Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 426: Our first mini-episode
95 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to the first episode of a still-unnamed show. It’s envisioned as a minipodcast by Sounder at Heart. Today is Monday, Aug. 28 and I am Jeremiah Oshan. My hope is to do this podcast every Monday and every morning of a gameday with the intention of sort of seting the table for what just happened or what we expect to happen.
For today’s episode, I’ll be doing a quick breakdown of the Minnesota United match, giving a quick preview of the Austin FC match on Wednesday and looking back on my story about the Sam Adeniran situation
Sponsors
Nos Audietis is the flagship podcast for Sounder at Heart, which became a reader-supported website on Aug. 21. You can support us by becoming a paid subscriber, learn more: https://www.sounderatheart.com/about/
You can also support the show by checking out our line of merch including every past YachtCon design and our latest skull-and-crossbones logo.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
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.
Hosts Introduction and Game Highlights
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 come three games through 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 doll
Sounder Heart Mini Podcast Overview
00:01:34
Speaker
Is that why you young people call twerking?
00:01:38
Speaker
Welcome to the first episode of a still unnamed show. It's envisioned as a mini podcast by Sounder Heart. Today is Monday, August 28th, and I am Jeremiah Shan. My hope is to do this podcast every Monday and every morning of a game day with the intention of sort of setting the table for what just happened or what we expect to happen.
00:01:58
Speaker
For today's episode, I'll be doing a quick breakdown of the Minnesota United match, giving a quick preview of the Austin FC match on Wednesday, and then looking back to my story about Sam and Denerin that I wrote over the weekend.
Match Recap: Sounders vs Minnesota United
00:02:12
Speaker
Well, as far as the Minnesota game, you probably know by now, Saunders tied 1-1. They got a goal from Yeymar to take a lead. Kind of refreshing to do that. They looked okay. And then they gave up an equalizer, also scored by Yeymar. He headed in a free kick from Emmanuel Reynoso. I would say it was a totally fine performance.
00:02:38
Speaker
Not bad, not good, just fine. There are moments of genuine quality play that we saw literally none of against Atlanta. I thought the goal was well taken and the defense was generally solid.
00:02:53
Speaker
especially in how they handled Emmanuel Reynoso and Teemu Pukki, who, by the way, was just totally taken out of the game, as concerned as I am about Raul Rui Diaz, and we'll get to
Challenges for Teemu Pukki and Raul Rui-Diaz
00:03:04
Speaker
that. I don't know that I'd be feeling much better if Teemu Pukki was my striker right now. As you may or may not know, one of the greatest scorers in English Championship history has just one goal in like eight games.
00:03:21
Speaker
It's not exactly been the best transition for him. Of course, the big hiccup was on the own goal, not just Yemar putting it in the net, but Vargas' foul, which came after Vargas had also had a bad giveaway on a counter. Generally, though, I thought Vargas was one of the bright spots. He looked energetic, he had ideas, he helped drive the counter, and he finally looked like the player who stood out at the U20 World Cup.
00:03:50
Speaker
On the other end of the spectrum, I am really getting quite worried about Raul Rui Diaz. He played 87 minutes, he didn't manage a single shot, he showed some life and was willing to defend, but he never looked remotely dangerous and that's the primary reason he's on the field. That's now 9 straight games without a goal.
00:04:12
Speaker
almost all of them, well actually all but one of them is a start. And in all but one of those starts, he's gone at least 85 minutes. So it's not like he's not getting chances. He's now gone 732 minutes without a goal. I have not looked up what his previous longest goalist drought was, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is probably a record for him.
00:04:38
Speaker
And I would say part of my concern is that it's not like he's snake bit. This is not a situation like Eber was in at the beginning of the season, and I suppose is frankly still in. And that's bad, obviously, when you've got two of your top strikers, both of whom are making over a million dollars, neither of whom are scoring or looking dangerous. But with at least Eber is still putting shots on frame.
00:05:03
Speaker
Raul Rui Diaz is not, he has only put one shot on frame in his last six games. Now I am not someone who really subscribes to looking at shots on target as a meaningful stat. It's, well, I shouldn't say that. It's, I think a lot of people use that stat to talk about tactics. Shots on target are not a tactical, are not tactical. They happen, they don't happen.
00:05:33
Speaker
But what they do, do a very good job of illustrating how effective an attack, an attacking player is. And when you aren't putting your shots on frame, you're obviously not giving yourself a chance to score. And that's all Rudy Diaz is right problem right now is that he's just not even challenging goalkeepers. And at some point.
00:05:54
Speaker
Uh, I, you know, I actually asked branch Spencer about, about roll radius struggles and you could tell he's, he's struggling with this one.
00:06:04
Speaker
He does seem very reluctant to sit him, which is part of why we're seeing him play so much, despite the lack of the lack of production. And I think the thinking on that is if they can, they need Raul Rui-Diaz to score. He's their highest paid attacking, well, I suppose him and Nukela Dero are their two highest paid attacking players. But Raul Rui-Diaz is the guy who they are counting on putting the ball in the back of the net.
00:06:31
Speaker
And I think, especially in Brian Spencer's mind, he needs Rudy Diaz to do that if the Sounders are to be at their their peak.
Strategy Discussion: Player Positions and Coach Decisions
00:06:39
Speaker
Now, I'm sure what you're thinking is, well, he could at least try Jordan Morris at that spot. And I agree. That's really what I want to see at this point. I am ready to move.
00:06:52
Speaker
on, at least temporarily, from Raul Rodriguez. Maybe the break would do him some good. To his credit, he's staying healthy. I do wonder if in an effort to stay healthy he is maybe not pushing himself the way that he had in the past. That is itself a problem.
00:07:09
Speaker
But maybe he would benefit from coming off the bench. I'm not saying don't use the guy. What I'm saying is that we can't just keep rolling him out there for 90 minutes and expecting him to turn around his season when he's he's having right now the worst time of the season. He's 32. That's not an age at which you would expect a player to be completely falling off the cliff production wise.
00:07:32
Speaker
But he, you know, he's no longer at a point where you can just assume that he's going to keep producing at and he's, he's just not. Um, but anyway, I did ask Ryan Schmetzer about, about, uh, Rui Diaz's performance and his quote was interesting. He says, when do you pull the plug? When do you give him rest? He'll have less minutes on Wednesday. Do we go out with a different look versus Portland? Time is running out for me to make those changes.
00:07:57
Speaker
And I think he was talking about both, you know, Rui Diaz, I think he was being realistic that at some point you just can't keep
00:08:07
Speaker
putting Rudy Diaz out there, especially when he's not even looking dangerous. But I think he's also talking about, frankly, how his own job is potentially tied to this performance, and how he handles this. I don't know, I don't have any super insight to tell me that Brian Spencer is on the hot seat. But what I can say is that at some point,
00:08:29
Speaker
There is a point of the team just has to do some ownership, the front office, they just can't just watch this team fail. And I think Minnesota, the Minnesota match provides or approve. I don't think there's any sort of like imminent danger right now. But it's gonna get very interesting at the end of this week, depending on how it goes.
00:08:49
Speaker
You know, it's, it's obviously very possible that the Sounders win these next two games. They come out of this week feeling great. Maybe they ride that momentum into the, into the postseason and they have a nice run. I don't think that's completely out of the realm of possibility. Uh, there's of course, another scenario where they, you know, almost regardless of what happens to Austin, if they don't
00:09:13
Speaker
look good against Portland if they miss this opportunity to beat Portland at home for the first time since 2017, which is one of the most wild and frustrating stats that exists surrounding the Sounders.
00:09:28
Speaker
If they can't take this opportunity where you have a Portland team that is completely rudderless, they're coming off a loss to Vancouver, another loss to Houston, where they just fired their long time coach, their Gio Saborese, who has absolutely owned Brian Schmetzer during this rivalry. If the Sounders can't pull it together for this Portland game, I think there's going to be some very, very difficult questions being asked. And I don't know that we all will like the answer.
00:09:58
Speaker
And with that, let's look
Upcoming Match: Sounders vs Austin FC
00:10:00
Speaker
ahead to the Austin game. Austin is another opportunity for the Sounders to pick up points. They are on a four game losing streak across all competitions, and they've lost five of six that goes all the way back to July 12. So this is the team that is arguably in worse shape than the Sounders are right now.
00:10:20
Speaker
Their most recent loss was 1-0 at FC Dallas That included a Danny Pereira red card Danny Pereira as they're sort of like do everything central midfielder And so they played most of the most of the second half down a man But what made that loss so painful the winner from Dallas comes in the 97th minute
00:10:41
Speaker
it's, uh, it, and that is just, you know, that's a brutal way to go down. It was, they had managed to get there. Uh, I, I had heard that maybe Sebastian Drusi came off in that game with an injury. I don't know exactly how serious that is or if that's something that we need to be watching. Uh, but I,
00:11:01
Speaker
They're probably going to have to rotate their lineup at least some against the Sounders. My expectation is the Sounders are going to almost completely rotate their lineup. I think, you know, looking ahead to Portland, I think Brian Schmetzer is very aware of the stakes of that game. I don't think he's going to take a lot of chances against Austin.
00:11:23
Speaker
I'd still think that sounders should have a decent chance. They've got a lot of players who aren't getting minutes for whatever reason who I think are potentially quite good.
00:11:34
Speaker
I really am hoping to see Josh Atencio get a lot of minutes in this game. Of course, I wouldn't mind seeing him get a lot of minutes against Portland either, but he's one that I'm really not understanding how he gets, he doesn't get on the field more. You know, we might see Cody Baker in that game. We'll probably see Reed Baker whiting. I don't, I'm very curious to see who we see it forward. My hope is that we get to see
00:12:00
Speaker
Jordan Morris, and that he gets a shot playing forward. By the way, Morris wasn't exactly lights out against Minnesota either. He did at least managed to get in a couple decent looks. Didn't put either of them away. That's on him. But he was, he was very active to inventively, I'd actually say that without some of his defensive efforts, the sounders would have been a lot of trouble.
00:12:22
Speaker
in that game. But I really want to see him at forward. I think he's potentially the answer there. Of course, we may end up seeing Eber or Freddie Monteiro, neither of whom I'm particularly excited about seeing start. But hey, when you're rotating your lineup, you take what you can get. If the Sounders can get Eber off the Schneider there, that would be great. He is on something like a 19 game goalless drought.
00:12:50
Speaker
That's getting a little ridiculous, but we'll see what happens there. Who else might we see? I think we'll probably see one of the two center backs rotated out. Javier Arriaga looks like he's ready to go. I would expect him to get the start there.
00:13:08
Speaker
in the midfield. I think we might see an Obed, where I guess Joshua Tencio pairing. I would imagine Albert Rusnak will get the start over in central midfield.
00:13:22
Speaker
maybe Paul Rothrock on the right, Leo Chu on the left. And so I think that's a lineup that should be able to get some points. We'll see. Speaking a little bit more about Austin, they have been better at home, at least in league play. You may or may not know they lost both of their league's cup games. Both of them were played at home. Both of them were, again, sort of like bottom
00:13:47
Speaker
table, Ligam, Eki's teams. But taking those losses aside, they have won three in a row, and they've won five or six at home. So they're definitely still a dangerous team, especially at home.
00:14:01
Speaker
And if the Sounders can get a point in this one, I think they'd have to be very satisfied. I did think it was a pretty good quote from Joe Paolo after this game, where he said, you know, we can only really be excited about road points if we're getting all of our home points. And I agree. There's no reason to get excited about a point in Minnesota. There's no reason to really get excited about a point in Austin. But if you can couple those two points potentially with three points at home against Portland,
00:14:30
Speaker
You know now maybe you're cooking a little bit.
00:14:33
Speaker
All right, well, the final element of today's show that I wanted to talk about was something I wrote over the weekend.
Player Transfers and Performance: Sam Adeniran and Others
00:14:41
Speaker
It was available for subscribers only, which this podcast in the future will also be. We're putting this show out on the public feed in the future. We're only going to be putting it out on the private RSS feed that goes out to paid subscribers only. Just like this Sam and Denerin story did.
00:15:03
Speaker
So you may or may not know too much about Sam and Denerin, but the Sounders did a pretty good job of developing him. They signed him or Tacoma Defiance signed him in 2021 after he had spent several years bumming around sort of the lower levels of the German system. But he's a Texas native.
00:15:22
Speaker
He has a big body. He runs absolutely beautifully. He has a very, very nice left foot. And you can see that he has a lot of potential and for whatever reason, he just hadn't put it together in a way that was leading to production.
00:15:38
Speaker
previously, but in his first season with Wade Webber and Tacoma Defiance, he scored 13 goals. He set a record for Tacoma Defiance slash S2 scoring in a single season. He earned himself a contract with the first team and he started the year out with the first team. Had a hard time getting on the field and eventually loaned out to San Antonio FC, where he picked up right where he left off in the U.S.L. Championship. He scored 10 goals. He led them to a U.S.L. Championship title and
00:16:08
Speaker
Not surprisingly, the sounders picked up his option with what I thought, the idea that they would bring him back and give him more minutes.
00:16:19
Speaker
But instead what ended up happening was he was traded to St. Louis. And again, he started off slow. He ended up getting loaned out to the U.S.L. Championship about two months into the season, spent a couple of months on loan, started scoring again, came back off loan because St. Louis needed the body, scored two goals in his first game back. He's now scored five goals, I think, in seven games. And he looks like he may be the real deal here.
00:16:49
Speaker
And there's even, there is a story from transfer market that there's European teams sniffing around. St. Louis thinks they might be able to get a million dollar transfer. It's a great story for St. Louis. Uh, but it's a pretty painful story from the sounder's perspective. Uh, here's a guy who has five goals, more goals, by the way, then either of the sounders, uh, high scoring or a highly paid forwards. Uh, that's one more goal than Rollroy Diaz. It's, uh, three more goals than ever.
00:17:17
Speaker
The only player on the Sounders that actually has more goals than him is Jordan Morris with nine. And, and it's not hard to imagine that he could be a very useful player here. And so I started digging around, figuring out, finding out what happened that, that led to his departure. And, and Brian Schmetzer went on the record and basically said, we just didn't really rate him. We didn't know what position he would play.
00:17:42
Speaker
And then I found out some more intrigue sort of behind the scenes. Originally, Garth Loggway had agreed to loan him to St. Louis. This is like one of the last things that he did as Sounders GM. And he worked out a deal with the St. Louis GM, where he would send a international roster spot for less than market value and agreed to loan
00:18:11
Speaker
a Denerin to St. Louis in exchange for not picking anyone from the Sounders in the expansion draft. That effectively allowed the Sounders to protect all their veteran players, keep their core together, and then expose Jackson Reagan without any real fear of losing him.
00:18:27
Speaker
Uh, and you know, I suppose at the time that seemed like an okay deal, uh, for the Sounders and the fly in the ointment was, uh, shortly after the expansion draft, uh, someone realized that Sam and Denerin was not actually eligible to be loaned within MLS. Uh, players cannot turn 25 during their loan season. Uh, Denerin turns 25 late next month. So just right before the season ends. And so he, he was not eligible to be loaned.
00:18:58
Speaker
And so the St. Louis GM apparently calls Craig Weibull in a little bit of a panic at this point.
00:19:07
Speaker
Craig Weibel has been named the successor to Garth Longaway and he's like, well, what are we going to do here? And essentially Weibel said, I'm not going to, I'm not going to renege on this. We will still do the deal. We just got to find a different way. They ended up agreeing to a transfer or to a trade where the sounders would get a hundred thousand dollars in
00:19:28
Speaker
2023 GAM, potentially another $100,000 in 2024 GAM. And then they'd also retain a 10% sell-on fee if a dinner in order to be transferred abroad.
00:19:40
Speaker
And frankly, at the time, I thought that was an okay deal. Uh, still, uh, I, you know, uh, Denerin hadn't really played for the Sounders. Uh, I wanted to see him play for the Sounders. I liked him. I know there were people within the centers organization that, that liked him. Uh, but if he wasn't going to play here, you may as you know, you don't want to hold a promising player back and you got to give him a chance somewhere else. And.
00:20:04
Speaker
Uh, and it seems pretty clear that he just was not going to get a chance here, uh, for better or for worse. And so they shipped him off and, and you know, the rest is history, uh, that 10% sell on fee. As far as I know, it has pretty limited upside. I mean, let's just say they get a million dollars for him.
00:20:23
Speaker
My understanding is that the centers can't actually convert that $100,000 they'd be owed into GAM that they since they already got GAM in one trade. I don't think they can get more GAM They so that would just be cash hundred thousand dollars cash is no hundred dollars cash But it's not changing anyone's budget in front of that matter neither would a hundred thousand dollars GAM I don't know is really changing anyone's budget either, but it does sort of illustrate a
00:20:52
Speaker
A growing, or yeah, it illustrates sort of like a growing trend where the Sounders end up letting a promising young player go because they can't find minutes for him. And then that player goes on to be, you know, reasonably successful. And if he were to be transferred to Europe for $700,000 or more, that would be the third player the Sounders have done this with. Henry Wingo, similar situation where they ended up selling,
00:21:20
Speaker
sending him into a Molda in Norway. He turned that into a $700,000, $750,000 transfer to Hungary. He's since started playing in Champions League qualifiers in Europa League. In fact, I think he may or may not. I can't remember if he actually has played in the formal Champions League, but he's played in Europe. Sam Rogers was a center back who the Sounders really liked at one point, but he couldn't get a first team contract.
00:21:50
Speaker
kind of bumming around various places. And now he's looking very, he's playing in Rosenberg, which is one of the big teams in Norway, looking very good there. He had originally moved to Norway in their second division, playing for a team called Hamcam. But he translated, he played so well there that he, you know, was valuable enough to bring in another $700, $750,000 transfer fee.
00:22:14
Speaker
And it's just, I guess it's, and I'm a little worried that something similar might be happening with Josh Atencio too, where, you know, here's a promising player who just for whatever reason can't get on the field as much as it seems like he should. And, you know, I hope this changes.
00:22:33
Speaker
But I do think it shows sort of Brian Schmetzer's reluctance to really trust younger players and to give them more minutes. And I think we're seeing that play out a little bit in the way that the lineups are being chosen right now.
00:22:51
Speaker
You know, time will tell. All right. Uh, I've gone a little longer on this whole thing than I had originally intended. Uh, but let me know what you think. My, my hope is to do these more like 10 minutes than I'm at 20 minutes right now. So, you know, hopefully there'll be a little, a little, uh, Oh, I'll dial it in. Maybe get a little tighter. Uh, but one to also use this opportunity to tell you, uh, some of the other stuff that's going on.
Future Podcast Plans and Listener Engagement
00:23:17
Speaker
the rest of the week on this feed. Later today, I'm going to be talking to Nico Moreno of Polso Sports and end Sounder at Heart. And we're going to talk a little bit about some of the behind the scenes stuff that's going on with the Sounders that will probably be released tomorrow. Then I will do another one of these episodes ahead of the or after the Austin game.
00:23:41
Speaker
No, before the Austin game, I guess is what I said I would do. So I'll do it before the Austin game, and then we'll do the actual No Sadietes recording on Thursday night. So that'll come out on Friday. And then I'll do another one of these shows, probably Saturday morning before the Portland game.
00:23:59
Speaker
You know, that's a lot of podcast content. Hopefully, you're into it. Again, after this one, these episodes are going to be subscriber only. But I wanted to let everyone know that this is one of the reasons we want people becoming paid subscribers of Sounder at Heart. We're off to a great start there. But we also want to make sure we're providing value to the people that are paying. And we think this is one of the ways we can do that.
00:24:26
Speaker
But let me know what you think. Uh, if you have any good ideas for what we should name this podcast, uh, please reach out. Uh, you can find me at Jeremiah O'Shan at sounder at heart.com. I think that one works. Uh, or you can get me at editor at PNW soccer media.com. Uh, hopefully both of those should be working. Uh, but with all that said, I am Jeremiah O'Shan. Thanks for listening and I will catch you next time.
00:25:54
Speaker
We love you. Let's win another one!