Kiran McGuire on Football Weekly (The Guardian): "If you compare Manchester City's performance pre-takeover to post-t...

This is the Guardian. Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly. You worry about how to fill the international break and then, well, the man city verdict we never thought would come arrives on a quiet Friday afternoon or at least its leaked city maintain their innocence. Who knows how long an appeal will take. But for now what punishment fits the crime both for the club and for the owners and anyone involved. What did this mean for the last 15 years of city domination? Did it not happen? And will it be quicker to ask who isn't going to sue them now for lost trophies, lost earnings, lost moments, etc. Then there's an actual football England give Spain a good game in the nation's league, but again don't quite get over the line against top opposition. Not a game of huge consequence for how to get over that. And then to the fiasco in Hungary where the Republic of Ireland be Israel on Sunday, Gavin Bisono dropped out. There was a secret ballot in a secret meeting that we all heard about. The players and manager in the middle of a moral maze that should have been decided by FIFA or UEFA or the Irish government or the FAI. The rest of the nation's league might have to wait. There's a lot to get through. This is the Guardian football week, Cleve. On the panel today, John Brewin, welcome. Hello there. Hello, Bonnie Ronnie. Hello, everyone. Welcome, Barry Glenn Denning. Hi, Max. And from the price of football. He's been he hasn't been on air on a network or a podcast for two minutes. So we were contracted by his to bring him on from the price of football. Kiran McGuire. Hey, Kiran. Morning, all Alex says all the big hitters are out for this one. Hope it's two hours long. Charlie should the 1999 division to play off final be declared null and void. Paraguay Ralph, pray for the national league defenders facing Irling Harland. Mike says, is this a good time for city fans to dust off last season's panic banners? Okay. So the news broke on Friday that man city had been found guilty of the vast majority of the 115 charges against them relating to breaches of Premier League financial regulation two years and 10 days since the hearing began. The news was leaked rather than an official announcement for the Premier League that was still waiting for city's official response was first this maintaining their innocence said the club is diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League board and executive would behave as an independent impartial and fair-minded regulator free from parties and influence on Saturday. Their chairman, Caldune Almabarak said following Friday's media reporting, many of you will have spent your evening answering questions and responding to messages from friends, family and colleagues, so have I. Here's what I said to my family. The Premier League process still has a long way to run and our confidence and intent improving the club's innocent is just as strong as when this began. Kiran, can you as simply as possible because I'm pretty sure most people listening will know just run through what they've been found guilty or what we know they've been found guilty of? Three things. First of all, disguising money from the owner and pretending that it's sponsorship money. So that's artificially inflating your revenue. Secondly, paying people off book which suppresses your costs, both of those go into your PSR calculations and thirdly not complying with the Premier League investigation into their finances. Right. And how much money have they spent that they shouldn't have spent or made that they shouldn't have made or wouldn't have made it? It's not easy to quantify that. Yeah, what I did is that if you compare Manchester City's performance pre-big the takeover to Manchester City's performance post the takeover over the nine-year period, they've gone from an average of 14th to second in the table. And on that basis, they've probably generated somewhere in the region of 900 million to 1 billion pounds of additional revenue in prize money and appearance money in UEFA competitions in sponsorship bonuses and so on. Has that money been spent? Yes, it has. So it's certainly been recycled in terms of transfer fees and wages. But there's an argument for say that had the takeover not taken place, we're probably talking the thick end of a billion pounds. Right. And then do we know what the punishment could be? Well, I think we got to look at a precedent here as far as the Nottingham Forest and Everton cases. Both of those were a breach of the 105 million pound loss limit over three years. Both started effectively with a six-point deduction. And then you have extra points deducted depending on by how much you've exceeded the limit. And then there's extra points deducted for what we refer to as aggravating factors. I have they helped the commission. Equally there has can be mitigating factors which help to reduce, I think, forests punishment in particular if they've cooperated. So looking at the charges, I think there's four years in which city are deemed to be over the PSR limit. So that means you start off with 24 points. If they've been over the limit by lot, then you start to sort of add, I think it works out as one extra point per every X million pounds. And we go from there. Now we don't know what those X million pounds are, aggravating factors. Well, there's no love lost is there between the Premier League and City. So you would expect that to top up the bill as well. What should the punishment be as a slightly different question? Barney, I don't know what you think it should be. Can I just add something to what Kiran said? There's one thing that keeps bothering me about this is, it's really important to keep explaining why this is a problem. Because on the face of it, spending your own money is essentially what's happened here. Sometimes if you look at this in isolation, it can be really hard to, particularly maybe if you're a city fan and you've, it's really hard to be objective about this. You've spent your own money, you've brought money into football. And if you disagree with the rule that there should be any limit on that, it could seem absurd to you that this is such a big thing, even if you accept that there are rules and you blame by them. But I think it's really important to separate out that what we've just described there. The point is that everybody's sticking to this rules. So what's the damage? You're spending your own money, you're not stealing money, but what you are stealing is other people's success. Other people's, think about other people's lives being affected by this. Think about how many footballers have, their lives have been affected by this. You've moved abroad, you've had to move your family, you haven't won something. Like connections, relationships, things you want to do, hopes, life chances, things you are going to live for. If everyone's sticking to these rules and you don't stick to them, you are affecting people's lives in quite a violent way. It's not simply this thing of, well, are these rules correct or not? They shouldn't be correct. That's a separate argument and a legitimate one. You can have a debate about that. Lots of people think, well, they're bringing money and what's the problem. But that's not how it works. You've perverted the way people's jobs function and their lives function and also fans hopes things that you might have bought a sky subscription for the last 12 years. And it turns out I've been watching something that's not maybe really small. Maybe I have a claim against Manchester City. And of course, the second thing is not reporting your financial, not cooperating is deceit. You could call it fraud if you wanted to. Obviously, there's an appeal. It may not have happened. But those are the two things. There is real damage here. Even though you may disagree with the rules, the point is other people, not everyone, stuck to them. In terms of punishment, that's the really key issue. Because this could all actually be massively dampened down by an inadequate punishment. If we don't know the outcome of this year, I think just as a side issue, because one of the punishments I'd like to see would be a, I would suggest a five year ban on having any sponsors at all. Because that's where the crime, it's like a headmaster would do that. That's like saying, you're going to learn from this. It's like doing lines, grow your income organically. It would also test the owners resolved to actually be involved in this. If you can't stick your name on it, what's the point? So that would be one interesting punishment that speaks to the alleged or, well, no, actual crime pending appeal. And Barry, like within this, there's this idea of, you know, if they got 100.1 season, well, then they'd go to the championship and come back up. And would that be a big enough punishment? Or do you stagger the punishments? I don't know what you think the punishment should be. Well, I mean, how do you put a price on the mild irritation I felt at Wembley when Sunderland lost the 2014 the COP final to Manchester City? It's unquantifiable. Yeah, I think if that happened, if City got a points deduction that was sufficient enough to ensure the relegation to the championship for a season, I think most of their fans would quite enjoy a season in the championship. And to be fair, a lot of their fans should be, as you've said, Max, very angry at their owners. So I do, it does feel to me that it should be staggered, that it should hurt them and hurt City for a long time. And I wondering here, should their owners be stripped of their fit and proper status and be forced to offload the club? Because surely this proves that they are not fit and proper owners. That would probably outside the remit of the Premier League, but it could be caught within the activities of the independent football regulator, because it does have the power to force a sale of a club, which is more difficult for the Premier League to, and I imagine that the Premier League would like to wash its hands of that particular decision. Whether the regulator would want to get, you know, for the, for the first big in-trade job, that would be quite a scary one. And also, what they might say is, well, it happened before we were appointed, so therefore we don't want to get involved. Everybody doesn't want to make decisions here. Sure. Can I just add, what Barry just said there, like it's so fundamental to UK law, the idea that you can say to someone you no longer allow to own something, you're effectively saying you have to sell this club. That goes beyond the remit of, that's totally contrary to everything that UK law is based on, and would have a massive shockwave effect on so many parts of, well, parts of the economy that many people don't really, don't really think are good, like why, why is the London housing market basically this repository for international money, because it's seen around the world as something safe. Like in this country, property doesn't get confiscated, it doesn't. It's safe. We have this incredibly ancient network of statute and common law that means you buy something here, you're basically yours. It's a safe place to rest money. What football's talking about there, and what the question Barry just raised is so massively, I mean, I'd be really interested to see what would happen, but it's a vast issue. And it goes so far beyond saying, no, no, we don't want you to buy in. We've decided you're not fit to own this. To say, you're no longer allowed to own it, and you have to sell this huge piece of real estate and investment that you've pulled so much money into, that's kind of mind-blowing. But we did have that with Sheffield Wednesday, with Chan Seary, whilst the regulator wasn't in place, there were lines of communication in London, which led to HMRC putting in the winding up order, effectively forcing him to set, or forcing him to put the club into administration through the back door, so that there's no doubt that the regulator will is happy to use those powers. It would just be such a huge decision though. That's not quite the same, that's applying the law. That's saying, if you can't pay this bill, you're going to have to sell up. That's not the same as saying, because I don't think that Abu Dhabi is going to have any problem paying a tax bill. Sure. If you're literally saying you are not allowed to own this property in Manchester, that's really fundamental and interesting. You're not fit to wear the shirt, but you're not fit to own the club. I wonder, John, with this staggered thing, this idea that you'd say, right, you're 40 points off for every year that you committed these crimes, would be, in a footballing sense, would be totally fascinating. I mean, I just don't imagine the players would hang around, but this idea that they'd have to get 80 points to get 40 points, you would sort of find it gripping. The punishment at this point just seems so opaque, doesn't it, because we're still in this process of the Premier League have not actually commented, have they? They're refusing to comment the confidentiality of which Manchester City speak. The leak, such as it was, and the news published over the weekend, that appears to be what Manchester City are kicking against, so that it feels a long way down the road. We don't know how long the process is going to care and may be more across that than we are, but as regards punishment, there is a psychological punishment for the fans of the club. Now chatting to people over the weekend, who are Manchester City fans, there is this state of disbelief. People I know that are rational people. People actually work within quite a similar sphere, you know, law enforcement working in the law cannot get beyond this idea that the system is unfair, and that his kicked against their club, though Red Cartel have produced this great conspiracy against their club. And I heard Norgallaha talk about how it's not going to take away any of what we achieved, you know, the feelings that we had when a Guero scored or when Roderie scored the winner in the Champions League final. But I do wonder if a fan of Marseille from say 1993, thinks back on those glory days, and there's a certain point of that was tainted or a fan of Juventus from the mid 2000s. And what Abu Dhabi did was, and this is the Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Mansor and Caldoun and all the people involved are accused of doing, is going against the rules. And if you don't have rules in sport, I remember this is a sport, and football is just what we see every year in that garbage village, you know, people just chasing after the ball. If there's no rules, you can just, you know, you just fight over the ball and that's it. And we talk all the time about rules with VAR and all the rest of it, and this is it's a separate issue in the fact it's a financial issue, but there were rules to follow and the accusation that the verdict is they didn't follow them. Harland would be quite good in that garbage village, you know, once he's got it, I don't know what his heat map would be like, but you touched on this, but it is an interesting philosophical question about, you know, and John mentions, you know, you can't take the aguero moment away from city fans with there and you can't, right? It was an amazing bit of football. But like, how should we view the last 15 years? What, what, you know, what, what are we meant to, you know, just Georgie Thompson's, I think, Adam Harley to be, does she have to re-voice Premier League years? What, what, it still happened. We still watched it. Well, it's really hard to know what to think isn't because it's never happened before. I mean, I'm a massive, just a huge Lance Armstrong fan and, you know, for me, for me, it was all real. It was all real. It is very difficult because it's really hard to get your head around because it definitely happened. But these, these things were played out. It wasn't bribery on, you know, it wasn't bribery on the pitch. People weren't not trying and were allowing you to score goals. So those players had to push themselves to the very limits of their physical capacities, had to do amazing acts of theatre. They're still brilliant footballers. It still happened. Kevin De Bruyne has still gave us these incredible moments. And that's real. He didn't buy that. But, but the point is it might not have been able to happen. It only really makes sense if you believe in football as one team against another and in supporters and the entire culture of the game being real. If you just want to watch an exhibition, then it doesn't make any difference. If you just want to see messy, endlessly scoring penalties and that's your entertainment, then who cares? Who's paying for that? But the point is if we actually believe in the culture of football, which is people trying to build things and people having an equal chance and it being a test of your system and your skill within a framework of rules, then you've basically destroyed the whole thing. Like you have, you've destroyed what sport is because other people were sticking to the rules, caveat, not everyone was sticking to the rules, but to the best of our ability, we were trying to make them do that. So I can understand wanting to hang on to those moments and the players as well must feel very strange about this. Because we're talking about the arbitrary values you attach to the value of a human when you're buying their talent, essentially, which is ridiculous. So you could say, well, you shouldn't have been able to buy Omar Mahmouche because he is worth this much. Well, is he? I don't know. Do you? I have no idea. We attach a value to them. And then we say, this is your budget. It's sort of insane, really, when you break it down. But we still do have a market that decides those things and other teams wanted him, couldn't buy him, maybe had an escape because he was always supposed to play for spurs. That's obvious. And so we attach these arbitrary values and say, that's the set of rules. But in the end, we do that. And there are players you couldn't bid for, couldn't afford, couldn't do, who would have improved your squadron. You might have won that game. You're winning leagues by one point. And then everyone gets to feel good about that. Another people get to feel bad. So we have to accept the spectacle and accept what our sport is. Or we have to say, means nothing. And we're just watching a TV show. And that's what city breaking those rules turns it into. Like we know that we know they're good football. Yeah. Yeah. And that makes this podcast just a TV review podcast, doesn't it? So I'm carrying a couple of things. Like obviously lots of people ring up, talk sport or five live and say, stick him in the national league. But the national league don't have to accept them. Do they? I mean, that is that sort of points deduction is the only thing they can't just say, you're in league one, for example. Premier League and the EFL are separate bodies. So you can't do that. But if you take a look at what happened with Leicester City's points deduction, that was a points deduction, which was imposed by the Premier League and applied by the EFL. So whilst there is a dispute between the two bodies about financial distribution, there are lines of communication. So if the panel concludes, the best thing is to have something similar to what we saw with Rangers and Juventus, are you going to be demoted so many divisions? It's then up for the EFL to make that decision. And they're going to welcome Manchester City with open arms. Yeah, Manchester City is going to be the biggest story in town. So it will be fantastic for their clubs. So you would see them probably taking on the recommendations. And can I ask about the future implications like the wave of lawsuits that could come from other teams, other players, their own players? What's the timeframe? The timeframe is appeal. We don't know how long that'll be. And then to the clubs act in like, is it like a class action or is it individual clubs? Or each saying, hey, we didn't qualify. Tottenham didn't qualify for the Champions League six times because of this, I think. And obviously, you know, stoked in when the FA Cup, Tony Puyris has talked about it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What's, can you envisage what what happened? Well, again, we have precedent with Everton having to pay Burnley 35 million pounds in compensation. And when you talk to lawyers, they talk about a loss of a chance, Burnley lost the chance to play in the Premier League for an additional season when they were relegated. And therefore, they claimed compensation as a result. So therefore, you'd have to look at it through, first of all, the financial lens. Clubs would deny the opportunity to be Premier League champions and the wealth that that brings. But most importantly, from a financial point of view, the Champions League versus the Europa League were the differences. And you're talking realistically 40 million pounds a pop there, for though the clubs finishing fifth went in those years in which city finished in the top four. So that's going to be one area. As far as players are concerned, again, you talk to players, the bonuses that you get for qualifying for the Champions League at the elite end. It's normally 25% of your to a weekly pay packet. So for a player who's on 100 grand a week, that's 25 grand a week for that player. You multiply that by 25 people in the squad. And the numbers very soon start to multiply. And then, regardless of the wealth of Manchester City's owners, you then wonder why they might say if we think we're going to lose these cases, why don't we go and do similar to what we've seen in golf with PIF and live golf and just walk away? Because we're coming out of this with no credibility whatsoever. Our reputation is in tatters. Shake man saw us only being to see City play twice. So it's not as if he's not as if he's got a surgery at a square out tattoo or anything. He's not a hard hardcore city fan. So therefore you could see that as a nuclear option. And yeah, there's the broader issue that regardless of the merits of all of this, Manchester City's a big employer in the city of Manchester. Barry, we should talk about the journalism that broke this, right? Ruby Pinto and football leagues and other journalists who have reported on this for a long, long time and have faced quite a lot of opposition for doing it. When this story broke, it wasn't long before my thoughts turned to our colleague and friend Nick Harris who has been like a dog with a bone on this story for years and was the subject of repeated threats on social media. He was docksed on social media. His address was published. I believe a brick was thrown through his window by allegedly by a disgruntled Manchester City fan. And he has faced relentless abuse and hardship at a very difficult time in his life. The stuff he had to put up was disgraceful. So that my thoughts sort of turned to him and he is vindicated now, but he's still had to go through all that hassle and grief. And there are other reporters who have been subjected to awful abuse, mainly on social media. And on the back of what they've reported, I know Miguel Delaney has been approached in airports and in pubs and being the subject of abuse from Manchester City fans and I'm sure there are others. I suppose that's the nature of the job is something you have to you shouldn't have to put up with it, but they have had to put up with it. It's such a huge story. The kind of macro elements of this, like you mentioned Caldo in our own Mubarak's statement, but there's so many layers to it. It's like the wire this, it reaches into everything. So how much do you trust? Imagine the pressure he's under. He's the sort of highest ranking non-royal person involved in this. He's basically been the face of this thing. His job has been to make this propaganda project work and look what's happening. He's under so much pressure here to try to kind of make this work for essentially his employers. And this isn't just something that he walks away from. So when I hear him make statements, I kind of have a kind of sympathy for him in a way in that this is a nightmare situation and beyond that. I've often wondered about the punishment and about the scale of football's place in things here. We know that Andy Burnham from his days of using the UAE as a means of inviting huge amounts of investment into Manchester. When he talks about Manchesterism, there's always some part of me that thinks there's a part of Manchester that's literally renamed the Emirates. There's a tram stop. This is not some miracle of internal economic growth. There's been so much Emirati investment in Manchester. One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to speak to the government there and to assure them of his help. There's a talk of a 10 billion pound investment on the table, further investment in the UK, which is obviously really, really key trading partner. There was a Bloomberg story, which had lots of annotated quotes in and you should probably be slightly wary of, but there must be something in it, which suggested there's been direct communication between a governmental level about the worrying possible impacts of a major sanction on Manchester City over this. And we tend to forget that sport and football really is the toy shop to most people. We think it's so important because of loyalties, but at a government level, it's just nothing. To the government in Abu Dhabi, this must seem absurd. Come on, just sort this out. It's nothing. It's sport. We're talking about investment here. Do you want it or not? Why is this happening? That the cultural difference is a vast. I am proud of the people in this tribunal who've decided to enforce some essentially very minor sporting regulations that go against macro geopolitical pressures. And there's a kind of element of the rule of law and rules based international order here. But I will wait to see what the actual punishment is before deciding because the level of pressure on these people is vast. It's ambient pressure. I'm not suggesting it was literally Andy Burnham's it's to be picking up the phone and say, this and guys, we can't afford this. But we're all aware of these pressures and anything that goes against the idea that you can just steam roller regulation because of investment and deals on trade is really good. I think and I am proud of it even though we're talking essentially micro regulations. But let's see what the final outcome is. All right, that'll do for part one. Kiran, thank you so much, pal. Cheers guys. Kiran Maguire there for the Pisa Football Podcast and we'll be back in a second to talk about England 2 Spain 3. Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly. So the nation's league then England 2 Spain 3. John obviously we watched the Argentina game together with sadness, buried with happiness. But I mean, I was quite enthused about this game. Obviously we didn't win and we often don't be really good teams, but I wasn't sad. No, no, and it was an entertaining international football game that outside of a world corporation, which is not often the case. It is something to be said, the nation's league has made that happen more often. I suppose after the shame of Atlanta and the soul searching, probably the worst team you wanted to face is Spain because the difference in the English football against Spanish football was shown by, well, what went wrong for England in the fact that the technique of the Spanish still looks so superior. England played well, but played this direct football that took all it has to lean on. There were good points, there were the folly of Harry Kane falling over himself, but then you'd look at, say, a play like Luminium R. I'd play like Alex Mahina. These are not English players. English players don't do that stuff. I suppose if we're looking at footballing technical level, we'd be able to be no good at defending anymore, and you know what, but this is England. This is England. We're the country of redoubtable centre halves. We're so good at centre halves that Steve Bruce could not get an international cap. We had John Terry, we had Salt Campbell, we have Rio Ferdinand, we had John of the Woodgate, all these players and now, do we draw any inference from the fact that the two errors that led to Spanish goals were by Manchester City players. Are they distracted? A game in microcosm, fascinating to watch. Great fun. The best team won because they are the best team in football. Thomas Tuchel's continuing role as England manager. It feels it gets shakier all the time, doesn't it? It just feels the thread is getting thinner. Let's see. I thought this was maybe like someone sowed an extra layer back on. I feel, you know, maybe I'm just, I'm just a fool for that. I just saw one touch. I'm sorry. You were there, Barney. My response is England just so unlucky, aren't they? We just keep producing. Every time. Every time. The best players in the world, like we just should win every corner and then just keep being managed by these idiots every time. That's almost equal to fault. Before, before that, we hit this Garassalski's fault. This is one guy. There's one person who just ruins everything with their terrible, you know, not picking Adam Wharton and that really obvious things that would have totally changed everything, like we just keep hiring these fools, like 76 years of hiring idiots that betray our lines who are clearly the best players in the world. That seems to be the, I mean, I was listening to the radio this morning and I heard endless dissections of the two calls, the betrayal of his terrible substitutions. It was slightly different substitutions. England would be the best team in the world and not one of the top four teams maybe, even though quite clearly other teams have a coaching, coaching culture and entire structure that is superior. No, it's this man. And then I heard Anthony Gordon saying, well, it was a good game and we lost the best team in the world by one guy and we're pretty happy with it. And I thought that's probably quite a sensible take on it. Maybe all, all. This is one guy who actually happens to be a German who should be sacked for taking England to the best World Cup they've ever had overseas in his first attempt at an international manager 18 months into the job. But made some substitutions that went wrong. And it's so unfair. When, when will English coaches finally get a chance because they're obviously the best in the world? Barry, what did you make of it? I'm kind of with Anthony Gordon on this one. I thought it was a really good game. I thought England were good going forward. The goal this goal to make at 1-1 was superb. Amicia Anderson Tackle and then some lovely interplay down the middle back to front with Bellingham and Gordon. The defence was a bit of a shambles. And I think the nation's leadness of it all means more England fans, like yourselves probably aren't that fussed about losing the game. If this was a more important tournament, no doubt there would be people calling for Mark Gay and Nicole Riley calling for them to be put in the tower of London and alongside Mr Tukkel. But because it's the nation's lead, everyone's a bit decent game. We lost not the end of the world by any stretch of imagination. Yeah, got a tower of London. We saw full of people. How many England players would be in the tower? You know, they're all their beckons in their runes in their capello. Just an endless list of people in the tower. It would make visiting the tower of London probably more interesting. I mean, a friend's wife who sort of has a passing interest in football asked me on Saturday what is the nation's league. And the best way I could think of to describe it was, well, it's a tournament, but it's one I wouldn't care if England won. So that tells you everything. I think the nation leads quite good though. I mean, I think England should try and win it. I think I don't think they will, but I think it would be really good if they tried to win it and maybe did because it is winnable. They have a big problem seems to be trying to actually win things. And they're not ever going to get a better opportunity to win something than the Euro's at home two years from now when they still have good players at their peak. That's the chance because Tukkel's a good manager. They've got good players. It's at home games like this. Yeah, it's October. The players are fresh so you can play in those quite and it's the evening. It was 16 degrees at Wembley or whatever. So you can play in the, they had some really good periods at 15 minutes spells or they pressed really well. And you suddenly thought, oh, they can win jewels against these players because you know, that that's an element where England had a physical superiority and not just muscle, but they pressed really well and they were little bits or they how and you thought, oh, there's a model here for how you can actually succeed against a team that's better on the ball than you are. And I thought in those little moments, so maybe there's something here that could mean England could actually win these kind of games. I think winning the nation's league is their best route to actually winning the Euro's. But that's now going to be really difficult. And also, it won't always be Wembley 16 degrees and moments where you're going to catch Spain a bit cold after half time. But in the end, I think it was a game about Spain and not about England. And you saw just how good they are and how good their system is and attacking subs come on immediately pick up the game and score two goals in 15 minutes with that, and it's seamless. And it's a tribute to their football culture that that they can do that. And rather than sort of panning England, we should probably appreciate how good that is. No, of course. And you know, it isn't as simple as came scores that penalty and win because you know, Ferrant Torres has those chances to make it too nearly, et cetera, such. But if came score that penalty, I feel like it's World Cup 2022. But I suppose the difficulty, John, of comparing, you know, I, you know, I was trying to, you know, I was actually, I asked producer Joel to, you know, find all the results against the top, top teams, whatever that means. And there aren't that many because you don't end up playing that many. But comparing the nation's league in the World Cup in the Euro's, it's just, it's actually pointless because the whole thing about it is, is, is different. But as everyone's alluded to, the depth of Spain and the bench, you know, you miss it by, by, you know, you know, Petry comes on, a Yazzle Boy comes on, you know, they're really good. Spain have this culture, which is a hybrid of several different things, don't you say you have the bass culture, which has produced all these coaches that we have now in the Premier League, how a club like Athletic Bill Bale through its recruitment policy has to breed young players because, but by almost economic, to run the business, they have to do that. But then you've got the Barcelona School, La Macia, all these things that that fit together to produce this amazing football culture, which is, you can't imitate the Germans try to imitate it, it worked for a while. And then it came apart. And the German you see now is a very milked host, sort of, Spain hybrid that doesn't really actually, you know, it can't, it's lost what made German football great at the start. And what Thomas Tuchel has tried to do, and Anthony Gordon talks about this before the game, didn't he, about we need to play fast direct football that suits us. Now, the thing is, they can do that. Anthony Gordon is actually one of the best proponents of that. He's actually got, it looks, we've got better since he went to Spain. You know, he, he, he was productive La Macia. This Spanish football is producing players like Anthony Gordon now. Yeah, I mean, look at that. It's amazing, isn't it? And to deflect it back to England, which we always do, it's how do we arrive at that where we might take the best from all our separate English facets and make it? And, and as Barney says, you know, at the end of it, we just always seem to end up with someone to blame. And it was Southgate who did such a fine job. And Thomas Tuchel has actually done, you know, a good job. But we cannot stop just fraying at that, you know, I got it to him and it's done this. And, you know, we're all guilty. We're in this game, aren't we? We've got to find someone to blame. But do we need anyone to blame? But do we just have to accept the Spanish have got this nailed for now? It won't last forever. But they do actually, if you think about it, there was a point where Spain looked to have lost it, but they've come back and they've regenerated. We've got to generate that's all we've got to do. Barry, what did you make of James Trafford getting the nod over Pickford, who has, you know, to quote many phone and caller or pundit, he's never let England down. But Trafford came in for this game. And it seemed that Tuchel was picking his strongest team. Big Jordan Pickford fan. Ever since he was a kid at Sondaland. And yet he hasn't done much wrong playing for England. I think his time as automatic first choice may be coming to an end. And Thomas Tuchel may well share the same opinion because we're both intelligent football men. If you want to try out new players and the nation's league is the time to do it. It's healthy for Jordan Pickford to have stiff competition. In Trafford Pickford, Henderson, England have some brilliant goalkeepers. Three really, really good goalkeepers. I often wonder, we know how G'dop and Fist Pompey and Hyper, Jordan Pickford gets during games. I wonder if maybe England's defence would prefer a less manic presence behind them. But I don't know. But as you say, he has been a very good servant for England. There were several occasions in the World Cup where I saw Jordan Pickford hit one of those passes downfield. He is really good at these passes. But it's basically just a absolute missile that someone's head really instantly. He's seen something. He's thought I'm going to do that. He's obviously been empowered to do that. It's good. It works sometimes. And then I looked at Tuchel and saw him head in his hands. What are you doing? Why have you done that? I think he got frustrated with some of Pickford's decision-making and possibly linked that slightly to between 55 and 72 minutes in Atlanta, where England did suddenly start hitting these quick clearances, kept playing like it was the last two minutes. He didn't know how to stop that happening, didn't perhaps make the right changes. Maybe one of the changes he might have. Maybe we'd take the goalkeeper off and bring someone on. He's a bit calmer in their distribution, but you'd ever do that in football for some reason. It's just never done. But I could see him visibly. I'd always looked straight to Tuchel when that happened. It was like this reliable kind of nudge. You would instantly be leaping up and down, waving his arms around. And I think they're might have something to do with their tactical change. Are you saying at Lamassia they don't have Missile, ATR Missile to someone's head. Double ATR Missile to someone's head after lunch on a Friday. That's when you get to learn how to do that. By the way, if you want more Spain, Sid Lose, sat down with Lemini Marl, recently to discuss his career so far. That's your Marl's career, so far not Sid's career so far. You can find that in the paper on the website, of course, and that'll do for part two. Part three, we will discuss the pretty extraordinary weekend that the Republic of Ireland players had before they beat Israel 3-0. I'll get to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly, so yesterday the Republic of Ireland beat Israel 3-0. Barry, that isn't really the story, is it? Oh, no, it isn't. They beat them. They beat them. Had them beaten inside 25 minutes. That came on the back of a diabolical performance against Kosovo on Thursday night, which they lost 1-0. And we're very lucky to only lose 1-0. I wonder if perhaps the players were preoccupied by thoughts of what was to come. And then on Saturday, between them, you wave the Irish government and the Football Association of Ireland have known for almost 8 months that this fixture was coming and between them, and I would lay most of the blame here at the door of the FBI for what happened in the last few days. They allowed this farcical situation to unfold where the day before the game, the players were locked in their hotel, debating whether or not to play this game against Israel, and having a vote in their hotel, while a load of journalists, some of whom have done excellent work on this story over the past 48 hours, were waiting outside to see what color smoke would come out of the chimney. It emerged that the FBI CEO said that the vote was an overall or a significant majority vote in favor of playing the game, but it turns out that more than one in three of the squads, including Gavin Bazoonert, didn't want to play the game, but it went ahead anyway. So we can speculate that at least seven, if not eight of the squads who were involved in the game against Israel, didn't want to play it, but it was played anyway. And obviously there was no handshakes, no penance exchange before the game. Ireland wore black iron bands. They stood with their heads staring at their shoes while the Israeli national anthem was played, and then they pretty much hammered them, but the victory in the game is the only more of a footnote than anything else. And you won the minute by minute, John, it was a weird atmosphere, wasn't it? Yeah, eerie. I mean, there were Israeli fans there. There was a small Irish delegation. In post-match, it was so strange the way that the players from both teams just turned away from each other as if they'd never even interacted in any sense at all. Just down the tunnel, clapped some of the fans, and I have a few friends who work in the Irish media, and Saturday was the strangest day in their careers since Saipan. Some of them would have been around around that time when Roy Keen was ejected from the Ireland camp back then. And when you're watching and listening to a bit of the press conference with Jaime Halgrimson and David Carell, who is the FAI chief executive, it was farcical stuff. And he got to the point where Gavin Pazunu, a guy who said he did not want to play in the game, it turned out they hadn't asked him whether he wanted to play in the game. He had not yet. He's the mad thing where Halgrimson had only asked outfield players. Yes. Go keepers don't matter. Go keepers are amoral, have everyone knows that? Yeah, have a moral compass. Maybe that's Thomas Tuchel's problem with Jordan Pitford. Yeah, I mean, they can't make decisions for themselves as it appears. You can't make light of this because of the issues involved, but it's rarely press conference involved. This rather odd segue where they were to discussing the, I'm sure you discussed it the other day, the red card where the player was sent off for what the referee mistook for a gun celebration. It was a discussion of snooker. And one of the Israeli delegates referred to the legendary Kendoherty who I don't believe and I don't think Ken himself believes is a big star in Israel. And it appears that someone had done some frantic googling and looked for Irish snooker players and it just, the whole thing was, as Barry correctly says, this had been eight months in the making. It has been a huge issue in Ireland over whether the game should be played. Those players were hung out to drive by the FAI, the Irish government, UEFA and to put in this position. And the result was a game that, as Barry says, the result barely mattered, that it was just this ghost of a game taking place. Gavin Bisuno, I'm always conscious that it's easy on a sitting in the shed to take a moral stance on nation-state ownership or boycotts or whatever. But for Gavin Bisuno to actually take a stand, it's impossible to know what the future impact on that is. That is a completely different thing to people sitting on a chair saying people shouldn't play this game. Yeah, he's taken a stand and predictably enough people in Ireland who didn't want to go at game to head, go ahead are hailing them as an absolute hero and people who criticise and belittle those who didn't want to go game to go ahead are wondering why did he turn up for the camp? Anyway, he knew they were, you know, who the opposition were. But people can change their mind over time. And I think there was friction in the team hotel and he was confronted by one of his teammates who abused him over the stance he was taken apparently because he was going to make the rest of them look bad. The player who confronted him has since apologised, I believe, to Gavin. But it will be interesting, Ireland play Austria at home in the Yviva next Presumance Wednesday. So it will be interesting to see what kind of reaction the players get, what kind of reaction, Heimer Halmömsson gets. I don't think I'm a Halgömsson covered themselves in glory the last few days. He was like left hanging in the wind at that press conference. He was accompanied by a couple of FAI executives and the media officer and was left hanging in the wind when he had to face some ridiculous questions from Israeli journalists, worn about a football match Ireland played nearly 100 years ago in Germany. So it's just the FAI have made a mess of it. Any bad situation they ever find themselves in, they always seem to manage to make it worse. It is odd that his background in dentistry didn't prepare him to deal with issues on this scale. I mean, I've got sympathy reverend trying to cope with this and respect for any player who makes a moral stand, whatever that may be. You have to respect that. The players are individuals they can make choices. Personally, I don't think anyone engaged in significant military action should really be playing international sport. I would include Israel in that and I'd probably include America in that as well. They've just hosted a World Cup. I mean, if sport has any power, there's any sort of value in the idea of things like Olympic truces and that kind of stuff and given the way it works now, you'd probably want to take a harder stand on that and this game wouldn't have happened in the first place. But players trying to deal with it, I wouldn't could decide anyone for making a stand, whatever way that falls elsewhere. And we will cover these sides in more detail when there is presumably less that happens in the next two days, but I guess you never know. Scotland looked good in the second half against Slovenia in a nil nil draw, two defeats for Wales against Portugal, Denmark, Jürgen Klopp's Germany lost that I have to Greece. I watched a bit of the Greece, Germany game. I watched all three games last night as part of my duties. Germany were shockingly punchless against the Greeks and the goal that came by deflection was always coming because Germany had just blown themselves out and the optimism of the Klopp regime, the initial of it, the part of it, it perhaps has faded though. We must remember that Klopp can take a while to get his teams working. That's what we remember from Back at Liverpool days. But as I was saying before, it's not the Germany that we all remember from our younger days. It's a very different makeup of players and he's also done that thing as anywhere. He's picked 44 players. You can only imagine the amount of English players that would drop out if there's a squad of 44. I saw Nick Valtemarder who is one in the second trunch of the 44 simply re-enjoying himself in the stands and then one of the readers pointed out to me that you saw them all leaving before the end of the game and he was like, yeah, they've been told to get on a coach back to the hotel. So God knows what was going on. The game is in Augsburg. Greece actually, we should say, look quite a decent team these days. There's a team on a bit of a... Dark horses for the Euros. Yeah, they're the new Turkey. Actually, we probably shouldn't make that comparison. Yeah, but yeah, interesting times for Germany. The soul searching in German football is even deeper than it is in England. We should actually feel quite satisfied by comparison to them. I mean, Charlie Bacon made a good point of the radio saying, imagine being the 45th player. When he picks a squad of 44, go on, just pick 45. Yes, yes, Barney. Well, you know what's interesting about Greece in the context of England, the only team ever so in a major tournament, Neuros or World Cup, with an overseas manager. That's the only times ever happened, going back to 1930, but Thomas too. He was at the game last night, you know, Otto Ray Hargel. He was there, 88 years old. Legend. Well, legend. Loved in both countries, just yelling, get it launched, yelling, get it launched at all times. Quite a few injuries, Brobby, Brian Brobby looks out for a while. Don't bother, I might be Kai Havertz as well, so there'll be some unhappy club managers when we get to press conferences next Thursday. Ronaldo and unused sub in Portugal's game yesterday that they loved it. He loved it. Perhaps interesting. Of course, he just... I was going to say, Max, they kept bringing on subs and it wasn't him, but he was dressed in a very warm, looking tracksuit, so I think he knew his fate there. And of course... Right, he'd been told. Gunsalo Ramassi did have... He scored two goals, one of them was chalked off, but my memory is of Qatar. Remember when Ronaldo was dropped and Ramassi scored a heart attack? That was the moment. You just think, of sliding doors moments, maybe they'd just said, listen mate, thanks for everything, you know, but he's just still there. Even as the guy just stood on the sidelines, it's just amazing. Still the story, John Wright, Stimax, Barry and Friends, the search for more rhyming players to quonser and concern. The last episode reminded me of a time when my beloved Blackburn Rovers could feasibly have put out the following players on the picture any one time. 9th of January 2013, Keen and Kane, not that one, Dan and Dan, Henley and Hanley, and Hanley, not related. Olson, Olson, related, but not the sisters you're thinking of. Unfortunately, this remarkable name, synergy, didn't translate to Enfield's success and we went through five managers that season. One of them was Steve Keen and finished four points clear of the bottom three. Love the podcast. Thank you, John, for doing research that we couldn't be bothered to do. And that'll do for today. We got to a lot, so well done, everybody. Well done, all of us. We're the best. Thank you, Barry. Thank you. Cheers, Barney. Cheers, everyone. Thank you, John. Thanks for having me. For a week, Clay is produced by Roy Simon and Ty Papula. The executive producer is Joel Grove. We'll be back on Wednesday. This is The Guardian.