Dad, can I have a new contract

0:00Every game day you show up for your team. Now it's your time. We Go V! We Go V!

0:11Phil Kitromilides:Ask your prescriber about We Go V, semaglutide injection 2.4mg, a GLP-1. Call 1-833-4-WEGOV or visit wegovy.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about We Go V. Why wait? We Go V! This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch.

0:57Phil Kitromilides:Terms and more at AppleCard.com.

1:07Hello everyone and welcome to today's edition of the Spanish Football Podcast. I'm Phil Kittremelidis. Sid Lowe is with me to talk about what's happened on match day five in La Liga EA Sports. Lots for us to talk about. Hello Sidney. Good morning Philip. How are you on this Monday morning? I'm all right thank you. Normal Monday morning you know. frantic madness a little excitement frustration all the emotions all of those all of those things

1:33Phil Kitromilides:yeah yeah what are you writing about uh valencia who have just sacked their manager um less than uh less than two months after renewing his contract they've sacked their ceo as well who in his most recent press conference said if you're waiting for me to resign your coffee will get cold. Well, Ron, your coffee's gone a bit cold, etc. and so on. It's a bit of a mess, but they hope they can sort it out. They're bottom of the table. They only have one point. They've only scored one goal. They are the worst team in Spain. They are quite literally the worst team in Spain at the moment. They have appointed Braulio Vázquez as the new director of football.

2:10Maybe that's one ray of light because he's done some good work at Valencia previously. All right. We might talk a bit more about Valencia if there is time. I mean, and we really should. But obviously, Sid's writing about it as well. So by the time this podcast is out, or if you're watching on YouTube, it might be available to read. So go and check it out at The Guardian. This is what happened on match day five in La Liga EA Sports. That Friday night game between Sevilla and Valencia, which finished 1-0 to Sevilla, which was not a particularly good game of professional football, Sid. But Valencia were particularly bad in this game.

2:44I think you were on commentary for this, weren't you? I was, yeah. experience and witness and enjoy it firsthand. Chatera, you were also commentating Racing against Alaves. Racing beating Alaves by two goals to one. Big, big win for the newly promoted side against the team that had been the sensation of the season at the start of the campaign, but a win for Racing at home to Alaves. Espanyol beating Osasuna by two goals to nil. Two goals from Bobby Fernandes, San Diego PD. Roberto taking his tally for the season too. five league goals. Athletic Club really, really, really, really should have beaten Elche at home.

3:22They absolutely battered them, particularly in the first half. And then Elche scored right at the start of the second half. Athletic managed to equalise. It finished 1-1. A frustrating result, I would say, for Athletic. Decent enough point for Elche. And Real Madrid beat Rayo by four goals to one at the Estadio Bernabeu, racing into a 3-0 lead at halftime, taking their foot off the gas. Real Madrid letting Rayo back into it. They scored one. They could have scored more. But then Real Madrid scored the fourth and it was game over. Sunday saw Celta play out a 1-1 draw at home to Malaga. Another disappointing result for Celta who have not started this season well at all.

3:59We had high hopes for them. I think, Sid, I might have even tipped them on another vastly inferior broadcast network. They're not inferior. They're great as well. Go and watch them if you're in the US. but obviously this is our podcast. Anyway, on the American TV channel I work for.

4:16Phil Kitromilides:That's a nice bit of fact tracking there. Yeah. Love you guys. Love you guys. Don't sack me. But when we did a preview for CBS, it's who I work for in the US, I tipped Celta to get into the Champions League, which is looking absolutely... Did you? Wow, that was very bold. I think it was maybe my bold prediction of the season, something like that, you know. It's your bold prediction of the season and it was Celta to finish top five and they have not started well at all. At all. Barcelona beating Levante by four goals to two. Kind of a similar story to what happened at the Benabur the night before.

4:47Barca were 3-0 up. Took their foot off the gas, but Levante played really, really well as well. They got it back to 3-2 before Barca scored late on to pick up their fifth consecutive win. Getafe and Depo played out a 1-1 draw. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scoring for the fifth consecutive game. The first player since Lathanin-Brahimovic in 2009 to score in the first five games of a league season. And Atletico Madrid beat Real Sociedad 3-0 at Anoeta. If you're just looking at the scoreline, you would have thought, ah, comfortable away win for Atleti. It was not all three goals coming in the last five minutes or so.

5:21It was heading for a 0-0. Monday night game is a good one, Sid. Very good one. I'm commentating that, so looking forward to that. Yes. Now, if you're listening to TSFP, hopefully you've got at least a passing interest in Spanish football. If you want more coverage, and obviously you do, obviously you do, come and join us at patreon.com forward slash TSFP. It's just€4.75 a month, which is about a euro, just over a euro a week. It's not a lot of money. You get the Monday and Friday pods with no adverts. You get a Q &A pod on Tuesdays, which I'll let you in on a little secret. That's our best podcast, the Q &A podcast.

6:00Yeah, it is. We do the bonus pod on a Thursday as well. There's the new TSFP Daily, rounding up all the headlines five days a week as well. So loads of content. Come and join us. Patreon.com forward slash TSFP. I guess we should start with Valencia, Sid, because it's big news, them sacking Carlos Porto Beran. I thought I kind of thought it was going to happen in the international break. But it's happened before that when they've still got two games before.

6:24Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, I didn't think it would happen yet either. I think it's very significant as well that it's that it's a complete restructuring. It's a sacking of Corbaran. It's a sacking of Rangoulet, the CEO. it's the second of all of rongule's backroom staff as you say the arrival of braulio basquez from um from osasuna they had to pay 249 000 euros i think it was to to release him from his uh work also he's done very very good work indeed he's actually the father of the valencia left back yeah jesus basquez who's got a contract renewal uh to be sorted out at the club so hopefully we've already sorted out.

7:02Phil Kitromilides:Dad, can I have a new contract, please? I mean, and you know, what makes this striking really and truly isn't that it happened. It's when it happened. It's the context to it when you've had this press conference recently from Ron Goulet, in which he was quite bullish and sort of said, you know, we've done the right thing. People only see the superficial. People only see the results, but the work we've done is good. And I guess actually he had a point in saying that, and he did have a point that people didn't always see the work, but there were certainly gaps in the squad. I think it's true that this is a squad that should be performing better than it is.

7:35Phil Kitromilides:But the manager had had his contract renewed for another year when there wasn't really any need. He had a year left anyway, but he was added a year on top of that. He never really connected with a fans, Corbaudan, even though there have been moments where actually he's been quite successful in the context of what Valencia is. In the first season, he rescued a team that looked like it was in trouble. Last year, they started really, really badly. In fact, they got to week seven, I think it is, with only seven points or eight points last year. But they had a very, very good second half of the season, which saw them almost get a European place.

8:07Phil Kitromilides:But they had a really, really awful start this season. And of course, I just use the word context. And the context of this, I think, is the really important thing because it's a much broader question. Now, it's a broader question in a way that because we all know this, I almost wonder whether part of the problem is that we know that Valencia aren't what they used to be, but we still talk about the Valencia the way they used to be. And so they're judged through what they used to be. And of course, this is a massive club. And this is the third biggest club in Spain or was the third biggest club in Spain pre-Simeone.

8:40Phil Kitromilides:The Simeone era has changed that. Yeah, exactly. It has changed that. But the strength of the club is not what it is. This will now be, we're about to start the 19th different managerial spell under Peter Lim, the owner who's been in charge since 2014. Now, I should probably say to justify this, that six of those are Voro. And Voro is the eternal man who steps in and helps out when they need an interim manager. But actually, he's been in charge for a lot of games. He's been in charge for almost 50 matches in his six spells. So it's not like he's coming for one game and then the new manager takes over.

9:17Phil Kitromilides:One of those spells is a 25-game spell. I think you can call that a real managerial spell. He's not in charge now, though. He's not. And that's very interesting because he was, as I say. And do you know what the reason for that is? It's very simple, really, is that he said, look, I'm not doing this anymore. I can't be bothered. I'm not the guy to take over when you're in the shit. I'm not doing it anymore. So it's the B team coach who takes over instead, briefly, while Braulio looks for a new manager. Now, obviously, the chances are that'll be at least a two-game spell because they've got midweek football and they've got next weekend's football.

9:54Phil Kitromilides:And this brings us to your point where I think we all thought they would wait until the international break to do this. Kiat Lim, the son of the owner, was at the game against Barcelona last week. It's the first game he's been at for... I apologise now, I can't remember the exact date. I did have it written down. It's about a year. And now he's decided to change everything. And he's decided to change everything. And I was looking through some material on him last night. There's an interview with him from a year ago in which he said, we've changed the structure now. Everything's great. I'm not saying we didn't have good people before, but we've got really good people now.

10:28Phil Kitromilides:The structure's changed. We're in control. It's all right. That was a year ago. Now it's not just the coach that's changed. It's the structure that's changed as well. they're in a bad way. I actually think they are good enough to not go down. I do think they have the right players. I think if they get the right manager, I think Braulio knows what he's doing. I actually think they will probably be all right. But there is that broader context, which, as I say, is so embedded now. And it's been more than a decade that this is the broader context. I don't know if we should keep reaching for it. But how can you not?

10:59Phil Kitromilides:Because they're a huge club. They've only scored one goal, Sid, in five games. And that goal was, and I'll give you two caveats, well not caveats, two extra little elements to that goal as well. That goal was given to them by a gift. So this is a team that hasn't created a goal all season. This is a team that has not created a goal all season. And it was scored by a player who's now out injured and will be out for months. So if they're currently available players, no one has scored. No one has provided an assist. They are not very good. Shambolic at Valencia. and you could kind of see the writing on the wall last week when they just completely downed tools against Barcelona.

11:38Barca are a really good side and they will dismantle many teams this season. But Levante, the way that they dealt with going 2-0 down early on against Barcelona was in stark contrast to the way Valencia did today. Absolutely crumpled. Levante did not, Sid. And let's move on and talk about Barcelona's 4-2 win at Levante, which, again, if you see the scoreline, it might lead you to have one idea of the match. I thought Barcelona, it was an imprecise performance from Barcelona, even before the second half. You know, the first half, they started really well and there was that incredible statistic.

12:17After six minutes, they'd scored one goal and had 97 % possession, which was absolutely extraordinary. Then they let Levante kind of back into it and Levante actually playing quite well when Barcelona scored their second goal, 2-0 up, and you think it is game over. Then they score a penalty right at the start of the second half, Barcelona, and you think, well, that's definitely it now. And it kind of felt like Barcelona felt like that as well. Hansi Flick wasn't too critical after the game. He said, I'm happy, I'm happy with the results. There are things from the performance that we need to correct, some of the positioning, some of the passing.

12:52But he wasn't overly critical of his side. Obviously, they won, and they've won five out of five. So, you know, you can't be too critical. And we shouldn't necessarily be too critical about this performance from Barcelona. But I did feel like that little drop in intensity against a team like Levante at home who kept going and leveled things up.

13:10Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, and momentarily put themselves in a position where they might have lost it. And obviously post-game and once they've got the fourth goal, it's kind of easy to say, yeah, it was never really going to happen because it was late when it's 3-2. and one of the two goals is a complete gift from Xavi Esparte. And actually, funny enough, Fliq took... Both of them. Both of them. I'm sorry. Mark Bernal has to do better with the second one. Yeah, I agree with you. But one is a real gift. One is literally a pass. Yes. Yeah. And actually, Flick took responsibility for that. He said that Xavi Esparte had been suffering with cramp for a little bit and I decided to hang on and wait.

13:45Phil Kitromilides:And I should have actually made the change. And there's a little sequence before the goal where Xavi Esparte gives the ball away three times in about a minute. and all of them actually, to be fair, once you know that context, they do look like a player who kind of sort of isn't swinging his leg quite right. I mean, I wasn't watching this game live and I sent you the screen grab and I was genuinely trying to work out how on earth on five minutes you can be 1-0 up with a 0.05 expected goals and 98 % of the possession. And that literally means, unless you've racked up 100 passes already, which in five minutes you certainly haven't, it must have been 50-1.

14:21Phil Kitromilides:assuming the the statistics were being based on passes how has that happened and i was like well barcelona kicked off i think and then they didn't get the ball exactly so then where's the where's the levante touch there has to be a levante pass in there otherwise it's 100. that's the bit i couldn't get it's either 100 or it's some other number how's it 98 and then i thought to myself levante must have had kickoff one touch two sides faster get the ball but then that would mean they'd racked up 98 passes in five minutes which just isn't possible anyway enough of my silliness. And then watching the game back last night, I felt you're right.

14:55Phil Kitromilides:I think imprecise is a really good word. This wasn't the Barcelona team that we... That said, Barcelona, I suppose, haven't really been characterised by precision this year. It's been characterised almost by chaos, by being very, very dynamic. And maybe there wasn't quite as much of that either, I thought. I thought it's worth a foot. It's a very, very weak penalty to give for Barcelona, which then put them in a position where they were nearly safe. And it's It's a brilliant goal from Adeyemi at the end. Oh, it really is. It really is. And he almost scored one that would have been even better.

15:26Phil Kitromilides:That sort of, I don't even know what to call it, kind of a scorpion kick thing. It was fantastic. It was. And the speed with which Kareem Adeyemi is able to do what he did for that fourth goal is absolutely mind-blowing. I thought Rodri was really good in this game, Sid. I thought Rodri was sort of metronomic and just knows where to be, knows the right passes to make. Everything kind of goes through him and at the same time, it doesn't feel pedestrian because obviously a lot of passes to go through him are sideways but at the same time, he just seems to see everything, play the right pass and even though Barcelona kind of lost control in the second half at times, I thought Rodri was really, really good.

16:07Lamine scored twice in this game as well, Sid, and I just want to highlight something that Rafinha did. He let Lamine take the penalty. Yes, there was a little conversation, wasn't there, between the two. he is the sort of designated penalty taker for Barcelona. He is, you know, the hierarchical figure is the captain. He lets Lamin take the penalty because, poor Ballon d 'Or PR, I don't know. Maybe he felt like he wanted to help Lamin in that way. But what a captain's gesture to, I just, yeah.

16:38Phil Kitromilides:Well, we were talking about him last week, weren't we? The way in which Rafinha plays this kind of paternal role, this role that says it's about the others, which obviously plays into his own kind of self-satisfaction and importance and leadership and so on. I think what we'll see this year is that those two will kind of almost rotate the penalties, unless it's a really key moment in which one of them feels a little more confident than the other. I mean, Rafinha could have scored in five consecutive games at the start of a La Liga season. Nobody's done that since 2009. Only three Barcelona players have ever done that in history.

17:13Like there was a little bit of jeopardy on there for Rafinha on a personal level. And if he was someone who was completely motivated by individual records of that kind of thing, he would have been like, no, no, I'm taking this. I want to score again.

17:23Phil Kitromilides:Yeah. And I think his motivation probably lies elsewhere now. And I think there's probably also an awareness that, you know, if we're going to support Lamin, if the team is going to be good, we want to back him. We want to kind of project him. But I guess as well, there's also an element that if you, I don't know, maybe I'm doing the amateur psychologist thing here, but if you project a young player like Lamine, who you think is going to be the best in the world, or you maybe think already is, who you think is the heart of this team for a long time, and therefore you want to strengthen them, why?

17:55Phil Kitromilides:Because it strengthens the team. But maybe it's also these kind of very clear gestures, rather than your just day-to-day work, if you see what I mean. Maybe these clear gestures are also a way of ensuring that he sees that he's been helped there by others, if you see what I mean. So I know this is contradictory, but you create a humility in him by pushing him forward, if you see what I mean. Because you make sure he knows that others have helped lift him up. Yeah, I like that. Good bit of amateur psychology there, Steve. There's loads more we could talk about from this game. Xavi Espart scoring his first goal for Barcelona.

18:32Levante, credit to them for how they reacted. Absolutely. And in stark contrast to their neighbours down the road as well, by the way, Valencia. at the end of the game, you know, the Levante fans were chanting orgullosos de estos jugadores, proud of these players, because it was a monumental effort from them in the second half.

18:51Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, and just very briefly to pick up on what you said, and you were right, the not very good defending, but also the very, very good goal from Bruguay when he went dashing through yes took it very well very determined to chase it so so so levante i i i'm i know there's a risk of sounding very patronizing when a team loses 14 you go oh didn't you do well but but they did they did they really did they um they made a game of it when it didn't look like there was going to be a game uh at all uh now sydney we've reached the point in the podcast where i desperately need you to tell me who this episode of tsp is brought to us by well it's brought to us by our friends at NordVPN, Phil.

19:33Certainly is. Well done. Correct. It's a new season, new faces in the division, but one thing hasn't changed. We do a lot of travelling covering Spanish football.

19:43Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, and it's not that long since I got back from the World Cup. In fact, it still feels like it was quite recent. And I know I say that every week, but it really does feel like that still for me. I was invited to lift this weekend, which is a good one, to see the mighty Rail Oviedo win 3-0. And, you know, when you're all over the place, it's kind of what you need, isn't it? the best thing when you travel to make sure you get access to all your content from back home is NordVPN. Whether it's watching football, TV shows, football, let's face it, NordVPN, whatever you're watching, so long as it's football, in particular if it's football, allows you to access your subscriptions back home no matter where you are.

20:20Yeah, you can watch TV shows and movies. You can, but don't do it.