u/pleasedontPM

Here is the game time for the last three games and the average minutes per match.

Player	Brest	Lens	Paris FC	Average
Lucas Beraldo	90	90	90	90
Illia Zabarnyi	90	90	90	90
Dro Fernández	90	90	45	75
Senny Mayulu	90	90	33	71
Marquinhos	90	0	90	60
Fabián Ruiz Peña	60	30	90	60
Matvei Safonov	0	90	90	60
Bradley Barcola	68	45	57	57
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia	30	71	57	53
Lucas Hernández	90	60	0	50
Gonçalo Ramos	60	19	64	48
Ousmane Dembélé	30	75	26	44
Désiré Doué	38	90	0	43
João Neves	22	75	23	40
Vitinha	0	45	67	37
Renato Marin	90	0	0	30
Lee Kang-in	52	0	33	28
Dimitri Lucea	0	15	45	20
Warren Zaïre-Emery	0	0	57	19
Ibrahim Mbaye	0	15	33	16

Some thoughts:

• everyone knows that Beraldo and Zabarnyi won't start the final, but they are playing a lot in L1 as always
• Dro got a lot of minutes, as Mayulu in the set of promising young players who are still too green to start the final.
• final starters played at most 180 minutes, as two games like Marquinhos, Safonov, Vitinha, or Doué, or as parts of the three games like Fabian, Kvara, Dembélé, Neves.
• Hakimi, Pacho and Mendes are likely to start the final but were completely rested to fully recover.
• Barcola, Ramos, Hernandez and Kang In Lee are prime candidates to enter as substitutes, and played less. WZE could even challenge Hakimi for a starting position depending on how fit he is, but he was injured and missed the first two games.
• Lucea wasn't bad, I feel sorry for his concussion
• Mbaye isn't really favored by the coach, I don't know what happens in training, of if it is the reason he is not playing more.

Here are questions that will only be definitively answered at the game on Wednesday, but while we wait we may as well guess a bit ourselves:

• Doué or Barcola: that seems to be the only composition uncertainty. Doué is better right now, and Barcola played the whole game against Lorient. So this seems to favor Doué. On the other hand, Barcola makes more runs in behind, and that could compensate a bit for Hakimi's absence. This coupled with Dembélé could turn into assists, when Doué has more of a "main character" attitude. Finally, if he starts all the big games on the bench, he might want to move away next summer, and we would miss him.

• How to deal with Olise? Mendes struggled a lot, and needed Kvara's help a lot during the first leg. Will Ruiz be able to reinforce this side by switching with Mendes whenever Mendes goes attacking?

• Should WZE take a more defensive approach, and leave more freedom to Mendes on the other side? Wouldn't that open too much space for Olise? Or would it pin Olise more in a defensive position?

• Pacho was sub-par in the last two games, and is likely going to play 90' for the fourth time in eleven days (he is the only one to have played all three games for 90'). Are you concerned about his performance on Wednesday?

I now everyone wants to talk about Bayern, but there is a game on Saturday. So here is a review of the squad.

• Suspended: Ramos
• Injured: Hakimi, Chevalier
• Probably Rested: Dembélé, Neves, Vitinha, Marquinhos, Kvaratskhelia, Mendes
• Possibly Rested: Doué, WZE
• Should have some time: Barcola, Mayulu, Hernandez
• Probably playing: Beraldo, Zabarnyi, Lee, Dro, Mbaye

So the team could be:

Marin (why not after all ?)

WZE - Zabarnyi - Beraldo - Hernandez

Mayulu - Lee - Dro

Doué - Mbaye - Barcola

I don't think there were any academy players with the pros in recent trainings, could we see any on the bench on Saturday?

edit: I forgot Ruiz! He could play, but not the full game.

Just a thread to discuss some tidbits, related to tomorrow's game.

• we still don't know exactly how fit are our uncertain players, but at least every one was in training this morning

• Bayern lost a replacement option with the week-end injury of Raphaël Guerreiro.

• The referee team and officials appointed tomorrow is:

  • Referee: Sandro Schärer SUI
  • Assistant Referee 1: Ángel Nevado Rodríguez ESP
  • Assistant Referee 2: Guadalupe Porras Ayuso ESP
  • Fourth Official: Jesús Gil Manzano ESP
  • Video Assistant Referee: Carlos del Cerro Grande ESP
  • Assistant Video Assistant Referee: Guillermo Cuadra Fernández ESP
  • UEFA Referee Observer: Howard Webb ENG
  • UEFA Delegate: Peter Lundström FIN

This is pretty unusual, and what first seem like a spanish referee team where one referee has been removed because of his awful performances (Alejandro Hernandez Hernandez, you can google his past performances...) could actually be the complete opposite: Sandro Schärer's assistants are apparently both injured. Of course this raises the question of how efficient the relation between the main referee and the rest of the team will be. Another contentious aspect of this nomination is the game between Lille and Dortmund, where the staff from Lille were pretty disappointed by the outcome of the game, and the fact that the referee and Dortmund players were talking in German.