ESPN Notes the six-team battle in the National League South with one match remaining:
Even the top team at the moment has to keep their GD advantage.
Boreham Wood and Dorking have the GD advantage but need losses and draws above them.
None of them play each other on the final day.
Messi and Suarez showed up tonight in Vancouver and played the entire game. Inter Miami still lost 2-0 as the Whitecapsâ American players came through. Great night for the 54000 fans who showed up.
WAAAAAHHH!!! Things arenât going our way, so weâre not gonna show up WAAAAAAHHHH!!!
One guess as to which team is boycotting events.
More Trump/MAGA philosophy, âWe can trash you all we want cuz free speech; WHAT? Youâre concerned about your safety because of our free speechifying?? BOYCOTT!â
Anyone rooting for this team is probably a Trump fanatic, too. (poke)
One day, Iâll get ESPN+ and be able to read these and watch matches so important to the world of soccer that only subscribers can watch, but until then, can I borrow a copy of this from someone? Thanks in advance.
Before reading, my theory is that they are not using Mbappe as optimally as they could. What is that optimal way? No idea. Might be a communication issue?
Standard disclaimers applyâŠ
Ryan OâHanlonApr 25, 2025, 06:00 AM ET
Back in a 1999 column, my old boss, Bill Simmons, coined the Ewing Theory. A friend of his âwas convinced that Patrick Ewingâs teams (both at Georgetown and with New York) inexplicably played better when Ewing was either injured or missing extended stretches because of foul trouble,â he later wrote for ESPN.
Ewing was a star center for the New York Knicks, who drafted him No. 1 overall out of Georgetown in 1985. Unfortunately, his career directly coincided with a guy named Michael Jordan, so Ewingâs Knicks won lots and lots of games, but never enough to secure an NBA title.
Ewing had just gone down with an Achilles injury during the 1999 Eastern Conference finals. The eighth-seeded Knicks were tied, 1-1, with the second-seeded Indiana Pacers. Everyone assumed the Packers would walk to the NBA finals, so Simmons wrote his column, debuted the Ewing Theory ⊠and the Knicks immediately won three straight games to clinch the series.
Over the 25-plus years since, the theory has been flattened and mocked. Oh right, so itâs good not to have good players? Havenât the Knicks, uh, not been back to the Eastern Conference finals in the two decades since Ewing left the team? Of all the people you couldâve picked, you had to pick Patrick Ewing?
Simmons only landed on Ewing for the theory because a buddy of his was obsessed with that particular example, but the idea was more important than the individual. As he wrote in a 2013 update:
Thatâs the thing about the Ewing Theory ⊠it takes various shapes and forms. Sometimes, we just overrated a player, or mistakenly believed he was more valuable than he was. Sometimes, an injury or departure can lead to more minutes for players who fit that teamâs style and framework better. And sometimes, it might take a simple injury for everyone to realize, We lost our way. We relied on that guy too much. Iâm not doing enough. Youâre not doing enough. Letâs step it up. You win a game or two, you build a little momentum, and before you know it, everything falls into place and youâre a team.
Sounds familiar, right?
Like, what if the presumed best soccer player in the world, say, changed teams over the summer, but then his new team immediately got worse and his old team immediately got better? Or, you know, exactly whatâs happened with Kylian MbappĂ© after leaving Paris Saint-Germain for Real Madrid?
Letâs dig into why MbappĂ© made Real Madrid worse, how PSG got better after he left, and what it all says about MbappĂ© as a player.
The downside case for MbappĂ©-to-Madrid was a pretty simple one: They brought in another attacker who doesnât defend, so while their attack might be lights out with MbappĂ©, VinĂcius JĂșnior, Rodrygo, and Jude Bellingham, their defense is going to fall apart.
Last season, Madridâs defense was already getting by on individual brilliance â great goalkeeping, the athletic range of their young midfielders and elite center-back play. The arrival of MbappĂ©, who is genuinely one of the worst and least active out-of-possession forwards in the world, was going to put even more stress on a defense that wasnât protected by a sound underlying structure.
Now, the defense has been worse this year, but not by all that much. These are their adjusted goals allowed (a blend of 70% expected goals and 30% goals) over the past two seasons, excluding penalties:
âą 2023-24: 0.84 per 90 minutes
âą 2024-25: 0.94 per 90 minutes
Thatâs a decline, but based on the expectations for the attack with MbappĂ© added in, you wouldâve taken three or four more goals allowed over the course of the season in exchange for the, I donât know, 10 goals youâd expect to add on the other end. And then when you consider that Ăder MilitĂŁo, David Alaba, Dani Carvajal, and Eduardo Camavinga have all missed significant amounts of time due to injury this year, itâs not even clear that MbappĂ©âs arrival has made the defense worse at all. Given all those injuries, weâd expect Madridâs defensive performance to decline a little bit.
That shouldâve been a massive win for Madrid, but instead, the attack got worse. I canât stress this enough: The defending Champions League winners added arguably the best attacker in the world ⊠and then they got worse at attacking. Here are those same adjusted goal numbers for the other end of the field:
âą 2023-24: 1.88 per 90
âą 2024-24: 1.69 per 90
So, why didnât this work?
Truly elite attacks have three players who complement each other in new ways on every possession. Think Liverpoolâs front three of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, and Sadio ManĂ© or Barcelonaâs current group of Robert Lewandowski, Lamine Yamal, and Raphinha.
These players all have multiple elite-level skills so, on one possession, we might see Raphinha drive the ball forward and slip a through ball to Yamal, who plays a cut back for Lewandowski to score the goal. On another, Yamal might draw four defenders, Lewandowski will dart across to the near post to take more defenders with him, and Raphinha will crash the far post to finish off a curled ball in from Yamal.
On the tier below that, you might have attacks where the players have more static skills â each one is really good at one particular thing â but it usually works because each of those skills complement each other.
At Madrid, theyâve got none of this. Their two best attackers pretty much do the exact same thing: peel off to the left wing and try to run into the penalty area. Just take a look at MbappĂ©âs heat map of touches for the season:
And then check out Vinicius Juniorâs:
Perhaps this could work if there was a third attacker who was constantly crashing into the center of the box, or maybe a ball-dominant creative type on the right who was springing MbappĂ© and VinĂcius into these spaces on the left side.
But among wingers in Europeâs Big Five top leagues over the past 365 days, Rodrygo ranks in the 13th percentile for expected goals assisted. His heat map looks like this:
The common thread among Madridâs three attackers is that none of them are getting on the ball in the middle of the field. And hereâs a little industry secret about the middle of the field: itâs where the goal is!
On top of all this, Madrid also lost midfielder Toni Kroos to retirement over the offseason, so the team never really had any kind of reliable, systematic way of getting the ball up to these forwards. Perhaps a more consistent pattern of ball progression would have brought the ball up to the forwards in a way where even their lopsided movements wouldâve been able to rip apart unsettled or under-manned defenses.
Instead, more often than not, itâs looked like what we saw against Arsenal:
Needing to win by at least three goals at home, this collection of uber-expensive and super-talented attackers only created one decent chance off of a defensive error and otherwise were left shooting from tight angles and long distances â far away from the center of the goal.
âThe numbers speak for themselves. I still think weâre better in attack and defense without MbappĂ©.â
Thatâs PSG manager Luis Enrique, right after his club knocked Liverpool out of the Champions League. And heâs right.
By those same numbers we looked at for Madrid, hereâs how PSG have progressed defensively in Ligue 1:
âą 2023-24: 1.02 adjusted goals allowed per 90
âą 2024-2: 0.86 per 90
And for the attack:
âą 2023-24: 1.94 adjusted goals per 90
âą 2024-25: 2.56 per 90
Defensively, PSG are pressing more aggressively, winning the ball higher up the field, and allowing significantly fewer touches inside their own penalty area. On the other end, theyâre attempting almost four extra shots per game, playing more cutbacks, attempting more through balls, and getting into the opposition penalty area more often.
The only thing thatâs gotten âworseâ is the quality of shots theyâre allowing: 0.09 xG per shot last season, now up to 0.10 this season. But even that, I think, is a good thing because itâs indicative of a team thatâs able to press much more aggressively and much higher than last year. (With a high press, the best is that youâll allow better chances but also fewer chances, and itâll all add up to a decline in goals conceded.)
With MbappĂ© in the team, thereâs just no way PSG wouldâve been able to press Liverpool off the field like they did this season. In the match in Paris, they held Liverpool to season-worsts in:
âą Shots
âą Expected goals
âą Touches in the box
âą Pass attempts
âą Pass completion percentage
The attack also benefits from a press that keeps the ball in the attacking third for most of every match, and from the opportunities created by winning the ball back right as the opposition is transitioning from a defensive to an attacking structure.
Without MbappĂ©, who doesnât touch the ball a ton, is most effective in space, and likes to peel off left, the attack is also much more fluid and unpredictable. With the arrival of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia from Napoli in January, PSG now have four attackers who are devastating with the ball at their feet, but also comfortable running into space and slipping passes through the opposition backline.
The effectiveness of the press, too, allows both of their fullbacks, Nuno Mendes and Achraf Hakimi, to get forward aggressively and contribute to the attack.
While the various pieces of Madridâs lineup almost seem to actively negate each other, PSGâs players all seem to amplify each otherâs strengths.
While I tend to believe that talent always trumps tactics â and while almost every great manager is on the record in agreement with me â thatâs the remaining elephant in the room.
When Bill Simmons outlined the Ewing Theory, he made it clear he wasnât saying that Patrick Ewing was necessarily worse than everyone thought. No, he was saying that specific circumstances sometimes create a situation where a team plays better without its best player, and the coaching circumstances at PSG and Real Madrid couldnât be any different.
Luis Enrique is one of the most tactically demanding managers in the world â he has a clear way that he wants his teams to play, with and without the ball. And heâs done a brilliant job at PSG so far this season.
Itâs not a given that a bunch of ball-dominant dribble-happy wingers should work so well in an attack, but Luis Enrique has figured it out, largely by freeing up Ousmane DembĂ©lĂ© to play centrally and do what he does best: everything, with either foot.
Meanwhile, Carlo Ancelotti said this at the beginning of last season: âI think the mistake new generation coaches make is that they give too much information about the system on the ball. I think old school coaches like me prefer not to give too much information and allow freedom for creativity.â
That approach has worked brilliantly at Madrid, a club thatâs able to attract the best creative players in the world. But it has failed so far this season.
Without any clear plan on the ball, Vinicius and MbappĂ©âs instincts always take them to the same area of the field. And sometimes, Rodrgyo joins them over there, too:
Now, MbappĂ© is still having a fantastic individual season. Michael Imburgioâs DAVIES model, which values everything a player does on the ball, has MbappĂ© adding 10.57 goals compared to the average player at his position. Thatâs the highest number of any player in Europeâs Big Five leagues, and Liverpoolâs Salah (10.12) is the only other player with a number north of nine. More simply, heâs leading Madrid in goals, expected goals, and expected assists.
But Madrid are simply a significantly worse team since he arrived. And the difference between MbappĂ© and everyone else on Madrid is that everyone else had already been a significant contributor to this team when it was the best team in the world, just one season ago. Weâve seen them do it â we still havenât seen him do it.
For as productive as he is, MbappĂ© is just a really hard player to fit into an elite team. Since he refuses to press, he limits the approaches you can take without the ball. And while heâs a winger, heâs not the kind of high-touch player you can just ping the ball out to over and over again while he creates a ton of chances for himself and his teammates. You need a very specific blend of players both offensively and defensively to get the most out of MbappĂ©.
So, until further notice â until we see MbappĂ© actually be the best player on the best team in the world â weâre officially designating MbappĂ© as soccerâs face of the Ewing Theory.
In Simmonsâ 2001 column on the topic, he ended it by wondering, âFinally, what would be the greatest triumph for the Ewing Theory?â At the time, he suggested the 2001 Seattle Mariners winning their first-ever World Series after eventual Hall-of-Famers Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Junior, and Alex Rodriguez all left the team. The Mariners won an MLB-record 116 games in 2001, but lost in the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees.
Well, PSG lost Neymar and Lionel Messi two seasons ago. And now, with MbappĂ© also gone, theyâre undefeated in Ligue 1, and theyâre just three games away from winning their first-ever Champions League.
Thank you afterward as well.
So, they have three attackers who do the same thing. Iâm guessing one or two of them have to leave, and bring in some right-side help and better defense, to make the team better.
RM probably bit on, âwell, he wonât be playing against us, so thatâs a plus.â
RM is a bit weak on defense.
This had always been a concern that has not really been addressed in the last few years.
Lots of amazing attacking players, but you also need to be strong at the back or else you will end up conceding lots of poor goals against you.
This Barcelona Inter match has been wild so far.
Meanwhile, Vancouver demolishes Inter Miami 5-1 in their two match semi-final to advance to the CONCACAF Champions League Final for the first time in their history. White and Berhalter continue to be the difference-makers.
Wow! INT-FCB was amazing!
And Arsene Wenger whinging about Man U or TOT potentially qualifying for Champions League play next year. I understand the rant but that is the rule.
Been the rule for a long time. Why is he whingeing about it now?
Cuz TOT?
Cuz MUN?
Cuz Clouds on his lawn?
Jackass wants to make Offside even harder to determine:
Makes it harder for the PLAYERS to determine as well. Both attackers and defenders.
I guess this is a La Liga thing, blame referees. Maybe they should incite violence on referees like that other team.
I think Yamel needs to learn how to fall down instead of being so good at fighting through fouls and shooting.
Maybe âwhingerâ is âwengerâ in French?
Almost cheering for Bodo today as they are an interesting club. Not confident Spurs will advance.
Well that wasnât very interesting.
So, two fashion cities going at it.
So the 15th and 16th place clubs in the Premier League are cruising today to the Europa League Finals. One of these teams will emphatically redeem its season soon. Go Spurs Go!
Not if Arsene, the cloud screamer-at-er, Whinger gets his way!
This is great news for RM.
