Gab Marcotti

Because you could look at Arsenal and you could say, hey, maybe this shouldn't be the trend right now.

All right, Jules, I want to stick with this theme of the Linder's effect.

And look, Pep Guardiola's won everything.

He's changed guys around.

He's the guy in charge.

I'm not suggesting that Pep Linder, despite the wonderful job he did at Salzburg last year, is the issue here.

But when you look at how the top teams play and look at the footballing landscape, does this greater verticality, greater press, is this the direction of travel?

Because I can make a counter argument.

You tell me.

Yeah.

Because my counter argument would be, as I mentioned, Arsenal don't really do that.

I mean, they can, but Arsenal are much more multifaceted.

It's not at the heart of the game, right?

Barcelona, in theory, they press, but they also play a very high line because of it.

They take a lot of chances.

They also...

Barcelona have, certainly La Liga, they have such a talent advantage against anybody else that you can generally get away with it and you can outscore people.

And we have been saying, obviously, you can see tons at the back.

Real Madrid don't really do anything, but...

Based on how Bayer Leverkusen played last year, they don't do this obsessively in the same way Reinders teams do.