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Episode 375: Q&A for the week of March 27
72 Plays2 years ago
We're trying out something new and making the question-and-answer segment its own episode. Let us know what you think.
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This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)
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Transcript
Episode Introduction and Sponsor Highlights
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of Nos Arietes is sponsored by Fullpool Wines, a Seattle-based wine retailer and proud sponsor of Nos Arietes since 2011. Fullpool 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.
Sounders' Victory Celebration
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. Come on! Hey, Ocean! Let's go! I want to say bye-bye! The Seattle Sounders have done it! MLS Cup winners! And Portland can't say he's cheating! Here comes Rudy Diaz through the middle to crowd it for Seattle! They have climbed the mountain!
00:00:51
Speaker
And now our masters of all that they survey. Michael Adero leaves absolutely no doubt. The Sounders rule the region. Seattle Sounders is confused. Seattle Sounders, the greatest MLS team in history. Is that what you young people call twerking? How does this one feel? This feels fucking awesome. Why do we win? Why do we win? This is Seattle Sounders, bro.
00:01:24
Speaker
the bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle and the hills the greenest green in Seattle like a beautiful child growing up
Podcast Format Announcement and Q&A Focus
00:01:42
Speaker
Thanks to Watson's Counter for sponsoring this episode. Located in Ballard, Watson's Counter is your neighborhood specialty coffee shop, brunch spot, and now, coffee roaster. Sourcing exclusively high-scoring coffees, Watson's Counter has started their coffee roasting project to showcase amazing coffees grown around the world. Their first featured coffee is the beautifully complexed, washed Ethiopian Odola.
00:02:04
Speaker
Follow them on Instagram at wantsonscounter to keep up with all the upcoming releases or check out their website at www.watsonscounter.com. Whether you want to stop by for your daily coffee to go or sit down for delicious Korean inspired brunch, Watson's Counter has got you covered.
00:02:22
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of NOS Adiatist. I am Jeremiah Shannon. Joining me today is Aaron Campo and our engineer, Likit. We're trying something new here. We've decided to break the question and answer session that we do normally as just
00:02:43
Speaker
the second part of an episode, we're doing like a whole episode on this. People seem to react well to us doing this by accident last week. And now we're going to do it on purpose and see how that goes. Uh, so with all that said, Aaron, why don't you go ahead and jump right into
Sounders' Goal Scoring Feats
00:03:02
Speaker
this. All right. Our first question is from our good pal Mark Kastner is four goals, a lot.
00:03:08
Speaker
It is. It is. Statistically speaking, it's not a number that you expect a team to hit more than a couple of times in a season, probably. Centers have done it twice. Yeah. So in five games. That's pretty good. Not too bad. Three in one of the other ones.
00:03:29
Speaker
uh two but oh that's right it felt like three it did feel like three it didn't uh all right this one's from oh man this is i i apologize m boudwin one oh i think i did okay yeah that doesn't seem too bad uh
Player Positioning and Performance Analysis
00:03:50
Speaker
How did Russnak rolled on perform playing out of position and was there a noticeable drop off with a tensio in the midfield? I was watching, but not at full attention outside of the first goal. I thought they looked pretty good. I did like Russnak more when he moved in the second half with subs. Well, I thought a tensio was really good. I was really, I was really happy, really impressed with that. I think I called him the guy who would like to mostly break out this year, a couple of weeks ago and saw some raised eyebrows. So it was nice to see him play well. I mean,
00:04:22
Speaker
Rusnak and Roldan both played well in those positions.
00:04:26
Speaker
Uh, they're not their first positions, but I thought they did admirably. We talked about Christian, uh, earlier this week and, uh, you know, how we played pretty well at right back aside from being, I think fair to say. Responsible to a decent extent for, for sporting school. Um, but aside from that, I thought he was, he was quite serviceable. Rusnak I thought was, was quite good. Uh, I think, you know, obviously you'd rather them be back in the spots that they're
00:04:55
Speaker
more comfortable in and that they're more regularly in, but in terms of how you feel about the season going forward and being able to rotate and whatnot, I think you got to feel pretty good about how they did.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, I would echo most of that. I remain unconvinced that Rusnak is better deployed as, I know this is sort of one of the debates that we've been revisiting time and time again, is whether Rusnak and Roldan should sort of swap positions and let Rusnak be farther up the field with Roldan deeper
00:05:35
Speaker
And I understand the desire to do that because Rusnak at one point was a double digit goal scorer for quite a few years. And he hasn't been as goal dangerous with the Sounders. But I mean, I think we saw again, like he's he is probably better in possession than he is as a focal point of your offense. And, you know, he looked pretty good in this one. He got into some decent positions, but he wasn't, you know, he wasn't really
00:06:04
Speaker
particularly goal dangerous, any more goal dangerous, I guess, in this game than he had been playing more centrally. And I think his ability to possess and create for others is probably better in the central midfield.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think from for the team holistically having that many guys that can break lines from deep positions is really critical to how good they are and what they want to do in the attack. And I think if you put Christian, who is, I think, nominally a more defensive player.
00:06:39
Speaker
further back, you're going to lose a little bit of that. He's a creative player, but I don't think he's creative in the same way as the Rusnak is. And I think it's working just the way it is. Next one from Novemberly23.
Jordan Morris' Talent Discussion
00:06:52
Speaker
Does Jordan have the highest talent ceiling on the team? Seems like when he is on, he dominates games in a way no one else on the roster can. Yeah, I think I would agree. He probably does have the highest ceiling. And by that, I mean,
00:07:07
Speaker
If there's one guy on the team who I think is capable of contending for MLS MVP, I think it's Morris right now. There was a time where Lidero was that player. I think there was probably a time when Ruby Diaz was that player. And I think both of them potentially are still really good, but I think Morris's ceiling is higher right now. I think too that when Jordan dominates a game,
00:07:37
Speaker
he does it in a way that just is different than the way Raul does. Like Raul, I could see Raul scoring four goals and doing absolutely nothing else the rest of the game. Whereas I think when Jordan is on, he's creating problems all game long in a way that Raul doesn't necessarily.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it. Like he might roll. You could imagine scoring four goals on four touches. Yeah, exactly. Whereas Jordan, that's not what's going to happen. This is from Bill Jones, TRPT.
Obed's Playing Time Speculation
00:08:11
Speaker
How much playing time should we expect Obed to get this year? Yeah, it's a good question. I think a lot of that depends on how comfortable they feel
00:08:23
Speaker
how many minutes they feel comfortable playing him. He's coming back from a pretty scary injury. And my understanding of the injury is that it is like an overuse kind of injury or could have been exacerbated by overuse. So I understand if they want to bring him back.
00:08:41
Speaker
bring him along more slowly. But I think that he's going to get plenty of chances to play. I think there are going to be a lot of minutes up for grabs. I think that he's got a skill set that's a little bit different than the other players that you'd be competing for minutes for. And I think that there's going to be a time for Obed, there's going to be a time for 10CO. And so I expect him to get a decent amount of minutes, but I would kind of expect it to come along gradually.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, like I would say if he gets a thousand first team minutes, that would be like maybe not the ceiling because any number of things could force him on to the field more. But like I feel like that's a realistic expectation. That seems like the the Max that would. The Max you would see without there being some sort of external factor. Yes, yes, that's that's a good way of putting it. I think that's a good way of putting it.
00:09:36
Speaker
Uh, so the next one is from a W Stiggs two-part question.
Podcast Transition and Platform Changes
00:09:39
Speaker
Uh, why did the sounder at heart podcast suddenly turned into this in my Spotify feed? And why am I unable to find any explanation? Also how much of the club's success comes from the culture and players wanting to play here. We must have one of the most stable rosters in all of MLS. Yeah. So the first question is pretty straightforward. Uh, basically what happened is box media stopped supporting their, uh, our, uh,
00:10:04
Speaker
our podcast and so they essentially gave us the keys to the feed and they said, either you can kind of start your own thing without our support or you can roll it into some other existing property. We were going to have to change the name of it anyway, since Sounder Heart is still a box media property. And it felt like the most, everyone involved felt like the thing that made the most sense was just to roll it into this feed.
00:10:32
Speaker
So, again, if people are new, welcome. Hopefully, these are voices you're familiar with, at least the bylines of people, but we'll have a regular
00:10:46
Speaker
roster of sounder heart contributors that will also be contributing to this podcast in various ways. So yeah, hopefully this meets your expectations and it's not too much of a shock to the system.
Sounders' Culture and Team Dynamics
00:11:00
Speaker
As far as the culture of the club success, yeah, I think your read is right. I don't have the numbers in front of me to prove this, but my suspicion is the sounders have a lot more stability.
00:11:13
Speaker
than most teams, maybe than all teams. And that you see that not just in the year over year return, but in the propensity for the centers to bring back former players, both as players and other parts of the organization. I mean, you look around the organization, there are
00:11:32
Speaker
Uh, former sounders everywhere from, uh, the broadcast team, like Brad Evans, like Marcus Hahnemann, like James Riley, uh, Lamar Nagel, you know, Zach Scott used to do stuff for the broadcast. Uh, but then, you know, like Brad Evans works for the team in another capacities. Uh, you know, Andy Rose is a coach on the team. Uh, Brian Spencer obviously used to play for the sounders. Tommy Dutra used to play for the sounders. Uh,
00:11:58
Speaker
you know, even in the front office, people like Craig Weibel was a sounder, Taylor Graham, who was on the business side, played for the sounders. So it's just like up and down the organization, there is a sense of
00:12:11
Speaker
of club, I think is probably the right way of putting it. And I think especially once you get outside of the year over year stability, I don't think anyone else in MLS even comes close to, you know, the sort of like the legacy that the sounders are able to build in that way.
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the, the way that the club is, is rooted in the community is just, it's different than, than other clubs. I think Portland is probably the only one that comes especially close. And there aren't nearly the, like their roster stability is not similar. And if you go, once you go to outside of the roster, it's like.
00:12:55
Speaker
I don't know how much stability there is in that way either. Yeah, I would say that there are some differences in the way Portland and Seattle's ownership conduct themselves that would maybe make farm employers a little more happy to come back to Seattle. That too.
00:13:16
Speaker
Uh, this is from Garrett Amini.
Technical Staff and Analytics Insight
00:13:19
Speaker
He says, haven't heard much about analytics since Robbie left. Did the sounders still have a dedicated stats person? Um, I meant to look this up. I know they do. Um, yeah, my understanding of it is that they, they have, when Robbie wasn't around, he kind of ran the show, not necessarily by himself, but it was, he was.
00:13:39
Speaker
the focal point of the analytics department, and now it's maybe a little bit more of a team effort, but that could be incorrect. Yeah, he sort of built out the team a little bit when he was here, so it wasn't quite like that. I mean, he definitely had some people on his team. He started to build it out in terms of
00:14:08
Speaker
of like video analysts and things like that. But the guy who is in charge of that now is a guy named Tyler Cox, who his title is soccer analytics and video analysis. And he actually came to the Sounders from Arsenal. I guess Robbie recommended him pretty highly. But you're right. The team, the whole team is sort of built out differently and it's a little like,
00:14:36
Speaker
Ravi had actually graduated out of just street analytics and was sort of like almost like an assistant GM. And, you know, right now there's a guy named Jorge Garcia-Folera, who does a lot of the video analysis. And they have like a few more guys on that side of things. And it's, man, if you look at the sounders,
00:15:02
Speaker
technical staff. It's a pretty robust group of people. It's kind of remarkable how much bigger their technical staff is now compared to even certainly like 10 years ago. Yeah, I definitely think that if in a league that sort of runs on parody and has such fine margins, you've got to invest
00:15:28
Speaker
in giving yourself any advantage you can and then the edge that you can and the sounders seem to have done a good job with that. I don't think it's any accident that
00:15:41
Speaker
through different GMs, different coaches, a lot of coaching staff turnover, different cores. They've kept a pretty high level of consistency. And a lot of that is just they have good people in decision making positions, but those people are also getting good information. I think that that's pretty apparent. Next one's from Topher again.
Hugh Webber's Role in Sounders
00:16:02
Speaker
What's the deal with Hugh Webber? I hear he's overqualified for his new job. How was that? Does he have any new ideas or significant changes in the works?
00:16:09
Speaker
So one of these days we need to get Hugh Webber on the podcast and we'll probably get a better sense of that. My only experience with Hugh was sort of in a round table setting and yeah on paper he looks like he's overqualified. He ran the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils and
00:16:31
Speaker
Those are pretty high-level organizations. He was also the president of the New Orleans Pelicans, I think, in the NBA. He's got a really impressive resume. He's also from Tacoma. He went to college here and knows Adrian Hanauer.
00:16:52
Speaker
on a personal level, so it was kind of a coup a little bit to bring him in here. As far as what he's doing, I don't actually have a great handle on that right now. I am interested to know how that
00:17:10
Speaker
you know, over-qualification actually manifests itself and sort of what kind of ways he's able to leverage his qualifications and sort of what new insights he might be bringing to the sounders. I don't know that, but those are things that I think would be really good for us to track down at some point probably.
00:17:31
Speaker
Yeah, the stuff at that level of sports executive is so far out of my, I don't know what they do. I know it's important, but I don't know what they do. But it's interesting, right? The business of sports is important.
00:17:46
Speaker
how successful the club is financially, certainly has an impact on how successful they are on the pitch. So it'd be interesting to hear about, but I just have no context for anything, any of that stuff.
Debate: Best Stadium Desserts
00:17:58
Speaker
Yeah. So the last question is from BT Weber, who I don't think is related to Hugh. But what's your favorite stadium dessert food? Can we agree Dippin' Dots are not the ice cream of the future? Why isn't there a food vendor that sells warm cookies and brownies? Seems like the perfect stadium dessert.
00:18:17
Speaker
I don't know that I've ever even had Dippin' Dots, I'll be honest with you. I'm not a big stadium food guy.
00:18:24
Speaker
just often overpriced it is often overpriced it's not getting me drunk which is a big part of it although you know less so than in the past maybe but uh yeah i just i don't know i'd rather eat something before the game and then eat something after the game usually but not a huge dip in dots fan or they've never been appealing to me if i have them have had them they didn't make uh
00:18:49
Speaker
measurement impact on me, I guess. I think that the cookies and brownies thing, it sounds perfect. I can certainly see the appeal of it, but ultimately those things are best when they're fresh baked and I don't think they're doing a lot of baking at the stadium. No, but Otis Spunkmeyer made a pretty good business
00:19:10
Speaker
baking those things in malls, I got to think it can't be any harder, right? True. That is true. Those are pretty, those are pretty bad, but they are, but like, if you get them, I mean, if you, my point being is like, you can bring in essentially frozen cookies and just warm them.
00:19:28
Speaker
I would think that's a, to me, that's like a pretty obvious, like, I like this idea. I think this might be a winner. Yeah. I mean, I do like the idea. Um, I wonder if the margins just aren't right. I mean, I know I feel like most stadium food is basically designed to be
00:19:47
Speaker
like justifiably insanely expensive while also being really cheap is sort of what they're shooting for. And one of the other things that it's interesting to me is how much more interesting the food options are at T-Mobile Park than they are at Loom and Field Night. Maybe that's just because they have so many more
00:20:11
Speaker
games that it's just easier to scale. I think that's a big part of it. It does seem like the baseball food tends to be better. I think baseball is just more conducive to going and getting snacks. That could be too. I also think the fact that Lumen hosts the Seahawks and Sounders who are successful and T-Mobile hosts the Mariners who are a lifestyle brand.
00:20:35
Speaker
Uh, is probably part of it. I mean, the Mariners have sort of explicitly made the value proposition of the team for a very long time. We've got good food and the ballpark's nice. I think that probably factors into some extent.
00:20:50
Speaker
That's probably true.
Mariners' Ballpark Experience
00:20:53
Speaker
Unrelated to the Sounders, I'm fascinated with this idea that I think it's motto pizza is this West Seattle, Detroit style pizza place that you have to order like months in advance. And they're going to be selling pies at
00:21:12
Speaker
at Mariners games, which just seems a little counterintuitive. But. Yeah, I feel like I've heard of situations like that where like a like really hot restaurant that has like tons of demand that they have to sort of restrict. Yeah. And it.
00:21:32
Speaker
Sometimes maybe it goes okay, but I feel like more often than not, it doesn't go as well, but I'm wrong. I hope everybody's successful here. I mean, I would almost be willing to go to a Mariners game to try this because yeah, that's hard to see it. In fact, I am going to a Mariners game on Sunday. Maybe I will. Yeah, you should try this. I mean, the food at T-Mobile is legitimately spectacular and always has been.
00:21:56
Speaker
Okay, it's it's it's great. I mean it is look look I'm making fun of the Mariners when I say that but it is a nice night out at the ballpark even if the team is bad and now they're like actually pretty good so Yeah, it is a fun thing to do. It's just you know
00:22:12
Speaker
I'd rather the game team went a lot, so. Yeah, well, that's it. That's the questions.
Closing Remarks and Sponsor Acknowledgments
00:22:20
Speaker
That's the show. That's our show. So on that note, thank you to our sponsors, Watson's Counter, who is getting ready to move into a new space. So hopefully we'll have some information to share with you on that soon. And of course, Full Pull Wines.
00:22:41
Speaker
our other sponsor. And with all that said, I'm Jeremiah Shan, signing off for Aaron Campo and Lick It. This is No Study Yetis. Remember, you will never get alone. Green Douglas, where were the waters cut through? Down to wild mountains and tangents you flew. Canadian Northwest to the ocean so blue. It's roll on, Columbia roll on.
00:23:09
Speaker
Roll on, Columbia, roll on. Roll on, Columbia, roll on. Your power is turning our darkness to dawn. Roll on, Columbia, roll on. We love you. Let's win another one!