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Nos Audietis, Episode 330: Hot start, redesigning the crest and Super League
62 Plays4 years ago
The Sounders have tied a franchise record for best start through four matches. Discussing exactly how they've managed that takes up the first segment of the show, but after that Jeremiah and Aaron have a long discussion about potentially redesigning the crest and the possibility of a North American Super League.
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)
Thanks to James Woollard, Sounders Public Address Announcer, for doing our sponsor reads. You can follow him on Twitter at @BritVoxUS - if you’re looking for a British Voice to advertise your business or non-profit, please reach out to him.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of No Sadietes is sponsored by Full Pool Wines, a Seattle-based wine seller who recently released their first book, 36 Bottles of Wine. The ethos of the book, a highly curated look at wine categories that provide exceptional value right now, should be familiar to full pool readers. But there's loads of fresh content, and since it's not trying to sell any wine through the book, there's a bit more of a sass factor.
00:00:21
Speaker
And there's food. Lots of it. Fulpul's unique writing style is applied to recipes like leftover Thanksgiving turkey, schmaltz-a-ball soup, and pregnancy nachos. This book can be purchased through Sasquatch Books.
Sounders Player Introductions
00:00:32
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. What? Hey, Ocean! Let's go! Jordan Morris getting in behind Florian Youngford. Jordan Morris! Scores!
00:00:50
Speaker
And how's this for a save from Steph and Fry? Here comes Roy Deers from the middle to crowd it to Seattle. What do the Tigers dream of? They take a little Tigers in. It's the Sounders and an S-Com. I feel a lot better than Bob.
00:01:18
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
Sounders' Historic Start
00:01:35
Speaker
Welcome to another edition of Nos Adietta, sponsored by Full Pull Wines. This is episode 330, and we're recording on Tuesday, May 11th, 2021. I'm your host, Jeremiah O'Shan. Joining me as usual is my co-host, Aaron Campo, and Likit P, our engineer. It's been nearly a month since we last recorded, and I believe this is actually the first time we've gotten together since the sounders started playing games. So first off, I wanted to apologize about that. It's been busy.
00:02:03
Speaker
A lot of things going on in the world. I hope you understand. More importantly, the Sounders have tied their best start in franchise history going 3-0-1 despite facing three playoff teams from a year ago and a fourth opponent who started with nine points of four games. And by the way, Nico Lederos played a grand total of about 30 minutes. They've been using a new 3-5-2 formation that has at times looked absolutely amazing. All in all, things seem to be going pretty well, Aaron.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, I'll take it man. Um, you know, I think based on the last time we talked, we talked about. Wasn't it? I think we were both, uh, you know, not in the, in the camp of the skies falling, but I think we both had some concerns about how things would, would pan out, especially with Nico being out. Um, and so far so good. I mean, you know, seasons young, there's still quite a few games left obviously, but, uh,
00:02:57
Speaker
nothing about the way the Sounders have been playing seems unsustainable, doesn't seem fluky, doesn't seem like they've had a ton of luck. They're just playing really, really good soccer. And, you know, they've played teams. It's always tough to know in MLS whether or not teams are going to be good, but they've played some teams that I think people expected to be pretty good and, you know, have not had a ton of trouble with any of them.
Key Player Performances
00:03:21
Speaker
So, you know, even LAFC, they only got a point out of that game, but they
00:03:26
Speaker
I think looked like the better team in that game. I'm very happy with the way things have gone. I'm choosing to take credit for it because I moved right before the first game to a whole new city and look how things are going. Yeah, it was that Seattle energy. Yeah, they had to get the stink of me off of them and now they're doing great.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's, you know, the thing I love about this is that you can look at this team. You, you mentioned it. There's not really some, there's not one player who's playing so out of his mind that it feels. Unsustainably great. Like let's just take an example. We're all really ideas, five goals through four games. Very good start, but I think you'd be hard pressed to say.
00:04:11
Speaker
Like, I think you could look at his chances and say like, well, he missed a penalty. You know, he had a couple, he's had a few kind of close range misses that you, you're used to him bagging. Like he could actually have more goals. Like he's actually under, I think he's actually slightly underperforming his XG.
00:04:29
Speaker
And so, and then you kind of go through that and it's like, it's not like they're banging in these unbelievable goals. You know, you have Joe Paulo had a great goal, but other than that one, I mean, were any of these goals so well taken that you don't think there's sustainability in them? I don't. I mean, this has been, you got two goals from Freddie Monteiro.
00:04:49
Speaker
who I think is actually maybe excelling in this bench role where he just kind of comes in and goes crazy late in games. But you got a goal from, you got a couple of goals from Brad Smith, unexpected, but it wasn't like the goals were crazy goals. He was in the right place at the right time doing his job, right? Yeah.
00:05:12
Speaker
It's very encouraging. Jal Paulo, for me though, if I had to pick one player, I don't know. I guess there's three players who I think are candidates for the best player for the Sounders this early on. Jal Paulo, I think, has just been playing out of his mind. His two-way ability right now is just absolutely spectacular.
00:05:35
Speaker
Christian rolled on in what Matt Doyle is called the central winger role, which I find, I think is great I think it actually makes sense I get what he's saying he's just doing a lot of the movement, he's not necessarily tearing teams apart with the ball at his feet, and then new who
00:05:51
Speaker
I don't know. I was a little skeptical of the idea of him playing center back. I think the idea of him in a three-back formation does make a lot more sense, but he has been spectacular. And, I don't know, let's start with New Who.
00:06:08
Speaker
I'll say one thing that's not sustainable, I don't think. Dave shared a bunch of his defensive metrics and he compared them to the last three Defensive Player of the Year award winners and their Defensive Player of the Year winning seasons and he's double and tripling their
00:06:29
Speaker
tackles and interceptions and all this other stuff. I think that's not sustainable because I don't think teams are going to keep going at them enough to rack up those numbers, but he has been spectacular, absolutely spectacular.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's, I think that so far, if you want to point to any part of the, I guess it's not even really fair to call the three five two and experiments anymore. I mean, it's what they're doing. But if you want to say what has made this work so well, I think that knew who has been a huge part of that. He's completely shut down that side of the field. He's really excelling in this role. And, you know, I think you make a good point. Is he going to be able to put in performances like this?
00:07:08
Speaker
in a two center back formation, I'm not sure. I mean, probably not, right? Like it's unlikely he's going to put in performances like this in a three center back formation. But I think that his strengths as a center back are highlighted in this formation. And I think maybe some of the things that would be easier to exploit in a two center back formation are just less of an issue.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, with two other guys back there. But he's been, I mean, he's been lights out as a defender. And we've been saying for a few years now, you know, he is one of the best, you know, man to man on ball defenders in the league. And I don't think that that's really deniable anymore. You know, he's always been more of a defense first left back when he was playing as a left back. I think this role suits him just absolutely to a tee.
00:07:57
Speaker
He's been exceptional. He's been the bedrock of the defense. And considering some of the guys they've got playing back there, that's no small feat. He's going to regress almost certainly, because as you pointed out, the numbers that he's putting up statistically are just not sustainable. And if he does sustain them, he should have the trophy named after him, like for Chad Marshall, Defender of the Year Award. It should be the New Who Defender of the Year Award.
00:08:25
Speaker
I mean, this is the kind of season that gets you on big time onto the national team radar and gets you onto the radar of much bigger clubs. If you can sustain anything close to this, we're going to have to be talking about who to replace him with pretty shortly because he's just been completely lights out.
00:08:46
Speaker
And what I love is that he's still he's still so obviously new who like it's not like you're watching him and you're like, Oh, is that's new? That's not the guy I remember. No, he's still doing all the same stuff, except he's not bombing forward. I did think it was funny. He, you know, late in the game they brought in Javier Ariaga against the timbers and
00:09:05
Speaker
Uh, they moved new who up to left back and there were a couple of moments where you got a chance to kind of break out and you could just sense that he was like eyes big wide when he got across that halfway line and he was like looking for chances to get in and I loved it. Uh, but he's still, you know, he's still diving all over the place. He's still, I mean, he's.
00:09:28
Speaker
You know, one of the observations I made early in the season is that he has elite ability at doing things like shielding the ball. And you think, oh, that's a kind of silly thing to be called elite. But you see the way he uses that ability. And it's like any ball that goes near the end line, he wins.
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, he he has it. He has a way of using his balance, his positional awareness, his ability to read the game to sort of offset some of the physical deficiencies he might have compared to some of the bigger guys that he has to go up against. Yeah, because he's I mean, he's no physical pushover by any stretch, but you know, he's not a big hulking center, but he's no Ramon Torres. Right. And so
00:10:14
Speaker
And he just has an uncanny ability to use his body, to use his leverage, to use his ability to read the game.
00:10:22
Speaker
And he's fast and he's very fast. Yeah, he's very fast. What certainly doesn't, doesn't hurt. Right. So one of the things that's an interesting dilemma that I, it will be interesting to see how Schmetzer solves this. And I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Shane O'Neill go to the bench, not because he's been bad necessarily, but because I am wondering if there's some sort of rotation that's working here where, you know, it's just O'Neill's turn maybe to, to take, to take a seat and
00:10:52
Speaker
Because I really am dying to see what this three back formation looks like with ariaga in the middle jamar on the right and new who on the left.
00:11:02
Speaker
I don't know, what have you made of... Here's one of the things I said to someone is in the comments on Senator Hart. They made a comment about how, you know, he gets a lot of stick for being the fourth best center back. And my comment was the reason he gets a lot of stick is because he's not used as a fourth center back. He's used in seconds. He's been used as the second center back. And he's like, I think that a lot of outside observers see pretty clearly that he's the fourth most
00:11:30
Speaker
talented center back. Now, I can understand how Schmetzer likes that he's reliable. He knows who he's going to get, but then you also see he's not error-free. Against Portland, for me, that was 70-30 on him. Maybe Ro shares some of the responsibility for not screening his man better, but
00:11:52
Speaker
He just hangs row out to dry, that ball gets picked off, and then he compounds the error by committing a foul on the box when he's got other
Sounders' Strategy and Adaptability
00:12:01
Speaker
defenders around him. He doesn't need to do it. And to me, that's inexcusable. If you're there not to make mistakes, no one's asking Shane O'Neill to go out and win the game, but they are asking him not to lose the game for you. And when you make potentially game-losing mistakes, that's a big problem.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, and I think when you're making those mistakes and what you bring is not a lot on the other side of things. I mean, I think that there's two ways of looking at it. We've got a guy in Ariaga who I think everyone would agree is extremely talented in a lot of ways that Shane O'Neal never will be that makes some pretty dumb mistakes. Yeah. And then, you know, we had a guy for years in Zach Scott who
00:12:44
Speaker
was limited in a lot of the things he could do, but was extremely reliable and did not make a ton of mistakes. And O'Neill is kind of like this hybrid of, I think he has a lot of physical gifts and talents that Zach Scott didn't have, but he's certainly not Ariaga either in that department. And he does make mistakes. He makes them some pretty
00:13:08
Speaker
shocking mistakes, frankly. And I think your point about him not being the fourth center back is a good one. If Shane O'Neill was the fourth center back and he was playing half as much as he plays, half as much as he played last year, I would still be fine with him getting close to a thousand minutes every season. I mean, he's very good in that role. I think a lot of teams would be happy with him as their third center back, but he seems
00:13:34
Speaker
pretty firmly entrenched in the starting lineup. And that's, you know, we're not privy to what happens in training. We don't know for sure what Brian Schmetzer is telling his guys and whether or not there's somebody just not doing the things that they need to do that Shane O'Neill is doing.
00:13:49
Speaker
But with that caveat, it's strange. And I would like to at least see what it looks like with Ariaga, Jaymar, and Nuhu out there. Yeah. My fingers are crossed that we're going to get to see that soon. But who knows? I don't know. That said, there's been a lot of other things to like about this. You know, one of the big revelations is Kellen Rowe as a...
00:14:19
Speaker
defensive midfielder, I didn't really see that one coming. He's, you know, him, between him and Josh Atencio, I, somehow we've managed to barely miss Nico Ledero. And it's not that they're spelling Nico Ledero, but they're essentially the extra midfielder that's playing because of Ledero's absence.
00:14:40
Speaker
And both of them have been really good in their own ways, you know, uh, attention. His, his touch and his ability to make one touch plays is.
00:14:54
Speaker
kind of unlike anything I've seen from the sound, I don't know that there's a real easy comparison for sounders. At one point I was saying like he is doing a pretty good Gustav Svensson impression, but I actually don't think they play that similar. You know, Atencio is a much more
00:15:12
Speaker
You know, like he's the balls in and out of his his possession almost instantaneously. You know, he's he's not scared to take a to dribble and and do things that are more complicated. But man, he seems to hit such a true ball like he his every you know, it's like he's not infallible or anything. But I've been just very impressed by him. And then Kellen Rowe.
00:15:38
Speaker
has been like an energizer bunny. Like he's just been flying all over the field, doing, you know, all kinds of kind of thankless work. He, in his first game, he actually had three shots and almost scored, but this last game he didn't, you know, he wasn't as offensively involved, but he was everywhere defensively.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, they're a very good complement to each other, I think, when they do play together, because they don't really have super similar games. But I mean, the game that Ro is playing this year is not the game that we've seen him play in the past. Like he's, I don't want to say reinvented himself, but he's playing a very different role than he's been asked to play before and I think he's done it exceptionally well.
00:16:15
Speaker
Atencio has obviously been super impressive. He's very metronomic. His ability to make the correct pass, even if it's the simple pass, is exactly the kind of maturity and level-headedness you want. It's so common to see young players in positions like that try to do too much, try to play hero balls.
00:16:36
Speaker
Or conversely, don't try to try to just avoid mistakes. Right. And he's just, he's doing what he needs to do and doing it well for the most part. Um, he, he's the, whatever they're doing at the lower levels to teach the kids to read the game, um, they're doing a pretty good job of it. And that's, that's the hardest thing to teach. There's so many super talented kids coming up through American soccer that just their soccer IQs are not great. Um, and the sounders.
00:17:06
Speaker
do not seem to really have that problem as much, which is great. I mean, that's an important piece of development. Obviously, I think everybody's going to be happy when Nico is back. He's the best player that the team has ever had. And, you know, a great team is going to be even better with him on the field. But to know that they can play this well without a player that's so critical to their success,
00:17:29
Speaker
is pretty encouraging and to be able to see what they have and attend to a little bit, to be able to try different things, you know, playing Kellenroll in a central position is sort of like a shuttler, not a shuttler, but like a, you know, more of a box-to-box, six-eight hybrid type player. To find this stuff out now instead of like July in Houston on a Wednesday night or whatever is nice to kind of know what you have and have some options going into those games.
00:17:58
Speaker
Now, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot this year, and I hadn't really thought about much at all before this was, you know, when Garth came in and when they were kind of starting this project, for lack of a better term, where they were trying to kind of instill systems throughout the organization, I think a lot of people assumed like, okay, so that means you pick a formation, you stick to it, you start, you kind of plug people into different roles. And that was kind of, frankly, how Garth talked about it early on.
00:18:26
Speaker
But I think what we're seeing now is that it's not about roles and it's not about formations. It really is about a mentality of how you play the game and it's learning how to think things through. And it's learning how, you know, it's why the sounders can be playing a three, five, two at the first team and playing almost like a.
00:18:45
Speaker
a 4213 on the defiance and those are not incongruous. There's nothing wrong with that because they're all kind of being taught to play the same way. They're just doing it with different formations and the formation ends up being somewhat
00:19:03
Speaker
like a smokes like it's a system formation is not a system I guess is what I'm saying and a style of play is not a formation. It's like understanding space. It's like spatial awareness and it's understanding how the ball you serve.
00:19:21
Speaker
you want to put it in an advantageous place for the guy receiving it. And every second that you lose, every second he has to adjust his body is one less second he has to make his next decision. And it's like teaching players to think that way and teaching players to look ahead. And I think you're seeing that with Josh Atencio, you're seeing that with Danny Leyva.
00:19:47
Speaker
I suspect we'll eventually see that with Ethan Dobler. But it's why I think the Sounders could afford to have six kids from the academy training with the first team for all pre-season and even into the start of the regular season. And it's really exciting because it makes it feel like something is really building here and that it's not just going out and bringing in some really talented players, but that those players are actually
00:20:15
Speaker
you know, imparting some of their wisdom on these other players and you're turning into this, you know, like a real system here, which looks exciting. Yeah, very much so. I mean, it's, I think that, you know, this has always been Garth's plan, I believe, and he's been pretty open about that, about building the squad a certain way, doing things at the development level a certain way, having an organizational philosophy.
00:20:39
Speaker
And part of that is having a coach that can take the players that he has available, put out the best team he can have with whatever formation that looks like, whatever personnel he has to work with, and still play the way that
00:20:56
Speaker
the organization wants to play and has trained the people to play. That's a critical thing for long-term success. People talk about teams like IACS, for example, playing the IACS way. And yeah, IACS is always going to play a 4-3-3 more or less, but sometimes they don't. And they're also the biggest club in the Netherlands. Clubs like the Sounders don't necessarily have that
00:21:20
Speaker
they don't have those financial resources. They don't have the kind of academy reach that a team like IX has. So they have to have some flexibility. But they still look like the Sounders, playing a 3-5-2. Whereas in the past, they played a 4-2-3-1 a lot. They played a 4-3-3. And they look slightly different. But they still have the same philosophies. They still play the game a certain way, in a way that's pretty enjoyable to watch, fortunately. Because a lot of teams that have
00:21:48
Speaker
a philosophy that they stick to, sporting KC, maybe for one example, they always play the same way and it sucks shit. So I would much rather have a little bit of flexibility formationally and still play the kind of attractive tempo kind of soccer that the sounders have played for quite some time now. And it's good to see that that has stuck all throughout the organization and that it's the kids that
00:22:15
Speaker
started coming into the Academy and into the organization at the start of that initiative or coming up into the team and showing that experience. Well, you know, one of the other things I'm seeing and I'm really coming to appreciate is this idea of ground coverage and
00:22:34
Speaker
You know, it's one thing, I know that the idea of players running around and covering a lot of ground is kind of a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can look aimless and if players are running out, running around without a purpose, it can be bad, right? But with the sounders, it seems like they're using it in an effective way. You have a bunch of midfielders who cover a bunch of ground and it allows you to deploy everyone else differently. And it's like, they can,
00:23:01
Speaker
join the attack and they can get back on defense and they can go to, they can cover the width of the field relatively easily. And these are really valuable things in terms of the way that the Sounders are defending, I think. And, you know, a lot of people think of, you know, full, like defending as pressing and the Sounders aren't necessarily one of the hardest pressing teams. They're not
00:23:27
Speaker
disrupting passing lanes a whole lot in the off, in the, in the, in like the oppositions are in their offensive third. But what they are doing really well is they're closing down players at midfield. They're, they're not allowing a lot, they don't allow a lot of uncontested movement. Once the ball enters the middle third of the field and it stays that way all the way into the defensive end. And it's been really fun to watch
00:23:55
Speaker
And converse, I don't know what to make of this one, though. And maybe you have some better insight. I was looking at these numbers on fbref.com, which gets all their data from one of my blank on a stats bomb. And it's a little different numbers than Opta. But one of the things they keep track of is pressures. And the sounders have been
00:24:20
Speaker
the most pressed team in the league this year and it doesn't seem to be working and yet teams that don't press will some reason choose to press the Sounders. We saw that last week where the
00:24:33
Speaker
The timbers were actually credited with 60 attacking third pressures. They had been averaging about 42. So they increased the number of pressures in there. Like they press the sounders 50% more than they would have pressed a generic other MLS team. I have no idea what to make of that. Why do you think teams are doing this, especially since it doesn't seem to be working?
00:24:54
Speaker
I think to some extent the Sounders want teams to press them. I think that's a big part of it. I think that they invite pressure. I think that's a hard thing for teams to pass up, especially when they're playing from behind, as teams often are. And I think that that's also part of a two's game. Yeah, that's a good point. They've had some pretty lopsided games. That's a good point. But that wasn't the case against the Timbers necessarily. I mean, it was 2-0 for not that long, really. No, it wasn't. You're right.
00:25:18
Speaker
And so I think game state is somewhat of a factor, but I do think that, and this has been something the Sounders have done in the past as well, although I think it's been pretty extreme this year. They want teams to press them because they're pretty good at breaking the press. I remember it used to be a meme that the Sounders couldn't handle the high press and I know it was never true. It was never, ever true. The Sounders have always been pretty good at breaking the press.
00:25:41
Speaker
Um, and I think they've gotten even better at it, uh, as, as time has gone on, especially because that's become such a prominent tactic in the last, over the last few years is, is the high press and the sounders have, I think done fairly well with it. I think where the sounders struggle is, uh, where teams kind of sit back and don't press them because then they, they have to, you know, that's always going to be tougher to break down and, and, um,
00:26:06
Speaker
And the Sounders can be susceptible on the counter maybe a little more than we'd like them to be at times. So although it hasn't seemed to be that way this year too much. No, they've done a really good job of, and I think that the three-back formation actually seems to help there because there's almost always an extra body that's ready to defend that. And it'll be interesting to see what happens when they face a team that just decides to bunker in. I don't think that's going to be San Jose.
00:26:35
Speaker
But who knows? I suppose stranger things. No, that would be pretty strange. It would be very strange if it was LA FC on the weekend, too. We may have to wait a little while, but Austin maybe could do that, which would be the I think that's the last game for the for the break. So maybe we will get a look at at that before we go into the break, which is we're now weeks ahead of ourselves. But it's been you know, it's been a really interesting season. I feel like I've I've actually learned a lot more about
00:27:05
Speaker
Brian Schmetzer and his philosophy this year than maybe I ever have before, in part because I think by changing formations, he's given us a little bit more window into the way he wants to play because it wasn't just the 4-2-3-1 get the ball to Nico.
00:27:23
Speaker
That was kind of the thinking. I think a lot of places is like, look, you go into a pretty simple formation that is designed to get the ball to your best players. Okay. That's simple enough. But I think what we're seeing now is it's, it's not that simple. Like there is more of a philosophy. There is more of a game, a way you want to play the game that we're seeing.
00:27:45
Speaker
more clearly without Niko on the field. And it's, I'm really like, for the 30 minutes that he was out on the field against the galaxy, that was pretty fun stuff. And I'm really looking forward to seeing more of it. It's always struck me as convenient. And this goes back to Ziggy, but I think has grown under Schmetzer that the sounders have always been good and they've always had talented players. And it's always been so easy for people to say,
00:28:14
Speaker
Well, all the coach has to do is tell them to go out there and get the ball of the good players. And it's like, well, yeah, that's, that's what soccer is. That's, that's what tactics are. Tactics are figuring out how to get your best players into positions to succeed and figuring out how to prevent the other team's best players from being in positions to succeed. Right. That's the whole game. That's, that is the game. That is what coaching is. That's what tactics are. That's what all of this shit is. And so.
00:28:38
Speaker
I feel like people are finally starting to kind of wisen up with Schmetzer and realizing that he's not just a guidance counselor is something that I've heard a lot of people say about him, which is pretty funny.
00:28:57
Speaker
If you've actually ever talked to the guy that way, but I think, I think that he, you're right. I think that it's pretty obvious that he kind of knows what he's doing when he gets around the chalkboard. Um, and, and if he doesn't, he is willing to listen to the people that do. Right. And that's what being an executive is. So yeah.
00:29:17
Speaker
Well, I think that's a good place to call this a segment. We're gonna come back and talk about a few things. We're gonna take a bunch of your questions. I accidentally, I think, started a big conversation on Twitter about redesigning the Sounders crest. So we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk a little bit Super League too, North American Super League, which is not necessarily something that has been discussed a lot, but we're gonna talk about all this stuff.
00:29:44
Speaker
Take your questions in the next segment. You're listening to NOS Adiators. Full Pool Wines are based in Seattle, owned and operated by Sanders fans, and have been sponsoring NOS Adiators since 2011. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest. Their model is simple. One, they email compelling offers.
00:30:12
Speaker
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00:30:31
Speaker
Welcome back to no idea this. So, uh, let's just start here. I don't know. Did we get any questions about super league? We probably didn't. We did not. All right. So I wanted to have this conversation with you, partly because I think you and I are come from at least slightly different perspectives on it. And I always think it's nice to create conflict when we can. We don't have very much of it, but.
00:30:58
Speaker
The super league, the European super league flamed out pretty quickly for understandable reasons. It was shockingly poorly executed. They seemingly had no PR strategy. I still don't understand how you have billions of dollars committed to this thing. And at no point do you come up with a, like you are completely unprepared for everyone hates this idea.
00:31:23
Speaker
There was no value proposition to anyone that did not make money on it. Exactly. I think that they just figured their fans would be fine with it and that would be enough, which was an insane thing to believe. But even if their fans had been fine with it, it wouldn't have been enough. So yeah, very, very crazy and stupid and funny to watch happen.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, it was, but anyway, I think that there was a nugget of interesting ideas there, which is, you know, leagues combining their best teams in a format that is more expansive than the Champions League is, which is, you know, clearly it's a tournament. And I have this idea that's been running around in my head of
00:32:19
Speaker
essentially creating a North American Super League and I think there's something there. I don't know how likely it is but here's my theory. Here's my theory how we get there. So we keep playing League's Cup and the ratings for League's Cup are good and they're good enough that both League MX and MLS are like, well,
00:32:47
Speaker
Imagine how popular this would be if we put our best teams in this tournament instead of our fifth and sixth and seventh, and maybe down the road, once Champions League expands, you're talking about like the ninth best teams in MLS. And my suspicion is that once they do that, if they come up with something that brings in these top teams,
00:33:12
Speaker
That at that point you're almost like, well, what are we doing here? And I, I, I think this is all predicated on the idea that people actually like leagues cup, which is not guaranteed yet. I understand. But if they do, I think leagues cup is going to ultimately lead the leaders of MLS and league MX to figure out a way that they can put.
00:33:35
Speaker
the 10 best teams from each of their leagues or the nine best teams from each of their leagues or something like that into this like actual round robin tournament and they play a 30 game season or whatever and every year the top teams and those teams essentially graduate out of their domestic league
00:34:02
Speaker
And then every year a handful of teams drop down back to their domestic league. And so you essentially create promotion and relegation without having to relegate teams to anything lower than they are now. And I don't know, this is maybe a fever dream, but how, where, where, what's, what, what do you see as the problems with this? Assuming you can get past the.
00:34:24
Speaker
competitive issues that would exist right now, which I think you'd have to fix, right? You can't have single entity playing against independent teams.
00:34:37
Speaker
MLS team is trying to compete with Club America over a full season. That's the way it's structured now. Right. Exactly. But I think you're right that if this is ever going to become a reality, that's an obstacle that is going to be overcome because the MLS owners aren't even going to start talking about it until it is. So I think taking that as a given
00:34:58
Speaker
I mean, the real question is how you sell it both to the Mexican teams and their fans. I think MLS is probably a slightly easier sell for obvious reasons. I think that there will definitely be fans that wouldn't like it because
00:35:20
Speaker
You know, they're probably rivalries that get broken up. Yeah, I think almost guaranteed. Yeah. Yeah. The sounders probably aren't playing the Whitecaps very often if, you know, the sounders are in the top division. Anytime you make a change as dramatic as this one, there's going to be opposition to it. So that's...
00:35:37
Speaker
I think that's a big one. Yeah, the, the particulars of how you how you work it out, I think are critical right because, and this is where you know when we're having conversations about this stuff offline I guess not offline but off off air.
00:35:53
Speaker
How it's structured is a huge part of it because if it's just, well, there's a division of MLS teams at a division of Mexican teams, and then they have the playoffs at the end. I don't see the point of that. Right. I don't either. So you've got to set it up so that like, if the Sounders are in that division, they're playing Mexican teams with regularity.
00:36:12
Speaker
Yeah, like every other, like I think you got to set it up as a double round Robin. Like maybe it's a, maybe it's a, you know, uh, cluster or an Apatura where one, one year you play hat, you know, you, you play half the teams in the other division and the other half you play your division, or maybe it's, you know, you play two teams, you play, like one of the ideas I came up with was you had 12 teams from MLS and 12 teams in league MX.
00:36:40
Speaker
You play home and home against all the MLS teams, and then you play one once against each of the league and max teams. But maybe it makes more sense to have them totally mixed where you're playing. Maybe there's nine and nine and you play a 36 game schedule where it's just a normal round Robin. I don't know.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah. And then I think the difficulty there is like, how do you determine who gets relegated? Because if you've got a situation where let's say, you know, there's 18 teams and the bottom six teams are from one league, it will be MLS. Let's be honest, but you know, like, do you relegate
00:37:18
Speaker
two MLS teams and no Mexican teams so then whoever is in the second division in Mexico, doesn't get promoted that year because there's no movement, like, right, it's so there's a lot of stuff like that. Yeah, you didn't figure out. Yeah, and I think that was that was the other thing I liked about my 12 and 12 idea was that you could have.
00:37:39
Speaker
you could have it set up so there were like three teams from MLS that were relegated every year and three teams from league mx that were relegated every year and so you essentially have six new teams coming up every year six teams dropping down and i think you would want to create a high turnover because that would
North American Super League Speculation
00:37:58
Speaker
continue to foster the idea that the domestic league is not necessarily a relegation as much as it is the standard and the super league is something that stands above it right like you want there maybe there invariably there'd be two or three teams probably maybe even in each league that are staying up but if you can have like a regular churn at the lower end i think that's great i also think you would probably have to come up with a way that the domestic league
00:38:27
Speaker
somehow can compete for the big title. See, that's that I think that that's probably the thing we disagree the most on because corny you think? Yeah, because if you if you're playing in the Super League, you win the right to get promoted. And you compete in that league and you and you win the championship in that league.
00:38:46
Speaker
I'm not going to want to like win the regular season championship and then there's a playoff for like a top trophy. A it's going to immediately turn into the UEFA super cup or whatever the hell they call that thing where it's not going to be taken that seriously. Like it's just not because teams are going to know, well, obviously
00:39:05
Speaker
America is better than the revolution or whoever wins them. Right, right, right. So I think that if you've got them separated, you got to keep them separated. I'm not necessarily opposed to doing like a preseason super cup kind of deal. But I think that the biggest difficulty with it is going to be
00:39:27
Speaker
how do you ensure that the leagues, the MLS and the Super League MX don't become an afterthought? Whether that's revenue sharing, whether that's
00:39:43
Speaker
Um, do you really limit the number of teams in the super league? I don't know what it, I don't, that's the thing that you're going to have to convince people about because. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I think you're, you're totally right. That the trick, I think the whole trick of making this work is convincing. It is essentially selling the idea that the super league is.
00:40:07
Speaker
like promotion, but being relegated isn't relegation. You know what I mean? Like it's, and I think that's one of the, like one of the things I think is interesting, one of the, and I kind of stole this idea a little bit from one of the writers at Wayne got no history, which if you don't know is SB Nation's Chelsea site. And he proposed an alternate super league idea that was kind of similar to this, where you have teams that join the super league and they kind of leave their domestic league
00:40:38
Speaker
And I think that was the trick, right? Is that you have to have teams leaving their domestic league and playing in this other league and then they can come back. Like when they get relegated down, they go back. And I think that would be more, I think something like that, I think creates more interest than having, you know, like one of the ideas I've seen thrown around is like a league's cup where like every MLS team is playing every league at MX team. And it's just like,
00:41:09
Speaker
I think that would become pretty silly. I think the only way these two things can work is if it's either a small tournament or it's a full-blown league. Yeah, that's the thing. The competition that you're playing in has to be the paramount thing. And a Champions League or something like that, I think, is different enough and structured in a way that it can work.
00:41:37
Speaker
something like a super league has to be the thing. And because if it's not, then what's wrong with the Champions League? And obviously the answer to that question is, well, we don't control the revenues to the Champions League and we want as much money as possible. And that's the lesson that I think you have to learn from the super league is, yep, you're right, club owners, like this is your business.
00:42:02
Speaker
And you have to look out for your business interests and it's totally reasonable and rational for you to want to control the revenues and make as much money as possible and maximize your profits and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:42:14
Speaker
But your fans do not give a shit about any of that outside of how it's going to affect them. So you have to sell them on the sporting merit of whatever it is you're suggesting. The super league clearly did not have any of it. And I think that's one of the other questions too, where if we have a North American super league is how do you justify the promotion and relegation between MLS and the super league and league MX and the super league and not
00:42:38
Speaker
from the rest of the pyramid, right? And that's a much thornier discussion. And I don't, you know, I don't want to go down that road, but it does. Like you do, like, what's to stop a Canadian Premier League team from saying like, look, like, why can't we, you know, join into this competition? Now, obviously it's because your stadium seats, 2000 people and your players make $10,000 a year and you would just get destroyed. Right.
00:43:05
Speaker
But it's it's still a fair question. No, it is a fair question. And I think it's especially when you have a league like the Canadian Premier League that, you know, some of these teams aren't playing in 10,000 seats. You know, some of them are playing in like really nice. Yeah.
00:43:20
Speaker
you know, CFL stadiums. And there is like a path towards the CPL being like a pretty decent league. And so, and I think that same thing, you look at the USL, and there's a handful of teams in the USL that are putting out a pretty good product. And, and I think you're right, it does open up that kind of Pandora's box of, well, if we're going to have this
00:43:42
Speaker
why don't we have that? Like, why isn't there, like, why don't we have a fully functional pyramid? And I think it's a, it's a fair question. And I do think it's something that it will be interesting to see how North American soccer grapples with it because I do think for now it's really easy to hide, for lack of a better term behind the reality that MLS is the third or fourth most popular soccer league in North America.
00:44:09
Speaker
But what sometimes goes unsaid and I think this is what's driving a lot of the value proposition in MLS is that there's an understanding that MLS doesn't need to become
00:44:21
Speaker
the NHL to be successful or Major League Baseball or the NBA and certainly not the NFL, all they really have to do to dramatically change the paradigm has become the most popular league in North America, soccer league in North America. And if you can just, if you just blend the league MX and MLS
00:44:41
Speaker
markets and their their viewership numbers all of a sudden you have a league that is doing numbers comparable to the nhl and major league baseball and a lot of other things and And and you don't have to do there's no magic tricks But once it gets to that point though I think you do have to start answering a lot of these other questions about like well, where is this all going and and and how do you keep how do you keep this running and uh at some point they do have to start playing on the global scale and the global scale is demanding that
00:45:11
Speaker
You follow a lot of these rules. Yeah. I mean, we've been doing this show for long enough now that all of the stuff, all of these training wheels, things that we were defending 10 years ago, just don't hold as much water anymore. And if you, like, if you do want it, like Dave, they've been talking about.
00:45:33
Speaker
taking that next step for a long time now and in a lot of ways they have like the product is much better. The league is much more financially stable.
00:45:43
Speaker
In terms of where MLS is in the public consciousness in the US, not a lot has changed. I think it's worth saying. Right. No, I think that's totally fair. And at least in terms of like dollars and cents and where they fall in the pecking order, like I think most casual American soccer fans recognize that MLS now is not comparable to MLS five years ago, even. But that doesn't mean they care, you know? Right. And that's if you want to change things, if you want to justify those franchise values,
00:46:12
Speaker
You've got to take that next step and convince those people to care. And I'm not necessarily sold on the super league, although I'm not on your super league idea, although I'm not opposed to it. And it's definitely a way to kind of start to put your money where your mouth is and take the training wheels off.
00:46:29
Speaker
Right. It's like a real I mean, I think that's the thing is like you got to create some real competitions. And I think that that starts that conversation and it would be interesting to see where it goes. But it's I do think that we are genuinely entering a really interesting time in the North American soccer world. And and I'll be I'll be frank, I think one of the one of the downsides to.
00:46:51
Speaker
to a potential North American Super League. This is going to sound silly, but I do think there's a danger in it becoming too popular in that a lot of what people love about MLS would go away. It would become a less accessible sport. You'd have more money, you'd have more big-time athletes that
00:47:17
Speaker
treat the people like the European soccer stars treat fans there. And it just, it would change the whole paradigm. And in some ways it would be a much better product to watch. And in some ways it would be a much worse product to consume. Yeah, I think that's fair. And I think, I think that the European super league and the discussions around that really do kind of, and when you talk to fans of teams that
00:47:43
Speaker
you know whether or not you think it would have actually happened a lot of people viewed the european super league as like an existential threat to the game as they knew it like to to the entire pyramid a robust argument about this yeah and and i think that that's the kind of thing that you're going to be grappling with yeah and where mls graduates from this
00:48:05
Speaker
what it is now of like this culture that we have here. It may not be much, but it's, it's ours, you know, it's, it's our stupid shit. Like we're not, we can have Brian Schmetzer on here and, and right with him while he drinks wine for an hour and a half. We can't do that with, you know, Jose Mourinho or whoever, or any coach, frankly, in Europe, really like, like there's no, like any coach at any.
00:48:32
Speaker
top tier league is not doing that with like their media like it's just not that's not how it works um and that and i would miss that i'll be honest like there's a lot of ways that i i love where i definitely love where the sounders are in a way because we have a lot of the upside to like we get to enjoy a lot of the big time aspects like the big crowds and the exciting games and it is presented as a first class product but you still get all this like
00:49:02
Speaker
small-time access, which is kind of great. And I think to me that's where I fall, is that MLS doesn't have to be the best league in the world for me to care. I'm very, very happy. And I understand the desire of the owners. I understand the desire of people who have a lot of investment in the national team to improve the environments in the country and the development pipeline.
00:49:29
Speaker
I understand ESPN's desire to make it a Cantonese product. But I don't personally, I don't like the level of play is very good. I mean, it's it's not is it the Premier League? No, of course not. But it's one of the best leagues in the Americas. You know, I think people are happy. Like people are happy with much lower levels of play in a lot of countries. Right.
00:49:53
Speaker
than what we have in MLS. And we have a really kind of a best of both worlds, you know, Goldilocks kind of thing going on. I don't think it can stay that way. I don't think it's sustainable, but I'm also not itching to change it. Right. No, I feel you. All right. Well, we got a bunch of other questions. You didn't actually ask that listener, but
00:50:16
Speaker
Let's start firing away.
Injury Concerns: Nico Ledero
00:50:19
Speaker
What do we got? You want to get started? Yeah, I'll get us started. This one's from Motley69. I think I'm pronouncing that right. Probably. Seems right. It's close enough. What should we be worried about? Oh, man.
00:50:33
Speaker
I mean, I think I'll be honest. I think the biggest concern right now is what's going on with Nico Ledero. Like I, Brian Spencer went on the radio today and, and effectively ruled them out for Wednesday, which I'm not surprised by. He didn't sound very optimistic about him playing when he, he talked post game on Sunday. He said he's day to day for.
00:50:56
Speaker
for the game against LAFC. Obviously, if he plays in that, that would be a huge relief. But at some point, it's going to be a concern, like what's going on with Nico? Because as good as the Sounders have looked without him, there's no way they reach their ceiling without Nico. And so I'd say that's the biggest concern. And so I think that's where I am right now.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's the big one. That's the elephant in the room. I mean, if I had a guess, it would just be that they don't really see any reason to rush it. I'd like to, I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I hope so too. Cause it's not like, it's not like a player just mysteriously being injured for like a hundred years is unprecedented. But aside from that, you know, I have concerns about, um,
00:51:44
Speaker
depth and rotations and things like that. But I think that's always a concern in MLS. Yeah. I'm much less concerned now that I was, you know, three weeks ago. That's for sure. Well, this, this week will be a good test too, because they're going to have to do, they're going to have to do some rotation. They're already a little thin, uh, with Ladero out and seemingly a tensio out. And so there's not a whole lot of more, like, I guess Dellum could play Leyva could play.
00:52:13
Speaker
you know, Montero potentially could play. So there's some movement they can do, but it's, you know, it'll be interesting this week for sure. So this one's from Andy Holman, 09. He says, it was mentioned before Portland that O'Neill was very involved in the buildup. And then we saw him have a bad pass out of the back that led to the penalty. Would he be more effective as the right center back? I don't think that which side he plays on is going to be
00:52:41
Speaker
the solution to whatever problems there are with him. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that he probably would be slightly more comfortable there, but I don't think it's going to make a big difference. I don't think that feeling uncomfortable with, you know, the side he's on has been the issue. No, I against the galaxy. I was, I think it was against the galaxy that he, yeah, that was his first game as the center, center back.
00:53:07
Speaker
He hardly was involved at all with passing. He only had something like 16 passes. He had, I think 40 passes against Portland. He was pretty clean. He was mostly square and backwards, but then the one time he tried to push forward, he had a turnover that led to a penalty.
00:53:28
Speaker
I thought he was better as the left, as the right center back, but like, I think Yeymar has been much better than O'Neal was at that position. I mean, frankly, I think his best position is backing up everybody, like all three of those guys, which is fine. That's not a slight on Shane O'Neal. I just don't think he's the best player at any one of those three spots.
00:53:52
Speaker
I mean, I think that it's okay to not be one of the best players on the team. I don't think anybody is unhappy that he's on the roster. I don't think anybody is unhappy that he plays. I don't think it's an issue of putting him where he feels more comfortable. Staying on the center back theme from most underscore normal underscore guy, if we played for a trophy tomorrow, who are the three center backs? And Freddie or Will is the second forward.
00:54:20
Speaker
Well, I think we kind of answered the first question. My preference would be that it was, it would be Nuhu, Ariaga, and Jaymar, and I think I would want them in that kind of like that formation.
00:54:36
Speaker
You know, the Will Freddie thing, I'm still going to go with Will. I actually think Freddie provides more offensively in a pure production standpoint, but I actually think Will, what Will does is super important. And I think what Will does also makes it possible for Freddie to come in and be a game-changing player.
00:54:57
Speaker
It's kind of a thankless job that we're effectively asking Will to do, but he goes in and beats guys up for 60 minutes, and then Freddie gets to come in and score goals. And I actually, I'm totally fine with that. I think the Sounders might be better with Will starting games and Freddie coming off the bench than vice versa.
00:55:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's, I think I agree with that. I think that Will does not get enough credit for
00:55:30
Speaker
When you say, I feel like when you say a player does like the dirty work or does the hard work, it sounds like you're nagging him. And I, I don't think that's true. I just think that the skillset that he has is one that fans don't fully appreciate. And it took me, it took me a while to appreciate it as well. Um, if I didn't delete all of my tweets, everybody could go look at all the stuff I said about Emil Hesky 10 years ago to know that like, you know, I,
00:55:52
Speaker
I didn't appreciate the kind of work and I think that Will Bruin is more dynamic than Emil was at that point in time. So yeah, I think that Will does a lot of important things and he can still score. It's not like he's just like a big group beating people up like he had.
00:56:09
Speaker
some great moments against, against Portland, you know, he's, he's played very well in his goal dangerous and, you know, um, but, but he does kind of beat this knot out of guys. And that certainly helps later, later in the game. Yeah. And I, you know, I asked, I asked Brian if it was game planning that is part of why he doesn't have any shots through four games now. And Brian was like, no, we want them to shoot. But I also think
00:56:39
Speaker
That's not being completely, a lot of why he hasn't getting shots is because he's not being put in positions to shoot. And what he's doing is he's dropping into the midfield and being kind of like a fulcrum for the attack. And he's playing guys off of him and he's doing things like the play he had in Sunday's game where he took the long pass from Christian, shouldered it down, beat a guy and then cut it back for Raul.
00:57:09
Speaker
should have been a goal. It was a great play, but I think it also showed what he does that is not always directly at goal. It's like useful in other ways. And I think he's in, he's actually having a really good season, even though he doesn't have any shots. It's old school center forward, target forward kind of stuff that is comeback in Vogue because teams press a lot. And so you've got to have an effective outlet and he's been an effective outlet. Like soccer changes all the time. And
00:57:37
Speaker
The stuff that he does is back in vogue. Yeah, so this one's from our good friend, Bill Jones, trumpet. When Ledero is starting again, should we expect Roll Dawn to lose that freedom to roam that he's had, assuming Zhao can't do all the defending? Would it make sense to have Ariaga in the center of the back three play a stopper role behind JP to help Roll Dawn advanced? I think the answer
00:58:01
Speaker
maybe somewhat confusingly to both of those questions is all three of those questions is yes. I think he's definitely going to lose some of that freedom just because you can't have, that's how the midfield gets gross and clogged up is a bunch of guys not having positional rigidity. So he's going to lose some of it, but I don't think he's going to lose a ton of it. And I do think that Ariaga
00:58:26
Speaker
playing that sort of more advanced center back role in the center of a three does allow you to have a little more freedom in the midfield and a little more fluidity. Yeah, I think it's good. I agree. I will just say I agree. I think we might see, I think there's a chance that we might see kind of a box midfield where Lidero is next to Rolled On, but it won't be with two forwards. It would be with
00:58:54
Speaker
It would be with one forward, and I think they'd still be playing three at the back. And we've kind of seen glimpses of that when Montero's been on the field, and I think we'll consider to see glimpses of it. But I don't think we're going to see a situation where both Roldan and Ledero have respectively free rolls. That's just a recipe for disaster, I think.
00:59:16
Speaker
Next question is from oh wait and Garcia still trying to make sense of this new formation. I understand the back five and the roles of the wing backs, but still unsure what specific roles them into fielders have. It seems very fluid. Can you explain it also where will Nico fit.
00:59:31
Speaker
I think you're understanding it actually. There's a lot of fluidity. You don't have a classic six, you don't have necessarily a classic 10. Right now you have three midfielders who are all kind of allowed to roam to a certain degree.
00:59:49
Speaker
And they're given that freedom because you have three center backs who are able to kind of do what you would normally have a six doing. And then you have the help of the wingback. So you almost are always in a position to defend with five if you want to. And it allows the midfield to have just a lot more freedom.
01:00:11
Speaker
I agree. So congratulations, you actually understand it well. Yeah, you get it. All right. So this one, well, I'm curious. I'm looking at your notes here. What did you want to do with these highlighted questions? So we've got three questions. They're all pretty similar. We're on the same theme just in terms of
01:00:36
Speaker
what are we going to do about fixture congestion? What are we going to do about not having natural backups at some positions? And the three folks that asked were our dear friend Susie Rance, ssu underscore Richard M and Sounder Navia. All pretty similar questions, so I thought we could just take a single stab at it.
01:00:58
Speaker
Yeah. So, well, one of the, and so I'll start from, I'll start from the back and then, and you can kind of go into these things. The big one I think is what do we, at some point you, you figure you got to bench out, you got to give Alex rolled on some rest. What are you going to do there? Then that's a good one. I think the, I think the answer was supposed to be Kellen Rowe plays there. And I'm actually more confident that he can do that after seeing him play in the midfield.
01:01:25
Speaker
because I just think he potentially could excel in that spot. But if he's also needed in the midfield, which is the way it looks right now, I'm not sure what you do. I think you kind of gamble that you can get as much out of Alex's mind as possible. I mean, I guess theoretically, you can move Christian back there, but then Christian's got to have a day off. Right. Like, do you play Alex in the, yeah, it's tricky.
01:01:55
Speaker
I don't know. I suppose he might. I mean he's played in the central midfield before so maybe he could play right back. I think what you might end up doing is you probably end up bringing Danny Leyva into the midfield and then maybe you can
01:02:11
Speaker
Push row out to right to right wing back Maybe hopefully a tensio is back and you can and that kind of makes it a much easier equation Right. I am kind of curious to see more from Danny Leyva though. He's been You know, we haven't seen him a lot we saw him for a couple minutes against the timbers we saw him a little longer against the galaxy and You know
Player Development: Danny Leyva
01:02:37
Speaker
Before we had Josh Atencio, we had Danny Leyva. And I've been saying this other places that Josh Atencio is where we kind of hope Danny Leyva would be at this point. Yeah.
01:02:50
Speaker
But that doesn't mean Danny Leyva. I mean, Danny Leyva lost a year last year, but I'm still, there's a lot there still, I think. Yeah. He's not old. He's been around for a couple of years now. He's 18, right? Yeah. I mean, he was a literal child when he first showed up. So it's okay that he's not quite as far along. And I mean, a 10 CO is much farther along than I think
01:03:12
Speaker
could be reasonably expected for somebody his age. But I do think Danny is at the stage of his development where, and it's not like I'm an expert on the Academy kids, so maybe I'm wrong here, but I feel like he probably needs to be given a little bit more of an opportunity to fail.
01:03:31
Speaker
and put into difficult positions to see how he handles them. Like if you're going to be a pro, you have to protect younger players, you have to protect their confidence, but they also have to learn how to deal with difficult situations and playing when they're not maybe feeling their most confident and working through that. And this seems like a good time for that because they need them.
01:03:55
Speaker
You know, I mean, this is this is what you sign up for when you when you have a strategy like this and you choose to lean on your kids is the kids actually have to play. So I think it's definitely a time for that. And I think, I mean, the biggest thing I think is just those wide positions, you know, how you.
01:04:15
Speaker
how you rotate those guys because that's I think you got to get I think you got to use madranda for smith one of these games right yeah yeah I would I would think so I mean new who could probably play there but just leave him at left center but yeah I mean you don't like you don't
01:04:33
Speaker
When a player is playing that well, you maybe don't want to move him around too much. That's kind of unfair to him. And also he's playing really well at a position that's frankly more important than left wing back. So let me ask, who are the spots, which players do you think can play, like they played against the timbers and you think they can play the next two games?
01:04:57
Speaker
Uh, I would, I think knew who can, I think center backs tend to be like, I think all three center backs could probably play the next few games. I would prefer they didn't for reasons beyond fatigue, but you know, I think.
01:05:10
Speaker
They probably could. I think Christian probably can. I hate it when a guy has such a reputation for being able to play constantly that you just keep leaning on him because there's always the possibility that they are going to break at some point.
01:05:28
Speaker
But you've just got to take the risk with the guys that you feel pretty confident can. Yeah. I think Raul probably can. Raul does not seem to fatigue super easily. He played it. He started and went 90 minutes after getting COVID. Yeah.
01:05:48
Speaker
He's a, he's a, he's not a normal person. So I, you know, I think, um, Brad Smith, I think is going to need a rest. He just plays way too. His style of play just is not sustainable for, for eight games a week or whatever it is we're on top for. Um, I think Alex probably could. Yeah. He's, I think he probably can too. He's, he's got quite a motor, but it's, there's so much running required from that position that it's, it's a little nerve wracking, but.
01:06:17
Speaker
I have to assume Jiaopalo is going to get a game off during this stretch. I have to assume that
01:06:28
Speaker
like I don't think Ro is going to start all three games. I would think he's going to get a game off. So maybe guess will probably will probably. Yeah. So I mean, I think the easy answer is, you know, one game you probably don't have. You let Freddie start one of these games, and I think he deserves it. I think you probably want to start Leyva one of these games. You want to start Madranda one of these games.
01:06:57
Speaker
Right. You got to hope too, that guys like Atencio and Ledero are close and they're just holding them out. Right. You like to think that at least one of those guys can play not, if not Wednesday, then the following game. Yeah, exactly. Yep. So I guess that's, that's our answer I think, right? Yeah, I think so.
01:07:16
Speaker
All right, I'll ask this one. IP Ross says, I feel pretty good about the refs and VAR so far and definitely better than Europe I've seen. Should we at least let the MLS refing suck, stroke, die? What's the last thing to catch up to MLS 4.0 or is it 3.0? I think it's played by playing color announcers, but not ours.
01:07:35
Speaker
I think that's probably right. I will not let you answer. Yeah, MLS reps are not that bad compared to the rest of the world. I think that in like 2010, 2011, they were not very good. I think they put a lot of time and resources and effort into getting better. I think they've been pretty good in transparent about VAR.
01:07:53
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, like refs in England, especially, are hot garbage. They're very bad, they're very inconsistent. They let dangerous plays go. VAR has been a nightmare in England, especially. Especially off-sides, right? Yeah, I mean, it's just been a disaster.
01:08:15
Speaker
I think in general like MLS refs yeah they make mistakes reference hard. They're probably not as best as like, as good as like the rest in Germany maybe I don't know. But I think, by and large, they're pretty good. Nobody is ever happy with reps in any league in any sport, that's just kind of the way it goes.
01:08:35
Speaker
I am out of love with VAR. I would rather kind of do away with it, but I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle. And I think MLS has done it much better than other leagues. I think they've tried to be transparent. I think they've tried to be consistent. I don't like everything they've done with it, but it's not a
01:08:53
Speaker
just throwing a dart at a wall like it is in a lot of other leaks. When you see a replay, you have a pretty good idea how a call is going to go in MLS unless it's truly borderline. And they've done a good job about explaining calls. So, yeah, I think I'm pretty happy with the level of refereeing in an MLS, frankly. And I think that a lot of the
01:09:14
Speaker
abuse that the referees continue to get is not exactly coming from the most rational place. I think our play-by-play and color announcers are fine too. Man, they have got some absolute creatures doing announcing for English games. People got spoiled listening to Arla White, but some of the color guys they've got over there are just dumber than a box of rocks.
01:09:37
Speaker
Um, I don't know. I think the worst thing in MLS is still probably the coaching and quality of play. And both of those are much better than they used to be. So, um, I don't have a ton of complaints with, with MLS. Yeah. I, you know, this is a good time. I suppose we didn't talk at all about the whole, uh, penalty situation this week. I.
Referee Decisions and VAR Controversies
01:10:00
Speaker
On the whole, I think I was okay with how that all turned out. The thing that was frustrating is that the broadcast showed a replay that they said was synced perfectly to the first save that Stephen Fry made. And it sure made it look like he was still on the line. And the replay that they seem to be showing on
01:10:29
Speaker
uh to the referee did not look like it was perfectly synced or they it looked like they were showing him a play that like they were showing the ball coming off of his foot instead of first striking the foot and that made a big difference in where fry's foot was so that was a little frustrating i will say that i i did some digging around and it turns out that
01:10:51
Speaker
Nuhu clearly encroached, it like make no question about that, but that was apparently not reviewable because unless that was called at the time, he wasn't involved in the play. So it's not considered reviewable. And I also thought it was interesting on the second one, one of the timbers players was also encroaching. So those, I think would have canceled each other out anyway. So this thing that happened on the field would have been allowed, neither one of them were involved in the play.
01:11:19
Speaker
I guess it would have been allowed to stand, but still you'd like the coach knew who to maybe don't do that. Um, the, the one call that I was a little more, and I also will say that I thought Rudy Diaz was foul. Like I don't, I don't think that was a particularly controversial call. Like he, I know they called it on Antonella, but he was also fouled right before that, but I think it was Gloria and.
01:11:45
Speaker
You know, look, he doesn't have to, like, did he go down soft? I don't know. Maybe, but like he gets hit. He was already off balance. I'm not going to lose any sleep over that one. I'm fine with that penalty. And if anything.
01:12:00
Speaker
the Tully Loma foul that he got away with, I thought was much more of a penalty that they didn't call. But yeah, I mean, I saw all in all and then there was the offside call, which I'm still convinced if that was called onside on the field, I don't think VAR would have overturned it. And I think that's good. That's one thing I like about the way the offside is interpreted in MLS is that I think there is this,
01:12:28
Speaker
assumption that the player is on side. Well, the assumption is that the call on the field was right. Yeah. And that you got to be convinced it was wrong. And I think that's the right way of doing it because the way they do it in England is absolute insanity. It's the thing that drives me absolutely up the wall about it is that
01:12:49
Speaker
there's no scientific basis for how they're doing it. Like they're not accounting for lens distortion. They're not, they're not, they're just saying what is on the screen that I am looking at is a reflection of reality. And therefore I can get this precise and it's horseshit. It's total horseshit like there. And, and I think that the way that VAR should be used is exactly the way they use in an MLS where it's like, well, he's pretty obviously offside. We got that one wrong or vice versa.
01:13:18
Speaker
Totally fine with that. When you try to get into this, these boss levels of precision. That's where it goes off the rails, and I think you're right like I think they were like, they were right to review, or to not, or they got the off, they got the offside call right.
01:13:38
Speaker
And that's fine. They don't need to review it. And if they had gotten it wrong, not a big deal, like whatever it's, we spend so much time getting mad about offside calls. It's the same way with like, uh, spotting the ball in the NFL or whatever, where it's just like, we're just making this shit up. We're just doing our best here. And we've got to be, you've got to be okay with that. You know, if you totally blow something, yeah, like use the video by all means, but.
01:14:03
Speaker
Yeah, but I think you're in general, I think you're right. I don't think anybody has too much of a reason to be too terribly upset by the refereeing in that game. Whatever certain timbers beat writers would like you to think about. Yeah. Yeah. That was our friend Chris Rifer was trying to sell the idea that Rudy Diaz is going to be suspended for embellishment. And I don't think that was a serious possibility. No, I don't think so.
01:14:32
Speaker
He was trying to sell us on a lot of ideas after that game as he often does. So the next one is from Becca H. Sounds like the supporter shield will never be based on a balanced schedule ever again. What would you do to fix it realistically or not or both? Would you rather a future shield over a cup?
01:14:49
Speaker
Well, that's a, that is a, I had never honestly thought about that. Uh, but she's right. I don't think we are ever going to have a balanced shield ever again. I think the boat has sailed on that. Uh, we have too many teams to do it and.
01:15:06
Speaker
I guess I'm okay with that. I think it's always been an imperfect trophy. It's only been balanced, I think two years, maybe a little more than that, but it's almost never been balanced. I realized that it's more out of balance now than it's ever been. But eventually it will become more balanced. I think that it will eventually look something more like where you play your conference opponents twice and your non-conference opponents once, or there'll be divisions that
01:15:36
Speaker
Break things up And I'm okay with that. I I don't think the shield has to be perfect I think that's kind of what makes it an MLS that that's kind of the idea of that was born behind is that it was an imperfect award that it wasn't meant to replace the MLS Cup as the Champion of the league. I think supporters can take a lot of pride in it. I think it's a valuable thing I would like I'd still like at one point I was
01:16:03
Speaker
I was arguing that the supporter shield winner should be able to wear some sort of like emblem on their jersey the next year that signifies that they want it or something over their crest or something that signifies it as a one year kind of award. I'm still okay with that and I think, but I do think the idea that it will ever be the one true champion of the league
01:16:29
Speaker
is just no longer, like if it was ever true, it's not true. And I don't think we should try to talk ourselves into believing it's true. But as long as the points winner has some advantage in the playoffs, I think that's good. But I don't think we need to pretend as though they're clearly the best team and the MLS Cup winner is a false champion.
01:16:56
Speaker
I mostly agree with you, but I don't care about the shield at all. If I could just snap my fingers and make it not exist anymore, I probably would. Because I think it's a distraction. I think that it's
01:17:11
Speaker
I get irritated. I get so irritated every year when some dumb shit Eastern conference team that's spent, you know, like six games beating up on FC Cincinnati wants to pretend like they're clearly the best team in the league. And you know, I just like, I loved our shield because that was a balanced schedule year. It was a year that we were fighting the galaxy for it at the height of the galaxies shit. Um,
01:17:36
Speaker
It felt very meaningful in a way that I just have a feeling a shield now wouldn't. I don't begrudge anyone for caring about it. It's not a big deal to me. It came down to the last week of the season, I think, really enhanced. For sure. For sure. And then it was against it. It was the one versus two. Actually, the last two weeks of the season where the Sounders got to play a home and home against the Galaxy. I mean, it was perfect. It really was perfect. Yeah. And I don't know that any shield will ever come close to
01:18:05
Speaker
feeling that way. And that's, you know, that's okay. Um, it made sense then to care about it. It makes less sense now to care about it. And I think that's okay. Yeah. All right. So we're going to close with this one and this, I don't know that maybe we'll see how long we go on this, but we have thoughts. I think this is from Dave W. Montgomery. He says the new Columbus logo is absolutely horrible. If the sounders rebrand some time down the road, what would
Sounders Rebranding Discussion
01:18:29
Speaker
you like to see? Or even better if they make a horrible rebrand, what would that look like?
01:18:35
Speaker
So, we get accused sometimes of being an echo chamber and always agreeing with our listeners. And if your mentions from today, or any indication. Yeah.
01:18:50
Speaker
We are not going to be accused of that in this case. No. Because I hate the Sounders Crest. I feel bad saying that, but I truly do. I think it looks like garbage. I think it was dated the day that it was released in 2008. I obviously care about it and have an attachment to it because it's the Sounders Crest and I love the Sounders.
01:19:15
Speaker
But I also had an attachment to my mom's 1992 Dodge Dynasty that I drove around in in high school. And when I replaced it with my own GTI, I was pretty happy about that. So I would love to see them rebrand.
01:19:33
Speaker
It doesn't have to be a big rebrand. It doesn't, you know, like, but I, I just think that the aesthetic of the club beyond, I don't have a problem with the colors. Like I know a lot of people hate the colors or like to make. Yeah, I love the colors. The colors are great. I love the color scheme and I love the general aesthetic that the club seems to have outside of like it's branding materials, like the fonts that they use, the crest. I'm not a huge fan of, but like in general, like the aesthetic sense of the club is, is pretty good. I think.
01:20:01
Speaker
that's what's funny about it yeah that's what makes it so frustrating yeah like i it's so clearly designed by someone that is nothing to do with the club anymore like i don't know who designed it i don't know anything about the firm that i i i i don't want to be too harsh on whoever designed it but
01:20:23
Speaker
because I'm sure that they were working with imperfect tools, but man, it's not like, here, I'll break down some of the things that I don't like about the crest. And I will raise my hand and say, I agree with everything you said, but here's some of the things that drive me crazy about the crest. I'm looking at the crest right now. There are almost no straight lines in the crest, and that drives me crazy.
01:20:49
Speaker
They're all a little curvy. And some of them are really, there's all these round, but not sharp. There's sharp corners, but there's no straight lines, which just doesn't work for me very well. Both shields, I think, are awkwardly shaped. That there's two shields on there drives me absolutely bonkers. The banner looks like clipart.
01:21:16
Speaker
The space needle looks like a cartoon. There's just, it's not even like, well, like the space isn't used well. I don't think it, it reprints, like it looks okay on the jersey. I actually think it looks fine on the jersey and it looks really fine from a distance. But once you spend any time looking at it, like I would never wear a hat with that logo on it. Yeah, I have a hat with that logo on it and I wear it two games and that's it.
01:21:46
Speaker
You're braver than I am. Yeah. I mean, I, and mainly only cause it's blue and I like, I like the blue that they use. Like, and I, I just think like, I, I realized some people have, and I, and maybe, maybe we're at the point now where the space needle is just a part of the sounders brand and maybe you can't remove it without there being.
01:22:11
Speaker
a total public outcry over it. I'm willing to accept the Space Needle being part of it, but we gotta clean that up, man. And if it was up to me, I would actually, I'd probably scrap the whole logo. The name is perfect. Everyone jumps in and says, if they drop the sounder's name, there would be a right. Look, I don't think anyone is talking about dropping the sounder's name. We're just talking about the crest.
01:22:38
Speaker
and I think we pretty much love the colors. But man, if we were to start over from scratch,
01:22:48
Speaker
keep the name, keep the colors and just start over. I mean, like, I love Mount Rainier. I think Mount Rainier is such a powerful image. I love bringing in elements of the sea, maybe that won't be surprising to you, but I love just like coming up with a way to blend those two elements to me is like, that's how you hit a home run, but. Yeah. I mean, I think I am less, um,
01:23:17
Speaker
I'm less open to the idea of keeping the space than you are. I think it really bothers me and always has. But I also like I accept that like at a certain point we're not talking about we're talking about like subjective preferences versus an objective assessment of the crest.
01:23:37
Speaker
And, and so like fine, whatever. Maybe we keep the space in was part of it. Maybe that is part of the brand. I would ask people why they consider that to be because it's the sounders do not and never have played anywhere close to the space needle. If they, if the, if the, well, this version of the sounders never played. Right.
01:23:53
Speaker
Exactly. But this version of the Sounders did everything they could to distance themselves from the version of the Sounders that did. Right. That's like not to jump in, but that's one of the things that drives me crazy about the idea of the Space Needle is that it's like the same people that like talk about loving the club's history seem to not understand that like for less than a quarter of the club's history have they used the Space Needle in their branding.
01:24:14
Speaker
Right. And I think like, I think some kind of like nod to the Orca logo would be very cool. But, and also like, I mean, that's like the idea, like that's what the sounders is like a nod to that, right? Like Sammy is an Orca, like it's, I don't know, man, I think that that's a much clearer way to go than the Space Needle. But, but it's just,
01:24:39
Speaker
It's one of the worst crests in the league at this point. When the Sounders came into the league, there was a lot of really, really bad, um, very like early 2000s, late nineties, or at least 2000s, like, um, there's a term for like the weird shading.
01:24:56
Speaker
that's on like all the crests from that time, Atlantis has it. The sounders actually have less of it on theirs, but it's still present to some degree, but it just makes it, it looks like a bank logo to me. And so it was an upgrade on those, but it's just, it's the most 2008 looking thing in the world. And I do think to be fair, we have to acknowledge a position on this that I heard from a few people, which is that
01:25:23
Speaker
I don't love the current crest, but I'm used to it. It's fairly inoffensive and seen and it's ours and it's ours for sure. Um, and seeing what some other clubs have done with their rebrands has made me not want any part of that.
01:25:40
Speaker
And I think that that's maybe not quite being fair to the sounders and like I have a little more faith in their ability to do something like this well, but I completely understand that perspective, like, if they were to rebrand and come up with something like Columbus is disaster of logo, or Nashville's or, you know, some of the other truly awful ones.
01:26:03
Speaker
I would, I would eat crow and admit that we should have left well enough alone. But I think it's much more likely that they're going to come up with something like LAFC or Miami or Minnesota United or, you know, something that. That's an I, we originally, when we were off the air, we were talking about Miami's is great. But what's weird, the thing I don't understand about Miami is like they made pink such a big part of kind of like their brand and they haven't leaned into that at all.
01:26:31
Speaker
Yeah. It's very weird. It's a, it's the wrong choice. Like it's a great, it's a great color. It's unique to them. They, they should be doing with pink. What Orlando is done with purple, but you know, so yeah, but I, I mean, I, I think that there have been, honestly, like I know that I'm alone and kind of liking the fryer, the fires rebrand. So take what I'm saying here with a grain of salt, but outside of the new Columbus rebrand,
01:26:57
Speaker
A lot of them haven't bothered me that much. Like, yeah, like I don't mind the Houston Dynamo logo. No, it's, it's much better than what they had before. Um, RSLs kind of tweak to their brand has been pretty good. Um, Montreal's like, yeah, it kind of looks like a butthole, you know, what are you going to do? I still, I think it, I do think I'm much more bothered by them dropping impact. Yeah. I think that's, that's indefensible.
01:27:23
Speaker
But the colors and the crests are pretty good. I don't know that there's a lot to justify the belief that a rebrand would be, or just not even a rebrand, just a redo of the crest would really be all that big of a disaster. I have faith that they'd be able to pull it off pretty well. Ultimately, these are the same people that came up with the Hendrix kit. These are the same people that were responsible for nuclear orca and all that stuff. I trust
01:27:51
Speaker
I trust their aesthetic sense pretty well. I trust that they would do a pretty good job. Yeah, I do too. I would love it if they just like, I think they, and they probably could get away with just like tweaking it and not making a big deal out of it and kind of doing what the timbers have done, which is slowly change their mark. And I actually think the timbers current mark looks great. And
01:28:15
Speaker
They settled on a design that at the risk of giving the tempers too much credit. I think they settled on a design that could be contemporized very easily. Yeah, so that they can, they can make those tweaks as sort of aesthetic tastes change and it's never a huge deal it's just kind of happens and I think that that's the good
01:28:35
Speaker
You know, I think that there are other clubs in the league that are going to be able to do that. DC United is one of them. I think it's healthy. One of the things that people like one of the big criticisms was like, why? Why are we messing with this? And and it's like and people always look at it as like this naked money grab. Right. And I don't think it's a money grab. I think it is. It's just like a healthy part of a club's evolution. Like it's like they don't they're not going to they're going to spend more money
01:29:04
Speaker
on paying designers and coming up with all these ideas than they are in increased merch sales. I really don't think it's a money thing. I think it's just a way to keep your brand feeling vibrant and alive. You're going to be using it in different ways.
01:29:24
Speaker
When the sounders launched, I don't think that they thought that their image would be displayed digitally as prominent. Like that's almost all of its use, right? It's digital. And I mean, 2008 wasn't the stone ages, but I don't know that we would have foreseen the degree to which like the digital reproduction of it is so prominent and the versatility of it that you need.
01:29:50
Speaker
And so I just think it's a healthy part of like, these are brands and that's part of it. And I don't think there's anything that should be untouchable other than the name, like Seattle Sanders. That's perfect, right? We don't need to mess with that. But I don't know, everything else I feel like should be refreshed. There's a lot of designers need work.
01:30:18
Speaker
That's true. Yeah. I think, I think that we should do our part for the economy and, you know, get those, get the, get the bars back open with shiny new bud, Budweiser sounders, logo signs and you know, all that, all that good stuff. Yeah. I know, I know that this is all, you know, a personal preference thing, but I, I was truly blown away by, like, it's one thing to say, I like the crust that I don't, I don't think it needs to change, but the,
01:30:47
Speaker
fervor with which some people seem attached to it. I was genuinely, genuinely shocked by it. I mean, I guess it's good in a way, right? Like you want people to be attached to your, I mean, I don't know, it's not my brand, but I guess it speaks to like the fandom, but I was definitely
01:31:08
Speaker
I guess I realized that in some ways the people who I talked to about this stuff are coming at it from a different perspective because almost everyone I talked to about it agrees that it feels very dated and I was surprised how many fans were like,
01:31:21
Speaker
How dare you insult the Sounderscrest? I've never heard anyone insult the Sounderscrest. And I was like, oh. Wow. That's, I've been listening to this show for that long, man. Cause I feel like we've been talking about this since like 2013 probably. I know. I know. I agree. I know. It's not even the first time we talked about it on this show. But anyway, all right. Well, that's, that was good. Three hours later. Yeah. Yeah.
01:31:49
Speaker
Maybe that's what we'll do. We'll just do three hours. We're just going to become hardcore history. Right. Exactly. A very specific topic. All right. Well, good hanging out, Aaron. I hope everyone out there enjoyed this. And I hope if you're listening to this after the game on Wednesday, that it still feels relevant to you. That was low key, one of my goals with this one. So hopefully that works out.
01:32:14
Speaker
But all right, well, I'm Jeremiah Sheehan, 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? Mountain wild mountains and tangents you flew. Canadian Northwest to the ocean so blue. It's roll on, Columbia roll on.
01:32:41
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!