Do you need to have a genius in your team to win a World Cup? 

How do coaches and teammates accommodate a genius and if you don’t have one how do you compensate? 

Gary and Cesc recall what it’s like playing with and against the likes of Messi and Maradona and how their genius can impact the whole dressing room.

If you want to win football matches then scoring plenty of goals usually helps. But does having the tournament’s top goalscorer mean you are guaranteed silverware? A look at recent history would suggest it may not be clear cut.

This is Gary’s chance to defend the art of the goalscorer and explain the mentality needed to be the very best. Meanwhile Cesc wonders whether England might need to do the unthinkable and drop Harry Kane if they want to lift the trophy.

You can’t win a World Cup if you’re not there in the first place. In this episode Gary and Cesc discuss some of the great omissions from World Cups and the surprise players who came from nowhere to star at the tournament.

They also debate the value of a genuine squad player and Cesc reveals the extraordinary story of Pepe Reina’s key role in the 2010 Spanish World Cup winning squad.

Teams failing to live up to pre-tournament expectations are invariably accused of ‘bottling it’ under pressure.

So how exactly do you handle playing in the biggest game of your life? Both Gary and Cesc discuss the moments when they faced real personal pressure in the latter stages of a World Cup and how they overcame their challenges.

Winning a World Cup does not happen solely on the pitch. The winning team must keep a squad of more than twenty players happy, which means helping them feel relaxed but also keeping them entertained. You’ve got to let them have some fun. But not too much fun.

We hear tales from the 2006 World Cup including England’s infamous issues with ‘WAGs’ and how Cesc’s first senior international tournament included a trip to a police cell.

When things go wrong the manager carries the can, but just how important is the man in charge? At international level do tactics matter, or is it all about motivating the superstar players?

Gary takes us inside a Bobby Robson team talk, while Cesc describes getting on the wrong side of Spain supremo Luis Aragonés. The pair discuss the best managers they ever played for.

You’ve got the players. You’ve got the right coach. Now it’s down to the tactics. With less time on the training pitch, what goes into preparing a side to claim the biggest prize of all?

Gary and Cesc debate what went wrong for England’s ‘golden generation’ in the 2000s and how different tactics might have delivered a very different outcome. Cesc also explains how Antonio Conte got the best out of Eden Hazard at Chelsea.

It sounds obvious, but if you’re going to lift the World Cup trophy the first thing you’ve got to do is safely navigate the group stage. Which is often easier said than done. At the 2018 World Cup, holders Germany were dumped out at the first hurdle, finishing bottom of their group.

Cesc recalls Spain suffering their own World Cup hangover in 2014 and Gary reflects on one of his worst moments on a football pitch in the 1990 group stage.