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Episode 404: How did Obed Vargas do at the U20 World Cup?
75 Plays2 years ago
Obed Vargas is back from the U20 World Cup and to get a better idea of how he did and what kind of impression he made, we asked Adam Belz the Scuffed podcast to give us some insight. Scuffed, for those of you don't know, is one of the top US Soccer podcasts and they are fully listener supported.
There's also a second-half to this interview where we talk about Jordan Morris and Cristian Roldan's place in the national team and some of the broader issues surrounding the program. To listen to the full episode, you'll need to become a paid subscriber to our Substack.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsors
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.
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. Thanks to Watson's Counter for sponsoring this episode. Located in Ballard, Watson's Counter is your neighborhood specialty coffee shop, brunch spot, and now, coffee roaster. Sourcing exclusively high scoring coffees, Watson's Counter has started their coffee roasting project to showcase amazing coffees grown around the world. Their first featured coffee is the beautifully complex washed Ethiopian Odola.
00:00:50
Speaker
Follow them on Instagram at Watson's Counter to keep up with all the upcoming releases or check out their website at www.watsonscounter.com. Whether you want to stop by for your daily coffee to go or sit down for delicious Korean inspired brunch, Watson's Counter has got you covered.
Guest Introduction: Adam Bells
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of Moose Adiates. I am Jeremiah O'Shan. Joining me today is a very special guest, Adam Bells of the Scuff Podcast, to talk about Obed Vargas, his turn at the U20s. And we'll even get into Christian Roldan and Jordan Morris getting called up to the national team. But Adam, thank you for joining us. Great to be here, Jeremiah. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I think this is the second time we've had you on.
00:01:41
Speaker
I think the last time was we were trying to do a detente over, uh, Jordan Morris or something. Yeah, I suppose I, I actually can't remember that, but I don't.
00:01:52
Speaker
I will have to, our listeners will go back and remind me exactly what we talked about. But I do, we have had, we also had Vince on once to talk about Louisville city. Oh yeah. He's much better than me. Why were you guys talking about Louisville city? Cause the Sounders played them in a preseason game. It was just like, honestly, it was an excuse to have Vince on. No, he's, he's fun.
Scuffed Podcast Overview
00:02:16
Speaker
But Adam, in case people don't know the scuff podcast, is that the way we just call it scuffed or the scuffed podcast? What is the proper way to refer to it? I think the scuffed podcast makes sense unless you're talking to somebody who's like really knows who we are. Then you can say scuffed. Should I tell people about it? Yeah. Tell people about it because it's a great project that is, I found very inspiring to be honest with you.
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, you've been very encouraging along the way as sort of an elder statesman in the space. I like that. I'm sure you do. Let's see. We cover the men's national team, the women's national team, and the men's U20s more than the women's U20s, although we did cover the women's U20 World Cup last year that failed one.
00:03:07
Speaker
I we we we do a show every week for patrons called the Monday review, which Jeremiah listens to I can confirm because he texts me after it, you know, probably every other week. That's me and Vincent Waki. And that's that's sort of like our review of the weekends action in the US men's national team player pool. But it's there's a lot of other stuff sprinkled in to
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah. And then you also do, you, you do breakdowns of basically every time the U S plays, the men's senior team at least plays. Yeah. You guys have regular women now. Yeah. And the women, uh, you have a women's show dedicated to the women's every week, the women's team every week, right? Every other week, every other week we do also Wednesday. Yeah.
00:03:48
Speaker
And then, and you guys did a lot on the U20 World Cup, which is the main reason I wanted to have you on was to talk about one of the players who I thought was, I guess maybe to check my allegiances a little bit.
Obed Vargas at U20s
00:04:06
Speaker
I thought Obed Vargas looked really good in the U20s and maybe even better than what I think probably people expected.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yes, I think it's definitely better than I expected. And yes, definitely. I thought quite good. I w he was maybe the midfielder. I was least excited about going into the tournament. And, um, boy, by, by the end of the tournament, I was, I was the opposite. He's, he's an, he's an elegant player and maybe I just sort of thought of him as the next.
00:04:35
Speaker
Danny Leyva or Christian, Christian Atencio, who were both, we both had national youth, national team looks in the past and played, you know, Leyva played in the U 17 world cup. Um, but man, he, yeah, he was really good. He's like, I said, his elegance is what sticks out to me, you know, his ability to play on the half turn, the intelligence of his decisions, um, reasonably ball secure.
00:05:00
Speaker
I have a question for you about him. When he first started getting serious minutes with the sounders, was it evident to you like, oh, he's better than Leyva ever was, or he's better than, I mean, Atencio may end up being a center back, right? Or yeah, he does play center back. Yeah. You know, it's funny, Josh Atencio is who you're talking about, but I think he has a brother named Chris, which is funny.
00:05:27
Speaker
yeah i meant to say josh did i say chris that's okay i figured that's who you were talking about and uh uh yeah uh no i don't think it was evident immediately that he was better because what's interesting to me about obed is you like we've been hearing about him for a while from the
00:05:46
Speaker
the academy coaches and the, you know, the defiance coach who was a big fan of his Wade Webber. And so you would hear about him. And so you had this assumption because people talk so highly of him that he's going to just jump off the page or jump off the screen and be this, this, you know, just dynamo player. But when you watch him, his game is much more subtle than that. And so I don't think it's easy to always appreciate him
00:06:13
Speaker
if, especially in highlights, like if you're just watching Obed Vargas highlights, you're kind of like, what's the big deal? Cause he's not scoring goals. He's not really setting up goals. He's not going into crunching tackles. He's not hitting these amazing through balls, but you sort of watch the body of his work and it starts to become, okay, this is what it is. It's, it's, he does a lot of stuff well, and he does it at a high level for a higher level than you would expect for a player of his age. And he does it with a maturity.
00:06:41
Speaker
And so it took a while, I think, to watch him and to appreciate it. But his first start that he ever got for the Sounders was this infamous, or I don't know, infamous is the right word, but this game that the Sounders started a bunch of five teenagers against Austin FC on the road, and he was started as a number 10. And they won that game, and he didn't do anything in that game. I thought that was spectacular. But he held his own, and you're like, OK. But he played as a number 10 in that game.
00:07:09
Speaker
And then we didn't really, that was a one-off appearance for the Sounders. And then he came back and he got a start in the Champions
Vargas's Development Journey
00:07:16
Speaker
League opener last year. And it was against Montagua, it was on the road, and it was sort of like, oh, this is an interesting decision to start a 16-year-old time on the road in a Champions League game. And again, he just sort of held the zone. He didn't do anything spectacular. And he sort of built on that as he went. And yeah.
00:07:38
Speaker
So that has been a journey, I guess, is the long answer to your question. Is that similar to how you experienced him, I guess?
00:07:58
Speaker
And his passing, some of his passing ideas, you know, the things, the thing that you never see in highlights is the pass from the deep lying midfielder into the center circle or like past the center circle to somebody's feet. And both of those guys make that pass. You know, that's, that's one thing I really liked about Vargas is he was, he was, he was brave enough to receive the ball from a center back, maybe even under some pressure turn with it and then find the feet of somebody 20 or 30 yards ahead of him.
00:08:24
Speaker
which is just, you know, it's almost as important as the assist, you know, if you're, if you're counting G plus, um, but, uh, but Lava, I think maybe lacks the quickness to, to play defensive midfield at a really high level. And, um,
00:08:44
Speaker
Vargas is quick, definitely quicker, but I'm still waiting to see if he – how his physicality translates to the next level. I mean it seems like it's translating fine in MLS, right?
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think that's, that's sort of, it still does require some projection. Like he's not, he doesn't look like a finished product at 17, but you sort of see the things that he's doing in, at least from, at least what I see is his ability to hold the ball, his ability to draw fouls. I think that that's actually a really underrated skill of his is he's, he's very good at drawing that foul that sort of slows a game down when you need it, or, you know, you're in a tough spot in the corner. And instead of trying to just kick it off the defender,
00:09:29
Speaker
you're able to get a free kick out of it or, you know, and so he's not, he's not giving the ball away. Needless to say, although in this last game, he did have a couple of turnovers that were for the Sanders, uh, that weren't great, but that's just, you know, those were warm mental mistakes. There, there weren't things where he was getting caught in possession or something like that. They were just like loose passes that, you know, you would for free not make.
00:09:52
Speaker
Right, right. Well, it seems so ideal for a player like him to be at a club like Seattle where he can learn from Joao Paulo and Nico Ledero. I mean, even Rui Diaz will tell him where he wants the ball put. And I mean, this is so much, so much experience and like just real quality on that team for him to learn from. Not to mention Christian Roldan and Jordan Morris. I'm sure he'll learn some stuff from them too.
00:10:23
Speaker
Although it seems like, yeah, right. No, it does seem like he has a lot of Christian rolled on in him. Now Christian rolled on his path to where he is. I suppose it's a lot different in that, you know, he, he, this one of these players who came through.
00:10:38
Speaker
the prep system, like he played all through, like he played high school soccer all the way through, which you just don't hear of. There's not a lot of national teamers that were playing high school soccer as seniors. And that's what he was doing. And he was more of an offensive player in college. Like he, I think he was actually, he was kind of deployed as a 10 at UW.
00:11:00
Speaker
and he got moved back the field and now he's sort of moved. He has an interesting journey, but they have some similar characteristics in their game and you could sort of see the potential for Vargas to evolve into a Roll Dawn-esque role where you could see him playing wide as more of a possession-type winger or something like that. It's not necessarily a role that has an obvious
00:11:27
Speaker
place in the national team. I think for the national team, he's probably an eight or a six, right? If you were to project as a national team. I would think so. I mean, and that's a little bit, a little bit of Christian's problem with the national team is he, you know, he, he has played some winger, but there's not much, it's not many minutes to go around at winger. Does, does open have any of the sort of goal dangerousness that Christian brings?
00:11:49
Speaker
Well, you know, that's one of the things I thought we saw a little bit of at the U-20 World Cup. Like in that, in that first game, he, you know, he got into the, he was deployed a little farther up the field in the, in the, for the U-20s than he is for the Sounders where with the Sounders, he really is a, a six or, you know, an eight, like he's in a double pivot most of the time.
00:12:06
Speaker
Yeah. When he's wins with the Sounders. Uh, but it seemed like with the U20s and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it felt, and he, and he, this is what he also told us was that he was given a little bit more license to get forward and to play a little bit more offensively, uh, with the U20s and you saw him in the box a little bit more. Uh, you know, he had a couple of shots from distance that we haven't really seen him. We haven't seen that at all from him with the Sounders. Oh yeah. He had, he had one where he just laced it. It just went right at the keeper. Right.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, and so that was an interesting thing for us to see was the way he was used differently at the u20s and it was sort of this reminder that he's got more. I think that's what's so intriguing about him is that you dig it like what the more you watch him the more you can see that there's uncapped potential and you can see that there's, he has ideas like you know he.
00:12:55
Speaker
he had an assist in the in the Portland game against, you know, a couple months ago where he set up really ideas on this really nice cutback pass. And, and he seems to have that in him and he seems to understand have a really good understanding of when to get forward, when to push down to the, you know, to the, to the end line. And he's, you know, he has the ideas, the offensive instincts, I think, to potentially project farther up the field potentially.
00:13:22
Speaker
Well, and even if he doesn't project
Potential and Future Prospects
00:13:24
Speaker
further up the field, a high level six or eight does have to provide some threat of like, of scoring goals or setting up goals. That's just like, that's part of, it's part of soccer. But yeah, he played, I would say he played further up.
00:13:41
Speaker
in the tournament and then against Uruguay when we were a little bit more, had a little bit less of a grasp on the game, a game that we lost 2-0, he was playing as a deep-lying midfielder in that game, more so than in the earlier games. But yeah, against Slovakia and Ecuador is a game where he
00:14:02
Speaker
He nearly scored by getting into the box and take a touch around a defender and then just a really good save by the keeper from Ecuador to keep it up. That game and the game against Slovakia, which was the second toughest of the first four games, he was a little more advanced, like kind of an eight slash 10.
00:14:21
Speaker
And so when you, when you are judging him specifically, do you take into account at all that he was the youngest player on the team? Or is that at this point, that's just not a, a relevant metric to judge him by? Well, I have to, I guess I, I do not know how much of a difference it makes. I mean, it's, it makes a difference in some cases and some cases it doesn't make a difference. You know, it's such an unknowable.
00:14:50
Speaker
time period and like a player's career, like are they fully baked at 17? Some players are, you know? So I don't know. I do take it into account. I hope he's so good that he doesn't get to play in the next U20 World Cup, because if he does get to play in the next U20 World Cup, then you're like,
00:15:11
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know how far he's going to go, you know? Right. Yeah. And so what you're saying is like, if he's a Ricardo Pepe type of trajectory where he's eligible for the U20 World Cup, but he's just sort of not seen as a youth national team member at this point.
00:15:28
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So would be peppy would be an example of that. I guess Josh Sargent was that. And, you know, the jury's still out on him as a, I mean, he's a legit national team striker, but the jury's still out on him and being like a future legend or something. Um, Who else Rayna, I think Rayna, Rayna graduated out of the youth national teams before he ever had a chance to play in the U-20 World Cup. So yeah, that'd be nice if he, if he made that, made that shift. Do you think he's gonna, like, is he, is he gonna,
00:15:57
Speaker
keep accelerating in his growth is that you're I mean that's that's that's our hope right and I it'll be interesting because you know this was an interest this game I thought what this last sounders game was an interesting test case for him because he didn't show up back in Seattle until
00:16:15
Speaker
I think Monday was when he was back in Seattle. He didn't train on Tuesday, like he was just watching on the sidelines on Tuesday. And so he trained Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And I don't think the plan originally was for him to start, but then Nico Ledero picked up an injury on Thursday. And so there was sort of a choice between him and Atencio who they should start. And Atencio's been
00:16:38
Speaker
You know, solid, he's he's had some games where he's been outstanding. He's had some games where he has not been as as impressive, but he's sort of like attention to me presents a little bit more as a.
00:16:53
Speaker
Like if I was going to bet on someone being having a 10 or 15 year MLS career, I would, I would be happy to put that on a tensier. Cause I think he projects as a very good MLS player. I don't know that he projects higher than that though. Whereas Obed.
00:17:09
Speaker
I think the sky is the limit, sort of. You could see him moving to Europe potentially and being a standout eight or something like that. Or you could potentially see him not come anywhere close to that. And it was an interest, and I think it was one of those situations this week where the Sounders wanted to put some faith in him and said, look, maybe Atencio gives us a 10% or 15% better chance of winning this game.
00:17:37
Speaker
You know, we can, his floor presents a better, gives us a better floor, but they want to give, they want to find ways to get Vargas minutes. And I think that's really going to dictate a lot is, is how many minutes can the Sounders find for him and where can they put him in? Where can they find starts for him? Where can they find opportunities that are challenging? And I think that the trick is going to be finding situations like this last week where he's deployed mostly with starters. He
00:18:05
Speaker
because you know what we so often see happen at least with the Sounders is that they will you they'll give young players minutes but they only give them minutes altogether and you have a much harder time getting a sense of how good they are when it's you know like that that Austin game where you have five teenagers
00:18:25
Speaker
They won the game, but there was very little soccer being played. It was like, OK, they showed they could grind out a win. There's something to be said about that. But we're not really learning a lot about these players in terms of their projectability because they aren't getting to play with the other starters on this team. And so I think what the Sounders need to, the trick is going to be is finding minutes for Vargas
00:18:53
Speaker
With starters with, you know, where it's not just like, it would be fascinating to see him and attention deployed together. Cause maybe that's a long-term partnership, I suppose. Uh, but that's not really what's going to be best for learning his ceiling. Uh, and the sound is right now.
Importance of Playing with Experienced Teammates
00:19:09
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:19:09
Speaker
Don't they all, don't all those young guys get minutes in, you know, not just altogether, but also in rotation when there's injuries and stuff? I mean, they, they get a fair number of minutes with the starters, don't they? Yeah, they do. They do sometimes, but it's, that's what I'm saying is that it's, it's a little bit hit and miss. Like you can't always rely on that. And I think the centers have done a good job with, with Vargas and to agree with the tensio in terms of rotating them in. But, uh, I guess that's what my point was is that they need to look for these opportunities to get him.
00:19:39
Speaker
minutes with the first team with the starters where it's not short rest and it's not you know where you know where he's sort of like working from a deficit and and being asked to make up for the I mean you learn different things in those cases right but to see him at his best like this was an opportunity to see something like you know he didn't have a full week of training so it wasn't ideal but I thought it was an interesting
00:20:06
Speaker
place to deploy him because it showed, you know, he got to play next to Jau Paulo behind Albert Rusnak with, you know, Raul Rodriguez on the field and, you know, and the starting center back. So it was like, he wasn't, he wasn't being asked to do anything crazy in this game. He just had to sort of be himself. And he had some moments. He had some, he also made, you know, he had a,
00:20:29
Speaker
I would you by over committed on the on the national second goal or not national Charlotte's second goal. I don't know. Yeah, they're all the same thing.
00:20:40
Speaker
But yeah, I like him. I like him as a player. And I'm just always curious to hear what people who don't see him all the time think of him. And it was when I heard you guys talking about him on Scuffed, it was really encouraging to see that you guys are seeing a lot of the same things that we see, because I don't know how obviously they present. And I mean, do you see him? How likely do you think it is that he would be graduated out of the U20 pool by the next week?
00:21:10
Speaker
I've sort of grudge, you know, in the five or six years that Scuffed has existed, I've graduated out of making really bold predictions about players' futures.
00:21:21
Speaker
Because nobody knows how he may physically develop in the next year or two and what little tricks he learns that elevate his game and make him just really difficult to play against.
00:21:41
Speaker
Who knows? So I have to plead the fifth. I'll give an example. Like Richie Ledesma was a player that I was really excited about, came up in the Real Assault Lake system and then went and got signed by PSV Einhoven. And he's on loan in New York City right now, not playing. He didn't play over the weekend, just sat on the bench. And that's not where I was expecting him to land four years ago.
00:22:08
Speaker
Sebastian Soto was another player from that same Academy. Yeah. And he was great in the last year, 20 world cup. I remember, right? They, the two of them combined on a gorgeous goal to beat. One of the goals to beat France at the U 20 world cup, which was a big deal. You know, France was the reigning world champion and, uh, they had like 50 players, 50 U 20 players playing like legit first team minutes, you know,
00:22:32
Speaker
And we beat him thanks to impart to Ledesma and Soto. And I thought, man, Ledesma says he's going to be a really good professional player, probably a key contributor for the national team. And he's not so. And I have like a long list of misses like that. So I'm just going to say, I don't know about Obed, but I'm really rooting for him. Partly because he's from Alaska, you know, that is another. Yeah.
00:22:59
Speaker
But also partly just because I think we need more high usage Latino stars on the national team. And with all due respect to Christian Roldan, I don't think he's been a good soldier, but he's not going to be a starter for that team when everybody's healthy and probably never will be.
00:23:21
Speaker
or even when they're not all healthy. Right, right. Yeah, I'm just trying to be gentle about it. Yeah, I appreciate that. But you know, maybe Vargas can be, he'd have to end up being like one of the top four or five midfielders, you know, in the American player pool, but maybe he can be that. And then we have Vargas from Anchorage, Alaska, and Ricardo Pepe from El Paso, Texas.
00:23:46
Speaker
the range
00:23:59
Speaker
The thing with with Vargas that I also really like and I'm I don't know if this if this came off to you but he has the one of these things I'm seeing a lot more with young players is they have this way of talking that is both articulate but not sounding
00:24:19
Speaker
without sounding overly educated. They have a lot of interesting things to say without using big words that are off-putting to people. He's just plain spoken, but has really interesting things to say. He's quietly confident, but he's not blowing himself up. He's not out there on Instagram.
00:24:43
Speaker
doing all these kind of flashy things, but he also isn't shy about saying that he has a lot of belief in himself and he just presents it in this really accessible, likable way.
00:24:53
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah. You know, that makes me think of one other thing that he did in the tournament that we haven't mentioned yet. He saved a goal against, I think it was against Ecuador. Yeah. I think you're right. I remember by, you know, somebody got, Josh Winder got roasted on the left side, on our left side. And one of those fast Ecuador wingers was coming in from the right and fizzed the ball.
00:25:15
Speaker
And there was an – there was – the left-winger was lurking and was going to tap it in. And Obed, who was not responsible necessarily for this situation, he went sprinting right at the goal line and cleared that ball pretty much off the goal line and saved a goal.
00:25:34
Speaker
And, you know, we might've lost that game if we, if that goal goes in, cause it was zero, zero at the time. So that high, that's a, that's a really good sign in the 17 year old player, you know? Yeah. And I don't know how much of a sense you get. Maybe, maybe I have a better sense of this. I don't know. Uh, but you know, when he first kind of came up, there was a lot of discussion about the dual
00:25:59
Speaker
dual national nature of his status.
Vargas's Early Inspirations
00:26:03
Speaker
There was even a documentary that I think Grant Wall put together that was sort of talking about the US-Mexico rivalry, and he was featured in this documentary.
00:26:16
Speaker
And he grew up rooting for Mexico. His dad was a low-level professional player in Mexico and sort of raised him to be this... They were L3 fans back home. What does his dad do? He works on a fishing boat or something like that.
00:26:36
Speaker
very blue collar type of work. Both of his parents do that kind of very blue collary type of work. That's in fact what brought them to Alaska was to work on a fishing, like work in the fishing industry, essentially. It can be fairly lucrative, right? If you're... I mean, it's a good way to... You can make a fair amount of money, I think, without
00:26:59
Speaker
in a relatively short amount of time. But I think they've all now moved back to Seattle, relocated. And that was a big thing. They didn't love fishing that much. Right, exactly. And I don't know that working the fishing boats is exactly as... It makes for good documentaries, but I don't know if it makes for a good life. Yeah. It's like being a truck driver, but much more dangerous and hard work. Exactly.
00:27:25
Speaker
And I remember being like in high school or college, people were always talking about, man, if you go out there and you can get on a fishing boat, you can make like X amount of dollars in three weeks or something. I was like, man, that's a lot of money. But maybe, yeah, it's been a while and I don't remember the figures.
00:27:39
Speaker
It is I think you're right. That's my that's my impression as well. It's just that it's it's it's hard work and it's yeah And it's tough being away from from your family like that, too The other thing that's interesting about Obed is he's got a brother named Abad who is I think 14 and And he's sort of this this high he
00:27:59
Speaker
Another one of these players who scout who the people in the in the academy are extremely high on and he's a different kind of player than Obed. Like he's much more offensive and he's he might be 15, but he you know, these are children. Yeah, but it's never too early to get excited. We're all excited about Kevin Sullivan, Quinn Sullivan's younger brother. He's like 12, right? Yeah. But man, have you seen the highlight video from his game against England?
00:28:30
Speaker
This was the first part of our interview with Adam Bells of the Scuffed podcast. In the second part of the discussion, we talk about Christian Roldan and Dorn Morris's place in the national team and get into a more broad discussion of the future of the program. If you'd like to hear the full interview, please become a paid subscriber to our sub-stack. The cost is either $5 a month or $50 a year. Either way, thanks for listening to No Sadietes and we'll catch you next time.
00:29:49
Speaker
I love you. Let's win another one!