Mark Critchley

speaker

1,840 appearances 10 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 8 Jul

Mark Critchley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 7.

Appearances

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The Athletic FC Podcast · Germany hit new low + Ornstein transfer latest · 30 Jun 2026 podcast

It's not happening.

Okay.

I'm all for it, to be honest.

No, honestly, I'm all for it because I get it.

It is soft.

There's a little bit of contact there.

But I think after the season we've just had where we've seen so much grappling at set pieces and we've seen...

These become contested pitch battles and it feels like the football is actually focused on those more than in open play and actually creating chances properly.

I think a little bit of, yeah, strictness from the officials on that sort of thing is welcomed because we don't want football to become the sort of set piece, slugfest, meatball, wrestling, Royal Rumble that we've seen over the last 12 months.

That's not Royal Rumble, I'm not saying...

I'm not saying this was raw rumble whatsoever, but I think that by stamping it out and taking a hard line on stuff like that, it's the direction that I think a lot of us want the game to go in or at least move back towards compared to what it's been over the last year.

So, yeah, look, it wasn't the most egregious example of that sort of thing, but I'm all for it, to be honest.

I thought Sané had a few decent little moments last night, a lot of whip crosses that were causing some trouble in the second half.

But broadly across the whole of the tournament, we saw them in that first game against Curacao and I thought it was really difficult to make any sort of judgment on them on that basis just because they could blow Curacao away.

And then in the Ivory Coast game, Ivory Coast were on top of them for about an hour, I think.

And yeah, they go and win it late and you would hope that would spark something and there would be some momentum behind them.

But speaking to colleagues who've been over there and have been covering a couple of Germany games,

it's the lack of confidence or assurance that you so associate with the Mannschaft that hasn't been there.

And look, I think even going into this game, they get past Paraguay, they walk into France on Saturday and nobody was really expecting to get a result there.

And that's the biggest difference from the Germany team that I think we all know.

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