Highest of Highs, Lowest of Lows - Ep. 87

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What's going on, everybody? Welcome to episode 87 of Lobbing Scorchers. This is Ari Lillianwall. And Noah, we have got a pod of... highly conflicting emotions here tonight. How are you feeling? Well, Ari, literally before this, I was crashing out. And then before that, I was celebrating like I had just won the lottery.

And now I'm just like in a state of mental distress. Yeah. So this is going to be a bit of an unorthodox pod tonight. We have a, this might be the only time in Lobbing Scorchers history where we do a. dub pod and an L pod in the same pod. An emphatic dub pod and an emphatic L pod. About as emphatic on each end of that spectrum as you can get. So I think it's actually going to be a kind of interesting show. I'm looking forward to it. Or artists. Even though the...

L-Pod is fresher. I'm still looking forward to the contrast that we're going to be highlighting here tonight. We've got two games to review, one of which... We're going to do the belated dub pod for the 5-2 shellacking of LAFC at Lumen Field with the Tuesday game and some scheduling alignment issues this weekend. We were not able to get that dub pod.

pod out like we normally would. But we weren't going to not put it out even after the CCC game. We were hoping it was going to be a double-dub pod. But... Unfortunately, the Seattle Sounders have crashed out of CONCACAF Champions Cup in emphatic fashion, as you said. That was about as big a disaster as I could possibly think of. Not that they lost. Them losing in itself is unfortunate, but it wouldn't be a disaster. But this was a disaster.

both in terms of the performance and then the injuries. This is really bad. Yeah. It's really bad. So we're going to talk about all of that. But before we do, I do have to let you all know. That Lobbing Scorchers is a part of the Sounder at Heart podcast network. If you want to get the best independent Seattle soccer coverage, consider supporting us by going to sounderatheart.com slash LS. Noah, can you remind me what that link is? Sounder at heart.com slash LS. Scroll down to...

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a huge perk. Lobbing Scorchers kick off. Lobbing Scorchers under the lights. Post game. We've been doing post game lives. Call in shows. So you get access to that. Shout out to all our sponsors. Hacks and Ferments. Podium Menswear. Podium Menswear. We've got to say. I'm wearing Podium menswear right now if you're watching the video. Shout out to Podium and Edmonds. Go check it out. They just got a bunch of new stuff in. I went over there.

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And it was so good. It's actually like so good. And honestly, after this, I'm going to go drink four bottles of full pull wines. All right. But we have new people. Sorry, new subs. I'm sorry. We're so excited to get into it. I know. We're like itching to go. Ryan Van Lair, Jake Kline, and Michael Piseruk. Hell yeah. Thank you all. Something like that. Appreciate you. All of our subscribers. What are we up to now numerically?

Wow. We're 20 away from, uh, from a hundred. Yeah. That's awesome. Love you guys. Appreciate the support. All right. Should we do this? Let's do it. Let's do this pod. Uh, so I think the way we were going to do it is. We were going to start with the highs. Yep.

and then go to the lows, but then kind of maybe keep the game recaps a little shorter, but we're going to do, are we going to do like separate agenda checks? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, all right. It's going to be like two pods in one. So yeah, so let's just talk about this LAFC game first, because that was awesome. I was riding high after that. I was like, all right, cruises, bring them on. Didn't end up panning out like that. But on Sunday? Saturday?

Yeah. I just went the next day. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. I got you. Seattle Sounders five LAFC two. They dropped a five spot on LAFC, which I mean, it is worth despite what happened tonight. It is worth acknowledging the significance of that, how good the performance was. But to me, Noah, the most satisfying...

Part of watch. I mean, it was that was a cathartic game to watch on a lot of counts. And I'm going to talk about it in the agenda check. But this whole thing we were doing the last two years of talking about how much LAFC owns. Seattle and how it's a one-sided Western conference rivalry. You can't even call it a rivalry or a crack clash of heavyweights anymore. Cause LAFC wins every that's done. It's done. That is done. I think it should have been done with the playoff win.

Last year, I was saying it was done, but people were still because people were saying, oh, well, yeah, they won the one playoff game. But what about the 10 before that? Right. My response to that is like the stakes of that playoff game. We're such that if you take the L that LAFC did at that, in that fashion, in your own building, you were linked with the previous 10. I don't.

I'll trade all 10 of those for that win. Are you serious? Like, I don't care. But now with this, that is dead, dead. We can do our lineup reaction because... Both teams were heavily rotated. A lot of the talking points coming out of the LAFC camp was that, well, this doesn't matter because we were rotating for CCC. Well, guess what? So was Seattle. Didn't do them a lot of good.

Nope. But this was depth on depth and Seattle's depth won out. And I know I'm encouraged by that despite what happened tonight. I still think that the positives that we saw. from this LAFC five spot remain despite how badly they crashed out of CCC. How do you feel about that? No, I agree. I thought for one, if we're looking at the lineup itself, you had Jesus Ferreira.

You had Paul Rothbrock, JP, Danny Leyva. You had a mix. You had a start from Costa Rienzi, a kid who was on a short-term loan, has been playing super well, and he gets a goal. And let's just do a, I mean, Lobbing Scorchers, man of the match. Lobbing Scorchers, man of the match. Easy call. Paul Rothrock. I was saying KKR. Okay, you take KK, I'll take Paul Rothrock. Okay, well. Drop your, dish your, dish your. Because first MLS goal.

That was a great moment. And then also how he did it. Yeah. That was one of the better individual efforts you'll probably see all season. Just the... Just how hard he beasted that guy. They're U22 player. That is a U22 initiative signing. who KKR... Bossed by a 22-year-old college... Super draft pick. UW graduate. So just the fact that it was his first MLS goal, I thought it was...

like the teammates reaction. Like they, they were, they were going crazy. I'm sure the bench was going crazy. Like, yeah, it was just a fun, heartwarming moment. Those are like, uh, Like when I look back on a season and I, uh, like regardless of how it ends and I'm like, what were the standout moments? What were, what are the best memories? Like that was a great one. Yeah. So that would be my KKR shout. Yeah, no, that was like such a good.

story to like the cherry on top of the perfect match was having a kid who is essentially like a homegrown player someone who it's kind of like the old on brothers like Yes, technically they're not from Seattle, but they went to UW, you know, adopted Seattle. I'm an adopted family. Yeah, exactly. And for him.

Someone who I really loved in preseason. You liked him in preseason as well. The energy that he has. All of those videos that the Sounders were putting out in preseason in Marbella where they were just like... They would just hand him a mic and he would just, you know, he just has such a good energy to him. Everyone on the team seems to like him. And did you see before you do your Rothrock, did you see his postgame interview? This was funny. I was there.

I was there. I asked him a question, too. I didn't see that. Well, I thought it was so funny how he... He looked actually very, like, reasonably comfortable. He was pretty nervous. You could, like... Well, I think the first couple answers, I was like, all right, like, yeah, he's nervous, but he's handling it pretty well. Like, those scrums, when you're not used to that... Dude, they're nervous for the...

Yeah, exactly. It takes a while when you become a professional to get good at that. But he was doing pretty well, and then someone asked him, Have you had any dialogue about a first team contract? I think it was Jeremiah. Jeremiah asked him and he got really uncomfortable. Yeah. They told him what happened was they told him in the locker room after the game that.

he had earned a first team contract and I'm sure it was like a moment where everyone mobbed him or clapped and stuff, but you could tell he wasn't sure if he had the go ahead to divulge that. And like his reaction, it was like, they signed you. And finally, he goes,

I don't know if I'm supposed to say it, but whatever. No, he said, I don't know if I should say this, but fuck it. He literally said, but fuck it. I got the contract. It was awesome. So that was an even better one. Well, the best part was like...

10 minutes before that schmetzer was asked about it and he said you know i'm gonna have a have to have a really long conversation on the phone with craig in the car on the way home and it's like trying to keep you're a lying motherfucker brian yeah that was that was a

blatant lie. Brian, we know you listen. Well, yeah. Also, that's another good spot to bring up. Brian Schmetzer listens to Lobbing Scorchers. Noah asked a question at the press conference. Of course I asked the Rothrock question, but it was a genuine question. It was fine. It was a fine question. He was like, but anyway, he said the exact quote was add that to your podcast. Yeah. Meaning he knows that.

You have a podcast, this podcast. So thanks for listening, Schmetz. Appreciate the support. We love you. But subscribe to Sounder at Heart, sounderheart.com slash LS. Schmetz, come on. Come on. I mean, we know he listens because we were big in the coach of the year push. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Make your Rothrock. All right. You know, I had two. I had two because, you know, I always know which ones you're going to pick. So I always like to go with something different here. But my two.

men of the match i'm gonna go danny leyva had an outstanding game in this match and i think that this season he has really grown into the player that the sounders saw him to be it's a good point you know he has fought through going on loan not playing the the minutes that he was said told that he was going to be playing on at that loan you know

So much stuff that he's been through, you know, he's kind of rode the bench, hasn't gotten his break. Been on the team for seven years at this point. Yeah, like he's basically a Sounders veteran. Like it's funny to say, but like he's been around a long time. He looks like a different player right now. He does. I was going to say, from last season to this season, he looks so confident. He's playing really well. His distribution is so good, man.

Just so good. So I had to give a shout out to him because he played 88 minutes of great soccer. And I'm excited. I thought, and I guess we'll touch on it when we get to the Crucis World thing. I thought he played well in that match as well. And then my other one, Mr. Pauly Primetime, Paul Rothrock Lobster, my man, dude. goal and an assist Ari and then and it was a glazo and a really nice assist yeah and that's you know he self-admitted was like I have not had the best season so far

It's hard to come back from injury. We talked about it with Pedro de la Vega. We talked about it with every single player, Morris, all of it. It's a confidence thing, right? He said in the postgame scrum after he was like, during preseason, I was making some plays. And Brian pulled me aside and said, you're playing jumpy. I can tell that you're stressed out. I want you to know that I will be patient with you, but you need to be patient with yourself.

And you can tell that over these last few games and these reps that he's gotten, he's settled into the game. He's found his presence. He's found his patience. And he's more confident because of that. And I just thought that that was really awesome to see. He's a player that goes into training, works his ass off. Brian says as much.

You can tell he listens to what the coaches say and implements it in the right way. I think this was the best Rothrock game yet. I really like in terms of all around performance and then stat sheet contribution. The thing I wanted to say about the Rothrock goal is that it was really good to see them get a goal.

uh off a set piece i really liked the design on that it was great man like uh that was just really well worked where you you kind of have options right like rusnak is making the read do i put it in the mixer are they dropped far back enough for me to hit Rothrock. He makes the read, he hits Rothrock. Uh, and then the, uh, to me, it seems like the design on that is like, uh, there you're just like creating so much kind of chaos in front of the goalkeeper. Um, And...

trying to sort of make it so he can't see. And then that shot, that shot has a better chance of going in. Ferreira almost fucked that up. He almost fucked that up. And, uh, he was off. Well, he was off, but like you couldn't clearly and obviously. tell if he was obstructing from the offside position i did see some lafc fans upset okay that is that is how you can't tell you can't tell and so if you can't tell you have to leave it i understand it was it was definitely borderline yeah but uh

Some people were getting on Ferreira. I saw someone call him lazy. I think if you watch it again, he's not being lazy. He lost focus. I think he lost focus for like half a second. When I watched the replay, which I did a few times, I swear there was like a half second where he was like... Oh shit. And then like, yeah. And then jump back on side. But I would have been, I would have been very tilted at him if that had gotten waved off because it would have been the third.

perfectly executed set piece of the season that they got waved off offside. So thankfully that didn't happen, but anyway, it was, that was a great, I liked that goal a lot. Yeah. That was a sick goal. I have to say like for him to, settle that ball because it was a little bit behind him like the pass from a snack wasn't perfect but rothrock was able to read it really well collect it take a little bit of a step again that like just

settling, calming down, taking that shot, being confident. It was so sick. And I mean, yeah, he was like, dude, I mean, Jesus was offside. I think there's a shout for it. The issue is not if he was off or not. He was off, but you can't obstruct from the off. He wasn't making a run at the goalkeeper and making a run at the ball being played. You couldn't tell if he was in the keeper's sight line or if he was.

So if they had waved it off on the field, I think they would have had to leave it. But if they leave the goal on the field, then it has to stand. And I would have been even more tilted if they had... If they had waved it off because that wasn't clear and obvious, but I also would have been pretty tilted at Ferreira. Yeah. I mean, you know, the, I got to go with the old adage from our friends at happy foot, sad foot, which they even said this on their post game live stream.

If it's cool, it counts. If it's cool, it should count. And that was fucking cool. That was cool. I think that's spot on. Let's do positives and negatives because there's a lot of positives from this game. And then we're going to have to do some negatives in the next section. The positives I have. five goals. Like anytime you drop a five spot, that's, that's a good night. Right. Well, that's where I'm going to get to that.

As I said, the LAFC-owned Seattle narrative is dead, so that is honestly the biggest positive for me coming off of this game. I couldn't have been more tired of that. I wrote down here positive vibes ahead of this CCC matchup. Okay, but it's true. It is true. That was a positive. Didn't end up. Panning out, but that was a positive. I wrote Paul Rothrock and Georgie bounce back. They had a rough shift at RSL to the point where I was.

crashing out a little bit. Georgie had me crashing out in that game, not on his stock, but just on the offside play. in particular, but Georgie looked great. He got, uh, the, the Georgie to Rusnak goal was really, really good. Georgie absolutely, uh, destroyed... Who was that guy? I think it was Yaya Boa. Yaya Boa had one of the toughest games I have ever... Dude, he looked so bad. So on the Christian goal, he got...

He got deked so bad. That was an awesome play by Christian where Alex was going up the sideline. The entire LAFC team was like, all right, he's laying it off here. And Christian totally deked him. And Yaya Boa got juked out of his shoes. And then the finish by Rusnak, everyone's going to say it was easier and didn't count or whatever.

That was great. That's not an easy finish because of how the pace that the cross is coming in. So that was just a really, really good goal and a great play by Georgie Rothrock. destroyed Ryan Hollingshead. That was incredible. My favorite play of the game aside, well, he destroyed him like three or four times. He looked like he had just gotten hit by a car. But the one, yeah, the one where Rothrock just totally juked him and left him in the dust, that was like...

That's as bad as you can get juked. When they make the Rothrock mixtape at the end of the year, that's going to be prominently... featured. They're going to play it back a few times because of how bad he got Hollingshead on that one. We're going to teach Ari how to use a video editing platform so he can make a Rothrock edit. Whoever makes the Rothrock edit.

Got a lot of material in this game. So that was great to see. And then my last one that I wrote down was that, dude, Giroux looks like a bust. Yeah. I don't know what the threshold of games is. where you like call that a day. But it's been over 25 games at this point. There's these stats that are very alarming if you look at them of he's not only not scoring goals, he's not taking shots.

I forgot he was on the field for like 85 minutes of this game. Basically it was like, and I'm like looking for reasons to be like, Oh man, like Giroux's gonna. probably break out at some point and it's going to turn LAFC into this crazy juggernaut. I'm like that, like they've gotten pretty much nothing out of him, which is both funny and beneficial to Seattle. So

That was my last positive. Yeah. Positives in this game. Should I do my negatives first or do you want to? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I only have two because this was a great. This was a great performance. The De La Vega injury. Yeah.

I wanted to hit on that a little bit. Yeah, that's I mean, that's an undeniable negative. He's probably going to be out at least a few weeks. And just any time he goes out with an injury like that, it's hard not to feel anxiety about it because of what happened last year. So that's a pretty big negative. And then.

The first goal they conceded, the equalizer, was another pretty bad concession, really bad concession in an early season that's had too many bad concessions. And, like, honestly, like...

In a hypothetical world, say this game finishes like 2-2 and they drop more home points. We're sitting here like, this defense needs to like... shape up yeah now yeah I feel like that kind of after the CCC game but like that equal like that was a that was just a really bad goal like Jackson Reagan and Andy T uh I mean I don't know. They got him good. I don't know. It was bad. Yeah, that was bad. So those were my two negatives. Yeah. And that David Martinez goal, too, was.

That's the one you're talking about. No, no, no, no, no, no. The first one, the first one. Okay. We can talk about that goal. David Martinez goal was, uh, all right. For anyone who doesn't know that kid is like, uh, A baller? Well, he's one of the most highly rated players his age in the world. Have you ever heard of a club called Bayern Munich?

Every once in a while, Ari. I have heard of them once in a place. It was like clubs like that who were like... going for him like seriously and uh lafc like when lafc landed him it was like this big like whoa what's like why how how and why because of how highly rated he is and he's been

He hasn't played that many minutes in MLS. And it seems like the narrative with him is like he's been a little hit or miss. Like when he's been good, he's looked like one of the best players his age in the world. And then sometimes he'll go through periods where you don't really notice him on the field, which I think that's normal for you.

young player yeah but i saw that play and i was like oh yeah that was messy-esque okay he he was at midfield he dribbled from midfield through what seemed like 10 defenders shook them all off and scored. It was the best run like that I've seen since JP's. beard quake, honestly, which is funny. They both happened at Lumenfield. It reminded me of, and not completely the same, but that Raul goal where he like dinks it over.

the two defenders do you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah that's one of his most famous goals but this was like the the how long the run was yeah it's true so that's one where i'm where that's a concession where i'm like all right that kid just made he just balled out he just balled out like all right like If he's going to score that. Cool goals count. Yeah. But the first one where Andy T and Jackson Reagan.

just run into each other and then at that point it just becomes a ball pinging around it's that just didn't need to happen and it was at a really inopportune time and it didn't end up mattering but like i think taken in the context of the other kind of just

bad concessions that they've had so far this season um i didn't like to see it and i was tilted at the time because it was right after the de la vega injury and uh it was giving up an equalizer like before you can get to half so that's my yeah yeah yeah no i'm right there with you Honestly, do I even have any different positives? I think I might have covered those. Yeah, you really cooked with that. Maybe my other positive is this shows that there is...

The depth is good. Like there is some depth. In MLS. In MLS. But that is what matters, right? That's what matters now. That's what matters in the reality of things is like if you're going to compete in these big competitions. You're going to roll out your depth for MLS, right? And now they're going to be rolling it out. Yeah. But like, I think that was kind of the point was for me, it did cement the fact that like.

If you're going depth v. Depth, there was such... Okay, I went on the Happy Foot, Sad Foot podcast. Some of you might have watched it. And I made a joke. I said, does LAFC really have depth? Because... I've heard people talking all the time about LAFC is the second deepest team. No, they're not. That's what I was going to say. No, they're not. You guys played like ass.

Like I think there's a positive takeaway regarding Seattle's depth for sure. And then there's also the takeaway of like, yeah, LAFC's depth. tanked yeah they tanked like they looked horrible and like their fans and happy foot sad foot as i would expect and i would do the same thing to be fair i'm not criticizing but they're saying oh well we were rotated so whatever

But like. You have Olivier Giroud on your team. You're supposed to be, you know, big bad LAFC who's got like the deepest, best team of all time. So they definitely. I don't know if that was just like, you know, one bad game or if that's reflective of their depth, but that was not. That was not good. And I think you can both credit Seattle's depth for capitalizing on that and putting up five goals and also say that was dicey from the black and gold. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Negatives.

Danny Mussovsky. That's it. Okay. We'll get into it. He'll be in a positive in this next one, so I'm putting him in the negative for this one. I feel like Moose brought his stock back a little bit. With this next one, but if you were looking at this game, he played 45 minutes of the worst, dumbest, didn't do anything. People say ghost snack, Ari. I like to perpetuate a new ghost. Gustavski.

All right. Is that something? You can cook on that if you want. I just don't want it on record. I'm not with the... I just am not with the, like... incessant negativity about the number three striker like i get it like he hasn't played well since he's been on the team but he though he would only merit the amount of heat that he gets if he was the starter yeah that's not

So that's just how I feel about the moose thing. Like the number three striker, the number three striker is like, it's kind of hard to find a good one because if, if they were like, really, really good or highly touted, they would be a number two or a number one striker. I think that if you're the striker, regardless of if you're the backup or not, and you're starting and you play 45 minutes, 46 minutes, and you only have 11 touches, that's a problem.

That's like, I just, what do you think? Where are you? Touches aren't necessarily an individual stat. Okay. Well, he was, he had nine passes and he went seven for nine. I don't know. Like I just, he just was not super. I'll like, I'll accept it as your, as your negative. Yeah. Um, agenda check. Agenda check. Agenda check one. So yeah, this is agenda check one.

Paul Rothrock is back. We talked about it, but I think he's totally restored the Rothrock vibes of last year with this game. And then, frankly, I know he gave up the penalty tonight. He played well. You were talking about it on stream, but he was one of the only guys like... making things happen out there but save that for the yeah the second so second half paul rothrock is back agenda yeah i thought he i thought he looked so good man in this game like after he got that goal

Brian even said as much in the post-game presser. He said, you know, that first 45, this was after the question that I asked. He had said, you know, maybe we have something to talk about about that first 45. But after that, he worked his ass off. He worked hard.

and he got his goal and he settled in and he's he's playing like a man possessed and that's the player you want that's the player you want coming on at half at cruises all you know what i'm saying that's that's the player you want in your back pocket where

yeah, maybe you have to rotate, but you know you've got a guy who doesn't care. He just wants to play. He wants to score. He wants to win. And we were both a little critical. We said, you know what? He's not playing well. He was self-critical, but... Folks, the Paul Rothrock, the hype train, it had already left the station. It slowed down. We picked up some new people and we're on our way, bullet train style. Absolutely.

LAFC owns Seattle. I wrote fucking dead. Dead. Who are you? Already talked about that, but I don't want to hear that until the next 10 game unbeaten run they have against Seattle. Yeah. The KKR is an MLS player agenda. This is actually a Schmetz agenda that he brought to the table, I think. Yeah, he did. He was saying even before this...

I think Schmetz was like, I really like this kid. Like, I really think he has something. And you never know if a coach is on to something with that until you actually watch them play in an MLS game. And I got to say, like. I was talking to Nico about this on Lobbing Scorcher's kickoff every Monday at 8 a.m. But, you know, like we talk so much, Noah Wright, about young players.

And the difference between a young player who's like blending in and playing not to make mistakes and a young player who is. making plays playing without fear inhibitions and impacting the game moving the needle that is the difference between like a average prospect to a good to great prospect KKR and what we've seen of him, he scored a game winning goal in the open cup and did a really awesome flip.

But that was a big goal. That was a game-winning goal in an elimination game. And then he went out there and did that against LAFC. And I'm like, man, this... This kid has made more plays in his two games that I've watched him than a lot of the Academy kids who have... come up in the last couple of years who have been, uh, who've been like good. They become good players like Obed, but like Obed was a lot younger to be fair, but you know what I'm saying? Like he, uh, he's making.

not just an impact, but like a pronounced impact. That was an incredible individual play that he made against, against that LAFC defender. So yeah, the KKR stock is up. Schmetz might've cooked with that. No, and I think even more than that, you can take away the goal in that game and he plays really well. Like his passing was elite. He was literally like the heartbeat of that team for quite a few, I'd say quite a few minutes, but you know, like.

for large periods of that game. Dude, the 10 minutes, I want to see... I know that they have all of the heart rate data and all of the stuff. The 10 minutes after he scored... He was all over the field. He was running around. He wanted a second one so bad. You'd see him top of the box. Then he'd be all the way back defending. And then he was back out on the wing and back out on the left wing. He was like...

Playing like a man possessed. It was that just post-game adrenaline. One more thing on KKR. Another great moment I thought from his post-game scrum was when I think it was Jeremiah again asked him like, well, why didn't you do the flip? Like you did the flip in the Open Cup. Oh, yeah. Flip. And he goes, you know, I feel like the flip is more of a closer move. And then he's like.

It was so early in the game. I thought about it, but then I figured there's so much time for this result to flip. No, I'm not going to do the flip. Lock back in, refocus, and let's go. That was such a good answer. He's a Brian Schmetzer player, bro. No wonder. I just love the idea of like.

No, the flip is when, it's when we close it out. Yeah. That's how we close it out. But that's such like a, you can tell that's like another reason why Brian loves it. He's that Paul Rothrock archetype. He is that Christian Roldan archetype that just like knows.

in the grind all of that kind of stuff and like he's just always going to be playing with his hair on fire yeah and i love players like that i love players like that that's yeah that's the that's a seattle player identity yes and he is the seattle player through and through man like He's not just a Seattle player. He's an MLS player. Agenda skyrocketed. Should I lob my two that I have? Yeah. Well, I had to put this one in there because...

It's not necessarily your agenda. It's not my agenda. I'm just perpetuating the streets. Pedro De La Vega, always injured, bum signing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of the talk agenda. I mean... He goes off in what? The 30th minute or something? I get why it's a thing because of what happened.

last year and it was a muscle injury again i just hate this agenda because i don't know it just never sits right with me anything that uh feels like it's like blaming someone for getting injured you know like uh Like you can have a bust signing because of injuries for sure. But like.

It's not for lack of anything on his part, like as a guy or as a player. And in fact, like we were all so excited and happy about how he was looking to start the season. Like I really feel like I really feel like last season we never saw. that was kind of the issue is like he was hurt all the time and then when he wasn't hurt it looked it didn't look like he was

fully up to speed. It didn't look like he had chemistry. And we're like, well, even if he wasn't injured, would this be a good fit on this team? And then this year, I thought he was looking great. So I know that people are going to be... down on him and giving him a hard time because it happened again. But so maybe the, maybe this agenda is strengthened in that respect, but I don't like it, man. It's not his fault that he.

tweaked his quad. Yeah. I mean, he could be, I think that two things can be true. He is injury prone. I think that, or at least has been since he got here. I think it's fair to say he's an injury-prone player. And that said, that...

I think he's also played well, but that was also another reason why I was trying to pump the brakes. Cause I was like, man, like, I don't know if he's going to be able to play the amount of minutes. I don't know if he's going to be able to do all of that. And that's like, That's a big part of being a designated player. Availability. You have to be available. And so I think that people questioning the signing, it's fair. It's fine.

I think you take a gamble anytime you sign a player, especially when they're young, especially when they've had an injury before, but that doesn't mean that they're down and out for the count. Now, okay, I'm going to say Jordan Morris, but look at Jordan Morris last season. He was Teflon Jordan, dude. That guy played every single goddamn match and he was never injured.

he had a history of being super injured, like of having all of these horrific injuries, right? Like things happen in your career. It doesn't define you until it does. But I think it's fair to say that like there is a, there is a ghost. haunting Pedro de la Vega and the injuries there, you know, it just sucks. I was having so much fun watching him. Like he was, he's like, uh,

He's an exciting player, you know, which is what this team needed so badly. So it just sucks. Yeah, it sucks. My last agenda for this game was Sounders have no best 11 agenda. Let me explain this a little bit because I know that... It doesn't really maybe make sense initially, but what this is to say is I have seen our starting 11 play some of the worst soccer of all time.

And I've seen our road dated 11 play some of the worst soccer of all time. I've seen them both play some of the best soccer of all time. I just don't think that there is a perfect. I don't know. Maybe there's just not a huge drop-off is what I'm trying to say in quality between all of these players. And I think a lot of these players can work well together. You see...

Paul Rothrock looking great. You see Danny Leyva coming in and working on his own. JP has been playing really well. I think that what I'm trying to say is like, they may not have their best 11 yet. it may still get to develop. I was going to say the amendment I would make would be like they haven't found yet. Not that they don't have. Right. I think it exists in the astral plane.

And I think there's things to be figured out there. I think Ferreira's role is one of them. Well, when he can play more than 20 minutes. Right. Like him playing more. Whether that's fitness or whatever, it's going to be a part of that. I guess we'll talk about that in our next section, which unless you have any more agendas, I think we can talk some. CCC. Let's do CCC. It was the highest of highs and now Ari, it's the lowest of lows. Seattle Sounders went to Mexico to play Cruz Azul.

for leg two of their round of 16 CONCACAF Champions Cup Series, with it tied 0-0. And I guess let's first just talk about how we felt going into the game, because... I would say, like, I try to be realistic about these things in the sense that even against a team, a Liga Mekki's team like Cruz Azul, that... Isn't off to a particularly great start. Didn't look particularly great in leg one.

You're always up against it on the road. Roiled in turmoil. Yeah, exactly. They were roiled in turmoil, don't have a stadium, all that stuff. Their fans were saying that they were rooting for Seattle because they want the coach fired. I did see after... the fourth goal that they scored he was praying and I'm like yeah dude that is a fucking prayer answered for you huh even yeah so like even with all those variables into account uh

I still try to keep in my mind like, all right, it's a CCC road game in Mexico. Honestly, no matter what the circumstances are, you've got to heavily skew your expectations to being the underdog. 75 25 like you're gonna lose the game yeah and i think that will be true as long as mls's roster restrictions are roughly what they are because

The Liga and Mechies teams are always going to have a lot more quality in their depth. And their top end players are always really, really good, too. You got to play guys like Gignac, you know. Or Bogus. Or Bogus. So all that being said, I would say I felt about as good going into this game.

as i have for a ccc game maybe even better than the 22 one i think maybe i got a little overconfident in that respect because they've won this competition before and they've shown that they can handle series like this and we were all very uh Not all, but we were excited about like the depth and specifically how that could function and help them in a tournament like this. So I thought at the very least. Even if they lost, it was going to be like a really, really.

evenly matched game that's yeah that's honestly that's what the first leg looked like yeah exactly that's honestly what i expected even with like even knowing though that that a road game is a lot harder than the first you know than the first game that they played i mean did you feel

all that much different beforehand no i thought we had a chance i thought if the sounders came to play like they did at lumen yeah there was always going to be a chance because at the end of the day all they had to do was come out with a scoring draw to advance. Yeah. And I think that the way that this team was set up there, I,

I fully expected like a 1-1 or a 2-2 to advance them. I never thought that they were going to go down to Mexico and blow the doors off and win 3-0, 4-0, even 1-0. I didn't think that was going to happen. I thought it would always be a... Get punched. How are you going to respond type of thing? And I mean, we can run down the game quick, you know, four to one. They got punched and.

They did not. Well, so, okay. I think we should start with the first half because the first half was, it was a disaster. Yeah. It was a freaking disaster. The first, uh, we were talking about it on the post game live, but like the first, like actually three to four minutes of the game, I thought were actively good. Like, I don't know if I'm delusional on that, but I was like, okay, like this is actually going pretty well. Like they looked.

up for it. They had the, they had a couple of like good little sequences of play and half chances. They did not look like a team that was about to get overrun in the way that they ended up getting overrun. No. So, uh, like I think that's Adds to the frustration of how it panned out because it actually, like, legitimately started out pretty well. But the rest of the first half, they were...

as bad in possession as I've ever seen. And they didn't leave their own half. Like they, uh, I don't know. Maybe it's just because they're the team that I follow the most and I've watched them in. every big game that they've ever played. So realistically, you're going to have some good, you're going to have some bad in there. But I swear when this team plays in finals or big games like this, that they lose. It's in large part because they just lose all.

ability to maintain possession. They couldn't keep the ball. That was really the story of the half and the story of the game is that how bad they were in possession and then the giveaways. Every single time, man. They couldn't complete a pass. They literally could not complete a pass. There was lengthy stretches. And that is for anyone that didn't watch the game. That'll sound like an exaggeration. It's not. No. Like they couldn't.

complete a pass like you're right or it was like let's let's sky this ball in the air like let's not just connect some passes on the ground let's flick the ball up and to a 50-50 ball. It's because they were just under siege the whole time and so like a lot of the times the only recourse they had was just like...

clear it. Uh, but then Cruz Azul of course has the ball again. And honestly, there was probably until like the 30th minute or so. I did think what I was going through my mind was like, all right, this is annoying to watch because they can't keep.

the ball there's way too many giveaways but it did kind of feel like possession without purpose for them for a while of that didn't it yeah i felt like uh they were until the until the opener uh There might have been a couple good looks right leading up to the opener, but I remember feeling like...

All right. Like they have most of the ball, but it's not like Fry is under crazy siege right now. They're doing a decent job at like keeping everything in front of them, keeping their shape and then clearing it out and not giving up like. crazy chances or anything. But like at the end of the day, if you can't keep the ball, you're not going to be able to score and they couldn't keep the ball. So, uh, that, uh,

That was really what did them in in the first half. But then to add on to that first half, just because it needs to be said, like you're playing at elevation. And if you can't control any kind of possession and slow the game down. You're going to die. You're going to die. I'm sorry. That's just the way that it goes. That's what I'm saying. You have a team that is relentless in pressure. Cruz Hustle is relentless in pressure. You watch this game.

I mean, it is impressive the way that they are able to press so hard. Literally every player on their team is forward in our half. playing possession, holding the ball. It doesn't matter. And then, you know, their goalkeeper is basically just another center back. I love that guy. That guy fucking rocks. He kind of does. But like, you know what I'm saying? So it's like you are essentially playing 11 on 11 on defense. Your whole...

Game plan going into this is to spring counterattacks and push Jordan Morris forward. When you can't connect a pass, you're not going to connect a long ball. You're not going to connect to Jordan Morris. And it was just like he was not having a good day either. The balls would come to him. He would just not be in the right position. Things wouldn't happen. It just like it felt not great. And then.

The 33rd minute, man, they get that goal and you can just tell that this team is gassed from then on. Yeah. To me, this game was lost in the midfield. I thought the midfield got... absolutely obliterated. Probably the worst I've ever seen that double pivot play. That was the worst that double pivot has played. It was, I think the worst. Oh, Ben and Christian, by the way, just for. Yeah. I think that was the worst game of Christian's career. I think he would probably. if you asked him.

Christian has been one of the best players this team has ever had. I'm not having to go with Christian. I don't even think he was the worst player on the field. He had two really bad... giveaways and then he got low-key high-key kind of lucky to not get sent off yeah i i i would have been Stu Holden was saying on the broadcast, he was like, they're for sure going to send him off. I didn't think they were going to send him off. Well, it's just CONCACAF, so you never know. But like...

My thing is, like, I don't like reds where there's literally nothing the guy could have done to avoid it. Like, he's kicking the ball as he has the right to. And then the... On the follow-through, he hits the guy's leg, which Stu was saying that he left his feet, so that arguably becomes reckless. I just don't think there's... I don't know what Stu was talking about there, to be honest with you. I don't think there's much of any of a way that he could have avoided the contact.

That's a 50-50 ball at that point. And he won the ball, which I know doesn't technically matter. But it does. Let's be real. It does matter. The follow through happens because he won the ball. Yeah, exactly. But still, like it was a sketchy moment.

and uh in an otherwise really you don't want to put it up to a conca gaff raff exactly but they they give up the first goal which you know like i honestly don't really care about what happened on the sequence like they just they deserve they were asking for it They were fully asking for it. I was surprised it didn't happen sooner with how bad they were in possession. So that was honestly for as...

Bad as they played, getting to the half at 1-0 was a good outcome. But then you have the areola injury, which is really bad. It was non-contact. It's not announced what happened yet, but... You could hear on the broadcast him scream. It looked like he did his ACL. You could tell. I hope that's not what happened, but just based on...

what we saw. I think he was stretchered off the field. Like if, uh, if it's not an ACL, he's going to be out. He's still going to be out for a while. And that sucks, man, because he. looked like he was going to be a really awesome addition to this team this year. He was balling. He was balling. Like he's a really good player. Part of the reason we were all as excited as we were about the depth. He was a big part of that.

Uh, he scored two goals already in champions cup against Antigua. Uh, he's just like, uh, he and Ferreira both. I think their strong suits are just like how they're, they're team guys. They're unselfish. Paul Areola has like crazy work rate. Another Brian Schmetzer-esque player. He's a very Schmetz player. I think we mentioned that, but like losing him for an extended period.

sucks man there's just no way around it so like for that half would have been a disaster anyway in my opinion it felt like a disaster and like didn't I don't know didn't it feel like at that point that even though they were down one Didn't it already feel chalked? I think I literally posted on Blue Sky. I'm not reactionary like that. I've watched enough of this game to know that...

When you going down one zero does not mean the game is over. Like a lot of people, I feel like when they see one zero, they're like, okay, well that's it. That's, I usually am not like that, but that's how I felt in this game. The second, yeah. The second that Paul Oriola got that injury.

i am well one i was crashing out online obviously i'm the one who does that because you're the pundit you're the like you know the reasonable one and but you're right it was over like it just everything was going so poorly, it would have literally taken a miracle to completely turn around.

what we had just watched like it didn't matter if you subbed every single player off on who was on the field changed everything changed your form they're like you're gassed it's you're down one you just lost a player to an injury shit's not work shit is not working nothing was working passing awful well people want to blame the field sure cool it's the field then like it felt shocked from half it felt shocked but it actually wasn't like yeah they still were in a situation

At half. If they scored one. The way I was coping was, and I actually said this before the game, so it wasn't even cope, but I really going into this game was telling myself, if they score first, don't even panic. if the game state is as bad as it was, then like, yeah, that's why I ended up panicking. But as far as just like the outcome of if they score first, it doesn't, it didn't matter that much. Like, uh,

It mattered in the sense that it put Cruz Azul like a goal closer to being able to create separation. But in terms of what Seattle had to do, it didn't change anything. They just had to go out in the second half and tie that game up. And ideally, if you score two and they only score another one, then you advance. So, like, they weren't chalked there. It felt like they were, but, like, on the scoreboard, they were not. So...

The game wasn't over, but I think that the reality of... You can tell when a team is just not there. Like, I... I don't want to compare this to the 20, the... The MLS Cup that we pretend doesn't exist against the Columbus Crew. The 17 Cup was the same thing. Yeah, but exactly. This felt actually more like the 17 Cup to me. It's just like you can tell. It's just not their day. It wasn't their time. Nothing was working. The wheels fell off. The wheels fell off. Well, so that being said...

They didn't really fully fall off until the very end of the game. Rothrock came in for Areola and... He had an eventful shift, to say the least. Rothrock giveth and Rothrock taketh away. He was a key character in this game. So basically, though, like... what I wanted to see in the second half was like, just, just like figure out how to keep the ball a little bit. Like that's it. But step one, literally just stop, like cut down the giveaways.

Keep the ball a little bit. You don't even have to be generating chances. Just like chill this thing out and like stop being under pressure the whole time. Keep the ball. They couldn't do it. No. There was maybe a pocket of 10 minutes where they did have a few chances. Like into the second half, but this was after the second goal. Correct. This was, yeah, after Krustus had their cushion and they felt comfortable.

pulling their foot off the gas but yeah i agree with you yeah so uh they gave up the second goal on a penalty that rothrock conceded which uh it was a bad play by rothrock but like Uh, I'm really not aggrieved at him at all. And I'm not like aggrieved at the concession because again, like they were asking for it. If it wasn't on the penalty, they were asking to get bammed on.

Some other way. He scores that. Like he probably scores that whether it's a penalty or not. Yeah. Or they score. There was like at least. at least three or four, like really like the one that Reagan headed down to the guy. Oh, that was terrible. Like, uh, made an insane block otherwise that probably would have been a goal they had like at least they had a handful of other really good looks uh other than that so it just uh like the penalty

Felt like to me, like something that like it was an outcome that was inevitable, regardless of if he conceded that. Yeah. So at that point, it's two zero. And I think we all were like, OK, this is chalk chalk. But to be fair.

I guess this is where we get to the positive, to be fair. They brought one back and it was Moose. It was Moose who got one. And this was a nice goal. I have to confront you about this when you finish this statement. Okay. I mean, I was just going to recap what happened. Continue. It was a very good set piece by Rusnak. He put the free kick right on Rothrock at the far post. Rothrock heads it down into the mixer, and it pings around, and Moose gets one.

Right there, you are at one goal from advancing again somehow. Yeah. You posted, not tweeted, you skeeted. If Moose scores one today, I'll buy his jersey and shotgun a white claw while wearing it live on stream. Now, you... We'll pretend that you tweeted this today. You tweeted this this weekend. I know everyone. Will you follow up on this even though it was one game late?

Yeah, like I didn't say that about this game. Right, but I feel like it's what the people want. You know what? Okay, here's what I'll say. I'm not because... Okay, if they had won, if they had won... Or if they had advanced, like drawn and advanced or whatever, I would do that for Moose. I feel like shotgunning for a goal in a game like this, it just doesn't. Like it's not.

He probably wouldn't want that. Yeah, exactly. The whole point is that it was supposed to be celebratory. So it just doesn't feel right. But I...

I'll make more stupid bets, so don't worry about it. We had the people. The people wanted to know. Yeah, no, that's fair. I saw everyone tagging me on Blue Sky, but that was about the LAFC game, folks. I didn't even think... was going to play in this game so like i wouldn't have said that about this game yeah uh anyway moose makes it 2-1 and uh like i still was like i don't think they're gonna i didn't i turned the game off

You crashed out that hard? I turned it off. At 2-1, you turned it off. At 2-0, I turned it off, and I had notifications on. You didn't see the moose goal? No, I got the notification of the moose goal, and so I booted it back up, watched the moose goal, said...

Of course, Moose scores when I turned the game off. Classic. Wow. And then I watched the rest of the game. So I only had it off for about 10 minutes. Wow. That's a good crash out. It was a mental health preservation thing. That's fine. I get it. But I did turn it back on and I did rewind and rewatch those 10 minutes. So at 2-1, like...

They actually, despite everything we talked about, man, despite everything that we talked about, I know the narrative is going to be that they got boat raced in this game. I mean, like it ended like that. because Cruz Azul gets two late goals, but this was literally like 2-1. And I do think it's fair to point out that they were lucky to not be getting boat raced harder by that point. Sure, yeah. But they had it.

competed hard enough in this game to get they had a chance in the second half those were two garbage time goals man like this game should have ended two to one exactly like like i'm sorry like this this game fully could have been disgusting 1-1 draw. Cruz Azul probably would have deserved to win that, but...

I think if you were going to be real here, this was like a 2-1 threat. You could say, well, Cruz Azul could have had a couple more, but when Seattle in the first five minutes, Jackson Reagan had that header.

Uh, and there was at least one other chance. So like you, you, you're starting to play. Okay. Here's the, here's my, my thing. Jesus Ferraro misses a sitter from Paul Rothrock. Okay. That was what I, uh, I, uh, forgot about that yeah but that was i also wanted to forget about that aria i wanted that washed from my brain let's just talk about that because that was honestly that was one of the moments of the game

Oh, my God. Might have been the moment of the game. Paul Rothrock makes an awesome play to free himself up down the left side. He's all alone in acres of space. He totally mossed his guy. He puts in a great ball. Perfect ball. Perfect ball. Ferreira has it lined up. He could even take a touch if he wants. He could have taken a touch. He tried to first time it. I don't really care. Just...

He's a striker. He knows. Yeah. And he's got it. Like, not even close. Not even close to on target. And I, a pet peeve of mine is when, like. people point at one miss from a striker and they're like, Oh, well that like, how does he not make that? Like this stuff is harder than it looks. And, uh, every, the thing is every single striker.

Every single striker that's ever lived messy, man. You could go through all of their film and there's going to be plays like that. You know, like there's going to be missed shots, miss hit shots. So it's not an indictment. on Ferreira as a player or anything like that, but that was a brutal play. It's one everyone wants back. The player wants that back. I sure as hell want that back. Roth robbed. He got robbed. They robbed my boy of what could have been a game-winning assist. Rothrock really...

He juiced. He did his thing. He had, he had the assist on the one goal that they scored and really could have had an assist on that play. Like he's balling right now. So, I mean, that's the other thing. Like I'm not, I'm not going to give him a hard time about the penalty.

at all because he had the assist on the goal that they did score that gave them a chance to advance and like what's he supposed he couldn't have done anything different to uh to give ferreira a chance on that play and he just uh Even if you have that shot saved, man, just get it on target. I don't know. That was a huge play. Should we do a man of the match for this game? I mean, is it anyone other than Rothrock?

Yeah, I don't know. Probably. I think that's it. He's the only one. No, you pick Paul. I'll pick someone else, but you got to go through why. I'm going to surprise the people. He's the only player on the team that played well. I guess maybe Danny Leyva. Yeah. Danny Musavsky. Thank you. Danny Musavsky, Noah approved.

Lobbing Scorchers, man of the match. That's my atonement for all of this land. I'm unironically happy for Moose. It's a good, that is, and we'll jump into positives and negatives here. This was my positive. Moose getting a goal is great for his confidence. It doesn't matter the result. It shows that like, okay, like it takes that pressure off. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. That's a, that is objectively a good thing.

Agreed. And, you know, I already saw people being like, it doesn't count because it was off the set. Shut up. None of them count. All right. Positives and negatives, an agenda check. Yeah. This is my other positive. No more fixture congestion, Ari. Well, until leagues come. Until leagues come. Okay, but like for now, for like six weeks, no more congestion.

We don't have to go and do 7,000 pods a week. Let's go to negative. Sorry. Let's go to negatives. I mean, I don't need, I feel like we basically just covered everything, but I guess to me, like the biggest. Did we talk about Morris going off injured? Well, so yeah, like the areola injury and then Jordan Morris pulls up with the hamstring. You're right. We didn't even talk about that. Teflon Morris. So that means like I think overall negative is that.

De La Vega, Jordan Morris, and Areola are all now injured. Areola looking long-term. Morris and De La Vega looking like they're going to be out for at least a few weeks. So that's really bad. A very big negative. And then I think the most frustrating thing for me, for me, the most frustrating thing about watching this game was just the possession thing. Yeah. Like, I feel like if they could have just...

literally just kept the ball more, they would actually had a chance. They had a chance even with how bad they were in possession. So it's like, man, like why does that happen in these games? Like I, I can't, like, diagnose that. No, it's so frustrating. Agenda check? Uh...

Yeah, it looks like you wrote some down here. Did you have any you wanted to cook on? I do. Yeah, go ahead. Unless you're ready to cook or I can start. Well, I can read it and then maybe. Yeah, let's do that. So it looks like we got the Seattle Sounders depth is chalked agenda. I think. The reasoning behind that is obvious with the injuries that we talked about. And then just also how this game went in general. There's probably going to be that type of sentiment flying around.

I would use the term compromised. Yeah. I like that better. More than chalked. It's not chalked. Like we're going to find out a lot about the depth because guys like, I mean, Rothrock and Georgie you're starting now. Yup. So, uh,

We're going to find out if it's chalked, but when we're talking about guys like Jordan Morris and De La Vega and Areola, it's compromised. It's compromised. I like that. I think I'm right there with you. I don't think we're fully chalked. I think that you're compromised. And that's kind of why the depth matters. Do you know what I'm saying? So yeah. Uh, the next one, do you want me to read this next one? Go for it. Jesus is the savior agenda. I mean,

The stock is down. This is going to be diminished. He's going to take a lot of heat. He's going to take a lot of heat for this one. Because people were already down on his arrival anyway. Yeah. Because... He came from another MLS team and like a miss like that is just going to fuel that. I think, I think that's, I get why it's going to happen. I think.

doing that based off one shot is stupid. And I honestly think I'm just going to tune that discourse out. Like I can't do people talking about how. unambitious Seattle is as a club because their guy they traded for missed one shot. I get that it was a bad miss in a really big spot, but... One play is never why you lose a game. If you really think that we lost this game because Jesus Ferreira missed a shot that was still going to be a little bit of a difficult shot.

You didn't watch the game. You didn't watch the game. Or you're being willfully disingenuous. Yeah, exactly. They lost that game because they played really bad the whole time, not because of that one shot. Yeah. I'm not... Definitely not trying to downplay how brutal of a play that was, but to make it all about one guy or one play is never accurate.

But Jesus is the savior agenda. Definitely. Definitely. He hasn't, he hasn't been, he's going to, I think he's played well leading up to this game, but he's going to be, he's going to be taking a lot of heat. Yeah. This one is more of just me atoning for my own takes and having the Grim Reaper come for me. The winning CONCACAF Champions Cup is the...

The cup we're going to win agenda. I don't know. Something like that. I said we would win CCC. I said that it didn't matter how hard it was. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, that didn't happen. Yeah, I mean, this one's dead. This one is dead in the water. I think your reasoning was sound. It just didn't pan. You know what I would say is... Speaking for myself, I think I got a little overconfident about like, or like not overconfident, but not fully acknowledging.

how much of a beast this tournament is even for the deepest and the best quality of MLS clubs like it's still that the problem is it's still so early in the season you see all of those mistakes like I'm sorry I don't think this team plays like that in another month. I also don't think that people might not like this take. I don't think this Cruz Azul team is that much better than Seattle. No, no. I thought we played...

I thought that both of these games were winnable. The first leg is, I think, roughly what the levels are. Cruz Azul destroyed them in this game, but I really... I don't think there's as much of a gap between these two teams as it looks like. But if they get it done in that first leg, the game plan going into the second leg is drastically different. And I think that they have a way better chance. And I don't think that it's...

out of the realm of possibility that they're advancing to play, you know, America or Chivas. They had those chances in the first leg too, man. New Who off the post, Jordan off the post. Called back goal that was maybe a... Toenail offside, but probably wasn't. You can't blame the series loss on that.

But that does, that call still pisses me off. That should have been a goal. I think this series felt cursed as hell. On that moment, yeah. On that moment and going forward and just like in series. I'm sorry. I love Cruz Azul. That's like the Liga Mequis team that I love. I never want to play them again. These two teams playing each other? Cursed. Never want to play them again. Cruz Azul is cursed agenda. Certified.

We already talked about this last one, but I thought we could hit it again just for posterity. Rothrock should start agenda. He's gonna be starting. Yeah, I mean exactly. That's not even like an agenda at this point That's just literally what's gonna happen. Yeah week in week out and honestly with how he's looked the last couple games I'm I'm happy to have him starting every week. Obviously, I wish Areola was available. But given that he's not, I think...

Rothrock in the form that he's looked like the last couple of games is as good a contingency as I could hope for. Sweet. Well, Ari, we're going to take a break really quick. Thank God. We're going to take a break from all of this doom and this gloom, and you're going to listen to some beautiful ads. So we will be right back. Welcome back. All right. Thanks for listening. Ari, you just hit the line, Ari. You know the line. What line?

If you skipped our ads, we know. If you skipped our ads, we know. I do know that line. Don't skip the ads. Didn't we have that guy crash out on Reddit and he was like, I do skip the ads. And I don't care who knows it. We did have a guy crash. You know, Reddit is the place to crash out from what I hear. And we did have someone already left his first ever Reddit comment. I crashed out on Reddit.

There was a back and forth. I'm making fun of a guy for crashing out on Reddit when I did that as well. All right, Noah. I think that's enough of that. We covered... We covered that CCC game in about as much detail as I care to. It wasn't a good game. Feel free and leave your crash out comments on the video wherever you like. And I'm sure we'll we'll be discoursing about this CCC crash out plenty in the weeks to come. So don't worry about that. Let's just jump around the jump around.

league real quick and then we got our blazing hot coach press conference of the week sponsored by hacks and ferments and then we'll get out of here for episode 87 um code ls at checkout one free hot sauce match day Yeah, what do you say? Match day three winners. I got the Vancouver Whitecaps. They look good. Ryan Gould is injured. Scottish Messi is injured for a few weeks, which is not good for my fantasy team. It's not good for your fantasy team. It's not good for the Vancouver Whitecaps.

But they're off to a notably good. I mean, they're 3-0-0. And they advanced in CCC. So they could be fraudulent, but they're definitely off to a good start. The other 3-0-0 team, the Philly Union, who destroyed the Revs. They don't look fraudulent. They really don't. They don't look fraudulent. They look like the Jim C teams on steroids right now. It's kind of crazy.

Yeah, Bradley Cornell, right? That's who their new coach is? Yeah, which that's sort of the thing with the Philly Union is that they look... Last year, they missed the playoffs. They fired their coach. I think everyone kind of thought that... There was no reason that they would be any different this year. And they look like they still look really, really good. They did. It was against the Rebs who Caleb Porter might get fired, which would be like.

It would be the second funniest firing in the league to me. Number one being Phil Neville. But number two, this would rock too. Doyle had a whole thread. And he wasn't even like doing any advanced stats. He was just dishing the points per game that Porter has put up in the years where he didn't. make the playoffs. He's such a weird coach because he's got two MLS Cups, but then all the years outside of that, his teams are bad. Yes. Anyway, the Rebs look like they might...

wooden spoon and Porter's going to get fired. But the Philly union, they, they look, their turnaround has been impressive. They look awesome. And then I do want to say one more thing about the caps. I know we're going backwards to go forwards, but. Pedro Vitae? Yeah, Pedro Vitae, dude. He's looked... I know that he's been pinned as this like... potential superstar, young guy, you know, not the next like Alphonso Davies, but you know what I mean? Like he's their next big youth come up, right?

Vite? I thought he was a, or is he a U22? He's 23. Oh, okay. I thought he was older than that. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, no, he's a young player. He's been playing. He's really good. Yeah.

But he's been, it's like, it's been kind of his breakout year. It's been like his Pedro de la Vega breakout year. I think last year was sort of like, I don't know if it was full on breakout, but everyone was like, okay, this guy was on the up. Yeah. Yeah. And then this year he, yeah, he looks like he's kind of taking that leap. Yeah.

And one thing that's funny about him as well, if you collect trading cards of MLS, he was a signer on a bunch of cards. His signature is literally just a capital P, period, capital V-I-T-E. One of the worst signatures I've ever seen in my life, but I honestly respect it. I feel like that should make it more valuable. Yeah, exactly. So shout out to Pedro Vitae and the caps. I am happy.

I hope that they beat Monterey and I hope that they advance. And you know what? Fuck it. I think it'd be really funny if they won Champions Cup. The Caps? Yeah. Oh, that'd be hilarious. That'd just be funny, right? Like, that'd just be a good bet. Yeah. I really like... I like this Caps team. I like them. The Caps are definitely a rival, but to me it's not like a hatred rivalry like the Timbers one. I don't like the Caps, but like...

Their success doesn't move me either way. But they also did this shit last year where they were like insanely good at the beginning of the year. So I'll wait it out, but... I'm not offended by the Vancouver Whitecaps, and you know my affection for Scottish Messi. I wanted to shout out the Chicago Fire. So...

They beat FC Dallas 3-1. They anti-Chicago Fire. They actually held the lead, but... No, didn't they come back? I mean, they might. Well, so they scored twice late. Yeah, that's what it was. So it's like... I think what it was is like they didn't have a chance to blow the lead. Correct. Correct. Yes. But they did win a game. Honestly, anytime the Chicago Fire actually hold on.

to win a game. I don't care if they came back or if they, uh, how it happened. Yeah, they scored. They, that's a big story. They were down one nil in the 82nd minute they scored and then they scored another in the 84th and then in the 90 plus one as a penalty. They, they. Anti-fired. They anti-fired. But I think what you said is true, though. If you gave them another 45 minutes, they would have conceded four more goals. Probably.

So is that going to roll? Cause you know, this is their bit. Is that going to roll over to next game? Probably. Okay. Yeah. That seems, yeah, that seems about right. But for this week. They got the plus three. Congratulations to Chicago Fire. Shout out Greg Berhalter. Is that Greg Berhalter's first win? Congratulations, Greg. Congratulations, Greg. The rebuild is operational. Losers.

Uh, Charlotte FC, man, we gave them a bunch of positive press, I think deservedly. Uh, but they really like, they had a chance to beat inter Miami inter Miami went down. They went down to 10 men like in the first half. Yeah, dude. They were down. Charlotte was playing up a man for the 30th. Yeah. So most like the whole second half, the end of the first half and the whole second half, they were up a man.

And they got clean sheeted and lost the game. Yeah, that's not great. Dude, like you got Zaha. Like it's one thing, like it's Inter-Miami. They're the best team in the league. They're one of the best teams this league has ever seen. You got them down them in. Uh, Messi's not, he wasn't, Messi wasn't out there. Nope. Um, like if you draw them, that's still a bad result, but like I can maybe understand it to get shut out by a team that you're up, man.

that long especially with like the uh the zaha sign i don't know it just kind of i thought it was annoying because like anytime miami goes down or anytime miami loses it's like a novel occurrence and they really had a chance they couldn't have been given a better chance to at least take a result and they lost yeah so also can we talk about

Why is Miami have three red cards already this season? What are they up to, dude? They're being nefarious as hell. That is definitely a storyline. It was three straight games to get a red. They won this time, but usually you're not going to win. That's not a winning recipe. Yeah, they drew New York City, won against Houston, and the Houston one was the 90 plus six. And then this one. It's just like, they're not...

Folks, red cards are a tiebreaker in MLS. Like, so I'm just saying, like, I know that they lose the shield. Yeah. If you lose the shield on reds, how funny would that be? I mean, they're sitting in second, but yeah. The Portland Timbees, no. This is three weeks in a row they're in the losers, I think. No, because they won one game. Okay, two in a row. They're in it a lot. They're in it a lot. They lost to Nashville 2-0.

Should have been way worse. Yeah, I was watching that one. I wouldn't mislead you guys. I'm not just saying this because it was the Timbys. I think that was the worst performance I've seen a team put on all season. Out of a game that I watched. It's worth going back and watching the highlights. So take how Seattle played tonight. against Cruz Azul and make that, like, I would say way worse. Yeah. And that's how they played. And it was only 2-0, but, like, it should have been 5 or 6-0.

It's bad. It was bad. It was really bad. Like, in fact, I'll tell you guys, my friend from Portland who I used to live with in college texted me during that game and he said, I'm actively, it was like the criticism guy. He said, I'm actively rooting for the Timbers to lose.

they need to blow this up. Yeah, they do. And then I texted him back and I was like, yeah, no, it's like bad or something. And then I got like four. Damn, he paragraphed you. He was really. Dude, Phil Neff's crash out. That's like the state of mind there. down there right now but so yeah that was really bad they're in losers for the week uh and then i put rsl in here because uh it it bothered me that like uh pablo and company were

saying that there was anything to that Seattle game at all. They really thought. They thought that they had something going that like, oh, we're going to get on track now. And you know, we're Pablo apologists. I have been historically, but he pissed me off that game. Yeah, that was tilting as hell, yeah. So... So fuck you, Pablo. But come on the pod. I got nothing against Pablo except for when he's complaining at the ref for really unbelievably stupid reasons.

Real Salt Lake, though, they lost to San Diego, and it was 1-1 in second half stoppage time, I think. And then they got bammed on twice at the end of the game. So it just confirms what we thought about RSL. which is that the Seattle game did not signify that they were good. Yeah, I got to say, like, the San Diego, the Denmark boys, they both bammed on Real Salt Lake, and that's an interesting little wrinkle, too.

how the Denmark, the Denmark expats are doing here in MLS. Um, all right. That was it for winners and losers. Uh, let's do blazing hot coach presser. Yeah. Let's do it. We got.

A blazing hot coach press conference sponsored by Hacks and Ferments. Please buy their product. It's really, really good. We both were literally just talking about how much we use it. I was putting it on my food today and I was like, God, this product is... actually it's something like i would put my life behind yeah like an actual product i yeah it feels good to be sponsored by a product that i like i you know but maybe the audience does i'm a big hot sauce guy yeah arias and uh i love it

God, I love it. Go buy it. Blazing hot coach presser. I haven't seen Schmetz's after this game. Yeah, it wasn't out when we were recording. It's not out as of this recording, or it might be, but I haven't seen it yet. But I'm going with Steve C, man. Did you see this? I did. It was hard to find. You know it's bad when the official LAFC channel buries it so hard that they only put one minute up. So this is what I didn't understand. The clip that I found was a minute and 10 seconds. Yep.

I wasn't sure if it was just a, sometimes there's like these zoom calls for the road games where like there's no media on it and it's only one question. I've seen that happen with some of the smaller market teams. Yeah, but this is a big market team. LAFC has a big media. contingent they have the best other than our podcast the best podcast yeah like well uh but also like la is a big media market they've got reporters that

cover that team in our bait, like on that beat. So they're not a team that usually has pressers where there's no show media and the coach only gets one question. So I wasn't sure if there was like a whole, you know what it probably was. The Wi-Fi was down at Lumen Field, so it might have been. They didn't do it. Maybe that was it. But regardless. Either way, we got a minute and 12 seconds of it. Should we play it? We'll play the whole minute and 12.

Should we play it? Okay. Here is. Steve C. Yeah, defensively, you know, the unfortunate injury of Marlon. and having to change formations after going through a match plan and a first half of pretty solid defending, not much going on either direction. You know, that kind of threw us. off a bit and then the reaction after that is what I'm obviously disappointed in that the players in the field couldn't find solutions and that our subs who we subbed on were all pretty disappointing.

Not just in performance, but also in effort and mentality. And that's something that cannot happen. Olivier, it's not just about him. It's about collectively the group moving. forward in attacking as a group and getting more numbers around him and around the opponent's box in order to be dangerous. It's never about one player in LAFC. It's always about us as a collective. Okay, so what I thought was...

was interesting about that. It might not have... He wasn't tonally tilted. Tonally, it was not the most blazing hot presser I've ever seen, but the quote that caught my ear now, and tell me what you think of this, when he... called out his subs in no uncertain terms. And I think the words that he used were effort and mentality. I know mentality was one of the words.

Basically what he was getting at was that the subs weren't up for it. And he said that they, yeah, they weren't up for the effort and mentality. He said that cannot happen. So to me, that's like a pretty harsh indictment of his subs. Who were his subs, Ari? One of them was a guy by the name of Denny Bawanga. Wait, the demon who pissed on Seattle Sounders Field? The evil demon spawned from the gates of hell himself.

I just think that there's no reason for him to specifically call out the subs when everyone knows that Bowonga was one of them. If there's not, not like. He's got to be tilted about something else. Yeah, it's got to be deeper. It's got to be deeper than just how Bwonga played in that one. What did you think of that? You know, at first I didn't get it. You sent it to me and you were like, look at this blazing hot press conference. And I was like, dude, he's not.

saying it he's just it's one minute like what I don't I don't get what you're saying and you're like no like think about it bro you're like think about it bro use your brain Danny Bawanga was someone to come off the bench who had a frustrating performance, didn't play well, got so mad that he thermoblasted a soccer ball into a photographer's face. Don't know if you guys saw that. I don't think it was on the broadcast.

And then Christian Rodon went up and confronted him after that. But just like he hasn't been having the best start to the season. And I was like, damn. And like there's been kind of rumblings that. He kind of might want to leave. Yeah, there was rumblings this offseason before that he was maybe on the outs. He ended up coming back. Bring him home. I just think when a coach calls out a star player like that.

that is by design. Like there is no, you don't do that without knowing. Yeah. Like Steve C knows what he's doing. He's not like doing that for no reason. Uh, I think I don't, we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. I think the Denny's Buongas. days at LAFC might be numbered. Do we think it's going to be like a Portland Evander situation? I don't know. I mean, without knowing the specifics of what's going on, what the discontent is...

I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I just thought that was hot. Well, LAFC did advance in the next round of the CONCACAF Champions Cup. Barely though, right? Barely. by one they they well i guess they they scored one bwonga scored in the 90 plus six uh of their match so it was four two on aggregate um I don't know, man. We'll see. We'll see how they do. We called in briefly to happy foot, sad foot before we started recording and they're not happy.

they're not happy like the lafc fans aren't happy they're not happy they just got slammed by seattle and then didn't look good at all in the in their second leg so basically in general uh lafc might be on the rocks the west might be on the rock sorry Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, I know everyone's feeling negative about Seattle right now after that game. We are too. But...

Any fall off or drama or discord or discontent from LAFC, that only benefits Seattle. And it's comedic. Exactly. No, I think we can call it right there. It's 1043. PM Pacific. We put in a lot of content today. We were in the mind. We put in a lot of content today. Watch the whole game streamed afterwards. Did this whole pod. My brain is pretty fried. We're going to get out of here on that.

Like, comment, subscribe. Rate five stars. Rate five stars. Share with Denny Bwonga. Share with Denny Bwonga. Stare with Steve C. Yep. You don't have to share with Brian Schmetzer because he listens. Here he listens. Patronize all our sponsors. Follow the Instagram. Tune in to the live stream on Thursday at 7.30. I think that's it. That's it. Let's get out of here. Until next time. Peace.