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Episode 410: Mailbag for Week 20
75 Plays2 years ago
Jeremiah is doing this week's mailbag episode solo. He talked a lot about the future of Nicolas Lodeiro and his assessment of Héber's performance.
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Transcript
Sponsor Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of Nos Arietes is sponsored by Full Pull Wines, a Seattle-based wine retailer and proud sponsor of Nos Arietes since 2011. Full Pull was founded in 2009, is based in Seattle, and is owned and operated by longtime sounder supporters. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest.
Sounders' MLS Triumphs
00:00:21
Speaker
Hey, this is Christian Roldan. And Jordan Morris from the Seattle Sounders Football Club. And you're listening to... There's no study at this. Here we go. Come on! Hey, Ocean! Let's go! What a save by Fry! The Seattle Sounders have done it! MLS co-pointers! Here comes Ray D'Ace from the middle to crowd it! The vehicle! And now they truly can't stop the celebrations.
00:01:04
Speaker
Seattle Sounders, the greatest MLS team in history. This is a tiny f***ing doll.
00:01:34
Speaker
Is
Mailbag Episode Introduction
00:01:37
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of NOS Adiatus, sponsored by Fullpool Wines, Watson's Counter, and our Substack subscribers. This is episode, or sorry, this is the mailbag episode for week 21 of the MLS season. I am Jeremiah Shan, and I am doing this week's episode solo. Let's get right into this thing. First of all, we got some questions from our Substack subscribers.
00:01:42
Speaker
that why you young people call twerking?
Paul Rothrock's Contract Situation
00:02:02
Speaker
So let's start there. This is from, I'm going to guess, Shavia Bell?
00:02:08
Speaker
They want to know why wasn't Paul Rothrock given a first team contract? He seemed to have a pretty good run of scoring and would have been pretty helpful late in late game situations. Uh, I'll just start off by saying, I agree. I, I thought Paul Rothrock looked great. I think he probably could have been useful, especially while, uh, Christian Roldon was out.
00:02:29
Speaker
My suspicion though is that the sounders have pretty limited salary cap maneuverability right now and they want to like essentially hold their powder as long as they can. My suspicion is that Rothrock and maybe one other Tacoma Defiance player is gonna get signed this transfer window.
00:02:56
Speaker
but that they don't want to do that until they know they can't bring in a player from outside the organization. The player they bring in from outside the organization probably informs the kind of player they want to bring up from the defiance. So basically, what they want to do is not overcommit and sign Rothrock or anyone else, and then feel like, oh, whoops, I wish we had a little bit more maneuverability.
00:03:19
Speaker
Um, so it's sort of a short term pain for long-term gain. Uh, hopefully that works out, but that's, that's my suspicion anyway. All
Brian Schmetzer's Audio Clip Inquiry
00:03:28
Speaker
right. Uh, this is another one from sub stack, uh, from Nick in Seattle. He says, I keep meaning to ask this oddball question. I'm enough of a sounders nerd that I can easily recognize every audio clip in the
00:03:39
Speaker
pod intro, the LMS cup saved by fry, best twerking question to Schmetzer, choose on field comments after his four assists match this year, et cetera, et cetera, except the very first one. It kind of sounds like Schmetzer on the field doing a pregame match hype type thing. I can't even work out what he's saying. What feels good? Let's go. What is the source of this audio? It keeps driving me nuts every time I start an episode.
00:04:04
Speaker
Well, I have something to share here. That is a clip you're right about it being Brian Spencer. It is not, however, from a, uh,
00:04:16
Speaker
from a pep talk, it is from the highlight video that the Sounders created off of the media day game back in 2020, I believe. And that is Brian Schumacher yelling at me. He's saying, hey, oh, Shan, let's go. I think I was playing as a right back and he wanted me to push forward. So it's sort of like an inside joke there, but I can see how, if you aren't prepared to hear that, how it might be kind of confusing.
00:04:46
Speaker
But anyway, hopefully that answers your question. I went back and tried to find the actual highlight because I wanted to link to it, but I'm having trouble tracking it down. If anyone finds it and they want to share it with me, by all means, send it and I will put it in the show notes.
Nico's Role in the Team
00:05:02
Speaker
Uh, this one again from our subtext subscriber, Oscar Paul, he says, once our international is her back, do we ever think we'll see a day when Brian proactively puts Nico on the bench and relegates him to a super sub role? Is that just a hard conversation he doesn't want to have with the captain? Well, I think it's a very valid question.
00:05:21
Speaker
I don't know the answer for certain, but this is starting to feel a little bit like the Clint Dempsey situation in 2016 when, or sorry, in 2018, when, uh, Brian was sort of trying to navigate how to handle Clint Dempsey who had clearly, uh, his production had fallen off.
00:05:42
Speaker
Uh, not in a totally dissimilar way than how Nico's production has fallen off. Uh, I will point out that during this 12 game straight, he started the season. Great. Uh, we were praising him. We were talking about what great shape he is in. And he looked like he was poised to have a standout season. And at the time I remember thinking like, man, they better sign this guy to an extension now because, uh, he deserves it.
00:06:05
Speaker
Well, it turns out they were probably smart not to excite him to that extension over the last 12 games. He has one goal, no assists. And that one goal was a penalty. He is just not really contributing very much to the offense these days. And that is an increasingly significant problem to the point where I think it is a totally fair question to ask once they have a fully fit squad, a fully available squad, is he going to have a space in this lineup?
00:06:32
Speaker
And I don't know, I don't know that he does. To me, if I'm filling out the lineup card, I probably have, again, assuming a fully fit squad, I think I have Morris as the left wing. I have Rui Diaz as my number nine. I have Christian Roldan as the right mid. I think I'm pushing Albert Rusnak up to the number 10. And then I want one of Obed Vargas or Josh Atencio next to Ciao Paolo. Maybe Nico fits in there as well.
00:07:01
Speaker
And I know my sounder colleague, Andrew Pearson, has sort of been making that case for quite a while now. And I think there's some validity to the idea that he might actually fit in really nicely as a number six. But I don't think he really belongs in the attack at this point, especially when they're fully fit. And that's hard to say. I wouldn't totally close the door on his possible return. But what I can say is that he's not even worth probably TAM money.
00:07:28
Speaker
If he's primarily an offensive player next year and beyond, I think either he's got to really change roles. He might be a really effective super sub type of player, but I am definitely open to the idea that he's not really a starter on this team once they're fully fit.
Sounders' Lineup Strategies
00:07:49
Speaker
All right, this is the last one from our subsac subscribers. And I'll remind everyone, if you want to become a subsac subscriber, just go to nosadietes.subsac.com. The plans are available for as cheap as $5 a month or $50 a year.
00:08:04
Speaker
And basically what we do is we give you priority to get your questions answered. You get some access to extended episodes. We just did one with Adam Bells from Scuffed. We have another one coming up where we're going to talk to Brad Evans. So there'll be an extended cut version of that. We have some other players and personalities that we have lined up for extended interviews like that. So if you want to be doing that listening and contributing and also just supporting independent soccer media, go out there and
00:08:34
Speaker
And sign up. So anyway, with all that said, here's the last question from Bill Jones, or the last sub-site question from Bill Jones. He says, our defense looks great, and a healthy new who goes a long way. But we sure could use someone to stretch the right side of the offense. Would it make sense to start Tevez on the right and slot Lidero next to JP for Houston? That's an interesting idea. And it's a nice companion question to the previous one. And there's some validity there.
00:09:04
Speaker
I think that's probably worth looking at. I suspect Lidero is going to start on the right again. But yeah, I mean, I on the on the full podcast, Mark and I also wondered if it would make sense to maybe start Obed Vargas on the right. That's another idea that I sort of am into. I think the Sounders are probably going to have a lot of the ball against Houston, which is another reason why starting Lidero and the defensive midfield makes a lot of sense. It's not like he's going to have to do a ton of defending there.
00:09:34
Speaker
And, you know, we've run the numbers and in terms of defensive actions, he's not really any less active than Albert Rusnak. So there's, it would be an interesting experiment to run. As you may know, Jackson Reagan is also going to be out for that game. He picked up, he's going to be on a yellow card suspension after getting that yellow card against
00:09:55
Speaker
against Orlando. So, you know, it'll, it'll be an interesting one. This is not a literal must win, but man, uh, the centers really do need to start winning some home games and, and, uh, Houston is not a bad team, but they are not very good on the road. And this is absolutely a game. The centers should feel like they have to win.
Player Development in MLS Next Pro
00:10:13
Speaker
All right. So going to the questions we picked up off Twitter, this is from Josh on the sound. He says, do you have a sense of whether the sounders are getting what they want out of MLS next pro Cody Baker stepping in and keeping belong under wraps feels like a big win. Yeah. Uh, I would say that does feel like a big win. And, uh, Brian Schmetzer actually pointed out that that was a pretty.
00:10:33
Speaker
uh, good performance from Cody Baker. And, and I think the centers are, are generally getting what they want out of, uh, both the academy and a defiance. They are consistently bringing players up from that team. Uh, they haven't had a whole bunch of them break through as obvious first team starters, but you've got Obed Vargas, you've got Josh, you've got Cody Baker, uh, uh,
00:10:57
Speaker
A step down from that, you have Reed Baker Whiting. These are all players who came through the academy relatively recently and through the Defiance slash S2 and are making significant contributions to the first team. Now, they aren't bang on starters, which is the next step, I think. But if one of those guys can be sold, that's almost as good. So, yeah, I mean, I think they're getting what they want out of that out of that whole developmental pipeline.
00:11:27
Speaker
This one's from TIE Fighter 17.
A-Bear's Scoring Predictions
00:11:29
Speaker
What's going to happen first? One, an A-Bear goal. Two, a set piece goal. Or C, the other team scores an own goal.
00:11:39
Speaker
Well, I don't know. I hope it's one of a bear or a set piece goal. I'm going to say a bear is more likely to score than a set piece goal. It feels like a bear, you know, I know he's been getting a lot of flack and yeah, he does need to finish some of these chances. But in his defense, I do think that they've done a pretty good job of not just creating chances for him, but he's done a decent job of like at least putting his shots on frame.
00:12:09
Speaker
And that's really all you can ask, right? Like you, you put your shot on frame and you take your chances from there. Uh, hopefully some of those start falling for him. I, I still think he's going to end up scoring a few goals for the Sounders. Uh, so, and if they do that could turn fortunes around quite a bit.
A-Bear's Team Contributions
00:12:27
Speaker
All right. Uh, this is the last question. This is also off of Twitter. It's from Steve at home. He says, what are your thoughts on a bear at this point? Uh, I guess I could have,
00:12:35
Speaker
stack these a little bit better. But overall, I think a bear has been OK. No, he has not been great, but he has been a lot better. I mean, he is not a bum. He's not he's not just falling apart. I see a lot of really kind of like frankly, strange comments about a bear in terms of like how bad he is. People like dread the idea of him.
00:12:58
Speaker
getting into the game and I don't quite get it. This is a guy whose movement is still elite. He had three or four plays against Orlando that I thought all looked very good. He's good in possession.
00:13:11
Speaker
I still like watching him play. I mean, yes, I want him to finish some of these chances, but I'll take a guy who's getting into good shooting positions over and not finishing as many as you'd like over someone who's simply not getting into those shooting positions in the first place. So yeah, I mean, I, I still think he's a, he's a,
00:13:30
Speaker
a benefit to the offense. It would be nice if someone was scoring and I don't know if we would be quite as focused on his particular lack of finishing, but you know, it is sort of getting into that Nelson Valdez in 2016 territory where, you know,
00:13:47
Speaker
I don't think he's missed any sitters quite as bad as some of the ones that that Valdez missed. But, you know, it's it's not good. It's not ideal. And I can appreciate that. But overall, I think he's been OK, even if it's not quite up to the to the standard that you'd expect for what the Sanders had to spend to get him. You know, he is on a million dollar salary. He the Sanders gave up two hundred thousand dollars in in game this year and then another two hundred thousand dollars next year. So, yeah, I mean, he wasn't he wasn't a free acquisition. That's for sure.
00:14:19
Speaker
I don't think that he's lived up to those expectations, but I think some of the criticisms of him are a little bit over the top. Well, that's it. Those are the questions we got. This was the mailbag episode for week 21 of the MLS season.
00:14:35
Speaker
Hopefully, the next time we do this, I'll have some of my partners in crime to help me with it. But let me know what you thought about the solo effort. And if people really dug it, maybe this is the format we'll use more often. But all that said, thank you for hanging out with me. I am Jeremiah O'Shan, signing off for our sponsors, Watson's Counter.
00:14:56
Speaker
full pool wines. And again, thank you to everyone who's supporting us on Substack. We will hopefully have more exciting news about that project in the future. But yeah, this is No Sun Dit Dis and we'll catch you next time.
00:16:07
Speaker
We love you. Let's win another one!