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Episode 440: Preview of Sounders FC - St Louis
78 Plays2 years ago
Matt Baker of the podcast Flyover Footy joined us on the show to help preview Saturday's regular-season finale against St. Louis City. He explains how the expansion team recovered from a midseason slump to blow away everyone's expectations.
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Transcript
Introductions & Sponsorships
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, this is Christian Roldan. And Jordan Morris from the Seattle Sounders Football Club. And you're listening to NOS Arietes. 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 Sounders 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.
00:00:28
Speaker
A.O. Shen! Let's go! What a save by Fry! The Seattle Sounders have done it!
Seattle Sounders' MLS Cup Victory
00:00:38
Speaker
MLS Cup win! Here come three years through the middle to crown it the vehicle! And now they truly can't stop the celebrations. It's the Sounders' MLS Cup! Niko Liddo leaves out!
00:01:12
Speaker
Is that what you young people call twerking?
St. Louis City Game Preview
00:01:26
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of NOS Audio Disc, sponsored by Fullpool Wines and Watson's Counter, as well as our subscribers. I am Jeremiah Shan. Joining me today is Matt Baker of Flyover Footy to preview the St. Louis City game. Welcome to the show, Matt.
00:01:43
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Jeremiah. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be back. Always a pleasure to chat. Soccer, MLS, Seattle, St. Louis. Yeah, absolutely. So we're going into the season finale here. Sounders are playing for maybe a bit more, but there is something on the line here for St. Louis. They've already clinched
00:02:04
Speaker
or they've already become the first expansion team to win their conference, but they have a chance to set the record, tie or set the record for most points in a season by a expansion team. But then there's also potential MLS Cup hosting rights on the line if they can move up the overall table. What would you say the attitude of St. Louis going into this game is?
00:02:31
Speaker
Intense optimism for the club and for fans. I think the break, let's be honest, the break that we just had has been hard and it's difficult to get momentum going into this kind of thing, but I think the club has done pretty good job of starting to ramp up support. We have a fan appreciation weekend going on with different events. There's a concert on Friday. There's another concert at pre match on Saturday, so there the clubs doing what they need to do to get the support geared up.
00:02:58
Speaker
But from a fan perspective, we're looking at those two things. It's setting the all time expansion points record, shoring up the highest seed possible and support a shield so that if we make it that far, we don't have to worry about traveling. Because if there's one thing that we've all can agree on, it's St. Louis has been a fantastic team at home and kind of an average team on the road. So it's looking forward to using this as momentum going into the playoffs.
00:03:25
Speaker
And so overall, I have to imagine St. Louis, the organization and the fans are just sort of beyond pleased with the way the season has gone. Is that a fair way of saying it?
00:03:37
Speaker
Oh yeah. Uh, St. Louis fans are typically, we hold ourselves to a high standard from the Cardinals and the blues recently, but it's been, uh, overall just through the, through the roof as far as the optimism and the excitement this year, the little ebbs and flows that we've had have always ended with positivity. And so we've always bounced back from any one or two games street losing streaks that we've had.
00:04:01
Speaker
So when you look at the season as a whole, I think the thing after the Vancouver game a couple of weeks ago is everybody pointing to the predictions before the season. And it's Austin 2.0 from an MLS perspective, right? It's the bulletin board material saying, we told you so. Nobody thought we could do this. And so everybody's riding that high.
00:04:22
Speaker
Well, let's, you know, let's dig in on that a little bit. Everyone basically did predict St. Louis to finish last or second from last. And frankly, I would be surprised if
00:04:35
Speaker
If anyone would really take back that prediction, not because there weren't some positive signs, but the idea that an expansion team is going to hit the ground running without really a big name, you know, without a field, a big name field player DP with sort of like running with this idea that, Oh, the team is the designated player.
00:04:59
Speaker
And, uh, and all these other, you know, there was nothing particularly impressive about the roster. A lot of re reclamation projects in the roster. Now it's, it's all gone amazingly. But when you look back at the start of the season, and I don't know, I have to imagine even inside the organization, this season has exceeded expectations by a healthy dose.
St. Louis City Success Story
00:05:22
Speaker
But what were, were, were there signs? What were the things that, that everyone was missing?
00:05:28
Speaker
From a national perspective, I can't blame anybody for predicting St. Louis to finish last because look at some of the key cogs in the wheel. You have unknown DPs in Klaus and Leuven. You have the reclamation projects, like you mentioned, Samadendron, Jared Stroud, Tim Parker.
00:05:46
Speaker
Those are three of our top six leading goal scores right now and knowing that we brought from MLS has been castaways to usl never got the chance to MLS and then some old veterans who have been able to lead this team to what they become.
00:06:02
Speaker
It's a lot of everything has to fall exactly perfectly right if you're going to have success. And I think you really do have to point to the system, the coach, and the overall organization as for reasons that things did fall the way they did. Everybody's been given freedom to play within themselves, the
00:06:19
Speaker
players have responded very well to the system and the style of play that they've been asked to do from the high press to the very vertical movement up the field on the offense. And it's almost the perfect storm of pulling everybody's highest possible attributes together and getting the most out of every single player that you brought in for relative discounts.
00:06:40
Speaker
Right. And I think that's sort of the thing that I come back to it is, you know, I was, I, I, I, I look back at this and I go like, okay, yeah, no one believed in St. Louis, but like, let's be real. What was the reasons to believe? And you had, you know, you, you, you point to Edward Louvin and Joe Klaus as great examples. Here are players who had not really done much. Like, like I'm sure if you were a professional scout, you could watch them and say, okay, they have something here, but for them to have the seasons they've had,
00:07:10
Speaker
I mean, that's got to be like, did anyone really predict that, uh, gel class was going to be a 15 goal score that Evan Louvin was going to be, you know, a 20 goal contributor.
00:07:18
Speaker
No. And that, I mean, that's reason I think we're seeing a lot of newcomer of the year, uh, lists have Eddie Louvin on them because his, his impact to the team. We saw it in St. Louis last year was city two. And we talked the last time I was on about the runway that the club gave themselves to bring on the players last year, get them acclimated to the system. That was the one thing. I think if you're looking at anything that maybe national media overlooked, it was that aspect of.
00:07:43
Speaker
setting the club up for success, setting the players up for success because you bring in so many internationals. I think we had as many or more than Charlotte did last year. And the risk is if you bring them in late enough, then they don't have time to gel. They are dealing with the off the field issues. St. Louis put that to the side. They took care of all that last year. And so all these players had an opportunity to come in, learn the principles, the fundamentals of the system, have a kind of a dress rehearsal at the back half of last season against that level of competition.
00:08:12
Speaker
And I'm by no means saying that the success that they had in MLS Next Pro should have been seen as a direct correlation to what they did this year. But it helped. But it helped and it gave them all of that off the field stuff to get out of their minds. It let them become acclimated with the system so they could start this year really ahead of the curve compared to where a lot of expansion teams did.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think at the very least you can say that it raised their baseline performance. And so maybe, you know, and I think that if anyone, if they had been a playoff team, it would have been like, that would have maybe been a more reasonable or like a fringe playoff team going, if people had predicted them to finish 10th or something.
00:08:53
Speaker
But it just, it does amaze me how well they've maintained this. And especially where, to me, where they really shown us, okay, they jumped out of the gates, that was great. And they didn't quite maintain that level. But what they did do is they maintained a real core competency.
00:09:11
Speaker
even after they started losing players to injury that was inevitable. And, and I think what was most impressive is how deep this roster ended up being and how much faith the coaching staff showed in using bench players. And, you know, I think I heard a stat the other day that they've
00:09:27
Speaker
used the most subs, but they've only failed to use something like two subs all year, which is just a remarkable statistic when you think about the way that substitutes have been used by virtually everyone else.
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah. The, the idea of, of being able to withstand an MLS season throughout is often where expansion teams falter and they, they, you know, fall in the heat of the summer, but that's, that's been a big positive for St. Louis city in that when we had the five game win streak to start the season, we had all cylinders firing. We didn't even have really a full starting 11 at best 11, because we still had Yokee Nielsen, our center back and Jaboolu Blom, our defensive midfielder.
00:10:09
Speaker
who were dealing with injuries. And so Blom came on late. Nilsson didn't come on until the back half of the season. And after you, after you have that first five games, you get knocked around a little bit with some heavy competition. Your Seattle Sounders included in that and you have to bounce back. St. Louis found a way to do that by pulling in guys like Indiana Vasilev.
00:10:27
Speaker
to kind of add to what was going on in the first part of the season. That was really the emblematic of how the entire season went. When Klaus went down, it took two games to figure out what to do at the club and how to score goals without him. And then Indiana Vaslev came on. When Eddie Leuven went down while Klaus was still injured, it took a few games to figure out how we're going to play. And that's when Sam Adendron came back and was able to lead his charge. And he scored eight goals in the back half of the season.
00:10:53
Speaker
So you're having, you're having this depth that shows it might take a game or two to figure it out, but St. Louis has shown consistently throughout the season that it only takes a game or two, and then we can figure out how to compensate for those kinds of deficiencies. And then now we're seeing a fully healthy St. Louis. And so given everything that's occurred in the season, where you now have Klaus, Nico Joakini, Sam Adena on up front, adding in tools like Nukvi Thorison from Iceland, having some defensive help like Josh Yarrow, Kyle Hebert.
00:11:23
Speaker
come on throughout this season, you're really showing two, three deep at every single position and you're showing proven ability to win throughout this season. With everybody healthy, that can only be seen as a reason why St. Louis may go further into the playoffs because they've been able to rally all this depth that's been proven throughout the season and carry it into where we are now.
00:11:45
Speaker
Sam and Denerine is a player who Sounders fans have particular interest in. And there's also, as Ziel Jackson, we'll talk about him a little bit later. But Sam and Denerine, like you mentioned, eight goals. He has been every bit the player that I think a lot of sound, anyone who was watching Tacoma Defiance saw the potential of. I think even within the Sounders, a lot of coaches saw this potential.
00:12:12
Speaker
Uh, but he was having a hard time breaking in in part because he didn't have a clear position within the sounder system. What, how would you describe his role? What's his role going forward? And what have you seen from him?
00:12:26
Speaker
Uh, quickness that he, his ability to stretch the field has been impressive. His ability to win 50 fifties. Uh, he's, he's shown multiple times that he can go one V one to win a long ball, whether it's, it's controlling it or chasing it down all the way to the end line. And there, there've been highlight real moments throughout the season where he's won singular battles and he's been able to either create chances just himself.
00:12:51
Speaker
Or facilitate for others as you would expect a singular strike or two. And in our system, he often operates in a two striker role with either Klaus or Joe Keeney, but his ability to stretch the field to, to win some of those line battles and really be that, that.
00:13:08
Speaker
that line breaking forward that you need in this kind of system where you're playing the ball long, often you're not looking to do a lot of build up passes, build up plays. You're looking to move the ball as quickly as possible. And Sam Adendron fits that bill very well. And even when he doesn't.
00:13:24
Speaker
have a lot of space. You know, I can remember multiple moments where he's able to just flick the ball over into the goal with his left foot. And it's the, it's the balance that he often provides with that left footed attacking this. So you have Klaus or Joe Keeney right next to him or underneath. And he off, he offers an another dangerous opportunity on the left side that balances out our ability to move the ball up. So you're preventing defenses from cheating too much. And he'd wins those one V one battles more often than not.
00:13:53
Speaker
And is he still a starter with the team fully that is he been, has he been good enough to, or is that where, what is his role at this point? Yeah. And it's funny. You should ask that because when I referenced carnals best 11, it changes throughout the season. We've seen up moments throughout the season where, you know, almost the entire 11 is turned over and they've just ran with it because of how successful they've been able to become.
00:14:16
Speaker
If you look at the past four or five games, you have to say Sam and Deneron is a starter on this team. And he's beaten out Nico Joakini for that second striker role. Looking at the past six games, Sam and Deneron has started, uh, four out of those six games. And that's one Vancouver, I think was a, almost a throwaway because we tried to rotate heavily, but he's been playing as well as anyone else can expect right next to Klaus. I would be, I would be shocked and a little surprised if he didn't start against Seattle.
00:14:44
Speaker
I would be, I would think he'd be, he'll be motivated for that as well. I would think. And obviously Bradley Carnell is that kind of coach who he takes those, those player moments that mean something, whether it's a former team or something else related to that player's journey. And he'll give them that opportunity. We've seen him do it with Tim Parker in Houston, AZL, Jackson with Minnesota, even Nico Joakini with Orlando, indie bass, live with Miami. And so another reason that with Sam on the team now, which he wasn't, um, he wasn't broken through with us the first time we played.
00:15:14
Speaker
I think he came off, I think he came off the bench or he was at least there. I know he was. He wasn't out on loan yet. Right, right. Watson's counter wants to thank everyone for their patience, but now the wait is over. Located at 6420 24th Avenue, Northwest in Ballard.
00:15:31
Speaker
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00:15:53
Speaker
And so I'm just curious. One of the, the thing that always bums me out a little bit about Sam is we got to meet him right after he signed his first, first team deal with the sounders. And at some point someone asked him about his cooking chops or somehow it came up and he was.
00:16:15
Speaker
Absolutely adamant that he was the best cook on the team. And he was just ready to sort of like, you know, and I was very intrigued by this and I was hoping to be able to dig into it. We never really got that chance. Has he talked about that at all with St. Louis media?
00:16:30
Speaker
He has not. Well, that's a good one to dig into then. I was going to say Bradley Carnell also likes to bring those players with those moments into press conferences, which is Thursday of this week. So if he's there, I will be sure to ask about that. That sounds like one of those one of those intangible things that St. Louis fans just might like to eat up.
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Sam, the thing that I loved about Sam in the very few times we got to know him is he has this huge personality that feels like it just needs to be given some spotlight and he could be a real star. He I know he he's very confident. He has this great backstory. I guess he's multilingual.
00:17:09
Speaker
But yeah, he's a very interesting character who I'm a little bummed that even from a personal perspective, we didn't get to know him better here.
Aziel Jackson's Role
00:17:17
Speaker
But the other player that has some Seattle ties, although it's harder to, it's funny, I asked the sounders about Azeal Jackson yesterday, and I was like, what do you remember of this guy? And I kind of got blank stares of, I don't think he ever was in with us.
00:17:34
Speaker
I know he at one point was going to Crossfire, which is a local academy. I guess he moved out here as a senior in high school, I think. And supposedly, Tacoma Defiance offered him a contract. And then during their off week after Vancouver, Azeal and Sam actually came to Sounders training and were hanging out saying hi to folks.
00:17:56
Speaker
And has Azeal been asked at all about what his experience within the Seattle area, but specifically with the Sounders organization was?
00:18:06
Speaker
No, most of Azeal's questions and our feedback for him come from Minnesota, even with New York. So getting that far back hasn't really been something he's been asked about. But I was wondering, actually, in that video and photo that we saw with him with Sam in Seattle caused us to go back and look and say, OK, what's his connection? Because that hasn't really been something spotlighted here.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, so as far as I know what happened is he was with the Red Bulls Academy and then he moved out here for unspecified reasons. I don't know the backstory of how he ended up here, but he was out here for a senior year, I believe. And I think he was living in Renton, which is near where the training center is. And I guess he spent the year with Crossfire, which is sort of like the local competition for the Sounders for elite Academy players.
00:18:55
Speaker
And, uh, and there's some story, like, I don't know, like one version I heard is that he was an offer to contract with, uh, S two maybe at the time or what ended up becoming to come into finance. And he turned it down because he was looking for, you know, a first team deal. And then I guess he went into the draft and was drafted by Minnesota. I don't know exactly even how he ended up at Minnesota.
00:19:16
Speaker
And Minnesota obtained his homegrown rights. That was one interesting thing. So yeah, I assumed that however they acquired him, they traded for his homegrown rights. And I assumed it was from New York. It was definitely he never was officially within the in this organization, but I asked them first team coaches and they.
00:19:34
Speaker
They act, they, like they knew who he was, but they had, they were sort of taken aback at the idea that at one point he was training with the first team. And, uh, so that may not be the case. But anyway, if you want to dig into that, that's a bit of a backstory for you. More importantly, he is developed into a important player. Like as more relevantly, I should say he's developed into an important player for St. Louis.
00:19:57
Speaker
What can you tell us about his game and how you watch him kind of like a dinner in and you say how worse it's not like he has really sneaky skills. He has like jump off the page type of skills. He has the exciting skills that you look for when if you if you don't know anything about the formation style of play you just watch the players move around the field.
00:20:17
Speaker
He will draw your attention 99% of the time. He's quick. He's, he's good on and off the ball. He fits the pressing style very well because he's often one of the first players to initiate the press high up the field. And so he tries to win the ball back. He's good. Uh, he's a great two way player and he's one of, if not the most exciting players that we've seen in his, his journey with St. Louis has been fun to follow because.
00:20:40
Speaker
The beginning of the season, you know, acquiring him for low dollar from Minnesota, you bring him in, you know, he's young. And so you look to him as maybe a project over a few years, but beginning of this year, he saw time with city two and he was a regular with city two in next pro.
00:20:55
Speaker
succeeded there playing the 10 and eventually got his opportunity. He had a sub appearances early in the season against Minnesota. And then it was, it was that, uh, the fixture congestion, the injuries that were occurring over the summer where he really got his opportunity to start against the San Jose earthquake and with, with Sam alongside. So I think that was actually Sam and AZ's first start were together and a couple other players like Akil Watts and Josh Yarrow were a part of that group.
00:21:22
Speaker
They won that game at San Jose and they got to run with it. It was, and that's, that's an MO of Cornell, or if you, if you have an opportunity and you take it, then you're going to get more opportunities. And that's been AZ. So seeing what he's been able to do in this back half of the season, facilitating, creating, defending.
00:21:39
Speaker
He's been the typical number 10 that we really didn't think we would have an opportunity to see in this system. And he doesn't necessarily play make with the ball often, but the moves he can make very quickly to get the ball up the field if he has it and to create space if he doesn't have been what has come to be known as hallmarks of St. Louis style. If he's in the game, he's going to impact it one way or another.
00:22:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's, I mean, he's definitely a player who, you know, again, like a Denerin, you watch them and you go, it's not, these guys have very clear abilities. Like a Denerin is manhandling opposing defenses at times. He is scoring goals that are, you know, highlight real type goals. Azeal doing similar stuff.
00:22:25
Speaker
Uh, maybe not goal scoring wise, but with the ball and, and making moves, both exciting players, two players who I think are really illustrative of what St. Louis has done so well this year in terms of taking players who weren't given chances, but had skills and sort of like rising, really giving them a platform that they're, they're really exceeding at.
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah. And with, with some of those players you've seen with Sam, he gets pulled up from loans to USL championship. He gets his opportunity with AZ. It's almost you're seeing how long is his timetable with St. Louis going to be, because he's already garnered rumored interest from Europe knowing and knowing his age and knowing the contract that he's on. It doesn't seem far fetched where his time in St. Louis past next year might not be set in stone. He could be a guy that may be one of St. Louis's first sales.
00:23:15
Speaker
which is kind of crazy to think about given his journey here in such a quick amount of time. Yeah. Uh, so two more things I want to get into and they're sort of more focused on the fan aspect
Upcoming Match Atmosphere
00:23:25
Speaker
of this. Uh, first off, what's the atmosphere going to be like on, on Saturday? Is this, you know, is this a more celebratory, um,
00:23:35
Speaker
sort of an anointing side of thing? Are we going to see a banner raised for any of this kind of stuff? Or is this a tense playoff like atmosphere that you're expecting?
00:23:47
Speaker
Anybody from the St. Louis area as a St. Louis sports fan knows that we have no desire to raise a banner for a regular season conference win. Coming as a Blues fan, I've seen the Predators do that in Nashville, and I was one of the people who made fun of them. So no banners will be raised, at least if the fans have anything to say about it. I think the club gets it, so they're not going to be overambitious there.
00:24:10
Speaker
But honestly, I see this as one more thing that needs to be done before we can truly celebrate the regular season. We know the conference win, we know the points records and all that stuff, but a lot of those things have happened when the fans haven't been in the stadium.
00:24:26
Speaker
And so I think what you can expect is the fervent crowd that you've often seen on TV. You can expect the standing, the entire 90, the excitement, the noise. But I wouldn't look to celebrations yet. And the team has kind of encouraged that in the sense that the job's not done. We might have playoffs. We might have home field locked in. But if you want to be able to truly enjoy this and celebrate in the stadium with 22,000 other fans,
00:24:53
Speaker
The job's not done yet. We need a point to tie that points record. We need a win to set it. And that's what everybody's going to be building towards in that stadium. So all that noise, all the atmosphere and excitement is building to we still want three points because we want to cement ourselves truly as that best expansion team ever.
00:25:10
Speaker
And so this is always a question that I wonder in relation to that. You know, the Sounders came out of the gates pretty strong. They won an open cup, but then they they bounced out of the playoffs in the first round. And really, it was a slower build to sort of like their crowning achievement, which I guess you could argue was the 2014 supporters shield, but really the 2016 MLS Cup. They had to wait.
00:25:33
Speaker
Not an enormous amount of time, but they had to wait some time to build up to it. Um, and then you see other organizations like Atlanta, for instance, one MLS cup, I think in year two. And I, and I do start to wonder sometimes, is there a such thing as too much too
St. Louis City's Future Prospects
00:25:48
Speaker
soon? I don't think St. Louis is, is there necessarily at this point where you're worried about like, well, what are we going to do to top this? Obviously there are things, you know, presumably there are things that are better than what they've already achieved. That said, is there a sense of.
00:26:03
Speaker
We don't want to spoil ourselves too much because you don't want, I mean, I would think on some level you do, like you want to win MLS cup, right? But at the same time you need, there's a, there is some awareness of like, wow, we won MLS cup in our first year. What are we, what do you do for an encore?
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah, and we can't expect to pull a Sounders and go straight to CONCACAP Champions Cup and FIFA World Cup. I think that's nobody's thinking about that, but but you're right. And there have been rumblings of you know, whether it's from other fan bases to hours of you're going to pull in Austin next year and fall off or you know you're going to be bounced in the first round and something is going to falter and whether no matter how far we get this year, I think there is that thought in the back of everyone's mind of.
00:26:47
Speaker
This needs to be sustainable and it's exciting in the first year, but you don't want to be a one-hit wonder. You don't want to reach the pinnacle and then fall into the bunker and be a spoon contender for the next two or three years. The thing that I think has been descriptive of this season is the ability for this organization to identify and bring the most out of those castaways, those unidentified talents. We've used the term plug and play a lot this year.
00:27:15
Speaker
because whether it's AZ, Indiana Vaslev, Jared Stroud, Rasmus Alm, who we haven't talked about, those guys have been plug and play in their positions. If one guy goes down, another guy comes in, and over the course of a game or two, they've stepped in. So that gives us confidence going forward that no matter who leaves this offseason, the talent can be identified as long as the organizational leaders are still in place.
00:27:37
Speaker
All of this is under the presumption that Lutz Fenning Steele remains our sporting director for at least a few years. Bradley Cardinal remains our head coach for a few years, and they're given this opportunity to say we're not a one-hit wonder and we can sustain this for a period of time. If those pieces are in place, I think the idea that we're going to fall off isn't necessarily one that we're worried about because of the way the season has gone. There is a thought, though, that if you get bounced in the first round,
00:28:06
Speaker
then it becomes what was it all for or see they didn't have the they couldn't they couldn't last as long as they needed to they got they they lasted until the end of the regular season they didn't win any silverware and suddenly they're bounced just like every other expansion team that makes the playoffs does on that note though i'm excited about the three game first round series because
Playoff Structure & First-Year Comparisons
00:28:28
Speaker
This is a different playoff structure than anybody's used to with the PK aspect right after the three games in the first round. It gives you a little more leeway, I think, as an expansion team, especially to show that if you have one bad game, it's not the end of the world. You can bounce back. If you have a bad half, you can come up with a way to overcome that. It gives you a little room for error, so to speak.
00:28:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, I am interested to see how this three-game series plays out once we get into it. I will say, someone suggested this to me and I can't believe, I'm actually kind of surprised MLS didn't go with this format. But if you gave three points for a regulation win, two points for a shootout win and one point for a shootout loss, you would create an invite. The one thing I think that would be a nightmare for MLS is if you have one team that wins in regulation and they lose twice in penalties.
00:29:20
Speaker
which just feels like a really awful way to say, like, obviously there's no such thing as three game series. And so it's not like, uh, like this is not a thing in the rest of the world, but it doesn't feel like that's what MLS is going for is to essentially get knocked out by two ties.
00:29:34
Speaker
Which would be a nightmare for any team that happens to. And that's a concern for St. Louis because we're not good at stopping PKs in general. Roman Berkey is a fantastic keeper. I think he's goalkeeper of the year, validly in contention for MVP. But if there is a deficiency to his game, it's PKs. And so if St. Louis gets to a point where we're in the third game against the Dallas or San Jose, and it goes to PKs to get knocked out and that happens, nobody's going to be happy about that.
00:30:03
Speaker
No, I know I I just I'm like amazed that this is the the like they almost seem like they wanted this sort of set up where you or even the equally bad is the idea that you would lose the first two games and penalty shootout and it just feel like so dispiriting of like what were we doing this for
00:30:22
Speaker
That said, I guess there was a time when you lose one penalty shootout and that was the end of it. You think that over time we would grow more than reverting back to this idea though? That's a little disappointing. I agree. Well, Matt, thank you so much for doing this.
00:30:41
Speaker
I am really looking forward to this game. I think it's going to be very interesting from a lot of perspectives. St. Louis is a great story this year. I am sure they will be showered in praise when the end of season awards come through and they will be well-deserved because this has been a very impressive build that they've been through and it's going to be fascinating to see how they build off of this. Hopefully one of these days I'll be able to get out and see this wonderful stadium that you guys have. But in the meantime,
00:31:10
Speaker
I guess we're hoping for a good game on Saturday and and best of luck in the playoffs. Yeah, thank you. Look forward to having you out. And honestly, it's exciting playing Seattle in this last game. It's a little poetic and because you alluded to the US Open Cup win in your expansion year. So it's it's almost I don't I don't want to say like welcoming in the new expansion side from an existing team who had such a great year your first year. I think there's a there's a level of poetry to that. So it's exciting to welcome one of perennially best MLS teams to St. Louis to finish it off.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah, I know. I don't know. I don't know if there's been a ranking of best MLS expansion seasons in a while, but I would still think the Sounders ranks pretty high up just because they actually won silverware. I don't know how many other teams ever won any silverware their first year, but it's been, it is fascinating. I will admit that I was a skeptic when
00:32:00
Speaker
They were putting this roster together and thought it was very funny the idea that they were going to roll out a designated team or whatever the term was. But it's been amazing. And I think they deserve all the flowers they're getting. And you guys do a great job covering the team. So where can people follow you? What's the best way to, you know, give you guys some love?
00:32:21
Speaker
any social at Matt Baker STL and then our podcast at flyover footy. We record twice a week covering the team as much as we can. And it's exciting. It's been a fun run and we look forward to continuing it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I am Jeremiah Cheyenne signing off for no study at this and Matt Baker. We'll catch you next time.
00:33:38
Speaker
We love you. Let's win another one!