4/25 Orlando Pride Match Preview

I am a little [super]stitious.

Just a little

Just a little, just enough to, to fix it

don't, don't change shit. If you want things to go the same way,

All right, you ready?

let's go.

Hi everyone and welcome to Casual fc, an Angel City Match preview and footy therapy pod, featuring two podcast certified footy therapists. I'm your host, angel Morales with the Disney Dad, Salazar.

You know, there's sometimes we flub this so bad. Other times you do it so cleanly. I'm just like, wow, we've been doing this for a while. Right?

about it before I opened my mouth like it's a miracle. When that happens. Sometimes my brain like actually sings up with the rest of my body. Not always, but sometimes.

When it works, it works.

Hmm. It's true. It's true.

We will,

the place.

we'll have our footie therapy session. we'll make it, we'll make it brief. we don't want to dwell on this one as much,

No.

we don't want to reopen wounds, but, you know, we'll talk about it.

Yeah. Especially because we have another match coming up on Friday. April 25th. Mario wrote February 25th. In these notes, everybody, and I just had to figure out what month we were in.

I've been writing, I've been writing February for the last week. I don't know why. I think it's just 'cause the two, like I'm hitting 2, 2, 5 or 2, 2 6, yeah. Okay.

Anyway, Friday, April 25th against the Orlando Pride at Enter and co stadium in Orlando. The game will be taking place, kicking off at 5:00 PM Pacific, 8:00 PM on the East Coast TV and streaming. It will be on Amazon Prime. So if you wanna watch it but can't, and you wanna listen to it on the radio, make sure you pull up your iHeartRadio app and listen to Isaac and Tracey to find the Angel City Channel on iHeartRadio, you just type in. Angel City in the search,

Yeah.

and then boom, there it is. And there are official watch parties, there are supporter group watch parties happening. All kinds of stuff is going on. the official Angel City sponsored watch party kicks off at 4:00 PM an hour before actual kickoff at five, at the high tops in Los VLEs, los if you're pronouncing it correctly, which it really should be but whatever. We're not getting grammatically angry at

We have other things to be angry at.

Yeah, I have many things to be angry about tonight. but along with the actual watch party in the game, it's also going to be celebrating lesbian visibility Week. So woo. Power to the power to the fam. yay. There we will be posting other watch parties as we see them posted. I was on Instagram earlier. I know rebellions having one. I think Relentless usually does. Pandas usually do some,

There,

got something

there'll be a few out there.

we, the information

It's an, it's another Friday, so like it's, you know, watch parties are hard. Like it's just getting people to, getting people to a singular place when we're spread out. Right.

for us out here on the West coast, so

Five o'clock. Yeah.

when work ends at five. So just listen to iHeart on your way home and turn on Amazon when you get home.

Yeah.

before we get into the nitty gritty meat and potatoes of the show, our beloved, beloved community outreach Queen Catherine Davila, has officially. her post at Angel City after the game on Friday. We went from sad to more sad because they have this beautiful video montage. She's down on the pitch. Everyone's, the players are crying. The supporter group members are crying. She's crying. The FO members are crying like everybody's a mess. She's such a beloved and wonderful human. I cannot say more.

I,

was

I,

with.

so, you know, a little peek under the veil. We knew a, a little bit ago that this was going to happen. and when we found out it directly from her, it's not like we were like snooping around or anything.

It's not like a rumor mills like we were given a heads up.

Yeah. We were giving a heads up. we were both a little shocked and also, you know, happy for her 'cause it's, it's time to move, you know. It's, it's,

it's

it's a good thing.

because she's completed the mission.

Yes.

It's a, oh my God, she was so terrible. She has to go. It's no, she did. She gave everything she had to this and look what she built.

Yes, she is a huge part to what the team means to the community and the way her and her entire team

Yeah.

worked at all. The community outreach, all the events, all the organization. dealing with six different supporter groups,

Which is a lot.

which is a lot,

to schedule interviews with six different groups of people is hard. I

scheduling ourselves, just scheduling ourselves between two people, I guess. It gets crazy. but I know that she's done, a ton of work just kind of building up what the supporters are going to be, being a part of that kind of shepherding what that relationship is with the team. all the stuff that they did as. Far as, getting the word out, you know, going to these events, doing the, the, the public shared garden stuff. doing the outreach in, the van. I forgot what the van's name was, but,

Oh, shoot. She

but,

us what the van's name was.

her and fish drove it and then drove it into a ditch. yeah,

on a road trip. So if you have not two seasons ago, was it last year or the year before? Oh my god, I don't even know.

I don't know.

It was sometime in the last a hundred episodes. We interviewed Catherine and it was a wonderful time. Go listen to it.

Please.

Good. She did and does, and all of the everything and how much she loves this, this team and this community. And I was messaging with her earlier today and she's just excited to be a fan now. she can take a,

She, she's had season, she has season tickets 'cause she, she was a fan of the team and then, you know, she ended up getting a job. Dunno which one came first, but still she had tickets. She's honestly never used them because game day is work day. Like she is working during game day, so she's never really gotten to use her tickets. And I, yeah, that's what she told me too. She was like, yeah, I finally get to use my tickets. I get to see the game from my own seat.

Yeah,

the van.

She, she's just so fun and she's so silly. And she's so weird and it, she's, she's just a good egg.

Yeah.

we'll see what comes next. 'cause it's gonna be something fricking cool.

we wish you all the, we wish you all the best, Kat and, look forward to hearing, about what you, what you're going do. And if you ever wanna come back and just be a guest, not necessarily a rep of the team, but just a guest.

You wanna just come hang.

Yeah. Just come hang. We, we can talk about the team. We, you can now talk about the team the same way we are going to talk about the team in a little bit. And, yeah. Okay. So with that big news that happened literally the day after we last posted our episode,

and drop an episode 10 minutes

Mm,

news.

exactly.

Angel City does something,

Angel City announced their actual head coach is done. Their search is done, and they have an actual head coach has been named. It is Alexander Strauss, Strauss, Strauss, str

Straus.

Strudel, that whatever. Alexander Straus, he, is the new head coach. He will be here June 1st of this year. So he is currently with, with Byern Munich. Byern Munich women, he is the coach for them. He has taken them to two championships in the Women's Budesliga, And he also led them to a super cup.

Oh Supercup der Frauen victory

there you go.

in our notes.

It's a, it's a one game competition, in the Women's Bundesliga champion versus the, DFB-Pokal Women's Champion, which the DFB, the equivalent of the US Open Cup or the equivalent of the FA cup in the, in the uk. It's their like legit challenge cup. Not like the Yeah, yeah. It's not like our challenge cup, where now it's just oh.

have multiple women's leagues in Germany, so

Well, 'cause they have an actual like, structure, you know, like Yeah, yeah. I mean USL is getting, USL is setting up for that. So

exciting.

exciting. And they have not announced it. The, the USL men's division, is announcing that they've gone, they've voted and they're gonna be doing an actual pyramid, an actual promote promotion relegation. So that's coming.

funded? Sorry, I, I have, as most people know, I, I, okay.

Yeah,

Angela's I

I'm just saying,

just came out hard.

I'm just saying that that is a possibility and it's probably coming towards the USL women's. there has been developments, Cleveland Pro Soccer is now going to be part of the USL, basically the division two of, USL women's, the Development League, and.

excited. Our homies out there in the

Yeah,

are freaking pumped.

there's a beautiful little graphic of a pyramid, a soccer pyramid of women's soccer that can very easily start this promotion relegation also.

Just

So

remember, women's sports are not as funded as male, like men's sports, Mario. That

know, I know

land in this country.

is scary land, but it's also exciting. I don't know, well, I mean, yeah.

because you don't have the trauma of watching one of the greatest dynasties in all of sports fold.

Is this the,

don't

yeah,

reasons

There we go.

Yep. Only four time back to back to back to back champion.

Okay. Sorry. We said, we told each other that we were gonna stop derailing ourselves.

topic and now I'm just mad.

Okay, so he has all these championships. He's brought the team through all of that. He was also, the first ever, the team that he, coached in, in Norway, in the Norwegian league, was the first time they ever were promoted into the top tier. and then that team merged with another team, and then they also won a ti and he also had them won their win, their Title two. So

me that he brings teams above 500 or like above. Bad.

yes, he,

record

yes. so we, the, you know, we are, we're hopeful for that. He's also coached and developed in the U 20 threes and u nineteens in the women's, Norwegian, national team.

about this than I am, I think. 'cause I'm still mad about the game.

I'm trying to ignore the result of the game and, and trying to keep this compartmentalized.

Yeah. But genuinely, like this is a big deal. this is the most high profile and most, win. has the most accolades

Yeah,

of anyone on, the whole coaching staff over the last four years combined and then some. So I'm really hoping that, like we've said it before, there's no reason why on paper this team should have struggled the way it has.

yeah,

We've had the players, yes, we had injuries. Yes, we had like weird things happen, but like we were still really good. Our players are still very, very, very good. They were, they ha they still are and they still will be.

yeah.

it's just a matter of making sure everybody's on the same page,

Yeah. There was a couple. Yeah. We'll get into it. and, you know, just to, just to hit that note of I know there's going to be people out there saying well, great, we hired another, you know, another man to be a coach in the league. And we've,

We've talked

we've talked about this a lot, and it's not to say that there are any like excuses or ways to justify this or whatever, like it is what it is. It's not my money, right? I am, I'm a fan. I buy the merch, but I'm not the one funding the salaries, right? So yes. But we've also talked about there's just a lack of infrastructure for women to get developed. And the thing is that we've, we've already said that like both, Tweed and,

Freya,

Freya have, we're, we're, we're super happy for them to have found. Even if they've gone back to a, assistant coach like role or whatever. But the fact that they got, the fact that they're still coaching, the fact that they are still within the league, the fact that they can still keep developing and potentially come back to a head coach in, in a couple years, you know, and they weren't just thrown out and be like, well, you had a bad record. We're not going to hire you anymore.

Which is pretty much what happens with most female coaches across sport.

yeah.

a bad season, a bad season and a half, and then you're canned and you're never seen again. it makes no sense when you have male coaches who are hot trash, are actively bad at their job. They just keep getting chances after chance, after chance, after chance, and failing up over and over and over again. And it's so difficult to see. So

Yeah.

I'm really hoping that with Strauss coming in, it kind of like turns the tide a little bit for Angel City and that a lot of the people who are in Angel City's coaching network are able to build and build and build. And then in a few years, we have a freaking truckload

Yeah.

of female coaches or

And,

you

and the, the thing is that there are, there's, there's actually probably a good amount, if not just a better amount of like in the professional like NWSL, USL kind of, world female coaches in college, right. Doing with a,

stable and

but it's more, but it's more stable. That's the whole thing, is that I really hope, and there was an article recently in the Athletic about We're down to 20% of coaches in the NWSL are female. Actually, no, it's just two. I think there's only two F there's two head coaches are female in the nasl. which it could be viewed as a bad thing, right? But it's also viewed as Hey, that's the reality. And don't let that, that's a reality. Now. Don't let that be the reality going forward.

to be fixed.

the system needs to, yeah.

now, you know, I, I compare the NWSL to the W in a lot of ways because it's going through what the W went through 10, 15 years ago, and now the WNBA is back to having mostly male coaches. It's cyclical one, but because female coaches are not given the same amount of opportunities, both to grow, to learn in their position as head coaches, to watch something happen for longer than 10 minutes.

Yeah.

you know, it's the kind of thing where you're like, Why would, who is this guy?

And with,

sports is not a charity and

yeah.

is not, oh, well I need coaching experience so then I can coach the guys. It's completely different needs to be valued as such across sport.

Yeah. I think if we really want to get more good talent, and especially the, the talent that we have in college is we need to. Figure out, or US soccer and the NWSL. and I haven't taken a look at the USL, so I'm not gonna lump them in, but most likely, just need to figure out a way to build up, entice and kind of secure these collegiate, coaches or even like the, the supporting staff of like bringing them, bringing them up and bringing them on and figuring out how to get them in there.

I know. I'm excited and I'm, I'm excited and I'm trying to like, sturdy myself, you know, not get too excited, not get my hopes up. I'm just, I'm excited

Yeah,

Like he has a good track record and that's all we can really hope for at this point.

exactly. Okay, so we went off a tangent on that. Let's go off on a couple more tangents. but at least these are related to. Everything.

Hat gate. That's what I've been calling it since I was in line. this is Hat Gate for

I

seen

I'll.

Yeah.

put up pictures that were shared about those lines while we're talking about this.

Dodger Hat Yamaha sponsor Peru Dodgers logo. It's fine. Listen, if you have over 10,000 season ticket holders a city like lives and breathes by the Dodgers for the most part, and you're gonna do a giveaway, either a special ticket, something like this, give it out before the game, have different pickup places around the stadium so that you don't have a line that wraps from almost. Two thirds of the way down the east side of the stadium, all the way up to the north side.

Yeah. Yeah.

up your hats. And they were like, that's not the line. It was Vero. Who am I saying? she listens to the podcast. She's be like, why didn't you say it was me? So she comes back and I was like, why didn't you fight them? Like just, just stirring the pot just was absolutely insane. I got in line because I had a, a fork at four 30. We had a barbecue at work, so everybody was goofing around. Eva, I left the barbecue around 5 45. got to BMO.

Oh, Jesus.

side of the stadium. Then walk all the way back again because the ticketing system, way people are entering now, makes no sense. Why are you doing bag check after you scan a ticket without having a locker or something inside where people can put their stuff? This system was designed by a dude, a hundred percent, who isn't responsible for carrying anything in his life outside of his pockets.

I, yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah.

if you have a kid, if you have, the lady in front of me had to throw away her food and she was diabetic, and I'm like, girl, tell them like it's covered under a DA, but because they don't train the security staff well enough, they don't know that they have to let that stuff through.

they almost made, my brother toss a bunch of, baby food when he brought, attic. At a game. Well, it wasn't baby baby food. It was like a, a sandwich that he was gonna pick apart and let her eat and stuff. But still, he was just like, what the hell? But, you know, and then

you, like that's

eventually he was just like, I know it is allowed. But even that was, that was another separate game. Separate thing. But it was like he didn't get to his seat till about halftime. yeah. And, and it was all because of the entrance. The entrance, security thing.

Yeah, the whole new security thing is so dumb. Just switch it. I don't get why we, I don't understand. But so I finally get in there, Eva's like, where are you? I'm gonna go, I told her I'm gonna go get in line. 'cause I told her, just go get food, go hang out with people. I have to go walk six miles and then six miles back. I get in line behind section like one 12

Okay. Mm-hmm.

And that was at six 40. Made best friends with a woman named Eliana and her husband who have seen me and you on their tiktoks.

Oh,

And I was like, no way. I had none of my stickers, none of my anything on me. 'cause Eva had it because I was like, take this shit. I'm going to the car to put the one little thing back in the car. and so I. like best friends 'cause we're now gonna hang out for about an hour together in line. there was another family behind them who we became friends with the people in front of me. I saw some other friends like it. It was so stupid.

when, when you guys,

don't

when you guys told me about that, I was like, oh, no.

like it. People are still so mad, like even the front office is can we just pretend like that whole day didn't happen? Everybody's yeah, because I hate everybody and everything. A week later, like it, oh, it was infuriating. I got to my seat about 15 minutes after kickoff, and then Richie came up about 20, 30 minutes after that. So he made it before halftime. What? Yeah,

is that? Yeah.

writing emails in their, in our section from their seat their ticket rep of what the actual hell is this shit?

Yeah.

And then my other part of the chaos award is Chesky, one of the referees. And I don't even wanna talk about her 'cause

She was just horrible. She was just bad, bad.

bad. And it's the kind of thing where when you look at the, who's refereeing the game and you see her name, you're like, oh shit.

We've said this before, but if you know the ref by name, you know you're gonna have a bad time.

Yeah. If you're a big baseball fan, you know who Angel Hernandez is? Same thing. She's an Angel Hernandez of it's women's soccer,

Yes. Chesky. And then, and then for the podcast, Trevor also, Trevor is the, the other name. And he was, he was the fourth official at the Stupid Game on the same. So we got Double Shitted on by the refs. and I remember I was, I, I was searching his name again and I think, a thing came up again where oh yeah, I, just to remind you, Trevor was a scab during the, the

yeah.

lockout. Yeah.

we don't forget. Yay. I just, everything about Friday was bad with the exception that I won money. Like outside of I had this wonderful moment, had great time with my coworkers, like we're good friends. It was a blast. Even our like, oh yeah, I couldn't even get food in the stadium. Thank goodness I ate something at the barbecue because the cauliflower cauli power, the pizza place that has the gluten-free stuff

Yeah,

that is like the only safe place to eat in the stadium was closed of all these lines.

because of the lines. Oh, Jesus.

luck to anyone who was hungry and couldn't eat any of the other shit in the stadium, because they also, like BMO as a whole will not tell you like they don't have a guide. What's gluten-free and what's not, and their customer service is terrible to like, for concessions and things like that. Every single stadium I've ever gone to sends you like a full thing of these are all the sections, or, you know, this section has this place that you can get this at. Like all these kinds.

Okay,

we lost.

we lost.

loss.

it was an,

embarrassing and bad.

it, it seemed like all the stuff that looked like was, looked like it was gelling, kind of went out the window.

we were playing people at a position, we were

yeah.

in positions they hadn't played before. We were playing defenders on offense. We had no sense in the midfield. there was nothing that made sense about what happened

So, yeah. So.

Those of you who don't know Thompson and Gisele Thompson are two different women. Are they sisters? Yes. Do they kind of look like they're related? Yes, but guess what?

They don't play the same position.

same positions and they're not the same person.

Yes, they're both fast, but they don't play the same. there's,

One has more bleach, blonde hair. The other one grew her hair out and doesn't anymore. One sometimes wears her hair in a ponytail or a braid. The other one does like a little bubble braid thing like. Alyssa was out, I'm assuming, because she ran a million miles between the two

she,

games and then the week after

she played, she played 90 minutes for the first national team game. She played more than 70, I think she 75 for the second national team game, then played the full 90 for Angel City in in Houston in muggy ass weather and ran her ass off. The entire time. Yeah.

minute or whatever.

if you looked at the report, it said upper leg, which is, you know, the very Vegas thing of it, it could go, it could go very serious. Like she does have a hamstring issue or dude, her legs are just tired. there's, you can't expect her to, yeah, she needs to rest and one week is probably not enough with the amount of stuff that she ran. Remember, people, professional soccer players can run up to eight miles in one game. So eight miles in a 90 minute span. Okay.

And she did like probably eight miles in that first game at SoFi, five to six in the

It takes, it takes me 45 minutes to run three. So come on.

a marathon essentially in a week and a half. That, and that doesn't include training.

Yeah. So I mean, okay, so she was out. We, you know, she was the only one from the normal,

Mm-hmm.

roster that was out. But I think that also gives you the, the moves that were made were a little nonsensical in that, look, we only had one player out and we've talked, and I've mentioned this before, where like the, the, the study or the

subs.

Yeah, the, like the, the study of like how many players that you change out of the lineup affect the, the, if you change up to three players, like you're pretty much like putting a whole new team out there.

Yep.

If you move players out of position, that's considered the same thing. So what the hell are you doing? yes, you had most of the same people out there, but you had 'em in a completely different, okay. So overall we all know we lost four to nothing. Yeah.

being outta position made no sense. Jaelle are two different people. We got our asses out, coached so embarrassingly loudly because of the way people were moved around. And I don't know, don't know if it was on purpose. I don't know if it was just like, let's just try shit and see what happens. let's just get weird. Not this kind of weird, this is bad. Weird. is real bad, weird. I do wanna say in our discord, I made the reference to America's Next Top model.

We

What is this? I could have figured this out better. a lay person who has never played soccer seriously, who just likes the sport, I'm not gonna unless I have no other forwards, which was not the case,

not the case.

I would not have put Giselle. And it's no slate to Giselle. It's just not her position. Why would you do that against Gotham? When they have players coming back from injury and they're gaining traction and gaining speed, why would you?

Oh,

Okay. I. I am done. So also subbing. Really quick, one more thing, subs. Why are we bringing people the 75th and 89th a minute, 89

it's so stupid.

Fens that, that's just disrespectful to any player? Honestly, unless you know you're going into extra time, unless you know, you might be going to pks, like that's when you make a sub like that. But not when you're down for nothing. After an own goal, after like somebody has a brace. Like just why

Yeah. The. I was watching the, the 'cause, you know, I, I wasn't at the game. I watched par part of the game. kids were, kids were on the mend, but they were still sick, so not good enough to take them to the game. so Brightside, we got to go to a Korean barbecue place and pinball, which was weird combination, but fun. And the kids got to play. Pin

Honestly, you had

pin.

better night than the rest of us. Yes. He texted me after the game. I'm like, yeah, that was some bullshit.

Yeah.

What's that like Mario?

But just watching the bit that I did, watching the replay, I'm just like, I, what, what happened? I don't feel, I don't necessarily feel that it was any one person's. Like fault or lack of trying on the field. Like it was just very much like you fucked everyone over by, by changing everything for no apparent reason.

Yeah,

play.

like could have started Kristin and sub Casey in, in the second half, or vice versa, just to have some kind of offensive something because Giselle bless her heart, like she's not an offensive threat that way. She is an offensive threat, but not in the way that a striker is. Not in a way that somebody who plays the position all the time is,

I mean, grant, yeah.

she doesn't have the radar vision in that way.

Granted. I, I see why he wouldn't have made the, the subs at the half. they were, we, we were only down by one. but it's not you know, if we were watching the same game, you should have made those changes because things weren't looking very good. Yes, yes. It was only one to zero at that point, but it really quickly after that, it kept evolving. So, come on.

Like

Um,

55th minute, who gives a shit

yeah,

anyway,

honestly, it Okay.

Casey Phair.

Yes, we're happy for Casey. She finally got her minutes. We wanna see more minutes for her. we wanna see more press minutes. We want to, you know,

does

just

thing against her? Like I was trying really hard to not be shitty

not,

just mad and I wanna be shitty about it and I'm not going to be, because

I,

to his situation.

I know.

else had to say about this. 'cause I need to stop.

I know the rumor of Ramel out there has been that he doesn't like press for some reason. Hasn't. is that real? 'cause it, it kind of seems like it is. 'cause like he's really not giving her the chance, but I don't understand. Okay. all right. So this one was truly a footie therapy session. I posted up. So every run has to end. We were undefeated, right? It was the technically undefeated, but we were undefeated. so I guess downside was the, beyond the shitty game that we had.

negative one

negative one. We were, yeah. Brightside is that we're still at least tied for fourth. I mean, we're in with Gotham. Yes. So we could have made our spread bigger there, but, you know.

Mm-hmm.

Eva came in with my biggest issue last night was the decision to hold off the subs. I have no clue what Sam was waiting for again, just 60. 60.

Yeah. We need to start making subs earlier because people are gassed and it's not a good look, and that's how you burn people out.

Yeah. all right. And then,

it.

and then, on Instagram, we had a couple of of other ones too. Were like, Mirna said, the ref and lack of subs early in the second half. need new need fresh legs and new energy. Eric are OSG friend, from from the Dash dispatch was, this was a complete surprise. He's been

Yeah,

Yeah, yeah. Genuinely for us too. I mean,

if we had to draw that game, I would've been fine with it and considered it a win. 'cause I knew how good Gotham is. Trending.

I wonder, I wonder if for some awful reason he was just like, look, they're in a bad slump and we can, we can

Midge came back

make our way

or two, you know, not this last game, the game before.

the game before. Yeah. And perform the game before too. So don't, don't be like.

us.

And like I was, I had to come home and I had to keep working. So I was watching from like my dining table and that, like, when I sat down, it was when, Mead went around Savvy and I thought it was Sarah by, by the blonde hair. And I was just like,

now Savvy has Sarah's, they have similar hair

yeah,

the braids that Savvy has were like the same color and same style as Sarah's old braids. 'cause Sarah's back to her regular ponytail now. And everybody was like, 'cause if you couldn't see their number or Savvy's wrist brace, it was like, which

yeah, yeah. And so like I saw the, I saw Midge just get right past her and I was like, damn, she got burnt. And then someone corrected me saying it was look savvy. I was like, damn, she got burnt. So either way. okay. So Liz and Sam, I'll admit it was hard to watch. I knew we could lose, but this was kind of brutal and sad. Face Trent came with, thumbs down. Alyssa being injured. Thumbs up, not having the same refs. Next match.

I like Trent.

I like trying. Yeah. Carisa came with, glad still in fourth place, but that game was not what I expected. Zach came with, poop. Checkered Racing flag. Trevor 2.0, KC debut, rock on clapping. We never give up. Proud CP equals air traffic controller Last 15 minutes.

That's true.

Yeah.

Kristen was like directing traffic at that point. Because here's the thing, when you put experience in against an experienced team, you play better. Oh my God.

Ben Benjamin also came in with welcome Casey. And, you know, he's referring to fair there. so yes. And last but not least, we've got Jennifer. We started so strong, but we couldn't hold the tempo. I'm guessing Jennifer's really talking about so far in the season and not necessarily this one game, this

No, we, we, couldn't keep the tempo with Gotham.

No, no.

were getting circles running like it was just

Yeah.

dizzying at one point.

Okay. All right. the Always fun graphics from Alison Gale. Amazing stats kind of visualizer. I just love looking at this way of the, looking at the standings and the kind of movement that happen every week. We can see that we are in fifth place, but our points. we're tied with Gotham, so, you know, I'd like to look at the glass half full and be like, we're tied for fourth place. 'cause it can very easily change that way.

Yep.

And with that, let's preview our next match. We have Orlando coming or no, we are going to Orlando, excuse me. to play the pride on Friday. All right, let's talk about it. What do you got?

Okay. Time out really quick. I wanted to check the, the score from oh, got got fucking lost tonight. Four to one.

Four to one?

Four to one against Portland.

God damnit.

Jesus Christ. Okay, I'm back. okay, so I'm just, okay. I checked the score 'cause it's Tuesday night to see the end of the Gotham Portland game, and I see now that Portland just beat Gotham four to one, which thank you. Thank you for that. I hate it because we didn't do that, but thank you because yes, you have now you are now tied with us in points, Gotham is now, now we are back and forth place,

The gold differential.

over Gotham because of the the win-loss record. So Woo. anyway, we're playing Orlando on Friday night. a lot

Mm-hmm.

it's a whole thing. There's so much going on between the Washington spirit and the Orlando pride. It is fantastic sports drama and I love it, but when a good team comes off a loss, it's terrifying because

They're gonna wanna make a point.

Gotham tonight or you go kick some major ass against whatever team you played. However, we could also do the same thing because if I were anybody on Angel City, I'd be ready to fight someone based on how I feel after Friday. Fight someone, meaning I want to embarrass the team the way, like I wanna make some other team feel the way I felt. And that's just being competitive. People are gonna be like, oh my god, angel, that's so me.

It's, it's, it would.

it spurs the other team to get better. And two, it's target practice.

Okay. Yes. Yes. It was target practice. And I, I, I remember hearing the, the, the kind of banter about that and being oh, that, that was so, like, how, how

so

bad or whatever, so disrespectful. No, it wasn't. And look,

World Cup.

it would be more disrespectful

Yes.

to the team to be like, oh yeah, we're beating you by five. We're gonna take it easy now and, and not score on you anymore. And it's just no, that's just, that's this. So you're saying you're pitting me and we're not going to play anymore. oh, you know, we, we, we give up and we'll just let you try, try to pass the ball around. No, you keep going. You play it, like I said, whistle to whistle. Were not your friend. And this game needs to happen. Whistle to whistle.

yeah, we need to get shit right this week or we will get our shit rocked in Orlando regardless. I don't know how to feel about this game, honestly, because, can I coach? I just not to say that I'm right, but that I'd play people in their like positions. And like stick with the, stick with the program, but

Sam, you have great fucking players. We have a great team on paper. Why?

great team on the pitch when they're allowed to be,

Why get, get past your own stupid ego of for some reason not playing Zella for some reason, not playing cp.

it

I don't know what it is.

I just want it to stop.

I can't imagine that. Press or zem are playing that horribly during practice that they're not getting the, the starting 11.

I don't believe that at all.

And, and

not this starting 11, like first off the bench.

yeah. And, but, and we completely agreed that okay, cool, beginning of the season, let's let the young players play. Let's get them minutes. Cool.

We're

But again, subs,

now.

but like,

vets.

but like subs, just the, just we've been talking about this for five weeks now, and it's dude,

dude. For those of you who aren't watching on video, Mario just had a crisis and maybe you should turn video on to watch it. 'cause that was fantastic. That was more dramatic than anything I've ever done. I'm so proud of you. I'm rubbing off on him everyone. He's bunkers just 'cause he's a dad.

and this is just water.

In the, in the cup that Mario Eats. okay, so anyway, we need to recalibrate. We need to hit the reset button. if this is like your, your Nintendo system or your super NES, pull the cartridge, blow on it, clean it out, hit the reset button a couple times so you don't like, you can just erase what happened and then put your cartridge back in. Let's go.

Do you remember? We didn't have, you know, remember, you remember that we didn't have save states? Like you couldn't save your game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

to

Yeah. You,

out and

yeah.

like it didn't happen.

Like it didn't happen. Or like you died and you're just like, holy shit, I gotta start all over from the beginning, yep. Yeah.

Yeah. we, we have to go in with a goldfish mindset. We have to just be able to be like, well, that happened. Turn the page, pretend like it never did. I really hope, and this kind of Eva brought this up as something for me to talk about, like given the sports psychology of it all. really curious to see how Angelina shows up on, on Friday because the goals weren't, because she wasn't playing well.

We got,

goals were because we got

we got handed. Yeah.

got our asses handed to

The own goal was such a freak. Like it was a freak bounce off, off, her head, Mariah M.A. Maria M.A. I'm fucking this up. It,

can't help you on this one. I'm sorry. The one time.

Mariah, I think, it, it was just a freak bounce off her head. And because of the change of direction and it went, it lobbed that it just caught her off, off position. Right. Like she was too far forward.

of those where she like, you could tell she was watching it like, oh, that's not going in. And then, oh shit, it's going in.

Yeah,

like I hope that she looks at that game and says, well, okay.

that is definitely,

this

that is.

be different,

This is definitely a goldfish game. Yeah.

is able to reset because I don't think that, and I think a few people said it in like the different feedback we got for the game, like in their position did not play terribly. It's not like everyone just crumbled. system was set up for them to kind of fail. So that's what happened. Instead of just being like, ah, this is a terrible game. You know, like players were playing well and then bad shit happened. Also, Vera's mom, sorry we're cussing a lot. But you were like, you were mad too.

Yes.

so much in the off season, probably during the season as well to maintain that like stoicism and, and understanding that A game ends, the page turns, and that's where you are now. And it's such a difficult thing to do because you like, it's, it's, we all carry responsibility as athletes that have a position on a team. know, your, your position is to block a shot. Your position is to break up the play making like whatever that is your, your position is to, to keep the goal, it protected.

Yeah,

no joke,

no.

is not the Orlando of three seasons ago.

It's, it's still Raza laia. It's still,

Yeah,

there's still heavy hitters

exactly. and getting into the Orlando of it all. They didn't make too many season or season. Oh my gosh. They didn't make too many changes in the off season this year. They just kind of solidified their core and added the pieces that they needed, which is terrifying, frankly. Like we haven't even seen like Carson Pickett. Really. We haven't. There's so many players we haven't seen that much of. And then on top of just solidifying the core that they had, grace Chand is back.

Oh yeah.

training with the team and just, we didn't see her at all. Like she made her NWSL debut last weekend and I was so happy for her. not happy now. Same thing with Midge, like you couldn't wait two weeks. Dang girl. but

We,

excited for players when they come back from injury 'cause it's such a long road,

we need to, we need to have that, that injury bounce back for both, both our injured players

I know like Kap and

and June just kind of like show out when you're, when you're back,

I'm gonna score a million goals, so we will make it happen.

June's gonna reclaim that, that midfield goal, just do it again.

She's gonna be like, take that Trevor or whoever called it back. It was the bald guy. He wasn't Trevor. Hailey McCutchen is like a, a, not an icon, but like a, someone who's been in Orlando through the, through the bad stuff. Like her and Marta, like they've been there, they've been in the mud together, they've been through it like before. The end of the season last year, Marta told her like, I wanna lift this trophy with you. Like we're gonna, after the championship game, they won.

Yeah.

And come on. Everybody at Orlando is like. On all cylinders constantly. They're so good. They're so in tune. They're so finely tuned. Seb Hines is an amazing coach. the last player I wanna talk about is Ally Watt. She's an incredible scoring threat. She bonkers that first game. She's had a little bit of a knock where she, it was her hamstring, I think, that first game that kind of got a little, strained. And, but she's playing fine. They, man, Orlando's just dope guys.

They've, they've been, they've been a team that's been around so long and has had so many ups and downs. A lot of downs that the fact that they've been on this, yeah. The fact that they've been on this rise this last, these, these last number of seasons is, is great. Like you wanna see it for the sporting merit of it all. You wanna see it for the growth of the game. You don't wanna see it for us though,

Yeah. I don't wanna see it against us.

like God damnit.

can somebody just like trip and fall over their own feet so we can score. let us do, can we have this one please?

There. I, I think, I think right now everything is running up Alyssa's side. It's very much apparent that it's running up Alyssa's side and it's for good reason. Elisa El Alyssa has the pace and has the speed. She's got the young knees, she's got the cartilage still, so yeah, she, and, and so the mo the ball is moving very quickly on her side,

Mm-hmm.

When, when it gets to the other side and when it gets to Claire, like Claire's, Claire's,

to watch

Claire's got a targeting system. Like she can, she can nail that ball.

watching Claire, move the ball from whoever, if it's like M.A. like M.A. and Claire pair very well together, like they'll just do short passes back and forth to move the ball forward so that they can both still be in scoring position if needed or if somebody has the free and clear, it's go ahead. You know? But there's that, it's not so much these long balls to get the ball forward like it is when to get to Alyssa.

Yeah, I mean, she,

weight isn't all on her.

yeah, last season she's the one that, that, that stepped up, when Alyssa wasn't quite. performing a, you know, performing at the beginning of the season,

Yeah.

found the, the hole to fill and she was in the running very early on for the Golden Boot up until we get, you know, she had,

Until Tim Mucha and Barbara Bondo

yeah.

off.

then they just made it a, a two person race,

Yeah.

from there. So but, yeah, she, she's solid and like I said, she has a pretty good like way of just finding, finding where to place the ball. I think she's one of the, and I think that's, you know, probably for good reason why she's the one taking the corners is that she has a good way of pinpointing that ball. A good distribution of where that needs to go. And sometimes it just doesn't need to go to anybody. It just needs to go straight at the goal

Yeah. It

and

to just get in the direction and then somebody will meet it there,

Yeah.

it'll just go in.

You know, just go in. Yeah.

she's done before she can do it again.

Yeah,

But

current

just so, so fun to watch. We have Katie Zel, who is an English national player, queen of the midfield, the when she was playing with Arsenal, she was a captain at Arsenal. She has a, like I said, she's a veteran with a lot of winning experience in the midfield,

kind of a player that you probably want on the pitch for longer.

when you're playing against a team who can make your midfield look like Swiss cheese in four seconds maybe. I don't know.

Okay. TikTok, do your thing and make sure that this video, this clip gets in front of, gets in front of Sam,

Katie's el. I'm like, we got you girl.

also get in front of Sam and be like, there's, there's a reason she needs to be on the pitch.

Yeah, like I will go, I'll pull up the Wikipedia right now and pull up all of her accolades and all of the, everything, like Katie Zum has led a lot of teams, a lot of places, and a lot of very good places, I know we are building and rebuilding a team right now. And I know there's a lot to be said of using our younger players and getting them minutes, but as we get into this stretch of Orlando, Washington, Kansas City, I want my vets up front. I want, I want the, the team locked in to a system

Is that real?

way when people are subbed out in the second half, that's when you bring your youth in to hold the line with energy, with legs, with, with that,

Is that really our lineup coming up right now?

What

Was that really our lineup coming up right now? Orlando, Washington, Kansas City.

I think it, I think so it's Orlando. Washington

We've got heavy hitters coming. That's, that's

Utah, we get a break.

okay. We gotta,

Ooh.

okay. Okay. Well,

We don't, we, we've got a little bit till we see Kansas City, but still, as the season goes on, teams get better, teams get, find their form, they find their stride. is the moment it where we have to get our shit together. our good friend Casey from Casey's on the case has grouped Angel City in the, could be good, could be shit category. And I do not disagree with her. We could be good, we could even be great or we could be shit.

yeah.

And right now, I don't know.

Also,

gonna happen.

if you don't follow her, do follow her because, Every single game that lineup comes out and Zem is not starting, she is losing her shit.

and I love this

And,

so much and it's hysterical.

and we're on board. I mean,

Yeah.

but it's great. good content. okay. So yeah, and going into this, again, the history is not favorable. It's not on our side. we have,

Oh no. Against Gotham? No.

yeah, well, in against Gotham, we didn't have a good history and against Orlando, we also don't, we have one win, two draws, and three losses. So, you know, we've only, we only had one win against Gotham last, you know, last week too. And it stayed that way. So.

Yeah. Gotham, which used to be sky blue and Orlando have really hit their stride, right as Angel City showed up. And I would really appreciate it if Angel City decided to start showing up against these teams because you're gonna drop games in a season. But I don't like dropping games to the same teams. It's annoying.

Yeah,

But on that note,

on that note,

is gonna be a good game. Some shit's gonna get changed, somebody's gonna get yelled at. there has been enough anger on the internet towards Sam, towards the substitution situation, chesky, towards the referees. And I'm gonna take a break because I, I need to enjoy this, my birthday's next week. Like I'm, I'm cruising to good times like

okay, with all of that reminder, the game is on Friday, the 25th versus the Orlando Pride at Inter and Co Stadium in Orlando. The game's gonna be at 5:00 PM our time. It's gonna be on Amazon Prime. or listen to the radio iHeartRadio. Listen to Isaac and Tracey, the homies there. again, iHeartRadio not an actual radio station. It's an app. The iHeartRadio app, just search for ACFC and or Angel City and you'll find it. There's big ass Angel City logo on there. So hard to miss.

I hope you do. I hope you get to get outta work early. Hope everybody does.

Yeah.

Short circuit, like

Follow us on all our social shows. We're at Casual FC Pod on Instagram threads and TikTok and on Blue Sky. We are casual fc.com. Join us on our discord as you keep hearing us reference. There's a lot of fun conversation. There's a lot of fun banter. I will say both in good and bad times. The, the, the band, it, it's fun Overall.

yes,

be ups, we may be upset.

because even in the bad times, at least we're there together.

Yes.

Nobody suffers alone.

Yeah. okay. And then. Best ways to help support the pod, share, subscribe, engage with our content on Instagram, on TikTok, wherever you see it. go to one of the streaming platforms that you're listening on and rate us and review us there. It'll help other people find, what we do, and that's the best and easy free way to do. support us. If you do want to support us with a little bit of cashola, you can go to shop dot casual sea.com. We've got some merch, new merch for this year.

most pissed off we've ever been on this podcast. It's like our vow to not be these people, and here we are,

Yes.

those people.

If this is the first time you're hearing us, we promise. 99% of the time. This is more fun. And we have, and if you've heard us, I mean, we, I, we've still had a somewhat positive outlook for future games. You know, it is what it is. Get grab your support, emotional support pouch, and, join us, and watching the game. Maybe we'll do another live kind of watch along on Discord, you know, depending on what time everybody can get back home. And, yeah, it's all fun.

Bye