Could Bayern tempt Alonso this summer?

Okay, with me on this one, we've got the Athletics German football writer, Raphael Honigstein, and also England and Tottenham reporter, Jack Pitbrook. Raph, look at this, 3-0 defeat to Leverkusen, Bayern. You called them an embarrassment in that defeat. I saw that tweet and I was like, we're definitely talking about that on the pod. But realistically, we'll talk about Bayern in a second. Can we just talk about the work that Xabi Alonso is doing at Leverkusen this season? Absolutely outstanding. Yeah, hard to struggle to put it into words because it has been so superb. 31 games unbeaten, no competitions, five points clear in the Bundesliga, huge favourites to win the German Cup, among the favourites to win the Europa League, and all this from 17th place in the league when he took over last season. Now, granted, Leverkusen were in a bit of a forced position, and I think that was part of the attraction. He realised that they were going to go up the table almost by default. But the way he's been able to build on the work of last year, when he made them a counter-attacking team, very defensively solid, into the best team in the Bundesliga, a team that can mix it up, a team that can dominate possession, but also can play really well and effectively on the break, as they did against Bayern, that shows you just how much of an impact he's had. And Leverkusen has this reputation for being a bit of a soft spot, for being a place where players come to be quite comfortable, knowing that's either a stepping stone or a kind of very unpressurised environment where you can have an easy life. But he also has changed the mentality completely, and his winning mentality, having done it all as a player. And I presume being on the verge of doing it all again as a coach, has rubbed off on them, and I can't speak highly enough of him. Yeah, Jack, you look at this Leverkusen team, young and a bit sprinkled with a bit of experience with the likes of Geraint Schacker as well. It's quite remarkable how quickly he's been able to get these lads on side and play also a beautiful version of football. What I love about this so much is it's the kind of thing that doesn't seem to happen in football anymore. You know, we're so used to, I think what, Bayern have won the last 11 Bundesliga titles consecutively. We're so used now to most of the big European leagues being locked down by the team who has the most money. And it feels very rare that a team, through basically having a great manager and then making a few clever signings and everybody buys into it and you generate a bit of momentum, maybe it's slightly nostalgic of me, but it feels to me like this is how football used to be, or rather this happened more often in football in the 90s and 2000s. Nowadays, it doesn't seem to happen this way anymore. So I think everyone, even people with no real knowledge or interest of Bundesliga whatsoever, are kind of all cheering on Bayer Leverkusen as they try to win the title. Yeah, one thing you've written about, Raf, is the fact that, you know, if you look at Stuttgart, if you look at Wolfsburg, you look at Dortmund, that game in the seasons against Bayern, in the seasons in which they won it, they had to beat Bayern to go ahead and win the title. And there's a sense here that this Leverkusen side, after beating Bayern so convincingly, have sort of lost that fear factor for Bayern. Did you agree with that in terms of how Xabi Alonso set up his team in comparison to Tuchel? Well, absolutely. I think Jonathan Ta after the game said we were so pleased when we saw the Bayern lineup because it showed how much respect they paid us rather than the other way around. That might not have been the decisive factor in the win. And I think it does take away that bit of mythology that Bayern have around them. A lot of people, I think, in Germany still think, OK, that's Bayern, they're going to come good. And maybe as the leading team, you get a little bit unsettled by that. But having beaten them so convincingly, I think Leverkusen have made it easier for themselves not to get distracted by all the noise about Bayern inevitably coming back and the red wave crashing over them eventually. I don't think they see that anymore. I think they concentrate on themselves and the kind of confidence that that spread in their game, combined with all the ramifications in Munich, which are just beginning to unfold, have put Leverkusen in a really strong position. What did you make of Thomas Muller's comments at the end talking about, you know, we don't have to go at the manager. It's not about tactics. We had enough players of international quality, really annoyed that, you know, the Bayern boys didn't step up for a game of such huge magnitude. I think Muller put into words what many people would have thought. How come a Bayern team just doesn't show up in a game of this importance? What is it about these players that they just go missing? But of course, it doesn't stop there, because ultimately, even though Muller was at pains to point out that this is not about Tuchel's selection, Tuchel's tactics, ultimately, it's the manager's responsibility to get the players to turn up and perform. And they didn't. And I think so Muller was sort of saying one thing, but there was a heavy subtext as well. And perhaps it's no coincidence again that some of the big leaders that you'd expect to show up didn't do so in a season where Tuchel has sort of undermined them a little bit. There's been a constant debate about what Kimmich and Goretzka can't do as a duo. Tuchel wanted a more holding defensive specialist. He doesn't even play Kimmich in the most important game of the domestic fixture list. He plays them a little bit later, saying he's not fully fit. Kimmich says he is fully fit. Goretzka in Kimmich's absence was a complete no-show. It fell to a 19-year-old kid, Pavlovich, to do something in midfield, and he was overruled by the occasion. So it's very hard to divide cause and effect here. Is Tuchel right to put these big names into question because their performances are below par or have their performances become below par because Tuchel has questioned their position and their sacrosanct status in the dressing room? You can extend that to De Ligt, who was supposed to be the leader at the back. He changes to a three-at-the-back system. The one centre-back who's been a constant in this calendar year doesn't make it onto the pitch. Diop and Mikanov, fresh from injury, is back instead. Eric Dier, fresh from the Tottenham bench, is starting instead. And Kim Min-jae, fresh from the Asian Cup, is starting instead. So Tuchel has shaken up, if you will, the existing order in the dressing room, and you can do that as long as you win. If you're not winning, then you're building up a disgruntled opposition of big names who have the ear of the board, and it's a very dangerous game to play. Jack, were you surprised to see, with your Tottenham hat on, were you surprised to see Eric Dier playing at centre-back in a game of such magnitude in the Bundesliga? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, obviously it is a different league and a different style of play and so forth, but as Raf says, he's not played really at all for Tottenham this season. You know, he couldn't have been, he almost literally couldn't have been further down the pecking order for Posse Coglou. And to be frank, he hasn't played well since the first six months of Antonio Conte. So we're going back to the 21-22 season now, so two years ago. I'm actually quite a big fan of Dier because I think he brings quite a lot to a football club. You know, he's a great guy. He's very thoughtful. He's multilingual. He's a leader in the dressing room. He can play in different positions, but he hasn't played to a consistently high level for quite a while now. And to see him thrown into a different environment with such high expectations, it did, I mean, I can see why Bayern would want him as a squad player, but to have him thrown into that game ahead of someone like Dillic does seem slightly surprising, yes. Rafa is, I'm just going to be blunt, it's too cool in trouble. Like, you know, realistically, I mean, Leverkusen carry on the way they're going. I mean, the Bundesliga is theirs out of the domestic cups. It's really just the Champions League left. And let's face it, we know how hard that is. There's a certain Real Madrid in there who look unbelievable at this moment. So I have a few other teams in there that look very, very good. I mean, he's kind of penned to the back here. Absolutely. He's under huge pressure. Bayern need to, first of all, eliminate Lazio. I think that's a non-negotiable. If they fail to do that, then I think his position will probably become untenable. Even then, they need to A, keep going in the Bundesliga, at least get their house in order, play some decent football, get the wins. If Leverkusen ultimately play the perfect season and perhaps go for the whole season unbeaten, something that no one's ever done in the Bundesliga, then maybe, maybe Bayern will just be gracious enough to say, OK, Leverkusen are better. We don't have to tear up the whole thing and start again. But if Tuchel doesn't suggest, through performances in the Champions League especially, that his team is improving, that his ideas are bearing fruit, then the Bayern board will do what they always have done, which is to be very ruthless and look for somebody else. Jack, I was just, you know, listening to this and especially from an outsider's perspective, do we get a feeling that it's going to be same old Bayern, they'll find a way? Or do we generally think that, you know, Xabi Alonso, what he's doing here is just absolutely outstanding? I mean, for the dream of football alone, I want Leverkusen to take this Bundesliga. But do we see chinks in the armour of Bayern Munich here? And we're thinking, actually, Leverkusen have just got too much to see it all the way to the end. Well, I mean, five points isn't that much when you've still got, what, 14 league games remaining? 13 league games, sorry, remaining. And of course, last season, they, what, Musiala won them the league in the last minute of the whole season. So look, there is a lot of football left to be played, although I get the impression from what Raf says, that, I mean, Leverkusen are just playing significantly better than Bayern at the moment, in such a way that you wouldn't, it feels just as plausible that that gap might get bigger rather than smaller, which I guess would be their problem. If that job does become available in the summer, Raf, is Xabi Alonso one of those names that you definitely know the hierarchy of Bayern will be looking at? I mean, it's fundamentally what they, it's their job to look at, you know, next big prospect. And Bayern, we know, like to pinch some of the best talent from the league to make their team, you know, invincible, to say the least. I mean, Alonso has been somebody on Bayern's radar for a long time. Since he retired, there was a feeling that eventually he'll come back and be a Bayern coach. Up until this moment, the timing wasn't quite right. He hadn't had the experience at top level either, but he's done enough in those two years to put himself at the very top of the wishlist. If Bayern would have their pick, he'd probably be number one at the moment. But will they have their pick? It's still not given that he will leave Leverkusen. Leverkusen seem to be, at least outwardly, more optimistic now than ever have been that he will stick around for at least one more season, guide them into the Champions League and prove himself at that level as well. And of course, there is the big spectre of Liverpool in the background as well, which I think at this moment in time, Bayern would find hard to compete with in terms of where the respective teams are. I think Liverpool have built a team that is going to be competitive for years to come. Bayern are probably in a bit of a transition. The amount of support, I think, that you get as a coach at Liverpool under FSG is a lot more sustained and built for the long term than it is at Bayern, where everything is very short term. You don't win your first season, you're gone. You don't win your second season, so I think Bayern will find it hard to compete if Liverpool come in for him. But they would love to have him and maybe one day the stars will align and he'll come back. Yeah, I just also think though, I mean, if he does go to Bayern Munich, there's still nothing stopping him from yet again pinching some of the stars from his team at Leverkusen. Frimpong, I'm sure, would be a very welcome addition to that Bayern team. Yeah, well, absolutely. There's a lot of players who've done incredibly well. The question is, are they actually as good or have they been made into top performers because of the great coaching of Alonso and because they're playing in a team that functions so well as a team? Individually, you'd probably be hard-pressed to put any of them into Bayern starting 11, still at this point. Maybe the fullbacks, but otherwise, maybe Wirtz and Curran form ahead of Musiala just. But otherwise, in terms of potential and ceiling in stature, Bayern still have a much better side, which again points to the great work of Alonso and explains why he's in such demand because he's taken everyone to a completely different level and he hasn't done it by spending. I mean, coaches, I think people outside Germany, sometimes don't appreciate that coaches don't buy and sell players in Germany. It's a much more club-driven transfer policy system. Coaches will have their views. They will have their recommendations. They will have their preferences when it comes to a certain style. But there is a big degree of independence and a lot of people, I think, making the point that Xabi hasn't done this in isolation. He has taken over a team that already had huge talent and that made really fantastic signings in the summer to make them even better. And you wouldn't necessarily expect him to go into a new job and then suddenly identify players like Jeremy Frimpong or Nathan Teller or Borja Iglesias or, you know, I could go on and on. So there's a lot of good work being done at Leverkusen independent of him. But he has taken all these great ingredients and making them into irresistible and perhaps invincible. Can I just ask Rafa a question, which is that obviously in Alonso's playing career, he played for Rafa at Liverpool, he played for Mourinho around Madrid, he played for Guardiola at Bayern, played for Ancelotti as well. To what extent does his own style of play reflect the managers he's played for? Is he a kind of big possession guy like Pep? And how flexible would his own style of football be when it comes to moving into a different job beyond Bayer Leverkusen? You know, it's hard to say because I think we still haven't got a lot of, we don't have a big sample size yet. In his first season, he stabilised the team by playing quite defensive counter-attacking football. He played five at the back they were absorbing pressure and then they played a lot of long balls towards the like of Moussa Diaby and I mean Adli and so on and it was very effective. This year they've gone to a completely different level by being a lot more happy possession, lots of short passes, lots of combinations, the whole team being very compact. But I don't know if that is the finished version of Alonso ball, if this is just yet another stepping stone towards something else. It could just be that what he learned from Ancelotti above all is to make the best out of the players he has and find a system and a style that suits the players rather than be an ideologue like Mourinho, like Guardiola who comes with a certain view and then everyone has to fit into that system. I think he seems to me a more adaptable coach in that way. But as I said, it's not even his first full season, sorry, it's only his first full season at senior level. It's hard I think to understand what the fully fledged version of his football looks like. But I have to, I guess what you're asking me in a way is also can he fit in at Liverpool? I have no doubt that his tactical intelligence, his man management and his ability again to get the best out of the players would get him to find a way to get the most out of this Liverpool team as well. I don't have any, I don't get the sense that they suddenly need to change everything because he wants a completely different style of smaller possession, slower possession. I think that he will blend in wherever he pitches up next really well. Yeah, super quick, Jack, if you were Xabi Alonso, Bayern come calling, Liverpool come calling, which is the most ideal situation to move to? And then I'm putting you in great shoes here, mate. I'm calling you a master tactician here, Jack. Well, it's a great question. I would guess probably Liverpool. I think because of the lure of the Premier League is so big for managers, the idea of competing against so many of the best managers in the world working in the Premier League. So you're going head to head with a great manager almost every week. I think that counts an awful lot. That informs a lot of decisions that managers make in terms of picking their next job. I think that, I mean, because on other aspects, the jobs, the attraction would be fairly equally matched. I think, you know, he played for Liverpool and for Bayern. Liverpool and Bayern are both huge clubs who will almost certainly both be in the Champions League next season. So I think maybe it's just, it's the attraction of the Premier League that would count. I think there's another factor here. It's the patience and the time afforded to managers in the Premier League. We'd like to think of it as the most pressurised environment. But if you think about the fact that Guardiola was given time to succeed, Klopp was given time to succeed, Ateta was given time to succeed. There is actually, because the manager is quite more powerful than in other footballing leagues, I think there is actually a sense of give him a bit of time to get this right. And for Alonso, I think that might be the key factor. He's gone to Leverkusen knowing that it is a perfect environment for him to make his first steps in coaching. Why? Because it's a great team, but not a very pressurised environment. You don't have a lot of media in Leverkusen. You don't have a lot of pressure. You don't have a massive fan base. There's no titles. So putting all that into context and understanding how he picks his next clubs, I think it's yet another reason why Liverpool are more attractive in my mind. Well, let's move on to Harry Kane, who has had an incredible season so far. 24 goals and five assists in 21 games. I mean, I almost just turn on the Bundesliga every week and Harry Kane has scored either a hat-trick or just another blinding goal. Jack, obviously we know what he did at Tottenham. Were we expecting him to be this successful so quickly in a new league? I think so, yeah. I think I was expecting him to be this good. You know, he's been... I mean, just from watching him play for Tottenham in England over the course of the last 10 years, I think now, he looks after himself very well. He's in good shape. He's technically brilliant. He's very clever. He's been able to play up front in a variety of different ways over the years. He used to be a kind of rampaging, lead the line, batter centre-backs physically, kind of more Alan Shearer type player. Over time, he's kind of dropped a bit deeper. He's sort of what us and Wenger would call a nine and a half. So he's clearly a hugely intelligent player who's able to play in different situations. So I don't think I ever had much of a... And also he was going into a team that was better than the team that he left. And to be honest, playing against opposition, which were weaker than the teams that he would play more often than not in the Premier League. So I didn't have any doubts that he would hit the ground running and score as many goals as he has done. And Rafa, just a thought in terms of how he settled in at Bayern. Look, they paid a lot of money, what 86.4 million pounds for Harry Kane. I mean, he's definitely worth the money. How are the Bavarians taken to Harry Kane? Oh, they love him. They love his goals. They love his professionalism. He is, for a superstar, remarkably humble and uncomplicated. Does every press interview that's being asked of him. Always happy to play for the team. Again, I think that's quite unique. Centre forwards, big strikers. You sometimes get the sense they play their own game. They want to score. It doesn't even matter so much to them whether the team draws or loses. He is the opposite. He plays for the team. And as Thomas Topol says, he plays for the process and the goals almost kind of a byproduct. So yeah, hugely, hugely successful time. The caveat is coming now. He didn't show up along with everyone else in the big game against Leverkusen. He needs to now show up in the knockouts because he hasn't been bought to break goal-scoring records. He hasn't been brought to score hat-tricks against Heidenheim and Hoffenheim. He's been bought to be the missing piece, rightly or wrongly, whether that's a justified expectation is another matter. But he's been bought to be the missing piece for a Champions League winning team. And the pressure on him is also now a little bit bigger after this no-show against Leverkusen. 18 touches he had. I don't think necessarily through his own fault because Bayern were so poor in the opposition half. But the few touches he did have, he was quite wasteful with. So I think now is the crunch time for him as well. He's been superb the first half of the season, but it's the second half of the season that always defines how players and the team are being judged and the manager in Munich. But in respect to that, Rafa, I mean, Bayern aren't struggling for attacking options either. Leroy Zane's been incredibly wasteful sometimes this season. I've seen, you know, are they over-reliant on Harry Kane to get them out of trouble? I'm not sure they're over-reliant on him, but at the moment, there's few injuries, so they don't have the ability to rotate on the flanks. Serge Gnabry's still injured. Kingsley Coman picked up the injury. That leaves Leroy Zane as the one senior winger, if you will. Brian Saragossa has come in, but is yet to play for Bayern. He's still quite young. And Jomar Musiala can play wide, but it's not his preferred position. What he does, and he was bought for that reason, is to paper over a lot of cracks. If you have Harry Kane or a player of his quality in your team, it almost doesn't matter at times whether you play good football. He will find a way of scoring and then it doesn't matter. You can play pretty poorly, but have Harry Kane up there with a couple of goals and it's another three points in the bag and you move on. And that's not negative. That's actually what he's been bought for. And we saw last year when Bayern didn't have that player, how actually some good football sometimes became ineffective and lacked the end product because they didn't have somebody up front to take all the chances. They created a lot of chances last year under Nagelsmann, but didn't finish. Now they're creating fewer chances. Tuchel's system is a lot more pragmatic, a lot more concerned with avoiding counterattacks. And Kane is very efficient and helps Bayern get results. And that's why results by and large have been actually pretty good. They're much better in points than they were last season. They're much better in terms of the consistency we've seen in the Champions League than the crisis talk might have you think. But again, it's what happens next. What happens in the last third of the season that really is going to define Harry Kane's first season in Munich. My worry hearing Raf say that is that it reminds me a little bit of in 2018 when Juventus bought Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid and they thought that Ronaldo would be the man to take the final step to win the Champions League. And individually, Ronaldo was great. Ronaldo scored tons of goals. He, as Raf said, he papered over the cracks. He made them probably a more pragmatic team and kind of limited the football that they were playing. But overall, we can see with hindsight now, Ronaldo, despite all the goals that he scored, made the events a lot worse. And they were delighted to send him to Manchester United three years later. Raf, do you worry that the same dynamic might be at play with Kane at Bayern? No, not at all. I think it'd be very unfair to compare Kane's impact at Bayern to that of Cristiano Ronaldo at Juventus. Remember, Buffon came out with that great line saying, what made us special at Juventus was that great togetherness. It all changed when Ronaldo came. Kane isn't nearly as egotistical and problematic a character as late-stage Ronaldo was at Juve. And he has made people better around him. I think Sané has had his best season at Bayern because his combination with Harry Kane has been so devastating. I think Müller has had a new lease of life because having Kane in front of him helps him to find more spaces. Jamal Musiala, even though he hasn't been that consistent, looked really good before the winter break and started quite well. So no, I don't think we see the same dynamic. If anything doesn't go right for Bayern, I think bigger problems are at play. But of course, Kane needs to do his part to help Bayern progress. But no, I wouldn't say that there is any danger of him taking the team down a notch or upsetting the cohesion because we saw all these problems last year. And I think Kane is much more part of the solution than adding to those issues. Yeah, I guess one of the stark differences that Harry Kane doesn't mind sacrificing himself for the team, bringing players into the game, if you think of the work he was doing at Tottenham, you know, pinging those balls over to Sonny to score. You know, he's got that difference to his game in comparison to, I guess, as Rafa said, a latter runner. Although just a quick one on Kane, Jack, a different kind of pressure, I guess, for him compared to Tottenham, especially now that, you know, the Champions League seems feasible for Munich. How do you think he's going to wear that kind of pressure as their talisman for the Champions League? Yeah, it's a huge amount of pressure. I remember when he was on international duty with England in September, so quite early on in his time at Bayern, he's enjoying the fact there was a lot more pressure at Bayern than there was at Tottenham. He said at Tottenham, you know, if you went a couple of games without winning, it wasn't a disaster, whereas the feeling at Bayern is that you have to win every game. And when he was saying that, it felt as if there was this expectation that they would have a great season to win the Bundesliga as normal. But I think this will only add to the pressure that he feels in the Champions League over the rest of the season. I actually, I think Kane probably needs, Kane probably needs to win stuff this season even more than Bayern do, in the sense that when he went there, the expectation, certainly from outside and maybe even from within, was that this was finally his chance to go and win trophies. And he didn't have the, not so much the excuse, but he couldn't fall back on the fact anymore that he wasn't at a team, that he wasn't at a dominant team. Now he was at a dominant team, he would have to go and win. And I think maybe he does need to win this season or at least soon to validate the move, because otherwise people, otherwise people say, well, why didn't you, what was even the point of moving in the first place? There's a lot of pressure on him over the final stages of the season. Yeah, I think we've just dug this stats out, that his record in finals isn't that great, both for Spurs and England. What, Kane has lost all four finals for club and country, not great. Failing to score in each of those games, bar a penalty in Euro 2020. The shootout that was versus Italy. I mean, he wasn't fit for, he wasn't fit for, he wasn't fit for the 2019 Champions League final when he was rushed back. He wasn't fit for the 2021 League Cup final where he again, he was rushed back from an ankle injury. I think he didn't look that fit during Euro 2020. Having, you know, having suffered injuries the previous season, I think he looked exhausted by the end of it. So I think he's never, this is a strange paradox of Kane's career, is that for someone who has scored almost 400 goals for club and country, he doesn't actually have a, it's not only that he hasn't won a trophy, it's that he doesn't really have a standout moment. If you ask the average football fan, what's your favourite Harry Kane goal or Harry Kane's greatest goal? I think people would, a lot of people would struggle to come up with anything. You know, if you look at his score, 280 goals for Tottenham and his most memorable Tottenham goal, I think, was the goal to put them 2-1 up against Arsenal in a game they eventually drew 2-2 on their way to failing to win the title in 2015-16. Even for England, his most famous moment, his most famous moment for England is missing the penalty against France in Qatar in 2022. So I think he's still, even if you look at, say, Tottenham's run to the 2019 Champions League final, he missed the second leg of the quarterfinals with injury. He missed both legs of the semifinals with injury. By the time he came back for the final in Madrid, he wasn't 100% fit. So even now, having been a great player for the last 10 years, I still think we're waiting for this kind of signature moment to come, and maybe that will come when he does win a trophy. But for now, I think it's, yeah, he does need a huge moment in a semifinal or a final for his legacy. Yeah, and Rafa, I know you're heading to Rome shortly. That's why you're dressed very nicely in the smartest gear. Nice polo neck, nice turtleneck, obviously buying a Tecno Lazio, a game which you feel they should win. Harry Kane, this is his moment, really, as the striker buying boards to bring them the major trophies, to bring them back into the reckoning in the Champions League. How do you think he will deliver in this tournament? Well, he needs to deliver in the knockout stages. He's done really well in the group stages. He made Bayern negotiate a tricky group that Man United got eliminated from with minimal fuss. You'd expect them to get past Lazio without that much of a problem either, partially thanks to him. And then it really starts. Then the quarterfinals come around, and that's been the limit of Bayern's ambitions in the last three years since winning it. They've been knocked out of the quarterfinals stage every single time. And for Tuchel's sake, and I think less so for Kane, but of course, partly for him as well, they need to go further and make a real impact on the Champions League. There's another factor for Kane which shouldn't be underestimated, I think. Yes, of course, trophies is important to him. But I think he also moved to Bayern realizing that playing in a team of Bayern's quality will help him become a better player and will keep him improving. And I think that's something very much at the forefront of his mind. He's not one of those players who thinks I'm the best player in the world. Everyone has to help me. I think he still is working on his game. He's still trying to get better in all aspects. And I think the idea was to be surrounded by elite players will take him to the next level. And I think we shouldn't just judge him at what happens with Bayern, even though it is very important. But this season could be one big prelude to what happens in the Euros in the summer. And if Harry Kane then goes on to help England over the line, then I think that decision will be seen in a different light and will be vindicated, obviously. But yes, if you go to Bayern, the one place where a trophy is all but guaranteed and failed to win one, people who are happy to roll out the stereotypes will have a field day. But I think by the time he leaves Munich, there won't be any shortage of silverware. Yeah, for sure. I was thinking as well, we've got the Euros this summer as well, Jack. If we talk about Harry Kane in finals, this is the one really as well. Champions League and Euro Cup in one year. Can it be for Mr. Harry Kane? Yeah. I mean, look, the fact is it's still only February. There's plenty of time left for Kane. I mean, it's totally plausible they could win the Bundesliga. I think they'd probably make them third favourites for the Champions League at this point. I think I'd make City significant favourites. And then I think Bayern could probably beat Real Madrid. So I think that they're in the mix for that. And then you would probably make England favourites for the Euros, I think. I don't think anyone, I think England, I think the only team really better, arguably better than England and France. I thought England could easily have won that World Cup quarterfinal in 2022. I thought it was a 50-50 game, really. And, you know, I don't want to keep going on about it, but if Kane had scored that penalty, which he would do 19 times out of 20, then England might as well have won an extra time. So, look, I think England have got a huge chance at the Euros. And I think, as Raf says, if England do, if he lifts the Euros in July, then I think he will instantly cement himself as one of, or cement himself as one of the most significant footballers of his generation, regardless of how Bayern do this season. And I'm sure Raf's also right that, you know, by the time, he's still got a few years, quite a few years left in his Bayern contract. There's plenty of time for him to win all sorts of trophies. Yeah, Raf, before you go, I know you're off to Rome and Mr. James Wan-Castle has definitely been to Italy quite a few times there. Any tips? Any nice tourist attractions he's ushered you to? Well, I don't trust his restaurant recommendations anymore since he led me to a place where I took my wife for a romantic dinner and they put us next to the kitchen in the worst table. And it was so bad that we actually left before ordering. And I've never really forgiven him for that since. So, I don't ask him anymore. Do you know what? Head to TripAdvisor. I'm sure better recommendations there. For sure, gents, honestly, absolute pleasure. Jack, Raf, thank you very much. Have a safe trip to Rome, Raf. And also make sure to rate and review the podcast if you're enjoying it. Thank you so much for listening. We're back tomorrow. Search The Athletic Football Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from.