Total operational failure

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1:46Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of the Spanish Football Podcast. I'm Phil Kitt from the ladies. I've got Sid Lowe alongside me drinking tea and ready to discuss what happened on matchday 15 in La Liga EA Sports. Got so much to talk about after a very eventful weekend. Sidney, hello. Hello. So much to talk about. Almost too much. I don't really know where to start. Well, we do know where to start, to be honest. It's just a case of whether we can touch all the other bases all the way through. Don't you worry. You leave that to me. I know exactly where to start. We're starting on Friday night in Oviedo.

2:16No, we're not. You liar. But we will go through the results. And that was the first result of the match day. And it was an almost inevitable nil-nil draw between Oviedo and Mallorca. Fortunately, Sydney didn't make the eight-hour round trip to see this game while struggling from a cold. So you saved yourself from that. Then on Saturday, Villarreal beat Getafe 2-0. Villarreal continuing their sensational start to the season. They are keeping pace with the leaders. Alaves beating Real Sociedad by a goal to nil in a local derby. An absolutely wild game at the Cartouja. So Betis take the lead against Barcelona inside six minutes and end up losing 5-3.

2:57Comprehensive from Barca, although Betis added a few goals late on. And Athletic Club with a big 1-0 win for them at home to Atletico Madrid. Atletico were beaten 3-0 midweek by Real Madrid. They needed a result and they got one against an Atletico Madrid who once again disappoints on the road. And then on Sunday, Elche beating Girona by three goals to nil, helped in part by some really questionable goalkeeping from Paolo Gazzaniga, Girona's magnificent looking stopper. He's got the twinkling green eyes, but he wasn't very good on Sunday. Valencia once... I mean, those eyes need to look it at.

3:39I mean, they don't just need looking into, they need looking at. Very much so. Valencia 1, Sevilla 1 was pretty awful. More on that in the newsletter. There we go. Teased that up nicely. Sevilla, Espanyol beating Rayo by a goal to nil. And Celta Vigo winning 2-0 at the Bernabeu, their first win away to Real Madrid in 19 years. Monday Night Football is Osasuna against Levante. Now, it's shaping up to be a very interesting season. so don't miss any of our coverage. You can join us at patreon.com forward slash TSFP from just€4.75 a month. You get advert-free pods on Mondays and Fridays. You get the Q &A pod and the bonus pod and the newsletter and access to the Discord and the WhatsApp community.

4:26Why not gift annual membership to your La Liga loving pals this Christmas? You get a discount if you sign up for the year as well. Patreon.com forward slash TSFP. Now, Sid, we do know where we're going to start at the Bernabeu. At the end. Last night, indeed, the last game that we saw. Real Madrid beaten 2-0 by Celta Vigo. We've got loads to discuss about Real Madrid, but we're going to start with how bloody good were Celta Vigo last night, Sid. Absolutely brilliant performance, sensational plan, perfectly executed, really, really good from Celta. They were just fantastic. They used the ball so well.

5:08They were brilliant at taking control of the game, controlling the pace of it, at drawing Real Madrid out of the kind of positions that Real Madrid wanted to be in. The thing that really struck me, and I was thinking this, it took a while for it to kind of dawn on me, but one of the things they did so, so well, and I'm not really quite sure how to describe it, was to take Real Madrid to a place and then go long to another place and pull Real Madrid out of that position and then have Real Madrid scrambling to try and get to that other place and then take them to another place, if you see what I mean.

5:39And they were really, really good at pulling them, kind of inviting the pressure into a corner, then either playing their way out, diving across the pitch or up the line, pulling Real Madrid into that place, then coming back inside where the space has now been opened up. I don't think I've ever... No, ever is a big statement. All right, let me retract that. I haven't seen for a while, I think, a team, if you like, manipulate the movement of the other team quite as well as I thought I saw Celta do last night. How well they dragged them in, pulled them out, made space, opened the pitch up, went into it.

6:12Now, it's true, of course, we're talking about Real Madrid. So there were periods of the game where Real Madrid have more possession. There were periods of the game where Celta were forced to come a little bit deep. But it all felt at every point like Celta knew how they were going to play out of this, how they were going to control the game from this. The performance as, if you like, the kind of the centrepiece of so much of what they did from Borja Iglesias was absolutely phenomenal. And so when we're talking about how they were drawing Real Madrid out, the amount of times that what they did was go to Borja, who would come towards the ball with a defender or sometimes two on his back.

6:44He would then go across to one of the two sides and Real Madrid would have to stop and turn and go after the ball that way. Then they would inevitably, Real Madrid wouldn't quite get there. And by the time they get there, the ball's turned back inside again or it's turned up the line and the space is opening up. And I thought that, is there an English equivalent of the Spanish word tiralinias? That idea of pulling the lines around, you know, that kind of you pull it this way and the kind of, what do you call it, like the bead in the middle of the line kind of goes that way. And then you pull the line across and it comes back this way again.

7:15And there was just no way it felt like, like Celta were going to panic until actually they went a man up, until Real Madrid went a man down and then Real Madrid sort of kind of went to them. And I got the feeling, do you know my feeling there was Celta played worse with 10 men, at least, sorry, against 10 men, at least for the first 10 minutes or so of that. And I think that part of it was at that point, they started to think about the result rather than about the play. And I think at that point, it was like, we're leading at the Bernabeu. We're a man up. Ooh. And at that point, a bit of vertigo comes in.

7:50And also it's true that, you know, then Brown would just start running at you, being really aggressive, being much more dynamic, much more offensive, much more direct. And I felt Celta panicked for a little while. But it only took 10 minutes or so to put it all back in place again. I thought their performance was absolutely fantastic. Yeah, totally agree. Just a little side now, if it sounds like Sid is recording in the toilet, he's not. He's recording in his kitchen because we've had to change positions for today's recording. So apologies if it is a little more echoey than normal. I mean, you mentioned Borja iglesias it was just an absolute textbook performance of a center forward how to lead the line how to hold the ball up this concept of descargas uh which existed in in in in in spanish you know holding the ball and then laying it off it was just extraordinary and um yeah i think we may see him in the next spain squad again he's been in i mean he doesn't have to do that that much in in for spain that's the thing this is a completely different role is what he needs to do for Spain, but still, he was absolutely brilliant.

8:54Well done to Celta, well done to Claudio Giralde, the youngest manager in the league, and a terrific result for them. Real Madrid, Sid. The crisis ometer is teetering towards explosion because it is a massive, massive, massive blow. And they've had disappointing results this season. You know, they conceded five in a Madrid derby. They've drawn Elche, Rayo and Girona, teams that they should all have beaten. But this is the worst result of the lot. And it comes off the back of what was in theory supposed to be a turning point. A 3-0 win in Bilbao in midweek when momentum was supposed to be built.

9:37And there was nothing from them yesterday again, Sid. So let's talk about what we talked about on Thursday when we talked about the Bilbao game. and we were conscious of saying, look, we don't want this to feel like it's undermining what was a very good performance at a very good place. In theory, you go away to Sam & Mesh, you play like that, it's a very good performance. But we were talking about the context of it and the context of the approach from Athletic, which had been not massively dissimilar to the approach from Olympiacos. And in that approach, Real Madrid can play really well. And also they had Trent Alexander-Arnold as, if you like, the launcher.

10:09I mean, that's a very kind of rudimentary word putting it, but the launcher of some of their attacks, You know, the starting point of some of their attacks, going long, going diagonal. And Celta, we thought there was a risk that we could do this to Celta because Celta liked to play quite high. But what Celta also wants to do is keep the ball and to control the momentum and the tempo of the game in a different way to Athletic. I also felt that Celta adapted the way they play a little bit. They weren't quite as gung-ho. They were a little bit more cautious. I think actually they've been a bit like that for quite a lot of this season compared to last year.

10:40and in particular with those bad results at the start when it took them, how many weeks did it take them to win? Eight weeks or so, something like that? Can't remember now. And they were, I think there was a sense of, right, we need to solidify this, but it was all about control. And when it becomes about control, the truth is I don't think Madrid have a really obvious response to it because I think Madrid live better in chaos, if you see what I mean. They live better in spreading the game out. And we talked about that at the Athletic game. And this was partly their undoing this time because they came across a team that I think more than anything else was clever, was structured, was clever, was intelligent, knew how to move those spaces around.

11:19And Madrid had no real response for it. I also think it is true that we can strip it down to some of the things we were talking about in midweek as well, which is that Madrid lacked attitude, lacked aggression, lacked, if you like, a willingness to go at people. We've talked about this so many times this season. No juega nada. You know, they don't play anything. There isn't really a clear idea. You know, you had Bellingham and Ardegula back in the team again, and it sort of felt like neither of them really got the performance they wanted to get from it. Their best player, certainly when they did finally respond down to 10 men, in my view, was Chormeni.

11:54And I've got nothing against Chormeni, who I think is a very good footballer. But if he is the one that's leading your attacks, or at least leading your attempt to construct play, then to be honest, something's wrong systemically there. And I thought Madrid were dreadful. And you're talking about this as being their worst performance, I think, or their worst result. I think in a way, it's a culmination of things. It's the worst because it comes off the back of the others. So it's only one win in five now in La Liga. It's the worst because it comes at home. It's the worst because of that sense, as you've just framed it, that they thought they'd turn the corner.

12:28And as you turn around the corner, you get to another street and think, God, this one's shit as well. You know, you get in a situation where you think, OK, here's the momentum. Oh, where is the momentum? And then I think the other thing is the way it ended. So you get a game in which they get two red cards plus another one on the bench for Hendrik, although Hendrik wasn't playing anyway. So that's not really a huge loss. You get a big injury, which really is a loss at a Milletown. And you get that sense of them losing their heads again. And you get that final goal, which I think is a really, it's a brilliant goal.

13:00And I think it's a really symbolic goal for Real Madrid in a way, because Celta quite literally walked the ball into their net. And that final scene is like a kind of a portrait of Madrid's total operational failure. And it's a brilliant portrait of that. Total operational failure. Good podcast title. You might have a title. It certainly encapsulates what happened yesterday. to Real Madrid. Their next league game is away at Alaves and as things stand, they have eight defenders unavailable for that game. Eight defenders unavailable for that game. It's going to be particularly problematic for Real Madrid and Xavi Alonso.

13:46Before that, speaking of problems, there's a visit of Manchester City in the Champions League on Wednesday night to the Bernabeu. Allow me to be a little bit sort of sensationalist with this question. how much pressure is Xabi Alonso under? Is there a chance that this is his last week as Real Madrid manager? Yes. Yes, there's a chance. Of course, there's a chance. We've seen these kind of scenarios before. We've seen how they tend to play out. I think possibly even more so, counterintuitive though it may sound, because they played well against Athletic and because there was a sense of, OK, we found a coexistence.

14:25We found a way of kind of dealing with some of those internal splits and then to then produce this kind of performance. I think that hits almost harder. You say, well, hadn't we fixed this one? And I think that suggests, you know, that that can be a temporary fix. It suggests that he's not getting through to them. I do think the context in part is, as you've said, that it's Man City midweek. I think there is an element of them thinking this is about City and that mentally the mind goes to there. There's something about the culture of Real Madrid, of course, that prioritises the Champions League over all else, which doesn't mean that you don't bother trying against other teams.

15:02Absolutely not. But it plays a part. But yeah, Alonso is under enormous pressure. And I don't know about you, but I thought his press conference yesterday, now I understand the kind of pressure they're under, but I don't. I don't think we can ever fully understand the amount of pressure they're under. But I thought his explanations didn't convince. He talked about two things having a real impact on them. One of them was the injury to Militao. I understand that does have an impact on you, but that can't be the explanation for the whole thing collapsing. And then he said, oh, and the referee nos desquithió.

15:32What's that kind of, kind of made us lose the plot a bit. You know, the referee kind of made us lose it a little bit. Sent us mad, yeah. No, he didn't. I mean, that as an excuse for this performance is pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. And that's not to say that there aren't moments in which Real Madrid might think, well, but the first of the two red cards is absolutely right. In fact, Xavi's response on the touch-up was really funny. He's going, Fran! Fran, no me jodas. No me jodas. Fran, you know, oh, for F's sake. And I think that was, you know, that's the definition of the fact that it was Fran's fault, entirely Fran's fault, two cards in a minute.

16:11The Carreras one, for what it's worth, I think referees could be a bit more indulgent at players shouting at them. I sometimes think they're a little bit kind of quick to take the card out. But the bottom line is, rule book in hand, that's a red card as well. No two ways about it. And in fact, in Real Madrid losing their head's response to it, there could be a red card for Rodrigo, there could be a red card for Valverde, there's more said post-game. So I don't want to go on to that really, but the point I was trying to make is that that's not the reason for what happened. And so much so, in fact, that if you are going to look at it through the context of red cards, Madrid played better once they'd had a man sent off.

16:45So what's your analysis of what happened in the hour beforehand? There kind of wasn't one. There wasn't really an analysis. Now Now, I'm not always sure that a manager, you know, it'd be nice if a manager gave an analysis and it would be good if they did, but I can understand why a manager I'd actually rather walk away from that. And when he was asked, you know, what's at stake in the Champions League game in the week? Unfortunately, the play on words doesn't quite work in English, you know, what are you playing for? And he said, the Champions League. But I think he knows there's a lot more to it than that.

17:16What's at stake? Well, no, I was going to say that's the translation of you know get the players oh sorry sorry sorry i thought you were yes yes exactly it's what's the state yeah sorry i thought you were asking me what's the state i was i was about to give you a very clear answer as to whether i think he gets sacked off the city game i think the answer is no unless it happens in a really bad way and for what it's worth i think which would probably will respond oh you do yeah you're expecting but they're structurally not but i think they'll respond to in terms of attitude and i think they've got very good players and i think they will go to the formula from the athletic club game and i think that's potentially useful against City.

17:50But I think there is a risk that they spend a lot of this game being out of this game with City dominating possession and then feeling frustrated. I guess the question is then, do City make the most of that? Are Madrid able to find a way through on the break? That would be... That would be how I imagine the gameplay. Going back to something we've previously discussed, you know, teams that potentially leave a little bit of space for Real Madrid. Maybe they get on better against them. Exactly that. We're saying there's a chance. But in the league, They are four points behind leaders Barcelona. It's been quite a turnaround, Sid.

18:24Remember, they won the Clásico a few weeks ago. What were we talking about? Five, six weeks ago. Well, it's a nine-point swing. Nine-point swing, my friends. We're talking about a nine-point swing. All right. By the way, Villarreal are third. They're a point behind Real Madrid and five behind Barcelona, but they played a game fewer. So we're sort of discounting them for the title, but they're still there. All right, that was a big historic result for Celta Vigo at the Bernabeu. If your business runs on five different apps, 12 browser tabs, and one spreadsheet that everyone's afraid to touch, it's probably time for Odoo.

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20:25This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. let's talk about betis 3 barcelona 5 i was fortunate enough to be there i wasn't supposed to be there i was in seville celebrating my 10th anniversary with my missus and it just so coincided with betis against barcelona i just about managed to convince her to go to this game so shout out to my missus who is a glorious and wonderful and deeply understanding and loving woman who allowed us to go and visit this game.

21:19I've actually written about my experience in Seville as a city at the game, got some restaurant tips as well in the newsletter this week. So make sure you check out the newsletter for patrons at patreon.com forward slash TSFP. This was a funny old game, Sid, because as usual, Barca conceded first and they conceded in the first half. A lot of their goals have come. I mean, around 80 % of the goals that they've conceded have come in the first half, but they responded. I think we said in midweek when we were analysing the Atletico Madrid victory that Barcelona is going to keep defending how they defend and they're just going to try and outscore everyone, which is more or less what they did last season.

21:59And now it's very much what they did in this game. A hat-trick from Ferran Torres, Laminya Mal scored a penalty and Rooney Bardagi scoring his first goal as well. Interesting that Rooney was in the team, as was Lamin Yamal, who was playing in a more central position. Before we get on to Lamin specifically and him playing in that position, what did you make of this game as a whole? Because we were talking about it afterwards and you were saying, this was a funny old game. Yeah, it was. It was a game that I don't really know how to analyse. And this came up because you were saying to me, did you not have the feeling that bars were a little bit deeper?

22:35To which my response was, I had the feeling that none of it really made sense. It was a bit of a weird game. I think Barcelona's response to going goal down was very good, but I also felt like it was more a case that every time they got a chance, they took it. And so you didn't really... There's a Spanish phrase, which is the goals came before the play. And I think there was an element of that. Now, that would be a little bit unfair because actually the construction of the first two goals is really, really good. Really good indeed. Both of them on the right-hand side, where Bardachi, I thought, had a fantastic game.

23:03It's a really lovely touch for the ball to Gundé for the first one. He's the one that provides the cross for the second. Both of them really well taken by Ferran Torres, who did the kind of movement that Ferran Torres is very good at, going towards the near post in both cases, getting ahead of the defender and finishing with the ball coming from right to left. And he's in a sort of just to the right of centre position in the area. I thought that Barcelona really actually, as I say, responded really well. I thought Pedri was brilliant again, but it feels like that's almost not news now. And he ran the game.

23:33I thought that of the forwards, the one that kind of had the least impression was Marcus Rashford. But then when he was able to run at people and I was pitch side and got him running at me a bit in the second half, he's some athlete. When he runs at people, people bounce off him and he was very good. And, you know, Betis were bizarrely open. And I think they knew that they, in fact, Manuel Pellegrini had been talking pre-game about the importance of transition going beyond Barcelona. they never quite achieved it they only managed to get me on barcelona a couple of times and the first goal where it's one of those where barcelona think it's offside and they're wrong because jules kunday is coming out slowly but that's not the offside you imagine being barcelona because normally that offside you imagine being barcelona someone coming out slowly he's on the halfway line he's pretty much inside the six-yard box kunday when he's coming out on this one they get caught very very very deep um and and so even the goal they concede isn't really a barcelona a goal to concede.

24:31No, but they did concede and they continue to concede and they continue to score as well. As we said, Lamin playing as a number 10 because Rooney was playing on the right, Rooney Bartadji. It was quite funny, actually, because I was up in the stands and it's a very big stadium, La Cartuja, and when you're up in the gods, you get a very good overview of the game. You need to know who the players are because you can't really tell from their faces. a few times, I mean, not a few times, many times you could just see Lamin naturally drifting out wide because that's his natural position. And a couple of times he was standing on the touchline and Rooney sort of looked over and saw Lamin was there.