England are somehow one game away from the Euro 2024 final – Football Daily podcast

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Speaker 3 Hello, and welcome to Guardian Football Weekly, a semi-final pod then for Euro 2024. England are there somehow.
Gareth Southgate's third semi in four tournaments.

Speaker 3 It feels the least planned, the most chaotic, perhaps the luckiest of them. And yet, we are still there.
We'll discuss the left side, the immovable, immobile Harry Kane.

Speaker 3 We'll talk the good things, Saka May Nu Eze Parmatoni, a relatively miserly defense, the hopeful return of Luke Shaw, five pounds to all of us.

Speaker 3 If we avoid saying a team of moments, and then there's the Dutch. Big Vout got trolled enough in England to want to troll us back.
Is it darn to suggest targeting Van Dijk?

Speaker 3 There's the classic goodies v. Baddies in Spain versus France.
People have been begging for some Copper America. So hopefully, Wilson's been watching that.
All that, plus your questions.

Speaker 3 And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

Speaker 3 From the look of your face, Jonathan Wilson, you haven't been watching it.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 two words. Salomon von Don.

Speaker 3 There we are. That's your Copper America for you.
Johnny Lou, welcome.

Speaker 4 Hi.

Speaker 3 Hello, Barney Ronay. Hello.
So, England so far played five. They've won one in normal time, one in extra time, one on penalties and two draws, four, five against three.

Speaker 3 But South getting to his third semi-final in four tournaments. Barney, is the football as bad as we think it's been? Or somewhere in the middle?

Speaker 3 Is there now a sort of culture war over how this is all happening?

Speaker 1 I mean, there has been for a long time.

Speaker 1 It's weird. I feel like I've been forced into a, I've had to adopt a position here that I really want.
I've become this kind of Southgate truther.

Speaker 1 I'm the sort of Joe Rogan of Southgate-ism.

Speaker 1 I mean, actually, I'm not.

Speaker 1 I'm more of a marginalised figure than that. I'm like Donald Sutherland in jfk i'm appearing on a bench right saying you know look who stands to gain uh

Speaker 1 actually maybe i'm the kevin bacon figure in that film right just shouting out truths from a hotel room in in germany or you're kevin bacon in tremors just going ah it's just

Speaker 1 i've i don't care that much about southgate obviously he's not the world's greatest manager but I just hate the discourse around it. I was thinking about it this morning.
It's really hard.

Speaker 1 There are all these like, this is cognitive dissonance between... England been to 26 tournaments before Southgate and reached.

Speaker 1 If you say a semi-final is that you're in the final four days of the tournament, that's a sign of success. They reached three in 26 tournaments.
They've now reached three in four.

Speaker 2 So can I just add a footnote?

Speaker 1 No, we had this conversation already today.

Speaker 2 We had this argument at breakfast. Barney does not count 1968 Euros, which there are reasons.

Speaker 1 Because you have to win the home championships to qualify for a semi-final.

Speaker 2 I think that is a footnote that's worth adding. That's all I'm saying.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I've already adjusted to include the 1980 one at your, but that made it worse for England because they were terrible then.

Speaker 2 I was just giving you facts. I wasn't taking a side.
I was probably out of the way. But you see, there's no logic in starting in 84, not 80 if you're saying it has to be a tournament of eight teams.

Speaker 2 Anyway, carry on.

Speaker 1 I'm giving facts.

Speaker 1 Three in 26 and then three in four. And this cognitive distance where you can look at that and say, well, the problem is Southgate's holding them back.

Speaker 1 Obviously, he's not perfect. Nobody's perfect.
But they had very good players before. Stanley Matthews, Ballon d'Or.

Speaker 4 Kevin Keegan, Ballon d'Or.

Speaker 2 Michael Owen, Ballon d'Or.

Speaker 1 Bobby Charlton, Ballon d'Or.

Speaker 1 Now, if you say Ballon d'Or a lot, that means you must know something about football.

Speaker 2 And that's now me.

Speaker 1 But the point is, yes, he obviously makes mistakes, but he's kind of, there's two problems with England. There's this culture stuff, the idiocy of being English, battling all that.

Speaker 1 And then there's being good on the pitch. And he's kind of slain one of those dragons, but he's not a brilliant manager.

Speaker 1 He's not going to work out how to make a slightly worse midfield, beat a better midfield. Yes, we can see that.

Speaker 1 But to go on and on about it, learn from what he's done, get a slightly better tactical manager, and maybe they'll win something. But for now, it's pretty good.

Speaker 1 And he's certainly not a deceitful, dishonest, corrupt person.

Speaker 1 So the amount of abuse he's getting, people throwing things at him, I find really sickening. And I think it's really something that people should just stop doing.
Also, I would say,

Speaker 1 probably disagreeing with your intro, that this is probably his greatest achievement, this current semifinal, because he's got over two things. He's got over his own mistakes.

Speaker 1 He's made a lot of mistakes with the team. Midfield wasn't configured properly.
He forgot the things that made him good. And the amount of background noise is just absolutely absurd.

Speaker 1 And both of those things have been addressed face down and they've reached the semi-finals somehow while playing winning ugly football.

Speaker 1 I just think how you can look at that and say, this guy is the big problem. You know, we just get rid of Southgate, everything will be fine.

Speaker 2 Management is a lot harder.

Speaker 1 Club, international management, it's weird. It's not like a, you're playing fancy football league or playing a club game where you've got endless money to spend and blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 You have to.

Speaker 1 compromise and do weird things and it's about feelings and emotions and culture and they've done okay. Sorry, I'm just going on about this.
I need to stop.

Speaker 1 I've become one of these middle-aged obsessive. He's my veganism.

Speaker 2 I'm obsessed with Southgate. He's my micro-brewery.

Speaker 1 It's become the thing that I live for.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'll let Johnny have a little go then.

Speaker 6 I agree with a lot of that.

Speaker 4 I mean, I thought, I think I've said many times on here that I thought Southgate should have gone after Qatar.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 there is a... There is a kind of paradox here because, yes, there is a lot of noise.
There is a huge amount of engagement. There is a huge discourse around it.
Uh, and that is partly

Speaker 4 the kind of the reconnection that Southgate created between the public and the England team in 2018 and 2020. Uh, that's why people, you know, care so more about this, you know, this thing.

Speaker 4 I think, I think, after Euro 2016, there was this huge disconnect, and it could have gone one of two ways. And Southgate is part of the reason why people are so engaged with it now.

Speaker 4 And the other, the other thing is, you know,

Speaker 4 there is this idea that he is just benefiting from this incredible wealth of talent. He's just sort of, you know, sucking at the teeth of this incredible pipeline.

Speaker 2 But, you know,

Speaker 4 if you look back at his work with the FA before he became England manager, the building block that he put in, this is, you know, he does deserve some credit for creating that pipeline, nurturing that talent, you know, his work with the under-21s.

Speaker 4 All this could be true. All this could be true.
And, you know, you can look at his tournament records, and,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 there is no body of work in my lifetime as an England manager that stands up to that.

Speaker 4 He is very clearly either England's greatest manager or their second greatest, depending on whether you value things like winning a World Cup. What I kind of don't,

Speaker 4 what I don't like really is this

Speaker 4 idea. And I think this kind of patronising, slightly patronising, patrician condescension that you get from,

Speaker 4 I think a lot of people in the media, I think a lot of people who are sort of mates with Gareth and who just, who find this, who basically don't like England fans and don't, you know, find them a little bit vulgar and Philistine, this idea that

Speaker 4 you can't dislike the way England are playing now.

Speaker 4 That actually, this thing is good.

Speaker 4 The bad football is actually good football, but you've never had it so good that, you know...

Speaker 4 You can't, if you liked the previous Southgate teams, you are sort of duty bound to like this one as well because he's just a nice guy.

Speaker 1 Who's saying that you need to like the football? I've not seen anyone say that. I think there's a general agreement that football's terrible.

Speaker 4 No, no,

Speaker 4 I think there's a lot of agreement that he's, you know, he's playing a

Speaker 4 he's playing a long game here, that

Speaker 4 this is actually really good, that

Speaker 4 his fingerprints are all over this team. When in fact, I think his fingerprints have never less been on this team.

Speaker 4 I kind of wrote after the Switzerland game, that it feels like this team has basically become an unward from him. You know, 2018, 2020, those successes bore

Speaker 4 blueprint. Absolutely.
I think this is now a kind of, it's a mess. It's a mess being run on incredible individual talent.

Speaker 4 And, you know, and yet we're being told that this is the final twist of his genius, that this is the ultimate triumph.

Speaker 2 Who's saying that? I've not, I think

Speaker 1 everybody thinks this all.

Speaker 4 No, I think this is this is definitely being sold on you know on social media and in the media as like this is Southgate sticking all the Gareth haters have now got one in the eye because look at what he's done here and I you know I think it's perfectly it's perfectly possible to take the view that he has done, he did a really good job up until 2022.

Speaker 4 The team and the system has become a little bit stale under him, and yet brilliant players are bailing him out this time.

Speaker 4 And, you know,

Speaker 4 I think it's kind of weird that people say, you know,

Speaker 4 that wanting a different kind of football, wanting to be entertained while also winning is

Speaker 4 some sort of Vulgarianism.

Speaker 4 The grown-ups are in the room now. Another future is not possible.
Suck on his 174-seat majority. Tough choices now have to be made.

Speaker 4 You know, I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that.

Speaker 1 Well, I just don't think that argument exists. I've not heard anyone saying that.
England are dreadful.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think the best you can say for Southgate here is that maybe he created a culture that was good. And so if there's luck, maybe he deserves that luck.

Speaker 1 I think that's the best you can say about Southgate in this tournament. I've not seen anyone say, you've just got to suck this up.
It's awful, obviously.

Speaker 3 I mean, maybe it's a reaction to the BBC were very positive after the last game on TV. and that is 18 million people watching that going, sort of almost feeling like...

Speaker 3 And we had a lot of reaction after our pod because I had people who listened to us and then listened to their pod going, the difference between the two is so marked.

Speaker 3 I definitely Wilson am a sort of Southgate apologist who slightly jumped off the Southgate train this tournament.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I think...

Speaker 2 I mean, there's so many problems

Speaker 2 with the discourse around this. So the people who hate the style of football, look, England are not playing well, but there's a point beyond that.
What are they trying to do?

Speaker 2 And it is true that Southgate, his aim is a slightly more conservative form of football, small C conservative form of football than a lot of people would like. But

Speaker 2 how do you create attacking beautiful football? You actually often have to create it by playing fewer attacking players.

Speaker 2 And the paradox of this England side is one of their problems is they've tried to put too many attacking players in. It's the same thing Argentina did for years.

Speaker 2 We've got this incredible clutch of attacking creative players, which certainly more than England have had before.

Speaker 2 And suddenly, rather than playing the 4-3-3

Speaker 2 where you'd have Declan Rice alongside a fairly defensive, fairly solid figure, who would occasionally get forward, or Declan Rice would occasionally get forward with a slightly more creative player in there.

Speaker 2 Now, it's suddenly a 4-2-3-1, or started tournament it was, with Bellingham, and that he was then playing slightly further forward than he had been at the World Cup, and that meant he was getting in the way of Foden and getting in the way of Kane.

Speaker 2 There was a lack of balance there because there was nobody to go beyond Kane, partly because of Rashford not being anywhere near good enough form.

Speaker 2 So I sort of think the complaints about how England are playing are clearly legitimate in that the football is not good. I think the solution people are proposing, oh, take the handbrake off.

Speaker 2 No, put the handbrake on more. That's how you make them more creative by

Speaker 2 creating a firmer base. You know, it's the same as, I don't know, look at, say, the 2005 Champions League final.
How did Liverpool become more attacking?

Speaker 2 It's by bringing on Diddy Hermann and showing up in midfield to create

Speaker 2 the foundations for it. I don't think the complaints are legitimate.
I just think the solutions are proposed aren't really possible or relevant.

Speaker 2 I also think people's expectations of international football are often slightly fanciful. It's not club football.

Speaker 2 We're used to seeing at club level incredibly finely tuned machines that have been put together over a period of years by people selecting the right parts and then honing those parts within a system every day, looking at data, analysing it, working how you can tweak it to make it better.

Speaker 2 They're incredibly efficient machines. International football, by its nature, cannot be that, should not be that.
And it's always going to be a bit of a bodge job.

Speaker 2 And a lot of that means just sort of scrambling through when you can. And even the very best teams

Speaker 2 in a seven-game span of a tournament maybe play well, like really well, twice.

Speaker 2 England haven't had that twice yet, but were they to play well in the semi-in-the-final, we would think, oh, you know, time the run perfectly, and you back-project the narrative onto it.

Speaker 2 So I think what we're seeing so far is

Speaker 2 what never seemed to happen to England before. You'd see other teams be terrible in the creep stage and somehow bundle away through it.

Speaker 2 Look at Portugal in 2016, whose Southgate is sort of said as a model. They drew all three games.
They were then terrible in.

Speaker 2 I can't even remember which way around the Croatian Poland games were, but one was on penalties, one was a 1-0 win. And suddenly they've been a semi-final against Wales.

Speaker 2 That's almost a position England find themselves. England probably played better in this tournament than Portugal in 2016.

Speaker 3 Terry says, is Kane untouchable?

Speaker 1 He shouldn't be, should he? I mean,

Speaker 1 he's not been. He's been really bad for five games in a row.
I mean, he scored twice, but yeah, he's looked so immobile.

Speaker 1 I wonder if anyone's ever been previously so bad in five tournament games and played every minute. It could be a world record.
He could go through the entire tournament.

Speaker 1 I'm sure that has happened before, but normally you'd get knocked out by now.

Speaker 1 But like, I don't know, I think I'd like to see him probably have a rest but i managers again don't do that because this is everything isn't it this could be gareth southgate's last game in charge hopefully uh i mean what i mean is hopefully he's going to leave after this tournament because i really don't want him to stay on but it won't happen

Speaker 1 uh but i yeah i'd like to see ivantoni because i really like him um ivantoni i think he's really fun and he's a good player and it would just be nice to see some different energy in there because kane isn't causing any problems when he drops off when his physical levels drop off he doesn't really have much you forget that he's his achievements are not based in any particularly outrageous talent he's a really clever player he's brilliant at striking a ball he's got good movement good passing but you know it's always been a stretch he's really overachieved and so when his physicals levels drop a bit i think he's been confused by the bundesliga as well he did play a much reduced role there and uh bellingham and foden getting in the spaces he likes he's not been able to adapt it's his failing uh but no he won't he won't be dropped i'm sure of it no because I and I can't, I can't think of anything worse, Johnny, than England winning and Harry Kane not being on the pitch, but just sitting on the end and just like,

Speaker 3 what that would do? It would just be like the memes would be too much. It'd be better to go out of the semi-final.
But maybe his best chance is coming on late. I mean, I agree.

Speaker 3 Maybe this is a futile conversation because he will start. But you can see, like, even simple things are not working because he's just not right.

Speaker 4 No, and the touch is heavy, the gait is leaden.

Speaker 4 He's not challenging for

Speaker 4 for the aerial ball in the same kind of physical way that

Speaker 4 we've been used to him doing. I think England are

Speaker 4 quite blessed in fact that they've got three strikers who have got very different

Speaker 4 profiles, they've got very different capabilities, they're suitable for almost for different phases of a game.

Speaker 4 You wonder that with a squad of 26 with five subs available, I think they get a sixth sub in extra time.

Speaker 4 whether you know it'll never happen but whether you have ollie watkins on for the first half uh you know using his pace and movement to stretch defences and try and give him a fast start then you bring on kane for this for the second half because you do still want 45 minutes of kane and if it if it's looking like it's going to extra time you bring on tony just before the

Speaker 4 goal on 85 minutes you bring on tony for his aerial presence and and you bring him on for penalties you know that is possible these kind of combinations with the the the the way that squads are configured these days You could do that.

Speaker 4 I think we know that that's not going to happen, but it is just worth thinking about all the different attacking combinations that England have, that they could if they didn't see Kane as this kind of sacred cow that needed to play from the start and play basically until his legs fall off.

Speaker 3 Wilson, the left side, I mean,

Speaker 3 I'm now starting to quite like watching Kieran Trippier cut back and play a fast back to a centre-back, you know, sort of like Stockholm syndrome.

Speaker 3 But it seems almost during that second half when the Swiss were getting better, I was like...

Speaker 3 This feels so obvious to me that I must be missing something.

Speaker 2 Well, I think one of the reasons Southgate likes Trippier is he's very vocal.

Speaker 2 And I think there's a sense that without Maguire and without Henderson, England lacks an organising voice and Trippier does give you that.

Speaker 2 Whether that's enough to compensate for the bluntness that caused on left-hand side, I'm not sure. But if England do go to a back three

Speaker 2 long term, I mean long term, as in the next two games,

Speaker 2 I guess Saka does take the right side of Real, doesn't he, rather than Trippier?

Speaker 2 Whether you can sort of fiddle that round somehow to make it more of a 3-4-3 with Saka still playing on the right, and that would mean probably sacrificing one of Fogen or Bellingham, and you have Trippier on one side, Shaw on the other.

Speaker 2 I don't know, that's a possibility.

Speaker 2 There was a moment when Shaw came on against Switzerland,

Speaker 2 he'd been on about 30 seconds, and he suddenly pings his left foot at 70-yard pass cross-field. And you still think, oh, yeah, people can do that with a left foot.
That's great.

Speaker 2 I think Trippier defensively is probably better than Shaw.

Speaker 2 But it depends. I mean, I don't know who the Dutch are going to play on the the right, because if it's Stephen Bergvine,

Speaker 2 he's been so bad

Speaker 2 the twice I've seen him in this tournament that I'm not really sure that it matters what you have on the left defensively. But I sort of presume Bergvine won't play.

Speaker 2 Whether that means Zavi Simmons pushing the forward line, whether they start their course, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I thought at the start of this game, the Switzerland game, Barney, that Foden and Bellingham did start to look like they were working together a bit. They both faded, I think.

Speaker 3 But again, I guess it's it's like the Kane question, like, they will both play.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, there was a couple of moments, really briefly, in the first half, where Foden and Saka combined on the right. And that was just like, oh, wow, you know, that's great.

Speaker 1 That's what English football has. These two really good players.
Seeing them play together was really, you know, it was really interesting. But it didn't really work.
I mean, to be fair to

Speaker 1 be fair to South Goat, as I'm trying to get people to call him, when I saw that thing about, you know, Saka playing on the right, he was like, great, he's going to play Wimback.

Speaker 1 He's going to have have balance. Maybe Saka, you know, and, oh, he's playing Trickery on the left.
You know, I was furious. And I just, what are you doing? Why have you done this?

Speaker 1 You're going to have balance, but no balance. And, oh,

Speaker 1 he's worried about Andoy, so he wants a more defensive player there. And then in the first three minutes, Andoy just weaves past Trippier.
But, I mean, to be fair to him.

Speaker 1 Saka was England's best player and scored the goal. And that seemed to not really be the problem.

Speaker 1 That weirdness problem seemed to be other stuff, mainly the sort of death after half-time. So, that part of it seemed to work okay.
But I think Luke Shaw will definitely start.

Speaker 1 It makes a huge difference. And I think he's a really good player, Luke Shaw.

Speaker 3 Start on the left of a three or start as a wing back or wing back, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Mark Gahey will come back in on the left side. He's he's left-footed, he played well, um, and he's he's a good player, he's had a good tournament.

Speaker 1 So, then you've got two left-footed defenders on that side, and it starts to look a bit better.

Speaker 3 Suddenly, I think it's you know, that sounds nice, Johnny, doesn't it?

Speaker 4 It's on.

Speaker 2 I mean, England

Speaker 2 could

Speaker 4 win

Speaker 4 the,

Speaker 4 I still don't think, I don't still, I still don't see how they beat France or Spain, but like weirder things have happened.

Speaker 4 I mean, Barney was saying the other day that he thinks that England are sort of on for a bellow horizontal style, you know, an absolute, an absolute pacing at some point, a total systems collapse.

Speaker 4 But I, I, you know, I think 7-1 against Spain.

Speaker 2 I don't think they're that bad.

Speaker 4 I mean, as long as they have this

Speaker 4 fairly solid base, and to be fair, they have managed to restrict teams to only a few chances.

Speaker 4 It's not like the defence is just going to suddenly subside in five minutes.

Speaker 4 They might have a bit of a freak out. They might have the odd freak out.
But yeah,

Speaker 4 the thing about Bellingham, because I mean, I think we mentioned Bellingham earlier, is that when he plays at Madrid, he needs width. The paradox that

Speaker 4 because Bellingham roams around all over this, you need players to stretch the pitch who are really disciplined.

Speaker 4 And so, you know, he has Rodrigo and he has Vinicius at Real Madrid who stretch defenses for him. That's the whole, you know, that's the whole idea of balance.
You know, that when

Speaker 4 they bring on Luke Shaw, it creates space for Saka on the right, and almost immediately he gets that space because the defence is stretched further across the pitch because they're not having to defend 70% of the pitch like they were with Trippier.

Speaker 4 So you need players who are going to basically do what they're told,

Speaker 4 stay wide,

Speaker 4 carry the water if they have to, and create that space

Speaker 4 for the creative players,

Speaker 4 whether that's Bellingham and Foden in tandem or whether it's just Bellingham. The tests are only going to get harder from here.
They're reaching sort of the boss level stage of the tournament now.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 you do fear for them if they are just going to carry on.

Speaker 4 Just have a football, lads, and try and do things, think some things with it.

Speaker 2 Here's a football.

Speaker 4 They are going to need something approaching tactical integrity.

Speaker 3 It'd be interesting to see, you know, because I think Palmer and Esday have both been great when they've come on, but you know, it's a step to start one of them, I guess.

Speaker 3 Wilson, on the big boss-level omiter, where are the Dutch?

Speaker 2 I mean, really hard to tell. I mean, that's been the thing about this, Sorton.
Spain have been good, everybody else has

Speaker 2 not been that good.

Speaker 2 So, the Dutch were pretty average first half against Turkey. Yeah, Turkey fully deserved that half-time lead.
Then Vegorst came on, and that changed the game.

Speaker 2 That Turkey got deeper as it had done against Austria. And basically, Veghorst

Speaker 2 meant that when the Dutch were slinging crosses in, he was winning balls, he was dragging. Well, I think he only actually won one A rug dual game, but his presence was causing problems in a way that

Speaker 2 I doubt if it hadn't been for Austria. I know Austria caused a few more problems when Gregovic came on.
Essentially,

Speaker 2 that Turkish policy of allowing the opposition to cross the ball was no longer effective. And the second half, I sort of felt pretty,

Speaker 2 you know, it felt that they were going to come back and win that game, whether they were going to do it in normal time or extra time.

Speaker 2 You could sort of see Turkey sort of, maybe it's just accumulated fatigue of the tournament, but you could see them sort of diminishing as a half went on.

Speaker 2 And you know, I was sort of, I was in a Turkish bit of the press box, and the first half, they were incredibly sort of buoyant and the bullions and noisy, which is not ideal for journalists, and certainly not something you'd see from a British press box.

Speaker 2 And they were pretty cowed by the end. I think they'd accepted the inevitable.
so

Speaker 1 yeah the Dutch are they're fine but they're not brilliant I'd like to introduce a new feature to the podcast where oh good we don't have enough features yeah

Speaker 1 does it have production behind it well it could have I guess the theme tune is my sort of droning voice um saying it's a very popular very popular part of the podcast yes um that I have to go and catch a train to Munich now um so but I can if there's any rapid fire take you want me to give really quick rapid fire before I I'm running for a train This one Keith, I've always wondered what does he think about Adam Walton?

Speaker 3 No, my question is: I saw you call out Barry Glendenning for not appearing on this podcast, and he hasn't reacted.

Speaker 3 And he has he's called you out on this podcast, but he wasn't brave enough to do it when you weren't there. So, I wonder if you wanted to.
We're building up to a Ron A. V.
Glendenning moment.

Speaker 1 I mean, my first thought about that is Barry who.

Speaker 2 Oh, good.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't know. You know,

Speaker 1 he makes a lot of noise, but I'm here. Where's he?

Speaker 1 um i will be releasing a full call-out video stripped to the waist um ranting into an iphone in due course but you know it's just sad because people want these big fights the public want these big colossal vast generational comings together and it's just going to happen when we're both too old we've lost it in reality just doing it for the money yeah with jake paul on the bill and nobody wants that when we're in our prime yeah now yeah when we're we're champions that's what people want to see.

Speaker 1 But sadly, Barry didn't see it like that, which, you know, also doesn't really surprise me.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I'm here.

Speaker 3 Enjoy your train journey, Barney. Thank you, mate.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much. Bye.

Speaker 3 That'll do for part one. Part two.
The remaining panelists will look ahead to Spain and France.

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Speaker 3 Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly. Spain v France, then, Wilson.

Speaker 2 How do you see it? Well, Spain have been better than anybody in this tournament. I don't know.
I think it's still not entirely 100% convincing.

Speaker 2 This idea that there is suddenly new Spain, and as well as

Speaker 2 the nice patterns in the possession of midfield, that they suddenly have this directness given them by Leminia Marlin and Nico Williams.

Speaker 2 I remember I was watching the game against Italy. They absolutely battered Italy in that game, and yet the only goal was an own goal.

Speaker 2 And then, okay, I know it's a much changed team against Albania and they're already three, so to an extent,

Speaker 2 who cares? But the fact that having been broadly dominant in that game, they only won 1-0. Then the Georgia game, I mean, yes, they win 4-1,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 three of those goals came in the second half when Georgia were clearly exhausted. And the fact that they somehow, I think, think Spain had nine shots and Georgia none when Georgia took the lead.

Speaker 2 So you start to think,

Speaker 2 is actually the old Spain of being really good but not being able to score goals, is that entirely banished? So that would be my one doubt. Obviously, Pedri's now out and he's a big loss.

Speaker 2 Although maybe that does allow Daniel Mo in, and Danielma probably was the key figure in the same in the quarterfinal. So, you know, they have been the best team in the tournament so far.

Speaker 2 France have been like a sort of seeped up version of England. They've been terrible but have got three.

Speaker 4 Johnny? Yeah, I think, you know, Spain,

Speaker 4 it's been interesting. They have clearly been the best team in the tournament.

Speaker 4 I still I still feel like they're not as good as they were four years ago I just think it's a it's a slightly lower quality field all round

Speaker 4 and they have been the best of what has largely been a disappointing bunch of favourites but yeah that they've everyone's talked about the wingers

Speaker 4 I think the fact that they've pretty much rebooted that midfield is also the biggest change you know that they now have a much more kind of it's much more vertical energetic midfield that they're trying to get the ball in get the ball out in a way that I think a lot of the Spanish teams at recent tournaments were sort of hamstrung by the legacy of

Speaker 4 those great Spanish teams from 10-15 years ago. They felt they kind of had to pass their way through, and

Speaker 4 the game has sort of changed. It kind of changed under their feet a little bit.

Speaker 4 You saw this when Italy put them out in 2016, and then again, you know, in Russia, that they sort of the game had changed under them, and now they finally kind of

Speaker 4 rebooted it. You know, you have Rodri at the base, you have Fabian Ruiz, Marino came on, and actually providing a goal threat as well.

Speaker 4 So I think it's going to be really interesting.

Speaker 4 In terms of the mentality, I still don't think, you know, like Wilson said, you know, Spanish teams

Speaker 4 overperforming and underachieving in tournaments. I still don't think they've kind of shed that.

Speaker 4 I still feel like I've got a soft underbelly.

Speaker 3 Is that better than the England underperforming and underachieving?

Speaker 2 They're all in England or overachieving. That's true.

Speaker 4 Nobody thought they were capable of this.

Speaker 2 The thing we didn't say about England, where Southgate clearly deserves enormous credit, is he's slain the penalty dragon.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 As soon as Akanjia missed the penalty, as soon as Pickford had saved it, I don't think anybody in the press room I was watching had any doubt England were going to win.

Speaker 2 They looked so in control of that. And you think of the panic that penalties have introduced before.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, that's where you see the benefit of a cautious, research-driven, hard preparation, very mechanical

Speaker 2 style of management that Southgate sport.

Speaker 3 That leads us to Didier Deschamp quite well, doesn't it? In a way, who is, I mean, would it be great, Johnny, if France didn't won the Euros without scoring a goal from Ottawa today?

Speaker 3 There's part of me that would absolutely love that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and ironically, given how many generationally great attacking players they have in that squad,

Speaker 4 this isn't my formulation of words. It was someone on Twitter, so I can't take any credit for this, but somebody said it should be illegal

Speaker 4 for this France team to be so boring. I was at the Portugal game, which I think about 15 minutes in, maybe 10-15 minutes in, I just wrote on the WhatsApp group Simulator Penalties.

Speaker 4 I don't think there was any doubt that that game was going to just going to get dragged out. And

Speaker 4 there is, you know, a really solid base there.

Speaker 4 This France team were really hard to score against.

Speaker 4 And the ease with which,

Speaker 4 you know, Pamicano, but especially Saliba, just dealt with Cristiano Ronaldo, it was almost, you know, it was almost embarrassing. But Spain are going to provide

Speaker 4 a very different kind of threat.

Speaker 4 They're going to have a lot more movement just by dint of not having a 39-year-old Ronaldo up front.

Speaker 3 Well, they have got a man in Kilian Mbappe who can't breathe.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Or sleep.
Right. Or run.
Like, he wasn't, you know, there was a game like... Yeah.
Sorry,

Speaker 4 an incident early on in the game where Cancello just sprinted him down. And I know Cancello is quick, but

Speaker 4 when Mbappe really put the the boners on and he just couldn't out-sprint, he just couldn't get away from Cancello. And, you know, surely that doesn't have anything to do with his nose, right?

Speaker 4 I just wonder whether he's, you know, he's all there at the moment.

Speaker 3 I reckon it could. I reckon if I had a broken nose, if you felt it every time, you'd feel if it was really bad, you'd feel it every time you put your foot down and it would just jar a bit.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think it would affect it would affect my game.

Speaker 3 Are we underappreciating defending Wilson? In this whole tournament, actually, from these mechanical, slightly uninteresting teams.

Speaker 2 Possibly to an extent. The thing is, I'm not even sure

Speaker 2 how good some of the defending has been. I sort of feel with France, it's a bit like Real Madrid, they've got this tremendous capacity to induce the opposition to not take chances.

Speaker 2 I don't quite know how that works.

Speaker 2 Manion's clearly a very good keeper as well.

Speaker 2 I think a lot more commanding than Luis was. But yeah,

Speaker 2 I think generally defending is underappreciated.

Speaker 2 And yeah, the thing we didn't say about Spain is obviously the rodery factor that, yeah, apart from games when Scott McTominay has been on the other side, he hasn't lost a game for 17 months now, which is against Tottenham at

Speaker 2 whatever Hotland's called. He said, Tottenham at Susadium.
So I don't know if England could get McTominay naturalised by the final. Is that something that a new Labour government could do?

Speaker 3 That is ludicrous, isn't it? Well, it feels to me that that midfield is the most balanced. It'd be interesting to see what France did in the midfield, Johnny, because Camervinga played really well.

Speaker 3 And I I just think everybody senses he's better than Rabio. And maybe Philippe Auclair has done that to us.
But it looks like Rabio will come back in.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I mean, I think

Speaker 4 it is a slightly different... You look at that midfield, you know, when

Speaker 4 they're capable of putting out, you know, Camervinga and Tremini and Kante, and you think, you know, how is anyone going to score through that? But, you know, it is a...

Speaker 4 It is a slightly different Kante, obviously. Kante's have had a great tournament, but he is a slightly different player to the one we saw, you know, ripping it up four, six years ago.

Speaker 4 His coverage, obviously isn't what it was.

Speaker 4 He does a lot more sort of pointing at the spaces where other players should be

Speaker 4 rather than actually going to cover it

Speaker 4 himself these days. He maybe covers like 10%, 10%, 15% of the planet rather than the sort of the 25-30 that he used to do in his prime.

Speaker 4 And then, of course, you have Rabio, who is just a fantastic scurrier. And he's just one of those players that helps you win tournaments and you don't notice a thing that he's done.

Speaker 4 He'll have 60, 70 touches, and you won't be able to recall a single one of them. And then, of course, you have

Speaker 4 the athleticism of Kama Vinga, Trimani, who's incredibly smart. Griezmann, I think, has been slightly disappointing.
I've been slightly disappointed by Griezmann in this tournament.

Speaker 4 I don't know why. I don't know whether he sort of...

Speaker 3 He's not been played in that role.

Speaker 3 In Qatar, he was there always. He was holding midfield sort of.
And we were like, oh, he was amazing.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and I wonder whether that's because he had the legs to do it because he barely played. He played that season with for Artatica because of the claws,

Speaker 4 the minutes claws. He just hasn't been able to do that, that role here.

Speaker 2 But I think also he had three players in front of him then, whereas here is he's got two. So there's not that width

Speaker 2 because they're playing that 4-3-1-2,

Speaker 2 which sort of makes sense because then Mbappe can cut in from the left still, but he's not got the defensive response when he'd pick up the opposing right back that he had at the World Cup that he really struggled with the semi-final and the final.

Speaker 2 So maybe it's just that the options or the forward-passing options are

Speaker 2 less varied for him in this tournament.

Speaker 3 What's the final going to be, Wilson?

Speaker 2 England, France.

Speaker 3 Johnny?

Speaker 4 I was going to say the same.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 France.

Speaker 3 And is that penalties?

Speaker 4 No, I think it might. No, I think it might be France-Holland.
I think it might be France-Holland.

Speaker 2 Right, okay.

Speaker 3 And who wins the whole thing?

Speaker 1 France.

Speaker 3 Wilson.

Speaker 2 But they do have a shot on target.

Speaker 2 Okay. They do have that do they do?

Speaker 3 The goal from open play. The header from William Saliba as their only goal from open play.
That's your beer from a set piece, that won't it? Uh, Wilson, you're still thinking France.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 I don't know. I just sort of think the

Speaker 2 there's a lot of narrative reasons to say England, but I don't think any reasonable footballing reasons.

Speaker 3 No, but there are no reasonable football reasons for them to be in the semifinal, I guess.

Speaker 3 Which is the narrative, right? Yeah, that's the narrative. Anyway, that'll do for part two.
We'll do any other business in part three.

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Speaker 3 Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly. Can I ask you just about generally how you've found it all?

Speaker 3 There is a view, Johnny, that it's that the tournament has been slightly underwhelming. I felt like it started really well in my mind.

Speaker 3 And I can't really remember what happened yesterday, let alone two weeks ago, that we were like, and maybe this just happens because there's loads of games in group stages, but we were like, ah, this is great.

Speaker 3 There are some young, exciting, new teams, and we've got all the big guns. And it's sort of flattened out a bit.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think this is

Speaker 4 one of the consequences of having 24 teams is that

Speaker 4 there's been a lot talked about the format, but I think towards the end of the group stage, the various different experiences, like

Speaker 4 the range of experiences, widens a lot.

Speaker 4 So, you get some teams which basically are peddling down, they're already qualified, and they sort of get embroiled in their own kind of selection dilemmas or whatever, and you get teams for which this is absolutely everything.

Speaker 4 And I think

Speaker 4 that that sort of difference, that divergence, disparity in what everyone's thinking and feeling about the tournament has, I think, the consequence for how

Speaker 4 we all kind of experience it collectively. I don't think we're,

Speaker 4 I'm not making much sense here, but I think that

Speaker 4 with the 16-team Euros, everyone's attention is focused, I think, in one direction or mostly in one direction at a time. And I think here it's been a lot more

Speaker 4 dispersed in a way that you know it's just kind of inevitable because you have teams on such different paths and such different tracks.

Speaker 3 But do you think you're better off having 32 rather than 24, Wilson? I mean, the sense that the group stages would have that jeopardy, even if obviously you're adding lower quality teams.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I hate 24.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 my preferred range of options would be 16 would be best, 32 would be second best, 24 is 16.

Speaker 3 You'd like eight, really?

Speaker 2 Or you'd probably just no, 16 is good. 16 is good.

Speaker 2 Four groups of four is it's the thing. I think the thing the Euros had, it's sort of

Speaker 2 it's a point of difference from the World Cup. Was it was it was sort of it was compact,

Speaker 2 every game mattered, there was a high level of quality. Um, the expansion of 24, yeah, I know people say, oh, yeah, but what about Georgia?

Speaker 2 They were one of the, yeah, they were one of the soys, but they went out in the last 16. Everybody thought they'd go out in the last 16.
So So great for them, but

Speaker 2 is that enough? Maybe if we just watched qualifying a bit more seriously, those teams would forget their moment anyway.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I think it's sort of the difference between a European weekend mini-break where you're only away for 72 hours, but

Speaker 2 you go out for three really nice meals and you've really planned it and toned it. And a sort of sprawling two weeks where...

Speaker 3 Where one evening you would just watch a box set because you're just like tired.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Exactly.
And it's, you know, know, with the World Cup because you've got teams from everywhere

Speaker 2 and with sort of less familiar with a lot of the sides and the players.

Speaker 2 I think that justifies the bigger scale. But 24 teams is just massively problematic.
I mean, for the reason Johnny says that that last round of group games,

Speaker 2 I mean, obviously the thing UEFA does, which is stupid, is...

Speaker 2 to have a head-to-head record being the determinant who finishes above because it meant that you knew categorically that Portugal and I think Spain had definitely topped their groups.

Speaker 2 Whereas, at least if it was goal defense, there's a chance that they might slip down to second.

Speaker 2 So they've actually got something to play for. They're not just.
I mean, I know Georgia beat Portugal and looked brilliant, and that was one of the games of the tournament.

Speaker 2 It maybe would have meant more if Portugal had feared, oh, actually, maybe we might slip down to second in the group, and that's not such a good thing.

Speaker 2 But I also just think it's fundamentally unfair that the teams later on know exactly what they need

Speaker 2 to get through as a best third-place team. Whereas if you're in groups A or B,

Speaker 2 you don't. You're playing blind.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Hungary got done dirty by that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, they'd lost their first two games. I guess it's kind of their fault.
But yes,

Speaker 2 if they'd known that they needed to beat Scotland by, say, three goals, then maybe that would have been a more open, better game.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I just think there's a fundamental unfairness in that format.

Speaker 2 And I think, yeah, the round of 16, you lose a bit of momentum because there's a lot of games that feel a bit like foregone conclusions.

Speaker 2 I think there has been a definite sense of momentum lost.

Speaker 2 On the other side, you're being here, it's been great. It's been the most fun tournament for me since Russia.
I think actually probably my favourite Euro since 2008 in terms of covering it.

Speaker 3 Is that just the Wi-Fi, or could we add it to a sort of fan experience?

Speaker 2 Actually, the Wi-Fi has not been good. Oh, interesting.
I mean,

Speaker 2 if German trains weren't so dreadful, everybody talking about German Wi-Fi. In Berlin, especially, I don't know how you cope, Johnny, but there's no phone signal.
In Berlin, it's terrible.

Speaker 4 They didn't invest. Deutsche Telekom, basically.
This goes back to the trains as well. They didn't invest in the mid-2000s when they could have built a fiber network, like a world-class fiber network.

Speaker 2 They're like, oh no, phones are fine.

Speaker 4 We are the leading telecoms provider in Europe. And so they just didn't invest.
And now, yeah, internet is almost, high-speed internet is almost non-existent.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 it's just

Speaker 2 a weird thing that

Speaker 2 you know the name of the restaurant in Berlin you're going to, you walk out of your hotel and you put it in your phone and you have to go back into the hotel to use the creaking Wi-Fi to get your Google Maps up to work it out because you can't get enough phone signal to get your maps to work on the phone.

Speaker 2 It's astonishing in a capital as of a country as clearly advanced and rich as Germany that that should be the case. Anyway, so yeah, a lot of that

Speaker 2 is personal as to what choices you make or which games to go to, which cities to be in.

Speaker 2 And I sort of messed up France by spending too much time in Paris where I think it was a lot more fun to be had going to Lyon, Bordeaux.

Speaker 2 And that was my fault in terms of planning. Whereas this tournament, I think I've got the balance of travel and sitting in one place about right.
But just having... And it's such a simple thing.

Speaker 2 fans from all over Europe coming together in a way that just wasn't really possible in guitar, wasn't possible the last year, it was partly because of COVID, partly because of a dispersed nature.

Speaker 2 That's just nice, it just sort of feels good. At the same time, that does bring problems because everybody brings their own nationalisms.

Speaker 2 And I've had to learn far more than I wanted to learn about grey wolves and what autochtonous means and double-headed eagles.

Speaker 3 So, has the fan behaviour, I mean, it's like you obviously see the odd video, right?

Speaker 3 And it like you have to be really careful about just watching it, one, you know, 20 England fans singing 10 gems, it's like, well, that's obviously depressing.

Speaker 3 But actually, you get the sense, Johnny, that I haven't really heard any big stories of any fans from anywhere being

Speaker 3 they've all been good, as far as I can tell.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you could tell right at the start, there was,

Speaker 4 and for months beforehand, there was this narrative that almost demanded that England fans come over and set

Speaker 4 fire to the place, and then it didn't happen. There was, you know, there was some kind of

Speaker 4 scuffle with some Serbian fans and Gelsenkirken and then there were some air kicks thrown at some Germans a couple of days ago and literally that's been it and this is

Speaker 4 a triumph I think for you know the security services or you know the police back in the UK I think the security you know here has been

Speaker 4 not heavy-handed I think it's been firm without without being as brutal or as heavy-handed as it could have been.

Speaker 4 And yeah, generally,

Speaker 4 any trouble has been of the political sort. Obviously, yeah, there have been sort of unsavoury incidents.

Speaker 4 There was a lot of talk about Spanish fans in the fan zone

Speaker 4 in Berlin getting some abuse from Germans. There are always

Speaker 4 little

Speaker 2 outcrops of trouble.

Speaker 4 But I think on the whole, given how febrile a state Europe is in right now, and given how different we all are basically, and the sort of climate that we're in, and bringing all these people

Speaker 4 us into one place, it's kind of gone about as unproblematically as it is realistically possible to expect.

Speaker 3 That's good, isn't it? Any other thoughts

Speaker 3 before we tie things up and get ready for the semi-finals, Wilson?

Speaker 2 Did you want to do something on Copper America?

Speaker 3 Oh, well, yeah. I mean, if you've got enough in your locker, Andy says, hello, everyone.
I know it's a Euros podcast.

Speaker 3 I just wanted to wish Team Canada the very best of luck against Argentina in the semi-final of the Copper America.

Speaker 3 I went back-to-back days of penalty dramas, first with my adopted Canadians beating Venezuela, then England. And that's where the similarities end.

Speaker 3 Canada now have Jesse Marsh as coach, and he's installed his style of all-out attack all the time onto the Canadians.

Speaker 3 If you ever wanted to see the absolute antithesis of England, seek out Canada-Venezuela quarter-final. It was pure stress as Canada continued to throw men forward.

Speaker 3 Even when one and up, I found myself calling for some caution, structure, and control.

Speaker 3 The Rondon goal was pure kamikaze by Canada, so they threw every man forward for a corner, even their goalie playing sweeper keeper close to the halfway line.

Speaker 3 Be careful what you wish for, England fans. And yes, Wilson, what can you tell us?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I have not seen a single minute of this tournament live because it happens in the middle of the night. And

Speaker 2 I think,

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't, maybe this is me being selfish, but I don't really understand why Common Ball decided to move the tournament to be in the same year as the Euros, because it just seems to me it disappears, or certainly to a European audience.

Speaker 2 Maybe they don't care about that. But

Speaker 2 actually, one of my other complaints about Joe, this has been a great tournament. I'm not complaining, really.
But German curtains are terrible.

Speaker 2 I've woken up at five o'clock every morning because the light streams in.

Speaker 2 Why can't they make curtains properly? What's that about? So, anyway, my point being that I couldn't sit up and watch a Copper America game because you can't sleep past 5 a.m. Right.

Speaker 2 And so, when you're getting in for matches, going to bed at 2, 3 in the morning, and then waking up at 5 because of the curtains.

Speaker 3 Die Schlechte Vohenger, I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah, oh, the Voorheener is in Zin Fuchba. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Wooz in Die Dunkelheid. Let's get Nicht

Speaker 2 here.

Speaker 3 So good.

Speaker 3 So, Salomon Rondon, you were talking about Copper America.

Speaker 2 Oh, Salim Rondon Skull against Canada is a brilliant, brilliant goal.

Speaker 2 All the haters, all the people who said, I didn't know what I was talking about, that goal. So basically, it's a corner that's cleared.

Speaker 2 He takes it down, and then from, I don't know, 50 yards, 45 yards, just whacks it over the keeper. It's sort of two touches from one box to the back of the other net.

Speaker 2 It's a brilliant goal for Solomon Rondon. And Venezuela, I think, judging from what I've read and the highlights I've seen, have been really good in this tournament.

Speaker 2 Go to Canada, who've also been really good.

Speaker 2 We now have the amazing prospect of a final being Marcelo Bielso against Jesse Marsh, back-to-back leads managers,

Speaker 2 which is such an odd thing.

Speaker 3 David Hockaday is fucking serious.

Speaker 2 But Uruguay have been very good. They put out Brazil in the quarterfinal on penalties.

Speaker 2 I think Uruguay have generally been very good since Bielso took over.

Speaker 2 But I mean, the reason they were playing Uruguay in the quarterfinal was that they come second in the group because they'd drawn against Colombia.

Speaker 2 And Colombia have been really good.

Speaker 2 They beat the Hammer the US, the first ever US team to feature 11 Euro-based players in a friendly back in March.

Speaker 2 Hammers Renegas still pulling the strings for them. So Colombia in the semi-final against Uruguay.
Can't do Argentina in the other semi. But yeah,

Speaker 2 the former leads managers, Darby, in the final is what we all want to see. Did you see Bielsa's?

Speaker 4 Did you see Bielsa's speech?

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, about the future of football.

Speaker 4 About the future of football

Speaker 4 after the Brazil game.

Speaker 3 Can you summarise it?

Speaker 2 Well, basically, he was saying that

Speaker 4 football, while it's more popular than ever, while there are more eyes on it than ever before, is losing the things that made it the world's greatest sport. And so,

Speaker 4 you know, he talked about football being an expression of cultural identity, an expression of

Speaker 4 who nations are.

Speaker 4 And that we're losing that because the players that people want to watch are becoming fewer and fewer.

Speaker 4 And that any kind of short-term gain, the business-driven gain in the viewership now is temporary. It's quite fleeting because

Speaker 4 football has become, I think he didn't say this, but football has basically become a kind of entertainment product.

Speaker 4 And it's become obsessed with what he calls polemicus and controversies and blame, blaming individuals and things.

Speaker 4 And at that point, I thought he's clearly watched Mark Goldbridge at some point because that's the only interesting thing he'd be able to sit there at 3 a.m.

Speaker 4 in La Paz, just watching Goldbridge's latest rant going like like this.

Speaker 4 And who would not come to that very same conclusion

Speaker 4 having watched that?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know how, you know, to the extent to which I agree with it or, you know, as a lot of people have pointed out, Belf's own,

Speaker 4 you know, not complicity, but, you know, his almost his compliance with these same trends. You know, he's

Speaker 2 whether,

Speaker 4 I don't know what I think about it, but it is incredibly thought-provoking, like...

Speaker 4 like a lot of people have said.

Speaker 3 But I thought it's interesting, isn't it? Because you can't, for example, do this podcast without talking about the controversies.

Speaker 3 And even if you're trying to talk about the controversies in sort of a non-ranty way, I guess.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's true. I mean, I guess it's just the way discourse in sport and politics in everything has gone.

Speaker 2 Everything is about the generation of clicks. Clicks are generated by controversy.
And therefore, maybe people take up more extreme positions to try and generate that controversy. Or people feel that.

Speaker 3 Don't be ridiculous, you idiot.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe people feel that that sort of, on the one hand, on the other, just doesn't doesn't cut anymore, which is which is sad. But I think, yeah, I think

Speaker 2 whenever anybody involved in football talks about football,

Speaker 2 you inevitably notice the compromises and the hypocrisies of it. That's just the nature of it.

Speaker 2 But I think with Bielsa, the fact he's conscious of it and he's trying to work it out in his own mind, he's talking about it, is just a very positive thing.

Speaker 2 And in terms of the style of football, the fact that his very high-octane, hard-pressing football mitigates against the militates against the sort of creative players he seems to be talking about having gone out of the game.

Speaker 2 I think that is interesting. And I know that when I was in Argentina researching Angels with Dirty Faces, I talked to Pancho Sar,

Speaker 2 who was the head of coaching at the Argentinian Football Association.

Speaker 2 And he was saying that he thinks that the quality of the Argentinian league in terms of a spectacle has gone down because everybody tries to play BLSA football, so everything's done at 100 miles an hour.

Speaker 2 And so you don't have the creativity and the skill.

Speaker 2 And whereas the Argentinian ideal of a player is still, yeah, the Riquelme figure, but the sort of graceful number 10, they're just battered out of the game by these sort of sub-BLC sta coaches who just want everything done incredibly quickly.

Speaker 2 Having said that, Argentinian coaching is clearly in a very healthy state because every group at the COP America was won by an Argentinian coach.

Speaker 3 Interesting stuff. Thought-provoking.
We'll end on that.

Speaker 3 Thanks, chaps. Thanks, Johnny.

Speaker 2 Thanks. Thanks, Wilson.
Cheers. Thank you.

Speaker 3 Football Weekly is produced by Dole Grove.

Speaker 4 Our executive producer is Christian Bennett.

Speaker 3 We'll be back on Tuesday night after Spain versus France.

Speaker 1 This is The Guardian.