that injury and the sort of discussion with the Spanish national team before the last international break, I think he hasn't been fit since then. I think he hasn't looked quite right, even if he did come on and create that assist after, what was it, 40 seconds against... I can't remember what it was. Brelsofira, that's right. Yeah. Despite that, he hasn't been going at people in quite the same way. Nope. He, in this game, I think had two men in front of him.

18:32Phil Kitromilides:And there was a bit of talk pre-game about how Álvaro Carreras had played really well against him for Benfica last year. Although, as Marco Sorg, the number two, said, well, we beat Benfica in all of those games, which is true as well. And there was lots of goals, certainly in the one away in Lisbon, the 5-4. And so maybe there's an element of Madrid defending him well. I think mostly doubling up on him. Not always, but mostly with two in front of him. I think there's an element of him not being fully fit. I think there's an element of the rest of the flow not going very well. Also, the players around him.

19:01Bear in mind that Laminia-Mal, you look at that front three, and if you like, you can say, look at the front four,

19:08Phil Kitromilides:if you're talking about the number 10 position as well. And Laminia-Mal is the only one in it that would normally be in it if everyone was fit. So I think that plays a part as well. The absence of Rafinha plays a part. The absence of Dani Olmo plays a part, or even Gavi maybe in that number 10 position, despite the fact that Firmin's playing really well and I personally like him. The absence of Lewandowski, Ferran, I thought, had an almost anonymous game, had one really good chance and wasted it. One really, really good chance. Really good chance, yeah, very good. Although the best chance was Koundé right at the end.

19:37Phil Kitromilides:And actually, the reason... Set up by Lamin. Exactly. The reason why I bring this up is that Lamin, who didn't do very much, produced one absolutely wonderful pass, which really and truly should have been the equaliser. If Koundé either heads that or controls the chest, well, he scores or should score. So I think it's true to say that Lamin wasn't right. And I think there are factors that help to explain it. The other factor, as I say, is that it's Real Madrid. This is a very good side you're playing against. Well, of course, it is a very good side. And you're up against a team being led by an extraordinary player in Kylian Mbappé.

20:15And the way he took all his goals, not all of them counted, but he did have the ball in the back of the net a number of times. The first one, which is ruled out for a very, very small offside, is just the... It's what happens when a player of that talent with that much confidence takes a shot on because he doesn't even think about it. This is from miles out. The ball drops and he just smacks it. It's a brilliant hit. He's obviously clearly physically, mentally 100 % looking so sharp, looking like he's going to score every time he's anywhere near the penalty area. And this is the Kylian Mbappé that Real Madrid waited seven years to sign.

20:58Phil Kitromilides:Yes, and Xabi Alonso had said pre-game about the, if you like, the emotional or psychological or mental process of being settled and understanding and being happy and being fit and things happening quickly because of the confidence and things happening smoothly. Now, Kylian Mbappé, even last year, certainly after about Christmas, was doing some of these things, but I think even more so now. I was looking at the stats last night, thanks to Al, actually. Al sent me this kind of, I suppose, what would you call it? Graphic description of where Kylian Mbappé's goals come from. And because one of the things that it's really struck me, and the goal that he scored yesterday that was ruled out from a distance doesn't show this, but the goal that he scored that did count does show this.

21:38Phil Kitromilides:You see the positions he's scoring from, he's scoring from that centre-forward, number nine, inside right position. Whereas we've talked so much about him coming in off the left, And I think he started to really understand the movements for that position, which is really, really good news from Madrid. Because, of course, it takes him away from Vinicius. And it prevents, which isn't to say take someone away from Vinicius. What I mean is it prevents that problem we had of players trying to occupy the same space on the left. And I think they're dealing with that really well. And his finishing is really, really good.

22:04Phil Kitromilides:And that goal that was ruled out, it sits up perfectly. And it sits up in a way you think, yeah, hit it. But not many players would take it quite so quickly, quite so unthinkingly and quite so cleanly. You see that if you do a freeze frame on it, he's off the floor when he hits it. He's sort of in the air and swinging his foot through it. He takes it very, very well. Have you done a freeze frame on it, Sid? I might have done it last night while I was watching the game back because I was watching the swing of the strike and I thought, here we go, I think we can pause this here. It's a shot map, what's it saying?