The Weekend of the Garcías

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1:37Hello everyone and welcome to this week's edition of the Spanish Football Podcast. I'm Phil Kitram, ladies. I'm joined by Sid Lowe. We have had some technical issues with Sydney's mic before coming on, which is why Sid looks so particularly unimpressed ahead of today's podcast. It's also Monday morning, which means it's the busiest time of the week. And Sydney is looking at me with a look which basically says, let's bloody get on with this. I've got loads to write.

2:01Phil Kitromilides:I'm looking at this microphone and thinking, I need to scan out the window. That's what I'm thinking. It wouldn't be the first piece of technological equipment which has frustrated you, which has gone literally flying out of your office window. It probably wouldn't, no. No. I think there was a poor old printer which felt your wrath. Oh, that didn't go out the window. That just got kicked. I just got kicked. No, that got kicked. Yeah, it didn't go out the window. I'm using the printer. Anyway. And I kept it even after it was broken because it was quite useful to have something there to kick. Good.

2:29Phil Kitromilides:This is a brilliant insight. I kept it in a box so that the pieces could fly around without flying around the office. And I kept it in a box. And when I wanted to, I could kick it. Fantastic. Good. Good. Well, that's how we're starting today, Monday morning, talking about kicking things inside a box. This is what happened on Match Day 18. Talking about kicking things inside a box. Neither Ryo nor Getafe are very good at that. Very good. Seamless. They played on Friday night. It finished 1-1 at Vallecas. An absolutely terrible game of professional football, just stunningly low quality. The surprise is that both teams managed to score.

3:06Getafe did it in the 91st minute in rather painful fashion for Rio. It finished 1-1. And then on Saturday, Celta Vigo inflicted a really damaging defeat on Valencia. 4-1 it finished at Palahados. Valencia missing an early penalty. They are in the relegation zone now, Valencia. and in all sorts of trouble. Osasuna and Athletic Club played out a Basque-ish derby at El Sardar. It finished 1-1. Villarreal became the first team to win away to Elche this season. 3-1. They were successful at the Martinez-Balero. Sydney was there to witness the game. And Barcelona won the Catalan derby 2-0 at the RCDE Stadium against Espanyol.

3:47Espanyol feeling very hard done because they played really well in this game and probably deserved to get something out of it. Then on Sunday, a massive win for Levante. Bottom side Levante went to Sevilla and won 3-0. They're not bottom anymore. Real Madrid beat Betis 5-1 at the Bernabeu in a funny old game. A hat-trick from Gonzalo Garcia, seamlessly replacing the injured Kylian Mbappé. Alavesa and Oviedo finish 1-1. Should have been 3-0 to Oviedo. They scored. They had plenty of chances to score more. I got so many expletive-ridden messages from Sydney throughout the latter stages of this match.

4:24Really, really, really should have won. Desperately needed to win because teams at the bottom were winning as well. But they didn't finish 1-1. Girona, one of those teams at the bottom who did win, claimed a 2-1 success at Mallorca. Tsygankov and Vanna, the two Ukrainians, with the goals. And Real Sociedad played out a 1-1 draw with Atletico Madrid. It was the first game in charge for new American coach Pellegrino Matarazzo of La Real. They looked better, played a bit more on the front foot and probably should have won this game. Atletico Madrid creating absolutely nothing, one shot on target and yet another disappointing away showing from Atletico Madrid this season.

5:01Thank you to everyone who's joined us already at patreon.com forward slash TSFP in 2026. We've had loads of new patrons over the last week, so thank you. They'll be getting the Monday and Friday podcasts without adverts. That's a weekly Q &A pod and a bonus pod as well. and there's the newsletter, the diary, the Discord. You can join us. Sign up from just€4.75 a month, or it's even cheaper if you get an annual membership. That's all at patreon.com forward slash TSFP. So let's get to the Catalan Derby then at the RCDE Stadium on Saturday night, Sydney. It finished 2-0 to Barcelona. The goal's coming late on, very late on.

5:39Dani Olmo in the 86th minute, and then Robert Lewandowski in injury time. the build-up to this game was all about Joan Garcia. It genuinely was focused so much on his return to Espanyol, what we're expecting the fans to greet him with, and the hostile reception he was going to get. Espanyol pleading with their fans not to be violent towards him, erecting nets behind the goal so they couldn't chuck things at him. It was all about Joan Garcia. And at full time, Sid, it was still all about Joan Garcia.

6:10Phil Kitromilides:Yeah, because his performance was absolutely brilliant. as good a goalkeeping performance as I've seen. I was going to say for a long time, but I think probably Thibaut Courtois has a thing or two to say about that over the last few years, because there's been games where he has single-handedly made, well, not single-handedly, he's tended to use both hands, made so many of it, very good, made so many saves that he's kept round with it in games that he shouldn't be in. I think what was striking about this was, I suppose it is the context as well. It's the way that it's built up. It's the fact that Joan Garcia didn't seem at all moved by any of it.

6:41Phil Kitromilides:It didn't seem at all fazed by the noise, by the things that were thrown at him, which mercifully were not quite as much as they should have been, but still more. So quite as much as we thought they would be, but more than they should have been. The amount of pressure he was under and he made six saves officially. I think it's seven because I think the one-on-one against Roberto doesn't count as a save because he dives at his feet and pushes it away. No, because it's not a shot. I think statistically that doesn't count as a save. That was one of the best of the lot. Yeah, I think that's one of the best of the lot.

7:08Phil Kitromilides:My favourite save is the one he doesn't make. is the one that he makes Gerard Martin make. I mean, for those of our listeners who haven't seen it, there's a save and a rebound, and he realises he can't get to the rebound in time. So he pushes his centre defender into the ball. He pushes his centre defender over, so his central defender makes the block for him. And then there's a save that he makes from a Pedermia header, which is just extraordinary. I think that's the best save I've ever seen live, I think. It may well be. I mean, it is phenomenal because... Maybe recency bias, but genuinely, I mean, you know, certain saves that stick in your mind.

7:44And I genuinely can't think of a better one. And it's the speed of movement.

7:46Phil Kitromilides:There's a little bit of good fortune in the sense that he's in the air and he kind of throws his arms across. And, you know, they could end up anywhere. They might not reach the ball. But the reaction time is so, so fast. The, what would you call it? The adaptability in the air, I suppose. The ability to see it and move his arms towards it quick enough. It's just a phenomenal save. So what I love about that, there are three reactions from three Espanol players in that save that tell you so much. So the cross is from Romero, the header is from Pedramilla, and just behind Pedramilla is Dolan. And so you've got the three of them.

8:20Phil Kitromilides:Now, the first reaction you see is Dolan, who's celebrating the goal already. His arms are up celebrating. Then he realises that the keeper saved it. Then you see Romero doing that thing, you know, where you wag your hands as if you've just trapped your fingers in a drawer. He's going, whoa. And then you get this moment where Pelé Milla kind of walks up to Dragaccia at the corner and sort of gives him a little punch in the stomach, like a sort of gentle punch in the stomach, because it's like, bloody hell, man. It's a fantastic save. And he was brilliant throughout the game, which, of course. I mean, it wasn't just the saves, was it?

8:49Phil Kitromilides:It was everything. It was so hostile, but he was coming out of his box to pick up those long balls. He's good on crosses. Playing the passes that he always plays. Good on crosses. It was everything. Yeah, everything. He's a big goalkeeper without being giant. There's a calmness about everything he does. His use of the ball with his feet is good. His reaction time is fantastic. As you say, there's a kind of an awareness of everything going on around him that I think makes him look very, very special indeed. He's only 21, which of course is... Sorry, no, he's not. He's 24, isn't he? He's 24, which in goalkeeping terms is pretty young still.

9:26Phil Kitromilides:Obviously, the debate has started now about the national team. And funny enough, we've actually talked about this on the pod before, so let's not go over it again. But I think what that does tell you is that everyone's looking at him and going, wow, this guy is absolutely fantastic. And of course, what that leads us to in terms of an analysis of this game is that, as Hansi Flick rightly put it, we didn't deserve to win this. And I have to say thanks to Joan Garcia. That for me is this match in a nutshell, because I thought Espanyol were very, very good indeed. They were superior to Barcelona. They were better team in it.

9:54Phil Kitromilides:Much the better side. Much the better side. Well, matches possibly, is that a bit unfair? I don't know. I think they were the better. It was quite even, but I was, you know... But they made a better chance, and certainly till the end. And, you know, the other thing, if we could look at this from an analytical point of view, I think Barcelona, here we go, this is that thing that always makes me feel very uncomfortable, but I'm going to say it. Hansi Flick got it wrong again. I think that insistence of trying, of thinking that he's lacking midfielders and making up for it with an extra forward and playing someone inside.

10:24Phil Kitromilides:On this occasion, it was Rafinha playing in the inside position, the number 10, Rashford on the wing. Again, it didn't work. I mean, they've tried it a few times and it doesn't entirely commit. We saw Lemine play in the middle of it and it worked quite well against Betis. But it wasn't like it was his great performance. It was just like we looked at it and thought, well, this is interesting from a Lemine point of view. From the point of view of, wow, could this be a place for him? But generally speaking, I think that hasn't worked. And I think the change changed everything. The introduction of Olmo, the introduction of Pedri, the introduction of Lewandowski, I think less so, although he does score the goal.

10:57Phil Kitromilides:And then obviously, yeah, that's the guy I'm coming to. What a player he is. When he's good, he's so good. And he's really brilliant in the two goals. And a slightly different type of Barcelona youth team player. And it's not all about technique, although he's got it. It's about the drive and determination. I suppose you could almost call it. Is this a childish word to use? One of the things I like about Firmin is the enthusiasm with which he plays. There's this sort of sense of, oh, I can get to that. I'm going to do this. And I really like that. Almost cartoon-like. Yeah, exactly. It reminds me a little bit.

11:32Phil Kitromilides:It's slightly different because I think he's more aggressive. But it reminds me a little bit of Camavinga. I always talk to you about how I like Camavinga's exuberance even when he doesn't play well. You know, that sort of willingness to run through and go for things. And with Fermin, it's not quite the same. But there's a touch of that to him as well. The thing with Fermin is I find that sometimes when he gets in those areas around the box, like the only thing on his mind is shooting. and I think he needs to have a little bit, potentially a bit more power, so a bit more vision, a bit more awareness, which maybe is coming, maybe is coming.

12:02But yeah, that would be the only thing that I would say. I agree with you.

12:05Phil Kitromilides:Yeah. The weird thing is that, and this is very contradictory, but I think that at times that's beneficial because I think at times it means he takes things on and makes things happen that other players might not. I mean, obviously, I still think in those spaces around the edge of the area, their best player is Danny Olmo. But of course, Danny Olmo doesn't have, well it's a physical thing really doesn't get continuity yeah because he's seemingly always injured because he gets injured a lot yeah exactly but he's got an absolutely brilliant goal fantastic goal made by Fennemine and dispatched by Olmo in superb fashion beautiful first time strike over Marco Dimitrovic who didn't have too much to do in this game the Espanol goalkeeper but he did make one extraordinary save from Eric Garcia really do you know what are we allowed to say it it's better than all of Joanne Garcia's saves The best save of the game is actually Dimitrovic's.

12:54Phil Kitromilides:Do you think so? No, I know. I'm being deliberately obtuse, but it was an absolutely fantastic save. We've seen two of the saves of the season in this game, coming off the back of Jan Oblak in the last game of 2025, Atletico Madrid against Girona, the save he made against Axel Witzel. We thought, oh, that's the save of the season. It's not now. It isn't. But anyway, Barcelona winning this game against a really well-organised Espanyol side who had these great chances, who really, really should have scored. And afterwards, they were clearly disappointed. Because remember, Espanyol haven't beaten Barcelona since 2009 in the league.

13:33They haven't won at home against them since 2007. They've never won a league derby against Barcelona in this stadium where they play. This was their best chance to do so, Sid.

13:44Phil Kitromilides:Yes, it was. And it wasn't just the best chance because of how the game played out. it was the best chance because of how they came into the game. In a way, how the game played out wasn't enormously surprising. Espanol have been absolutely fantastic. I think they came into this, I think it's six wins in a row, wasn't it? Coming into this, or maybe five. And there was, there's a, there's, one of the things that happened, we talked about this a little bit last week, was that last year they shifted at the halfway stage of the season. The results improved, but they were broadly speaking in a counter-attacking team.

14:11Phil Kitromilides:I think they do more now. And I think in this game, they were much more front-footed. They were much more determined to go out Barcelona. And in a way, perhaps they partly lost this game because they thought there's a chance they could win it. Because they were continuing to go for Barcelona. I think, you know, in previous years, you get into 82, 83, 84 minutes, nil-nil with Barcelona, and perhaps you close off. And they didn't because they could feel that the weight of the game, the dynamic of the game was in their direction. And then you have that fantastic turn from Firmin, and suddenly they're caught and they're open.

14:40Phil Kitromilides:And that's it. Admittedly, there's another goal. But I think, you know, by that point, the game is broken. I think they use the ball pretty well. They're quite direct. They are quite direct. I'm not going to pretend they're this paragon of possession or anything. They're not. They've got the lowest possession in La Liga at the moment. In the whole league? Even lower than the attachment. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, I didn't know that. And they are quite direct. They try and get the ball into the wide men pretty quickly. They go quite long to Roberto, who, remember a few weeks ago, I described Roberto as being the game in which I'd seen a player do the least, do the most.

15:14Phil Kitromilides:Yes. Because he's one of these players that you watch him and there's such an enormous, I suppose, generosity of effort and so on. And in this game, he had the chances and he missed them and he had two really, really good chances. And you could see when he went off, he was absolutely devastated at the chances he'd missed. But I think he gives them so much and he's a big part of the reason why they can play the way they are. He was a huge part of why they survived last year because he came midway through the season and scored lots of goals. But it's also about what he gives everyone else and gives the players around him someone to play from.

15:47Phil Kitromilides:So it's to him and then from him to everyone else quite a lot of the time. There's only one forward in the league, Sid, that does more high-intensity sprints than Roberto Fernandes. Okay. Is it Hugo Touro? No, no, because he hasn't played enough minutes. High-intensity sprints? Go on, who is it? A vein popping on the side of your head. Go on, who is it? Giuliano Simeone. Ah, I wouldn't have called him a forward. Right, okay. I would have thought of him as a wide midfielder. Okay, yeah. Well, there you go. That's the obvious answer. Yes, absolutely. That is absolutely the obvious answer. But apart from him, it's Roberto Fernandes.

16:23So, yeah, that gives you an idea of just how many of those, sort of that repetition of those high-intensity sprints that he does game after game. And it was a big performance from him. The only thing missing was a goal, unfortunate for Espanol.

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17:29Phil Kitromilides:New friends. Gary the snake. And your last name? The snake. Dream team. New habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. So you can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus Rated PG. Right now, you can get Disney Plus and Hulu for just$4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th. After three months, plan auto renews at$12.99 a month. Terms apply. All right, let's talk about Real Madrid beating Real Betis 5-1 at the Bernabeu with a hat-trick from Gonzalo Garcia. Perfect hat-trick as well. a header, a brilliant goal with the right and a beautiful flick with the left.

18:09A memorable, memorable performance from him. There were also five goals from Canteranos in this game because he scored three. Raul Asensio scored one and Fran Garcia scored in injury time as well. This game, I mean, I thought the first half was possibly Real Madrid's best performance for a while, certainly in the first half of the game. They went 3-0 up. And then Betis sort of got back into it. They made it 3-1. They had a couple of chances to make it 3-2. Royal Riquelme hits the inside of the post with an unbelievable shot. If that goes in, it's 3-2 and things start getting very, very nervy indeed.

18:47There were already whistles in the Bernabeu at 3-1. But it didn't. Then they scored a fourth and then a fifth. And then it was all wrapped up pretty comfortably. So not to take anything away from Morel Madrid. They played well in this game. It was a positive day for them. But it could have gone a slightly different way, Sid, it felt like in that second half.

19:06Phil Kitromilides:It could. And it was sort of starting to happen at the back end of the first half as well. From about 35 minutes onwards, there was a sort of a sense of the intensity dropping a little bit. A sense that Betis was starting to realise that they could get into the game. Maybe not creating a huge amount, but the territorial sort of possession had shifted a little bit. Then, as you say, they had these chances. They hit the post. Not just the Rorokilme one. There's the Los Elos free kick, which he's not trying to score, but it does go all the way through and hit the post. There's a couple of saves that Courtois has to make.

19:33Phil Kitromilides:And at this point, you're thinking, wow, Madrid do look a little bit edgy. And obviously, the atmosphere and the context doesn't help because people are starting to whistle or get a little bit irritated. And you think, oof, I think you're right. If Betis make it 3-2, then things change. But they didn't. And I do think that it's worth talking about, obviously, and as we've done with the other Garcia's, the weekend of the Garcias. Let's talk about Gonzalo Garcia in just a second. But I think there was a dynamism about Real Madrid, certainly in that first half an hour that we haven't seen very often this year.