Tim Vickery

Yeah, I think that your theory is about Ancelotti's reverence for talent is correct.

In fact, he has a story that he has told a couple of times about how he came to this realization, which involves one of the players in that final, which was Roberto Baggio.

And he, Ancelotti was the manager of Parma, I think, in the late 90s at some point.

And they were going to sign Baggio, and Ancelotti said, no, no, no, I don't want him.

He wants to play as a 10, and our system doesn't have a 10.

And so he went off and joined somebody else.

And it was after a little while that Ancelotti realized,

I am stupid.

I should have signed Baggio and just figured out how to use him.

Yeah, it does seem in these conditions that anything that requires you to maybe run a bit less is probably worth thinking about.

But just before we leave Neymar behind here, there's a couple of issues there.

I mean, I wondered if Ancelotti was sort of pandering a little bit, purely because I saw so many videos of Brazilians reacting with joy to the inclusion of Neymar, who they love, even though he's a shadow of the...

player that he was and it's clear that this was obviously a really popular decision people just want Neymar to be there because Neymar you know let's in my opinion is the best Brazilian player of the last 25 years you know since Ronaldinho I think he's the best player that's come out of Brazil he's been so unlucky in the World Cup I remember his goal against Croatia in the last one which was one of the goals of the tournament and then moments later Croatia ended up scoring equalizing with a deflection and winning on penalties and he's out again and

He's had a lot of heartbreak, but when you see the reaction of people to the news that he's in, it underlines his enormous status, which is still far above that of any other player I can see in this squad.

And if you're going to bring him along, obviously he's not going to be playing 90 minutes of every game.

Is he a guy who's, do you think he would be happy to be a 30 minute guy?

You know, I'm looking at my options on the bench.

Nay, you're up.

Like, is he happy to accept that type of a limited role?

Category number one.