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Planet Fútbol with Grant Wahl

Awkward moments with Giovani Dos Santos / Talking analytics with Opta VP

Planet Fútbol with Grant Wahl

Sports Illustrated

Sports, Sports News, News, Soccer

4.6859 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2016

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Giovani Dos Santos had an awkward Tuesday, and SI's Grant Wahl and Brian Straus had the distinction of being part of it. While Dos Santos was left off Mexico's Copa America roster–said by Juan Carlos Osorio to have curiously declined the invitation–he was in the midst of a media tour, and Wahl and Straus share their conversations with Dos Santos while it all went down on the new Planet Fútbol Podcast. Later on this week's episode, Wahl also speaks with Angus McNab, a vice president at renowned soccer data provide Opta, about data and analytics' place in today's game, how they're used as a metric to judge players and the more prevalent stat of expected goals. This weekend also marks the cup finals for Europe's five major countries, and Wahl and Straus make their picks for the FA Cup, Coppa Italia, Copa del Rey, DFB Pokal and Coupe de France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to SI's I's Planet Football Podcast, for each week we discuss the latest in the world of soccer.

0:14.3

I am SI.com soccer editor, AviCreditor, joined today by SI senior writer Grant Wall,

0:19.2

and SI dot com's Brian Strauss, a little later on, we have an interview grant that you were able to do with

0:23.7

Angus McNabb, a vice president at Opta, the soccer data provider.

0:28.2

But guys, first I want to start with some Copo America talk more specifically what happened this week with Giovanni

0:34.5

dos Santos. It was one of the more bizarre roster snub situations because it

0:39.7

happened while he was in the midst of a media tour, organized, pre-organized for this time.

0:45.8

And both of you spoke to him during this time.

0:47.9

Brian, you got him a little bit before the roster came out and Grant you had him on

0:52.3

XM radio as the roster came out.

0:54.5

Brian I want to start with you. We'll go chronologically here. You know when

0:58.6

Mediatore is organized for a player like this you assume it's because something good

1:02.4

is about to happen to him

1:04.3

and it was it was weird he just wouldn't talk about Mexico's team he made it seem

1:09.6

like he had no idea what was going on right? Yeah it's one of the more, I mean, we've all been doing this a long time,

1:15.0

and it was one of the more bizarre experiences I've had dealing with PR reps and a player.

1:21.4

The timing was baffling.

1:24.0

Their apparent ignorance of the timing was baffling.

1:29.0

And then this whole thing that came out later that Geo somehow snubbed an invitation to play in this tournament is baffling.

1:36.0

So it's tough to draw any conclusions when I'm so confused.

1:40.1

You know, he got on the phone with a couple PR reps and I started asking about

1:45.3

Kopa and and the woman who was working with him said well we're not here to you know we're not

...

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