Euro Leagues: Mbappé v PSG, Fabregas under fire & Benfica’s Talent Factory

On the football daily podcast, the EuroLeaks with Steve Krossman. Hi there, welcome to the EuroLeaks on the football daily. We're going to be getting into Fiorentina's fall from Grace. How Paris Saint-Roman have had to pay 60 million euros to Killian and Bapet. Why, Cessk, Fabregas is in hot water with Senegal. We're also going to be joined by the Academy Director at Ben Fieker, the most profitable academy in world footballs. All of that to come, ESPN's Julian Leran, the Athletics James Horncastle and Rafael Honextan. Good evening, everybody. Hello guys, good evening. Hello, James, are you in a sauna? He is. No, I'm not in a sauna. I am in Finland though. Alright, okay. Are you in Lapland? I am in Lapland. Oh, well, this is Fabregas, that's perfect. Oh, he finally got a job as father Christmas. No idea if he's one of the elves. Oh, brilliant. What are you? Are you having a little break and you've just decided to include us or you want some sort of secret journalistic mission? No, although there is a Santa FC, isn't there? No, I have brought my nephews to Lapland. Okay, so you're not interviewing the manager of FC Santa Claus? No, no. I mean, now that all the elves have, yeah, sort of back to work, I'm looking for the Northern Lights, but as I look at the window, there is a blizzard going on. That's why I needed Rudolph. I mean, it's perfect. If I open this window crossy, I might be blown away at the moment. It's quite spectacular outside, but yeah, no, it's wonderful up here. I recommend anyone to come. I came on Joseph's recommendation, so there you go. Brilliant. Joseph was doing a sort of holiday season as an elf. He was introduced as an elf from ESPN when he was doing his season. They're the best elves in those. So if James Hongcastle is Santa and he does have the hair for it and Jules has the height for an elf, I don't know what that makes me and you, Raffa, but I still want to be involved. I don't have any answer to that, let's find out. Couple around. I like your haircut. He believes in Krampus and that's it. Krampus comes on the 6th of December if you've been naughty. Is that right? If he hasn't got you yet, you're OK. OK. By the way, the chairman of FC Santa Claus will be on the euro leagues between now and the end of the year. So that is an interview that you can look forward to. Right, let's start our show tonight with the biggest story of the week, Paris Saint-Germain, trying to play Killian and Bappé, a lot of money. PSG were countersuing and Bappé for compensation for his failed 300 million euro transfer to Al Hilal. It's all got very messages, but in the end, PSG have got a part with 60 million euros to a player who left them a long time ago. Yeah, I think it's a very interesting story, quite rare one because I don't think we've ever really been in this situation where basically the heart of it is, and Bappé was going to run down his contract. We knew that. It was going to leave to go to Ramajray on a free and PSG were not happy with that. So at the start of the 23-24 season, they dropped him from the squad. He didn't travel on the preseason tour to Japan and to find a solution to be reintegrated into the squad for his last season in Paris. Apparently, they had a meeting where Killian said, "Listen, understand that you don't want to lose me on a free. I don't want to leave with nothing for the club." So I'm going to waive of some of the bonuses that you will owe me by the end of this season, by the end of this contract, and that you will feel like a transfer fee kind of thing. The club said that's what he said. He said that he never said that, that he never said anything, that he never agreed anything. So all basically was at court, was PSG saying one thing and Killian and Bappé saying another thing through lawyers. When there was no contract, nothing on writing, nothing black on white. It was one word against the other, and at the end of the day, PSG had to pay what they owed him from the contract. I mean, I can read to you in details, because it's quite funny to be fair, but there was 37 million, as you do, euros in Saninonfi, that they were still owing him. There was 3.6 million on pay leave, that they owed him, 17 million on unpaid wages, three months, that they owed him. And the list continues. The total made it 61 million, obviously. So in the end, I think maybe PSG thought we could settle for something a bit lower, and I think that's why they went to court, because other than that, they just have to pay him what they owe him. It's as simple as that. Is this unprecedented, James, precedented? Well, I was wrecking my brains sort of in my career reporting on football to find something similar. And there's nothing of this profile. I mean, Jules has kind of laid out the damages, the kind of the compensation, you know, it's huge. And obviously, with a player with the name of Killian and Bappie, this is someone we've been expecting to win the ball on door for the last number of years, someone who scored in a couple of World Cup finals. So it's sort of rare, rare air that he is living in. In Italy, I can just remember in sort of 2010, sort of a player being in a bomb squad and sort of taking his team to court, winning, that player was Goran Pandev, certainly a different strike compared with Killian and Bappie. And Pandev sort of winning this court battle with Lazio moving to Inter in the winter of 2010 and winning the treble, which, yeah, it worked out very well for him. But nothing on this scale, it's pretty remarkable. And Jules, I mean, if PSG had won, I mean, what they were claiming was pretty remarkable. I think hundreds of millions they wanted from Mbappé. So yeah, incredible, really. I think they just went for something in return not to lose face in a way or something like that. Both knew that if you went all that way to the court, the court will very likely, and they did in the end, settle for, that's how much it was written in the contract. I've read the contracts black and white, all those numbers that I've given you with a few more numbers at the end, I'll run them up for you. But that's exactly what was in the contract in terms of the bonuses, the signing on fees, the wages, the leaf pay, all of that was there. He got 5,000 euros of damages and 5,000 euros to pay for his lawyer's fee, which, by the way, were much higher than that, I can tell you. And that was it really. The rest is exactly what was in the contract. So in the end, it felt to me a bit like a lot of noise and first for not really much in the end, because they could have agreed to this, both parties at the same time. You want to work out when a suing is on club, I'd give you lota Mateos, only in Germany and a buy-in. In 2000, buy-in made a testimonial for him, and afterwards, which brought in about 9 million euros before cost, sorry, 9 million marks, and lota Mateos sued buy-in saying that that's not the whole sum, and he wanted to have a look into document and everything. And after a long protected case, which really didn't help him, because that's when the famous line was born, that Uli Hurner's the president at the time said, "Lot of Mateos, as long as I'm here, will never be even be greenkeeper at FC Bayern." He won 7,500 euros, and ruined, at least, damage his relationship with buy-in forever. So the very definition of a "piric victory" got a little bit of money, but fell out with the biggest, most powerful club, and to this day, still a bit of an outsider, whereas every former buy-in player of note has been brought in to the fold in the either officials or ambassadors, and he's the odd one. Even Jürgen Klinzmann, who had a famously unproductive time at Bayern, is now coming back to play for the Legends team, but Lota, yes, played occasionally for them, but Lota is still sort of the odd one out. Rossi, it's come to my mind, because I actually wrote about this before the event has played Real Madrid in the winter this year, which was Cristiano Ronaldo against Juventus, which people don't realise this is going on. Could you think of a more high profile player? I went from Goran Pandev to Cristiano Ronaldo, but no, Ronaldo and Juventus has been an arbitration since he left Juventus from and united over the money due to him in Covid, which was sort of, okay, Cristiano, are we going to reduce your wages? And it's gone back and forth, and there'll be a final decision in January. I think Juventus has played half of it. Cristiano wants the full amount, and that full amount is 19.6 million euro. So there you go. I think it's all the steam in the sauna, James, though. I think that it's all gone to your head and you just, you just lost it. It's the clock. It's the glue vine. I think Joseph's an interesting question here about whether fans care about this kind of thing. And sort of doubly, because anecdotally, I get the impression that the younger generation of football fans, there are a lot more people now who follow players than there used to be. Obviously loads and loads of kids are still massive fans of a particular team, but equally there are people who are just massive fans of individual players. And this might have changed over the years. Do you think Paris Saint-Germain supporters care? Does it make them feel any differently about Killian and Bappé or not? I don't think so. I think everybody sees it in the way that, again, in a very simple way, this is the money that was owed to him. You can't have a player and not pay him in March, April and May, or April May and June's wages. If you're in any whatever job you're in, if your employer doesn't pay you three months in a row, you're not going to be happy and you're going to go, you're going to sue them and you're going to go to court. So it's exactly like that, really, I think, yes, did he really agree to wave off some of the bonuses maybe? Did it maybe? Didn't, to be fair. In the end, that's not going to change much regardless. So I don't think PhD cares so much. I think it's good that this is finally over, although PhD could still appeal the decision that was taken yesterday. I think they're looking at it, but I don't think they will go through. So you could put that one to bed. Everybody can get on with their lives, kill them in Madrid, PhD, doing their thing. And I say, and I don't think that tarnished the relationship that they had for seven years. We've said at the time, seven years was a long time for him to stay at the club. He tried. He tried. He wanted to win the Champions League to be the first player to bring it to Paris. He didn't happen. He had a final. He had semi-finals. Just didn't happen. I've been in a way that, yeah, it was not very nice because I don't think, ideally, if you're a fan, you don't want to see one of the greatest players ever to play for your club to live on a free. That's not nice. Fair enough. But I think people have moved on really quickly, and that hasn't changed anything. This story is remarkable. And it involves the Komeh manager, Cezc Fabregas, who's landed himself in hot water with the Senegalese football federation. It's basically led to a war of words between the two of them. It's because Fabregas played a young Senegalese player, Asana Diao, in Komeh's defeat to Roma on Monday, one week before the start of Afcon, which Diao had been selected for. He's been injured since the first of November. He's got an injury again now. It's very unlikely he's going to feature at Afcon. This is what Fabregas said about it to Sky Italia. He said, "Oh, I'm really glad when my players are called for international duty, but I asked Senegal for a little common sense, and for them not to call him up, because this is a player who was barely featured for eight months as he keeps getting hurt and can't find consistency. I feel sorry for him, because perhaps he shouldn't have played, i.e. in the game that he picked him in. Tomorrow, however, he would have left us for the national team for five weeks. We're paying his salary. He's a strong player for us. We try to take a risk." Discuss, James. "I don't really have a problem with Cezc, saying what he said. In fact, I'm a bit surprised that this is because the kind of furore that it has. Look, Asanadeo is a very talented young player, and you might say that Senegal would call him up regardless of how much he's played this season. As Cezc has said, really since the turn of this year, Asanadeo has been out injured. He's been out injured for eight months. He gets back to being sort of fit and healthy. He goes away on international duty, and he comes back injured and he's out for another month. And so that common sense, that I was going to call it common sense, that Cezc was calling for there, is like, you know, this player needs time to basically get fit and healthy. Otherwise, he's going to keep breaking down. Cezc been played him against Roma, and he goes on this incredible run. I imagine people would compare it to George Ware against Hellasparona back in the 90s. And then at the end of that run sort of pulls up, he's clearly hurt. And he's like, look, these are the risks that a manager takes. We're sort of entitled to take these risks because he's our player. We pay his salary. And I thought Cezc was very respectful of the fact that, look, you know, he was an international player himself. He won the World Cup playing the Spain. He said, there's nothing a player wants to do more than represent his country and win something with his country. You know, he felt that Senegal coach was showing a lack of common sense in basically calling up a player who's barely featured for Koma, who's been regularly injured. The other thing that, you know, it didn't seem to make the tweets that made this a kind of viral thing was what Cezc said to Sky Italy after which was, he finished that answer by saying, I had a conversation with the Senegal coach. It was unpleasant. And he claimed that the Senegal coach said, look, you either let me take the boy to Afcon or he's not coming to the World Cup. And Cezc was like, that's, he was like, that's unacceptable to me. I can understand why Senegal's manager and Senegalese fans want to see us on the DL play at the World Cup. Frankly, they haven't seen him play a lot because he's always injured. So it's Pappe Chau, isn't it? It was the head coach of Senegal. I mean, look, Jules, I think there is an argument that nobody comes out of this particularly well. I mean, the idea of a manager basically threatening, threatening, so you won't go to the World Cup if you don't let him go to the World Cup. Yeah, Pappe Chau said he didn't say that, but yeah. But equally, we can take Cezc at face value from what Cezc has said. I think some people will hear him talking about common sense and say, well, where's the common sense in playing him if he wasn't fit enough and then seeing him get injured again. Either of his fit or he's not fit. Yeah, I agree completely. I thought he was really disrespectful from Faber, guys. And I think James makes a very good case for Cezc. I have a very different view. Cezc is not here. I know Comic-Pay, there was wages, obviously we know that and we've had this debate for a long time now, or Club V Country, all of that. The players wanted to go to Afghanistan. He felt fit enough to go to Afghanistan. I think there's, as always, between club and country's relationship between the two medical staffs of your national team and whoever your club is, medical files are sense. You assess players together, you speak regularly and I don't know exactly what are the relationship between the common medical staff and the Senegal medical staff. You expect that they are professionals and they should be okay to see that and say, "Okay, we can see that he's not completely ready to go back to back games for 90 minutes in the heat in Morocco, fair enough, but they could also have taken him and not having to play him 90 minutes back to back games or all three group games, for example, within three days, a part of each other. So, for Cezc Faber, he has to come and say, "I didn't want him to go. You can't, you're not the one deciding if a player should go to the Euro's, the World Cup or Afghanistan." That's why I was very surprised and very disappointed by what he says. I think there are two things here. One is just dispute between Cezc and Papacha, and we don't know exactly what has been said and clearly there's been put pressure on the player who happens all the time in various disguises, various guises. But I think what you can't do as a coach is come out and say, "The player shouldn't have played, but because it's Afcon, we thought we'd take the risk anyway." I mean, you might think that. You might secretly think, "Okay, the worst that can happen is that he's going to miss." But as a duty towards your player, if you think there's a risk, even if you won't miss him, he still would be injured and you might not be able to play once Afcon is over either. So, it's a very strange thing for me to say as a coach. And it sounded as if he was a little bit caught up in the controversy and maybe just spoke a little bit out of turn and said things that maybe he wouldn't have said otherwise in a more calm, rational environment. Oh, no. He has a coach. You can't do that. Okay. So, he kind of addressed the point you've just made, ref. He was like, "A lot of coaches won't talk about this, but I'm basically going to be honest with you and express exactly how I feel. I'm very passionate. I'm going to be very authentic to myself here until you exactly how I feel like this." And he basically said, "Not enough managers do this. They'll come here. They'll bluff. They'll lie." And all this sort of thing. But what you get from me is really how I think. Now, whether what he said and we've gone through it, I think he was entitled to say, "If some of the things he said, Jules has made the case saying he doesn't think that." But I think what we can't sort of, I'm reluctant to sort of criticise, says, for saying what was on his mind and being honest. I'm not so much criticising him for saying what's on his mind, but if you believe what he said is true, then I think you shouldn't do it as a manager in the first place. But if you think there's a risk of a player getting injured and then think, "Well, actually it's not that much of a risk because if you missed the next two weeks, it doesn't really affect us." You still owe a duty of care to the player not to get injured. Whether you're going to miss him or not, the player might be up four months, four weeks, five weeks, six weeks. I know. I don't think he can. I don't think he can do that. I don't think he was making the calculation on I'll risk him because he's going to be away from the next five weeks. But he said, he said, "Tomorrow he was supposed to go away on international duty, be away for five weeks and since we're the ones paying his salary, we might as well take a risk and play him a little." It does sound very much like he's making exactly that calculation. Yeah, but I think we're entitled to take a risk for the player as much as a national team is entitled to take a risk with the player, which is what they were going to do. Take a player who's barely played, had eight months, so that coach is essentially willing to take a risk with that call that I'm making with this call. We're playing against AS Roma in a big game at the Stadio Olympic Goal. We're in contention for Europe. I'm going to take a risk because I believe he's the right player to help us get something out of this game. I think that was the risk that he was talking about. I don't think he's talking about the risk. He's going to be away for five weeks anyway, so might as well roll the dice on this one. I think it was purely the five weeks point is we're going to lose a game, we're going to lose a player that we can't use for the next five weeks and we pay a salary. I don't think it was, let's roll the dice and see what he said. He said James, he probably shouldn't have played. Yeah, but if you believe that the player shouldn't have believed that I'm not sure they do it all the time. I think they do a lot of, they do the exact opposite all the time. They think there's a risk of a player getting injured. The national team means a lot to him. I'm not going to play him in that one game when he hasn't played a lot of games. We have this discussion most weeks on this show. We've had it about Premier League clubs, Spurs last year, Arsenal last year. Why do these teams have so many injuries? Have they rushed players back? I think this is a calculation that managers make all the time. Whilst having that duty of care that you talk about in their minds, yeah, even with some of the best sports science and sort of really investing in your sports science departments, you never know until a player gets out on the pitch, how they're going to do. You can go play. But if you say he probably shouldn't have played, it says you'd think that it was more than a risk. It was a probability that something might happen. And I think if he really believes that, if he was saying the truth, then I think it was the wrong call. It felt a bit like he made a point of saying like, I told you it was not fair, I played him, like Senegal would have played him and he broke down after 36 minutes. It felt the way the way he said it, it felt after the game, felt almost like you see, I told you, I told you it was not, and almost like he played him to make a point that he could get injured again and he did. And I think it's a really interesting discussion and I appreciate it. It feels a little bit like James versus the world, but as always, you're all doing a very good job of keeping it very, very polite, which is good. My sort of thing about it is, I agree with what James was saying about the fact that this is how loads and loads of coaches will be feeling and what he is doing is just expressing that. But there is a little bit of me that thinks, he's, as the kids would say, he's saying the quiet thing out loud, isn't he? And he probably shouldn't. It doesn't. Yeah, I think he's a young coach, as we know. And I think he learned, and probably in 10 years' time, he wouldn't have used those words or said those kind of things and that's for sure. I think there's also, and this is not new, I think, crossing together we did the show, whether it was before the last half corner, the one before even, the lack of respect towards the competition in general. And let's not forget that, as early as three weeks ago, clubs were complaining and protesting that the players' dates to join the national team for this competition was too early. It was December the 8th, they pushed hard for that date to become December 15th and they obviously won because it's the clubs. So players even arrived late in Morocco to join the national team to be part, to take part of Afghan, because, and there's a lot of clubs, a lot of managers who are not happy with that competition being half way through the season. We know that. It's difficult to play at any other time during the season. We know that as well. And I think Cess comments were part of that, I think. And I don't think it's helpful. I don't think it's good for Afghan. I don't think it's great for African football in general. And you have people like Cess Fabregas who are, in a way, dissing a competition like Afghan, which is as important as the Euros or the Copa America. And I don't think that's good at all. I think there is an interesting point, which might be a good place to finish on it, James, as well, around that, which is that Afghan as a tournament, it is really emotionally charged because we have seen lots of coaches in the past, be pretty disrespectful to it as a tournament, mostly because it falls in the middle of the season, which other international tournaments don't. So I think anything which is seen to be adding to that is going to go down very, very badly. It is a unique competition in that sense. Yeah. And look, this competition was supposed to be played last summer, right? And it wasn't because Janine Fantino decided to host the club World Cup that everyone so wanted and desired. So I mean, I suppose I don't think this is necessarily Cess, dissing the African cup of nations. I think if there was another tournament, international tournament, winter, which a player was called up for who'd been injured, but much of the last eight months had got injured on international duty, had not been selected for the national team until 2025 this year. So it's made what only two appearances. You know, I don't think you would have made distinction between whether it was a European championship, whether it was a World Cup in Qatar, or whether it was Afcon in Morocco. I think it's purely a valued judgment on why are you picking this player with his injury record. And I think that's it. My name's Steve Bradnell, a system manager at Royal Oak FC. You may have seen me online, we've had a vital sensation. And now, the BBC have given me the chance to set the footballing world Banta Rags. This could be a great opportunity for us to have the podcast for the BBC. Can I just say what's the podcast? Brilliant. Right start. Well done, Bob. Brilliant. What's on you, Chub? Listen on BBC sounds on the football daily podcast, the Euroleagues with Steve Crossman. James Horncastle, Julian Laron, Rafferhonextine, all withers on the Euroleagues. We're going to do fewer and Tina and why they're struggling so much in Serie A, a little bit later. We've got loads coming up right now, though. This is a really, really interesting story. A few weeks ago, Portugal won the under-17 World Cup in Qatar for the first time. With nine Benfica players in the squad, last year, the International Centre for Sports Studies, named Benfica's Academy is the most profitable Academy in world football, generating 516 million euros, which was 140 million euros more than the next best club. As Ajax, this is calculated between 2014 and 2023, Benfica's Academy director, Giammi Muller, has joined us on the Euroleagues. Giammi, good evening. Good evening. Hi. Those are some brilliant numbers, aren't they? Congratulations before we say anything else. What's the secret? Well, first of all, thanks for the invitation, the opportunity to be with you guys and share some thoughts. I don't know if there's a secret. I think there's a couple of things that are brought together. I have contributed for this success. I'm biased, but I very much like the Portuguese player, and we give a lot of importance to the Portuguese player, because we think that we have in our country a few special characteristics that help to improve and develop more talent. There's no hidden secret. There's nothing that we can point out as being just the one thing, but I think that there are some characteristics, in fact, in our country that make it easier than in other countries, and we've been able to compare it with other especially European countries, and there's something in our heart that helps us a little bit here. What are those special characteristics? Well, first of all, we can say this really out loud, but there's no major restriction regarding recruitment, contrary to other countries, such as England, for example, so we can recruit in the northern part of Portugal and the southern part of Portugal, without any conditions. I think that's a good thing for us, because it makes it possible for these three to four biggest clubs. This is the case in Portugal with the Bainfique as part in Portugal and now Braga. To grasp the better talents really soon, just out of curiosity, you guys were speaking about the Portuguese national team that won the World Cup, the under 17 World Cup. We have nine in the Portuguese team. We have a tenth player in the Irish team, Jayden, so in total we have ten, but these nine players have an average of ten years of longevity in Bainfique. We're speaking about 17-year-old kids who, in average, have at least ten years of Bainfique. This is good because they have the opportunity for a long, long period of time to train with the best and to compete together against the best. So I think that's something that has really helped us is to be able to get the better players really soon and have them train together and have them compete together. So there's something that has been good for us, so the concentration is an important secret. And of course, there are characteristics of the players from genetically, from our relation to Africa. I mean, lots of things from the past that have also helped, but I mean, more to bring it back to the present. There's also a certain education about football in Portugal. We see it with the coaches, with the university degree, a lot of them go, and obviously, your coaches, everywhere in Europe, everywhere in the world are the most successful of any countries, really. And then it feels like with the players, certainly your Bainfique players, and I speak about you are never especially because you're not playing for my club in Paris and I had a really interesting chat with him before the Champions League Final where he was talking about the kind of education that he received as a young boy, you know, up in Africa. And okay, maybe Joe is a very, very talented, very bright kid in any way, but is there something or also in the way you teach football to those kids that is a bit different, maybe than what we're doing in France? Well, yeah, I would say that firstly, people love football and people love their clubs in Portugal, which is good because the kids from a very early on start to play football together and there's always a ball present in every house. And that's something that's very good and we think we feel that this is very important. Unfortunately, it's changing a little bit. We see with the younger kids now that it's not the same as it was in our time, even in Juan's time with the younger kids now, it's a little bit different, there's a bigger attraction to play station, cell phones, whatever, I mean, you know, you know, I'm talking about it. So it has been changing a little bit, but it's true that we love football. And this, if this is the fact for kids playing football, I think it's a bigger thing because it's really a passion for the sport. And this as represented is not everyone can be a football player, everyone has tried, everyone has believed at some point that they could become a football player, but I think there's lots of people who understood soon enough that they weren't going to turn into football players, but they still wanted to do something related to football. And the passion, it's true, it's a matter of education, but I would say that firstly, it's a matter of passion. And with this passion, we have a lot of football players, but a lot of people interested in football in the phenomenon and studying the phenomenon. And this has turned into understanding the game better. And in the case of the coaches, more studies, more development to understand the game better eventually sooner than in other countries. And so this understanding of the game is also so important because not only for their own preparation, but what they can give to the players. And I think that in Bifika, this is very clear, but it's something that we also need to think because what we see now is our players are very well-educated. João is a very well-educated player in football terms, well, in his case, not only in football terms, but in most cases of our young football players, very educated in football, but it's something that we really insist that they keep on evolving and really trying to learn better to improve the development of the player. The problem that we feel sometimes is that this is turning the players a little bit similar to one another. But we feel now with the change that we are feeling in football, with the intensity, with the high intensity of matches, with the very physical profile of games. At some point, we need to really maybe shift a little bit what we're doing because we are producing, I think, again, on bias, but very talented players. Players that are very well-educated in tactical terms, but need to also adapt to this new football that we are experiencing now, and so this is also a challenge. I'm sorry if I just a little bit from the question, but it's something that we need to also look for. But I would say that I would say passion that turns into education and that started soon making it a competitive advantage for our coaches. Yeah, man. This is fascinating to me. And I cover Italy, which has a population which is five or six times the size of Portugal. Italy has a real problem producing players, certainly compared with the 1980s and the 1990s. And it was really interesting to hear you just say maybe the players, well, they're very well-educated, particularly when it comes to the tactical side of the game. I think that's true of a lot of young Italian players coming through academy level as well. I think one of the things that you guys get right is you always prioritize, so it seems to me you prioritize skill and technique. Whereas the Italians kind of stop doing that. They think actually to your latter point, the players need more physical, be able to hack it at greater intensity. And so they tend to prioritize that instead of technique. Whereas you have this very steady flow of highly talented technical players that keep coming through. I think if you were to look at Giaoneves and Vettinia in terms of their size, you might not think they would be able to compete in the Premier League or in the Champions League. And instead, they've shown that they can with their size because they're so good technically. Can you speak to that? I mean, I would be a little bit worried if you were to go over to the other side and basically think about we need to make these players more physical, more intense because even when top clubs sign your plays straight out of your Benfica Academy, they seem to be able to compete whether they go and play in France, Spain, and England almost immediately. It's an excellent question and it's my fault. I assume the technical side as basis and I should have mentioned it. When we start to look at young kids and we're starting to look at the kids younger than ever, just out of curiosity, 75% of our recruitment happens between 6 and 12. So we're starting to look always to younger kids. And there's basically three things that we look at. And these three things we've been looking at them for a long period of time and it's technical ability. It's decision-making and it's the quickness that the good decisions are made. These are basically the three things to look for in the kid from Miffica's perspective. It's basically the three things to look at and I may have jumped a little bit to the conclusion saying that this is something that we are not allowed to not look at. However, the problem is for a long period of time, we have looked at almost only this because the players that we've been identifying have been so good in these three things that they've always been, especially in the internal competition, able to surpass the kids that are bigger and higher than them with these three abilities. So yeah, this of course is their basis and that will not change. The problem is that for this modern football, we've been feeling that it may fall short in some cases, especially depending on the way that these kids, because we're looking at them really early, the way that they mature and even with these new players that have been chosen to be promoted to the first team in recent times, we've been feeling that the coach's decision takes, there's a lot of influence in that decision with the physical side of the players and not only the technical, but it may be, sorry, my fault because I'm assuming that there's a condition for a kid that wants to move to the first team. So you're right. You're absolutely right. Giemi, it's been absolutely fascinating having you on. Thank you very much indeed and congratulations on doing such a great job. Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. Giemi Mullyd with us there, the Benfica Academy director. We're going to finish on for your antenna before we do. Can you tell us a bit more about Leonard Karl at Bayern, because he's just got his sixth goal of the season, didn't he? We'll ignore the fact that it was a two-wheel draw with Mike, who are bottom of the table. But I just think another exciting young, number 10 forward, what would you call him that they've suddenly got? He's the new Messi. He was asked about him. He's Messi is his idol and there are some moves that are obviously, it's very early days, but there are some similarities in the way he plays, he's left footed, he likes to really dribble past players. He's got a wonderful finish, which often is very placed, very deliberate rather than struck with real force. Again, not unlike a certain Argentinian player who's won the odd thing or two in his career. But the fact that this guy has become an automatic starter at this age in a team as stacked as Bayern, I think his testament just how exciting and consistent he's already been. His technical understanding is wonderful. He comes up with these really creative moments. He's done so not by going the regular route, which is, you know, you play as an under 17, play in the maybe in the under 19s or the under 23s and then eventually you get the odd game, but he basically went straight from the under 17s, jumped to age groups and would have had his debut already in April. If it hadn't been for an injury, I think Rafael Guerrero was supposed to come off for him, but then there was an injury. So at the time, Palinia came on for the last few minutes in a game against Heidenheim. I've always already had his debut then, but he was brought in. And he's one of the players that, I know James was a little bit dismissive of the club word cup early on, but he's one of the players who's really benefited from this competition because, A, by the team being together for a prolonged period of time, the coaches had the sort of time to work with him that they wouldn't have had if he'd been just coming straight from, you know, the under 17s into the first team, let's say in July or August. But also, of course, the opportunity to play once Jamal Mziella got injured in that competition. So these things had to happen kind of simultaneously. Müller moved away, Mziella got injured, Komann was sold, Sonny was sold, and suddenly there was a space opening up behind Harry Kane for Leonard Carl, but I don't think even his biggest sort of fans or people who rated him highly as possible within the club would have dreamt of this career going astratospheric as it has gone and lost, what, four, five, six weeks or so. And now there's big talk, yes, sorry, I was just going to say, I've slightly disappointed in you to be honest there, because you and James had a really, really polite argument earlier, which I enjoyed, but what you've just done felt a little bit over the line. And as a result, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to withdraw, I'm going to have to withdraw your nomination for next year's FIFA Peace Prize. So that's it. Damn. You were a shoe in as well. I think there is still hope for me, judging by the previous recipient. I don't know. Maybe. Probably no comment. I think. Maybe. So listen guys, it's Christmas. All right. It's Christmas and it's our last year of leagues of the year. So let's just end with something really, really negative. Fiorentina, along with wolves are the only teams in Europe's top five leagues without a league win. Obviously, we're not going to talk about wolves, it's the year of leagues, we're going to talk about Fiorentina, James, what's going on. Massive name of club. Great, great history, iconic shirt. We cannot lose Fiorentina from Serie A. No, obviously very successful in the kind of 50s and 60s, which is a European cup final. I think a lot of people in the UK, of a certain age, will associate them with Batistuta. Manuel, we cost her that incredible feeling, Nintendo shirt that they used to wear. You shouldn't go and notice that they actually got relegated with Batistuta. I did not know that. And just to show how the times were very different in those days, Batistuta stayed and got them up. How many goals did he score in Serie A B? He did decent, although Serie A B then was kind of as good as the Premier League is in the league now. Very competitive. But so it's not unprecedented for a team that is more talented than it suggests to go down in Fiorentina's case. What's going wrong? Last time last year, Prosi, they were top of the table. They were joint top. And now they're bottom with six points after 15 games. As you mentioned, still winless. They spent 90 million in the summer. And there was no indication that this was going to happen. There has been sort of rumblings of discontent, however. I mean, the coach last year, I could Raphaela Paladino, he led them to their best league finish in a decade, got them to a conferencing semi-final. The club sort of said, here's your new contract. He then walked at the end of the season. He didn't share the vision that Daniela Paladino, the sporting director, had for the club. Both the coach and sporting director were kind of unpopular with the fans. Florence is a very, very demanding city. I remember Florence leading place for the Renaissance as a very high opinion of itself. Its football fans are like art critics. And so even last year they were like, this is not good enough. So the coach walks, the sporting director then quits in the autumn. The coach's replacement, Steffan Opioli. He won the league. Remember what they see me land not so long ago. But it's spent the last year kind of coaching Cristiano Ronaldo al Nasa. Some of his coaching staff left. One went to coach Sunderland, or as an assistant to Libri at Sunderland, who's doing a really good job there. Feeling that that coach, Steffan Opioli, misses him. And they've just spiraled and it's one of those things where one bad mistake, it needs a correction and they'd go and make another mistake and then another mistake. And so the new coach, Paladino who replaced Steffan Opioli, he basically called out one of his players for refusing to take a penalty. And then that player went on social media and said, no, I didn't, I never did that. And it's times like these where you need a dressing room that's really unified, understands the position it's in. And as I said, this was a team that was, has been used to getting to European finals in the conference league over the last few years. It's not used to being in a relegation battle and you really see that at the moment. I think it's one of the most iconic shirts in World Football. I agree. And you would know, Jules, because you own almost every year. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. Would that been the 7-up season when they got relegated? Oh, that's a good question. Is it before then? I think it was the 7-up season. The iconic one is Nintendo, right? The iconic one is Nintendo. They also had one that was sponsored by a famous kind of Italian ice cream brand as well, which is just very 90s. Yes, Samontana. I don't know if anyone's on this panel knows had Samontana. No. Store-bought ice cream, which, yeah, I can see Honeykstein sort of turning his nose up on that saying that. Not from up to the rear. It's from a refrigerator. I'm surprised for your antenna didn't turn there, no, it in Tuscany, store-bought ice cream. It's the sponsor. It's not bad. It's not bad, Samontana. If you want to send me some tubs, buy all needs. Guys, lovely stuff. Thank you all very much indeed, Julie Alleron, Raphael Honeykstein and James Hongcastle who've been with us on the Euroleagues. The next episode of the football daily will be the commentator's view, Christmas special. That should be great. As always, thank you so much for listening. On the football daily podcast, the Euroleagues with Steve Crossman. This winter, cricket's oldest rivalry is re-ignited. England and Australia do battle to compete for the ashes. Here live, ball by ball commentary on Five Sports Extra and get analysis and reaction of every day's play with the Test Smash special podcast.