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Episode 391: The time Schmetzer got way too cute with the lineup
65 Plays2 years ago
The Sounders came into Sunday’s game facing an opponent that looked all but dead in the water. Sporting KC had gone winless in 10, had only even managed three goals scored and looked fragile enough that an early goal could have completely knocked them out.
Instead, the Sounders conceded a goal in the 4th minute -- the first they allowed at home since last season -- and then another in the 31st minute. That was more goals than KC had scored in any game this season and more than they’d scored in their previous 535 minutes coming into this game.
It was, to put it simply, a really ugly performance.
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Transcript
Sponsorship and Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of Nos Arietes is sponsored by Full Pull Wines, a Seattle-based wine retailer and proud sponsor of Nos Arietes since 2011. Full Pull was founded in 2009, is based in Seattle, and is owned and operated by longtime sounder supporters. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hey, this is Christian Roldan. And Jordan Morris from the Seattle Sounders Football Club. And you're listening to... There's no study at this. Here we go. Come on! Hey, Ocean! Let's go! What a save by Fry! The Seattle Sounders have done it! MLS co-pointers! Here comes Ray D'Ace from the middle to crowd it! The vehicle! And now they truly can't stop the celebrations.
00:01:04
Speaker
Seattle Sounders, the greatest MLS team in history. This is a tiny f***ing doll.
00:01:34
Speaker
Is
Sounders' Performance Against Sporting KC
00:01:38
Speaker
Welcome to another edition of Noce Adietta, sponsored by Full Bull Wines, Watson's Counter, and our Substax subscribers. This is episode 391, and we're recording on Tuesday, May 9th, 2023. I am your host, Jeremiah O'Shan. Joining me today is Erin Campo and her engineer, Lickett.
00:01:42
Speaker
that why you young people call twerking?
00:01:54
Speaker
The Sounders came into Sunday's game facing an opponent that looked all but dead in the water. Sporting KC had gone winless in 10, had only even managed three goals scored, and looked fragile enough that an early goal could have completely knocked them out. Instead, the Sounders conceded a goal in the fourth minute, the first they had allowed at home since last season, and then another in the 31st minute. That was more goals than KC had scored in any game this season and was more than they'd scored in their previous 535 minutes coming into this one.
00:02:22
Speaker
It was, to put it simply, a really ugly and disappointing performance. We'll get into all what went wrong, but Aaron, what's your overall reaction to that result? It wasn't great.
00:02:35
Speaker
Uh, my reaction or, or the result, frankly. Um, yeah, I think that it's working. Casey is very bad team. Uh, we talked on, on the last show about how this felt like an absolute must win slam dunk game. And that not only was it must win in just in terms of you got to be bad opponents.
00:02:53
Speaker
It's a must-win game because you need to beat them for the table. You've got to win your home games against the bottom of the table, just if you have hopes of being a championship team. But if you want people to take you seriously as a championship team, and you want to take yourself seriously as a championship team, you can't lose games like this.
00:03:13
Speaker
And I think that I know we're going to get into this in a little greater detail, but this felt like it was a game that was lost from the kickoff to me. And there were, I think, some pretty clear issues with
00:03:28
Speaker
the match-ups, the way the formations went up against each other. And I think that sometimes that happens. The Sounders were in a difficult position. They were missing some key players. They had to figure out there were going to be some trade-offs in the lineup, but I think it was apparent pretty much from the word go that
00:03:45
Speaker
this formation was not going to work against what Sporting Kansas City was doing. And it just felt like the adjustments, by the time the adjustments were made, the game was more or less lost. It's been a long time since the Sounders have had a game like this where at no point after Sporting Kansas City's first goal, did it really feel like they were going to get back into this game. You know, there was that moment after they conceded, I kind of chuckled and said, well, that was bad, but you know what, they looked really bad.
00:04:16
Speaker
early in the last game too, and they ended up wanting that one four to one. And then they just from the kickoff, just gave the ball straight away and continued having the same problems they had been having to that point. And it just felt like this is not going to happen today.
00:04:33
Speaker
There's confirmation bias involved in that, right? Like when the team is playing poorly, it doesn't feel like they're going to figure it out. Very rarely does, for me at least. But in this case, it just felt like there were structural reasons, tactical reasons that it was going to be an uphill climb. And even after the penalty, for me, it just didn't feel like it was happening. And they were even getting back to a draw. And frankly, I mean, a draw in that game is obviously better than a loss.
00:05:00
Speaker
would have also been unacceptable. I don't think I would have felt good about it. You know, I think I maybe would have been slightly less pissed off, but that's just the game that you need to win and need to unhandily. Yeah, I would agree with all that. I will say that, you know, they there was one moment where I I felt like, OK, maybe this is clicking into place. You know, Albert Rusnak played a really, really good cross into Jordan Morris. He made decent contact on it. It looked like a deflected off a defender and went out.
00:05:30
Speaker
Uh, ended up being called, uh, for a goal kick, but I thought that was a good play and it showed some ideas and it, and it showed some skill and, and whatnot. And if they had converted that, it was still pretty early. I think it was in the, maybe the 75th minute, something like that. Maybe it ends up going their way, but I think to your point,
00:05:53
Speaker
That doesn't change the underlying reality that the Sounders looked like garbage for the entire first half. I think the second half was better, but some of that was just down to Sporting Kansas City protecting a lead.
00:06:09
Speaker
At no point did the Sounders feel like they were dominant. At no point did it feel like they were just getting unlucky. They just weren't really putting it together. And I think, you know, maybe this is a good time to get into this. I'm someone who is always very reluctant to just like pin a loss entirely on the coach. And I don't know if I would put it entirely on Spencer, but I do think he left himself a lot of room for second guessing in this
Tactical and Structural Challenges
00:06:34
Speaker
one.
00:06:34
Speaker
And frankly, the least of those problems may have been Alex rolled on at left back. I think you can sort of excuse that away because there weren't a lot of good options there and we can we can sort of getting and get into those options. And it should be said that Alex did look really bad at left back like he looked as bad as you could probably, you know, he was somewhere in the in the single digit percentile of what you might expect him to do. That said,
00:07:03
Speaker
where I was really more bothered by was the setup of the front six and really the front, really specifically the front four. And I think Brian just got a little too cute. I think he just felt like he wanted to get, I think this was all predicated on getting Jordan Morris to be the nine, which I think in a vacuum is a sound.
00:07:28
Speaker
way of thinking about it. But the problem was he played him a nine and then he played a bear as the 10 and he moved Lidero out to the right. And there just was no cohesion. There was no plan. And I think it really left the sounders undermanned in the midfield in a pretty obvious way. Yeah, it was. That was my concern when the lineups were announced and I didn't have a great reaction. And then I thought through, well, look at who they're missing.
00:07:57
Speaker
This is a team you should be able to expect to dominate. And I, I don't, I wouldn't say I talked myself into it, but I definitely could understand the thought process behind it, but it just was not ever going to work. You can't play with two guys in midfield. You know, there, there was a reason that the four to four fell out of favor a while ago.
00:08:19
Speaker
And especially against a team that's doing what Spartan Kansas City was doing, which is packing the midfield and they got really aggressive with it, you know, after the after the first few minutes when it kind of became apparent how the Sounders formation was going to look.
00:08:35
Speaker
I think they figured out pretty quickly, oh, we can just dominate the midfield. We're going to make them go over the top. And the Sounders just were not able to do that because Sporting Kansas City also felt comfortable playing pretty deep. So, you know, the, the, the pressing, I don't think was necessarily issue. Like I, I saw some comments on Twitter during the game and so forth about like all the Sounders can't handle the press. And I, and I don't.
00:08:58
Speaker
think it was the press, it was just any pressure in the midfield when the ball got advanced towards the final third, the Sounders just didn't have any options. And so the Sounders ended up, I think, dominated pretty handily the possession numbers in that game, something like 60 to 40.
00:09:17
Speaker
But all of that possession was bouncing the ball around the back, bounce the ball around the back, bounce ball around the back. Maybe try a little four way forward, come backwards, punt it long, trying to find somebody into a channel and those channels, like it just wasn't there. And in the rare instances where they did find somebody in a channel and can get in behind, nobody could make runs through the midfield. There was no space in the midfield to make those runs. And it just.
00:09:44
Speaker
You know, it looked like something from the 80s, like it was just over the top, over the top, over the top. No creativity. The movement was really bad. Eibear, I'm sure, nominally was supposed to play similar to the way Ledero plays and drop back and receive possession and sort of function as part of the midfield, but he didn't. I mean, he was playing really as more of a withdrawn forward.
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah, you had about half as many half as many or maybe even a third as many touches as Ledera would normally get in that position Which I think speaks to the different way they played right and you can maybe you can get away with that if your Wide midfielders are playing as midfielders and they're playing in that second band in the midfield and so, you know, you you don't have the
00:10:30
Speaker
neat triangles that you might get when you have a 10, but you at least have somebody on the same plane of possession, different options, but really the Sounders were just playing with four forwards and two deep-line midfielders. And that's just not going to cut it. That's just not going to cut it. And on the rare instances that they were able to get forward and have some possession in the final third, both of those midfielders were pushed up. And so there's tons of space in behind. I don't think the defense looked good in this game.
00:10:58
Speaker
But I think it's really difficult to say that they were the problem in a game where they were just under so much pressure so constantly with no help whatsoever. The first goal
00:11:10
Speaker
You know, the fenders is again, didn't cover themselves in glory, but there's, there's like six midfield runs coming in. What are they supposed to do? Because nobody's tracking those runners because they're all pushed forward. Cause you've got again, four strikers. So, and that was just kind of a consistent theme throughout the day. It was, it was really frustrating because sometimes you, you gamble on the formation and you lose. But when you know you've lost, you need to make those adjustments a lot quicker than the sounders did.
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah. And in the second half, they sort of did make those adjustments. And we saw, again, some of that's game state, but the Sounders at least look like a cohesive unit in the second half. You know, when they were training last week, to me, it looked like they were going to be playing more of like a three, four, two, one. And
00:12:01
Speaker
with basically both A-Bear and Lidero sitting beneath Morris, but pretty tight. And I thought that might have made some sense. It didn't play that way, I didn't think, in reality. And if they had gone with a 3-4-2-1, I don't see why you can... For this game, it seems like it might have made sense to just to play Ariaga as a third center back.
00:12:30
Speaker
and sure that leaves you with Leo Chu playing as a wingback and that's asking a lot of them but I don't know I think that it would have been a much more reasonable gamble than what they ended up doing which was you know moving a bunch of pieces around and getting overly clever and I think at least with a three four two one in in that case you are
00:12:53
Speaker
bringing on a player who you have a reasonable expectation of succeeding and you're not asking too many people to do really different things and they would otherwise be doing. I don't know, maybe that would have backfired too but at the very least they wouldn't have been outnumbered in the midfield. They would have had another solid defender in there. But let's talk about this left back situation a little bit because this I think has gotten a lot of the attention and I think
00:13:22
Speaker
there's some understandable frustration. I also think you can say that it went about, like I said, about as poorly as it could have, but you can still, I think, see the logic of why they decided to go with Alex Roldan there instead of, you know, once you've decided you're going to go to a four-back formation and try to essentially play the same way you've been playing all year,
00:13:49
Speaker
I do think there was a logic in putting Alex there instead of either Reed Baker Whiting, who, as far as I know, has never played left back, or Cody Baker, who is a 19-year-old who has three career starts at left back, none of which are against MLS-quality opponents, and certainly none of which were against someone of Johnny Russell's pedigree. Yeah, I definitely think that
00:14:15
Speaker
It's understandable that when a player has a performance as bad as Alex Roldan had in this game that people are going to second-guess that. But I do think it's important to remember that he has played left-back before and looked pretty decent. I've never felt that he looked as good at left-back as he does at right-back, but he looked serviceable. And there just weren't any other great options, like you said.
00:14:40
Speaker
It's easy to Monday morning quarterback and say, well, Cody Baker would have done a better job. Look what he did, you know, in the open cup. And he's, he's played there for the fines a few times, but.
00:14:51
Speaker
I don't think that you can look at that decision and say that's the problematic decision, right? There were a few high profile moments that Alex had where he looked bad. I thought it left back, but I don't think that decision is what cost the sounders. I think that if you have that same lineup except you have Lodero playing as the 10 and you have a more cohesive midfield,
00:15:16
Speaker
I don't think Alex is nearly as big of a problem. Because he was under a lot of pressure all game as well. I mean, that's the other thing, right? Is that Leo Chu was pushed very high. He's not a guy that is going to offer you a whole lot defensively. And so Alex was just under a lot of pressure. And without any midfield help, you know, without players rotating over to help, he's got to deal with a lot. And that doesn't mean that he didn't have a bad game because he did.
00:15:45
Speaker
But I think structurally, he just wasn't put in a position to succeed. I think Jackson Reagan and Yeymar weren't put in a position to succeed structurally. Reed Baker Whiting, same deal. I saw some really harsh language about Reed Baker Whiting's performance, and it wasn't great.
00:16:00
Speaker
I just, I think that if you, you sort of alluded to this, but if you're in a situation where you've got to make trade-offs with the lineup, the center of the field is not where to do it. Like you should be building your, your lineup. You should say, okay, what do we need to do to make the central midfield work?
00:16:20
Speaker
And who do we put around that central midfield to put the best team on the field that we can? You can't say, you can't do it any other way. And I feel like the sounders approach in this game was we need Jordan playing up top. We want to get A-Bear on the field as well. We got to play Nico. We need to play Leo Chiu and we'll just kind of figure out the rest of it. And to me, it almost feels hubristic of like,
00:16:51
Speaker
like it's coming from this place of like, we're the sounders, they're sporting KC, we should be able to impose a will on them. And I understand that perspective, but I don't care who you're playing, you can't concede the center of the field and feel like you're gonna win.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, I would totally agree there. I understand why the decisions were made. I think that what we gained from this game though is hopefully the knowledge or a lesson that you just can't do that and you shouldn't have to learn
Lessons and Reflection on Defeat
00:17:27
Speaker
Okay, let me back that up. It's not that you can't see the center of the midfield. I hope that's a lesson they didn't need to be taught. Right. But A-Bear is not going to be a player who's going to help you control the midfield. I think is maybe the more
00:17:43
Speaker
coherent lesson that we're going to learn from this. And sure, if you wanted to put Albert Rusnak in the middle and move, uh, move Lidero out to the right and you had JP and Vargas or something sitting beneath them, that's a different discussion. Maybe you can make that work. I'm, I'm not convinced. Like I know some people are convinced that Lidero can't play on the right wing. I'm not.
00:18:05
Speaker
quite there yet. I think he's still got some, he could probably make that work, I guess is my point. The issue to me is just putting Abraham in the midfield and thinking that he was going to help you. He can do some things to help, but he's much more capable of helping you in the way that
00:18:25
Speaker
Will Bruin was helping you when they were effectively playing a three, four, two, one. And he was sort of lining up as one of those two central midfielders and doing a lot of that work. And that's what I would have expected a bear to do in that position, not in what he actually did, which is, you know, like you're really expecting him to spray balls around and like, come on, like, what do we, what do we do here?
00:18:47
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the other problem with this formation was the press. And the press was as ineffective as it's been all year. And a big part of that is Lidero is the driving force behind the press. And he was out on the wing. And you're asking Jordan and Abare to essentially lead the press. And they're just not going to do it as effectively. And they weren't as effective at it. Yeah. And I think that
00:19:13
Speaker
If you're going to do something that dramatically different, you can't expect to change the shape that much. Try to play the same way, but it felt like that's what they were trying to do. And when the options that are usually there weren't there in possession,
00:19:30
Speaker
All they could do was punt it upfield and give away possession. And it just felt like that was this repeating theme of the Sounders bounce the ball around the back, nothing's there, punt long, sporting Casey wins the duel, start all over again. And that's just an incredibly frustrating thing to watch when you know how much more talented the Sounders are than the other team.
00:19:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was and unlike the the RSL game last week, which we said, I don't think you're going to look back on the season and think, oh, man, if we only had those two points in RSL, I think there's a really good chance that we're going to look back on this team wherever they are. And we're going to look where could we have picked up points that we dropped points? And yeah, I think three points that you
00:20:21
Speaker
dropped at home against the worst team in the league, that's going to stand out. And maybe it's the difference between a three and a four seed. Maybe it's the difference between a six and seven seed. Maybe it's the difference between a one and two seed. Maybe it doesn't really make that big of a difference, but my suspicion is those are three points you're going to want. You're going to be looking at pretty frustratingly.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't, I don't see any scenario where the sounders run away with it. And, and those three points don't, even if all they do is give you heartburn on the way to the supporter shield, I'd rather not have to deal with that. I'd rather it'd be a nice, comfortable ride, but I don't want to say that was the supporter shield out the window. Cause it's too early for that, but it certainly makes it a hell of a lot harder. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It really does.
00:21:17
Speaker
All right, well, we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and talk a bit about this open cup game that we have tomorrow. And and then, of course, we'll do our question and answer session on Thursday or no, Wednesday, I guess. So that'll probably come out the. No, it'll come out on Thursday.
00:21:38
Speaker
But anyway, that's the way we're doing these things now. And we probably won't talk about the Open Cup on that show. But we are going to talk about it. We're going to preview the Open Cup after this. You'll listen to Nus. Adios.
00:21:52
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:22:34
Speaker
Welcome back to Nos Arietes. So we have a Open Cup game coming up today, if you're listening to this tonight. Sounders are going to be playing at LA Galaxy. And by all appearances, it looks like the sounders are going to use a pretty heavily rotated lineup, probably something very similar to what they used against San Diego Loyal.
00:22:58
Speaker
with some notable changes, the biggest being probably Josh Atencio is gonna, I assume is probably gonna replace Obed Vargas who has gone to the U20s for the World Cup. And then the other change is probably gonna be at left back where, or no, that's not true. The other change is gonna be left mid,
00:23:21
Speaker
where I don't know if Leo Chu is going to be available for this one. My suspicion is that he won't. He was not training on Tuesday. He hurt his foot against Kansas City. And so someone's going to have to replace him there. I'm not exactly sure who.
00:23:36
Speaker
but maybe paul rothrock maybe you know it's it's pretty thin uh maybe georgie um mananju i think is how you say his name he's a naivorian from defiance but my suspicion is would be a defiance player that replaces him but i guess the big question i have for you aaron is
00:23:55
Speaker
Do you want to see the Sounders use a Defiance heavy lineup in this one or would you rather see them go closer to first team and then just maybe go Defiance heavier roster, reserve heavy roster against Houston on the weekend? I think for me you've got to prioritize MLS at least until you're into maybe the semifinals and you're further along into this tournament.
00:24:20
Speaker
both because I think MLS games just matter more, frankly, and also because I think we've talked about this before, but I think these are the games that you have these guys around for. And you've got a lot of injuries, you've got a lot of rotation that you've got to do anyways.
00:24:43
Speaker
And, you know, I just, I don't know. I appreciate the perspective that the Sounders should be going for it in this tournament every year, but I just don't agree with it. I don't, if the Sounders still hadn't won anything else, like it was in 20, you know, 2015, 2014. Well, I guess they won the shield in 2014, but you know what I mean. That one MLS got a patent on the CCL. I understand putting a greater emphasis on this tournament, but
00:25:10
Speaker
You know, I'd love to win it, but I'd much rather beat Houston, I think. And, you know, those games matter in the standings. It's going to matter come playoff time. And, you know, this is why you, this is why you have the defiance. This is why you, you sign defiance players that aren't going to get a ton of MLS minutes to first team contracts.
00:25:32
Speaker
And if I had my druthers, it would be a little stronger than the one they played against San Diego loyal, but I don't because a lot of guys are hurt. And so it really does kind of become an either or sort of thing. I guess you could do 50 50 in each game, but then.
00:25:48
Speaker
you're kind of punting both, which is not ideal. So I don't know. And I would expect Houston to not be playing their strongest lineup, right? Like I think that we're still at the stage of the competition and Houston is probably going to be more of a battle for their playoff lives than the Sounders. And so for them, maybe this MLS game matters even more than it would for Seattle. So I want to see if they're having to choose. And I think that they are. I want to see the emphasis placed on the Houston game.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think the other thing that you have to sort of grapple with is that if the sounders were, let's just, and I don't even know, I mean the reality is the sounders played on Sunday, so I don't know how many, even if you wanted to push guys, I don't know how many of them.
00:26:31
Speaker
are going to be 90 minutes, capable of playing 90 minutes on two days rest anyway. That's sort of what makes this extra tricky, is that the sounders are on one day less rest than the Galaxy on both ends of this game. The Galaxy played on Saturday, the sounders played on Sunday. The sounders upcoming game is on Saturday, Galaxy's upcoming game is on Sunday. So they are able to
00:26:57
Speaker
more reasonably, you know, get guys out there with a little bit more rest than the Sounders could, even if they wanted to go for this, as it were. And the Sounders are obviously limited by all these injuries. They have six, I think they have six or seven guys, depending on how you count things, who are probably going to be unavailable for this game through injury or other reasons.
00:27:21
Speaker
Like they just aren't a lot of good options, but let's just say you do go for it and you're like, nope, Jordan, you're playing a bear, you're playing Nico, you're playing. And you just sort of like, you just go for this thing, right? Maybe, maybe Steph Fry is a, is it, you could theoretically put them out there.
00:27:37
Speaker
But then even if you win this game, they have to win four more games to win Open Cup. And so are you telling me you're you're effectively willing to punt five MLS games from here on out? Because that's not like it's one thing to say, OK,
00:27:52
Speaker
going to punt an MLS game for the final or maybe because it's like, that's just one MLS game, right? But this is potentially punting a significant portion of your season. And I just don't really see that as a viable plan. Yeah. Your pot committed, right? If you do it once, you've got to keep doing it. And I do think that that's maybe something that people don't always think about because
00:28:15
Speaker
The odds are that the need to rotate players. The injury crunch is not going to be that much better for any of these games. Guys will get healthy. Other guys will get hurt. You've got more of the season behind you. So the wear and tear is going to be that much stronger.
00:28:32
Speaker
You really are, you know, you're you're all in on the open cup at that point. And if you don't win it and you sacrifice, let's say four games, you could have had nine points. You get three instead, maybe, you know, something like that.
00:28:48
Speaker
I mean, that's the difference between first in the West and fifth, right? Eventually, you know, I mean, it's like that's a that's a big deal. And you got to be coming off a loss to sport in Kansas City that you should have won. Right. And like you are sort of like a little bit. You are sort of chasing points now in MLS as well. And you haven't played well in MLS in four or five games. I mean, even though their results had been OK prior to sporting Casey aside from the Portland game, obviously,
00:29:16
Speaker
the the Sounders the very dominant free scoring Sounders team of of early in the season hasn't been seen for a while and so you know maybe the results haven't caught up to that yet but they need to turn you know turn things around in the league before you can really be talking about giving up results at any point down the line but especially this this early in the tournament yeah and we talked we talked about this uh the last in the last round but
00:29:45
Speaker
It remains true. These are the games that I want to see. I want to see, like, the reserve players in. I want to see what Sota Kidahara can do. I want to see what AB Sisoko can do. I want to see what Cody Baker can do. I want to see what Reed Baker Whiting can do. And these are the games that I want to be playing in. Now,
00:30:09
Speaker
My suspicion is the galaxy, you're going to put out a lineup that is probably not first choice, but has some regular starters in it and they might be at a talent advantage. I mean, that's, that's the, that's the reality, but this is also not a very good team. Like they're one, I think one six and three, uh, so far this year, which is better than what sporting Kansas city were, but like not that much better. They just got beaten pretty badly at home by the Colorado rapids who all of a sudden that rapids game.
00:30:39
Speaker
the win over the rapids the Sounders had earlier this year is looking a lot better but yeah this is this is a game that you know on paper the Sounders are at a disadvantage but i don't know i stranger things have happened uh you know a first place team just lost at home to a last place team
00:31:01
Speaker
on Sunday. The Sounders can definitely get a result in this one, and I hope they do. It would be nice to, it would be fun to go on a little open cup run, but I'm not too emotionally invested at this point either. Right. I would much rather, I think we've said this over the years about pretty much every secondary competition, I'd rather go out early than go out in the semifinals.
00:31:29
Speaker
Right. And obviously you can't know that at the time. So you always want to survive in advance. But in hindsight, I'd rather lose my first open cup game. Then, you know, go to the semifinal and and not go even get to the final. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. And I know that a lot of people love the open cup and I don't think that there's like any sort of objectively right answer here. But for me, I just it's the
00:31:57
Speaker
Second, at best, most important competition that the Sounders are in. If they were running away with the league, that would be maybe would be one thing. Although even then, I don't think I'd want to sacrifice as much as you would really be signing up for yourselves to sacrifice. And imagine if you punt the Houston game and still lose to LA. Right. Which is like, the thing is that you're not.
00:32:17
Speaker
Right. Exactly. That's, that's the thing is like, I think a lot of people sort of like assume that your, your starting lineup is going to dictate the result completely, but we've seen plenty of, I mean, just today we saw, uh, some MLS teams use relatively strong lineups and go out in the open cup to, you know, do other MLS teams. And that's just like, that's one of the risks that you, you, you take when you, when you feel the strong lineup is like, it's not.
00:32:47
Speaker
it's not a guaranteed result i mean that's just the reality no i mean even when the sounders were playing really well they struggled to beat la with a very strong lineup at home right right and you know now they're gonna play a weekend lineup away for a game that i think the galaxy are probably targeting is one that is really important to their season you know i don't know i i
00:33:12
Speaker
The magic of the open cup cuts both ways, right?
Injury Updates and Impact on Lineup
00:33:16
Speaker
You can be on the receiving end of it just as easily as you can on the beneficial end of it. For me, it's just a secondary concern at this point. Yeah, I would totally agree with that. I'd actually go one step farther. If there's one thing that I
00:33:36
Speaker
wouldn't mind seeing in this game it would be like an Andrew Thomas instead of Stephen Cleveland. No disrespect to Stephen Cleveland but like I wouldn't mind seeing Andrew Thomas in a game like this. In fact, Andrew Thomas might be really good in a game like this where he is probably going to be doing a lot more shot stopping than distribution and he strikes me as the better shot stopper of the two and
00:34:01
Speaker
you know, maybe not the holistically better goalkeeper of the two, but it would be an interesting choice. I am genuinely excited to see like how Cody Baker fares because I think there's a good chance he's positioning himself for a first team contract. And if he is able to establish himself as like a solid backup left back right now,
00:34:27
Speaker
you know, he might be in line for some significant playing time because we still don't know when Nuhu's gonna come back. We didn't really talk about this in the first segment, but Nuhu was diagnosed with malaria and he apparently is on the mend, but they can't play him until, I guess one of the side effects of malaria is an enlarged spleen and he can't play until his spleen is basically returned to normal.
00:34:54
Speaker
And there's not a clear timeline on how long that's going to take. And in case people haven't heard, Christian Roldan remains out with in concussion protocols. It sounds like he basically did some rigorous exercising maybe before he was ready and as a result, he had a setback. And so they're just being very careful with him.
00:35:17
Speaker
Raul Rui Diaz looks like he's coming back, but he's still at least a week or two away, I think, from playing. Kellen Rowe, somewhat shockingly, was out jogging at Sounders training today. I don't know how much, like they originally said he was gonna be out six to eight weeks, but I'd be a little surprised if he's out that long, if he's one week in already sort of like doing outdoor exercise. And then who else am I missing that's,
00:35:44
Speaker
Well, JP will be back because he was going to be back and he should be at least available off the bench, I think against the galaxy. And then we talked about Leo Chiu, right? Most likely missing. And if he's suspended for the dynamo game. No. So what the deal there is that his wife is is due to give birth. Gotcha. I guess this weekend. And so they had already
00:36:10
Speaker
Scheduled him off like they already planned to have him to give him the time off so he could be with his wife For the birth of their first child, which hey, that's a pretty good excuse. Yeah, and But yeah, so he's questionable for Wednesday, but he's definitely out for for Saturday But I would assume he's back after that. Gotcha. Yeah, it's
00:36:33
Speaker
There it's the new thing is sort of reminiscent of this is for the old people. Carlos Guillen getting tuberculosis in 2001, just like for the mariner, just like, what else? What else could go wrong? Oh, yeah.
00:36:51
Speaker
tuberculosis, malaria, you know, why not? Why not? Right. Like, yeah, that's, that's a one's pretty random. Uh, that's definitely a first that I've heard for, uh, obviously extremely glad that it sounds like he's going to
Closing Remarks and Acknowledgments
00:37:05
Speaker
be okay. But I mean, we talked about this, I think last week, but like when I get the flu, I can't move for a month. I can't imagine like, you know, obviously I'm not new who he's probably in slightly better shape, but still that's a, that's a brutal one.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yep, yep, yep. Well, all right. Well, I think that's probably a good place to call to call it, right? And we have again, we have our question and answer, say our mailbag episode coming up later in the week, but.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, thanks to Watson's Counter. Thanks to Fullpool Wines. Of course, thank you to our subtext subscribers. You are maybe the biggest reason that we've been able to do these multiple shows a week. It's really helping us move forward and potentially move forward into the next phase of this whole project. So if you are a subscriber
00:38:01
Speaker
Thank you very much. If you are not a subscriber, but you really like what we do, I'd urge you to go check out our substack, which is nosudietes.substack.com. Other than that, I'm Jeremiah Shan, signing off on behalf of Aaron and Lickit. This is Nosudietes. Remember, you'll never get alone.
00:38:53
Speaker
We love you. Let's win another one!