Real Madrid’s rocky week and crunch time for Antonio Conte – Football Weekly

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Speaker 3 Hello, and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly. It's a Europod with title races as far as the eye can see.

Speaker 3 Barcelona's high line continues to excite, frustrate, and baffle, but they get the job done to close the gap to Real Madrid at the top of La Liga to three points.

Speaker 3 It's even tighter in Syria, where three points separate the top five. Has the stench of Antonio Conte's Champions League record penetrated Napoli's league form?

Speaker 3 Which highlight show will Ivan Jurich pop up in next after he's given the boot by Atalanta? And can his predecessor guide Roma to glory for the first time in 25 years?

Speaker 3 Remarkably, PSG are also making harder work of it in League R, just two points clear after a last-minute win over Leon.

Speaker 3 We'll talk turkey and ask how many officials and players can you fit into one courtroom. Take your questions, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

Speaker 3 So mum and dad are away, so just call me the babysitter, where we'll be gorging on suites, staying up late, and asking for a nominal fee for the pleasure.

Speaker 3 So on the panel today, Nikki Bandini, good morning.

Speaker 4 Morning, Robin.

Speaker 1 Bourgeois, Philippe.

Speaker 3 Bourgeois, Robin. Paul Watson saw the international break signal in the sky and responded as ever.

Speaker 5 Came in a bit early, sorry.

Speaker 3 Good stuff.

Speaker 3 And joining us for his customary customary cameo in part one sid low who joined with a well what looked like a massive milkshake the size of his head but he assures us it's slightly healthy pretty much it's just

Speaker 6 there's plenty of milk in it and it's been shaken so i suppose it's a milkshake

Speaker 3 yes um is it high performance would you say is it bollocks

Speaker 3 that's the right answer

Speaker 6 sorry good morning i was supposed to say good morning there wasn't i sorry

Speaker 3 lovely to see you all let's start with the liga shall we um so Real Madrid still top, but a goalless draw against Raoul Vaicano, who were the first team to keep a clean sheet against Real Madrid in the Liga.

Speaker 3 And that was the follow-up to their defeat to Liverpool in the Champions League. They're fairly demanding fans, aren't they? Sid.
So how has this gone down?

Speaker 6 Wow, this has been a real release the Hounds moment.

Speaker 6 It's incredible how quickly everyone's gone for Xavi Alonso and how quickly very specific people have gone for Xavi Alonso, which are the people who tend to be the harbingers of doom, who tend to be the people who have, who've,

Speaker 6 how do I put this, who've been guided into a certain direction to have a word. And of course, the part of the problem is that someone like Chave Alonso knows that.

Speaker 6 He knows that this doesn't come purely in a vacuum. He knows that this isn't just a few fans totally losing their heads.
And I think he's, I think you see that in him a little bit.

Speaker 6 You see that that sense of, okay, I can, this is more than just criticism.

Speaker 6 It does seem a little bit nuts to me, but it's true that Real Madrid, there hasn't been a kind of a flow about them. There hasn't been an excitement about them.

Speaker 6 And I think there is a little bit of a sense of Alonso trying to build a structure and an idea that maybe some of the players don't entirely buy into.

Speaker 3 Has he tried to change a lot then as he's come in?

Speaker 6 Well, I think that there is an idea of them playing higher up the pitch.

Speaker 6 There is an idea of there being, if you like, a clear identity to how they play, whereas with whereas before, I mean, there was that great line from Drew Bellingham, which he suggested as something that made Real Madrid really good, but it actually sounded like a criticism of the manager, which which, well, we play off the cuff.

Speaker 6 And I think what Alonso doesn't want them to do is to play off the cuff. He wants it to be a structure.
And of course, in theory, everyone completely buys into this. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 6 Because if this team was well organised with the quality of players and so on, but of course, there's a quality of players, some of whom quite like playing off the cuff and quite like that degree of freedom.

Speaker 6 And so there is a change there.

Speaker 1 I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 6 A few weeks ago, I was thinking Madrid are going to be boringly good this year. You know, they're going to structure games.
They're going to be on top.

Speaker 6 They're never really going to give other teams a chance. And they might not always be fantastically exciting, but they're going to win loads.

Speaker 6 And then then they got battered by athletico madrid in the in the derby they won a clasco so everyone's happy about that but they weren't particularly good at anfield they weren't that good this weekend and there is a slight sense that it's not as exciting as it was and then there's the other thing which is the the kind of the the the personal relationships and of course the thing that that kind of overshadowed the clasco they beat barcelona this should have been a moment where everyone says here it is this is the team you know for the first time in four claskos they've beaten barcelona but they had that moment when vinetius went off and actually absolutely went at alonso and that doesn't look good And it doesn't look good partly because it's then played out in public.

Speaker 4 Sina, I have a question, which I guess I'm still slightly forming in my own head, but I think that when it comes to the European context, and obviously that game against Liverpool, and observing it from the perspective of someone who's watching the Italian teams a lot, I think we've certainly got to a point where I don't know whether to call it realism or an inferiority complex, but I think Italian teams, even when Intera going to Champions League finals, there is an expectation that English clubs, because they are richer, they are wealthier, they are stronger, they're supposed to be on top.

Speaker 4 And so the victories against them are victories for the underdog. And when you're not able to beat them, it's almost a bit more expected.
Now, Madrid sit in this different position, don't they?

Speaker 4 Because even though the Premier League is outspending the rest of Europe by three to one at this point, Madrid are the one team that are the exception that can sit atop the money league and can bring in these huge numbers.

Speaker 4 And I just wonder how much in that context, I suppose, like how the Liverpool performances for you, Liverpool who aren't even playing that well in the Premier League moment, and how much that just was like a real shape to the confidence of the club that actually, okay, hang on.

Speaker 4 But when we went and played the big boys from the other school, it was a bit different.

Speaker 6 Yeah, there's a couple of things here. I mean, one of them, one of them is, and this feeds into what we were talking about before about the kind of the idea of people criticising Real Madrid.

Speaker 6 One of them is the idea that Madrid haven't yet played one of the big games. So you have the Athletic Madrid defeat where they lose 5-2.

Speaker 6 They have the Liverpool defeat where they only lose 1-0, but you look at the number of saves from Courtois and you think, oof, that could be 3 or 4.

Speaker 6 You have the World Club World Cup game against PSG where they lose 4-0. And then you win the Clasco.
And one of the big things about the Clasco was everyone said, here we go.

Speaker 6 This is a big game that Real Madrid have won. But at the same time, it comes in the context of Barcelona having players out, Barcelona not playing very well.

Speaker 6 And then so you get this post-Anfield, you get this feeling that, oh, could it actually be that it was more because Barca aren't that good than because Madrid really were, and that there's a reality.

Speaker 6 And then there's the broader context, which is that that Premier League thing you're talking about.

Speaker 6 I haven't got the figure in front of me, but I think I'm right in saying that in seven Premier League against La Liga team games this season, it's been 6-1 to the Premier League, I think.

Speaker 6 And you're right, Real Madrid are the ones that should break that trend, but there's a much, much broader context here. And this speaks to the game in Miami.

Speaker 6 It speaks to the Super League project, which bear in mind was driven by Florentino Perez.

Speaker 6 And in the background in all of that, and actually said explicitly for the first time, I think, by Javier Tebas around the Miami game, is the understanding that if we don't move, the Premier League is going to be the de facto Super League.

Speaker 6 Now, in theory, Madrid and Barcelona are always separate from that, but one of the reasons they wanted the Super League is they wanted to lock in that power. before it starts to get chipped away at.

Speaker 6 And Madrid are conscious of that. And there is this thing.

Speaker 6 The thing is, it sometimes gets framed slightly differently. It's not just here's the Premier League running away from us.

Speaker 6 It's here's the Premier League where you can have state-owned clubs, where you can have massive foreign investment. And of course, Madrid and Barcelona are member-owned clubs.

Speaker 6 And so one of the background discussions is that idea of what if we change the model? What if we invited foreign investment in in some ways?

Speaker 6 And there's an AGM coming up for Real Madrid, as there always is just around Christmas time.

Speaker 6 And I think it's perfectly plausible that Florentino Bedeth presents a project for a new structure of ownership at the club to invite in that foreign investment as part owners.

Speaker 1 Hasn't he actually already said that, actually said that? I mean, or is it just leaks at the moment?

Speaker 6 No, there was, it was funny because it was before, I think it was before last year's AGM. There were a couple of newspaper pieces saying, Florentino's going to announce this new model.

Speaker 6 And then he didn't. And he thought, oh, this is one of those cases of test the war to see what people think.

Speaker 6 And then, but, but there is no doubt that Madrid are looking into it and that there will be. And there was a suggestion from Florentino about...

Speaker 6 about how we structure the club, but it wasn't as direct as saying, right, we're no longer member-owned. I think this year we might actually get some meat on the bones there.

Speaker 6 I think we might get a proposal which would be be about bringing in foreign investment. And then, of course, it would have to be voted through.

Speaker 6 But Florentino's control of Real Madrid is such that it will get voted through, and no one really knows the mechanics of it. I mean, a very simple question.
I've often thought this.

Speaker 6 When you reach a privatization process of any business, in this case, Real Madrid is owned by its members.

Speaker 6 So, if you're going to go and allow someone to buy into the clubs, what do all the members get of a dividend? Do they get to sell their shares? What are their shares worth?

Speaker 1 I mean, they could go for a kind of a lemon model in which i think that's what you have like that it wouldn't be a hundred percent yes the bayon has done that or for example herter uh you have got um a holding company which is completely separate from from the sporting club uh and in which you can have foreign investors and the rest of it the other thing as well uh the membership it's only a small proportion of them who actually vote don't they so it's and it's the ones who are in in florentino's pockets already so he he could push it through if he wanted to oh 100 so so that everyone votes in theory in presidential elections but there haven't been presidential elections for

Speaker 6 how long is it now? Off the top of my head, I'm thinking 12, 13 years. What happens at the AGMs is you have, if you like, representative members.

Speaker 6 And as you say, the representative members, it's largely controlled by the club. There's almost no way that anything doesn't get through that AGM.

Speaker 6 Now, Florentina could propose changing the name to FC Barcelona in Madrid and it would get through.

Speaker 1 It would be highly amusing.

Speaker 1 We should test that.

Speaker 3 Let's move on to Barcelona. They beat Celta Bigo 4-2.
Means they're three points behind Real Madrid.

Speaker 3 Yeah, producer Joel said that he felt when the camera reveals the Barcelona defence for Celta's first goal, he thought it was the midfield. I mean, this is a high line.
This is a high line, Sid.

Speaker 3 And we saw that against Club Bruges. And I'm wondering about, did Hansie Flick, did he kind of posit the Ange defence? without maybe mate or I don't know what he'd say that it's just how we are.

Speaker 6 He doesn't say mate, no.

Speaker 6 Sadly. It'd be quite good if he did sort of morph into that.

Speaker 6 I think hansie flick actually said something i think it was you know what i i'm trying to remember if it was the pre-game press conference or post-game i think it was pre-game and he was asked about this high line which of course has become the focal point of everything and one of the reasons it's a focal point of everything is because it's so visibly obviously there you know you you can't not see it and i think hansie flick's argument actually is you lot don't see it you see the line but you don't see the actual point you don't see the wood for the trees for for want of a better phrase um and but before the game he'd been asked about it he said yeah we have a problem with dropping too deep sometimes.

Speaker 6 Essentially, he said, you know, what times.

Speaker 1 I said, you're what?

Speaker 6 But post-game, and then post-game, he had a sort of a bit of a giggle and he said, oh, I was going to say something about experts and ex-pros, but I don't think I will because there's enough noise around this already.

Speaker 6 Now, Hansie Flick's point, and I'm going to, here we go, I'm going to risk making myself look stupid here.

Speaker 6 I'm going to back him a little bit because I don't think it's as simple as saying, there's the line. And I do think we see the line.

Speaker 6 And it's not necessarily the fact of playing a high line that's the problem.

Speaker 6 I think it's the fact of not executing it very well, not timing it as well as they did last year, not putting the pressure on people like they did last year, allowing people to play passes when last year they didn't even allow them to play the pass.

Speaker 6 And so the fact that the lines there never resulted or very rarely result with the ball going through them. Why? Because they weren't allowing that pass to be played.

Speaker 6 And when the pass was played, they timed it right and they were catching people offside.

Speaker 6 The example for me, which is perfect on this, is last year's Classico against Real Madrid, the first one of the season. The Barcelona won 4-0.

Speaker 6 We were thinking, wow, they're living dangerously. They're under pressure.
Real Madrid are going to score 10 here because Real Madrid kept on running through.

Speaker 6 Barca caught them offside 12 times now it's tempting of course to look at that and say cool you were lucky because you kept catching them offside or you could say do you know what you're really good at this and and i thought barcelona's argument would be it might look like we're vulnerable but actually what we're doing is protecting ourselves from the vulnerability by playing this way now what's happening this year is they're not doing it very well and it is true there's no two ways about it is true that when you watch a game and you see the same chance happen again and again and again there is a bit of you that thinks just pull the line back man it's not that hard um but i think flicker's entitled to say that actually we're being a bit simplistic when we look at it purely in terms of where the line is positioned.

Speaker 3 So he went for you've never played the game rather than that's just the way we are, mate.

Speaker 6 I think he went for, I think he went for we're not doing some of the things right and we need to improve that.

Speaker 6 But yeah, and also there was that line a little bit, a little bit Angeball in that he was sort of saying things, this is the way we play and we're not going to change that and this is what we want to do.

Speaker 6 And to be fair, they did win a treble last year doing this.

Speaker 6 You know, for all the flaws,

Speaker 6 they won quite a lot of football matches.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, that's fair repost, I'd say. Marcus Rasher with a cover of his cyst,

Speaker 3 37-year-old Lewandoski making Harry Kane look like a Wunderkind with a hat-trick. I guess my question is: you know, we're talking about investment and things like that.

Speaker 3 Barcelona just seems to just fashion up more levers, and they have this embarrassment of riches. I mean, but how is this viewed? Because I just wonder, I was making the comparison Manchester City.

Speaker 3 You know, we're saying, when are we going to see what's going to happen here? Are they just going to kind of get away with it?

Speaker 6 and not too many questions are asked about how they're actually doing this it's right it's it's such a broad question that we could be here all day i mean the the the argument that there's there's two slightly different things and one of course is your your your your financial position in reality what you can do what money you've got who you can bring in the other is what you can do in terms of complying with la liga's financial fair play rules and i think it's a really important point that that that needs to be made certainly to to to to kind of a uk or a non-spanish audience which is to say the big difference with the way that financial fair play is applied in Spain is in Spain, it's applied ahead of the event.

Speaker 6 So you're not fined or punished for breaking the rules. There is a limit put in place.
And if you can't comply with that limit, we won't let you register the player.

Speaker 6 You might have already gone and bought him. but we won't let you register him.
Now, this is where the debate comes in with Barcelona. But Barcelona are finding

Speaker 6 ways of registering players because they're challenging it or they're taking advantage of loopholes or taking advantage of rules.

Speaker 6 So for example, you know, signing a player because Tirstegon gets injured. If the the injury is over four months, you're allowed to use that money in accountancy terms to pay for another player.

Speaker 6 And so last year, for example, you had the

Speaker 6 industry, sorry, the injury of Andreas Christensen, which is what allowed them to sign Danny Olimore, but only until the winter. And then they had to find another way of signing him.
Then they went to

Speaker 6 what's essentially the sports ministry and said that this is wrong. And the sports ministry said, yeah, okay, then he can play.

Speaker 6 And so the answer to your, the short answer to your question is, what does people think? Is that people who are in favor of Barcelona saying, well, these rules are rubbish, aren't they?

Speaker 6 They're really restrictive for everybody, and people are against Barcelona going, Look at that lot, cheating again. And this, unfortunately, is the nature of everything in Spain.

Speaker 6 I think there is a much broader question. I think there are some doubts.
I think it's probably worth saying that the levers,

Speaker 6 this is the example I always use, and I don't want it to be an example that kind of justifies everything or lets Barcelona off the hook.

Speaker 6 But there is this idea that says, Well, Barcelona always get away with it, they always get the players, there's never any punishment, they always get the players they want.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they did lose a guy called Leo Messi because they couldn't pay for him.

Speaker 3 Very true. No, that's a very good point, indeed.
Um, just Just wrapping up the Liga situation, Atletico Madrid on 25 points after a good win with the beautiful mullet of Antoine Griezmann.

Speaker 3 It's a classic. It's Patrick Swayze.

Speaker 1 Yeah, get him a pottery.

Speaker 1 Get him some pottery, yeah. Absolutely.
It's fantastic.

Speaker 6 He'd only been on the pitch 34 seconds as well when he scored. I mean, he's still the best player they've got in terms of talent, although Julian Alveleth is playing fantastically well.

Speaker 6 He obviously can't play every game, but he came on and scored twice at weekend.

Speaker 6 And Atletico Madrid, after a really difficult start to the season, and after that classic debate that we always seem to have with them, is: are they evolving? Can they change their identity?

Speaker 6 Why aren't they more attacking? They've been more attacking.

Speaker 6 They've played much more front-footed this year. They're still only one once away from home, and that's still the doubt.
But they're playing really, really well at home.

Speaker 3 And Villarreal in third. Is that a surprise? And can they stay the course?

Speaker 6 It's maybe a surprise that they're ahead of one of the other three, but it's absolutely not a surprise that they are the fourth team in Spain.

Speaker 6 They're the fourth team in Spain in terms of budget, in terms of continuity, in terms of the quality of the squad. You know, this summer they spent more money than anyone except Real Madrid.
Albeit.

Speaker 6 Let's use it, shall we? The old next spend, they actually made a profit because they sold. Of course, Terno Barry went.
Jeremy Pino went. There's a third one that went who was quite big money.

Speaker 6 I've forgotten who it is now. But anyway, three big, big-ish players went and they brought Mika Talzi in.

Speaker 6 They've spent well. But their best player at the weekend was Jerov Moreno, who's 33, always injured, come back, and he's still better than everyone else.

Speaker 6 And he scored against Espaniol, his former club, whose fans gave him a nice, uh, nice standing evasion.

Speaker 4 Can I just ask one quick one from the other end of the table? Sid of Valencia, obviously, like sitting just above the relegation zone, feel like a bit like a club stuck in stasis at the moment.

Speaker 4 I don't know if there's realistic fear that they could end up going down this season.

Speaker 6 Do you know what? I had a moment of panic there where you said a question from the other end of the table. I was thinking, I really don't want to talk about the team that's bottom at the moment.

Speaker 6 Albeit, the team that's bottom at the moment that does have friends in very, very high places with the mayor of New York is, it turns out, a shareholder at Real Love.

Speaker 6 Anyway, that's that's me, you know, shamelessly crow-buying Rey Laviero into everything I possibly can.

Speaker 6 Valencia, actually, I thought, played pretty well against Betis, but there is genuine fear, of course, because this isn't new. You know, Bettis is,

Speaker 6 what do you call it in English, a decapitalization?

Speaker 6 They keep selling their brands, basically. You know, Mama Dash Ville is only

Speaker 6 the most recent example. Every summer, there's a reduction in costs.
Every summer, the best players go.

Speaker 6 I think they've got enough good footballers, and they've got, in terms of atmosphere, one of the best grounds in Spain, a noisy fan base, which has been their salvation in previous years.

Speaker 6 Last year, Corbett came in and rescued them. There's a feeling now that that's not really working.
Yet, there's absolutely no doubt that they are bad enough to be in a relegation battle.

Speaker 6 And it would be massive if they went down and a real pity as well. And, you know,

Speaker 6 I should use the two words that I haven't used yet to explain this. And it's not necessarily this simple, but I think on some levels, at least, it is this simple.
And the answer to this is Peter Lim.

Speaker 6 His ownership of the club has been absolutely disastrous.

Speaker 3 Sid, thank you so much for that. We'll leave you to finish your milkshake.
You need something to wash down those CBD gummies, don't you?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll

Speaker 1 go for it.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much, Sid Lowe, out in Spain for us. Before we go any further, we, as you might have noticed, are nominated for best podcast at the FSA's, and we need your vote.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, Google FSA Awards 2025. You can find links on our Instagram Blue Sky.
Max's ex-account, which is getting more and more incendiary, He labelled last year's Ramble win suspicious.

Speaker 3 He stopped short of insurrection.

Speaker 1 Did he refuse to go to the ceremony?

Speaker 1 Did he go to the full Venicius?

Speaker 3 Quite possibly. Yeah, yeah.
No, that's right. Although, yeah, the flight from Australia might have had something to do with that.
I was just going to say,

Speaker 3 he is also campaigning for the FIFA Peace Prize.

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But we need everyone to vote for The Guardian, don't we?

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Everybody everybody should vote for the guardian and we actually are going to vote for ourselves was really frowned upon to say that in the old days that's awful you shouldn't do i cannot tell you who i'm voting for well i know who i'm voting for and you know who i i'm voting for and you know who you should be voting for there you go

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Speaker 3 message to you. So that'll do for part one.
In part two, we'll head to Italy and talk about Syria.

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Speaker 3 Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly. So, Syria is super, super tight.

Speaker 3 Five teams within three points of each other. So into top on 24 points, ahead of Roma only on goal difference.
Then it's Milan, Napoli in fourth and Bologna. We'll start with Napoli, Nikki.

Speaker 3 And yeah, as mentioned in the intro, so a disappointing goal of straw against ITRC Frankfurt in the Champions League. An even more disappointing loss away at Bologna,

Speaker 3 having drawn... nil-nil with Como the week before.
And Antonio Conte has taken this well. I mean, in his customary style, actually.
Some amazing quotes post this game.

Speaker 4 Yeah, talking about his players needing heart transplants, because, in his opinion, that's what it's coming down to at this point, is just a

Speaker 4 lack of heart from his players.

Speaker 1 I mean, it was but Nikki, if they had heart transplants, they wouldn't be about to they wouldn't be able to play, they would be convalescing.

Speaker 4 It's a fair point. I mean, with um, with De Bruyne and Lukaku already missing, does he really want even more players heading to the uh the infirmary? I don't know.

Speaker 4 Um, but it was an extraordinary move, uh, really, against Bologna when you think that um, bologna had to sub in a 17-year-old keeper massimo pacina in in the eighth minute and really he didn't have a lot to do after that you think gosh okay this kid's coming in here's a chance to to to throw a lot at him right away and and it didn't happen and it's funny because it feels like only a beat ago that we were talking about them beating into 3-1 really big result on the surface for for for the title race and and it was the game where Kevin Kevin De Bruyne scored a penalty and then immediately is clutching his hamstring goes off.

Speaker 4 And to be honest with you, Napoli played well after he went off. McTominay scored a fantastic goal.
And people were going, maybe is it going to be better for them without De Bruyne, who was the big

Speaker 4 showpiece signing of the summer and as brilliant as he is and

Speaker 4 as well as he's played. I don't think anyone was saying he's played badly, but

Speaker 4 maybe just letting McTominay get back into his slightly more central position and be the player he was last season, maybe that's a good thing for the team. Well, it hasn't proved to be.

Speaker 4 They haven't scored now in three games. They beat Lece after that 1-0, but the last three games they haven't scored in all competitions.

Speaker 4 That attack really is starting to look like a bit of a genuine disaster for them. Obviously, Bukaki's injury is what it is.

Speaker 4 He's out until probably the middle of December is what we're expecting at the moment. Hoyland came in at the last minute in the summer and had a bright start.

Speaker 4 But actually, if anyone needs De Bruyner, I think it was Hoyland. Hoyland was dealing, was making some real

Speaker 4 hay with the balls that De Bruyne was playing for him. De Bruyne, you could see was really gearing his game around Hoyland and getting the ball to him in the way that he wanted to have it.

Speaker 4 Lorenzo Luca, who they signed for, well, it's on loan to start off with technically, but it's going to add up to somewhere between probably about 35 and 40 million euros.

Speaker 4 It's a good amount of money for a club like Napoli. Again, Italian football doesn't spend like English football does.
That's a good chunk of change. And he's

Speaker 4 the last two two games when they've needed a goal, he's been given something like 11 minutes off the bench. He's that far out of favour already with Conte.

Speaker 4 So it's really, it's really looking quite ugly for them up front.

Speaker 4 And Conte, again, with these heart transplant comments, also casually dangling that thing he dangled a lot last season, which is, well, last season it was, you remember this team finished 10th last season.

Speaker 4 This season it's, you remember we finished 10th a year and a bit ago.

Speaker 4 It feels like a bit of

Speaker 4 a very tense moment, I think. And look, to be absolutely clear, Conte won the league title last season, their fourth ever.

Speaker 4 There's not even a whisper of this being something that's he's in trouble, but it is certainly not

Speaker 4 looking so bright from them from the point of view of their title defence, especially when you have got, well, I suppose that actually I suppose I could reverse this and say the good news for him in this title defence is while there are lots of teams going for it, none of these teams are looking at all perfect or like they're about to run away with it at the moment.

Speaker 4 So for now, at least it's quite a messy situation at the top of Serie A.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we've talked a lot about inter-Annapoli. We haven't given Roma much airtime.

Speaker 3 I'm really interested in how they're doing actually, because Gasparini had obviously been at Atalanta for so, so long. And they started so, so well.

Speaker 3 I mean, do you believe they could stay the course and be the be title challengers? Because it's been a hell of a long time.

Speaker 4 It has.

Speaker 4 And what's fascinating with Roma to me is that actually some of the things have just been saying about an athlete right you could say them about roma who who of roma got to play up front this weekend to end up with tommaso baldanzi who's a 22-year-old midfielder having to play up front because everyone is injured um evan ferguson who they signed in the summer and who started kind of brightly i had high hopes for him but fundamentally is still running into the evan ferguson problem which is for a long time now he just hasn't really scored goals and that's pretty important when you're playing at number nine uh artem dovbik who i can't remember exactly how many he had, he did get into double figures up front for Roma last season, but again, hasn't been as quite as explosive as everyone hoped for him when he arrived from Na Liga.

Speaker 4 He's now injured as well. He got injured at the weekend.

Speaker 4 Paolo de Bala, I mean, listen, if you're relying on Paolo de Bala not to be injured, then you've got a problem because Paolo de Bala is injured about half the time or more.

Speaker 4 He's brilliant when you've got him, but he's going to be injured a lot.

Speaker 4 So the attack is mostly just not there. And Suley as well, who's absolutely been brilliant this season.

Speaker 4 First of all, he's not really a number nine, he is a fantastic football, he's not a number nine, um, and also been dealing with injuries.

Speaker 4 So, that there's just nobody there to lead the line, and yet they are still joint top of the table, they are still winning games as they did at the weekend, beating Udinezo 2-0.

Speaker 4 The obvious answer to that is the defence has been great, they've only conceded five goals this season.

Speaker 4 I think that's the fewest across what we, I guess, still slightly call the top five European leagues.

Speaker 4 I'm never sure if that's a good measure anymore, but it's very convenient journalistically to talk about five European leagues, isn't it?

Speaker 4 They have been retyped the back, and it is, of course, the name I haven't said yet, Giampiero Gasperini success story so far, really.

Speaker 4 The guy who made Atalanta into this over nine years essentially took them from being a mid-table club famous for producing young talent into being a genuine European force, into winning the Europa League, qualifying for the Champions League in four of the last six seasons.

Speaker 4 He's been due this chance to,

Speaker 4 I suppose, lead one of the traditionally bigger clubs.

Speaker 4 If anything, Roma's on the low end of that big club scale because as you say, they don't really win league titles. I mean, they have, but it's not a thing they do very often.

Speaker 4 It was definitely time for him to have this opportunity.

Speaker 4 He had the one at Inte years ago that barely even got to have because they kicked him out so quickly before he'd had a chance to settle in, even though it was a very bad start.

Speaker 4 It feels like a vindication for him at the moment. It feels like a vindication for him and his ideas.

Speaker 4 Also, of course, Claudio Ragneri, who was there last season, did incredible work to get them really close to the Championsy places last season after taking up in a really messy state.

Speaker 4 And I think when you look at defensive success like this, it's hard not to think, well, there's a bit of Ranieri's work in there too.

Speaker 4 They certainly aren't the swashbuckling team that Atalanta have been under Gasfarini. They certainly are still playing in a more...

Speaker 4 reserved fashion than that. But I do think that is also

Speaker 4 just Gasfarini being a very smart coach and going well look i haven't got an attack right now so you play to your strengths don't you and uh and i think he's he's doing a fantastic job i i don't know if they've got that absolute quality to take it all the way this season i feel like when i look at these teams it's really hard to look past the quality interhav and the depth interhav they they do just look like the best team on paper they are showing it in the champions league where they've been by far the best performing italian club it feels like in the end they come out on top but equally it's very often been true that the team that concedes the fewest goals wins the league in the end.

Speaker 4 And right now, Roma are really not conceding many goals at all.

Speaker 5 Nikki, I was going to ask,

Speaker 5 look at Roma potentially having a title push and this gap being going forward.

Speaker 5 Are they under some sort of transfer ban? Like, are they able to make signings in this winter window?

Speaker 1 Roma? Yeah.

Speaker 4 I don't believe we're Roma under a full transfer ban. I mean, Lazio under full transfer ban, which is

Speaker 4 the other half of Rome.

Speaker 4 so they could go for someone so roma could because i was just thinking like who could they bring in do you think who is the who's the answer to this problem because they they clearly do just need someone up front who can sort of take them to that scudetto level yeah well that's it's no never an easy answer is it and and not not a transfer ban but that they they did spend extremely uh lavishly under um Jose Mourinho and uh and in that chapter and they certainly aren't going to be throwing uh cash around freely this this this transfer uh this winter window.

Speaker 4 And what's nice, I suppose, in contrast to Conte is you don't hear Gasparini going, I want X, Y, and Z. He gets on with it.

Speaker 4 Who is a centre-forward who scores a lot of goals you can have in the middle of a season for not much money?

Speaker 4 That's a question I bet a lot of sporting directors around Europe are asking.

Speaker 4 There aren't easy answers to those sorts of questions.

Speaker 4 You have to get creative. I don't know if someone else has got an idea, but I don't have one, I'm afraid, on that front.

Speaker 3 Well, it's not gone so well for Atalanta, the team that Gasperini left. We'd only just learned that Ivan Yurich was coaching them, and now he's gone.

Speaker 3 So it'll be very interesting to see where he pops up next. This sort of career path, Southampton, Atalanta

Speaker 3 question mark. Not sure if anyone's got to deposit any ideas.
But I mean, we've done brilliant analysis then from Sid and from Nikki. But Paul, this is the...

Speaker 3 one of the greatest things I've seen in a long, long time. Let's talk about Yerry Meena.
You brought this to the table.

Speaker 1 It is poetry emotion.

Speaker 3 Take it away.

Speaker 5 Honestly, this kind of made Saturday and Serie Ar worth it because Saturday's Serial was so bad, it almost brought about a kind of existential crisis, like these 0-0 draws, 0-0 draft and 0-0 draw.

Speaker 5 But this Como Calieri game, which was otherwise quite hard watching, you know, Calyri had made it very clear they were coming for a point. They got a point.

Speaker 5 But the moment of the match was watching Alvaro Murata

Speaker 5 having to ask to be subbed off because Yeri Mina had just so comprehensively shithoused him.

Speaker 5 So you could kind of see this building that Mina is one of those defenders who will just wind you up, wind you up. And Murata was getting nowhere really from him.

Speaker 5 And then suddenly there's this moment in about, I think, an hour in, where a ball's played through. Murata's not going to get it.
You know, he's not going to get it, but he has to chase.

Speaker 5 And Mina looks over his shoulder, sees where Murata is going to run, and just very, very clearly and obviously runs in a way that Murata is going to just touch him.

Speaker 6 And he goes down like a sack of spuds.

Speaker 5 Murata gets the yellow card. And Murata's response is just, I can't deal with this.
I've got to be subbed off. I think it's, it reminds me a bit now.

Speaker 5 As a parent, I've got two kids, and it reminds me of a moment I get with them where you're just being outplayed by those two kids and you're losing your temper.

Speaker 5 And you just have to say, I just say to my wife, that's it, I'm coming off here. And he's just had that moment.
He's like, I've got to go for my own good, for the good of everyone, I've got to go.

Speaker 5 And it, and after the game, I saw they did an interview with Mina and sort of said, you know, you know, what was going on.

Speaker 5 And he said, he goes, this quote, he said, I think he says, I go hard into every challenge and I don't give a shit whether that's against my mum, my wife, or my daughter.

Speaker 4 Jesus. Wow.

Speaker 5 So great defender.

Speaker 5 Not so sure I would want him in my family, but you know.

Speaker 1 Was Morata actually subbed? Yeah, he was.

Speaker 5 He said, could I come off? And he took him off, which is amazing, really. You know, 60 minutes into a game that's nil-nil and he's, you know, one of your main chances of scoring a goal.
But he's gone.

Speaker 4 It just reminded me of when Papu Gomez for Atlanta and posting videos of himself playing football with his son, who can't have been older than like four or so on his Instagram and it was like proper two-footed on the beach like not not holding back full two feet into his kid and sending him up on Roma really quickly just to to um be completely accurate on what we just said uh they're definitely not under a transfer ban Roma they they are still under financial fair play restrictions which mean they have to be within certain loss limits.

Speaker 4 I believe it's they can't have a bigger than 60 million euro deficit between until the end of 2027. That sounds like a lot.

Speaker 4 It can easily get up to those numbers.

Speaker 4 But yeah, they can't spend lavishly in the window.

Speaker 4 They can spend, but they can't go crazy.

Speaker 3 I just think Yeri Mina should get a trophy for that performance. It's absolutely unbelievable.
To get someone to...

Speaker 5 Marutta should present it to him as well.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Now that would be a dynamic I need to see. Yeah.
I just think

Speaker 3 how many players in their career can say, I got someone asked to be subbed off? I mean, it is incredible.

Speaker 1 Absolutely incredible. What a feather in the

Speaker 4 mix, though, isn't it quite impressive self-awareness from Murata? Because he has absolutely let it go into his head, but a lot of people would just stay there and keep getting more and more wound up.

Speaker 4 He's kind of gone, okay,

Speaker 4 I've just been an idiot and I need to get out of here before I'm even more of an idiot.

Speaker 1 Ashley Cole has said that Cristiano Ronaldo once asked to be subbed off back in 2006 when the Chelsea Manchester United, because Cole had been at him all game and gave him a really bad reducer.

Speaker 1 And Ronaldo, for the only time in his career, actually asked to be subbed and was subbed by Alex Ferguson.

Speaker 1 Now, I've wondered if it was because he had actually been injured in this, but actually Cole is adamant is because of his shithousery and it had really got him in his pocket all.

Speaker 1 And I have to say, when I think the only other player I can think of who has to be subbed is Cristiano Ronaldo, there's something that doesn't sound quite right here. No,

Speaker 1 he's not exactly the kind of player player you would associate with that.

Speaker 3 No, Ronaldo and Murata seem very, very different characters.

Speaker 1 Yes, very different.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's an interesting duo. I think that'll do part two.
In part three, we'll begin with a title race in France. Not often we get to say that.

Speaker 11 Hello, I'm Max Rushton, an Englishman in Australia, the host of the Guardian Football Weekly podcast, but for the next few months, I'm also bringing you a new show at the Guardian Ashes Weekly.

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Speaker 3 Welcome back to Guardian Football Weekly. So let's talk League R and Philippe, an actual title race we have on our hands.

Speaker 3 PSG, do you believe they will get there in the end or do we think we could have an upset here?

Speaker 1 To be honest, you know what? I don't know. I mean it's the tightest race that we've had for 15 years now.
They are top, but there's only two points in it at the moment.

Speaker 1 And at the moment we've got seven teams in seven points after 12 games which is very very unusual to say the least the reason why i think that we might be onto something is the is because psg are at the moment caught in a kind of spiral of injuries uh lack of energy lack of resources i mean player resources of course which they find they're finding quite hard to get out of and in in a way it's as if there hadn't been an interlel so to speak, between the two seasons.

Speaker 1 And in fact, there hasn't been, because they were at the Club World Cup. You know, they played in the final.

Speaker 1 Then they went on holidays, they came back, and Luis Enrique didn't have a chance to actually do a preseason. And when they started playing,

Speaker 1 players started to get injured. And at the weekend, I mean, they were very lucky.
I mean, it was

Speaker 1 an absolute cracker of a game, by the way,

Speaker 1 at On Apiclione. It was absolutely brilliant.
And they did win very late on 95th minute.

Speaker 1 A corner kick, Jaron Eves at the near post, scored after Lyon had been reduced to 10 men just two minutes beforehand with Terrio Fico being sent off and 3-2 for PSG. But it was so hard.

Speaker 1 And the problem they were missing, Ashrafakimi, Usman Dembele, the Balantor, Nuno Mendes, and Desir Edouet. That's four players you would expect to be in the starting lineup.

Speaker 1 And the problem is that every time these players have come back, they've had another little nickel, another little injury, which means that other players like Varaskelia or Barcola are being used far too much and that they too are really playing in the orange, if not the red zone.

Speaker 1 And every time you think they're going to get back some players, no, there's another one being injured. And it's going on and on and on like this all the time.

Speaker 1 And you think that's a bit tricky, especially when you're a PSG, you know, you're defending a European title at the same time.

Speaker 1 You have to play on all fronts. And they don't quite have the resources at the moment in terms of players.
And we're seeing the result. They're drawing too many games.

Speaker 1 The others are losing more games, but PSG are drawing too many games. They're really struggling.

Speaker 1 And some people are actually starting to question,

Speaker 1 which is crazy, Luis Enrique's management of player time. But he doesn't have much of a choice when suddenly you're missing four of your first team players.
And

Speaker 1 the thing is, is that there are some other teams around PSG which not only are getting good results, but are really fun to watch.

Speaker 1 And I have to say, this is the funnest season for a long time in Liguen because Marseille, obviously, is strong. We know that one of the weekends, 3-0 against Brest, that's fine.

Speaker 1 Strasbourg is a bit of a big surprise

Speaker 1 and not necessarily a nice surprise because Strasbourg is basically Chelsea under another name. And that, you know, that the players at Strasbourg who will do well will end up at Stamford Bridge.

Speaker 1 and not all the supporters are happy about that, but they're playing well. They won against Lille, won another big team over the weekend, 2-0 with Emmanuel Maga, the Dutch player, scoring twice.

Speaker 1 And the big story, of course, as well this weekend was loss. Another cracker of a game at Monaco, so kind of top of the table

Speaker 1 clash.

Speaker 1 And the stadium in Monaco was about 12 times as loud as usual because hundreds, probably thousands, of lost supporters had actually crossed the whole country to be there.

Speaker 1 It was amazing. The atmosphere, I've never said that before in my life.
The atmosphere at the Luido Stadium was amazing.

Speaker 1 And they didn't travel for nothing because they saw a really great performance by their team, Merse Lance,

Speaker 1 really

Speaker 1 with some high, high-quality goals. And some players, you know, you remember Tauvin? Françovant,

Speaker 1 who famously turned up, I think, in a tux at Newcastle, if I'm not mistaken,

Speaker 1 for a game in a tuxedo suit. And he's back and he's playing very, very well indeed.
And Wesley Side had an absolutely superb game as well. And they won 4-1.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the result is that we've got a really tight league with teams performing extremely well and one team probably underperforming. That one team is PSG.

Speaker 1 Now, I've just described to you the ingredients of a proper title race.

Speaker 4 How much do you think is fatigue from the

Speaker 4 not just the season they have, but then the Club World Cup in the summer? Do you think this feels like for certain clubs it's really having an impact more than others?

Speaker 3 And also is Luis Enrique,

Speaker 3 is he talking about that or is that kind of frowned upon?

Speaker 1 He's not got into that kind of discourse. He's not trying to find excuses or whatever.
He's not that kind of manager.

Speaker 1 But it's obvious when you see the performance against Bayern as well.

Speaker 1 And you can see that these are players who are absolutely knackered.

Speaker 1 Also, because they do play a high-energy game, and you look at the Markinhos we saw against BioMe, it was just like, it thinks, this is not possible, it's not the same player.

Speaker 1 And he's exhausted, and he's not the only one to be exhausted.

Speaker 1 Others are not quite as good as they've been. Even Vitinia absolutely adore Vitinia, but is not quite at the same level.
And

Speaker 1 they're really struggling. And the other thing is that those injuries they've got, Nikki,

Speaker 1 they're not short-term injuries. because we've got the international break coming.

Speaker 1 I'm actually not sure how many of those missing PSU players are going to be back for the last round of games before Christmas. And it's absolutely obvious that there is a...

Speaker 1 this is also the impact and the consequence of the Club World Cup and of going to the very end of the Club World Cup and not having time to train properly and especially not to have the time to do proper physical preparation.

Speaker 1 We know it's a recipe for a disaster. Physical preparation is absolutely indispensable and they had none or almost none and they're paying for it.

Speaker 3 In a similar vein, Philippe, can you talk us through FIFPRO versus FIFA?

Speaker 1 Well, now that's pretty amazing because in fact you have got

Speaker 1 FIFA is really annoyed or Jenny Infantindo is really annoyed when anybody else has some wields any kind of power in the world of football.

Speaker 1 Now, FIF Pro, which is the trade union of trade unions, has 65,000 professional footballers as members, normally should wield a lot of power because these are the guys who are on the pitch, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Infantino and FIFA have been trying to sideline FIFPRO for as long as I can remember, to be absolutely honest.

Speaker 1 And in particular, when it comes to, well, we were talking about the Club World Cup, Nikki.

Speaker 1 You remember what FIFPRO said about the Club World Cup and the calendar and the schedule, saying it's crazy, we're asking too much from our players. So there are injuries.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're not respecting the

Speaker 1 recommendations, the medical recommendations of the amount of time that you should rest and so forth. And FIFA has always been,

Speaker 1 said the right things, but basically kept FIFPRO at an arm's length. And now going a little bit further,

Speaker 1 they've created FIFA, you know, just the way they've created the FIFA Peace Prize, so they can give a prize to

Speaker 1 Donald Trump on the 5th of December at the World Cup. Or Max Rushdon, or Max Rushdon.
Or Max Rushdon. This is very true.
Can we send nominations for that as well? Because I'm very happy to do so.

Speaker 1 They have created a players' forum, which is basically they decided, okay, what we're going to do, because we don't want to work with the people who are representative of the actual players, so we'll start our own...

Speaker 1 No, it's not a trade union, our own forum, and we'll bring in the people we want.

Speaker 1 And then we'll pretend they're representative of the players because there are legends amongst these people, like George Weyer, for example, is there, which is a shame, but there you go.

Speaker 1 And so they're bringing those people and then they published this statement after a meeting in Rabar in Morocco saying that they had done all this talk about player welfare and this and that.

Speaker 1 And you think, hold on a minute, FIFPRO weren't there. How can they talk about this? Well, it's because FIFA has created the Players Forum.

Speaker 1 You know, which is astonishing. So, you know, you're fed up with your position, okay?

Speaker 1 So let's say you're you're Kierstamer, you're fed up with the Conservatives, who are still in the opposition at the moment.

Speaker 1 So you decide I'm going to create my alternative Conservative party, but all the members will be chosen by me. So that's basically the way that Jenny has been working around the problem.

Speaker 1 And FIFPRO replied with a statement, which I have to say was a bit on the weak side, because obviously FIFPRO has got a nuclear option.

Speaker 1 And the nuclear option is to tell their players, you know what, FIFA competitions, you don't play in them. We're in a World Cup year to carry on like this, FIFA.

Speaker 1 This players' forum should be disbanded now. You've got to talk to us.
We are the true representatives. If you don't, simple,

Speaker 1 we ask our, you know, you don't have the, you know, you cannot demand of us that we do nothing and accept to be basically annihilated. Their statement doesn't go as far as that.

Speaker 1 The nuclear option, the strike action, which has been talked about for so long, remember Diego Maradona was talking about it and Eric Cantona was talking about it. And, you know,

Speaker 1 this has been this happening for a very long time, but it's never been used properly at international level. And they've got this option, but they've decided not to exercise it for the time being.

Speaker 1 But the problem, Robin, and I'm really serious when I say that, and I've talked to a few contacts at FIFPRO, is that if they do not react in an actually more meaningful way, this forum, Players' Forum, which at the moment we're laughing about, this kind of Potemkin village of players,

Speaker 1 could actually become the main stakeholder as far as player power is concerned for FIFA.

Speaker 1 Representative of nobody but the main interlocutor, the protagonist from the players' side, which would completely sideline FIFPRO and actually, for me, condemn it as a representative trade union.

Speaker 1 So it's really serious, it's really

Speaker 1 quite impactful. And well, let's watch this space, but it's not good.

Speaker 3 Yeah, pretty remarkable story. Another one to go through today is Turkey.
Paul, every time I look at this, there's been more people arrested.

Speaker 3 Maybe give me across what's happening here. Referees, players.
I mean,

Speaker 3 it's insane, isn't it?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm absolutely no expert on this. I'm sure Philippe knows a huge amount more than I do.
But as you say, the numbers are what's so staggering with this.

Speaker 5 And the one thing I saw, and I had to check this a lot of times. I'm still not sure this makes sense.
It said one referee alone placed 18,227 bets.

Speaker 1 Now, couldn't have been one referee.

Speaker 4 During the games, you're right.

Speaker 5 It's like in play, in play throw-in.

Speaker 5 Like, surely, how is that not flagging something up somewhere? Yeah, it's staggering. The numbers are absolutely staggering.

Speaker 5 And the thing that I always feel is Turkey is not exactly a place where referees have been treated without suspicion.

Speaker 5 Turkey seems like one of these countries where literally all the time everyone is saying the referees are crooked.

Speaker 5 So surely now this is going to be a bit of a hammer blow to a nation where it's hard to convince people the referees aren't against them already.

Speaker 5 I don't know how they ever come back from this really, to be honest.

Speaker 1 The extent of the crackdown

Speaker 1 is quite extraordinary. I mean, this is very much, by the way, a crackdown which is ordered from the very top.

Speaker 1 It's not just the Turkish Federation waking up, smelling the coffee decided some, because everybody knows that match fixing is a huge problem in turkey and it's something which has been going on in the background for months because it's not illegal to bet on games uh on on in in turkey as long as you do it with the national operator which is ida everything else is illegal and in fact criminalized and also

Speaker 1 referees and other officials are prohibited from having betting accounts. Now, I've got the numbers, I've written them down because they are absolutely astonishing.

Speaker 1 There are 571 officials who work in professional leagues throughout Turkey. Professional league here, we're talking about the four top levels, basically.
571.

Speaker 1 371 have a betting account out of 571, which is, of course, totally prohibited. So 149 have already been suspended

Speaker 1 from 8 to 12 months. 19 were arrested.

Speaker 1 17 referees plus the president of EOSPOR,

Speaker 1 the club from the Super League, Murat Oskaya. And we just heard that seven have been remanded in custody,

Speaker 1 plus the president as well. And the number of players, I mean, I also, just like you, Paul, I thought this number must be wrong.
The players involved, 1,024 professional players are involved. 1,024.

Speaker 1 27 in the super league, including two from Qatarata Getalatasarai, two from Beshiktasen, one from Trabzon Sports, so not exactly small clubs.

Speaker 1 77 in the Turkish equivalent of the championship, 282 in the equivalent of League 1, 629 in the equivalent of League 2, which is basically who doesn't have a betting account.

Speaker 1 And the problem here, I mean, this is the major red flag, is that the lower you go into any kind of league,

Speaker 1 the greater the risk of match fixing becomes. Because obviously, you know, fixing Fenabache Galatasarai, good luck doing that, mate.

Speaker 1 But if you're fixing a fourth division game that nobody's really paying much attention to, that's much easier. So it's absolutely incredible.
I mean, what's coming out of it.

Speaker 1 And there are new developments every day, Robin. And to be honest, it might be that what Turkish football need is like, is this massive purge.
It's something which is completely unprecedented.

Speaker 1 I don't think there's unlike,

Speaker 1 well, it's a bit like Mina Morata, you know, basically, it's unprecedented to see anything like this.

Speaker 3 That many players. I mean, assuming what's going to happen to the league? I mean, this is then going to be, I mean, it's going to be literally youth boys and no referee.

Speaker 1 I don't know. You need referees.

Speaker 1 You need referees. Maybe they're going to ship them in.
I don't know. I have no idea.
But, you know, we don't have the identity of the referees who've actually been jailed.

Speaker 1 I mean, remanded in custody.

Speaker 1 We don't know who they are yet. But I mean, sure, it's going to have a huge impact.
But this i mean to be absolutely honest who is surprised

Speaker 5 not many people yeah we're definitely the tip of the iceberg aren't we um paul it is the international break and what's going to catch your eye over the next uh week or so oh yeah that's a very good question um i was keeping quite a close eye on kosovo actually i think kosovo are in uh suddenly in a very unexpected situation partly because of sweden's dismal campaign but kosovo are within well one good result really of securing a playoff spot uh There is a route where they could actually qualify for the World Cup automatically.

Speaker 5 It requires a little bit more

Speaker 5 unusual results to happen

Speaker 5 in their favour, but it could go to the point where the crucial game is their last game against Switzerland at home.

Speaker 5 And that in itself is quite an interesting fixture because of the huge links between the two countries, obviously. and the number of players of Kosovo Heritage that have played for Switzerland.

Speaker 5 And, you know, that would be a really poignant moment if those two teams play with potentially World Cup qualification on the line or maybe more likely just Kosovo needing to secure that playoff spot.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that'll do for today.

Speaker 3 We're all off to,

Speaker 3 I think we should all try and channel our inner Yerimina today and

Speaker 3 try and get someone to, I don't know, that's a bit cruel, actually, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I just think that the sheer force of, you know, doing something being so annoying that someone needs to take themselves away from the situation. Again, I just, what a man.
What a man.

Speaker 3 I think that's the main takeaway from this one. But thank you so much for your time, Nikki.
Thanks, Robin. Thank you, Philippe.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 And thank you, Paul.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Robin.

Speaker 3 Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove, and our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

Speaker 1 This is The Guardian.

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