Is this it?

0:07Hello everyone and welcome to this week's edition of the Spanish Football Podcast.

0:30Saudi Arabia, again, which was won by Barcelona. Three goals to two. They beat Real Madrid in the final. They won it last year. They won it this year. They beat Real Madrid last year. They beat them this year as well. It was an interesting game for us to analyse, which we'll do in just a moment. Let's get you up to date, though, on what happened in Matchday 19 in La Liga EA Sports. Friday night, Sydney was on commentary for Getafe 1, Real Sociedad 2. We had two late goals at the Coliseum and some excitement as well. The unbeaten start to life as a Real Sociedad coach for American Pellegrino Materazzo continues.

1:07Then on Saturday, Sydney made his way up to Oviedo to see Oviedo play well, but not manage to win. They drew 1-1 with Betis at the Carlos Tartiere. Villarreal beat Alaves by three goals to one at the Estadio de la Ceramica. And Girona's recent good form continues. They beat Osasuna by a goal to nil to move away from the relegation zone, a relegation zone where Valencia remain. after a 1-1 draw at home to Elche. All sorts of problems at Mestalla. Then on Sunday, we were both at Vallecas, only Sid didn't come and say hello to me. I didn't even realise he was there. We both saw Rayo beat Mallorca 2-1.

1:43And Levante... I've been on a guilt trip ever since. How long has the guilt trip lasted now? It's nearly 24 hours. It's going to last a long time. I can't believe it. You made my son cry. Why does Uncle Sidney hate us? Why? No, he didn't even know. Levante and Espanyol played out a 1-1 draw as well. And the Monday night game could be interesting as well. Sevilla against Celta. Sydney is on co-coms for that as well. Sevilla just three points above the relegation zone. Celta could move sixth with a win. Thank you to all our new patrons over at patreon.com forward slash TSFP. We've had loads of new patrons this year already.

2:15They will be getting the Monday and Friday podcasts without adverts, plus a weekly Q &A pod and a bonus pod. And there's the newsletter, the TSFP Diary and the Discord. Join us. You can sign up from€4.75 a month, or it's even cheaper if you buy an annual membership. So we'll start then by talking about the Spanish Super Cup final, Sid, which you described as a weird game and very hard to analyse properly. But give it a go. Yes, I'm going to try and give it a go. And I suppose there is a sort of simple, if slightly reductionist, well, very reductionist approach to this, which is to say that Barcelona are a team that know what they're doing.

2:54They're a team that have a very clear identity and they're a team that play in a broadly similar way all the time. What Real Madrid did, of course, was to try and set up to stop that. Real Madrid had an approach that was designed to prevent Barcelona from moving the ball well, designed to offer them the opportunity to break towards Vinicius. In that sense, I suppose it was clear. The reason why it feels less clear to me is, of course, this isn't what Real Madrid always do. So this was effectively a defensive response or a tactical response, at least, to Barcelona's approach. For about half an hour, I'm going to try and give a brief description of the game and then maybe we can start from there.

3:30So for about half an hour, almost nothing happened. Barcelona had all of the ball, but not very much happened. There was one chance. Real Madrid had two chances, didn't it? Yeah. Well, hang on. Matisse, caveat here. Real Madrid had the one chance with Vinicius Brokaw on the left-hand side, which was obviously very much their plan. And that was about it, although Barcelona completely dominated possession. I mean, the numbers were absurd at that point. I think it was 79 to 21. Then we had the drinks break. And we came back from the drinks break, and suddenly everything started happening. You have a very clear chance for Gonzalo.

4:02You have a couple of chances for Rafinha, I think, that you get the Rafinha goal. And then Barcelona, at that point, threatened to completely take Madrid apart, I thought. I thought there was a period where Madrid weren't getting to the ball. You could feel the frustration creeping in as well. You could see that thing that you get where a player runs to make the challenge, doesn't get there, turns around, comes back, runs and makes another one. And by the third one, it's kind of like, you know. And so then, of course, Madrid get deeper and deeper and deeper and Barcelona look even more dominant.

4:31But then we had those three mad minutes at the end of the first half. I've actually written this down because this was a game of moments and brief little flurries. Okay. So I've written this down because I quite enjoyed this. so you have four shots within two minutes and 54 seconds in the first half immediately after that drinks break so you got 32 32 18 through to 35 11 and it's free for Barcelona and one for which starts with that gonfalo one okay then you have two shots two courtois saves at the near post inside 42 seconds again another little flurry then you get that madness of additional time at the end of the first half three minutes 33 seconds for three goals and so at that point you're thinking and this has gone a bit wild, and quite how this has happened, it's difficult to put your finger on.

5:15So you're going at halftime 2-2 with a feeling, in my view at least, that Barcelona are so superior to Real Madrid that it doesn't make sense that it's 2-2. I actually think the second half was different. Now, I don't think Real Madrid took control of the ball necessarily, but I thought they were far more threatening than they'd been in the first half. And I thought they started to make chances. And again, you've got a little flurry. All right, 11 minutes doesn't really count as a flurry. But there's three really good chances for Real Madrid. A giant Garcia save from Vinicius, a Vinicius deflected shot, which Garcia saves, and that great chance for Rodrigo.

5:46And Madrid probably should have scored at least one of those three. And they didn't. And then the game settled again, I felt, into a pattern of Barcelona being in control. I felt Madrid lost control again, or at least lost any real sense of threat again, and Barcelona score. And after the 3-2 for Rafinha, which is 72 minutes, I didn't think Real Madrid did anything. Given that they're chasing the game, I didn't think they did anything. Until? Until additional time. And additional time, you get two absolutely clear-cut chances. This game's five minutes added on 95.04 and 96.42. A minute and a half in which you get two absolutely clear chances to go to extra time, and both of them go straight at Joanne Garcia.

6:28And so that's the description. And why is that difficult to analyse? As I say, because you have flurries rather than an overall pattern. But if you take a step back, the overall pattern is of a Barcelona team who have all of the ball in the Madrid team who looks to break with Vinicius. And in truth, both of those approaches sort of worked. And in the end, Barcelona won. You know, that's the bottom line. I mean, I guess, you know, using a Spanish phrase, is lo que hay. No, I mean, this is what there is because how are Real Madrid supposed to approach this game given the players that they have? I mean, they don't have the players to control this game through possession and create chances against Barcelona.

7:05I don't think when you look at the Barcelona midfield and you look at the Real Madrid midfield, who is going to have the ball and create chances in that battle? Yeah, and this is why I say it's difficult to analyse, because on the face of it, it's easy to analyse. As you say, look, this is the reality of what it is, this L 'Okeate. And so this is how you approach it. And I think Xavi Alonso obviously is entitled to approach it any way that he wants. And he would argue, and I think he'd be right in terms of clear chances, that his team created enough to have possibly won this. Well, in terms of big chances created by, you know, as defined by Opta, they had more Opta defined big chances than Barcelona did, more shots on target as well, more corners.

7:42But the sense of control was Barcelona's. Exactly. And that's why it's sort of both easy and difficult to analyse at the same time. Because you then do get into this kind of emotional or analytical dynamic in which you start saying, OK, but we're talking about Real Madrid. Right, I'm going to choose my team so as not to upset anyone else. We're talking about Real Madrid as if they were Oviedo. As if it's OK to... Why? But why are we getting drawn into this? I mean, it's just a pragmatic approach. There you go. Right. OK. This is it. Exactly. This is it. You know? But then the question is, is this it?

8:22Is this it? Does it need to be it? Should this be what you aspire to? Should this be the pragmatic reality? Are the players Madrid have got necessarily so much worse than Barcelona's or so much different to Barcelona's? They are in the field. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that is part of it. And you look across the midfield. Joe, many who actually played at centre-back played well. Yeah. Not one of Madrid's midfielders. None of them were even there yesterday, I thought. Bellingham, I'm struggling to think of anything that he did. No, Bellingham, it was an eye-catchingly low-key performance. Yeah, Camavinga didn't really get control of the game at any point.

9:03No, I thought he was terrible. In a way, the midfielder that was most effective for them was possibly Gonzalo Garcia. And I say midfielder, and everyone's going to be saying, what are you talking about? He's a forward. But his role was partly to try and prevent Franky de Jong from playing. And actually, I thought Frankie de Jong played really well, by the way, until that slightly bizarre red card at the end. I say bizarre because of his decision to do what he did, not because the decision was wrong and the decision itself was right from the referee. But I sort of look at Madrid and you're right, it's pragmatic.

9:33But it's kind of easy, doesn't it? Because we're talking about Real Madrid here. That's why. We are. We are. It's true. Here's the thing, though. Real Madrid coming out of this game, having competed against Barcelona, despite the sense and the feeling that they're inferior in footballing terms, they actually competed. They could easily, easily have taken this game to penalties. I mean, easily. And yet maybe that's not so much of a surprise because the teams that they have struggled against this season are not the teams that approach the game like Barcelona do. Here we go. What are their previous decent performances in the last couple of months?

10:07and there haven't really been any apart from away to Athletic Club and against Olympiacos, two sides that press really high and leave loads of spaces for you to run in. And it's true that Barcelona weren't playing with quite as high a line last night and they did look a little bit more pragmatic themselves and I think they weren't playing quite as suicidally with that high line but still they leave spaces and if you leave spaces, Real Madrid do have the players to hurt you. Where they have struggled this season is trying to break down teams with a low block because they don't have the footballing brains in that team to do it.

10:39Perfect. Perfect. And so we come to that question of pragmatism, and this is what there is. It's lucky I. So then you ask your question, this was okay in this game, except, of course, the bottom line is it wasn't okay. You didn't win the Super Cup, right? But in other games, is it okay? One thing I'm going to say, actually, I think a slightly important caveat that I feel like I want to add. Caveat me up, baby. And that is the performance of Vinicius. And Vinicius was brilliant. But here's the thing. Here's the caveat I want to bring into here. because in the context of what you're talking about, the high line with Barcelona, and as you say, Barcelona didn't play quite as high as sometimes they do and running.

11:13Here's the key thing for me. Vinicius didn't spend this game running into the space behind Barcelona. He didn't. He spent this game. Exactly. That, for me, is the really big difference. This was a game in which Vinicius was not the beneficiary of balls over the back. He was the balls behind Barcelona. He was the person taking Real Madrid behind Barcelona. And I thought he was very, very good indeed. again, that asked questions. He did this performance without Mbappe on the pitch. I think we've seen this year enough from Mbappe to say that he can adapt to the middle of the pitch. But we do still need to see a really good performance with those two together.

11:48I don't know. This is why I say it's difficult to analyse. Because I think on the face of it, if I analyse this, I can say, yeah, Madrid did a really good job, a good pragmatic job and all the rest of it. But the bottom line is they still didn't win it. I would say that the two goals they got at the end of the first half were basically out of nothing. So you're going at halftime 2-2, but really and truly at that point, I mean, in fairness, they had two really good chances. One where Gonzalo goes clean through, and that was a weird one because on that moment, Barcelona were too high and it was very easy and it was a very simple ball.

12:16And the one that Vinicius carried through. But, you know, the goals, I don't know, I find it hard to be convinced by what Madrid did. at the same time as I can see that what they did was kind of quite good and probably could have won them this game. Another caveat that I'll throw in is the injuries. Obviously, Barcelona managing to feel pretty much their strongest starting XI. I think only Gavi missing and Ter Stegen and Real Madrid missing some absolutely key players, not least Kylian Mbappé, who wasn't fit to really feature in this game at all, but came on for the last 15 minutes. Edemilitao, their best defender, is out.

12:55Danny Carvajal, Trent, Rudiger, Pedro Valverde went off, etc, etc. Go on. I think Carvajal's massive, by the way. I mean, he's only about five for eight, weren't he? Yeah. And all these players are important. But I think the impact of Carvajal's absence is really, really significant. Let's talk about Rafinha, MVP of the game, MVP of the Super Cup. Just another superb performance from him with two goals and not just the goals, the energy and the leadership. I mean, the absolute leader on the pitch for Barcelona is Rafinha. We shouldn't underestimate that and his absence earlier on in the season.

13:36We're seeing maybe why Barcelona was struggling a little bit because Joan Garcia wasn't there at one end of the pitch and Rafinha wasn't there at the other end of the pitch. Now that both are there, the whole thing looks a lot better. Yeah. Rafinha, in the nine games he didn't play, only won five of them, which, all right, is okay, but it's four games in which they didn't win, including losing to PSG in Real Madrid and Sevilla. Since he's come back, I think I'm right in saying that it's 11 wins and one defeat in 12. The defeat was at Stamford Bridge, and it's true that Barcelona were terrible that day.

14:07And so maybe you can say, well... And play with 10 men. And play with, yes. But I think Rafinha, at the risk of saying the things that we've said before, I think is so important because he imposes character on the team and he's contagious and he's the one that drags everyone through it. And if you are going to play the way that Barcelona play, you need him. Now you can maybe play a different way and Rafinha wouldn't be important but if you're going to play the way that this Barcelona play you absolutely need him and we've talked a lot and you know let's get the couch out shall we and play amateur psychologist I think lots and lots of things have happened with Rafinha that have been important over the last two or three years and I think a lot of them are about emotions as much as about football and I think that he said it himself, I think he may even have said it again last night, but the importance of Flick in terms of Flick giving him confidence and making him feel part of it and he clearly needed to feel that kind of embrace um we've talked about this before but just briefly to touch upon it again i think when he was made fourth captain it's only fourth captain by the way you could see from the things that he said and the way that he responded that that really meant something to him and that really played and what it did is it did two things it reflected his character because it was this is why they voted him and he didn't expect it and it was because they saw things in him.

15:21They saw leadership in him. And then it also enhanced that character because once he'd been given the captain's armband, which of course most of the games he hadn't been given it because there were usually one of the other three was also on the pitch. But it's like he took upon himself that this means something. This is responsibility. So I'm going to carry the team. And my favourite thing that Rafinha said was something he said about four or five weeks ago, just after he came back. And he said after the game, which I must confess, I can't remember which one it is now. I'm actually about to go and look for it because I've been thinking about this quite a lot over the last few weeks.

15:52He said after the game, my teammates probably look at me and think, why is he talking so much? This guy is a pesado, a pain in the arse. But that is what I have to do. And I think, you know, it's simplistic, but I think that in a nutshell is Rafinha. A pain in the arse. He's a pain in the arse. In the best possible way. Listen, there is loads more that we could talk about, but we want to move on. because dear listener and viewer of the Spanish Football Podcast, you know that we are not just about Barcelona and Real Madrid. So we will move on. But if there's anything that you want us to talk about, send us a question for tomorrow's Q &A pod on patreon.com forward slash TSFP and we will answer them.

16:32We're expecting quite a few questions for tomorrow's Q &A pod. So make sure you're signed up and you get yours in.

17:10All right, so let's talk about other matches that took place this weekend. and let's start with the Friday night game, Sid, that you were watching. Most people weren't. Catafé 1, Real Sociedad 2. You mean I was speaking into the void. Yeah. I think I probably was, to be honest. Quite possibly not too many people were watching this, but, you know, maybe they were. There was probably quite a lot of interest in the US because Real Sociedad managed by Pellegrino Materazzo, who had his first game in charge last week and managed a very credible 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid And a 2-1 win at Getafe is a really, really good result.

17:46He had a difficult start to his managerial life because he had that game against Atletico Madrid. They're away to Getafe. They're taking on Barcelona. They've got a Basque derby coming up as well. But four points from six. What can you tell us about what you saw of Materazzo's Real Sociedad on Friday? I think what I saw of them was an adaptability. and it's true that it's possible that I see this partly conditioned by what he said. But if you take what he said pre-game, Matarazzo, and then you see what you saw in the game and obviously the context of this is this was a Getafe team with only 13 outfield players available.

18:26First team, 13 outfield players available with no central defenders, officially. No central defenders. You've got full-backs playing at centre-back and we'll come on to this in a minute, by the way, because Bordelass brought this up again post-game. But I think if you take, you've got to take that into account, it's true. But if you listen to the way that Matarazzo talked about it pre-game, and then you see what Real Sofidab did, I think what you see is a realism and an adaptability. And maybe this takes us to our discussion about Xavi Alonso and the approach to Barcelona, by the way, which is to say that this is Hatafe.

19:01And so we know that the game will be, what do you call planteado in English? The game will kind of be, the framing of the game, the setting of the scene of this game, the way this game is conceived of by Getafe is different to the way that Atletico Madrid came and played last weekend at Anoeta. And that you have to be able to compete on their terms, at least to begin with. Now, put it in very simple terms, he came up with this phrase, which was fight first, football second, or worse that fact. I can't remember. I think it was first you've got fight, then you've got to play. To use an old English phrase, you've got to earn the right to play.

19:38You can't go to Getafe and think, well, you know, we're better than them, aren't we? And what he essentially said is if we match them for those things, we've got good footballers, which isn't to say Getafe don't, but obviously comparatively, they don't. You've got to fight for your right to party, Sid. Yeah, that's exactly it. Fight for your right to party. And that's essentially what they did. I mean, fight is a good word. I was just checking the statistics. 17 fouls committed by both teams in this game 34 fouls in a in a la liga game is a lot of way by the way and that was in a game in which the referee was trying to let it go oh good luck with the referee was now i i personally i mean this is a slight aside but i personally think conceptually we get it wrong with gitafe we sometimes assume that that because gitafe play the way they do referees should give every foul because that's the only way to to sort of stop it but actually well that's what gitafe want they want the game stopped so i actually think the best approach to it and obviously a referee shouldn't have the approach which is how can I best screw up Getafe that's not what I'm saying no no I realize I realize it sounds like that but what I mean is that if you think that Getafe are trying to utilize fouls to their advantage and you think well in which case we've got to blow them every time they give no they want you to give the fouls they want the game to stop and actually the referee I thought tried at times said it go it wasn't as confrontational as I thought it would be there's a lot of little fouls rather than confrontational but what but Braus I think I definitely stood up to that.

21:01And then very nearly got Getafe'd. It was extraordinary, really. They conceded in the 90th minute. He thought, that has come from literally nowhere. But then they Getafe'd Getafe'd back by getting another one in the, what was it, 95th or 96th. Double Getafe reversal with that goal from, was it Oyarzabal in the 96th minute? No, it wasn't. It was Aramburu. For a moment there, my head went back. Yes. So there we go. All right, that was Real Sociedad beating Getafe. Just briefly, because I should just say it, because I prefaced it. Go on, then. After the game, Bordelast said, we can't carry on like this.

21:38Why are you doing this to me? Why are you doing this to me? That's what he was basically saying. Yeah, basically he said, I do not deserve this. I do not deserve this. We can't go on like this. And he used this analysis, which was, people say I always get something out of nothing, but you keep sharpening the pencil. Eventually, there's no pencil left. What does that mean? Well, it means, you know, so you've got this pencil, and there's not very much there, but you sharpen it, you get a point and you can keep getting points and you've got this thing that works. But then the point goes down, but don't worry, keep sharpening.

22:04He said, yeah, but if you keep sharpening, if you've got no, you've reached a point where there's just a little nubby bit of the pencil. Only the little eraser is left, the rubber is left. I know it was a bizarre reference, but basically he was saying there's nothing left. What does he mean? He hasn't got any players, yeah. He means he's been worn down to nothing, yeah. It's the borderline version of Harry Redknapp's bare bones, I suppose, isn't it? And his is a pencil stub. It's strange that you would treat the greatest ever manager in your history like this, isn't it? From Qatafi? Yes and no.

22:29Yes and no. Because I think the first thing to say is, you've just used the phrase, treat your greatest ever manager like this. It is your greatest ever manager. Everyone recognises this. But what's the treatment we're talking about? Bring him some players that he desperately wants. Right, okay. So let's return to a phrase that we've used already three or four times in this pod. It's LOKI. Bring in the players with what resources? Bring in what players? How do you pay for them? Which players do you want him to bring? This is the thing. I mean, I do think for what it's worth, Bordelassi's right in that he's not been given a huge amount.

23:07He has been left with a very short squad. But of course, the reality here is that Gitafe, what else? I don't know, man. Well, that's what sporting directors are there for, you know, go and find some gems in the transfer market and see what you can do. But for example, I mean, to put this into context for everybody, In the summer, they had, was it five players, or maybe six, I can't remember now, without a feature. They weren't registered until they managed to sign, until they managed to sell Ucce. Now, here's the big problem. They've sold Ucce, but they're not actually going to get the money for Ucce.

23:38So that 20 million euros that they put on their books, which allowed them to register those players, is about to be taken off their books. Yeah, they're in serious trouble. Yeah, they really are. They really, really are. Let's move on. We've dedicated quite enough time to Getafe. Yeah, sorry. That's fine. That's a lot. We are the Getafe. football podcast. We will never be that, Sidney. Tell us about Olledo against Betis, because you were there. Now, I've written a little bit about Betis and in particular Cucho Hernandez in the newsletter. He was brilliant, wasn't he? He was. So we don't need to dwell too much on that because patrons can read all about Cucho and his brilliant performance.

24:15But you were there in the posh seat, Sid, at the Carlos Tartiere. You were their corporate hospitality-ing it up. I was. I mean, you know, it's not something, first of all, it's not something I'm proud of. Secondly, it's not something, actually, in truth, it's not something I - You could do it every week there, Sid. You could literally go there every week and you don't, so credit to you if it's fine. Well, also, to be honest, this is why it happened because essentially I'd essentially been given tickets in the only place where there were tickets available. Yeah. And so it's a little weird. But I'm going to just, you know, the best thing about this game is that Oviedo scored a goal.