Conor O'Neill
speaker
78 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 6 Jun
Conor O'Neill’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I think the outer fringes of the squad, which kind of generate the controversy, is a bit overrated.
I did a piece before that looked at this, and since 2010, 96% of the minutes are played by the same core 16 players.
So...
All the debates about, you know, Adam Warden, these players that are like number 22, 23, they're not really important in terms of getting on the pitch.
So if you need to bring a guy who's good for cohesion, good around the camp, you actually do have room to do that.
Maybe a bit less in this World Cup.
with the extra game, the extremely warm conditions.
I think we do kind of focus a bit, drill down a bit too much on those fringe selections.
But I think in terms of what Michael said about like having your best team versus like the squad, I think that like also applies to club levels to a degree.
It's about like the players that complement each other.
Even look at Liverpool, like Liverpool,
Is Roberto Firmino the best striker Liverpool could have got?
No, but he compliments Salah and Mane.
And I think like for 2018, Giroud for France was pretty much there to be a focal point that Mbappe could kind of flit around, you know, for knockdowns rather than being, you know, he does have the actual French goal scoring record, but he's not the best out and out striker possibly that they had on their books.
So I think it is about managing all those elements.
Well, the most headline-grabbing stat that has been... Sadly, other people are able to count as well, is that Crystal Palace have more players at the World Cup than Real Madrid.
A crazy statement on how strong the Premier League is all over it.
Like, there's 154 players from Premier League, which is...
Far ahead of everyone else.
I think Germany's next on 93.
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