Matchday 21 Preview

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0:24Phil Kitromilides:two teams one cup the primetime stage is set for the tgl presented by sofi finals los angeles golf club versus tigers jupiter links keep up it's playoffs tune in monday march 23rd 9 p.m eastern on espn 2 and tuesday march 24th 7 p.m eastern on espn and on the espn app during lowe's pro savings days the job works in your favor milo's pro rewards members buy more and save more of the materials they rely on every day. Get up to 25 % off Select Molding when you spend$1 ,000 or more. And up to 25 % off Pergo Evercraft Laminate Flooring. Put Pro Savings Days to work for you. Members get more at Lowe's.

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1:21Hello, everyone, and welcome to the TSFP Friday preview pod, where we look ahead to what's coming up this weekend in La Liga EA Sports. Hello, Sydney. Good morning, Philip. Good morning. How are we? Below average. We have things to talk about. How are you?

1:37Phil Kitromilides:Below average is all right, yeah, because your average is so high that even below average is exceptional. Thanks. I needed that. Let's kick on, shall we, and discuss what's coming up on Matchday 21 in La Liga EA Sports, Friday night. It's a regional draft. If there's any consolation, by the way, Phil, sorry, just briefly, if it's very consolation, this microphone that I now use is very heavy and I just dropped it on my finger. So, you know, I'm slightly below average as well. My finger really hurts. Yeah, I mean, absolutely zero consolation. I'm glad you're in pain as well. Levante against Elche is a regional derby that's on Friday night first game of the weekend then on Saturday I trust we'll both be at Vallecas for Ray Vallecano against Osasuna sadly we will not because the only train that would get me to Villarreal in time set off before kind of you know anything up to from up to about 4.30 I might have been able to do but unfortunately not okay so I will be health permitting at Ray Vallecano against Osasuna Then it's Valencia against Espanyol.

2:45Massive game for Valencia at Mestalla. Sevilla against Athletic Club. Good looking game at the Ramon Sánchez Pijuan. Really important one for Sevilla. And Villarreal against Real Madrid. The big game of the weekend. It's second against third at the Estadio de la Terramica. I'll be commentating it. Sydney will be their pitch side for ESPN. Then on Sunday, the early game is at the Metropolitano. It's Atletico Madrid against Mallorca. Yorker. Sydney will then make his way up the east coast to the Camp Nou for Barcelona's inevitable victory against Oviedo. What do you mean? Sorry. The comeback starts now, starts on Sunday.

3:23Oviedo's comeback from almost certain relegation.

3:27Phil Kitromilides:Yes. Or not. Then it's Real Sociedad against Celta Vigo. I'm on commentary for that as well this weekend. Alaves against Betis is the Sunday night game and Monday night football comes from Montelivy. It is Girona against Getafe. Let's talk about some of these games then. Brief. By the way, your predictions last week, Sid, weren't as good. They weren't as good. I think you got five or six out of ten. Yeah, I lost out with a very late Sevilla goal. I know that. I'm not sure where else I screwed it up, but that was a bad one. All right. So, Levante against Elche on Friday night. You know, this is a really difficult one to call because I'm not yet sure what to make of the new Levante, who do look improved.

4:15Phil Kitromilides:Away from home, Elche haven't been very good. They got caught out at home against Sevilla at the weekend. So I'm actually going to go for a home win on this. Home win? Yeah. They've not won at home all season, Sid. Yeah. It would be their first home win. Okay. Wow. Big call. Big call from Dr. Lowe. Then, Raya Vallecano against Osasuna at the early game on Saturday? Rayo. Really? Yeah. Why? Because Osasuna aren't great away from home. Because Rayo have, in the last couple of games, scored the goals that they weren't scoring in the four or five games before that. Because, well, the last game. They got two last week, Phil.

4:56Yeah, they did.

4:57Phil Kitromilides:Because Rayo at home, I sort of trust Rayo at home still. Do you? Wow. Okay. Yeah. I do not. I also see them making some interesting signings as well in the genuine transfer window. They've brought in Raul Moro, who formerly of Valladolid went to Ajax. Didn't quite work out there. They've signed him to go with Javi Galan, who they also signed at the start of the month. Yeah, Galan's a very interesting signing. Let's see. I am not convinced, but what? You're going for a home win there, Raul? I'm going for a home win. Okay, let's see. Vallecas is the stadium with the fewest number of goals seen this season.

5:29Just for and against. So not a huge amount of entertainment.

5:32Phil Kitromilides:I find that amazing. that the Tatia Re isn't right at the top of the list. Yeah. Valencia against Espanyol. Now this, I think, is very, very difficult to call. Well, I mean, I say it's difficult to call. On the face of it, it's not that difficult to call because you've got one team that's genuinely quite good and one team that really isn't. But the one team that's genuinely quite good, Espanyol... They haven't won this year. Exactly. They've not won in the last three games. They've been defeated twice, both of them 2-0, defeats both of them at home. they went and only got a draw at Levante. But again, that speaks to what I was saying about the first prediction is that I'm not quite sure what to make of Levante yet.

6:14Phil Kitromilides:That said, Valencia, I don't know about you, but Valencia feel to me like a team that if you are going to make a prediction with Valencia and you want to go for the safe option, you go for a 1-1 draw in which they score relatively late to rescue the game. So that's what I'm going to go for. That was exactly what I was going to say. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. With probably an Hugo Dudo goal in the 88th minute. Wow, we have seen that film before, Sid. We certainly have, yeah. Sevilla against Athletic Club at the Ramon Sanchez Pijuan Athletic Club, coming off the back of that famous and magnificent victory in Bergamo in the Champions League, which has given them a really strong chance of making it through to the playoff round of Europe, at least.

6:53To do so, they will need to beat Sporting Club de Portugal on Wednesday night at San Mames, which may or may not influence their team selection.

7:03Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, yeah. So you just said it's given them a chance in the Champions League. I would say it's probably withdrawn any real chance they have of winning this particular game. Now, that might be overplaying a little bit. But if I'm athletic, I 100 % rest my team, don't I? As much as I possibly can. I 100 % protect them. And now all season, Ernesto Valverde has talked about prioritising the league. And he's talked about that, you know, despite the Champions League, the prioritises the league. And at times we've been a bit baffled by, you know, you get in the Champions League for the first time in a decade.

7:32Phil Kitromilides:Why isn't all of your focus on this? And it hasn't been. He made a comment. I think it was midweek or maybe it was. I think it was before the game midweek. It might have been afterwards. I must confess, I can't remember when now. In which he said, well, prioritising the league is what led us to win the Copa de la Réa. The year that we won the Copa de la Réa, we didn't prioritise the Copa de la Réa. We still prioritise the league. We just did both. Sevilla, I find a really weird team. I did the Sevilla game Monday night on Monday night on Monday night and as a co-commentator one of the things obviously that you're supposed to do in your job is to obviously provide the the colour around the game provide the analytical start part of it to to hopefully offer things that people haven't seen and at one point I was trying to explain why I thought Sevilla were really really bad at the back and I couldn't quite come up with the way of explaining it and I'm going to try now and see if you can help me and I actually saw former Real Lovie de goalkeeper Esteban on the way out and and he he basically put it in in far more blunt terms than I had done but the point basically was that it seemed to me that every time Elche were faced by what should be the Sevilla back three in other words in a position not not in a position where they're going beyond them but in a position where they're in front of them.

8:52Phil Kitromilides:So you would call it, I don't know, they're in the kind of three-quarter position and there's a back three in front of them. It felt to me that every time they're in that position, there wasn't a back three in front of them. At most, there was two of them. Usually one of them was just not in the shot. The amount of space to the side of that back three was always huge. And it was like this barrier that should be there simply wasn't there most of the time. And it's curious because for a lot of this season, I felt like Sevilla at least have a kind of a sense of collective responsibility, which maybe they haven't had in previous seasons.

9:25Phil Kitromilides:They at least have a sense of, I suppose, competitiveness, for want of a better word. I mean, that's a very nebulous and generalised phrase. But organisationally, I felt that that three was just really, really haphazard. And yet Sevilla, I was going to say they're not absolutely terrible. They've lost three of the last four and they drew the other one and they were a little bit fortunate to draw it in Elche. I thought. Yeah, I thought so. Although in truth, almost without, how do I put this? Again, this is another one which I couldn't properly explain. Sevilla didn't create loads of chances, but they got a lot of them.

10:01Phil Kitromilides:There was an accumulation of opportunity without ever feeling like, oh, look, here's a pattern. Here's a play. Here's a thing that's making it happen. So at home against Athletic, if only because I don't really trust either of them, I'm going to go for a draw. Going to go for a draw. Then the game that you're covering in situ, you're going to be at the Estadio de la Ceramica for Villarreal against Real Madrid. Villarreal, who we were a bit rude about on the bonus part in terms of their Champions League performances. But we said we were going to be not rude today because today is the league. It is, and they're third.

10:36They're third in the league and they're second bottom in the Champions League of 36th, 35th.

10:41Phil Kitromilides:It is a sort of almost comic situation, isn't it? Where basically the worst team in Europe is one of the very best in Spain. It's the only one in Spain really, well, the only one in Spain pushing the big three. You could possibly even argue the only one in Spain pushing the big two. I feel like the wheels have come off a little bit because they've lost two of the last four. But again, we come into that dynamic that we've been talking about, about losing to the teams they should lose to. So they were defeated 2-0 at Barcelona, and they were defeated last weekend 2-0 away at Betis. Now, you could say, well, they shouldn't lose to Betis, but I suppose it's away at Betis, and Betis are, with Espanyol admittedly, the best of the other teams, the non-top-four teams.

11:28Phil Kitromilides:I think this is, you know what, looking at this and thinking about this in predictions as we're doing, this feels like a really difficult week to call, doesn't it? There isn't any really, really obvious ones except the one that's coming up in a minute. But there aren't very many really, really obvious predictions, I think, this weekend. And I think this one isn't really, really obvious, but I'm going for a Real Madrid victory. How important is this game for Real Madrid? I heard someone on the radio describing it as the most important game of the season for Real Madrid. It could set the tone for the rest of the season.

11:57Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, I've got a bit of sympathy for that. The trouble is, of course, the next... I mean, I'm going to use the manager's cliche here. The next game is always the most important game. And for Real Madrid, it's felt a little bit like that. Because all the time it feels like, oof, this is the moment. Oof, this is the moment. And what if they don't win? And of course, when you win and it knocks on and then you get another most important one. Or when you lose, it gets forgotten and you get a new, you know, you reframe, what would you call it? You reframe priorities and significances. So for example, you could argue, well, more important surely was losing to Barcelona in the Super Cup final because that's what cost Xavi Lanzo his job.

12:28Phil Kitromilides:Or at least it's what pulled the trigger on Xavi Lanzo losing his job. You could argue that the Clasico early in the season was the most important one. And funny enough, they won that. But that was still the beginning of the end because we had the whole manifestation of the Vinicius Xabi Alonso thing. But yeah, I do see something in that. And I see something in that because I like, as you said, the idea that it sets up the rest of the season. Because it sets up, is this real? Is there a chance of turning around? Will they be better with Arbeloa? They've just battered Monaco. And I'm going to rephrase this because they did batter Monaco, but they sort of didn't batter Monaco.

13:01Phil Kitromilides:I was looking at the stats in this, and I'm glad in a way that it confirmed the eye test that we had a bit during the game. Now, I don't want this to sound like I'm undermining a 6-1 win, right? Because it's a 6-1 win. But there is a handful of saves from Courtois. There are moments when Madrid look quite open. And Madrid had five shots on target in this game and scored six goals. Now, that's not to say this wasn't good, because it was quite good. But I do think it feels a bit bigger than it really was. In fact, your first question to Eric Dier was, you know, was the result a bit harsher than it should have been?

13:33Phil Kitromilides:To which he said, in a French accent, mais non. no no no the result was about right i think

13:42if you haven't seen the interview i've done with eric dyer go look at tnt sports uh social media and find it he it's not quite french is it there's moments of french there's moments of sort of um

13:53Phil Kitromilides:standardized non non-definite definable sort of european isn't there to be fair he did he was sort of he was born in england raised in portugal then back in england he's been in germany he's playing in France, he's been all over Europe. Yeah, no, it was funny. But that's still no excuse. I was talking to English TV, someone with an English accent. I quite enjoyed it. Anyway, but yeah. Yeah. It was funny. It threw me, actually. I was like, what? Did you have a moment? You thought you were sure this is Eric Dier you could win me and not some French midfielder who looks a bit like him. I was actually going to go off on a like, not, but I was going to ask him about like, and how, you know, how's life in France?

14:29How are you going? But he was so pissed off. I was like, I'm not going to get much out of him. But anyway, we digress. Remember, I just wanted to say here that this feels like the first game for Arba Arbaloa and it was quite specifically chosen that he would take over from Xabi Alonso after that Spanish Super Cup defeat because upcoming, the three games that he had were against the team 17th in the second division, 19th in La Liga and 9th in the French League. It was a relatively comfortable run of fixtures for him to start his tenure and it didn't necessarily prove to be as comfortable as they thought it might be.

15:06Now comes the first real test, in theory.

15:09Phil Kitromilides:Exactly that. No, no, absolutely. And that speaks entirely to what you were saying about this being the most important game. And this does, I think, give us an idea of, is this for real? Well, not is this for real, but is the 6-1 for real? Is there a chance of improving? And of course there is. And we know there is because they've got good players, really good players. And because if they are able to play in a way where they're free and they play on the break, they're always going to be threatening. which is so in other words I don't think we're going to see a kind of a massive tactical shift well there's a couple of little things that I thought were interesting in midweek Fede Valverde going from full back to tucking inside for example which I think changed his shape to kind of a free plus an extra man in midfield and then open the pitch out so that the two wide men could run I thought that was quite interesting I'd be interested to see what they do with that forward line when Rodrigo is available whether Mastanto keeps his position or Rodrigo comes into it um Gonçalo García kind of putting him in the team somehow seems to have been forgotten already because you know he's upset forward but then Mbappe came back and it was like okay he plays on the right that looks to me like it's gone already which might be unfair I might be jumping the gun but yeah I think this is this is a really interesting one and I think Real Madrid are going to win so good so good so good Spring Styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now and they're up to 60 % off.

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17:32Let's move on. Atletico Madrid against Mallorca. We gave them. Did you have the stats about Atletico Madrid scoring from shots?

17:40Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, it's it's an it's an amazing statistic, which you may not have heard before. And unfortunately, I can't remember exactly what it is, but I think it's five goals from the last 75 shots. It's five goals from the last 85 shots. Oh, there you go. It was close. It was close. We've barely mentioned it on the podcast. No, we haven't. This is a running joke, guys. Al mentioned it on Monday. I didn't hear it. I then mentioned it as if he'd never talked about it on yesterday's bonus pod. And so now we're going to talk about Atletico Madrid shooting and goal stats in every single podcast and mention it.

18:09But the point is that they are lacking that contundencia, that lack of efficiency in front of goal. and the caso Julian the Julian Alvarez case the mystery around the drop off in his form continues he hasn't scored in the league Sid do you know since when?

18:29Phil Kitromilides:Is it since the opening day when he scored against Espanyol? That was away in the league I reckon since late September 1st of November I was a long way off sorry way to undermine my points Sidney but it's still two and a half months without him scoring in the league, having played every game. It's a long time, yeah. In midweek, you know, I thought he looked lively. I thought his play was better than in recent weeks. And there's one chance, actually, that he's really close. He goes in the side netting, top corner of the side netting and he doesn't quite get there. Should we play smart ass here and say that we told you there was a Julian Alvarez case way before anyone else was talking about it?

19:09Did we?