Overage youth team mentors & the quickest repaying of a transfer fee ever

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Break up the music! Charge a glass!

Speaker 20 This nation is going to dance all night!

Speaker 3 Jonathan Pierce hits his Euro 2025 stride.

Speaker 4 The lionesses hit the clamour button, the shot mustering threshold, Jao Pedro and the most literal act of a player repaying the chunk of their transfer fee ever seen.

Speaker 3 A very subtly incorrect way of describing Fabio Capello.

Speaker 4 Which club would most likely sign the Free Agent 11 in its entirety? entirety? The wholesome phenomenon of re-signing a player to be the overage mentor to your under-21s?

Speaker 4 And football mentality at the supermarket? Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts.

Speaker 14 This is Football Clichés.

Speaker 14 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Football Clichés.

Speaker 22 I'm Adam Hurry.

Speaker 14 This is the adjudication panel.

Speaker 3 Joining me is Charlie Ecclesia from Wimbledon.

Speaker 25 How are you doing?

Speaker 26 Very well, thank you. Alongside you is David Walker.

Speaker 27 How are you doing?

Speaker 11 I'm good.

Speaker 22 On Tuesday's episode, talk turned to Dominic Calvert Lewin and how we pondered about whether there was still a player in there and who should pipe up within minutes of us recording with this.

Speaker 3 I used to think there was a player in Calvert Lewin.

Speaker 21 There still might be, but United can't seriously be thinking about signing him. What a come-down.
The Jim Reaper has led the club into a cul-de-sac.

Speaker 5 I'd be surprised if the new stadium ever gets built.

Speaker 31 It's a shambles.

Speaker 9 It really is like a mini-blog, isn't it?

Speaker 11 All in one. Yeah,

Speaker 11 it's the same style.

Speaker 29 He's gagging to blog, isn't he?

Speaker 36 Just do a blog, Keezy. It's fine.

Speaker 13 Or just you get like the Twitter verification. You do this really long posts.
If he can't be asked to actually, you know, put it on his blog, just do it there.

Speaker 5 But yeah, confirmation there, Charlie, that Calvert Lewin has passed out of his still a player in their phase, as you suspected.

Speaker 13 Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's

Speaker 13 sad confirmation for him.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I mean, yeah, for there not even to be a player in there, because that's already like, well, it depends a lot on the emphasis of how you say it, but that's also slightly damning with faint praise anyway, because obviously it implies they're perceived to be over the hill or have just had a bad spell somewhere.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 9 The fact that the keys is saying, I used to think there was a player in there with Calvert Lewin. It's like, well, obviously there was at some point.

Speaker 13 Yeah, but it's implied, isn't it? He's saying I did think he was at the stage where you could say, yeah, he used to be good, and then I think he might get back there.

Speaker 13 And he's saying he's even gone beyond that stage.

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Speaker 5 Right, time for the midweek adjudication panel.

Speaker 33 A lovely little mixture.

Speaker 22 of content tonight.

Speaker 3 Let's start at Euro 2025.

Speaker 37 This came from Joe White, Jonathan Pierce, having an absolute whale of a time.

Speaker 45 I really hope the man who designed the Norwegian numbers on the back of their shirts is happy with his work.

Speaker 45 They are a nightmare.

Speaker 30 Just the right level of annoyed Dave before it starts to sound like he doesn't want to be there.

Speaker 46 But he is right.

Speaker 47 I mean, they are a disgrace to the kit fonts.

Speaker 9 It's not like it's a, I can't see them because of the colours issue.

Speaker 9 His issue is is with the almost the font, I guess.

Speaker 11 Completely unreadable.

Speaker 9 Pointy numbers.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And when the numbers are bad, Charlie, you know that that's going to annoy a commentator.

Speaker 46 It's been a long old season for Jonathan Pierce.

Speaker 48 He's got himself to a major tournament.

Speaker 34 He's happy and he's confronted with this as well.

Speaker 41 Only Jonathan Pierce could carry off this level of irritation, I think.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I guess this is like the sort of poor Wi-Fi that we reporters whinge about. Like it's that it's the kind of like, oh, you know, I'm in position and I can't, you know, I can't do my job properly.

Speaker 13 And for Pierce and other commentators, that does make their life pretty difficult. And I have to say, I am in awe of their ability with so many different teams to so rarely make mistakes.

Speaker 11 Yeah, totally.

Speaker 30 And they're often quite far from the pitch as well to even spot this sort of thing.

Speaker 40 But yeah, hopefully his tournament improves from here.

Speaker 22 Speaking of tournament narrative arcs, Dave, England's tournament has reached the clamour phase with calls for 19-year-old Michelle Aguimang to be unleashed against the Netherlands.

Speaker 50 Now, by the time this podcast has gone out, people will know whether she has indeed been unleashed against the Netherlands.

Speaker 26 But this has all the hallmarks of a classic clamour.

Speaker 3 Young striker with a different dimension about her, in her case, a physical kind of presence.

Speaker 31 Hasn't played much football, so there's the mystique about her, but did score on her England debut after a matter of moments.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 48 I think it all...

Speaker 37 It all adds up.

Speaker 9 And a brilliant goal as well.

Speaker 9 The goal that she scored was a great control and volley, yeah, a few minutes after coming on. And she did come on against France for the last five minutes and put herself about.
Right.

Speaker 9 She's very much the something different option. Slinger on at the end.
And, you know, if you need something, you need to throw balls into the box.

Speaker 9 So I don't think she's going to be unleashed from the start, but I think we might see her at some point.

Speaker 22 The something different concept, Charlie, is gloriously unsophisticated.

Speaker 24 It's basically predicated around either being quick or being massive and strong.

Speaker 3 And those are the two things.

Speaker 29 Those are the two different dimensions a player can bring.

Speaker 13 Andy Carroll at Euro 2012.

Speaker 13 Like the absolute sweet spot of that. I mean, I think that the other, the sort of other category of clamour, though, is just like you can't hold them back any longer.

Speaker 13 Like Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney. Like, it doesn't matter how young they are.

Speaker 9 They're just so good.

Speaker 13 They've got to play, you know, sort of argument,

Speaker 13 which is slightly different from a, they offer something different.

Speaker 9 That's almost pre-tournament clamour, though, isn't it? That's, you know, we're suspicious of this manager not being forward-thinking enough to put this young player in the team right from the off.

Speaker 9 Whereas, this is the classic mid-tournament clamour of we're not doing very well, so what can we do?

Speaker 9 Looking in the squad, what could we do to try and rescue the situation?

Speaker 3 Elsewhere at Euro 2025, Opta Joe published this stat, Charlie.

Speaker 24 12, Germany's Clara Ball mustered 12 shots against Denmark, the joint most by a player on record since 2013 at a UEFA Women's Euro tournament.

Speaker 5 Ben writes in and says, Can you muster the most most shots on record?

Speaker 40 Mustard is surely for the least on record.

Speaker 29 You can't muster 12 shots in a game, can you?

Speaker 13 That's so true, yeah. They barely mustered.

Speaker 13 Like, yeah, mustard's always a bad, low number.

Speaker 11 Yeah,

Speaker 13 great spot.

Speaker 33 What's the upper limit, Dave, for a shot mustering?

Speaker 37 It's not many, is it? Yeah, it's two or three.

Speaker 11 Yeah. But three isn't bad.
Three's all right for a player. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13 For a player, yeah, but if you can get it for a team as well, like, you know, they only mustered three shots at home to Leicester.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Three attempts on goal.
Yeah. What should we be using then? Instead of mustard? Germany's Clara Burl.

Speaker 52 A mast? Registered.

Speaker 54 Registered is fine.

Speaker 34 I went too early with a mast

Speaker 11 racked up.

Speaker 34 Registered is fine.

Speaker 3 Yeah, mustard is overwhelmingly quite a negative thing, I think.

Speaker 43 So yeah, mustard versus registered.

Speaker 3 The age-old debate.

Speaker 34 Let's move over to the Club World Cup now.

Speaker 18 As Jao Pedro put Fluminenze to the sword, Dave, I pondered whether he was already repaying a chunk of his £55 million fee as he sent Chelsea into the Club World Cup final.

Speaker 22 Luke Jensen-Jones says, to be precise, if his goals are the difference, it'll earn Chelsea 22 million in prize money, meaning he'll have repaid exactly 40% of his fee.

Speaker 5 It's the most clear-cut, slam-dunk case of a player repaying a chunk of his fee.

Speaker 33 Like, quite literally, directly doing it.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it's so nice it works so nicely because it's quite a rare situation isn't it that you'll be signed and then thrown straight into a competition where you can win this sort of prize money.

Speaker 9 I mean I suppose there isn't I mean maybe in the old days before the transfer window if you were signed in March and you played in the Champions League and you weren't cup-tied or something.

Speaker 9 But I can't think of any other example where that would work like that.

Speaker 13 But but also isn't this we talked the other week about what how will football in this era be remembered. Isn't this a very PSR-y way of looking at football?

Speaker 13 I mean, you know, this is the age we're in, that we're talking in these terms.

Speaker 37 You've become such a romanticist about this sort of stuff.

Speaker 11 It's amazing.

Speaker 13 You know, you don't think of like, if this is all Jal Pedro does for Chelsea, I don't think people are going to be like, what a signing that was. Remember those goals he scored in the Club World Cup?

Speaker 11 You know, PSR-wise. Just give his family mate.

Speaker 11 Yeah, he literally is, but that's what I mean.

Speaker 13 We're at a point in football where we think in these terms, we think so PSR, so literally about money. Like, this is not what he's been signing to do, I assume.

Speaker 5 To be fair, that kind of preempts the question I was about to ask you, Charlie, which is, um, you know, there have been some half-hearted efforts to turn the business end of the Premier League season into a race for the extra three million pounds per place for teams who aren't really sort of playing for anything.

Speaker 7 Um, but the Club World Cup is so clearly the

Speaker 30 football tournament that has been most defined by its prize money I've ever seen.

Speaker 47 There's no there's no competition.

Speaker 50 And it it's but I you can kind of see why because it's really struggling to overcome this kind of it looks like a glorified preseason tournament.

Speaker 41 And this, to be fair, is kind of rubber stamps it a bit.

Speaker 3 It's like there's no prestige to it yet, but there is a lot of money involved.

Speaker 13 There's money, yeah. That's what was so ridiculous about that Carve Sodo.
His sort of try telling them it doesn't matter, was talking about Chelsea executives.

Speaker 11 He was saying they're here, they care, because the PSR was like, oh, right, God.

Speaker 54 And there I was thinking it was a soulless, grotesque, money-driven competition.

Speaker 11 Oh, but the Chelsea executives care. Oh, oh, God, I was, I was wrong all along.
It is great.

Speaker 9 I do think the fact that Chelsea have been able, you know, and any team could do this, but a fact that a team has been able to sign a player and play him in the middle of a tournament is just so completely against the spirit of a tournament.

Speaker 13 It does feel mad.

Speaker 9 You can't just sign a player

Speaker 9 before the semi-final. This is literally what happened to us.

Speaker 59 Jael Pedro should not, they should be thrown out. They brought in bloody Jael Pedro for the semi-final, for fuck's sake.

Speaker 9 The Southern Sunday wouldn't have it.

Speaker 11 I thought this might trigger you.

Speaker 13 I mean, Carabao cup you could do it couldn't you i was thinking of other competitions but yeah yeah you could because january you could get someone in they could play the semis in the final but yeah for for a tournament for a summer tournament it feels it feels so weird and wrong i mean conversely uh jamie gittens who signed for chelsea from dortmund halfway through this tournament um isn't allowed to play for chelsea um like this has just been widely assumed dave that he's not allowed to play for chelsea in the rest of the club world cup because he's played for dortmund already in the tournament but it did make me wonder like have fifa even bothered to to like publish some regulations of his side?

Speaker 47 I don't, they probably just didn't get around to it. So,

Speaker 54 it'll be all right, we'll address it as it comes. What if someone signs halfway through?

Speaker 47 Oh, it'll be fine, it'd be fine.

Speaker 29 I don't reckon they've been asked to come up with some regulations for this.

Speaker 13 But it's a bit like in reality TV shows, like Big Brother, used to do this. They'd just sort of be like, ah, this is actually getting a bit boring.

Speaker 13 Should we just introduce some new people or heaven and hell or send a bloke to South Africa?

Speaker 11 Like, we're desperate here. Like, this is kind of what they're doing.

Speaker 32 Yeah, but anything goes in this Club World Cup.

Speaker 29 As indeed evidenced by this.

Speaker 39 In attendance at the Met Life Stadium for Chelsea vs.

Speaker 44 Fluminense was one Fabio Capello.

Speaker 5 And he was introduced by the commentator thus.

Speaker 11 Fall back as we go look at Fabio Capello.

Speaker 13 My stands here.

Speaker 13 Former England man.

Speaker 11 Now, Charlie, it's such a subtle thing.

Speaker 11 But it has such a massively jarring effect.

Speaker 41 I and D writes in and says, why is the Dazone commentator describing Fabio Capello as the former England man so jarring?

Speaker 26 I mean, yeah,

Speaker 13 I mean, we know why, but it's so funny because it conjures up.

Speaker 13 I mean, we were talking about Plan B's before and as though Capello was this sort of like, oh, I've got to give Capello a run about, haven't we? Like, you know, he's good in the air.

Speaker 11 He can put himself about.

Speaker 13 This sort of journeyman, versatile midfielder for England.

Speaker 55 But why should club slash country X man be a exclusive thing for players, Dave?

Speaker 33 Why can't a manager be an ex-club man?

Speaker 48 Is it because the sort of word man is sort of

Speaker 3 a sort of synonym for just a body in a team, basically?

Speaker 11 Too much, he's part of the group.

Speaker 13 I agree. You know, yeah, he's in the squad, sort of.

Speaker 13 Whereas

Speaker 13 it's as if he's like

Speaker 13 a soldier when he's not. He's a general.

Speaker 11 Yeah, basically. He's a different rank.

Speaker 47 That's the only explanation for this.

Speaker 55 Imagine describing Sir Alex Ferguson as the ex-Manchester United fan.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Sir Ralph Ramsey there, former England man, of course.

Speaker 41 It's just one of the most subtly absurd things I've heard.

Speaker 11 I mean, given that, like, ace is a essentially meaningless word in a football team, there's no reason you couldn't say, oh, there's fabric about it at former England days.

Speaker 13 Obviously, it would sound mental,

Speaker 13 but it's not like it has a logical meaning for a player either, particularly.

Speaker 62 The England flop.

Speaker 11 Yeah. I mean, that would have been better.

Speaker 5 I've just, I'm just, everything about this is great, and I'm just so relieved that at least one listener picked up on it and and tweeted it in because it was really important that people pick up on this stuff.

Speaker 56 Next up, it's been a while since we've had politicians getting football wrong but the football governance bill has now been passed in the House of Commons and is poised to become law.

Speaker 3 And Culture Secretary Lisa Nandi said this.

Speaker 63 I am proud to be part of the winning team that has put our fans back on the pitch at the heart of the game where they belong.

Speaker 5 That's the last place the government regulator is going to want the fans, Dave.

Speaker 13 Don't put the fans on the pitch.

Speaker 36 It's going to be the 80s all over again.

Speaker 11 Chucking seats about.

Speaker 11 They'll all get banned. Yeah.

Speaker 29 Honestly, part of the winning team, Charlie.

Speaker 56 What's wrong with them? What is wrong with them?

Speaker 13 At least the fact that it was said sort of as live makes me think maybe she slightly misspoke. The worst when it's put in like a press release or something.

Speaker 13 And you think this would have gone through so many iterations.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Now, this is a speech.
This has been written.

Speaker 9 She's got it in front of her. She's got a piece of paper in front of her.
She has.

Speaker 13 Yeah, maybe

Speaker 9 she has written this. What can we do? What nice little flourish at the end? You know, something to do with football.

Speaker 27 What can we do?

Speaker 13 But it's possible she slightly misread it.

Speaker 11 Give me the benefit of the doubt.

Speaker 9 I think the annoying thing about it is, like, the point of this whole thing is, like, broadly speaking, a pretty good thing.

Speaker 9 Like, it's well-intentioned, and they want to do good stuff to protect football clubs and to actually help fans.

Speaker 13 But...

Speaker 36 Why do we need to do this bit at the end?

Speaker 59 Why? Why does it need to be done?

Speaker 9 Why do we need to have some crap analogy at the end about putting fans on the pitch?

Speaker 11 It doesn't

Speaker 50 fill me with faith for the government regulator, I have to say.

Speaker 50 They don't know ball, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 33 Anyway, it wouldn't be the first half of July, Charlie,

Speaker 32 if we weren't presented with a free agent 11, a list of the players who are there to be snapped up if clubs want them.

Speaker 24 Here is the line-up.

Speaker 28 In a 4-4-2, of course.

Speaker 3 Lukas Fabianski in goal, Sergio Regilon at left back, Viktor Lindelof and Nelson Somedo.

Speaker 54 Good to see one in that position.

Speaker 5 Calabria at right back, Willian at right wing, Marco Verati and Luca Modric in central midfield, Lorenzo Insignia at left wing, and up front, Thomas Muller and Jamie Vardi.

Speaker 5 In the unlikely event that one club signed all of these players at once, which club would that be?

Speaker 61 And where do they all belong together?

Speaker 13 I mean, I feel bad say it because it's such an easy answer, but look, someone like Galatasarai is just a bit the midpoint of this because I don't think it's quite Saudi.

Speaker 13 Some of them are, but I don't think that as a collective, like some of them. It's a scattergun for Saudi.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it's A, it's too scattergun, but also some of the players I just think would be a bit jarring. Yeah.

Speaker 13 And I also, and as much as West Ham is then probably the other pole in that, I'm meeting a bit in the middle with Galatasarai.

Speaker 13 And I think West Ham, even West Ham, some of these players, like, they don't, as much as we joke about West Ham, I can't really see them going out and getting like a Luca Modric. No.

Speaker 13 You know, that would be quite weird. And I mean, like, Virati, again, is way more Saudi.

Speaker 13 But, like, none of these players, if they were at Galatasarai, I mean, Vardi would jar a bit, but I can't imagine Jamie Vardi playing anywhere but Leicester.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 13 But none of them would massively jar there, I don't think.

Speaker 5 Galatassarai is a great shout here, Dave.

Speaker 37 I mean, West Ham, West Ham Fabianske did play for West Ham, but otherwise, I could only see Regilon and Lindelof play for West Ham.

Speaker 11 But Galatassarai,

Speaker 24 I can actually imagine Vardi playing there.

Speaker 34 He's probably the most outlandish of the 11.

Speaker 13 Loves the passion.

Speaker 11 Yeah. Yeah, he does.

Speaker 13 Imagine him on the wind-up in some of those derbies.

Speaker 11 That would be amazing.

Speaker 52 He would do the flag, wouldn't he?

Speaker 13 He would kick it over and shuck it around.

Speaker 9 I wondered whether, I mean, it's not perfect because there are a couple that might not quite fit this, but I don't think AC and Milan are far off this in their current sort of, you know, they're not into, they're sort of a few rungs below.

Speaker 9 I could, you know, but there's a lingering sort of glamour to Syria that could tempt Modric or Muller to go over there. There are a few Italians in the team, anyway.

Speaker 9 You can't really see Vardi over there now, can you? But I don't know. I just, yeah.

Speaker 13 I know what you mean. It's a damning indictment of sort of where Milan are, but you're right.
There is definitely that element to them.

Speaker 13 I mean, like Kyle Walker going there felt a bit like, oh, this is where sort of washed former stars go now.

Speaker 33 My eyes are just drawn to Viktor Lindelof in the heart of this defence.

Speaker 18 And I think he could literally play anywhere.

Speaker 29 He has, in the most mundane way, the world at his feet, Charlie.

Speaker 11 If

Speaker 13 you sort of want to be a squad player of a variety of mid-ranking clubs, if that's the world, yeah.

Speaker 9 More in the way that like a retiree has the world at their feet. He can go anywhere he wants on a

Speaker 9 cruise for the value.

Speaker 9 You've got lots of time on your hands.

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Speaker 27 Indeed, let's return to the Club World Cup, and here is Dazone demonstrating why this season's big broadcasting innovation, the half-time interview, is facing an uphill task.

Speaker 12 But at the break here at the MetLive Stadium, Chelsea League Fluminense, buy a gold 1-0. Let's go down to the touchline now because Alex Aljo has been getting the thoughts of Chelsea's Tosin.

Speaker 65 Tosin, what a start for Jao Pedro. What a goal that was.
Defensively, so good as well. Yet to concede in the first half at this tournament.
How satisfied can you be with those first 45 minutes?

Speaker 66 Yeah, fantastic.

Speaker 66 Great finish from Jar, but we've still got 45 minutes to go.

Speaker 65 What about the penalty decision relief that was overturned?

Speaker 66 Yeah, of course. Trevor Burrus, his hands by his side, so it was never a pen.

Speaker 65 What's key now if you want to get to the final in this second half?

Speaker 66 Just keep our focus, keep the intensity going, and we'll get the win.

Speaker 65 How are you finding the conditions?

Speaker 11 Tough, tough.

Speaker 65 Good luck in the second half. Thank you.

Speaker 11 Thank you.

Speaker 41 I mean, this is an easy dig, Dave, but I think this is a great showcase for why halftime is a terrible time for an interview.

Speaker 46 They're in the zone.

Speaker 3 They don't want to tempt fate for the rest of the game if they're winning. They're pushed for time and they literally still have a job to do.

Speaker 47 Don't ask them any questions.

Speaker 9 The shortest of shrift there.

Speaker 9 And what you can't see,

Speaker 9 what we've just seen on the actual clip there, is he is out of shot before she's even finished saying the first word of her wrapping up, being thrown back to the studio. He's out of there so quickly.

Speaker 49 The sign of a great interview.

Speaker 33 It really bodes well for next season, doesn't it, Charlie?

Speaker 13 Yeah, he's probably like worried about, you know, like seizing up or like, you know, is this, do I really want to just be like standing talking? I'm a bit out of my routine.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 47 Yeah, you just feel completely out of place.

Speaker 55 I need to get back to the lads. I need to get back to them.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

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Speaker 16 That is wonderful!

Speaker 41 Welcome back to Football Cliches.

Speaker 5 This is the Midweek Adjudication Panel.

Speaker 3 A reminder that episode 3 of Dreamland is dropping very soon.

Speaker 30 If you want to get involved in that, go to dreamland.football clichés.com and for $5.99 a month you'll get two episodes a month of Dreamland, our exclusive new show, and ad-free listening of everything else we produce.

Speaker 38 And thanks again for supporting this podcast.

Speaker 3 We love making it and we hope you enjoy episode three of Dreamland, which is dropping soon. Right, this came from Tim Postins.

Speaker 5 And this is a good example of something that was a little bit too niche for listeners, Mez at Harland Dicks, but I really wanted to feature it anyway.

Speaker 27 Here it is.

Speaker 62 One thing I absolutely love is when there's a substitution made and the player coming on really wants to burst onto the pitch with that high energy, with a little sprint, with a little jump, with a little fake header when they first come on.

Speaker 62 But the problem is the position they're playing is actually right by that touchline. So they can't run on any distance whatsoever.

Speaker 62 They have to basically just step onto the pitch and you always get the sense they're feeling like, oh, I really wish I could like, oh, I really want to have a burst and show some energy.

Speaker 62 But they can't because they've got to to get straight into position as left back or left wing or whatever.

Speaker 23 I love it.

Speaker 41 Charlie, a classic example of something we were never going to get 10 minutes of chat out of, but just an incredible observation nonetheless.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's that's superb.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I'm thinking, could you take like a go, go really far back to give yourself some room, like get into the tunnel, just leg it forward.

Speaker 9 That's the way. Just come speeding past the fourth official.

Speaker 47 Where's he gone?

Speaker 34 Come onto the pitch, sort of toward your own penotier and run up the wing.

Speaker 29 That's the only place you could do it.

Speaker 26 But yeah, I just, as soon as I heard this, Dave, I had just this vivid image of it happening

Speaker 41 on a live TV game and just thinking, yeah, that totally must be quite frustrating for a player not to be able to sort of stretch his legs.

Speaker 9 And you could foresee a situation where there's some analysis and characters saying, look, the sub, he's run on too fast.

Speaker 9 He's gone to the middle of the pitch and he's out of position immediately. Look, there, the ball comes down this side and he's out of position because he's run on too quick.

Speaker 28 Just complete muscle memory.

Speaker 34 Just ran into the middle of the pitch.

Speaker 34 Abandoned his station.

Speaker 64 Lovely stuff from Tim.

Speaker 56 Next up, this came from Stuart Mack, who was reading an old Rangers' match report from 1887.

Speaker 22 It was a game between some Rangers' old boys and their current team at the time.

Speaker 64 It's from the Glasgow Herald.

Speaker 39 And here's a little passage for you, Charlie.

Speaker 18 The play on the whole was more amusing than scintillating.

Speaker 44 And although the ancients, notably Dunlop and Valance, showed some of their old dash, they had to retire at the close of the first half.

Speaker 29 A goal to the bad.

Speaker 47 A goal to the bad.

Speaker 50 Surely we're not having that, says Stuart Mack, albeit nearly 150 years too late.

Speaker 13 Well, who are we to say what was had and what wasn't 150 years ago? I mean,

Speaker 13 I wonder when that was phased out and why, because it's no different. I mean, gold to the good is there's no reason why gold to the good sounds anymore, it sounds natural.

Speaker 56 Maybe a gold to the bad was the dominant form in the 1880s, Dave.

Speaker 11 Who knows? Exactly. Maybe.
Gold to the bad. Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty kind of guy?

Speaker 34 I'm going to start using gold to the bad.

Speaker 11 Oh, we're a gold to the bad again.

Speaker 9 Tosin, you're a goal to the bad here at halftime.

Speaker 11 How do you feel about that? You what, mate? What is this? 887?

Speaker 13 I wonder what it would have taken to engage Tosin there. Like, given how autopilot he was.
Like, he would not have flinched if you'd said a goal to the bad. No.
No, no chance.

Speaker 13 You would have had to say, I think you could have said pretty much anything and he wouldn't have picked up on it.

Speaker 9 It'd be interesting if anyone's listening now and they've skipped the NordVPN section.

Speaker 13 Hey, this is why you shouldn't.

Speaker 9 Yeah. You won't get the callbacks.

Speaker 29 Exactly.

Speaker 52 Listen to everything.

Speaker 43 You'll never know what you're going to miss.

Speaker 64 Next up, I'm starting to enjoy this recurring item, which was born from football's autopilot habit of adding up the ages of veteran centre-back partnerships.

Speaker 3 Anyway, this week's ludicrous combined stat comes from James Kierton, who Charlie was reading a BBC article about why the world's super yachts are getting bigger and bigger.

Speaker 34 Lots of data in there about sort of, you know, the increasing length of super yachts, and then suddenly, half of all super yachts continue to be built in Italy, with its yards currently working on a a combined length of 22,195 metres or approximately 22 kilometres, 13 miles of boats.

Speaker 13 Do you know what it is as well? It's sometimes like sometimes all you then want to do is work out kind of what one what the average is, what one is. Like it's it serves the opposite purpose.

Speaker 13 It makes it harder to conceptualize how big something is. Like that's just a 13 miles of loads and loads of boats to me means kind of nothing.
I want to know, well what what's one?

Speaker 13 What does one one of these boats sort of look like? I can imagine one boat. I can't imagine imagine 13 miles worth of, you know, it could be 30 and it wouldn't really mean anything to me.

Speaker 5 It's quite an impactful stat, just, you know, you know, on its own.

Speaker 13 You could run half a marathon across all the super yachts that are built in Italy.

Speaker 28 I could try.

Speaker 9 I'd have gone with tonnage myself. I'd have gone with the weight of the boats rather than the length.

Speaker 37 Good for the BBC to clarify that 22,195 meters is approximately 22 kilometres.

Speaker 3 Appreciate that, BBC.

Speaker 46 You learn everything every day.

Speaker 5 Next up, Charlie, I know you're a fan of the established post-match interview opening gambit of Achievement X.

Speaker 13 How does that sound?

Speaker 56 Well, I don't know if you caught this at Wimbledon the other day.

Speaker 46 Here's Mira and Draver.

Speaker 35 Mira, congratulations. You are now the youngest player to make it through to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon in 18 years.

Speaker 11 How does that sound?

Speaker 11 She had to take ages to think about it, so I don't know, really.

Speaker 11 Good.

Speaker 34 The 18 years years really wraps it off, doesn't it, Dave?

Speaker 9 Yeah, it does, it's very nice.

Speaker 9 There's there's something so quintessentially wimbledon about those on-court post-match interviews, it's such a strange thing because, in theory, they shouldn't really be much different from your standard sort of post-match interview in any sport.

Speaker 11 But because

Speaker 9 they take place on the court, and you've got that little moment where the interviewer is just waiting for them to sort of put all their rackets and their gears in their bag, and then they come down, they put the bags down.

Speaker 9 Most of the people have stayed in. There's people cheering like you've heard there.

Speaker 9 It's amazing how all those little bits just make it so different to a football post-match interview when essentially the questions are pretty much the same sort of stuff, isn't it, really?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I'm working on a story on this topic. Also, tennis has the weird thing where the loser has to, after a final, has to stay on court and talk, which is kind of, you know, you don't get that.

Speaker 13 Imagine if in football, the losing team had to stay on the pitch and like applaud as the team went up and hoisted the trophy and then do it all do interviews to the you know just be like i mean it would be like toastin yannick sinner you've lost wimbledon

Speaker 13 but also the thing with that with the how does that sound construction it works if it's like uh something you're going to be known for forever like you know fa cup winner or you've just been given an ob e or something you know how does that sound it's like a it should in its core meaning it should be something that it's like you've now got something that no one can ever take away from you and you'll always have it like whereas something that tenuous is, I don't imagine Mira Andreva is always going to, you know, think that, oh, I remember when I became the youngest chords finalist in 18 years at Wimbledon in 2015.

Speaker 1 It's close to the threshold for me. Not even close.

Speaker 9 It's the childhood dream stuff is how does that sound? It's, you know, Charlie Eccleshare, most red writer on the New York Times 2024. How does that sound?

Speaker 60 At the very least, it needs to be a new personal status for your career

Speaker 40 rather than just achieving a tenuous record.

Speaker 61 Really important important stuff.

Speaker 39 Good to get it right.

Speaker 28 Now, this came from Coop17.

Speaker 30 This is great to see the hypothetical consecutive hat-tricks debate spread across the globe and indeed across sports.

Speaker 60 From Australia, this is the Fox Footy podcast.

Speaker 2 That is something that is a perennial conversation across grade cricket circles. And I think we may have even played this game before, Ben.

Speaker 2 How many hundreds do you have to make from fourth grade consecutively to then play Test cricket?

Speaker 39 There you go.

Speaker 58 It encapsulates sports fans of any denomination, Dave.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 9 I would like to have heard their conclusion, actually.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Is it comparable to our chat about hat-tricks or not?

Speaker 47 I mean, 100 is probably quite approximate to scoring a hat-trick, Charlie.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Yeah. But

Speaker 13 cricket's so stat-driven, I feel like it might be slightly easier to quantify than R1.

Speaker 37 Here's an ultra-modern transfer phenomenon for you.

Speaker 18 Andy Naylor of the Athletic reported that Ben Barkley has rejoined Brighton as an overage player and mentor for the under-21s.

Speaker 57 A 28-year-old former Academy defender at the club had spells in the lower divisions with Accrington, Stockport, Yeovil and Carlyle after leaving in 2019.

Speaker 30 This is definitely an established phenomenon, isn't it, Charlie, this kind of signing of a player to kind of guide the under-21s.

Speaker 3 It feels like the new conveniently British 38-year-old third-choice goalkeeper.

Speaker 25 Perhaps even more wholesome than that.

Speaker 13 I was going to say, yeah,

Speaker 13 because that's where you used to think, you know, you'd have your Richard Wrights and Scott Carsons and people like that popping up. Yeah, I mean, there are definite players you can imagine.

Speaker 13 I mean, Conor Cody feels perfect for this at some point.

Speaker 28 Is this for Wolves, I'd assume?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I guess it would be. Yeah, maybe not quite ready now, but yeah, like an Ernest Clubman, sort of perfect.

Speaker 39 The Jean-Marc Bosman of all of this, I think, was Paul McShane, Dave, who signed for Man United in July 2021.

Speaker 5 He was formerly a youth player. They never sort of played for them.

Speaker 37 That feels quite tenuous to be the sort of returning legend.

Speaker 53 I can't have that anymore.

Speaker 9 It sort of works because there is a connection. And I think, you know, Manchester United as well, they're kind of the

Speaker 9 youth player thing is such a big thing for Manchester United. Even though Paul McShane didn't make any proper first-team impact at Manchester United, it's still sort of

Speaker 9 he's still kind of, they're all welcomed back, aren't they? All those former players are kind of welcomed back into the fold because they understand the United, you know, club DNA and all that stuff.

Speaker 9 But I think this thing, I really do think it has to be a centre-back.

Speaker 9 Maybe a defender if you want to riden it a bit, but I think because if you if you think about it, it's like an experienced centre-back is the best position to guide young, inexperienced players through a game.

Speaker 9 If you've ever found yourself playing in a game with like an ex-pro or someone, if they're they can be old, they can't really run anymore, but they can just sit at centre-back, tell everyone else what to do, everyone else can cover their lack of pace, and they can see the game.

Speaker 9 Whereas if if you had like a centre-forward, you can't get a striker doing this.

Speaker 9 They're not looking after everyone else.

Speaker 43 They're just focusing on the broken.

Speaker 11 Jermaine Defoe just trying to puff up his goal scoring right now.

Speaker 9 Shouting back to the centre-backs. Yeah, it wouldn't work.

Speaker 55 It doesn't work for strikers at all.

Speaker 22 I've got a sort of list of suggestions for the big six clubs go-to man for this.

Speaker 58 Tottenham feel quite well-stocked for this, Charlie.

Speaker 34 I think Eric Dyer could go back and do it.

Speaker 5 Ben Davis could eventually go back and do it. Harry Winks could very conceivably become the overage player and they're under 23.

Speaker 43 So I don't know why Spurs are so good for this.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I mean, Winks, I think Davis is perfect as well because Winks,

Speaker 13 not that it really mattered, but he left and kind of, you know, he stopped getting game time and all of that. And it maybe got a bit sour.
Whereas Davis has just been the ultimate stalwart character.

Speaker 13 And like, you know, he's really friendly with everyone.

Speaker 13 He, you know, he wouldn't even have to go for long. And then he could.
you know, he'd have barely been gone and then he just pops back and it's like he's never left.

Speaker 13 You know, you just, you want him in the building.

Speaker 33 Man City, conversely, Dave, don't feel like they've got a lot of candidates for this.

Speaker 51 I mean, because they just keep signing 50 million pound sort of continentals and no one sort of puts down the roots that I feel that you need for this.

Speaker 3 So the only player I could think of was Alexander Zinchenko.

Speaker 47 I feel like he's got the character for it.

Speaker 13 That's quite a good shout.

Speaker 13 And also like he's a technical leader and that's sort of the currency at Man City, isn't it? He was always like, oh, you know, for all the stars, the best player technically is actually Zinchenko.

Speaker 41 And he scored in the Guardiola way as well.

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 I did notice that

Speaker 9 I think anyway, I wasn't quite clear according to his Wikipedia page, but there was some suggestion that Fernandinho might still be playing at the age of 40 in Brazil.

Speaker 59 And I could sort of see him doing it.

Speaker 13 Yeah, Fernandino's a good shout.

Speaker 9 I also thought that in an alternate universe, if his career hadn't fallen away in the way that it did and he hadn't burst onto the scene as a pundit, Micah Richards could have had this sewn up.

Speaker 52 That would have been absolutely perfect.

Speaker 3 Chris Smalling at Manchester United.

Speaker 18 Adam Lalana at Liverpool.

Speaker 8 That doesn't work, does it? He needs to be a son of a man.

Speaker 13 He's retired, hasn't he?

Speaker 57 Yeah, that's yeah, it could bring him out of retirement to just do this job.

Speaker 11 Just do this.

Speaker 5 Yeah, because I feel like at that stage of your career, if you're of that personality, Charlie, you've got two options: go back and be the overage player in the under-23s or go and become the loan manager.

Speaker 21 Which sounds like a great job.

Speaker 56 Just ringing up loan either saying, hey, doing, mate, you're right.

Speaker 9 That's what Johnny Evans has just done at Man United.

Speaker 13 He's taking

Speaker 13 the loans manager role.

Speaker 37 It's definitely the.

Speaker 11 I mean,

Speaker 13 he's been long since retired, but one of the guys who's what Dave was describing about playing like a with a legend game. I mean, Per Murtesaka basically did that in an FA Cup final.

Speaker 13 He barely hadn't played pretty much all season, came in, played centre-back in the middle of a three, aged, looked about 40, and didn't move, but like did a job on Costa and just talked everyone through it.

Speaker 13 And obviously, he's actually like the academy manager at Arsenal, but he would have been so the guy, you know, that everyone looks up to and respects.

Speaker 13 Great talker, great sort of manager of young people.

Speaker 30 I think this is quite a wholesome development, actually, because it means you can do your badges at the same time,

Speaker 33 earn yourself a reputation for being, you know, good at nurturing young talent.

Speaker 43 I think it's positive development, this.

Speaker 9 Is there an element to it of, because I think when like Man United signed Johnny Evans, it's like he wasn't signed as like the under-21's mentor player like Paul McShane was, but there was an element of like, we need a backup player and you know, we know him.

Speaker 9 He used to play for us. We'll sign him back again.

Speaker 9 And then he obviously ended up playing way more than they probably anticipated so i think some of these players you kind of want that just that little two percent chance that yes they could end up in extremists of playing in a game if we really needed them to in a proper first team game and i i wondered um for arsenal whether carl jenkinson could be this

Speaker 9 who's still playing at bromley he's 33.

Speaker 13 oh wow okay yeah bit two competition winner i don't know how much i mean like because Arsenal used to do it, they would bring...

Speaker 32 He's got a heft about him, does he?

Speaker 13 Yeah, like, Perez would pop back, or they'd have, like, or Layman. Do you remember Lehman came back and actually played a game against Blackpool?

Speaker 48 Yeah, goalkeepers could do this, I think.

Speaker 5 I don't mind a goalkeeper doing this, I have to say.

Speaker 39 What a lovely discussion this was.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 56 Finally, here's Rob Dowie with some football mentality creeping into general life.

Speaker 8 His story is as follows.

Speaker 27 I was in Asda doing a small shop.

Speaker 5 I picked up a basket on entry, but the items I needed were at the far end of the store.

Speaker 28 Passing the fruit and veg first, I decided to go off list and put some peppers in my basket, ultimately to avoid walking several aisles with an empty basket.

Speaker 48 I instantly felt more at home in the shop and in my head I likened it to an under-pressure goalkeeper getting an early touch or routine save, eating myself into the game and settling the nerves.

Speaker 54 I mean there are two things here.

Speaker 61 First of all the football analogy here Charlie I'm not massively on board with but I do I appreciate the fact that he sent it in and if that's how he felt then then I'm my heart is warmed.

Speaker 56 But the more pertinent thing for me here is walking around a supermarket with an empty basket is a crap feeling.

Speaker 29 You want to get something in there, don't you?

Speaker 36 So you do want an early touch.

Speaker 13 You do want that first tackle, just something.

Speaker 44 But, Dave, if you go for something that's going to rattle around in the basket, that makes it even worse.

Speaker 61 If you go for a single pepper, that's just going to bounce around inside the basket while you walk around.

Speaker 51 Don't like it.

Speaker 9 Yeah,

Speaker 9 I think I would like a bit more too. Yeah, because the feeling of having an empty basket wouldn't be a good one.

Speaker 9 I think it's like, for me, it would be like playing in a proper 11-aside match without shin pads. I would feel exposed.
I need something in there just to weigh me down a little bit.

Speaker 52 You just feel like a weird kind of fraud walking around a supermarket with an empty basket.

Speaker 47 It's like, what have I got this for?

Speaker 29 And then you realise you didn't need one after all.

Speaker 61 You could have carried it yourself.

Speaker 64 Oh, dear.

Speaker 57 Bag of pasta, I reckon, is a good first item.

Speaker 64 Good ballast. It's not going to roll around.

Speaker 39 You know, and make it awkward.

Speaker 9 But as Rob points out, like, the fruit and veg is the first thing you go past.

Speaker 9 You can't go straight to the pasta section.

Speaker 22 Bananas would do the job.

Speaker 13 Just get some grapes. You're always going to want grapes.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 30 Punnet.

Speaker 39 Punnett of strawberries.

Speaker 29 Weird discussion, and that's how we're going to end things.

Speaker 58 Thanks to you, Charlie Equil Share.

Speaker 55 Thank you.

Speaker 28 Thanks to you, Dave Walker.

Speaker 29 Thank you. And that's it for the midweek adjudication panel.

Speaker 8 We'll be back on Tuesday. See you then.

Speaker 63 This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

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