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Episode 363: New rules, but mostly the same Sounders
90 Plays2 years ago
After an odd preseason that featured the FIFA Club World basically in the middle of it, the Seattle Sounders are finally just days away from their MLS regular season opener. To help preview the season, Aaron and Jeremiah welcomed Sounder at Heart colleagues Susie Rantz and Mark Kastner to the show to help us. We discussed our outlook for the season and explained some of the tactical tweaks the Sounders are implementing that they hope can help get them back to their rightful place atop MLS.
In the second segment, we discussed some of the developments in the Apple deal and the rule changes that were implemented just a few days before the start of the season.
This week's music: Perry Como - "Seattle", "RVIVR - "Ocean Song", Woody Guthrie - "Roll On Columbia", "Your Journey Begins" - OurMusicBox (Jay Man) (CC BY 4.0)
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsors
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of Nos Arietes is sponsored by Fullpool Wines, a Seattle-based wine retailer and proud sponsor of Nos Arietes since 2011. Fullpool was founded in 2009, is based in Seattle, and is owned and operated by longtime sounder supporters. They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, the Pacific Northwest.
MLS Cup Victory Celebration
00:00:21
Speaker
Hey, this is Christian Roldan. And Jordan Morris from the Seattle Sounders Football Club. And you're listening to... There's no study at this. Come on! Hey, Ocean! Let's go! I want to say bye-bye! The Seattle Sounders have done it! MLS Cup winners! And Portland can't say he's cheating! Here comes Rudy Diaz through the middle to crowd it for Seattle! They have climbed the mountain!
00:00:51
Speaker
And now our masters of all that they survey. Michael Odero leaves absolutely no doubt. The Sounders rule the region. Seattle Sounders, this can feel it. Seattle Sounders, the greatest MLS team in history. How does this one feel? This feels fucking awesome.
00:01:39
Speaker
I didn't know what it was. Is that what you young people call twerking?
00:01:48
Speaker
I have no idea. I don't know.
Podcast Hosts and Guests
00:01:51
Speaker
Welcome to another edition of NOS Adietta, sponsored by Fullpool Wines and Watson's Counter. This is episode 362 and we're recording on Thursdays, February 23rd, 2023. I'm your host, Jeremiah Shan, joining me as usual as Aaron Campo. But we're also joined by our Sounder Heart colleagues, Mark Kastner and Suzy Rants. Expect to hear a lot more from Mark and Suzy, as well as other contributors going forward as we revamp the show for 2023 and beyond.
00:02:15
Speaker
We are now just a few days away from the regular season opener, and it feels like an awful long time ago when the Sounders were in the club World Cup. It's actually been almost three weeks at this point, and we're finally going to have a game. It's on Sunday against the Colorado Rapids.
Sounders' Season Potential
00:02:33
Speaker
Let's just start with what our general feelings are about this season. Aaron, why don't you start us off?
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think the gap between what I see as the potential ceiling and what I see as the potential floor of the season, I think it's probably higher than it's been, if not ever than in many years.
00:02:54
Speaker
I think the Sounders have a lot of talent. I think that they have a lot of veteran talent. They have plenty of talent to be a legitimate supporter shield contender. That seems less likely considering the age of the core of the team, but very talented team, easily could be an MLS cup contender.
00:03:17
Speaker
Oh, go ahead. Well, they also could miss the playoffs. And I don't think one is any likelier than the other. I think that there's a lot of risk. There's a lot of downside risk. There's a lot of injury risk. And there's not a ton of depth. It's a little better than it was last year, I think, but still not great. And so, yeah, I don't know what to make of this team. Susie, you have anything to add to that?
00:03:47
Speaker
I think I feel really similarly to Erin. I'm really optimistic going into the season. Excited. I'm excited to hear about
00:03:57
Speaker
some of the tactical adjustments that the team has made reflecting on last year. And I'm excited to see how that plays out. And like Erin mentioned, I just don't think we've seen enough of the depth of this squad on like a regular basis to be able to make a judgment call about how the season might play out if we have to utilize more of that depth.
Tactics and Player Roles
00:04:17
Speaker
But yeah, I'm optimistic and excited.
00:04:21
Speaker
So Mark, you've written a bit about some of these tactical adjustments that we are expecting to see that we saw a little bit of against Al Ali. How does that impact the way that you go into this season?
00:04:35
Speaker
So I think it gives me a little bit more hope than I would have had just in general. I think they made the right gamble on gambling on this roster, adding one piece, a better backup forward. I think all that was maybe the right amount of risk they took, because I don't think they needed to blow up the roster or anything, as a lot of fans wanted to see happen.
00:05:05
Speaker
But one of the concerns I had kind of like coming into the off season and going through the off season was like, okay, they got to do something different. Cause it's like, you know, it's a Brian Spencer team. You know, I think he's a little bit underrated in terms of like his kind of tactical mouse across the league. You know, Matt Doyle is never going to write 3000 words on like his formations or anything. Well, I don't know. Maybe, maybe this is, maybe this is here that it happens.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, and so to come into this offseason or this preseason more correctly, for him to basically come out and say, like, yeah, people basically had figured out my teams, I was really encouraged by that. And it does seem like
00:05:49
Speaker
Over the last few years, kind of a big talking point among fans was like, oh, you know, Brian Spencer misses Gonzalo Pineda. And while I think that might be true, especially since the more we kind of get further away from the 2021 season and those tactical adjustments, it seems more true. But it does kind of seem like now the fresh perspectives that Freddie Juarez and Andy Rose have brought to this team
00:06:18
Speaker
has kind of maybe given, given like a 2.0 to those Gonzalo Pineda ideas. And I don't know if we, if you want to get into like more of the specifics about what. Oh, let's go for it. Why not? So, um, basically we've only seen one game and I know press got to see another game last Saturday. Uh, but that wasn't, you know, nothing that we could have seen on like a stream or anything. And we saw, we saw these tactical adjustments happen in a very high stakes game at the club world cup. Um, unfortunately they lost, but that is what it is.
00:06:48
Speaker
But basically, it gets the strengths, I think, out of four or five players really well, and more importantly, I think hides the weaknesses. So a couple of the things that we saw was we've talked
00:07:04
Speaker
kind of endlessly on previous center of heart episodes and also on the pages of center of heart about how new who is not a kind of modern attacking fullback. I, you know, his defensive ability is obviously, uh, like really good. Nobody can really argue that, but like the attacking thing wasn't there. So like his kind of typical over, like what you would expect from a left back, like a Jovan Jones or Brad Smith, like overlapping on the left side and crossing in who can't do that.
00:07:34
Speaker
So what they've decided to do is in possession kind of bring new who and kind of tuck him inside like next to the center backs and kind of widen the pitch that way. So instead of two center backs in kind of traditional center back roles,
00:07:50
Speaker
on the back line. It shifts into three center backs with Nu who has kind of this like valve on the left side where he's free to dribble into the midfield or even dribble out onto the left wing, but he's not expected to deliver that final ball where previous left backs that have played for Brian Spencer's Sounders teams were expected to kind of be that.
00:08:12
Speaker
A couple a couple of more tactical adjustments is in possession, you'll see our rest that kind of float out onto that left wing with Jordan more is very high and very wide on the left and that.
00:08:25
Speaker
that stretches kind of compact defenses even more because somebody's got to come out and mark probably the sounder's best dribbler and maybe their best passer. We'll see how Jau Paulo recovers from his ACL tear, but to bring Rusnak out to that left side and kind of like
00:08:43
Speaker
instead of thinking about the pitch in like a vertical up and down way it kind of flips the pitch in the left or right way so he can pick up the ball and either pass directly across field dribble directly across field or kind of attack the box from
00:08:58
Speaker
From that position and yeah, and then the right side you have two Rodons basically playing the same position where they'll interchange a lot both have I think obviously Christian Rodons the better player but both have kind of similar abilities either with crossing or with passing inside and
00:09:21
Speaker
For that sort of tactical overhaul to happen in the offseason, which albeit has been a much longer offseason than the Sounders have ever had before, because obviously they missed the playoffs for the very first time, I think that's really interesting and I'm really optimistic with those changes.
00:09:40
Speaker
You know, they could suck. It could just all go wrong and they have to revert back to something or a player, a player too could get injured. And, and, and I, you know, share kind of equal concerns as, as Aaron and Susie to their depth. But, um, I think I'm really optimistic that Brian was able to recognize those, those, uh, maybe weaknesses in, in himself and in his players and do something about it. Um, so yeah.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the things that really stood out to me in the preseason game against Louisville was just how high both roll dons were. And you would oftentimes see Alex ahead of Christian on the pitch. And I think they're going to interchange a ton, even more than we had seen in the past.
00:10:33
Speaker
Susie and Aaron, have you picked up anything in the admittedly limited sample size that we have of this new formation that is jumping out at you? One thing that I wouldn't say is jumping out of me, but one narrative I've seen a lot of criticism of this new formation is basically you're adjusting around one player, which is new, which I don't think is a very fair characterization of the change.
00:10:59
Speaker
People like have this assumption that new who isn't a strong passer isn't strong with the ball and I actually think he is. He's not as strong like Mark said overlapping crossing that is not his strength but he is a very capable in possession kind of player so
00:11:18
Speaker
I just think it's a little bit unfair to say that they're adjusting just because of New Who. They're adjusting because they weren't getting Jordan the ball late in the season in good spots. They weren't finding those, like, overloads that, you know, if you have people trying to pay attention to two rolled-ons on one side and Morris is wide and can make a darting run inside on the other side, I just think they're using space more effectively. And I just think that gets lost a little bit in the conversation.
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I think, Susie, I don't disagree that this is about more than adjusting everything to Nuhu. But I do think that Nuhu's core skill set, his security and possession, his man-marking ability,
00:12:06
Speaker
That's one of the most elite skill set and collections of skills that the Sounders have on the team. It's okay to make tactical plans around the strengths of your team. There are a lot of teams in Europe, I know people love it when I talk about Villa on here, but Villa have been playing at actually a pretty similar system since Unai Emery took over.
00:12:27
Speaker
where they have two nominal fullbacks, but one of them plays a role that's much more similar to what we're seeing new who play in preseason. And, you know, the other fullback is more of a traditional, almost like a wingback, right? And it's the positional nomenclature, I think, is increasingly outdated. Like we talk about what a team plays in defense, and it's just not really
00:12:53
Speaker
It's not like that anymore, right? Teams aren't static. Teams have radically different shapes between even phases of possession, let alone possession versus defense. So I think that Brian Schmetzer should be given a lot of credit for saying, all right, Nuhu is not great at these things. He's really great at these things. We need to put him in better positions to do these things while also finding ways to recreate the things maybe in the past we would have expected someone in that position to do.
00:13:21
Speaker
It was a consistent frustration, I think, for a lot of people last year. And so to see that so aggressively, and the blame often fell to Nuhu, but I think it was more of a systemic issue, right? I think it was more of an issue of teams figured out, oh, we can just let Nuhu do whatever he wants in the attacking third, and it's not really hurt us. You're almost like taking a player off the field and attack. And so figuring out a way to
00:13:46
Speaker
get that from elsewhere is a smart tactical adjustment that's going to be, I think, a lot harder for teams to game plan around. Yeah, I think people tend to think of this as a way of hiding new who. And I don't think this is hiding new who. It's just adjusting a formation that suits him in a little bit more. And this is one of the recurring things that we've heard from the coaches and from the players is that they feel like they're accentuating strengths, not necessarily hiding weaknesses.
00:14:15
Speaker
And I suppose that's maybe a perspective change and it is going to, at some point it will become apparent whether or not, which of those two things are really happening. And I'm sure it's a little bit of both. But I do think that this idea that teams don't do what the sounders are trying to do is not really accurate.
00:14:34
Speaker
Aaron obviously just spoke to what Aston Villa is doing. But Mark has talked about this too, that this is not so dissimilar than what Man City does. I've heard the sounders talk about how Arsenal is maybe not the exact model, but they looked at a lot what Arsenal was doing and tried to adopt some of those things. I know, Mark, do you want to speak to that a little bit more about how this is a little bit more progressive of an idea than I think
00:15:02
Speaker
the commentary it sometimes has allowed it to be. Yeah, I think like you have any weak teams like Arsenal and Manchester City, even Bayern Munich a little bit, although I'm not as familiar with what happens in Germany as I am, is what happens in England.
00:15:22
Speaker
You have these elite level coaches with elite level players trying to find just the thinnest margins possible, right? Because that's what happens at that level of the game. And Pep Guardiola, maybe the best manager in the world, as much as that pains me to say, he
00:15:43
Speaker
He has like one fullback on his roster right now, either through injuries or kind of some weird transfer nonsense that kind of happens. And he has like an abundance of centerbacks. So instead of just playing a centerback out of position without kind of, and not wanting to sacrifice having a player further up the field, what he's basically done is he's taken Nathan Aquet, who is just kind of a,
00:16:12
Speaker
like a rotational player from Manchester City and it's just basically played him left defense and kind of made up this new position. So it's not a left back, it's not a left center back, but he's just defending the left side and he's in possession on the kind of reserved left side.
00:16:28
Speaker
And that just basically allows the abundance of midfielders that great midfielders that Manchester City have to focus on collecting the ball, progressing the ball through possession,
Influence of Elite Teams
00:16:39
Speaker
and ending up with Erwin Holland scoring a goal. At least that's kind of their ideal situation. Not dissimilar to what you want an ideal Sounders goal to look like.
00:16:52
Speaker
Obviously, Raul Rodriguez is not as good as Erling Holland. He's also like a foot shorter than like a hundred pounds. Less, he weighs less. So like, there's- A little more attractive, it should be said. Yeah, he doesn't look like a scary goblin created in some sci-fi thing. So when you think about what like an ideal sounder's goal looks like,
00:17:18
Speaker
You know, they'll, you know, they recycle the ball from a goal kick or whatever. And if they progress the ball through kind of these abundance of like quality midfielders. And I would also add kind of with the way that Alex Rodons has been playing, he is not also not playing a fullback position. No, he's he's playing a mid, like just a right sided midfielder that sometimes comes in and also plays central midfield.
00:17:40
Speaker
So the ball progresses through there. Maybe it's a long ball over the top to Jordan Morris from Jackson Reagan. But then just from watching one kind of, we'll call it preseason because it was the club world cup, but from watching that one game, you can see how they want to rely less on Ruby Diaz in kind of the buildup from previous seasons and just have him sit in the box and score the goals.
00:18:09
Speaker
And so it's not too difficult to kind of watch these ideas with an elite team in England with either Manchester City. And I'm not as familiar with what I've seen with Arsenal. I don't see as many similarities there, although I wouldn't necessarily argue with anybody that wanted to make those points. But that's basically what I can kind of see happening.
00:18:36
Speaker
Not to belabor the point much more, but I mean, this is actually quite similar to how the rain played last year as well, where you have Lauren Barnes, who's traditionally been more of a center back playing left back. Really important in the build up, but not really making a ton of runs to cross the ball in. And then you have Sofia Huerta playing a very similar Alex Roll-On role. So we've seen it in Seattle. Seattle invented, right? Yeah.
00:19:02
Speaker
And I will say like kind of my last tactical point without hogging the microphone is I've seen a lot of criticism that this narrows, that this makes the sounders way more narrow and I actually think it does a little bit of the opposite, where basically dropping new back a little bit.
00:19:22
Speaker
gives you a wider base of your defense and you're less susceptible to a counter that way. So your other players have more freedom to be much wider of the pitch. And we saw towards the end, like the last 10 games of the last season, all teams needed to do was just like have a compact defense and the Sounders couldn't score. But now with a much, much wider
00:19:46
Speaker
use of the field. I can see, you know, Jordan Morris sneaking behind just a one-on-one situation with a fullback or a central defender, you know, Rusnak or Jau Paulo just beats one man on the dribble and all of a sudden the defense is in disarray.
00:20:06
Speaker
I think that's probably the thing I'm most encouraged by with these changes. I think one of the other things that the Sounders have talked a lot about is getting Jordan Morris into isolation type of situations where he's going at a defender that's on an island, whether with the ball at his feet or moving into space on a weak side or something like that.
00:20:30
Speaker
The sounders, I think, envisioned Jordan Morris being a big part of this. We didn't really see that part come into play as much against Al Ali. I would hope that's more kind of growing pains and figuring things out. But, you know, the way I've been looking at this is pretty simple. Like, if the sounders can get a combined 3,000 minutes or so out of Abare and Raul Rui Diaz,
00:20:52
Speaker
and probably to, you know, say 2000 minutes from Joe Paulo. I think this is a team that, and you sort of take for granted the health of everyone else, which is a lot, but I think those are the sort of the key elements to me. Like I don't see any reason why they can't compete for a supporter shield. And I think there's been a lot made out of the congestion that League's Cup creates and there is some long-term costs that you're going to pay if you go on a long League's Cup run, but it's a very different animal than
00:21:20
Speaker
Champions League because Champions League was happening during the season So you had eight games that you just had to squeeze into your schedule and the beginning of the season at the beginning of the season whereas leagues cup is Seven or you know, like whatever is it six weeks? I think six weeks long but seven games That are all there's nothing else going on and there's nothing else going on either you're playing games or you're resting I mean, that's really all it is and I think that's just a fundamentally different
00:21:48
Speaker
kind of problem that you have to deal with you don't have to worry about you know all this travel I mean that was the other thing about Champions League is you're traveling like unbelievable distances I don't know that we always appreciated just how far how many miles the Sounders added to their
00:22:04
Speaker
to their travel itinerary by having to go to Mexico twice, by having to go to Honduras, granted New York City was like the closest game. And that's the equivalent of like one of the longest trips they would have to take in the regular season. So to just add four really long road trips to the season, in addition to eight additional games, I think
00:22:25
Speaker
was tough. I know people got really tired of hearing about, oh, Champions League, okay, we won Champions League, big deal. But man, I'll tell you, I was watching that Champions League title-winning video that they put out.
00:22:40
Speaker
This morning and I was just sort of reminded of like this was a thing we did last year like that was a pretty good high And I think we and I understand like the the frustrations that people have over missing the playoffs I was frustrated frustrated. I think they should have made the playoffs. It's really annoying but like the the I've been sort of surprised at how much I
00:23:02
Speaker
ongoing frustration I've read with the Sounders unwillingness to just absolutely blow up the roster this offseason. Instead, they took a much more nuanced approach and they reworked the entire mentality of the team and the tactical approach. I think it's pretty admirable, I think. I'm actually really jazzed for this year.
00:23:24
Speaker
I also think you have to accept that it's not like you can't blow up a team in MLS in the offseason, as usually, especially when blowing up the team is getting rid of a bunch of guaranteed player contracts. Yeah, you can't buy out roll, Nico snack, JP, like you can't do that. It's just not. And even if you could.
00:23:43
Speaker
then you have to integrate four new core players. It's unrealistic to expect. The sounders are kind of stuck in a go-for-it mode right now, and they have the talent to go for it. It's not like they're screwed. This isn't a 2013 LA Galaxy situation, but
00:24:04
Speaker
You know, they kind of have to make it work. And I think they've done about as good as they could do to make this work. And the teams that aren't blowing it up, like two teams in particular come to mind, Toronto FC and NYC FC. Just look at their rosters right now. I would much rather have the Sounders roster. Or Atlanta on this. Yeah, but Atlanta is a whole kind of different issue.
00:24:33
Speaker
Or I guess Miami too. I would just rather be the Sounders than either of those four teams.
Player Retention Strategy
00:24:42
Speaker
I think the Sounders blowing it up probably kind of looks like Atlanta too. Just dumping assets as much as they can, getting creative with buyouts, and having almost zero flexibility for the next year or two.
00:24:55
Speaker
And I would hate Raul Maria Diaz playing for the Timbers. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's like San Jose or whatever the equivalent of Miami is to Atlanta. You know, one other thing I'll add is where his offseason moves go is I tend to think one of the underrated moves will end has been and will maybe end up being
00:25:17
Speaker
like a genius move, was the decision to trade an international roster spot to St. Louis SC for a discounted rate. I think they did it to him for $100,000 in Gamm, which was somewhere between a $75,000 to $100,000 discount on what you would normally expect to get for that international roster spot, which was effectively in exchange for not picking someone
00:25:42
Speaker
And then they they were able to expose Jackson Reagan, who right now is looking like he's going to be a starter on on the sounders. And if like, like, I don't know, I was amazed where they exposed him.
00:25:56
Speaker
I was less amazed when they worked that trade, but he is another person who this system is sort of designed to accentuate either him or Javi Ariaga being able to pass out of that sort of middle center back spot and that they were able to basically keep him for essentially an excess asset like that was pretty good move, I thought.
00:26:23
Speaker
I agree. I mean, it's just kind of like losing Garth is like a big deal. Uh, and, but it was like one of those last moves. Yeah. But I would have to think that given kind of the timeframe of everything that yes, Craig had Craig Weibel had like a kind of a big say in that very much. Um, and it's it, I don't know. I have a lot of kind of faith in the system and structure that they built. And that is one of.
00:26:52
Speaker
One of the I mean the sound is I've kind of always done that kind of thing even before Garth was Chris Henderson and whatnot Yeah, so like it's just very cool to be able to do things like that Yeah, I mean a bear should end up being a great acquisition too And I was sort of reminded today how little they end up giving they didn't give up that much to get them I think they give up, you know 300 guaranteed and and potentially 500 something like that for a player who
00:27:19
Speaker
You know, I don't think it would be at all surprising if you put up a 10 goal season, which
00:27:25
Speaker
would be a great return. If you consider him, Rui Diaz and Bruin combined for just 13 goals last year. If Rui Diaz and A-Bear can combine for 20, which doesn't strike me as unrealistic, that's eight additional goals. You add eight goals to the Sanders total last year, and they're almost guaranteed to be a playoff team.
00:27:50
Speaker
I mean, the number of times you pointed out they lost by one goal last season. Like 16 times or something. I don't remember what it was, but it's an outrageous number. And how little contributions they were able to get off the bench. I think, I mean, he's certainly someone that can start a lot of games too. So I'm not saying he's always going to be a bench option, but to have more threats.
00:28:09
Speaker
in that spot is really, really great. He seems to me to be a similar profile of the player Bruin was when he joined the team. Yeah. Upleveled for where MLS is now. That's actually a good analogy. And Will Bruin was an extremely effective backup forward for many years. So I think if you can get similar level of production, you've got to be thrilled with that.
00:28:33
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, I think that's probably a good place to call this a segment. We didn't do a call for questions, but we are going to go deep into one of the other big offseason changes, wasn't to the Sounders, but was to the playoff structure. We'll talk about that. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about the Apple deal you're listening to.
00:28:56
Speaker
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00:29:18
Speaker
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00:29:36
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:30:18
Speaker
Welcome back to Nos Arietes. So two segments, two issues we want to go over in this last segment, the new playoff structure and this new Apple deal, which we've gotten to know a lot more in the last couple of weeks, not only who the broadcast talent is going to be, but a lot more about what the content is
Apple's MLS Streaming Deal
00:30:39
Speaker
going to look like. And I don't know if anyone's had a chance to watch those preseason games, but we actually got Apple did a couple of preseason games where
00:30:47
Speaker
It looked pretty good, I have to admit. And the more that this kind of comes into focus, the more skepticism I think is starting to wane as to what this product is going to look like.
00:31:00
Speaker
I'll just start with the simplest thing. The price is not striking me as bad as it once did. If for no other reason than there are a ton of people that are going to get this for free, either through their season tickets or the apparently 110 million T-Mobile customers that now get access to this for free, I know I was able to
00:31:27
Speaker
send my free T-Mobile account to somebody else. At least in year one, I feel like this is going to be a much more accessible service than it initially seemed like it might be. I say this as someone who thinks there are a lot of legitimate criticisms of the deal and how it is
00:31:52
Speaker
somewhat exclusionary, I suppose. But I think one of the things that Sounders fans especially maybe don't understand is that we have been extremely fortunate over the years with how easy it's been to access the team's games. They've been a lot of games done over the year. I think a majority of games, you know, over the year.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yeah, others on ESPN, ABC. That's not the case for most MLS teams. I mean, a lot of MLS teams' TV deals are buried on regional sports networks that, in some cases, I think you have to pay extra for within the cable packages. So it is a change for Sounders fans. And certainly, financially, it's cheaper to get games over the air with a pair of digital rabbit ears than it is to pay for a subscription. But
00:32:39
Speaker
Sounders fans are not the only fans in the league. And so generally, I think this is going to be in terms of accessibility, a step up for a lot of teams or a sideways move for fans of teams who are on just like regular cable package. And I also think
00:32:58
Speaker
There are things not to like about this deal that I think are totally valid. They are also going to become increasingly the way deals like this happen, the way broadcast rights are handled in the future.
00:33:13
Speaker
Legacy television media is changing. I think the way it's worked for years is going away. Regional sports networks are probably a thing of the past and the very near future. This is just how it's going to operate. And I don't think that's good. Like if you want to talk about our access to information and content in the future and how that shakes out and whether or not that's good for consumers, it's absolutely not.
00:33:43
Speaker
But this is where things are going. And I think this is going to become how people watch the NFL, how people watch MLB. And MLS is just because of where they are in the market and the consciousness, they can take these risks. They were early to market with direct kick, with
00:34:00
Speaker
I've forgotten MLS Live, the streaming platform, which I do think it's worth pointing out. This is cheaper than MLS Live was in its last season. Now, obviously you get local games with this, but you have to pay for local games. Not exactly apples to apples, but still worth noting that it is. If you want to watch all the games, you can do it more cheaply now than you could in 2017 or whatever the last year of MLS Live was.
00:34:25
Speaker
Um, so I, I just, a lot of people I think are framing this as MLS being desperate, uh, MLS being out of touch, whatever it is, MLS only caring about the bottom line. Well, that's, I mean, every sports league is that way. They only care about the bottom line. I'm not really fair to hold that against MLS if you're not going to hold them against other leagues. But I think that they're actually being pretty.
00:34:50
Speaker
daring and they're taking from a business perspective what I think amounts to a pretty reasonable risk to take. I think it's going to end up working out really well for them where the bottom line is concerned.
00:35:04
Speaker
I definitely agree with that as someone who's, has no Apple products so has been frustrated by the process. But I agree like this is the way that the industry is going and MLS may just be ahead of the curve and we'll see as that pans out but one thing that's
00:35:21
Speaker
been frustrating in the past for MLS games is the lack of, you know, you have a TV time slot that you have to work in. And so you get maybe no pre or post game coverage because of that. And this Apple deal allows them to be a lot more innovative in offering that kind of access, more analysis, more pre and post game coverage. And I think it'll be really interesting to see how they do with that.
00:35:47
Speaker
And having the, uh, like uniform kickoff times is really great for people's schedules. I know, I know there's still going to be kind of the outliers, like some afternoon games here and there, but just like knowing.
00:35:58
Speaker
for basically eight months out of the year, your team is playing at a certain time will actually, I think, help. One of the biggest criticisms is like, oh, MLS is going behind a paywall. Nobody's going to be able to watch games for free. First of all, that's not true because there's free games. But second, I'll just add 40. They actually confirm 40% of the games are going to be for free. Three of the Sounders, first four, they're announcing which games are going to be available for free.
00:36:26
Speaker
like I think on a month-to-month basis, but three of the Sounders first four games are going to be available to everyone, but go ahead, Mark. Yeah, but basically just like knowing that the team that plays down the road from you that like, okay, you're an Arsenal fan or whatever and you live in Minnesota, you're not really an MNUSC, Minnesota United fan, but just like knowing they play Saturday night at 7.30 every Saturday,
00:36:50
Speaker
Basically from the spring to the fall you're gonna end up watching more games just because they're not kicking off at 230 on a Thursday and that's like an extreme example, but they had to do a game like that last season because of a storm, but yeah, I just think that that's like really gonna be helpful just to have like a Like a serious
00:37:15
Speaker
offering for 10 seasons to come actually. I would say even more than the ability to follow your local team, what it increases the ease of following other teams, which I know MLS has really struggled with creating this idea that
00:37:34
Speaker
Like, okay, so the Sounders do good local ratings, but no one's really watching NYCFC LA Galaxy because there's just no national audience for these games. And I think the reliable times, it makes it really easy to just know that if on a Saturday, I want to watch the whip around show, for instance, during the middle of the day, there's going to be four games going on.
00:37:56
Speaker
that I know what time they're going to be, you know, starting at four 30 civic time, there's going to be a whole slate of games that are going to be gone every Saturday. I think that's going to make it just a lot easier to follow, not necessarily any one team, but just to follow the league in general. And it's going to create a lot more of this, you know, like this whip around show I think is going to be.
00:38:15
Speaker
really, really fun. I mean, I, I watch, that's basically how I watch Champions League now. That's to the degree that I watched the NFL. I almost only watched NFL red zone. And I think this is, you know, and so I'm, I'm really excited to see what this, this whoop around show looks like. And, and like I said, 40% of these games are going to be able available for free. I assume though the whipper on show is going to be one of those things that's going to be available to everyone.
00:38:40
Speaker
So I'm starting to like a lot of this stuff that I'm seeing. I think, you know, I was very skeptical that they were gonna be able to pull this all together. I don't think it's gonna look perfect on, you know, week one, but, you know, I think it'll be better. We're still waiting announcements on what the Sounders radio broadcast is gonna look like, but they are gonna have a radio broadcast. They're still gonna be on the radio. They're still gonna have Spanish language coverage.
00:39:09
Speaker
So a lot of those concerns, I think, are going by the wayside. And I will say I've watched a fair amount of the Apple season pass content, and it looks really good. It sounds good. The app works well. I think once you're in the environment,
00:39:27
Speaker
It's going to be great. There's definitely some discovery issues. There's definitely some ability to... One of the other things that they were able to deal with is they made a deal with DirecTV so that they can get these games on in bars all across the country. That was another big one that people were worried about. But I don't know. I think once you're in the product, once you're viewing it, I think a lot of these concerns are going to sort of go away.
00:39:55
Speaker
I think too that one of the major complaints I think everyone has had for the last forever is the quality of the broadcast of local broadcasts don't look great. Fox broadcasts look somehow worse. ESPN broadcasts are probably the best, but still I've never been convinced they're actually full 1080.
00:40:15
Speaker
From what I can see, the quality of the broadcasts on Apple TV is gonna be true, 1080p HD, really, really high quality, which is nice. Soccer really benefits from really good video quality. I think it's more likely with this deal than with ESPN or whatever, that within the next few years, we're gonna get 4K broadcasts, which would be really cool, I think. And that's something I haven't really heard a lot of people talk about, which is kind of surprising. I mean, to me, that's like one of the major benefits
00:40:44
Speaker
of this deal is we don't have to look at the vastly and smeared ESPN sideline camera anymore, which I mean, it truly did the especially games in Seattle that started during the daytime on like those, you know, late spring, early fall days where it's sunny, but not really. It was impossible to see because of the quality of the broadcast cameras. And I think this is going to help a lot. And I also think for me,
00:41:14
Speaker
When the move from MLS Live to ESPN Plus happened, because I wasn't really paying for MLS anymore, I didn't feel compelled to watch the games as much. I was like, when I had MLS Live, I was like, I'm paying 150 bucks for this. I might as well watch the games. And when it was part of a thing I was already paying for,
00:41:35
Speaker
Uh, you know, and that's a dumb consumer behavior thing. I'm not saying that that's like a, an incentive necessarily or a benefit to me, but I do think I'm probably going to end up watching more games and I wouldn't be shocked if other people just feel compelled to do that as well. And I think that's ultimately a positive thing. I like MLS, you know, so it's nice to, to feel like, eh, I should probably get my money's worth out of this.
00:41:56
Speaker
I will say that maybe not directly related to that, but that there's this whole, effectively, this whole channel built around MLS. We've talked a long time about how wouldn't it be great if there was literally an MLS channel or a soccer channel that was available that had a one-stop shop for everything you wanted. There's a lot of original content being created for this channel. It's not all going to be sounders content, but
00:42:21
Speaker
I think if you are a fan of the sounders, you're going to find a lot of stuff that you like, just making it all feel like a bigger thing. Even at its best, ESPN had a relatively short pregame show, even at its best.
00:42:39
Speaker
Fox had a relatively short pregame postgame. There was no shoulder programming that made it feel like an event. And this is like, you can sit down on a Saturday and basically spend your whole day watching MLS and it will feel, and it's not just games. It's like all this other stuff that people want. So I don't know. I've been kind of bullish on it from the start, but I am pretty enthusiastic about what this product's going to look like.
MLS Playoff Format Debate
00:43:05
Speaker
On the other side of the coin though,
00:43:07
Speaker
I'm less bullish about this new playoff format, like that transition.
00:43:14
Speaker
It saved me from making an Alexei Wallace joke. So that's fine for the best. There you go. So they unveiled this playoff format literally this week, which I just think is hilarious. A week before the season, they finally unveiled this playoff format. And there will be three different formats within this format in the first three rounds. They added two additional playoff teams. So there's now nine teams that make the postseason.
00:43:40
Speaker
Uh, there's going to be an eight, nine game, which I feel like is just absolutely overthinking things. And then they go into a best of three round, which is similar, but not exactly the same to what the best of three round. The MLS used to have way back in, I think 2002 was the last time they, they used it. Uh, it's been a long time since certainly in the, in the sounders era of MLS, they've never had a best of three, no other league in no other competition. As far as I know in the world uses best of three, uh, baseball guys.
00:44:09
Speaker
Okay. No other soccer. Okay. No, that was fair. Very fair. Uh, no other soccer league, another soccer league in the world, but I didn't, I actually get to know that only baseball uses best of three. Uh, but then WNBA might in their early ones too. Okay. All right. No, that's fair enough. Fair enough. But, uh, it, I mean, it is, it's something foreign to soccer on the, on the, at the very least. Uh, and then they go back to the.
00:44:38
Speaker
format we all know and love for the conference semis. No. Yeah, conference semis, conference finals, and MLS Cup are all single elimination, higher seed host type of thing, which I don't know. I guess the way they pitched it in the original release is like we know everyone loves that, so we're still going to have it. Of course, we're adding on this other Frankenstein playoff format.
00:45:06
Speaker
Are we being too harsh, Mark? I'm gonna let you maybe give the opener of how we're maybe being too harsh before we destroy you. Yeah, that's fine. And I will probably admit defeat because that's just kind of...
00:45:24
Speaker
I operate as a person. But when this was announced, I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. And then like the next like several hours, every person in my life, even the ones that don't like MLS is like, wow, that's dumb. So I had to like do some like reevaluating. However, I still kind of like it. I kind of like how it's weird. I kind of like how random it is.
00:45:50
Speaker
All right, who wants to take, who wants to first crack it at knocking Mark down? Although I will say he made some fair points.
00:46:01
Speaker
I will say maybe Aaron feels a little more strongly. I don't love it, but I don't feel strongly. And you did make some interesting points, Mark, I would say. I think that the obvious argument that a lot of people have made is that it does devalue the regular season a little bit more than it has in the past. And that means it's going to be harder to draw eyeballs on the regular season, potentially. People love to watch playoffs in general in the United States.
00:46:31
Speaker
more playoff games is going to be more eyeballs. And that's obviously a win for Apple and MLS, but it does make the regular season a little bit of a different story. I'm not sure how that will play out. Obviously, every team is going to want to win games. And then just the funkiness of having to remember like, what playoff round am I in? How many games does my team have to win? It's easier to remember than the away
00:46:55
Speaker
goal rule perhaps for people, but it will be just an interesting adventure when it comes to that. There is also just something like
00:47:06
Speaker
both heartbreaking, especially as a rain fan, and magical about single elimination games in the playoffs. Just that like intensity of that one single match that it's hard to take, like it's hard to take that magic and apply it to a best of three series, I think. But everyone's got different opinions. Over to you, Aaron. Thank you, Susie. So the thing is, is that I don't necessarily disagree with
00:47:35
Speaker
a lot of what Mark is saying in a vacuum. And I have some disagreements with Susie from a structural perspective, but I don't really disagree with anything she's saying in a vacuum. I think my issue is the holistic picture of the way the playoffs are structured. From a sporting perspective, I think
00:47:56
Speaker
The best format for playoffs is two legs, home and away aggregate goals. But I understand why that's not compelling TV. Um, and I, I understand why there's advantages to having a single elimination game. And I've, I agree that like it is.
00:48:16
Speaker
extremely intense. It's really high stakes. And you're sort of trading some of the, I don't want to say integrity, but the, I mean, you know what I mean, right? Like you're trading some of that for
00:48:31
Speaker
a much better product and something that's much more emotionally satisfying, I guess. And that's okay, right? Like sports are entertainment. They don't have to be 100% the most fair thing because soccer is a super fluky sport, just it's inherent to the game. On the opposite side of that, I don't really dislike the best of three on its own, right? Like I think if,
00:48:56
Speaker
There was a play-in game. I hate the play-in game. I hate how many teams make the playoffs. Those are my fundamental complaints with the MLS playoff system and have been for years, and it just keeps getting worse on that front. But if there was, let's say they're dead set on there being nine teams that make the playoffs, have the first round playoff game, be single a limb, have everything else be best of three until the MLS Cup.
00:49:21
Speaker
It's the, we're going to have this one round be best of three, but then everything else is single elimination because you are admitting, look, we know that single elimination lets the team that's not actually the better team win sometimes.
00:49:37
Speaker
And we're not okay with that happening in this round, but every other round, that's what I like. It's not, there's no like cohesiveness to the idea. I think you've got to commit one way or the other. You've got to say, look, we play a 34 game regular season.
00:49:54
Speaker
And you, there are built-in advantages to finishing higher. You get to host games, you know, maybe at some point in the future, they could do the higher seed wins, no penalties thing, whatever, but we're doing single elimination all the way through. I actually like that system fairly well. Um, it's not perfect, but it's fun. It's exciting. And I do think you can make it so that it advantages and places more of an emphasis on the regular season. I think if you want to do best of three all the way through, that's great too. It's the.
00:50:24
Speaker
living in both worlds thing that I think frustrates me so much. And I think especially when this many teams are making the playoffs and then saying, well, we've got to create more playoffs games. So here's our solution. We let in more teams. We do this best of three thing. Just play fewer regular season games.
00:50:43
Speaker
Like, keep everything, like, balance the conferences. I know they can't do that right now. And maybe that's where they're going with this. I don't know. But balance the conferences, play intra-conference, double round robin, and do all your playoff seating, you know, based on that. That's where I like the group stage idea, right? Is everything in the regular season is intra-conference. Then you do the group stage, you mix the two conferences at that point going forward. And that's how the playoffs work. I love that idea. That's, you know.
00:51:13
Speaker
That's not happening. So I don't know why I brought it up. I just really like it. And I think like in a different world where MLS has
00:51:21
Speaker
sorry, promotion and relegation, a system like they have in a lot of the smaller European leagues where they split the league in half about halfway through the year, one half is the sort of playoff round for the championship and for European qualification, the other half is for relegation. That's a great system that I think meets a lot, like checks a lot of the boxes MLS is going for. The problem is,
00:51:46
Speaker
that second half, the bottom half has nothing. I mean, they're just playing for draft picks. So it's not a great fit, but I think that's where ultimately they want to be, right? Is like, we want a lot of high stakes games towards the end of the year. This is the best way we can think of to get there that also guarantees teams home playoff games that also gives Apple what they want. And I just, I hope that they,
00:52:14
Speaker
they take their medicine this year with the feedback they're getting and make some improvements next year because it's just pick one or the other, but don't do this halfway between both things because it's not working. Yeah, I'll offer some maybe slightly different criticisms. I really do hate the 8-9 game, I don't think.
00:52:36
Speaker
I don't, I don't really see the value in it. I think that I would be much happier if they just did eight, like I could live with the eight teams. I think the nine team is just a step too far. The other thing that is kind of bugging me, there's two other elements that kind of bug me about this is one we're going to be treating.
00:52:53
Speaker
Shootout wins the same as we're treating regulation wins. I think there's got to be a system created to give added value to winning in regulation over winning in penalties. One idea I came up with is just like a first to four system.
00:53:09
Speaker
A shootout win would be worth two points. A shootout loss would be worth one point. So if you won the first two games in a shootout win, you would advance. If you won the first one in regulation and then you lost, and then you went two penalties in the second one, you just throw away the penalties and the team advances with a tie. The only way you would go to a third game in that scenario is if each one in regulation or the each one in a shootout.
00:53:39
Speaker
I would feel much better about that just because it feels a little bit more like I just don't think we should be valuing shootouts as highly as we're going to end up valuing in this one. The other thing that kills me about this is that if you win your first two games in the best of three round,
00:53:57
Speaker
you're going to end up taking a three-week break before the next round. And that just kills the moment. The best thing about the single elimination wasn't necessarily just the single elimination, is that it allowed the playoffs to be played entirely before that international break in November. And the international breaks can end up messing with or breaking up the playoffs again.
00:54:18
Speaker
And that's just, you know, you talk about, you know, a lot of this is built around the idea of building momentum, of building narratives, and doing all this other stuff. But man, you put that international break right in the middle of the playoffs, and I just don't know how you, you really recover from that. And that's been the biggest problem with playoffs in the past is just these international breaks are at a very inconvenient time for MLS.
00:54:41
Speaker
I don't, I honestly, I haven't entirely worked it out whether or not that was at all avoidable. But I mean, I would imagine they, because I think that is there still an international break that comes towards the end of the regular season? So I don't know, maybe it's to some degree, maybe it's
00:55:00
Speaker
It might be unavoidable, but that's that is a to me like that three week potential three week break in the middle of the playoffs just is going to be a killer. But you know, we'll see. But I don't know. We'll see. I don't know. I'm willing to kind of give it a chance, but I'm not I'm not loving the format change from round around the way it is.
Playoff Format Criticism
00:55:22
Speaker
Again, I can't get over this shootout win versus regulation win thing. And I will say I was not a big fan of aggregate goals, straight aggregate goals, because it just didn't give enough of an advantage to the higher seed. And we saw that play out over and over again. I want to say it was almost to the point where it was like a
00:55:42
Speaker
coin flip to determine the higher seeds only were advancing slightly better than 50% of the time in that too late format. And so that's obviously a problem. That also devalues the regular season. But it would be nice if MLS just sort of picked a format and stuck with it. I was kind of excited about the possibility of doing a kind of World Cup style group stage that got thrown around. But
00:56:07
Speaker
I don't know, maybe that'll come back if this doesn't hit. I mean, maybe it's, and who knows, maybe it allows teams, like something you had said, not on here, but you had, I heard you say is that it maybe allows teams a little bit more ability to kind of take risks with the way they manage their rosters and open cup and leagues cup. And because the regular, they don't necessarily need to be quite so focused on seating for the regular season. So although having two of three home games at, two of three games at home potentially is a pretty big advantage.
00:56:38
Speaker
It goes higher. Yeah, exactly. Higher seed, lower seed, higher seed. I mean, you're right. That could be a problem in my system is that it diminishes the possibility of a third game, which is potentially a benefit to the, to the home team or to the higher seed, I should say.
00:56:57
Speaker
I do think, though, if you if you're going to do something where you want to guarantee a team, a home game, you go away, home, home. That that makes the most sense because, OK, like the higher seed knows they're going to have to play on the road, but they at least get the benefit of a way to team having to either travel back or stay on the road. But.
00:57:22
Speaker
I think Home Home Away makes the most sense competitively, but if you want to make sure every team has a home playoff gate, and I think that might be the driving factor here, which I'm not sure why I'm supposed to care about that. I mean, that's the thing, right? Is that like a lot of the things MLS does, I can understand why they're doing things from a business perspective.
00:57:49
Speaker
But I don't know why I'm supposed to care about that. Well, that's probably a good place for us to call it. I like this new format. I think we're going to be doing kind of more of these multi.
00:58:06
Speaker
hosts, multi-guest
Conclusion and Farewell
00:58:08
Speaker
hosts. I don't know where we're calling this, but anyway, I did want to thank Susie and Mark for joining us. I am Jeremiah O'Shan, singing off of behalf of Aaron and Lickett. This is no audio. Oh, I should also thank our sponsors. I always forget this. Uh, full pull wines and Watson's counter who have both amazingly signed up for yet another year of sponsorship. So, uh, by all means frequent those establishments. Uh, but, uh, again, I'm Jeremiah O'Shan.
00:58:36
Speaker
Signing off for Aaron Campo and Lickett. This is No Saudi Yet This. Remember, you will never get alone. Green Douglas, where were the waters cut through? Down to wild mountains and tangents you flew. Vanadium Northwest to the ocean so blue. It's roll on, Columbia roll on.
00:59:01
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!