Liverpool dumped out by perfect PSG after Anfield thriller – Football Weekly

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

It's the David Mitchell dressed as a Nazi gift for we the farmers PSG get past Liverpool on penalties and it's hard to say they didn't deserve it over two brilliant games of football.

Dazira Douay, who was great on the night, scored the decisive penalty.

After Curtis Jones and Darwin Nunes missed, it's sad for Darwin that no one was surprised when he struck it at the perfect height for Donna Rummer.

Both sides created big chances as Mana Dead Belley was the only one who managed to score.

Confirmation certainly that Liverpool have played someone good this season.

Elsewhere last night, it was all pretty straightforward for Barca Bayern and Inter.

Lamin Yamal did some brilliant things, as did Jamal Mussiala.

And it was a great couple of games for Harry Kane, too.

And then Manchester United.

You wonder if Big Sir Jim had spent too long hanging around heavy chemicals.

An odd set of interviews where he claimed Man United would have run out of cash by Christmas if he hadn't sacked the tea lady, that Casemiro, Inanna, and Hoyland aren't any good.

Now, hang on, here's a 100,000-seater giant circus tent umbrella.

We'll ship him on a barge for £2 billion.

But then he's a more successful businessman than almost all of us, so maybe we shouldn't be quite so cynical.

Also, we'll touch on Newcastle's win at West Ham on Monday, a bit of EFL, and some more crawling to the good people of Nottingham.

All that past your questions, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Lars Sivadson, welcome.

Hello, Max.

Hello, Archie Bintut.

Hey, Max.

Ben writes: wishing Barry a very happy birthday on further inspection on celebritybirthdays.com.

I was surprised to see Barry's wealth at five million euros and that his body measurements were coming soon.

Stop gatekeeping this from us, Baz.

Many happy returns, my friend.

Well, I hope when my body measurements come, they're as inaccurate as my

reported finances

and yeah,

suitably lower.

But thank you for your good wishes.

Oh, that's all right.

Let's start at Anfield then.

Liverpool Nil PSG won PSG go through 4-2 on penalties.

Arna Slott said this was the best game he'd ever been involved in.

I wasn't sure, Barry, if it was as exciting as the first leg, but still a great game.

I don't think it was as exciting as the first game, but it was a really good game.

A game of the highest quality, played at seriously high intensity.

And I think over the two legs, there can't be really any doubt that the best team went through.

Liverpool started this game well, probably should have scored in the first 20 minutes.

Mo Sala had a good chance.

Then later on, Jarrell Kwonce headed one against the inside of the post that could have gone in.

But I have no ill will towards Liverpool at all.

I probably

shouldn't like PSG, but I'm glad PSG went through because I've really enjoyed watching them play in this season's Champions League.

Their midfield was brilliant.

The forward players were brilliant.

They totally dominated extra time.

They were excellent in defence.

Difficult to pick out a single PSG player who didn't have a good game last night.

And

as good as Allison is as a goalkeeper, you would fancy Donaroma to do better than him in a penalty shootout, I think.

And he did so by saving two penalties.

So, yeah, fair play to PSG.

I think they thoroughly deserve to go through.

Yeah, I think I think you're right about

you know, it's hard to single anyone out, and yet I'm going to single a few out.

I think kind of fitting that Desira Douay scored the winning penalty last because he was so good, and like, and I think probably there are a lot of listeners that don't know a lot about him.

I didn't know a lot about him, I still don't.

I know he came from Wren, he's 19, they bought him at the start of the season for 50 million euros, but I thought it was some performance, yeah.

No, and I guess he is kind of emblematic of this new direction of PSG, in that instead of just signing superstars, they have finally figured out that, hey, actually, French football is one of the great sort of talent factories of the world.

Maybe let's look domestically.

And they signed him for Rennes after two very promising seasons there.

It did cost them a fair bit of money.

I think they paid like 50 million Euro or something.

So,

but

it's...

It's symptomatic of the direction they're going in.

And they're going to have a bit of a conundrum moving forward because that front front three of Barcola, Vicaroskelia, and Dembele that would seem to be their first choice.

But Desre Dua was fantastic when he came on.

And yeah, there's some genuine squad depth there.

I would actually say, I thought this game was better than the first leg in the sense that the first leg had incredible drama, but this one was kind of going back and forth a little bit.

Liverpool were really good for the first 10 minutes.

And I think I posted in the group that I started thinking all those news stories after the first leg about how the PSG squad were shocked at how bad Liverpool were.

And then the first 10 minutes of this game go the way they do.

I thought, oh, well, there we go.

It's like you can't, you can change the players, but you can't take the hubris out of PSG.

But of course, they managed to stay in it.

A couple of great saves by Donroma.

And I guess that's the whole point: they did show a kind of resilience that we haven't really seen for them before.

It used to be an almost annual thing.

I used to pray that I would get the post-PSG European bottle job episode of Football Weekly because coming on and sniggering at them with you guys used to be so much fun.

But there does seem to be, even though it's a much younger and less experienced group, there seems to be much more grit in this group of players.

And I want to flag up another player who's very un-PSG, which is the defender Pacho, who they signed from Frankfurt, am I right?

Who's again a very non-showy.

Like the PSGO five years ago would not have gone, we need a new center half.

Let's go and get a guy from Frankfurt.

That's just not what would have happened.

But they seem to be now recruiting players who are very good rather than players who are just very famous.

And it turns out that is a good approach to building a football team.

I think Donna Rummer deserves extra credit for the way that he's come back this season as well, because there was a time in November where he was so out of form that he was replaced by Matvei Safanov in goal for the Bayern game.

And the repeated blunders were raising questions about his future at the club.

And he's come back in January.

He had a big performance away at Brest, I think it was.

On top of that, to

I through the game, I thought he was very solid.

And yeah, at penalties, as the England fan in you knows, Max, he's quite good.

And

even though, yes, Darwin's penalty was at a comfortable height, he was so on top of it.

And

the way that he clawed the one from Curtis Jones out,

you don't see as many, I think, good penalty savers as I'd maybe expect sometimes.

So it is a real talent.

And we always come back to fine margins.

I think having a goalkeeper of this class is something that, yeah, we saw what a difference it can make in Paris.

And you saw again last night.

what kind of a difference that can make too.

Yeah, yeah.

I heard on the radio somebody saying about Don Rummer that he doesn't make himself big because he's enormous.

He sort of stays quite tiny like a little turtle.

And then just as they put it all on the spot, he just goes, he sort of opens his, you know, like that dinosaur in Jurassic Park, you know, when the big guy is like with his glasses and the excitement goes,

and his whole head just appears and you're like, oh, shit,

this guy's a big old dude, isn't he?

Look, you mentioned that Darwin penalty and I wonder, Baz,

it just felt like, I mean, it's so easy to construct the narrative after he misses the penalty.

But he does miss the penalty.

And you think, would you put him up third?

Like, is that the best thing to do?

Or is that just

the randomness of penalty shootouts?

I don't think penalty shootouts are random,

but

I had no confidence that he would score.

And I would imagine I was not alone in having little or no confidence in him.

I felt for the guy.

He looked heartbroken afterwards.

He can't do right for doing wrong for Liverpool, it seems.

And I think there is

an element of Liverpool's support who kind of lost patience with him and want him gone.

I like what he brings to the party.

And let's not forget, you know, they are going to win the league.

They might win the Carabao Cup.

It's not going to, this isn't a disaster for them.

But yeah, he looked so sad when he was hunkered down after missing his penalty.

And

I think, you know, he might even think, well, it's not going to happen for me here.

Maybe I should go somewhere else.

But we'll see what happens in the summer.

I'd have no problem with him staying.

I'd say quite a lot of Liverpool fans that have no problem with him staying.

Some want him out.

He also had a bit of a shocker before even the penalty.

And we've got to be a little bit careful because we, and by we, I mean I, was praising him last week for just adding physicality and an element of chaos to the Liverpool attack that ultimately made a bit of a difference in the first first leg.

I mean, the goal comes from

his physical sort of thing up front.

But in this game, he just seemed like he was on completely the wrong frequency to all the players around him, like making runs that didn't make sense.

So there is sometimes, sometimes it's useful and productive chaos, but sometimes it's just chaos and bad chaos.

And I felt like it was definitely more of the second.

And I do wonder...

as Liverpool want to sort of develop further under Anish Loss,

if having this player who is just a a complete coin cost when you throw him on there like if he's going to get anything useful out of him or if it's just going to be disruptive and chaotic maybe that is not super useful back to PSG Archie because it's just worth mentioning that midfield isn't it because what Jam Neves is incredibly young Vetinha whose penalty was I mean it took half an hour it's incredible how slowly that went in but those two were just brilliant and you know we've seen Liverpool's midfield be brilliant all season and in two games it and you're right this was a closer contest than the the first leg but we've seen them be brilliant in two games yeah and vitinia as well has

such a range and tim and and tempo to his passing and the way he's able to just set the tone for a game

top sides throughout history seem to have players of that ilk and i think he is continually proving that even with the penalty where he's saying i can roll this ball in at whatever pace i want and it will still go in, is something of a statement of the form that he's in right now.

And this game also just threw up the thing

for me about

how some teams are able to just time their form correctly in a season and how I remember the conversations that have been had about Liverpool and how they

had this perfect record in the Champions League until the final group game and seeing it with other teams as well.

We'll come to buy in eventually but um

psg did not look this good when they went to buyern earlier in the competition or indeed when they were losing to to atletico madrid all the same questions were being thrown up of oh this is is it going to happen again let's not forget that this psg team could have gone out on the final uh on the final group stage uh match day uh had they lost at stuttgart and instead they turned in a fantastic performance.

And

now they are, I think, when you knock out this Liverpool team, you are riding well into favourites territory,

which is the exact place that PSG don't want to be.

I think PSG want to continue flying under the radar a little bit and taking expectations off.

And the fact that they could be facing a former coach in Uni Emery next round, should Villa complete the job against Bruges, I think adds a little bit more spice to it.

And seeing if they can

get past somebody who will plan to the nth degree and it'll be a very different kind of game to

what they faced against Liverpool.

I think it would suit Villa as well actually to not play Liverpool.

I think sometimes actually playing a team from your own country can screw with your head a bit.

Yeah, I think you're right.

I think actually

Slot was kind of right Baz, wasn't he?

It's pretty unlucky to win this group and then come up against PSG who have hit this form.

Yeah, it is.

And, you know, the

and actually in this game, you know, Quanta hits the post.

I know the offside flag went off, but it went up, but it shouldn't have done, and it would have counted.

You know, Gomez blocks that Salah on early on.

Like, Liverpool had real opportunities in this game, too.

Yeah, they did, but they didn't take them.

And whether that's down to bad luck or inefficiency is sort of irrelevant.

And they were unlucky to get a team hitting form

like this, but,

you know, that

that that's again, it's just bad luck.

One thing I noticed actually,

probably others did as well, but

in the penalty shootout, PSG appeared to have the decision over which end the penalties were taken in, and they also took the first one, which seems strange.

You know, because I think there are normally two tosses, there are two coins.

Is it right, okay?

Oh, well, I apologize.

But but actually some no, that's all right.

Mark

came up with a question, which is sort of it doesn't seem right, does it?

There should be two.

You sort of think there should be one

and then that captain chooses whether to go first or have the end.

And so it doesn't...

Yeah.

Because it is so unbalanced, isn't it?

Because PSG had a guy with a megaphone, didn't they?

Who was also shouting when Dembele went out to take his penalty, which I thought seemed a bit silly.

And that was some penalty, wasn't it?

The only other note I had from this game was there was one shot last from Kavarat Shalia that I've never

thought the phrase whistled over the bar was more accurate accurate for a strike.

It sort of made me go oof like a cartoon.

It was so good.

Yeah, I was, as I always am, on Cuaraskele.

I watched and it wasn't his best game, but he had two shooting chances.

One, which was incredibly well blocked.

Was it by Gravenbach or someone?

Was someone who got a got a little deflection in there, which I thought that one probably would have gone in.

And the second one just got away from him a tiny bit, so he left it over

the bar.

It's not his most active night, but he put a good shift in, which is a big difference between him and the superstars that have come before him at PSG.

I want to flag up again Luis Enrique

for doing a great job shaping this team and molding this team.

And I don't think he's the only one who's made this decision of them going no superstars.

Let's go young and dynamic instead.

But he's certainly the right person to marshal.

that direction.

And I think his in-game substitutions really worked.

I thought this game was kind of getting away from PSG a little bit.

Liverpool had the upper hand in the second half.

But when they brought on,

I mean, we mentioned Desiro Dua, who was fantastic when he came on, but I also thought like Isaiah Emery made an impact in midfield.

Lee Kangin wasn't.

So they just kind of got back control over the game.

And it was all PSG, really, in the extra time.

I mean, they could have found a winner there.

So I thought that the management of the game and the way it went worked out really well for Louis Enrique also.

And actually,

you know, Liverpool, Trent, Alexander Arnold might have taken a knock.

Canate possibly, they've played 120 minutes.

And, like, you're right, Barry, they're going to win the league.

They could win the Carabao Cup because Newcastle are missing what Lewis Hall and Botman and Anthony Gordon as well.

But

them being tired might make a bit of a difference to the Carabao Cup final.

Anyway, well done to PSG.

Deservedly through.

And they, as we suggested, will play Villa or Bruges in the next quarterfinal.

And then

potentially Real Madrid or Athleti

or two other teams that I can't think of in my my immediate Arsenal.

There we go.

Or Arsenal or PSV, Barry?

I'm going to say not even Arsenal.

Anyway, that'll do for part one.

Part two.

We'll run at the rest of the Champions League.

Hi Pod fans of America.

Max here.

Barry's here too.

Hello.

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Although, not like you.

A proper football journalist, man.

Exactly.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So, Parcelina beat Ben Fica 3-1, 4-1 on aggregate.

Ben Ficke will feel it was the first leg when they played against 10 men for so long where this game got away from them.

Is Lemin Yamal so good, Lars, that we believe he meant that assist to Rafini?

I'm saying miss hit shot, but he is awfully good for a 17-year-old.

So, maybe it was a pass.

I kind of thought he meant it, but Glenn Hoddle was pretty adamant that he didn't.

And Glenn Hoddle knows more about this stuff than I do.

So I don't know.

I thought he meant it.

It looked to me like he meant it.

And also just the way he

went past two players before that, just kind of sending two.

I love it when you can send two players the wrong way in the same motion.

It's not ideal for the defenders, but it's always a great look when that happens.

And he was...

He was incredible.

And he's also, he is, maybe he is the heir to the Aryan Robin throne of like everyone knows what he's about to attempt, but he's just going to do it anyway.

Because his goal was, I swear to God, I'm sure that I think there were people sat up in the International Space Station looking down who can tell, oh, yeah, he's going to cut inside and he's going to try to put it in the far corner.

It was so obvious that this is what he was going to do, but it just wasn't, it wasn't possible to stop him.

It was absolutely incredible.

And just overall, the first half of this game was really fun, even though it was slightly one way.

But just the quality of Rafinha, of Lyamal, of Pedri Pedrio and the Young.

I mean, just the way they move the ball, the pace,

it was really good.

It was quite scary from Barcelona.

Yeah.

Was producer Joel writing, was Messi this good at 17?

I mean, it feels ludicrous because you just don't know how a career will go, Archie, do you?

And like, Lamina Mara is 17.

He might be done at 19, but like,

if he plays for 20 years, like...

When we're doing football weekly, you know, and Barry's 72 on his 72nd birthday, we'll be like, I can't believe believe Yamal is still going.

I think the danger, even more so now,

of extrapolating, is the amount of games that he's going to be made to play

would be my question mark over

how good he might be.

Everything about him screams superstar.

So I just hope that.

Yeah, wrap him in cotton wool is what you're trying to say, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly.

Because is, he's just one of those players that when he gets the ball, you're like, okay,

what are you going to do?

Oh, that is pretty special.

Fair play, mate.

So, yeah, I

a complete joy to watch, and and just for

somebody as well, like to be even in the conversation to be in the shoe of filling Messi's shoes, um, and to have that quality as a teenager and to be able to continually live up to that hype as well is something really special to see.

We always do this, and I include myself and everyone in the meeting.

When a young player does something really good, I wish we would just celebrate and praise the thing they're doing rather than immediately go to how good can he become.

Because what we're doing then is that we're setting an artificial bar for that player to either clear or not clear.

Like, Lamin Yamal is already amazingly good.

Like, he's one of the most impactful forwards in the world at this point.

And I feel like the comparisons to Messi is kind of because then you, if people say that often enough, you reach a situation where, well, if he doesn't become the best player who's ever lived, then that'll be a disappointment somehow, which is super, which is silly.

Like, we, we should, I wish we would stop doing this.

Are you suggesting I shouldn't?

Are you suggesting I shouldn't have extrapolated to 2045 to see how?

I mean, well, it's about five minutes.

Look, the other player, Barry, is, you know, it's Rafinha, who isn't 17, but he scored his 26th of the season.

He's got 10 goals and four assists in the Champions League of the season, the most goals and assists by a Barcelona player in one season since, I'm sorry to say last, Lionel Messi in 2018, 2019.

And I was reading somewhere that, you know, like his sort of his career arc is very different.

And he's playing so, I mean, obviously scored that brilliant goal in the first leg as well.

Yeah, he's been outstanding.

We discussed last week that he should be in the Ballon Dora conversation, but probably won't be.

Although, presumably by by conversing about that, we are putting him in the conversation.

And we have a lot of clout when it comes to the ballon d'Or.

Well, we do.

Yeah, and the fact that he wasn't wanted at Barcelona, they were thinking he's only there under sufferance, but he didn't let that bother him.

He's made the most of this opportunity he's got and is playing brilliantly.

I give a shout-out to Pedri as well, old man Pedri, who's he was brilliant last night, I thought as well.

What age is he now?

22.

22, yeah.

Because he had a rough trot of it with injuries, but he's hitting his stride again and becoming the player that we knew he would be.

But yeah, Rafina just seems to be loving life there on the left wing for Barça.

He's a completely different player to Lemin Yamal as well, I think.

They're a pleasure to watch.

It's funny because it's an open sequel.

It's not even an openness.

Everyone knows that Barcelona wanted to bring in Nico Williams, right?

Now,

most likely they would have tried to sell Rafinha to finance that deal.

And if they'd kept him at the club, he certainly wouldn't be playing a lot if Nico Williams was on that flank.

But they weren't able to do it.

And Rafinha has responded by having this incredible season.

He's got 11 goals in the Champions League so far, 13 goals and 7 assists in the liga.

So Barcelona have kind of accidentally stumbled upon

a great solution.

I mean, it seems to be a good connection between him and Lamin Yamal.

It's working very well.

So I guess they can thank their really terrible financial situation for the fact that they have Rafinha doing this stuff as he is this season.

Someone high up just backed into the wrong lever and it meant that Rafinha stayed, didn't it?

Let's go to Labour Cousin Bayern.

Bayern on 2-0.

Harry Kane and Alfonso Davies with the goals in the second half.

Archie, you were there.

Did you have a nice time?

I did, mainly because my producer from England delivered seven packs of scampy fries to me that I obviously can't get in Germany.

So I'm going to.

Right.

Oh, okay.

Not just for the night.

No, no.

I'm going to keep you going for a while.

I was going to say that's quite a salty evening for you.

Very right.

And speaking of salty evenings by Aleva Cousin,

were in the end

left, yeah, high and dry.

I would say that this game, as Chabi Alonso put it, was very much lost at the Allianza Arena last week.

And

on top of that, at the weekend,

it's been a truly terrible week for Leverkusen in the context of their rivalry with Bayern

because they lost 2-0 at home to Verde Bremen.

But bigger than that, and what I think had also a very big bearing on this game, was the ankle ligament injury suffered by Florian Wierts at the hands of a former Bayern player, Mitchell Weiser,

going in a little bit late.

And yeah, the fact that Wiertz was hobbling off and was out of the stadium on crutches told you the story of, I think this game might be toast.

And the fact that Bayern lost to Balkham on Saturday as well meant that Leverkusen could have closed the gap at the top of the Bundesliga to five points.

And instead, it stayed at eight.

and yeah Bayern are growing into

they're doing this thing of timing their season well before in the last few seasons I think Bayern always blowing teams out the water in the first part of a Champions League campaign and coming up short later on even though yes they did reach the semi-finals last season in a very haphazard manner of of of uh the way that their season went finishing third in the bundles liga for example but yeah harry Kane performing in big games, which has been something that could be leveled at him before, and stepping up and doing, I think, you know,

just

being in the right place at the right time, which is his job.

And yeah, Bayern as a structure.

I think there's still something to be said about their efficiency in front of goal and their creation of chances.

But for them to put away Leverkusen, who had not

lost a game under Chabiolon, to Bayern and with the final being in Munich and that Leverkusen had the chance to take that away from them it's a big statement because they were actually written off by quite a few pundits in Germany ahead of this one but like the Arsenal game showed last year I it's it's a little

it's it's a bit naive I think to write off Bayern Munich in a Champions League tie actually can I ask you like a month ago Bayern went to Leverkusen and were really bad and we're very lucky to get out of there with a 0-0 draw.

And Levikusen looked a much more accomplished team.

And now this was kind of easy over two legs in both games there.

Well, especially in the first one, they were kind of cruising.

Is there a sense in Germany that something's changed with this team, that something's fallen into place?

I mean,

what has changed in that month?

I think that having Alfonso Davies back in the team.

and for the way that they want to play with such physical with such physicality and intensity, they really missed him for that for that nil-nil draw and you saw it whenever frimp wanted to get in behind last night that

sure jeremy frimpong is quick but alfonso davies is on is on his his level of being quick and

and i think that that that made a big impact the

there were just big mistakes in in munich the the fact like chevy alonso has rotated his goalkeepers a lot i think it's 13 times in the last 15 games.

This is just the way that he wants to do it.

But I don't think that Matej Kováš is as good as Lucas Rodetsky.

He paid the price for that.

He paid the price for not taking off Nordi Mukiele at half-time last week.

And I thought it was quite pointed that Conrad Leimer had a yellow card last night.

Half-time he was hooked for Josip Stanisic.

And there is also just a part of it being gravity.

Buying Munich, I'll still have a squad which is paid twice as much as Leverkusen.

And that over the course of seven or eight games, the odds are you will probably not win all of them or not remain undefeated.

Did you think there's any part of Jabi Alonso who's thinking he should have jumped at the end of last season?

Or he's just waiting for Real Madrid?

No, he's.

Yeah.

Oh, sorry, that's disingenuous to he's but he's at Leverkusen being a Leverkusen manager, but you take my point.

He is,

and he's still doing a job that is far exceeding expectations.

They remain in the DFB Cup at the expense of Bayn Munich,

having won at the Allianz Arena earlier this season

in that competition.

And look, you have to think about where Labour Kusen are coming from, and that before last season, they finished in the top two once

since that 2002 season where they finished second in the Champions League, the Cup, and in the Bundesliga.

And he has propelled them to new heights.

And last season, they overachieved.

And this season, they are still probably overachieving.

It's just that, yeah, I think when you come down from the highest of highs that they had last season,

a friend of mine said to me that they probably could have done with losing a few more games last season to actually prepare them for this one.

Because, like, even before last night, in the last two games,

they've spent more time trailing in games than they had in the entirety of this season.

They're not used to being behind.

They're not used to having to scrap.

And

it can probably help you at times to just have a little bit more knowledge of how to navigate those kind of situations.

Quickly on, well, a couple of things I want to ask.

Harry Kane, first English player to score 10 goals in a single European Cup Champions League campaign, you know, and looks lovely with Mussiya.

And Mussial is just a total joy, isn't he?

And Elise as well.

Just wonder, Barry, if he's gone up in your estimations a tiny bit, you know?

Harry Kane?

Yeah.

I wouldn't say he's low in my estimation.

I mean, the thing about him being not delivering in big games, that's tended to be because he's been injured in those games rather than

just not delivering, you know, there is a reason for it.

Sure, sure.

I think Harry Kane's a terrific player.

He was brilliant last night, scored one, created one, should have had a penalty.

Yeah, Muciala was great too.

Hit the post, hit the bar.

If you hit the other post, you forgot to keep the goal for him, bring it home with him.

The Troy Townsend hat-trick.

No shots on target.

Would work hit twice.

Yeah.

Pick the bones out of that.

But no, I think you're overestimating my lack of regard for Harry Kane.

I take it back.

I also like the child in goal for Bayer Munich, who looks very much like he was created out of a piece of Manuel Neuer and then grown in the laboratory.

I'm going to move on to Interfire Nord, Intergo to 4-1 on aggregate.

They won this game 2-1.

Marcus Turan scored a lovely goal, didn't he,

Lars?

And almost got a better one in the second half as well.

No,

he's had a good couple of ties here.

He scored a lovely goal in the first leg as well.

This was, I have to admit, I did not track this game very, very closely.

And it just kind of went almost exactly the way you you kind of would expect it to go.

Feyno did make a fist of it.

They did have some chances.

But as we saw in the first leg, Inter are very happy to sit back and kind of absorb that pressure.

And then they have some real threats on the break.

And there's a lot of experience and know-how in this team.

And they, yeah, it wasn't very complicated for them.

They got through it okay.

And

they're a funny one, Inter, because they're not as convincing as a few of the other teams in this tournament.

You look at the way

Barcelona absolutely

took Benfica to the cleaners in the first half.

You know, the way Bayan can be at their best, not to mention PSG, of course.

But again, Intra kind of

got to the final not that long ago for a reason.

And Simeona and Sagi has had that team for a long time.

They're very well drilled.

Again, there's a lot of experience there.

Less spectacular, but certainly not a team you'd want to take lightly.

And

it was just a bridge too far for Faino, I think, to do anything much here.

Intra have only conceded two goals in 10 games in this competition so far.

It's going to take some beating, I reckon.

Yeah, I'll buy an interrupt next.

We'll do more on inter, of course, next time.

Nikki is on.

That'll do for part two.

Part three, we will discuss big Sir Jim Ratcliffe talking to lots of people and not necessarily making complete sense.

HiPod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here too.

Hello.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So, big to Jim Ratcliffe did an interview for the BBC.

He did one for Gary Neville's Overlap.

I think he did a few other ones.

Picked out a few things.

The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian weren't invited.

Interesting.

On the finances, he said the club would have been bankrupt by Christmas last year if they hadn't introduced cost-cutting measures.

Manchester United would have run out of cash by the end of this year, by the end of 2025, after having me put $300 million

in £232 million, by the way.

And if we buy no new players in the summer, we are in the process of change.

It's an uncomfortable period and disruptive.

And I do feel sympathy with the fans.

The simple answer is the club runs out of money at Christmas if we don't do those things.

He then said he wanted Manchester United to be the most profitable club in the next three years.

Then he announced the new stadium.

We'll get to that.

I did message Kieran Maguire because this whole thing has confused me.

And he said, quote, it's disingenuous drivel from offshore gym.

I did say, can I quote you?

And he said, yes, the club had 97 million cash in the bank at the 31st of December.

So that disproves his first claim.

It could become profitable if prices core fans out of the game and targets the corporate hospitality and experience market.

The running out of cash claim is simply to justify the redundancy decision and removal of staff benefits.

He's not used to criticism and scrutiny.

And it does

I mean, we'll get to other stuff, but I don't know, Barry, that first thing, and I would trust Kieran on this, it

just seems ridiculous to say it out loud if it isn't true.

Yeah, I mean, I'm glad you texted Kieran because he's confirmed, I think, what most of us thought.

There's simply no evidence to back up the claim that United were going to run out of money if they didn't stop giving people free lunch and sack some, you know, receptionists.

So that's not true.

It was just his interviews have been weird.

He at times claimed not to know the full scale of United's fiscal problems.

A baffling admission from a man who, you know, you would expect to do his due diligence before investing in the club.

So is he pretending he doesn't know or does he actually not know?

Neither is particularly good.

He

listed all these various reasons why Manchester United are in financial trouble, but

wouldn't come close to citing the obvious one, the big American-shaped elephant in the room.

I get why he can't publicly criticise the Glazers, and I got the feeling when he was chatting to Gary Neville that he wanted to, but wasn't going to.

Gary Neville gave him every opportunity to do that.

He's clearly a very successful businessman who knows far more about the world of finance than I am, or than I do, but he did not come across well in these interviews.

And I wonder

in better-run clubs, you know, when's the last time you saw Tony Bloom give an interview, Brighton owner?

When's the last time you saw Matthew Benham at Brentford do an interview?

They rarely speak publicly.

You might hear from Tony Bloom this week if he has a winner at Cheltenham,

but otherwise he just keeps his mouth shut and gets on with things.

Well, actually, you don't hear from badly run club owners either, as it goes.

Well, yeah, On current players last, he said, if you look at the players we're buying this summer that we didn't, that we didn't buy, we're buying Anthony, we're buying Casimiro, we're buying Inanna, we're buying Hoyland, we're buying Sancho.

These are all things from the past, whether we like it or not, we've inherited those things and have to sort that out.

Now, I don't know how smart it is for the owner to mention three players that are playing quite a lot of the time at the moment.

Yeah, so I gently disagree with Barry in the sense that I think it's not a bad idea for club owners to come out and speak occasionally,

though that doesn't, you know,

completely insulate them from criticism of the things that do come out of their mouths.

But I would like to see owners, because specifically in English football, in other countries, you hear from the president, you hear from the sporting director.

In England, it's all dumped on the manager, and the manager is often not in charge of a lot of things, but he ends up being the only public face of this stuff.

So

I don't hate the fact that he is prepared to take interviews, but you have to then acknowledge that some of the things he says, A, doesn't make sense.

I mean,

even if it isn't disingenuous drivel, as Gary Maguire suggests, even if it was completely true that United were on the verge of running out of cash, that makes it really hard to explain why they racked up a net spend of 140 million euros in the summer, overseen by a head coach that was on a very weak mandate.

Like, that would be a completely bizarre decision.

Oh, we spent 140 million on players, but it turns out we need to sack some tea ladies.

If not, the club's going to run out of cash.

Like, this is just stupid.

This doesn't make any sense.

And

you're right to point out his decision to essentially throw several first-team players under the bus, one of which is a 22-year-old forward who's clearly desperately struggling for confidence.

Like, that's very bad leadership, first of all.

And it's just quite shitty on a human level.

It doesn't make him look like a particularly nice guy.

Maybe this is why he's never had any free lunches.

Maybe people don't want to take him to lunch.

This is another thing.

He mentioned quite a lot that he's never had a free lunch, which I also don't think is true.

I think someone who makes this much money in business ends up getting many free lunches here and there, but he insists he hasn't had them.

But yeah, throwing useful current first-team players under the bus to try to shield himself for criticism for the financial state the club is in.

Terrible leadership.

And something, I must say, which does not correspond very well with the Aeneas Compass, which I've been looking at all morning.

Well,

the Aeneas Compass, just for listeners who don't know, because they may not, is

it's on the Innias website.

They have a compass.

Basically, a circle, I think we can call it.

You can call it a compass if you want.

On the top is words we like.

On the bottom, it's words we don't like.

Words we like include skepticism, which I think is lucky.

Words we like, a beer, listeners, intellect, doers, growth, stamina, substance over style, work hard, play hard.

Words Words we don't like.

Clean your own coffee cup.

Words we don't like.

That's a good one, actually.

You've forgotten the most important one.

Yeah, that's true.

Northerners.

Northerners, yeah.

Words we like.

Northerners.

Do the right thing, which is probably presumably what they said when they were, you know, sacking Doris, who'd been there for 50 years.

Which is, we're doing the right thing, Doris.

Words we don't like, gloating, wafflers,

quitters, moaners,

clockwatchers, wasting time.

That actually, it's so great, isn't it?

Next time United, I wondered up in the 95th minute.

Quite a few of the words we don't like can be directly applied to Jim Ratcliffe, which I think is quite funny.

It's bad news, I think, that BS is under words we don't like after this round of interviews.

Bullies, boring wafflers, entitlement.

Winging it.

I also notice he really doesn't like turf wars or politics, which again, given how the Dan Ashworth situation went down, again, they hired a sporting director who they chased for months and who Sir Jim Radcliffe said was world-class, I think, at one point.

And then only to fire him a couple of months later because, according to Jim Radcliffe, chemistry.

Now, that cost him £4 million.

That seems, again, in the realm where we're having to fire staff and take away their lunches to avoid going bankrupt, seems like an expensive mistake.

And to me, seems like both turf force and or politics, which are words we don't like.

I've just noticed in words we like, just to the on the right, at three three o'clock is the word banter so you know

come on this is just amazing I literally could stare at this for the rest of my life well we like or we don't like banter do we like it or do we not we do like banter oh yeah we like it yeah this whole interview and I listened to to 40 minutes of him waffle on and

it just presented quite a which is a word we don't like

it presented to me the the dichotomy of football

right now, which is I love this game so much.

And then

I get to stare into the very dark heart of the people running it and how out of touch that they are.

And how when Gary Neville suggests what you think is a pretty routine idea of how to fund

£40,000

for

the X-Players Association who played for the club in the 60s and 70s, and how dumbstruck Jim Ratcliffe looks at being like, Oh, that's what that's a really good idea.

It's so sad, it's so sad.

With the,

yes, uh, yeah, up, up upon my ticket price horse.

I go.

That's the point I'll choose to make on top of this, which is he goes, you know, we're talking about 500 tickets of 75,000 here.

If I've learnt one thing from being in Germany, it is you need to get on top of people as soon as they start rising, the prices, because it all begins by stealth.

That's how Sir Jim made his money.

That's how it's done.

It's done incrementally, bit by bit.

And if you don't fight back, then, oh, suddenly another 500 tickets have gone up.

Well, maybe the ticket prices

will go down when they open their 100,000-seater stadium.

Matt Matt says, Are our Spurs supporters going to be annoyed that they will no longer have the most spectacular stadium in which to watch the home team lose to Crystal Palace?

Many people asking, you know, as Ryan did, is Man United moving to a giant circus tent a bit too on the nose?

Okay, so the day after all the interviews for the timeline, Manchester United then announced these plans to build the biggest stadium in the UK, an iconic £2 billion £100,000-seater ground close to Old Trafford.

The architects at Foster and and Partners said the stadium would feature an umbrella design and a new public plaza that is twice the size of Trafalgar Square.

It will form a part of a wider regeneration of the Old Trafford area, which is a good thing, predicted to be the biggest such project in the UK since the transformation of Stratford with the 2012 Olympics.

Apparently, it'll mean 92,000 jobs, 17,000 new homes, an additional 1.8 million visitors to the area annually, could be worth an additional £7.3 billion per year to the UK economy.

I presume Boffins have worked out these numbers.

Our current stadium has served us brilliantly for the past 115 years, but has fallen behind the arenas in world sport.

I think we may well finish up with the most iconic stadium in the world, said Jim Ratcliffe.

A new place for Manchester United to play football or a revamped Gold Trafford or a new Trafford is a good idea, Barry.

And if the numbers all stack up, great.

It just seems really weird to announce this the day after all those interviews.

Well, it's not weird at all.

It was all carefully orchestrated, one imagines.

Yes, sorry, but it's so obvious.

It's so obvious.

Oh, right, sorry.

It's not that carefully orchestrated.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like, no.

Yeah, I mean, it's ostensibly a plea for government money, isn't it?

So he said, oh, we'll pay for the stadium, but it will require a lot of infrastructure, which we'd expect the government to pay for, and then I will profit from personally.

It seems quite an ambitious project for a club that was apparently going to be scrabbling around the back of the sofa for spare change as recently as three months ago.

But it looks like a good plan.

All Trafford is

fit for purpose, but not as fit for nowhere near as fit for purpose as it should be.

But it will be interesting to see what the government reaction is to this

wheeze of Jim's.

It screams to me

we're not evil, but do have a look at our evil HQ here.

It looks like what happens if you type into chat GPT,

what would the Eye of Sauron look like, but in 2050?

It looks like there are other capabilities to laser people out of the stadium if there's any dissent.

I just looked as I, I mean, and also, it's sunny.

Come on.

That's the biggest piss take here.

Well, that's if we're being like vaguely positive about something, anything.

I do think like this idea of design of designing the stadium with having a very large public area that's covered by something is actually a good idea.

Like, having been outside Old Trafford in Durain many times, I think that that seems like progress for humanity.

But I do take it back to the Enios Compass yet again, where it says that they don't like fancy slides.

We have an innate suspicion of fancy slides.

We worry about the shallowness behind them.

And that was the only thing I could really think of watching this presentation video, which might be the fanciest slide I've ever seen.

I was also also slightly troubled by Lord Foster, isn't he?

Saying this would be arguably the biggest public space in the world, which I think is not very, I mean, they're not even remotely true.

I mean, you can start looking at like the, I started looking at the list of city squares by size, and I come up with like the

Xinghai Square in Dalian, China, which is 1.7

thousand square meters large.

I think that is, but also you can take it further.

I mean, are you aware that in the Nordic countries, all nature areas are considered a public space.

We have a law that you're the law of free passage, you know.

So really all nature in the Nordic region is a public space.

There is a fjord bigger.

There's a fjord bigger than that.

Well, like the Hadanga Plateau, the Hadanga Vida, which is a part of southern Norway where people go hiking.

It's the sort of 3,000 square kilometers, I think thereabouts, probably bigger than the space outside of New Trafford.

I'm not entirely sure.

But so again, this claim they're they're going to have arguably the largest public space in the world.

That falls under BS again on the Aeneas compass.

I have to say, I think Sir Jim needs to have a word with his lead architect there.

Anyway,

we shall see in the fullness of time.

By the time Lamine Lamal has passed Messi's record, Man United will be winning the Premier League with 100,000 happy fans underneath that big umbrella.

In the Premier League on Monday night, Barry, Newcastle won one at West Ham.

I thought it was not a terrible football match.

You know, Monday night football can get forgotten

and both sides contributed.

Yeah, it was okay.

I think Newcastle probably deserved to win.

Alfonso Areola had a busy night, made a couple of very good saves, one of them bordering on miraculous when he clawed away a deflection off Max Kittleman.

Bruno Jimarez prodded home the goal from a Harvey Barnes cross.

I think, as I said, I think Newcastle deserved to win, but West Ham will feel they should have had a penalty for a

blatant shove in Jared Bowen's back by Bruno, which went unpunished.

But I don't think West Ham could have too many complaints.

Archie, would you like a Fulham minute?

Yeah, sure.

I was going to say I was at Sam Fender on Monday night in Cologne, and

when Bruno Gimara scored,

just heard in between one of the songs, someone yell out, 1-0 Bruno!

And there kind of a cheer went up from, I'd say, a portion of the crowd.

crowd fulham are in the quarterfinals of the fa cup which is which is nice and managing to beat manchester united uh with our worst performance against them this season it it yeah things are things are looking up uh we've not beaten crystal palace at home in 20 years in fact the last time we did uh my mum took me to the game and and she doesn't like football and i've been thinking about trying to force her to go right um but the problem is the game falls on her birthday so come my mum are in touch.

No, no, I don't think that's going to encourage her.

So,

yeah, let's see.

Okay.

Well, yeah, no, no, that's quite a nice, it's quite a nice, unplanned minute that you gave us, but I enjoyed it.

Bit of EFL last night.

Phil says, Dirty Luderson finally shows some fight.

Can we stay up?

Yeah, big win for them over relegation rivals Cardiff.

They're now two points from safety.

Derby, a point from safety after their win over Frank Lampard's Coventry, which was a bit of an upset.

Bernie drew one over West Brougham.

A win could have put them in the automatic positions, but Sheffield Sheffield United went top with victory over Bristol City.

Birmingham are strolling it in League 1.

They beat Stevenage 2-1.

I'm reliably informed by Sandy Ridger Vajola that the ref had a word with the Stevenage keeper for time wasting after seven minutes, which is nice.

Cambridge went 1-up after three minutes at Blackpool with an amazing air kick from a Blackpool centre-back.

But sadly, we led in two goals and we lost.

And it's looking quite difficult for us in the Neil Harris revolution.

Now after Johnny Lou questioned the cultural contributions of the city of Nottingham we got the following comment on Spotify from Liam among a few emails.

Shane Meadows is from Utoxita.

Things from Nottingham include Lace, the inventor of the MRI scanner, Boots, as in Boots.

I don't know if he means Boots the Chemist or just Boots.

Stuart Broad, England's oldest pub, D.H.

Lawrence, Luddites, the Flying Bedstead, HP Source, Tarmac, William Boo, the founder of the Salvation Army, Paul Smith, Torville and Dean, Shin Pads, Goldnets, Crossbars, Iberprofen.

Without those four things, then Sunday League couldn't exist.

Alan Sillito, whoever he may be, and Rally Bikes.

So there we go.

You had me at HR Source.

HP Source?

Or HR Source?

HR Source sounds very much like something that Sebixa Jim would use, isn't it?

Just

pour some HR sauce on those employees.

We'll get rid of them.

Anyway, lovely stuff.

That'll do for today.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, Lars.

Thank you, Max.

Thank you, Archie.

If you can't be good, be lucky, Max.

Okay.

Straight from the compass.

Thank you, Barry.

Have a wonderful birthday.

Oh, thank you.

Yes, my birthday involves talking about football, writing about football, watching football, and walking two dogs, which who I can't walk at the same time.

Because they don't like each other.

It's not going to be one of the more...

If anything, Max, they like each other a bit too much.

Right, I see.

I I see.

And only and only fans dog walk with them.

Anyway, Football Weekly is produced by Joe Grove.

Our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

We'll be back tomorrow.

This is The Guardian.