Looking for clues

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1:37Hello everyone and welcome to this week's edition of the Spanish Shuttle Podcast. I'm Phil Kittramelidis. I'm joined by Sid Lowe. Hello Sydney. Hello Philip, how are you? I'm good my friend. We're recording on Sunday evening because tomorrow it's the start of Semana Santa, the Easter week and you and I are off on various recreational trips. No work Sydney, right? No work for a few days? I just think it'd be just working in a different place. Just working in a different place. That is what the Easter holiday is all about for Sydney. I concur, actually. I think I've got quite a bit of work to do.

2:12It's a busy... Next weekend is a very busy weekend in terms of La Liga and the Champions League. So there's lots coming up. But on this podcast, we will be focusing primarily on what happened in the Spain game on Friday. They looked pretty good. They looked pretty good in a 3-0 victory over Serbia in their penultimate friendly before the World Cup. More on that in just a second. I just want to let you know, if you haven't got a ticket already, don't forget that TSFP is heading back to London for another live show. It's on Friday the 24th of April, 6.30pm upstairs at the Fox and Green pub on Upper Street.

2:48Tickets are on sale now. They're£19.50 and that includes a drink. We'll be there for hours. so come and join us we've actually already sold most of the tickets so make sure you get one because it's a small venue it's intimate there aren't a lot of tickets you can find the link in the episode description or on our social media and while we're talking about you buying stuff the La Liga season is heading towards an exciting finale and then we've got the World Cup to look forward to so come and join us at patreon.com forward slash tsp patrons get the Monday and Friday podcast without any adverts there's a Q &A pod a bonus pod every week and there's the newsletter, the diary and the discord.

3:26And over the summer, as always, we'll be putting exclusively the patrons. Sid and Al will both be in the USA covering the World Cup. So come and join us. You can sign up for€4.75 a month or it's even cheaper if you get annual membership. So Sydney, people getting quite excited about this Spain 3, Serbia 0 result. Obviously, there is a second friendly to come on Tuesday against Egypt, Espanyol Stadium. But this game played at the de la Ceramica on Friday. It was a pretty strong team, not far off what we would call a first choice team fielded by Luis de la Fuente. We can go into a couple of the selection choices in just a second.

4:04But overall, this was a really, really strong performance. Three lovely goals, two of them scored by Michelo Yardzabal, the third scored by Victor Munoz, who came off the bench and marked his debut, a really impressive debut, not just with the lovely taken goal, but his overall play as well. And feeling pretty good after this, Sid.

4:21Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, feeling very good. And to start with the starting 11, as you say, there's a feeling not just that this was a strong side, but that had the World Cup started tomorrow, this might well be the side that they began with, given, of course, the doubts over one or two of the players' fitnesses, in particular, the absence of Nico Williams, the absence of Fabian Ruiz is really important. And I think, so you look at this and think, given the players available, if the World Cup would start tomorrow, this might well have been the side that that started and that obviously um brings us to a handful of positions uh and i actually in a way want to skip over very quickly which is why i bring it up first the the the incredibly uh how do i put this sort of over the top debate about the goalkeeping position i understand there's a debate i understand that people are talking about it i understand that it occupies people but not to the extent that it has i think there's a couple of other more interesting elements for me in this.

5:14Phil Kitromilides:And just to start by bringing it to the individuals, which I kind of don't want to do, but I think it's natural to do that because this international break is one in which we're all kind of looking for clues as to what will be the World Cup side, because of course this is the last break before the World Cup. Now, that doesn't necessarily guarantee that everyone who's playing is going to play at the World Cup. And I think I might have mentioned this to you last week. I went to see Roberto Martinez, the Portugal manager, before he named his squad for this and he actually said my squad will be lacking some of the players who I absolutely know will be at the World Cup and that would be precisely why they're lacking because I know I don't need to look at them I want to open it up and give myself one last chance look at a couple of other players first and see them in a in a in a national team environment and I think yes yes um well I've just said I didn't want to get into the goalkeeping debate I think part of the reason for calling up Joanne Garcia now obviously is to see him play he didn't play in this game I think he probably will get some minutes in the second game.

6:08Phil Kitromilides:And even if he doesn't, it's an opportunity to see him in that environment, in that dynamics. I think the really significant one, and obviously the way this game was played out, is Victor Munoz. And I'm really concerned now about being very knee-jerk and very immediate about this. But I think what he did... Hold on, this isn't knee-jerk and immediate because we've seen him all season. All season, exactly. It was impressive, but we have actually been impressed with him. We've spoken about him before on the podcast as well. So we're not being major, Sid. No, we're not. A lot of people who are commenting and getting excited and don't necessarily pay as much attention as we do.

6:45Phil Kitromilides:I think that's absolutely true, by the way. Yes, I agree with you. I just don't want to allow myself to say, wow, one good performance from Victor Mnjot, that means he's going. But I think it's more than that. And let me explain what I mean by that. So this is an opportunity to see him. I think if you really think there's no chance of him going and you're not opening the door at all, you don't even bother to bring him now. Except, of course, and here comes the big caveat alert, you do need to fill this squad. And you've got quite a lot of players absent from NGO. I would say it was, what was it, six maybe who would probably go in the summer weren't available this time around?

7:15Phil Kitromilides:Is that about right? Feels about right, doesn't it? Okay. Or didn't go this time. So Fabian Ruiz, who am I thinking? Fabian Ruiz, I'm thinking Nico Williams. Nico Williams, Danny Carvajal. Danny Carvajal, Robert Lenormand. I mean, for what it's worth, I think Carvajal and Lenormand still might not make it at all. No. I think they still might not make it at all. But anyway, there's a handful of players. So it's possible that you kind of bulk out the squad a little bit this time around. Pablo Barrios wasn't available this time. I'm not 100 % sure he'll go in the summer, but, you know, there's a few.

7:46Phil Kitromilides:But I think what happened with Victor Munoz is really interesting for a couple of reasons. One is the quality of the performance. But I think it's also about the personality. So I think there's a possibility that you go into that squad and you feel a bit overruled by it, and he definitely didn't. The other thing I think is about the profile of players. So we've talked quite a bit, haven't we, about what would happen if Nico and or Lamine weren't available and how one of the things that Luis La Fuente did before the European Championships, or more to a point, at the start of the European Championships, was to say, you know what?

8:16Phil Kitromilides:I want both my wingers running at people. And we talked a lot about how going into that Euros, we thought that one of the two would start and the other one wouldn't. That he would probably have an inverted winger, which we've seen with Spain a lot over the years, kind of coming inside, being an extra midfielder, being an extra sort of number 10 coming off the wing and being in that kind of position. And Alex Bainer. An Alex Bainer figure, for example. Exactly that. Exactly that. Or Carlos Soler, as we've seen before, or Nauz, as we've seen before. Lots of those players playing that kind of role.

8:46Phil Kitromilides:And instead he said, no, I want two going at them. Now, this is why I think Victor Mignoff is interesting, because there is still the possibility that Nico doesn't make it. Now, we all think that won't happen. We all hope that doesn't happen. There's still the possibility. And so here is that guy that is the run at them winger. So you don't necessarily have to go for the coming inside winger, which of course you see with Alex Bayer, for example, in this game. The other thing that I think is interesting in this is I think if you look at Spain over the last, I don't know, what am I thinking? Five years or so, maybe a bit more.

9:18Phil Kitromilides:There's always been this sense, even if they don't start, of wanting this kind of winger. So we've seen it with Brian Hill. We've seen it with Brian Zaragoza. We've seen it with Adam Atraore. We've seen it with Help Me Out Here. It feels like we've seen it with a handful of these kind of wingers who are a bit more old-style wingers who go at people, but we didn't expect them to start. So I think we've now got a bit of that, but we've also got the fact that we've got a coach of the Spanish national team now who likes both of his wingers to do it. So what I mean by this is I think the space for a player of Victor Munoz's profile is probably open.

9:52Phil Kitromilides:and I think he may well have stakes a pretty good claim for it. He came on for Lamine. Yes. And he played on the right. Yes, he did. And he's not going to play ahead of Lamine but I think he could play on the other side if you want people to play. That's why he does. Exactly. Yeah. So he could do for the Spanish national team. So I think what you've got there is that player who can be one of two wingers running at you or can be that person who what's the word I'm looking for? He's not really revolutionises the game but you know what I mean? He shakes the game up when he comes on. So I think he's a profile of player that actually Luis La Fuente is probably thinking, yeah, he goes.

10:27Phil Kitromilides:He goes. Because the other thing is, if you do take Nico off the back of a season which Nico has missed a lot of the season with injuries, you're always going to be in the back of your mind thinking, he might not make it through this. Because it's been a nagging injury. It's been one of those, we've talked about this, that pubalgia, I don't know what you call it in English, that sportsman's hernia we came up with, didn't we? That kind of keeps coming back. And of course, Lamine's had the same thing. albeit he looks like he's through it now, touch wood. So I feel like he did himself a really, really, you know, a real favour.

11:00Phil Kitromilides:I think he's given himself a really good chance of being in the squad for the summer. That's one of them. And to know who the other player for me was the most interesting? Go on. Rodri. Because I'll be honest with you, I thought Rodrigo Hernandez was going to the World Cup. I had no doubt about that. But I thought he probably wasn't going to play. I thought he probably wasn't going to play because of how well Thuby Mendy has played this year. And what I thought was interesting about this game is he was given a start when Thuby Mendy was available. Now, Thuby Mendy has now just left the squad, by the way, so he won't play the second game.

11:32Phil Kitromilides:But when Thuby Mendy was available, he was given a start. Now, you might say, well, that's not a big deal. Well, it is. He hasn't started since the autumn of 24. It's like 18 months since he started. I think Spain have played 14 games since then, and he hasn't started any of them. Obviously, we know that part of that was recovery and injury. So it's the injury time to begin with and then the recovery time. But what was interesting for me was not just the performance level, which was very good. I think he'd only played two games as a sub until this weekend, like kind of 30 minutes and 15 minutes in the two games.

12:04Phil Kitromilides:But you saw the centrality of him to the way they played this weekend. I got the stat, actually. I drew up the stat earlier this afternoon because I was having a look at it. 99 completed passes on the ball, I think 150. times across the course of the game. Zuby Mendy then comes on and then completes all of his passes as well. But what I was really struck by was... I would say, you know, completing passes, that's the bare minimum for a Spain midfielder. Of course it is. We're not going to get too excited about that. No, no, no, we're not. But it was the control of the game from Rodri and the timing and the tempo of it and all those things that we know he does very well, but we haven't seen him have the chance to do this as a starter for Spain.

12:39Phil Kitromilides:And the thing that really caught my eye, or more to the point, caught my ear, was what Luis La Fuente said about him after the game. And he described him as being at the same level he was at before. In fact, or better, or better. Now, I think that's Luis La Fuente doing Luis La Fuente things, right? Talking up his players. But I thought it was interesting that he said it. He also described him as the best midfielder in the world. He said, with the permission of Zuby Mendy. But here is the manager sort of saying, however happy we were with the other guy, the first guy is back. and I was really struck by that.

13:15Phil Kitromilides:I was really, really struck by that because I didn't think he was in a hurry to bring Rodri back. In fact, he hasn't been in a hurry to bring Rodri back because it could have happened sooner, but he's done it just in time. We wondered about the position of Pedri in this team. It's something that Luis de la Fuente has struggled with, in theory, in this game, playing alongside Rodri. Yes, and I think that's reinforced endorsed by, what's the word I'm looking for here? By the identity. Is that the right word? Yes, by the identity of the other midfielder, which is Ferdermin Loveth. Now, we know that Ferdermin can play the game from a slightly deeper position.

13:53Phil Kitromilides:We also know that he's a dynamic person that leads the press from a number 10 position that traces people down. So when it's Ferdermin with Pedri, you feel like it's even more of a statement that Pedri's position is deeper, isn't it? Than maybe some of the other options. So if the other midfielder, let's say for argument's sake, the other midfielder was Fabian, or even if the other midfielder was Mikel Marino, you're still saying that Pedri is playing a bit of everything. But when the other midfielder is Fermin, I think you are really clearly saying, or Olomou, or Olomou is true, Fermin or Olomou, I think you're very clearly saying, as you say, Pedri is a deep player alongside the Fubi Mendy or Rodri position.

14:33We've got a centre-back pairing, haven't we, Sid?

14:36Phil Kitromilides:I think you're right. I think we have. And I will be honest. Yeah, I will be honest with you. I was wondering about the centre-back position, to be honest with you. Partly because Lenormand's been poor all year. Partly because we thought that Mark Pooville would go to this squad and didn't because of injury. And I felt like he might get one of those positions. Partly because Danny Vivian hasn't played particularly well all season. So what was the obvious, or at least some of the obvious candidates were not that obvious by the time we got to this squad. I think we had one or two doubts about Koubati, or I did.

15:07Phil Kitromilides:I don't necessarily want to speak for everyone else. one or two doubts about Kubasi. Funnily enough, the player I didn't have any doubts about is Laporte. Because as I think we talked about in the pod in midweek, De La Fuente took him when he was playing in Saudi Arabia and more to the point when he wasn't even playing that much in Saudi Arabia and clearly wasn't happy. And I think he's absolutely clear in his mind, De La Fuente, that if Laporte is fit, he plays. And I agree with you. I think this game reinforces that the player alongside him won't be Housen, won't be Lenormand, won't be Danny Vivian.

15:36Phil Kitromilides:It will be Kubasi, at least to begin with. So I think this starting XI is beginning to take a bit of shape, I think. Yes. No doubt, Unai Simon is going to start. He is going to start at the World Cup. I'm pretty sure about that. You're pretty sure about that. Most people are. The back four looks like we got it. Llorente and Cucurea are the starting full-backs. And Marco Llorente, my God, what a specimen. It's amazing, isn't it? He's just a ridiculous athlete. We've spoken about this before, but what a ridiculous athlete he is. and it just keeps it going. Laporte and Kubarsi are the centre-backs.

16:12So, you know, a few doubts are beginning to be dispelled. You've got Rodri alongside Pedri and then a winger position and a number 10 position. And then up front, Mikeloi Arzabal, who is bang in form, Sid. Bang in form. The goals that he scored, he took them so well.

16:31Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, I mean, look, I would like here to hang the medal upon your shoulders or around your neck, Philip, and on ours as a podcast. Because at a time where there's been lots of debate about the number nine position, we've kept saying, this guy just quietly gets on with being brilliant. Like, there shouldn't be a debate. There really shouldn't be. And there has been a little bit. I mean, partly, I was, as you know, I was in San Sebastian on Monday of last week and talking to the sporting director there. And, you know, I have a very bad habit of talking too much and sort of giving my opinion, which maybe I shouldn't.

17:11Phil Kitromilides:But we're just kind of chatting after we'd done a bit of an interview. And I sort of said to him, Mikkel's amazing, isn't he? And he just kind of gets on with being brilliant and no one talks about him. And he's like, I just, just, just, you know, he's just a fantastic player who can do everything, who has no, at least no external, because he must have some internal fire because you just don't become a great athlete without that. But no external expression of his kind of self-regard. And I just think he's, I just think he's fantastic. He is, he is. And as we said, the goals that he scored were brilliantly taken.

17:48He has a really good goal scoring record in the last few months for Spain. And there is no question that he's going to be Spain starting number nine at the World Cup. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about, Sid, with regards to Spain before we move on?

18:07Phil Kitromilides:No, I feel like we've covered it. I do hope, and I still think Luis de la Fuente desperately hopes that Nico Williams will be fit. And I think you're right, by the way. You mentioned Llorente. I feel like it's just a fraction too late now for Dani Carvajal. Because I think if he's fully fit, I think he plays. But I just don't know that he's got time now to prove a point. Unless, of course, we see an injury to Pedro Borro or to Marco Cholente. Sorry, there needs to be an injury to Trent as well. Well, yes, that's a very fair point, actually. Yes, because you're absolutely right. because unless, even if Danny Carver Howell is fit, he's not going to play very much, as you say.

18:52Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, I agree with you, unless Trent gets injured as well. Or unless, for whatever reason, if Real Madrid can progress in the Champions League, maybe there's a degree of rotation that gives him some opportunities. But it won't give him many, will it? It won't give him many. There's not that much time left. There's not that many games left, exactly. All right, there we go. Spain beating Serbia 3-0. Obviously, relatively modest opponents. They're not going to the World Cup, but you can only beat the side that were in front of you. and Spain were very, very good and played some exciting football scores, some lovely goals.

19:21Again, me pretty excited

19:23Phil Kitromilides:for what we're going to see in the World Cup. Yeah, you asked me, Phil, if there was anything else I wanted to say. There is one thing I want to say. Did you know that this episode of TSFP is brought to you by our friends at NordVPN? I think you did. I do now, Sydney. The listeners will know that we travel a lot covering Spanish football. We follow Spanish teams around Europe in the Champions League. We do all over the place. I mean, we do that. we go to three or four games a weekend. We are, we're everywhere, Russ. The best way, if you want to do that as well, the best way to make sure you've got access to all your content from back home is using NordVPN.

19:56Which we will be using this summer when we head to the US for the World Cup

19:59Phil Kitromilides:and to Mexico. Don't rub it in. I'm probably not going, but you and Al are. That's fine. Whether it's keeping up with the football, TV shows or movies, NordVPN lets you access your subscriptions back home wherever you are. And it's really easy to use, which is quite important if, like me, you're not particularly tech savvy. And it improves your internet security, which is important if you spend a lot of time using public Wi-Fi, like at train stations, airports and hotel lobbies, Sid. Are you suggesting something, Phil, that I might be in those kind of places quite a lot of the time? Very, very frequently.

20:30You connect with just one click. It's one of the fastest VPNs around. And you can use up to 10 devices with one account. For more information, and this is really important, you need to head to nordvpn.com forward slash TSFP.