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Getting to know Spokane Velocity, Defiance’s Open Cup opponent
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The Tacoma Defiance will play USL League One team Spokane Velocity in Round Two of the U.S. Open Cup on Wednesday. To learn a bit more about this relatively new professional team, Jeremiah talked to Benji Wade of Spokane Soccer Show. They also discuss how promotion and relegation could impact the local soccer scene.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sounders Legacy
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, I'm Will Bruin, and I was just recognized as a Seattle Sounders legend. Now I get to do voice reads for the Sounder at Heart podcast network. Here we go. Come on. Hey, O'Shawn.
00:00:13
Speaker
Let's go.
Sounders MLS Cup Victory Celebration
00:00:15
Speaker
What save by Fry. The Seattle Sounders have done it. MLS Cup winning. Here comes Ruiz Diaz through the middle to cloud it for Seattle.
00:00:29
Speaker
And now they truly can start the celebrations. It's the Sounders MLS Cup. Nico Lidero leaves absolutely no doubt. The Sounders rule the region.
00:00:43
Speaker
Seattle, Sounders, it's got built.
00:00:52
Speaker
This feels fucking awesome. This is a tiny dog. Nice work on your little yacht yacht thing. And probably can't say shit. know, what was the thought process i did in terms of who you decided to use and you didn't?
00:01:06
Speaker
Ever since Salter Hart wrote a commentary that we didn't take over seriously.
Sponsorship by Full Pull Wines
00:01:18
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 Sounders supporters.
00:01:32
Speaker
They offer the best boutique wines of the world to members of their mailing list, with special focus on their home, Pacific Northwest.
00:01:43
Speaker
Welcome back to Nos Adientes.
Tacoma Defiance vs Spokane Velocity Preview
00:01:45
Speaker
I am Jeremiah Oshan. And right now, we are joined by Benji Wade of Spokane Soccer Show to preview this Wednesday's Tacoma Defiance Spokane Velocity Open Cup match.
00:02:02
Speaker
But also sort of just talk about this whole Spokane soccer scene, which I'm totally fascinated by, especially now that we're about to get promotion and relegation. Who knows? This might be a We might have like some crazy interstate derbies going on here. ah Anyway, thank you for joining me, Benji.
00:02:19
Speaker
I'm so glad to be here. I'm glad we connected when I was in Seattle and excited to have this conversation. Yeah, and and you're I guess you're not maybe going to make it back, but you are you were here in town for the Ballard game two years in a row.
00:02:33
Speaker
yeah That has been quite a match between Ballard and Spokane. You even came up with a clever little ah name for the derby. The Bridges and Falls Derby.
00:02:44
Speaker
And, you know, I don't even I think I might have. Maybe I just celebrated it more than other people because I wrote one of one blog articles for Spokane Soccer Show dot com. And it was about that game because I was sitting in a lobby of a hotel last year, getting ready to go to Memorial Stadium for that game.
00:03:00
Speaker
And I was like, I'm just going to write down some words. Go learn about this Ballard FC team like who? Peter Kingston. Who's that? I'm like, oh, that kid's really good.
Ballard Soccer Experience and Derby
00:03:08
Speaker
And then, yeah, that game happened. Back in in this game.
00:03:11
Speaker
And then he will be in this game. Yeah. Yeah. So what were your impressions of the Ballard ah soccer experience? You know, you got to it in two different places. Do we want to talk about the first one or the second one?
00:03:24
Speaker
I'm curious. I mean, now I would, I guess, talk about the last one because that's the one that is ongoing. But what was your impression? i mean, that was apparently quite a atmosphere that they put together at Memorial, which is not necessarily easy to do. It's a great point. I thought it was an incredible atmosphere. And it was one of those things where when I learned subsequently, and I did not know enough when I went there, admittedly, about the what was going on with the situation with the school board or whoever controls the destiny of that location and whether it's going to be another stadium.
00:03:53
Speaker
without Without knowing any of that, I will admit something only on your podcast. So everyone could just dunk on me, slide into the comments and and crap all over me. ay didn't even realize until I looked up that the space needle was like right there.
00:04:06
Speaker
I was how oh yeah I was literally right behind you. Totally. I was totally disoriented. I guess you're, you're facing the space needle where I was facing space needle because I went to that stand to face the stand where all the spectators were sitting for that game. Cause they had one stand was basically empty.
00:04:22
Speaker
yeah i don't know what direction was which, and they had the media on that empty side. So he did. Okay. I took turns going from hanging out with some friends from Spokane on the side with all the spectators where I got, you know,
00:04:36
Speaker
ah I'll say hazed by all the Bridgekeeper supporters. And then I went to the other side where the media was and and I looked up and I was like, oh, my God, the spacing is right there. I was disoriented. I'd never been in a Memorial Stadium, didn't know any of its history, found all that stuff out later. But ah that game was super awesome.
00:04:52
Speaker
But I will admit the coziness factor of Interbay at this year's game was really, really something to behold. i mean, i was completely bewitched by that side of things. Like this is, I wish, I wish I had a little thousand person stadium that could support like a pre-professional team in my market, you know, cause we really don't have anything like that, you know, like,
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, the it's I have never – I have still never embarrassingly been to a Ballard FC match. But my understanding was there was 1,500 people at this at this game, yeah which is like the most they've ever had in that stadium.
00:05:29
Speaker
And 500 of those must have been in the beer garden, right? Because they only have 1,000 apparently that the bleachers will hold. and that But they had a beer garden next to it so you could stand on the grass. I'm guessing that's where all that – Spillover traffic. There's a beer garden that apparently fits quite a few fans and they and so they guess that's it's ah where they get their numbers is ah like I believe their numbers, but it's like there's not 1500 seats. That's for sure. There's not. But I do think that that beer garden was crazy. And in fact, think it hurt them.
00:05:59
Speaker
It hurt the bridgekeeper side of things because I'll be honest. I didn't hear. anything but like muted expressions out of their supporters as far as chance, as far as there's the, the, the people on the, the, the hill, bushfis um the bushwhackers. Yes. yeah um all drilling Yeah. So it was, it was not as unified as far as like the bridge keeper side of things. And then some supporters like chanting and, and shitting on Spokane. That's, there wasn't as much of that, by the way, can you cuss on this thing? I don't even know.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's so we're OK with that. Don't worry. OK, just make it sure. Yeah, it was kind of a shame because on the broadcast also, the camera is behind is so on on the stand side of the stand where the seats were. So you don't really get a ah sense of how big that crowd was. But apparently it was
Spokane vs Ballard Match Recap
00:06:49
Speaker
a pretty robust. Everyone that was there it just raves about it.
00:06:52
Speaker
And it was very crowded. one them It was awesome. And of course, so in case people forgot, the way this game went down was it was 0-0 going into overtime. And then Spokane scored very late in in overtime.
00:07:06
Speaker
And then almost immediately, Ballard came back and scored what seemed to be the equalizer, but it was flagged offside. and that ended up And that was almost essentially the last play of the game, right?
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, it was. Yeah, I think um so. Anwar Pelaya's deflected shot. feel really bad for the kid who deflected that goal. my God. um And that was minute 120. And twenty and i think.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah. It was. There's two things that happened, I believe, after that. I but i think Ryan Bilichuk's save was maybe a couple minutes before that. You're right. It was minute 118. And then offside goal happened after Anwar Pelaya's deflected goal, though.
00:07:45
Speaker
And it was like one of those spiritually onside goals. It was like a maybe a head and a shoulder off. It was so tight. Yeah, I mean, certainly from the broadcast, you could not tell definitively whether or not it was on or off, but it was very close.
00:07:59
Speaker
And it was a great it was a nice goal. It was ah a volley, if I remember correctly. like i Really well-worked. Yeah, it was ah it was ah as was a well-taken goal. Anyway, Spokane moves on, and they draw, which we kind of knew this was what it was heading toward, is the winner was probably going to play the winner of the Tacoma-Washington Athletic Club game.
00:08:19
Speaker
ah Although I would have guessed that it was going to be in Spokane, but I guess the Tacoma Defiance won the draw. And and so they're going to be hosting on Wednesday, ah which should be a really interesting match. These two teams have played before they played in preseason last year before Spokane was really a team, right?
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, they played their last preseason game in the Tri-Cities at a high school stadium with a really terrible pitch. I made fun of the Memorial Stadium pitch. This this one was worse. It was literally cold. It was basically midway between the two cities.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, it was kind of like a neutral site. Yeah. And um in that game, I know that the Sounders had a lot of their first team, ah their senior team players making appearances in that game.
00:09:06
Speaker
And we still had like trialists on the team and had only played a few games together. It was ragged, though. I will say that. I think the final score was three to one. So but I think a totally different um group of players on this team, not totally different, but quite a few new ones.
00:09:24
Speaker
For Defiance, that is. Obviously, brand new team for... There were some of those players, but like Andre Lewis played like five minutes. A lot of the first team players from Velocity's 2014 weren't even on that. And now we've added eight new players. So I'm guessing it's going to be a totally different cast.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah, and Tacoma will be a pretty different roster as well. like they have i don't know how many players they have currently on the team that were on that version of the team, but even from last year's team, there's been a fair amount of turnover.
00:09:55
Speaker
Although there are some players from Ballard that are on on this team. there's I think there's four or five players that at at one point or another played for Ballard. So it's a it's an interesting little... ah
00:10:07
Speaker
grouping of players who are all sort of connected to the rivalry in one way or another, ah even if Tacoma and Spokane haven't really had much of a chance to to build a rivalry. But you can see that sort of building I mean, they're theoretically at the same level in the in the U.S. s soccer pyramid, both ah Division three.
00:10:28
Speaker
And it's an interesting, but it's it's sort of a different approach at the same division. So Tacoma obviously is very developmental. You've got some younger guys. You do have some you know old players that are in their mid-ish 20s, low mid 20s.
00:10:43
Speaker
I would imagine Spokane's a little more established pros. Is that accurate or is that are they also pretty young? It's a great question. i think that the youngest age of a typical velocity player has been a player that went to all four years of college.
00:10:59
Speaker
And oftentimes, if a college player has come from another country, like we have a couple players from Great Britain or Spain, and they played as they transferred to American colleges and universities, those those players end up even being another year or two older than that. So like, for example, we got...
00:11:19
Speaker
A player named Jack Denton and one of his teammates, Javier Martin Hill, they went to Missouri State, but they started playing for us when they were 25. so um So that's kind of interesting. And then there's a bunch of like, there's some fairly well pedigreed, you know, Luis Hill had nine years in the MLS.
00:11:35
Speaker
And then a couple of years. remember him Yeah. And the USL League one before coming over to Spokane. I think you had one for Union Omaha before joining ah Velocity. But yeah, there's some pretty experienced players for sure.
00:11:50
Speaker
And so I would imagine that Spokane comes. in i mean, if I would imagine the winner of this game, the winner of this game will play an MLS team in the next round. Maybe they could
Spokane's Open Cup Strategy
00:11:59
Speaker
also play a championship team. They could play a USL championship game. So you yeah we won two rounds last year and we faced Las Vegas lights in the third round.
00:12:06
Speaker
But you're right. It's a that's a true point flip. Right, you're playing for a chance to potentially play a you know a bigger you're playing a bigger team in the next round, one way or the other.
00:12:17
Speaker
I would imagine this has got to be a pretty big deal for Spokane. I think it is, but you know what's kind of interesting about it is that I do know indirectly that you know Velocity are technically now in, um can I count, three competitions because they have League and then they have what's called the Jägermeister Cup, which is just ah right within in the USL.
00:12:40
Speaker
But they're adding the championship to it this year, which is going to be really cool. So there will be two leagues from USL Championship and League One. Was the Jager Mineser Cup not all all the leagues last year? It wasn't. So the championship teams didn't vote to participate last year. It was just League One to kind of pilot the whole thing. But this year, the championship teams are joining. So there'll be 38 teams.
00:13:00
Speaker
And then they have we have the Open Cup as well. um I think everybody here really, really wants it. I cannot speak for Coach Lee Viedman, but... I'm guessing like any manager, he's going to be going, which are the competitions I'm really going to go for? You know, it's a classic rotation that we see.
00:13:17
Speaker
If you follow a primary league team of what does that manager, who does, who does that, who does Pep Guardiola pick for the Carabao Cup versus ah FA Cup versus whatever.
00:13:28
Speaker
um I do think there will be, a lot of players that didn't play, you know, in Saturday's game, for example. So I'm guessing the second goalkeeper, Ryan Bilichuk will probably start again. The one who had the great game against Ballard. So that'll be really unique, but I'm hoping we win because I'm hoping that we get a chance to host in the third round.
00:13:46
Speaker
But you're, but you you're not expecting this to be the first choice group though. No, I'm not. No, no. The first choice e group just played Saturday against group. yeah Right. though The hierarchy of the competition is the league play is clearly the most important competition. And then Jägermeister and Open Cups are competing kind of for number two.
00:14:09
Speaker
i I think so. And I also can't speak, I can't speak for Lee Veedman, but the fact that he started his best 11, me squinting and just going, oh, that's the best 11 that he has available in terms of form and fitness.
00:14:22
Speaker
But the unique thing about this year, and the joke was made when I was chatting with Katie Harnato, um one of the owners for USL Spokane, um she said something to the effect of, you know,
00:14:34
Speaker
Lee really wants to win this game against Ballard. He really doesn't want a repeat of last year. He really wants, he's, and you know, he's, he's going to start a ah strong team and not a, not a second team or whatever. And I went, well, they we don't really have a second team this year. And at the same time I was saying it, Ryan apparently was in the next room also saying it because he was over here in the conversation of like, we don't have a second team.
00:14:53
Speaker
So this team has much more bench strength than it did last year. There were a couple very inexperienced players or players that had not, um, you know, maybe had a year or two professionally under their belts. Whereas this team is really deep, like the eight players that were added with the exception of Ryan Bilichuk, who played for the Portland Timbers too.
00:15:12
Speaker
um It's all players that are either, you know, have had a couple years or some of them, you know, eight to 10 years as professional players, like including Nico Brett, who, who has scored the second most goals in USL championship history. He's our ah number one striker, although he did get injured against Greenville.
00:15:30
Speaker
to some degree. So I'm not sure if he'll be available Wednesday, but. And where is Spokane recruiting from? Are these mostly players from other league one teams? Is it from MLS next pro? Is it from college?
00:15:44
Speaker
You know, and we can probably have a conversation about this, but the MLS Next Pro leap happens. But it is almost one of those things of like me and anecdotally what I've picked up on is once a player leaves that MLS ecosystem, they don't typically end up back. And I'm sure somebody will be like, you're wrong. But I i know i think it's broadly true. it's not always It's not an ironclad thing, but I do think it's broadly true.
00:16:09
Speaker
It's probably true. You don't usually go back and forth in those ecosystems from what I've seen. um so most of the players that every player we just, we just signed has either league one or championship or both experience Nico Brett, I mentioned, um,
00:16:24
Speaker
Ryan Belichick being the only one who came from an MLS Next Pro team. Now I'm just going by my immediate memory um without looking at notes here. But yeah, that's that's my understanding. So as an example of that from last year, we had a player named Ahmed Longmire who played for the Huntsville. Is that what they're called? um mls net is a There's a Huntsville, mls next the Nashville affiliate.
00:16:45
Speaker
Thank you. Nashville's affiliate. Yep. He, he left that ecosystem, played for ah velocity last year. My understanding is that he probably wanted to go try to play for a championship team.
00:16:56
Speaker
Um, and maybe didn't want to play in league one. Who knows? I'm not actually quite sure. I've asked him. He hasn't, hasn't told me what his perspective is, but the path back to say the MLS ecosystem, I don't know how, I don't think that's easily made.
00:17:10
Speaker
I'll just say that. Yeah, I mean, i don' I don't think you're wrong. I think that that's definitely one of the challenges. i I know that there is seemingly a growing reluctance for MLS to even now loan players into the USL ecosystem, in part because there is starting to be sort of a rivalry and a competition between...
00:17:32
Speaker
Between these two leagues, which it'll be interesting to see how it evolves, because I know traditionally MLS, like the Sounders have sent a lot of players to San Antonio, especially for loans. I know that there's been discussions of sending ah Sounders players to even Spokane.
00:17:47
Speaker
And there's, you know, so there's this has been a thing that the Sounders at least had been. had done in the past. And there's, you know, plenty of other examples of of teams sending players on loan to USL championship. We're hearing less of that now.
00:18:00
Speaker
I, I suppose there's no official explanation for that, but I think we can all sort of ah draw some conclusions. Thank you for listening to the sounder at heart podcast network, which now includes no sunny at this lobbying scorchers and the cooler guild.
00:18:15
Speaker
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00:19:01
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00:19:56
Speaker
Hacks and Ferments is a proud sponsor of that Sounder at Heart podcast network. But that does sort of dovetail into the other subject I wanted to talk to
USL Promotion and Relegation Impact
00:20:05
Speaker
you about. And that is this decision by USL to to adopt promotion and relegation and sort of the impact. And I've been spending the better part of the last week and a half or so talking to various companies ah stakeholders in this whole thing. I've talked to ah the owner of Spokane Velocity. I've talked to ah some officials over at the USL league office.
00:20:26
Speaker
And then I've talked to all the people that run the USL two teams that are here locally. And I've gotten a pretty good perspective or gotten a pretty wide perspective on what this means. And I think there's a lot of excitement.
00:20:39
Speaker
No question about that. There's a lot of anticipation for what this is going to do, what kind of attention it's going to draw. And one of the things I'm really fascinated by is, you know, one of the things Justin Papadakis, who is the, I'm trying to remember what his exact title is, but he i think he's the president CEO of you at the USL. Yeah.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, he's he's a higher up in the USL. And and I asked him ah specifically like how they're going to handle teams like Spokane who and inevitably gain promotion and move up through the the the pyramid.
00:21:11
Speaker
And you know right now you guys are playing what a 5,000-seat stadium. And usl or Division one requires teams to be in capacity stadium. And that's a big jump.
00:21:23
Speaker
And i would imagine that there, and, and he made it sound like there is a plan for teams to sort of elevate. And even in, if they have to potentially diminish, they, they sounds like they really want to lean into standing room sort of capacity, but that's, there's not 10,000 extra state, you know, capacity can't be expanded by 10,000 on, uh,
00:21:44
Speaker
on ah On standing room, obviously. So there's going to have to be some infrastructure changes. And I'm just curious when you look at this as a possibility, you know, in 2028 is when this is supposed to come online.
00:21:58
Speaker
So theoretically by 2030, you know, if everything were to go perfectly that Spokane could be playing in division one. Is that something that you like?
00:22:10
Speaker
I don't You you cover this team. You have a sense of the market. Is that is that how would you gauge your excitement or your interest or your trepidation even about ah sort of how these things would work?
00:22:22
Speaker
Well, I think it's the great hypothesis of the whole thing is asking all of these supporters in the quote unquote lower leagues in the United States. And we're witnessing all this growth of the sport as far as not just, you know, the MLS has expanded to the point where it's like, can they expand anymore?
00:22:40
Speaker
Should they expand anymore? Those are questions for another day. Good questions. They're good questions, but it's like, okay, well, the championship is filling so many markets with teams and you've got league one. And then there's the possibility that league two could eventually be part of that pyramid. Right?
00:22:55
Speaker
So every one of those markets, you go to the groups of fans and you go, what's it like to have a team to go support? And their enthusiasm is just mostly that in a nutshell, it's,
00:23:07
Speaker
I think whatever level of soccer, I have massively adjusted my expectations for what I'm going to see as somebody who has paid so much attention to like my favorite team, Newcastle United, who that team plays in the Premier League.
00:23:21
Speaker
So I'm watching the literal pinnacle of athletic ability in that in the sport of soccer to go. All right. What's it going to look like when I go see a game at one stadium in Spokane and the third tier of soccer?
00:23:35
Speaker
men's soccer in the United States. Okay. So adjusting my expectation when we see, but a lot of people who like me, and then I'm rubbing elbows with somebody who they don't even know the difference between the premier league. If they watched Liverpool play tomorrow and they watched, uh, um, velocity play. Yeah. They'd be able to pick out some real obvious things, but for the most part, they're just stoked that they go get to watch professional soccer.
00:23:55
Speaker
Okay. So there's that level of care. The next step is narratively. Do you care about what happens to your team within this league? and do you care about the other teams in the league?
00:24:06
Speaker
Well, the hypothesis has to be, will they care more if their team has the ability to to be promoted? And there's a you know a growing number of people who are very familiar with promotion relegation. So I look at this and think...
00:24:23
Speaker
ah Whether I lived in if I lived in a market in England where our team on one year could, you know, make it to the Premier League, but we'd all be kind of like, yeah, we probably know this isn't going to last because we don't have the resources for whatever reason.
00:24:37
Speaker
But I'm still going to be really, really excited to go support my team regardless. But just it does it accelerate? Does it amplify that enthusiasm to just know there's far more at stake of promotion relegation? And I'm, of course, pretty confident that the answer to that is going to be some version of yes. I don't know if it's going to be at the level that...
00:24:56
Speaker
um It needs to be, we'd have to define need, but as far as the ratings and the TV deals that they can get, which will increase the revenue and then the parachute payments and all that type of stuff. But overall, a proprietary version of promotion relegation, I'm just, I'm still enthusiastic about, because I think it just gives one more reason to care, ah you know, in addition to just loving your team, but like loving with a context of that team within that structure.
00:25:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and I would imagine that most people that are existing fans of those teams are, it's all upside for them, really. I mean, it's it's all upside of, you know, this journey. You started it at League One, and the idea of being able to get elevated to the championship or beyond is I would think about as exciting as it gets now. But I think the question is, and I think where this is going to be interesting is once teams reach that, or even if, I mean, like one of the things that Papa Doc has told me is that teams will be able to buy it. There's going to be some teams that buy into division one. There's going be teams that buy into the championship. There's going be then a lot more teams, presumably that buy into league one.
00:26:08
Speaker
But then what happens when those teams start going the opposite direction? Because that's the way this works, right? it It's a two-way street. Although it'll be interesting to see as they adjust, because I would imagine there's going to be some period where they can they just grow every year into Division I. There might not be a relegation from Division I for a while, because they aren't probably going to start at 20 teams, for instance.
00:26:29
Speaker
and we could end up with a, you know, we could end up with a pyramid that has 60 or 70 even 80 teams in it, I suppose. And so anyway, there's, there's, but inevitably there will be some relegation and I'm just very curious how things get handled there because, you know, for the first time Papa doc that I've heard Papa doc has did say that they're, they're planning some parachute payments, but they're also part of the the gamble here is that the,
00:26:57
Speaker
the The potential downside is not so big right now because there is no – it's not like you've got $500 million, dollars a billion dollars invested into these teams. You've got smaller amounts of money.
00:27:10
Speaker
And so the TV money is not an enormous. yeah The TV money, right, exactly. and so But it's just goingnna i just think it's fascinating the way that they're going to... Let's just say Spokane adds 5,000 seats to move up to the championship and potentially into the into Division one What happens to those? you know All of a sudden, they're now in a 10,000-seat stadium. If they're back in League One, does that still work?
00:27:32
Speaker
That would be interesting. That's a really good question. um you know Because you don't want a bunch of situations like, you know for example, in the Super League, Dallas Trinity you currently play at the Cotton Bowl. And they're like, they're getting 5,000 people to show up, which is really good numbers by USL Super League standards of this brand new league, right?
00:27:47
Speaker
Probably an 80,000 seat stadium. it's It's like 45, but still, oh that's a lot of that's a lot of empty seats. so It is, yeah. That's a really great question, you know. and And, you know, there's also this stuff to be worked out with the US Soccer Federation about, are they really going to stick to these pro league standards that don't even make sense when you think about what's happening in Europe, you know?
00:28:06
Speaker
like hoffenheim or ah you know ipswich or uh who's great example luton town had to fix kennel with road and then they were only in the premier league for one year and it's like well maybe pause those adjustments we were going to make to our stadium it doesn't matter like they have this whole 75 thing it's not all the teams have to have this certain thing right it's supposed to be quote unquote 75 did they just allow waivers for a few years it's like hey Spokane, congrats. You made it, but you got to stick around for a few years and we'll give you those few years to adjust your stadium if you stick around in the Premier League. But if you don't, you'll go back to the championship or below and good luck.
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah. the So to speak to some of those standards, it's things like net worth of the owners at various levels. It's the size of the most of the attention right now has been on the size of the stadiums.
00:28:53
Speaker
But then there's also things like they need to have for the division one. They need to have teams, at least I think one team and in three different time zones. And then they have a thing where they have.
00:29:04
Speaker
They have to have 75% of the teams are in a match. And this is another thing. Like how were they, what are they calling a metropolitan area boundaries? They need to be over a million people people. Is it, is it the media market who's defining that?
00:29:17
Speaker
ah So like, for instance, would Everett be considered part of the Seattle? It probably would be, ah would Seattle or Everett be considered part of the Seattle media market for the purposes of this kind of league. And that was another bit of news that, ah you know, I don't think it was entirely breaking news, but, know,
00:29:33
Speaker
you Papa Doc has also talked about the possibility of an Everett team coming online, which is tied to the Aqua Sox, which are the minor league team ah trying to get a stadium. And apparently they're trying to build a stadium that would. And this was an interesting twist on this is there's lots of soccer teams that play in baseball stadiums. But as far as I know, there are no baseball stadiums that are built to also be soccer stadiums like they know. It's it's mostly awkward.
00:30:00
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And he so he was saying is that the idea here is that they would build as ah so a ah baseball stadium that would or it would be as much of a a soccer stadium as it is a baseball stadium, which I thought was really fascinating.
00:30:12
Speaker
i And the other thing i'm I'm really I'm really interested by by just being someone who covers soccer in the Pacific Northwest is that right now, you know, for a long from the period where the Portland Timbers and Vancouver Whitecaps moved from the USL into MLS in 2011, the there was no professional soccer at the USL level in the Pacific Northwest at all until Spokane came online.
00:30:37
Speaker
yeah Or i guess I guess you could say Tacoma was in the USL too. But there wasn't really a dedicated independent team in the USL until but Spokane came online. and And even now, Spokane is basically out in the wilderness in terms of ah who they're having to play. like They're all out in the... in the in the corner of the country.
00:31:00
Speaker
Oh, it's far worse for the Super League, but that's a ah topic for another day. Yeah, it's way worse. yeah and And then in 2026, though, all of a sudden you're going have Boise, you're going to have Spokane, and you're going have Eugene, and then potentially Everett coming online relatively quickly after that.
00:31:15
Speaker
And then who knows what happens to all these USL2 teams. A surprising number of them
Evolving US Soccer Landscape
00:31:21
Speaker
are which are saying, no, we want to totally go pro ah for what you in case you didn't know from what I've with the people I've talked to.
00:31:29
Speaker
ah Olympia says they would like to go pro. ah West Seattle says they have designs of going pro. ah Ballard has expressed some interest in going pro, although it's funny because they're probably the closest one to being able to pull it off. But they're also.
00:31:44
Speaker
Very much. It depends on where the professional thing, though. That's what part I understand is I thought that Ballard is really committed to the pre-professional thing. But well they are. They are committed to the pre-professional thing. But this but this is they're kind of an interesting case study because all of a sudden their eyes are open to, well, maybe this would make sense for us.
00:32:03
Speaker
And they are. Wait, wait. This is the part that's interesting. So Seattle University, UW, that's what I associated immediately with Ballard as like there's a pipeline of all those players and then probably yeah absolutely either defiance or those players hit this inflection point in their careers where they just go, am I going to try to pursue this professionally?
00:32:18
Speaker
um Because I find that fascinating, by the way, just ah maybe we could put a pin in it, but... Yeah. The decision of a young player to go, do I go from Ballard FC where I still have amateur status because I'm playing UW or whatever.
00:32:29
Speaker
Am I willing to take that leap into being a professional at MLS Next Pro level or even USL League One or championship level? because there's not often a path that we talked about between those two ecosystems. um And the money's not great. Like I think that a young person that can go make, you know, 80 to a hundred thousand dollars at some tech company in Seattle, why would, it's really a lot to be like, no, go play professional soccer.
00:32:54
Speaker
ah i mean i come I mean, I can tell you right now that as of yet, there has not been any players who once they enter the collegiate system, ah like the Sounders have a ton of Academy players, obviously that go to that go to college and Quite a few of them end up going to play for Ballard.
00:33:14
Speaker
And there have been a few that have gone... Once they're done with college, they've come back into the... like Leo Burney is an example of a player who was playing for Ballard last year. And then he signed a homegrown player contract with the Sounders this year.
00:33:26
Speaker
And there's a a couple other players who... you know ah played for Ballard and then got drafted by a Tacoma Defiance and now are are came got drafted by the Sounders and are playing for Tacoma Defiance or are just came straight Tacoma Defiance.
00:33:40
Speaker
But there are no players who went pro before they were done with college yet. And that's just not. I'm even talking about once they graduate, like some of those kids that were on the Washington Athletic Club team are guys that were like probably really, really good soccer, but are not thinking. Am I going to go play for academy players?
00:34:01
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, am I going to go play for the defiance or am i going to go play for a USL League One team? That's a big question to ask these players, but it's it's probably a digression. I was going to key in on the thing you're saying about because I think what's happening with college athletics is really fascinating.
00:34:16
Speaker
yeah That has so much influence of the future of these USL League Two teams, because I could see some of these like League Two teams deciding to go up to League One if. Yeah, so what I find fascinating about the current college landscape, and this has so much influence of the future of League Two teams is.
00:34:34
Speaker
Is it going to remain an amateur sport? There's all this conversation of just basically disbanding entirely college soccer from don maybe from existence or it just becomes an equivalent of like what League Two kind of already is. i just I'm not optimistic about the future of college soccer in the United States. I think that.
00:34:55
Speaker
This, you know, whether it's some pre-professional league or something's going to take that over, in which case all the current League Two teams are asked the existential question. Do you want to be part of that pyramid? Yeah.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's it's going to be interesting to see how USL League two fits into this whole thing, because I think you have a lot of it'll be really interesting to see how the USL vets a lot of these ownership groups, because I think my impression is that a lot of these USL two teams are sort of coming into this saying, well, we would love to get into this pyramid. And it's you know Some of them are folks who clearly are not resourced to be running professional teams. Some of them are.
00:35:35
Speaker
And you know it's going to be just fascinating to see how this evolves. I think it's a really exciting time for American soccer. I'm really excited to see how this um how you know what happens in the Pacific Northwest because all of a sudden this feels like it could be sort of ground zero for this experiment.
00:35:51
Speaker
ah The idea of having, you know, four professional teams potentially surrounding the Sounders ah that are not affiliated with the Sounders is really interesting. You know, I don't know. I don't really know the scene down in Portland quite as well, but they do have, you know, there's a USL League 2 team that's coming online in Portland that is, you know, has big designs of what they're they're trying to do. There's obviously Lane United, which is becoming Eugene USL.
00:36:18
Speaker
Yep. it's ah It's just a fascinating scene. The Boise ah team looks like that's going to be really interesting. That's going to be an amazing derby, I think, for you guys. I would think that you've got to be stoked about having Boise.
00:36:32
Speaker
That'll be the derby, I think. um Maybe everything could be interesting, but i just there's so much more, I think, tension between Eastern Washington and Idaho, even though that's not Northern Idaho.
00:36:44
Speaker
So, yeah, I think the Boise one Those cities get compared all the time, Spokane and Boise, whether it's a company or a person trying to decide where they want to live in a quote unquote second market that's not super expensive. They're both compared a lot. But the thing that I want to just like also throw out into the conversation that is going to come up a lot is...
00:37:02
Speaker
the comparison to the MLS product. I think there's going to be a lot of questions asked of like, imagine you're a fan of Chicago fire and every year your team sucks every year. There's no change in performance. It's still expensive as hell to go to a game.
00:37:16
Speaker
You see the same crap results in the, you're at the bottom of the table and that owner can just continue to not care. And I think that's the great questions that start to get asked by a system, even a proprietary one of promotion relegation fundamentally is like, oh, there's stakes to this.
00:37:32
Speaker
It feels it's hitting different. Yeah. I mean, I think that's good. And i think it is going to be really interesting to see how and MLS ends up stacking up and how these things compare, because it is hard to imagine 30 MLS or more and MLS teams all being able to because it's one thing for the sounders to say, hey, look, we have this.
00:37:52
Speaker
we we're We're winning. We're completing for trophies. We're doing all this kind of stuff and we're doing at the highest level. that's you know That's one thing. It's a whole other thing, like you said, for a Chicago Fire or for so a lot of these teams that have not competed on a regular basis for any sort of championship.
00:38:09
Speaker
And how do they keep telling their fans, no, this is more important. This is, this is a bigger deal than this is better. tension This is better than the USL team, which is in maybe the same town, which is maybe not playing at as nice of a stadium, but is probably cheaper.
00:38:24
Speaker
And maybe those players aren't as good, but does it matter if they're not as good if they're winning? And so, you know, it, it, it I think it, it lines up some really interesting competitions. I even think,
00:38:35
Speaker
Seattle is an interesting market because if the Sounders are talking about moving their stadium to ah going, going, moving their stadium to Long Acres, which is a suburb.
00:38:46
Speaker
And yeah all of a sudden, if no one's playing in Lumen Field, could you imagine a a ah USL team taking that over? i don't think that's that far fetched. So, yeah.
00:38:57
Speaker
They're existential questions. I think of think of Detroit City. Those supporters are rabid, you know, and even if imagine that a MLS franchise was talked about in going into the Detroit market, I still think that championship team or whatever, you know, if you know if Detroit City makes it to their the future premier division, I just don't think it's going to.
00:39:23
Speaker
I even think of a Chicago market, to your point. And if a smaller, scrappy League One team wanted to fire up a you know a club and then see if they can leverage the size of that market to eventually make their run.
00:39:36
Speaker
You know what? We're going to put our couple million bucks in the pot, which compared to an MLS team, it's about ah what? I can't even do the math. Like it's couple million bucks for a league one team and it's 500 million for an MLS team. It's almost, it's like, it's barely comparable. ah You know, it's yeah it's you're talking about ah half a percent.
00:39:59
Speaker
Intergalactic difference in scales. Right. So imagine there's some little scrappy League One team that goes into the Chicago market and then tries to, you know, get promoted a couple times and end up.
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah. These are the kinds of questions that I think are going to get raised and they're going to be really fascinating. I do too. Well, Benji, it's been great having you on. i hope folks who are interested in what's going on on the east side of our state in the soccer scene, um check you out.
00:40:26
Speaker
Spokane soccer show, mostly on on, it's a podcast and YouTube show, essentially, correct? ah Not so much a written product, but... Fascinating stuff. And I would hope that if you are out in Spokane, you would go check out a Spokane Velocity match or a Spokane Zephyr match as well.
00:40:45
Speaker
And, you you know, i have a feeling we're going to be learning a lot more about you guys in the in the coming years. Yeah. And I look forward to more trips to the West side to, I there's, I'm learning so much about that market too. This has all been an education to me and yeah, anybody who wants to follow ah what I'm doing, I think Instagram is probably the best place to start. Cause I post links to my, all my activities. So it's Instagram Spokane soccer show.
00:41:08
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thank you for joining me, Benji. i am Jeremiah Shan. This is no Zadieta as part of the sounder heart podcast network, and we'll catch you next time.
00:41:54
Speaker
I expect an LAFC who's motivated ah to prove themselves at home, to prove to their fans that that they're capable of winning in this league. And it's up to us to really ruin the party.
00:42:07
Speaker
You guys like that? and a what Awkward joke, dad joke right there, huh?