Abu Dhabi GP Recap: Norris Champion, Celtic Fall to Hearts

It's a long set, but nobody can stop Gonzalo Montiel. 25 years of age, his first ever win.

Podcasting from Studio 2520, somewhere near a snowy Akron, Ohio, bringing you all the latest talk in motorsport and soccer. This is Tackling the Chicane.

That's it, mate. You are world champion. Uh, Lando, this is Zach from McLaren. Is this the, uh, world champion hotline? Yeah.

You did it! You did it!

So that happened. Lando Norris, 2025 F1 World Drivers' Champion since the last time we recorded. And you had a little post-race radio snippet there with McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown, who, uh, maybe we can discuss in a little more detail here. But, uh, yeah, I mean, no really getting around it, no beating around the bush on this one. Lando Norris is your world champion in Formula 1.

So I guess we can kick it off there with, uh, sort of initial thoughts from from you, maybe, you know, as a whole for the season. And we will talk about this race in some detail as well, but overarching thoughts from you as we have crowned a new champion in Formula 1. Yeah, and, uh, deserved, deserved champion, although, um, The march that Red Bull put on in the latter stages of this GP can't be ignored.

But obviously McLaren set themselves up early in the season.

And, you know, Lando deserves the title, obviously. He was— he came out on top. Albeit by a very slim margin. And I think the bigger conversation is within the McLaren camp.

And I don't think that anything was done egregiously, but did they grab a horse at a certain point and make sure that they were going to get the championship and leave, you know, Piastri to pick up whatever, you know, scraps were left. It's clear their fate— their golden child won. That's not at all a question. It doesn't take a genius to realize that McLaren very clearly favors Lando Norris. Every single race in just about every situation, um, much like Red Bull does with Max Verstappen.

So it's not unique to McLaren that they do that, but McLaren are probably— uh, Red Bull have a very good reason to do that. McLaren are probably the most, um, obvious case of that in F1, um, outside of Red Bull, where it makes sense that you would favor Max Uh, I, I have— I don't have a bad taste in my mouth about how the championship ended up going to Lando, but there are a, a few instances, like I think I'd mentioned last week, that you can point to throughout the season and go, okay, if McLaren didn't team orders that shit, then, uh, this would have played out differently. Not necessarily that Lando wouldn't have won the championship, but, um, there are instances, I believe in Austria, uh, at the Red Bull Ring, where Piastri was basically told to get out of the way. Um, a couple instances like that throughout the year. And we've seen that in years past with McLaren with the same lineup of Piastri and Norris that they very clearly tailor strategy to Norris, and then if Piastri happens to be the one taking to the strategy better or leading a race or whatever, then they'll shift.

Um, so that's why I kind of get a little annoyed by this McLaren team from time to time, but I won't sit here and say that Norris did not deserve to win a championship. And I don't think it was the— I don't think strategically throughout the course of 24 GPs that they, they made the wrong call.

Um, monetarily speaking, you need to put your driver in the best— your driver of the 2 in the best position to win the championship. Um, and they, they had blown everyone away in Constructors, so there's money there as well. Um, so yeah, I don't, I, I don't— I think this is just F1 at its antithesis, and you're going to have those types of calls throughout the, the season where Let's— they, they set themselves up for victory. They got a victory. They got the money.

And at the end of the day, um, that is a game changer to be the number one car on the grid as far as money goes.

Um, Max Verstappen, obviously he, he's still a very huge force in this series and, you know, proved so. Came back from a 104-point deficit to be in the mix, and it made for a really great finale race.

Um, anything could have happened. Fortunately, nothing did, and I think it really a non-Verstappen fan, fortunately. Well, I mean, you know, listen, I, in the past, I've, I've said things about Red Bull and Verstappen and, and that's just my old head.

Um, but yeah, I, I was, I was, I won't say I was happy, but I was, I was interested in the fact that he made the in-rows that he did. And let's face it, he won this race. Yeah. And it came down to if we can get standings like this in F1 where it's a 2 or 3 point contest, then that's, that's not a bad thing. No, it's not.

It's, it's unfortunately, I don't think particularly realistic. Um, the last time 3 horses were in the race with 1 GP to go was 2010. Um, so obviously 15 years had gone by since then. Uh, even in this podcast run, we've done 4 seasons now. Never has it even come close to coming down to the first— the last round, let alone having 3 drivers in.

And yes, it was fantastic that there were 3 drivers, but let's be totally real here. The only reason Verstappen was in it to begin with was because McLaren kept fucking up for the last 2 months, um, for a number of different reasons. Now, Verstappen clearly found a ton of speed and a ton of form. I'm not saying he wouldn't have won all the races he did, but double disqualification at Vegas made this more interesting than it would have been. Um, Piastri having that cold stretch kind of out of nowhere made it more interesting than it should have been.

Um, and frankly, the way that McLaren sort of manipulated their cars throughout the year, you could say maybe made it a little more interesting than it should have been. So yeah, so do we throw these, these variables to the the racing gods.

I'm hoping that's just the way it is. Um, you know, this, as we talked before, highly technical. Lots of very minimal tolerances can get you thrown out or disqualified.

Um, one can't help but think from a tinfoil hat view that, you know, okay, so how much leverage does F1's stewardship have on making sure that this is an interesting finish? I mean, the, the math is the math. So the planks were off and hence disqualification. But what it did do is bring us to a final finale that made it much, much more interesting to watch than just somebody running away by, you know, mega points. Yeah.

Again, that's unique for this podcast run. Um, it's been Verstappen, clearly the champion the past 3 seasons. So that was a welcome change. I can't, can't sit here and lie about that. Um, in terms of, of this race, you mentioned the stewards, and I want to talk about a moment in this race that I think certainly caused a lot of controversy.

Um, whether or not we can discuss the issue about should Norris have been penalized, but basically one of the storylines in this race was how Red Bull would use Yuki Tsunoda, um, basically as a defense. Now here's the thing that I am a little surprised by from Red Bull. They didn't really pull out any stops, you know. They weren't really trying to— they weren't playing any games really, which I think was a little bit soft from them, um, in the fact that if you know you need something strange to happen you can't just let Max Verstappen pull away, which is what he did, and then just hope McLaren are going to screw up, because that isn't really a logical strategy. Because obviously, you know, McLaren didn't screw up, and you're banking on something strange to happen, which just isn't— that's not very practical.

So I, I wonder why they didn't play games. They didn't have Max Verstappen bunch the field up even though he was clearly the, the fastest car. You had Leclerc on the ass of Norris for a lot of this race. If the field is bunched up, clearly Leclerc could have raced Norris. If Norris finishes 4th— he only finishes 3rd in this race— if he finishes 4th, he doesn't win the title.

So why aren't you trying to play games?

Sunnoda, very weak, stupid defense, I would say, swerving around, but that was it. Where are— I don't really think that's a particularly awesome thing that Red Bull did, or a brave thing. I was sort of surprised by the lack of balls that they showed, I guess. Well, and the other thing at play here is you know, in racing we don't know what kind of contact's going to happen. Is there going to be contact in the mid to rear pack that's going to bring out a safety car and change everything?

Did not happen in this GP. It has happened in the past, so I think this is just racing.

Mathematically it's okay. Somebody's either going to cause what I consider a disruption when somebody brings out the safety car, or if somebody makes hard contact into the wall and they have to remove a car. Um, that didn't happen here, and we've seen plenty of races where it has. We've seen plenty of races where it has not.

Um, but with all that being said, A pretty compelling finale to the season and a well-deserved win for Lando Norris, especially who we have to remember this, this is a lifetime of accomplishments to get to the seat, starting from go-karts to F3 to F2 to F1 and then to perform And to get the points.

So in my opinion, a happy ending for Lando Norris, a great season for McLaren.

And really what it comes down to is, and I saw a couple of different animations on social media. There's a few that I follow, but some of them were funny where they were chucking the cars into a dumpster because this is it for that particular campaign. And now, honestly, I won't say we've reset to zero, but we get pretty close with this 2026 car. Who is going to master this new chassis? Who?

And, and power unit, which we're— I have— we're going to get into that in the offseason. Yeah, I, yeah, I'm excited to see what happens there. I do want to keep, for just for the purpose of this episode, I want to keep the focus on 2025's championship.

And we will certainly dive headfirst as we will have plenty of offseason discussion. On this new regulation. Um, I still— again, I'll say it again— I have a strange taste in my mouth about this championship because McLaren were one more mistake away from throwing it away. Like, we were so way too close to seeing the greatest sporting collapse of all time, at least in motorsport. 100— and I think people aren't really truly grasping what Max Verstappen came 2 points away from doing.

104 points back from, uh, Oscar Piastri not that long ago, and He comes 2 points away, wins the last 3 races. McLaren frankly didn't even look even remotely competitive against Max Verstappen the last 4 or 5 races. McLaren almost threw this away. And I think why I'm having a real hard time freaking, you know, like, yay, Lando, like, look at you, is because Max Verstappen kicked their fucking ass the last like 2 months of this season. And I think he is, he's, I'm putting money on him to win the championship next year.

The clock was definitely, definitely running at the end of this campaign. And as you said, rightfully so, had this been a 26 GP campaign, we might be talking about something different for sure. So I, I guess it played out the way it did. I mean, the reality is it's 24 races. McLaren came on top in 24 races.

So I'm not gonna revise history. I'm just saying you really, you You, you came as close as basically possible of throwing it away. So the takeaway for me for this 2025 campaign is they delivered a product that was watchable. They delivered a series that gave you pause, gave you a lot to think about what could happen. And the final 5 or 6 GPs were interesting because of that.

And I'm fine with the way things played out.

I would much rather have a season like this than a runaway. And we're going to see that again. We'll always see seasons where a team just dominates. But for this particular campaign. I thought it was, um, one of the best since we've been really eyes on in the last several seasons.

And even at the lower part of the tree, uh, lots, lots of things, you know, a lot, a lot of interesting finishes. I mean, just in this GP alone You know, Nico Hulkenberg finishes in the points. Lance Stroll finishes in the points. Fernando Alonso, 6th, who he just kind of is always just there for Aston Martin.

So, and you know, well, Russell is like the bridesmaid. He finishes in the upper middle section of each GP. And the, uh, only non-Verstappen or McLaren race winner this season. Yeah, so he has chops. That, that Mercedes team is a sleeping giant.

I think if they figure out, if they figure out this next formula, watch out because it'll be a repeat of the 2010s pretty quickly, uh, with that driver lineup especially. Yeah, and I think Kimi Antonelli plays into that a lot. I think there's potential there if he can take this new car in 2026 and capitalize. I, and we won't go into predictions, but yeah, I think what next year is going to bring is a lot of dynamically changing You're going to see some teams in 2026 that you didn't see in 2025. They're going to be right at the mid-table.

I think the most sort of biggest takeaway from this season was just how close it was from 1st to 20th. We're looking at 5 teams having collected more than 100 points, which hasn't happened since we've started.

Uh, RB came close. They had 90-something points, I believe. 92. Even Haas had what? Aston Martin Haas had 70-ish, 80, 79 for Haas and 89 for Aston Martin.

I think Haas had 12 points last year. Yeah. And Sauber had like 3, something ridiculous. Sauber had 70. Alpine had 22.

Yeah, I mean, the worst team, yeah, even collected 20-some points. So yeah, and that is to be expected with the last year formula a little bit. But considering the fact that McLaren dominated, scored over 800 points, which is a shitload, um, the rest of the grid was very, very competitive, um, which I enjoyed. You For potentially the first real season of this podcast run, you, you couldn't really rule anyone out from scoring big points, not just your 9s and 10s. Hell, fucking Carlos Sainz was on the— Carlos Sainz and Williams on the podium twice.

Yes. That's unthinkable. Yeah. Last year. And deserved.

And they ended up 5th in the Constructors Championship. They have to be Very happy for that. James Vowles has to be incredibly excited. He brought this team out of the basement, put them as a mid-pack contender in this campaign, which, you know, is a great thing.

You know, I think what we saw this this past season was everyone was starting to figure out everyone had great upgrades to make that mid-level pack competitive. And that's a good thing. Yeah, it is interesting to theorize and see what, how teams will come out of the gates in '26. I hope for even half as much competition throughout the the grid next year. Um, but my, my belief is that one team will have it figured out, or mostly figured out more than everyone else for a while, like, like Red Bull did in this regulations.

And Ferrari should be thrilled that they have 2 drivers who finished 5 and 6, considering the struggle of their campaign with Hamilton, who never really got used to the car. Was never happy. Excuse me, was never happy. Um, really, they brought out a heaping pile of shit in 2025. That's the weakest Ferrari season we've seen.

Um, and frankly, I— if they don't come out hot in '26, heads will roll. Hamilton, I don't know about him. He's so dejected, completely just turned off from F1 as a whole, it seems like. Um, that car, it was terrible. We're talking about Ferrari here, who granted haven't really done shit since about 2009, but I think they finished 4th in the Constructors, which is terrible.

And did not put a competitive car on the grid the whole year. They did not win a race, which is kind of unthinkable for them. So that program has to find— they have to have their come-to-Jesus moment at some point this offseason. And if, like I said, if, if they don't come out of the gates rolling and this new regulations, there's going to be hell to pay. I think there was a little bit of anticipation that Lewis Hamilton would jump from one silver suit to a red suit and just light the shit on fire.

But as we watched this season progress, he was, as I said, he was never really satisfied with the car. And, you know, once you have that on paper, that as a driver, obviously he's hugely talented, but he could not find any rhythm in this Ferrari car, uh, but still ended up 6th in the Drivers' Championship. Leclerc ends up 5th. Not what Ferrari wants to do. Obviously they want to be on top.

But I think considering how poorly, how poor, poorly they showed up. I think the problem for me is just how not very competitive they were with teams around them. Even Mercedes had their number the last half of the season. Uh, Verstappen's Red Bull miles ahead. Um, and obviously McLaren was McLaren.

So things, like you said, they don't go back to zero next year, but there is sort of that refresh. So you gotta hope for them that they kind of figure it out and hit the ground running. Um, Yeah, you know, the Williams story is huge. I think just how fantastic they were. It's interesting because Albon was kicking Sainz's ass for, um, I don't know, 3/4 of the year, maybe a little over half the year, and then Sainz just figured it out and was outscoring him.

Obviously finished on the podium twice in the last half of the season. Um, and was outqualifying him. So Albon, that is. So that's a very interesting team going into 2026. That's a great driver lineup, I think, and hopefully they can build off of this year's momentum and really start to compete at the top end of the table.

Yeah, so they end up 8th and 9th. Uh, 10th position is Fernando Alonso, and then after that in the driver standings doesn't quite really matter too much.

Um, but with, with that being said, I think this Williams team is, is like you said, they're on the right path. Now we'll see what happens with this new car next year. But, um, so Hadjar gets promoted to the Red Bull team. The senior team. The senior team.

Tsunoda's out and probably doesn't have a ride next year. Reserve role, which means no, he does not have a ride. And honestly, I, to have him be, the delta was so wide between the Verstappen car and his car that it's rightfully It's, I think it's the right move for Red Bull to bring Hadjar up. And this, this kid, if you remember the first race of the year, he, he spun out and before the race started, before the race even started. And then he came to be, um, there.

He was a contender and he was, uh, he was a force. He was on the podium. Yeah. And always kind of back there, you know, causing issue for other teams. So well done, Isaac Hadjar, for his promotion.

Yeah. I think he clearly has the more chops out of him and Lawson. Now Red Bull gave Lawson about 2 seconds at the beginning of the year. You'll remember Helmut Marko is gone, by the way, who is kind of the, the brains, or dare I say the lack of brains, with those decisions. So I'm thinking Red Bull probably will turn a new page in terms of giving rookies or, you know, new drivers more than about 5 minutes to figure shit out.

Yeah, I think the Lawson dismissal was a little bit premature. Yeah, I think it wasn't it. I think they gave him 2 races, which is ridiculous. So I don't know. This, this is a cutthroat.

It's a cutthroat scenario.

Um, well, yeah. So that, that pretty much, I think, takes us through the end of F1. And then we'll obviously offseason, we'll have our, we'll do our prediction show shortly. And then after that, we're going to really dive into this uh, 2026 chassis and what it looks like. Um, the biggest changes are going to be a little bit of wheelbase size millimeters, but it on paper, it does look moderately smaller than this particular car that we're running right now.

Yeah, I'm interested to see how that'll actually affect racing. My guess is not by really— it won't be noticeable. It is moderately smaller. The front nose is much smaller, the back wing is much smaller, so they've sized some stuff down. The big change is the power unit, 50/50 split with combustion and hybrid, so this will be a less powerful engine, um, and no DRS anymore.

So that'll be, um, I don't, I don't have the technical jargon for it, but essentially it sounds like it'll kind of be like a button that generates extra power, sort of like in Indy, it's push, push to pass. Yeah, I don't know the exact mechanics, but it's no longer a drag reduction system. By the way, Lance Stroll was the last person to use DRS to overtake in F1 history. So there's some random bit of, uh, trivia for you. And I'm not sure that that's the right call.

I think, uh, DRS made this more compelling. Or did it cause trains? Well, it It did do that. That's not really arguable. But the thing with DRS is I personally would rather it be coming from the power unit.

That, uh, I think IndyCar actually does that better. I would rather a boost in power is the reason you get around, not because you reduced, uh, or I guess improved aero and there's a flap at the back of the wing. Also It— I understand why it's there. You're trying to promote passing, but some tracks, once if you were on a long straight and a driver got DRS, it's a foregone conclusion that they're getting around. And other times DRS didn't work.

Like, it does not work in Abu Dhabi. It didn't work in Qatar. First off, F1 has got to fucking stop going to places and designing them and they're shit races. They're shit. There's no way to overtake at Abu Dhabi.

That's your last race of the season. So it's like, it's kind of a complex issue, but I don't know. I'm not going to be super sad to see DRS go. It looks cool. I kind of like that element of it, but I don't know.

That's just me. Yeah.

Yeah, well, a lot to be sort of sussed out for next year.

And honestly, I— there already was a lot of help electrically speaking with these cars that was kind of cast aside. People didn't really get into the technology of you know, the hybridization of the 2025 car, but it was there. And it's not like IndyCar where they bring it to the forefront. So in IndyCar, they, they're, they're giving you a graphic, you're, you're watching. We very rarely could see battery.

The thing with that is hybrid power and battery, you know, what, what would you call call it, like, originally the KERS system. It's been around in F1 for over a decade. Yeah. So like IndyCar had incentive to talk about it a lot. So I think F1 probably could do a better job at actually talking about that at races.

I think sometimes they— the difference I notice a lot when you're watching an F1 race to an IndyCar race is the IndyCar broadcast tells you a lot about the actual mechanics of the car. And they do talk about, even though it's way less complex, they talk about the weight jacker and why someone's hitting this button and all that hybrid graphic, for example.

F1, for, for the cars being so technical, they really don't get into a ton of detail detail. And some of that might just be people don't care, but I don't know, food for thought. Yeah, or they're trying to conceal their technology advantage-wise. In IndyCar, there might be more parity between the systems, so they can put lights on the dashboard that show you when they're deploying energy and when energy is regenerating. And in F1, they very rarely show you that.

So we'll see with this new power unit, maybe this— that will change as well because it's going to be a huge factor. Yeah, they'll, they'll be obligated to talk about it. So yeah, much like when KERS started, much like when DRS started. So Again, it'll be very interesting to see, especially with a new team added into all of that. Uh, that, that could be very compelling beginning to next season.

Um, interestingly, um, Simon Pagenaud has been the sim driver for Cadillac, doing all the testing on the simulator for them. I watched a video about that.

Uh, 2-time Indy 500 champion, at least once. Yes. Uh, had that huge crash at Mid-Ohio 2 years ago, which pretty much retired him from cars. But, you know, simulator is not actual racing. So interesting to see how he gets involved, um, with the Cadillac team, and I'm sure we'll discuss more about them.

Uh, in the offseason. But any other F1-related stuff you want to discuss this week? Nope, we can transition to a little footy.

So I guess we are obligated to discuss, um, this will be the primary focus of the soccer segment this week. And I would say rightfully so.

Um, we gotta talk about Wilfred Nancy's debut. It is Nancy, by the way. Uh, he said that in an interview recently, so even though he's French, so I don't really know how that works, but Wilfred Nancy, the new manager of Celtic Football Club. Um, debut match against Hearts at home. Of course, Hearts top of the table going into that clash.

Reminder, and you know, we've talked about it a bit on the show, but since Hearts pretty much put the belt to Celtic back in October, they've only won one of their next 6 league games. And mean— meanwhile, with Martin O'Neill, Celtic really kind of steadied the ship and won, I think, every domestic game. Um, did get battered in Europe and win in Europe, so mixed bag there, but won every single domestic game. And then, um, he's gone, obviously. So here's kind of my first bone to pick, and I'm sure you have thoughts too.

Wilfred Nancy is announced as the Celtic boss officially Wednesday night. He takes his first training session Thursday, and then Friday, Saturday— you don't, you don't really train the day before a game typically— and then Sunday takes charge against Hearts. So he had 2 days basically with the team, and then you're playing the top of the table Hearts.

Is— does that not seem a little dumb? To give him 2 days and then, well, here's the best team in the league. Good luck. Are you suggesting that they should have kept the other manager through this particular match? Or— I am.

Okay. Well, that makes sense. But as we know in sports, when you get— and he didn't get sacked. He was interim. So he was asked to step aside for this new manager to come in who, yeah, it was probably a very tough, probably a tough situation for him to be in.

Now I will say this, I felt for the most part that they played with a little bit different, um, There seemed to be a little bit more enthusiasm in the play, if that's a good— it might not be the right word. I actually think that's a pretty good way to describe it. And it could have just been a fact of, you know, this is my first match and, you know, you're— how much time do you have with the team to make sure that they understand what your game plan is?

It was unfortunate that they cut— I won't— I don't know how to say this. The— so the commentary, the commentary and the broadcast sort of made him out to be a little bit silly. They did, which I thought was unfair. Um, they zoomed— they particularly zeroed in on the fact that he likes to use a small magnetic board, physical tactics board, which really is not that uncommon. No, but I think this was a play for the broadcasters to— they mentioned it more than once, which I thought was A bit strange, but overall I felt like this team was playing more like Celtics should play.

Yeah, I would agree. I would give you probably the first half really felt like that and then the wheels kind of fell off, which is not to be unexpected. First off, he completely changed the formation. And I was largely right. I was right about the biggest component.

It was a back 3. That's what Nancy does, back 3. You had guys who don't typically do that or are sort of, quite frankly, out of position. Austin Trusty is a right, right-sided center back in a back 3. He has never done that to my knowledge, definitely not at Celtic.

You saw you could watch that game again, but you could see it on the first time. How often was Trusty on the ball? He had the ball a lot, um, and didn't, didn't really do anything with it, right? Because Hearts realized this guy is being asked to do something that he's not, at least at the moment, is not very good at. He's not a ball-carrying center-back that can spray passes around.

And that's kind of what he was being asked to do. So Hearts were like, oh, go ahead. We'll just hit you on the counter once you inevitably turn the ball over. So in a lot of these matches, statistics are, they lie to you. So possession, passes.

I mean, I think I recall them being way up on both. So possession and passes. Soccer is very unique in the fact that you can watch American football, for example, and the team that has the most amount of time of possession wins probably 75% of the time. That really— possession matters in soccer, but it, it's not a, um, correlation does not mean causation with possession. It's, it's an obtuse figure.

So you, you see Celtic with 72, 72% possession, but clearly that doesn't, um, doesn't end up in goals or shots on goals or victory in this point. So the underlying statistics of this match are actually very interesting because this match ends 2-1, by the way. Celtic score 93rd minute with Tierney. Um, too little too late, but, um, I think you were called into action by then, uh, by, uh, the boss. So Celtic were making an effort to come back, but in 90 minutes fell short.

So let's look at the stats. 72% ball possession, which is not unique. That doesn't really tell us anything about Wilfried Gnabry. Any Celtic manager would expect the same thing. Here's where it gets interesting.

Expected goals, xG. Now there's debates about how little xG— how little or how much xG actually matters. I for one think it is very important. Um, Celtic led that 1.86, uh, to 0.5. Total shots, 15 to 8.

Shots on target, 5 to 3. Another very interesting stat, big chances. Now that those are chances that you would expect a goal more often than not, it's kind of— and these higher numbers that you're saying are Celtic, 3, Hearts 0. 0 big chances. Now both of their goals by no means were luck, but they were not high percentage situations.

We had a one off a corner a header off a corner in the 64th minute, and then Braga with a sort of, uh, low angle or whatever, close angle shot, low angle, short angle, whatever. Not a, not a high percentage shot that goes in.

Um, unexpected, but Hearts were just a lot better in the final third even though they were there about half as often as Celtic. And that leads me to my next point. This Celtic team blows. They suck. This squad is fucking horrible.

So Nancy has been completely thrown to the wolves by our cheap douchebag who were asleep. You remember that? That fucker was asleep. They pan to him for 6 seconds. His eyes are closed the entire time until right when they cut away.

Fuck you. Fuck this stupid-ass board.

Well, yeah, I listen. If, if The board doesn't wake up and understand the importance of, of this team's history and where they should be in the table. And now we're, as you said, they dance around with obtaining players. They act like they have no money. You know, we, they wear a patch on their shoulder about the foundation of the club.

Clearly they have plenty of money to spend.

I feel like they just, they cast out a certain amount of money. They draft players and just sit there and hope. Hope it goes well. Hope that it goes well. Because every once in a blue moon, it does.

You get a Kyogo. That you spent no money on, or Matt O'Reilly or something like that. It's becoming increasingly less often with this shit recruiting process that we've seen. The sad part of obtaining a player like Kyogo is you give him a— you let him dance, you give him a dance, and then you pull him off the dance floor and allow him to go elsewhere because I'm sure if they had offered him the correct amount of money, he would not have left.

Yeah, it's, it's possible. He, he did a lot of posturing himself, but it is possible there. It's just why— let's go through the squad here, um, that Nancy is supposed to get a tune out of right away, which is ridiculous to expect. I've got a lot of beef with a lot of people right now, uh, be it the board, be it Scottish football fans in general, Celtic fans. But Kieran Tierney, okay, that's an upgrade from last year, uh, although his fitness isn't great.

2 years ago, Liam Scales wasn't even sniffing starting for this team, um, and now he's relied upon as our best center-back. Trusty has been okay. Yang is horrible. McGregor is, you know, he does what he needs to do more often than not, scores some heroic goals every now and then, but is increasingly older. Angles is hit or miss.

Tenecte, you know, he gets into good positions but then forgets how to play soccer. Hatate's been shit this year. Nigrin has been actually probably are arguably our best player this season. And Maeda is a shell of himself, um, and probably needs to be sold. And then you're asking Nancy to turn to a bench that can't fucking do anything.

Luke McCowan comes on in this game and does nothing. Johnny Kenny comes on to this game and does nothing. You roll through the, the rest of the bench— Michael Ange Balakwisha, Terrible signing. Koetje Iheanacho, uh, emergency signing and instantly got hurt and is out of shape. Bernardo doesn't seem to ever play for Celtic, ever.

Dane Murray, um, out of his depth. Colby Donovan's been fine. Ralston's old and sucks. So like, what the hell are, are you expecting Wilfred Nancy to do? He's not going to walk into this team and they're just instantly going to be amazing.

I understand that Martin O'Neill won, what, 4 or 5 games in a row domestically? The best team he came across was Hibs. He played the fucking dogshit of Scottish football. So I'm not really gonna sit here and just, just give him pomp and circumstance for beating the worst fucking teams in Scottish football. And I, I do have a bias for William Nance.

Wilfred Nancy, because I know what he's capable of. I watched him manage our hometown team for 3 years and win 3 trophies. So they— this is a guy that knows what he's doing, and we're going to watch a team that isn't good enough to play the system that he wants to, and we're gonna have a board that aren't gonna open up their goddamn checkbook in January To give him the players he needs. Can you give me 3, 3 starters for Celtic who are dynamic players? And it doesn't need to be position-based, but give me your top 3 with this current squad.

And we do have some injuries. Alastair Johnston's out. Carter Vickers is out. Jota is out. I'm— early January is he's expected.

So, uh, for the love of God, I hope that's 2023 Jota, uh, again. Uh, dynamic players, truly dynamic players this season. Tierney, sometimes, um, when he seems to be up for it. Um, McGregor. Scales.

Scales is— he's, he's a good defender. I— he's not a game changer, he's a good defender. McGregor seems to bail this team out pretty constantly, especially this season. Um, but he's had his stinkers this year. After that, like, Negrin I think has been our best player, and even then I don't think he's been like drop dead.

Like, he's not knocking my socks off by any means. And my ADAs look fucking— we watched him miss 2 sitters and he's been doing that all year. He— I think we need to sell him while he's— there's some value there. So what was that, 2.5 players? Like, this team is not very good.

Yeah. Are you still— do you still have confidence in the box. I, I do. I think Schmeichel is a, is a pretty decent defender.

I don't love him personally. I would actually rather see Sinisalo start more often the rest of the year. We'll see. He's fine. He, he's fine.

He's not a long-term option by any means. He's 42 years old or 41 years old. So 39. Okay, but, um, no, I don't see him as a long-term option. He'll probably be gone after this year anyways.

He's fine. He's not the, the worst issue here. I do want to give some flowers to Hearts. They just are well drilled. They defended well in this match.

They seem to just be very comfortable and confident in the system that Derek McInnis has.

Um, took their chances, which Celtic seemed to never do. Even at their best, they'll create 20 chances and put away 4 of them, uh, at their best. So man, that team, they are solid. And I think that was a really big statement of intent from Hartz because a lot of the conversation was, well, their bubble kind of bursted. Ever since they beat Celtic the first time.

They weren't losing games, but they weren't winning games, and Celtic were. And people are very, very quick to write off Hearts in a 38-game season. Then they come to Celtic Park and win, and now have a 3-point lead at the top of the table. And all of a sudden you're thinking, okay, this team is, I think, the real Could be the real deal. Very clearly is Celtics' closest competitor this year.

So I wonder how long this will continue.

Yeah, I mean, obviously we're, we're in a bit of flux here with the manager. I think we need to give him a little bit of time to get seated. And I, I really did enjoy the play of that match, at least as you said, in the first half. Um, so I, I think we need to give him a little bit of time to get acclimation with the team and get the players in the right position to, you know, we're not out of it. Right.

So we're 3 points behind. Um, the smart money is still on Celtic to win the title. Um, because that's just history, but I think the board is going to have to cough up a lot of dough for it to be something that could even be close to a comfortable win.

And I don't think they'll do that. As they should. But we will see if they do. So I want to— here's another thing, like, this is— you want to talk about baptism of fire, getting thrown to the wolves for a new manager? First match against the best team in the league, then you play Roma in the Europa League.

That'll be a loss. That's almost certainly going to be a loss. They're one of the best teams in Italy currently. Then a League Cup final against St. Mirren. So that's a trophy game away to Dundee United, and then Aberdeen, who have been resurgent after that.

That is a hell of a 5-game introduction as Celtic manager. And with— you know how it goes, if Celtic aren't winning, it's crisis mode. So he already has a lot of naysayers because of this result. And because they, quite frankly, a lot of Scottish football fans are kind of fucking dumb. I'm just gonna say it.

There's a lot of stupid Scottish football fans that don't know shit about the game outside of Celtic Park. Um, so I think there's been a lot of ignorance about what Wilfred Nancy is actually capable of doing and what he's shown he's capable of doing. A tactics board is not a fucking hilarious meme. I don't know why. I knew instantly when they showed that he was doing that, that that was going to be a meme.

That was going to be something talked about, especially because they lost. That, that's standard practice in a lot of the world. So miss me with that bullshit, please.

And give this guy some fucking time. Yeah, because if he lose, he's probably, probably gonna lose tomorrow. Like, I'm just being— I'm just being honest. And then St. Mirren, that's gonna be tough. That's a neutral venue cup game, so that is going to be tough.

There is a very real— you look at the schedule, there's a very real chance he only wins 2 of the first 5 matches, and that you're gonna have to just fucking live with it through January at least. He needs reinforcements, and, um, it's not really a foregone conclusion if he actually will get that. So I don't know with this team, it's pissing me off a little bit, but we gotta back the manager and back the team. Yeah. It's not, uh, not as bad as the Browns, but no, it could always be worse.

It could always be worse. Although Shedeur Sanders looks fucking good. Just saying. Yeah. Uh, so I think that'll do it for this episode.

Uh, we'll talk more Premier League next time. Uh, I, I knew F1 would kind of dominate the segment in the new Celtic boss as well, so We will discuss more Premier League next time around. Arsenal dropped points. They actually lost in a last kick of the game situation against Aston Villa. So they are, I think, only 2 points ahead of City now.

So, uh, I'm assuming you would like to save the, uh, World Cup discussion for a future podcast. I did forget about that. We could do a little, uh, quick take about this. A take of the draw, maybe? Yeah, uh, let me pull up the groups.

Uh, we'll just talk about the US group and then we can go into more detail probably next week.

Uh, but yeah, you know, very favorable draw for— if from a United States perspective, I was actually very happy with how it went. Um, The United States are in Group D. They drew Paraguay and Australia, and then they're gonna get a playoff winner from Europe who the smart money would be that that's going to be Turkey. Either way, the US should advance from that group. Who is drawing the balls? Well, it was Wayne Gretzky, Aaron Judge, Shaq, and Tom Brady.

Oh, interesting.

Uh, the actual draw was so fucking dumb, by the way.

I could go on. I mean, I've already dropped a lot of F-bombs in this show, but I could do a whole podcast about how farcical that stupid fucking draw was. Okay, um, you know where this is headed, so I'll just say one thing. FIFA, it's not smart to play politics. It's not smart to play politics because it eventually bites you in the ass, and it's going to at some point.

Okay, so Infantino, you gotta get Mr. President's cock out of your mouth at some point. Please stop. You make yourself look so fucking dumb. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't watch it, so I don't know, but okay. He awarded Donald Trump with the first ever FIFA Peace Prize.

So all year Infantino has been butt buddies. He does this every time there's a fucking World Cup, which We've had a real glowing track record with where these tournaments are even being held, by the way. Let's see. Let's run it back to Qatar, where slave labor was used to build stadiums and 3,000 people died building stadiums. Oh, okay.

You know, we'll look past that. Let's see. Where was the last one before that? Russia. And he was fucking chumming it up with Vladimir Putin.

And before that, it was Brazil where they had no fucking money to build any of these stadiums and they did it anyways. And now they're all dilapidated and not in use. And also people died. And now you're attaching yourself to, love him or hate him, Donald Trump, who is what he is. Okay.

And to give him— to make up an award, give it to him. And cite all of these dumb fucking reasons to give him this award and then have him do his little song and dance up there. This is a draw for a soccer tournament. Why does it look like a goddamn political rally? Yeah, that's just— I can't, I cannot deal with that shit.

Yeah, that's it. That's what I'll say. No, I, I Listen, these types of scenarios should not be intertwined with politics, although everything follows the money. So the money is building the stadium, making the, um, you know, making it a destination for certain types of people. Obviously you and I could never go to this thing, not without blowing a lot of money, right?

So follow the money, but as we do in most major sports. Yeah, I just— you— that, that, that's gonna— you're gonna piss off the wrong person at some point, and we've seen that a couple of times, uh, in this country the past year. So I'll leave it there. As far as the draw for the U.S. men's national team soccer perspective, yeah, very favorable. Paraguay are by no means, uh, a top dog South American team.

Australia are as weak as they've been in a long time. Um, now those are kind of famous last words, I suppose, but Interestingly enough, our— was it our October friendly window? We played both of these teams and beat them with like a B-team roster. Those are friendlies, so take from that what you will. It's just funny how that worked out.

We just played both of those teams, um, so we will be very well acquainted with them. Uh, I'm looking forward to the tournament as, you know, a sporting event. Um, very interesting. You know, 48 teams, there's gonna be some fucking— there's gonna be some, some beatings in the group stage. Haiti and Curaçao, for example, New Zealand— these are not really good teams regardless of the fact that they're in the World Cup.

And I, I do think there's, there's a lot less jeopardy in the group stage this year because of how many teams there are, some group— I think 8 of the best 3rd place teams are gonna make it out, which is new to the World Cup. So like, it would take a complete disaster for the US not to make it out of the group, but weird, stranger things have happened. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I think that's officially it. Okay, promising, promising for the draw, I guess, for us, and Looking forward to the ball on the pitch in June.

June, I think it is 11th or June 10th is the first. We, we know the schedule now, which is exciting. Very interesting first matchup. It's June 11th, 3 PM. That's a Thursday.

Mexico will square off with South Africa as the first, the opening night matchup in the 2026 World Cup. That'll be at the Estadio Azteca. That's a very interesting matchup because that was the first game of the 2010 World Cup that South Africa hosted, um, and there's a very famous goal from that game. So I would imagine there'll be some fireworks in that, and that, that's a great way to start off the match. Or, or the tournament.

I think Mexico, you don't have to be, um, very smart to realize that is a soccer-crazed nation, and for them to kick off the World Cup I think is a very smart decision. So looking forward to that in almost exactly 7 months. So yeah, I'll be here before you know it.

All right. I think that's a show. Yep, time to go.

For executive producer Richard Tanaka. This has been Tackling the Chicane.

Copyright 2025 Studio 2520. We'll see you next time.