You know, you hit a button and you're thinking something's gonna work, and then you're like, well maybe it will and maybe it won't. There you go, Hi, it's a new it's a new week, and it's another go round of sd H A M. John here you there, Thanks for dropping byes you always do. We'll go over the Landy United Loss in Chicago. Abe Gordon's going to join
us in about ten minutes or so. We'll catch up with Abe and we'll hear from Ronnie Daila and Ronald Hernandez in depth the sound from after the mat I've pulled and it's long, but it's worth it. And you know me, I don't like dealing in sound bites, and the fact that we have the space that we have is a good thing where we can all just kind of listen to things in depth and frustrations and all this kind of stuff. And you definitely hear that from
both Ronnie Dieline from Ronald Hernandez. So we'll catch up with that and we'll catch up with your thoughts as we go. Our number two, we're gonna kind of go and this is where this week we're gonna be kind of drifting in and out It's a chaos week to begin with because Atlanta United has Austin on Wednesday, and we're tracking folks down in Austin to see if they can catch up with us before Wednesday night. Then on Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday Friday, it's the GHSA Championships. You can catch that on the NFHS network. And let's see me Maddy Jess, Jason Matteene, the dream atteen, Rod, the voice of the Athens Rock Lobsters, Luke Winstell, who is a friend of the network. He's going to be calling matches. Justin Hanover
is going to be calling matches. What we're gonna be kind of doing for coaches that can't take their noon hour and be a part of in session at noon, I've kind of opened the gates up a little bit, and so in our gap spaces this week, we're gonna try and catch up with some coaches as they get ready for their activity in the Championships. To that effect, Scott Snyder, the head coach at Westminster, is going to join us at ten. Micah Aiken, the coach at Marist,
is going to join us at ten twenty. So that'll get us kind of into the GHSA Championships. No soccer is in session today. That picks back up tomorrow, and it looks like it's going to be Molly McCarty from Jefferson, Frank Zamora from Johnson Gainesville, and Troy Connolly also looking to join us from Cobb County, and that's going to
be coaches one, two, and three tomorrow. Coach McKinnon from Atkinson County's gonna join us on Wednesday, and that's kind of how this will go at least in the in session. No in session today, So we have opened up the gates a little bit in our number two. Westminster and Marrister going to join us and we'll catch up with
them and find out what's going on. But once again, remember whatever's on your mind as we go here on a reaction Monday, and we'll lay out everything stats, all the numbers, all that kind of stuff involving Atlanta and Chicago Fire. But once again, the idea of three matches in eight days, that's what you can look at here. You have a good week, you get you get into
the playoff picture and then you go from there. But you're talking about teams with three different styles in Chicago in a rebuild in Austin, trying to find an offense, and we know what Philly brings to the table. That's on Saturday night, So that's where we are this week. We're going to be kind of slamming in the Atlanta United. Three matches in a week, plus the GHSA Championships, plus our pundits, so it's going to be a week that's going to fly by, and we've got a lot of
stuff to get into. Tomorrow probably is when we will get into what happened with an owner who's not supposed to be an owner storming out onto the field and catching his coach and that almost was opening kickoff, But it's entirely too much to think about, and there's plenty to talk about where that's concerned Nottingham Forest, if you missed it, their owner who isn't an owner, who had to put the team in a blind trust so they would not fall victim to the rules of European Monetary
football engagement. After the match, he stormed the field and he wanted to, I guess talk to the physio for Nottingham Forest and he got headed off by head coach Nuno Spirito Santo and still Evangelinas Marinacas, decided that he wanted to have a conversation and dressed down anybody that he could stand next to in a public forum, even
as his team had qualified for Europe. We'll get into that tomorrow because then we'll have the space to get into it with some of the analysis that was instant from our friends at NBC Sports and the Premier League. So yeah, this week we're drifting in and out of Atlanta United, We're drifting in and out of the GHSA Championships.
And because here's here's the grid, Here's here's here's the grid at the moment, by the way, So in session Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it's our last four Soccers in sessions of the year, presented by Kaiser Permanente. Because the championships go this week, time slots that we have available, hopefully we can bring in high school coaches to catch up with the championships and literally just fly around and sit there and go
in out, in out, in out and out. So that's kind of what we're hoping for this week as we fly around like you wouldn't believe, trying to catch up with everything. Yes, I'm waiting to see, man's properly got to be properly hydrated. He has to be properly hydrated. That's how this works, making sure that well. And I'm gonna go ahead and bring Abe in a little early here, because you know, Abe was once again he's on the
Tom Kaflin scale. Five minutes earlier on time, you're on time, you're late, you're late, doors closed, doors locked, you ain't getting in, so you don't have to hide being hydrated in this segment, right.
No, I I I you know, I woke up not too long ago. I don't. I hadn't had anything to drink, took a dog out, and uh uh yeah, we're just getting going. Man.
It's uh.
You know what's funny is, as you mentioned, I'm like five minutes early, I don't actually like I'm I'm always at the same time now. And I don't remember what time I was supposed to be original. I think it was originally like nine to twenty, and then I started showing up early and that now I'm just here at nine to ten every day.
So here we go. That's perfectly fine. I mean, it's it's it gives me a chance to get through the opening monologue. And get everything squared away for the week and get opening kicked off up and running as we juggle both high school and a three match week for Atlanta United, And uh, you know, obviously and after you I have postgame sound from both Ronald Hernandez and I'm not bleeping it, so I'm running it as is and that because I don't want to do bleeping and editing
and things like that. And then the Ronnie Dila sound obviously that you and Maddy got the chance to listen to after the match with Chicago. But you know, once again, it was one of those where at the end of ninety minutes it wasn't good enough. There were waves, there were moments, but it didn't take over the full ninety
and you end up getting the own goal. However, look right now, get a goal on the board, feel better, and then you can push and pursue and then coming back on defense and backtracking, and then Chicago has an opportunity and it ends up open in between the six and the penalty spot for a slam dunky. You lose two to one. Now that you've had a day and a half to think about it, what else is stuck in your head?
Yeah, What really stood out to me, I think, is the message that Ronnie Dila wanted to deliver and then ultimately couldn't because of the eighty six minute go ahead goal for for Chicago. Look, you fall behind here fifteen minutes into this game, a tough penalty kick, but had to be called. There's no way around that. And and you fight and you scratch and you claw, and ultimately you're not very dangerous, but but you stay in the game and then in a moment, you put the ball
in a dangerous position. And look, I don't want to I don't want to hear about the own goal nonsense, Like it's not like guys are turning around and firing it at their own keeper. Like you're putting the ball into dangerous positions. I don't really care if it goes off of your guy's shoulder, off of a head, off of a hip, or off of one of their guys. Those it finds him back of the day. So put the ball in good things could happen. And it felt like for well, I guess for five minutes, because that's
all it was. It felt like for five minutes, maybe things had flipped a little bit where you could say this is a team that doesn't give up, This is a team that continues to fight, This is a team that finds a way all that stuff. And ultimately, because you did not outplay Chicago in this one, ultimately you maybe could have said that this was a result that we maybe didn't even necessarily deserve and can use that
as a chance to step forward. But that was a five minute stretch in which you thought that way, and then it all went away. And it took a while for Ronnie Dila to enter the postgame press conference room. I would imagine there were some words being said in the locker room, and then when he got there, he called his team soft three times. Go back and listen to it. He called the team soft three times, and
that's pretty much all you need to know. I think he had a message he wanted to deliver when they equalize, and and ultimately couldn't deliver that message to the media or really just to Jason h who was the media on Saturday night. And it's frustrating, and there's a lot of things that go into it. Late Loth was largely invisible in this game. We keep asking whatever we want to ask of Milgal Almaron He's nowhere close to goodenough
right now. He's just not dangerous. Saba didn't start, and obviously he comes on late and does what he can. I thought they were better all the way from the back line up until the attacking third. But again, your your XG, which I know I'm not the biggest fan of it, but I use it in this instance to point it out. You're just not dangerous, like at all. Chicago had a two point seven I want to say x G and you you go back and look at
that game and look at the saves. Right, obviously a ball cup through a wall which is just sloppy, but Gooz has to make a massive, massive save there. There there were other moments Gooz almost got beat at the near posts. He had to go down low and and poke it away for a corner kick, almost a goal there. The Chicago looked dangerous right now. Ultimately was only the two goals, but they looked dangerous at times where you
kept him out of net. Atlanta didn't look dangerous. And that's what's the most frustrating thing for me is I just don't know how to make the argument for goals are gonna come because there's just nothing there. There there's no knocking on the door. I guess you can send it in like Moranchuck did and hope for the best. And obviously it worked out. But Latte Lot is not getting serviced there. There's still obviously a massive disconnect there.
And and quite frankly, Miggy is completely lost. I don't know if it's stress or the pressure returning to this club and trying to be that guy. He is nowhere near the player that Lady United paid for or expected.
The numbers that you were alluding to, the XG was double two six, two to one, three one four big chances for Chicago, none for it Landy United, eighteen total shots for Chicago, thirteen for it Land United. You mentioned Brad Brad had six saves on the day to your point about pressure, nine corners for Chicago only one for it Landy United.
Now one corner was like in the eighty eighth minute or something like. It was super late.
Too, And you know, you you look at a couple of other things. You know, Atlanta United had more free kicks, had a couple more tackles, They had one more yellow
card on the day. So you all of these things coming together in a lineup that was a back five, and it starts out as Ronald Luis, Derek, Matt Edwards, Brooks Lennon and if you want to go five to four to one just for the sake of you know, pictures and drawings, but an't you j Fortune Matteas click Miguel almeroon and then Latte Lot up top when Brad by far has your largest grade from sofa score to seven point nine because of the six saves that he had on the day. Derek had a seven to Midanchuk
and Latte Lot had sevens everybody else had sixes. I mean it's, you know, pretty one sided, and I don't know how else to say it. In this particular case, it was one sided and you had a chance, and then you end up giving up the goal five minutes five six minutes after you get the equalizer. Where I think conventional wisdom is that you get that equalizer, okay,
go ahead and chase after the second one. You got the first one, good, You've got to draw, and now go chase after more points on the road, and it turns into a transition opportunity where you don't get back and Ronnie Ronnie Dila the head coach alludes to that in the postgame press conference. I didn't allude to it. He just pretty much laid it out there. You got to get back in these situations, and you don't for whatever reason. Right now, this is where it Landy United is.
Yeah, I mean maybe that's their mindset, like the way this season is gone. In no world am I like, all right, let's go find a second, like you got so incredibly lucky to find a first, Like I was sitting there like ride this out, like take your point. You certainly didn't deserve it. If we're gonna be honest and and and see if you can regroup and and
do better on Wednesday with a short week. So yeah, that was wouldn't have been my mindset here, John, because I thought at that point, the way you had been outplayed, the way they had held the lead for as long as they did and as many times as they knocked on the door to find a second, I thought you were lucky to be in a tie situation there for five minutes. So again, the team and the manager, they
obviously can't concede that. You know, we're we're just gonna hold down one point, especially not the way the season has gone right, you're a little desperate, and maybe that leads into that decision or that feeling. But I would have been happy with the one, and ultimately that didn't happen, and now we're stuck where we continue the same discussion points of did the formation work? Why are you out played for so long? Who's your best starting eleven? You know, why?
Why can't this happen? Why can't that happen? Whose fault is it? What are the things that And they just keep saying the same thing. We need to come together, we need to fight for each other, we need to see love for the game, all that stuff. But ultimately, at the end of the day, like individuals are just not dangerous and that's a problem for me well.
But at the same time, though, I would much rather hear a unity of message instead of sitting there and having you know, players flying off the handle and not being locked into you know, what you're supposed to be doing in this situation. You know, you don't want negative freelancing.
I'd like to see it. I'd like to see a showcase on the field at some point though, as a supposed to just delivery through the media. And I agree with you right. You you want, you know, the one unified front, right, you want to be chasing it from the same direction. But look, maybe the thing that this team needs is a big old shouting match in the locker room. Maybe this is a situation where they got to figure some stuff out, and it's not gonna be a fun way to do it, because I mean, what
are they second from the bottom right now? And it's I mean, you're down there with Montreal, like that's one of your only wins this season. So I don't really have an answer, Like I wish we could take a look at tactics and try and break it down. And I know Maddie was talking about tactics on the countdown beforehand, and I was like, look, I get it, like the tactics or something. You got to figure out the formation.
You got to figure out at the end of the day, though, like someone's got to step up and make a play. Someone's got to be an individual and make a difference out there. And I remember early on in the season, it may have been in the first game, it may have been in a second or third game. Like I saw Meggie and he put a tricky dribble on someone and and made, you know, created some space and you're like, all right, that looks like the guy we want to see. I haven't seen that from him in two months or
however long. It's been eight games, seven games. And again he's not alone. Right. We tried moving Saba on the right, try and make him more dangerous. It It worked for two games and then that completely fell off to the point where he wasn't even in the starting eleven this past week. And then again a lot of is a little bit different. He had one. They need to find a way to get him the ball higher up the field.
He's having to drop so far back, he's got fifty yards to go just to get into a dangerous position, and he's kind of just based on the amount of service or quality he's going to get from the other So he's in a slightly different position. But you're not gonna teamwork your way into a goal. You're not gonna tick you tack of fifteen to one touch passes with a tap in at the back post like that. That's
not happening. So someone's got to find some individual efforts to create some space to create a shot and make a difference. And we haven't seen that for weeks.
Now well, and now you are in and out of necessity since you have three matches in a week. And it was a point that I made before you came on where you're having you're dealing with three separate clubs with three separate approaches that with Atlanta United you this may end up being auditions to a certain degree because of out of necessity. I don't think you're gonna play a lot of folks two hundred and seventy minutes in eight days. So you're going to see in theory some
different folks in different places, in different positions. Some folks may be, you know, starting two of three, coming in off the bench for a third. You might see some interesting uh starting elevens starting in the midweeknd in Austin and then turning around against a very very physical Philadelphia squad that comes in on the weekend. So this may end up being something akin to Ronnie Dila and the staff having you know, for lack of a better phrase,
open auditions. It's like, okay, we have this week. We saw what happened with Chicago. Next step is Austin. We got to figure out who can give me X number of minutes where can I put them or wait until I need those minutes in Philly. I think this might be this will be a very interesting week to see how things progress heading toward Philadelphia.
Yeah, and look, you saw moye on Buckam off the bench, right, and I know he had been recovering from the injury and working his fitness back, So that was the thought. And same thought with Saba was maybe he was off the bench because you plan on starting him in one of these next two and you're trying to arrest him and like you said, you're not gonna go all three,
and that's all fine. You got some guys though, on that roster that are different guys than what you've been putting out there, and I think it's time you see some of them Togashi and Brennan and Riley and Cobb and some of these other youngsters. We've seen the veterans who have been mainstays here. It's not working. I'm not saying you go full sale changes here or or that it's permanent, but I think we need to see some of these younger guys and some of these matches coming up,
you got to try something different. And again, I don't care who's getting paid what. I don't care what designation anyone has. Someone's got to produce. And if the guys that are are labeled as such aren't producing, then I'll try guys that that you maybe don't count on the produce. I thought Jay Fortune has been great. I thought Matt Edwards has been great. These are guys that are stepping up. I thought Noah Cobb was good in the match. He did play a week and a half ago, whatever it was,
So you got to try something different. You've modified the formation a little bit now and back to back weeks. One week it gave you thirty minutes of improved play. It didn't do anything for you. The five in the back didn't do anything for you on on Saturday. And a lot of that maybe is determined by the handball and and kind of a free goal if you want
to call it that. But you got you gotta start looking maybe a little bit more drastically, uh if need be, because it's it's getting We're not halfway yet through this season, but we're not that far from halfway, and and you barely are touching double digit points.
Hey Gordon ninety two nine of the game, visiting as he always does here to start things off. So are you of the mindset with these three matches? You saw what you saw against Chicago, You're going on the road to Austin. Do you do you try and front load things with ideas or do you want to try and bring in those new names you're thinking of against Austin and see what happens against Philly or do you want to experience against Philly? How are you in your mind?
How are you seeing how you would lay things up?
Yeah, I don't think you could do anything with Philly right now. You got to find a way to get three points, and all attention has to be paid on Austin. And I'm not I'm not saying anything about we're gonna plan for this and then we're gonna plan for that.
There is no secondary looking ahead to to I know, it's like the oldest you know, like coach speak, like you know, one game at a time, all that stuff, But like as far back as you are in the standings, like you have to maximize everything you can to get three points on the road and then you can worry about the home games coming up against Philly and beyond after that, I would I would see what works at Austin.
Hopefully you can find some level of success and then try and recreate that at home against a tougher Philly team. But I don't know if you can plan right now for for what's coming on the weekend. When you have the midweek match and you're in the form that you're in. Some teams have that luxury, right you can kind of look and say, if we can just play to a drawl on the road midweek and then we can focus.
Atlanta's not in that position where they can kind of half hand a game over and and focus on one or the other. So they've got to go full on for three points Wednesday, and well, I'm interested to see how dramatic a change that could be.
Yep, and I think it's you and me partner. It is, Yes, you and me partner at Colony Square. So we're gonna be sitting there watching everything at Q two. So hit the promo for some guy named Nelson joining you inside Colony Square.
Yeah, yeah, you and me, we're gonna do a fun little pregame. Hopefully it's fun because the way the way the season's gone, the post games have not been fun, so so we'll know we'll break it down, and it was very interesting with Maddie to see some of the changes the form and trying something new, and so I'm interested to see what they try in this one because there the more this level of performance goes on, the
more drastic I think the changes have to be. And I know they kind of say you can't change everything all at once, but you are starting to move that way if you continually fall short. So it'd be interesting to see what the formation looks like, who they have and then, as you mentioned with the match compression, who's gonna play? Because some interesting decisions there for Ronnie Dayla. But pregame should start at what is it? Six thirty?
No?
Seven thirty seven thirty right seven? Pregame at seven thirty with kickoff there at Austin around eight thirty, So looking forward.
To that as always, my friend, great to see. Thanks for the recaps, and go go cleanse and tune everything out for a couple of minutes before everything starts back up again. As always, great to see my friend to start things off every week.
We'll do and we'll see you again on Wednesday.
All right? Abe Gordon ninety two nine and the Game and the Oudyssey app Yeah, so it's me. I guess I should have hit the breaking news soundar. It's me and Abe, Me and A A colony square on Wednesday night. So here's and here's the here's the rundown. So with the the match in with all the morning show stuff, morning show doesn't change. So then you have me and ab a colony square for a Central time kick in Austin. And apparently, and I got to check this again real quick,
so hang on weather dot com. Uh no, that is not what I spelled. So of course everybody's sitting there going, yeah, why don't you Uh all right, so temperatures in Austin, Texas, they are not going to be small like I said, it's uh, you've got all kinds of things going on, uh meteorologically. So the team is flying out, I don't I don't know if they're flying out tomorrow. I'll double check, but uh, you know, for the for a Wednesday match. So the uh, the high Wednesday, the high Wednesday in
Austin is slated for one hundred and six. I'm not kidding. And just to show you that I'm not kidding, I'm gonna do the thing with the screen share, just to just to let you know, just to see. No, I don't want that one. It's not that one, it's the other one. So here we go. So here's here is
the uh, here's your forecast right there. You see you see Wednesday, Wednesday, one hundred and six, one hundred and six partly cloudy though, and you'll we will have weinds out of the south southwest to twelve but one hundred and six degrees get rid of that pop up there. So one hundred and six on Wednesday in Austin, So you got that to keep an eye on as well.
One hundred and six blanken degrees on Wednesday. And that was why I was asking about how different the lineup is going to be, just in general, in general because of you playing three matches in eight days Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So it's three and eight. What does it look like?
What does it look like in Austin? And you're going to have to probably manage minutes, manage players, use your subs wisely, all things being equal, hoping that everyone stays as healthy as possible. You're gonna have your hydration breaks after thirty and at uh, what eighty seventy eight seventy five five minutes somewhere in there, seventy seventy five. So
you got that to look out for as well. So you anticipate hydration breaks, You're going to have to have the your your substitutions ready to go manage all of those kinds of things. And you're going up against an Austin club that until Open Cup because once again it was El Paso locomotive. It's a you know, it is a team that is offensively challenged. Then there's no other
way to put it. I mean, they actually did score in MLS play for the first time in three weeks in the two to one loss to Cincinnati, and you look at how it was for Cincinnati and for Austin. Austin plays in the three five two five three two, and yes, we are efforting OPO research on this. So with Brandon Vasquez Emirto Uzuni in being the two up top, you're thinking that it's probably going to end up being
a back five. That would be my guess, unless you know you have you know, us Open Cup hero Brandon Vasquez playing by himself, a Zuni drops back and it's a five four one or or something like that from a Nico Estevez. But if it's two, then you're probably gonna have three center backs, so you're probably with a back five or something akin to a back five. If Ronnie goes Ronnie Dialley goes with the four two three to one, then you end up with one of those.
Maybe you're six, being that de facto third center back. And like I said, this is me taking one of the first things I learned from Jason and applying it to a starting lineup. Always have one more in defense than they do an attack. So if Austin is gonna go with two with two up top Vasquez in a Zuni, then you're thinking three in defense. So who are those
three in defense? And then you have to once again go from a team in Chicago that is on a rebuild to a team in Austin that can't score, to a team in Philly that doesn't want the ball and is going to try and out physically you out of the building. So navigating these three things also is a part of it too, so that that's kind of the early OPO research that you have here their starting lineup. Once again, it was you might have matching five, three,
to two, three, five twos. They had five at the back Kolemanich, biro Heinzeich, Spatalk and John Gallaher midfield Savovich, Ilier and owen Wolf. And then to up top Vasquez and Uzuni with your bench Fudrig, Dubersarski, Jeter Obrion, Osman Buccari and Diego Rubio, Julio Casconte, Irvn Torres, Riley Thomas, and Stephan Cleveland. The backup keeper Brad Steuver obviously is going to be the man between the sticks. He is the one who had the highest rating for Austin in
their matchup against Cincinnati. Five saves, goals prevented a point eighty four to two runouts, two high claims, four saves twenty four fifty three passing seven of twenty five on his long ball's two clearances, and that's it in a two to one loss. So that's what you're looking at with. Like I said, that's just like the basic basics of Austin. As we get into Austin on Wednesday, and then we'll turn the page and see if we can catch up with our buddy Dave Leno on either Thursday or Friday,
to get you ready for Philly. But we got to get we got to get through, we got to get to Austin. First, I'm gonna play the sound from Ronald Hernandez. I'm gonna play the I'm gonna play the sound for Ronald Hernandez. It's most of his press conference opportunity. And no I did not bleep it out because he had uh he had two references that expressed the general displeasure. And I'm just double checking to make sure that the sound is what the sound is? Where is where is that? Okay?
So here is once I once I actually load it because you know, you kind of need to load the sound so people can hear it. But that's just me. But yeah, Ronald Hernandez and Ronnie dialup before we get into getting ready for Austin. Over the next two days, like I said, I will probably play both of these two very very long segments. They total up to about eight and a half minutes, but like I said, it's
worth it. I'm gonna start with Ronald Hernandez, and like I said, there are two moments in here that could have been bleeped. I didn't. So we're we're going to earn our explicit rating today. So here's Ronald Hernandez after the match. And then after Ronald, we'll get into the numbers and get into players and get into player ratings
and things like that. And if we have time before Scott Snyder and Micah Aiken join us in our number two to talk to Westminster and Marist getting into the GHSA finals, we'll play it there or we'll play it after and we get back into the Atlanta United discussion in the final twenty five minutes of the show. So here's Ronald Hernandez after the match, most of his press opportunity that he had with Jason at Soldier Field in Chicago.
And so here's Ronald Hernandez after the match, the two to one loss for a Landy United against Chicago Fire Guys.
Roald Hernandez here again, we'll start with questions in the room.
Jason go Ahead.
Made some information changes today playing in about five.
What worked in your mind and what didn't work?
Obviously it is our freeze change of formation. This decision. We knew it that isn't going to be perfect, but mainly we need to to be secure. We gotta five for the second balls, and then we need to we gotta have to build our foundation with the backfires. Uh. To be honest, we did that, but but unfortunately we got the penalty. Uh, and then that changed a little bit. But we we have the Rayman said to look to to go after the game. You know, I think that that that's why we play backfire.
The mentality and then together.
I felt like there were moments where very connected and Chicago fowls about people are in their face, and then there were moments where disconnected.
Was inconsistent in your mind?
Is down to just the pressure of the situation of not finding results.
Uh, I'm not sure about that. But we need to be honest with ourselves and then that's the true. We have been inconsistency this season and that little little details, Yeah, it changed our difference. You know, it changed the the sorry it changed it changed the the rhythm of the game. But we've gotta be a strong We need to bounce back, and then we have to talked about it.
Uh.
We gotta.
Two to put together more consistency through the full ninety minutes.
There's moments where it feels like Alexi and Miguel get into.
The same spots and try moving them around a few times. You know, how hard is it at times for you and your role to find them a dangerous moment?
Uh?
Uh that that is hard. Depend on the opponents always be me g and Alexis. We need to figure it out and find different positions to help the team for a moment. Derek play very good balls for for both of them, which was the play what we want.
Uh.
But you know, like we go back again on consistency. We need we've gotta be like to be honest with each other and move forward. We need to be reviewed the film and and to be honest. We only can push and we can only improve this this situation.
And we've talked about it before. You believe the bad.
You defend the city, defend the Colors strongly as anybody. How hard is it right now to be seeing the team play and the way they are.
It's tough, man, especially if you are outside. You want to have the team. I have been here for a while now, and then you feel shited to be outside and and and you want to have the team. Today it was my thur And you know, I know the people working in the club for so for so much time that I appreciate things like little around the club and stuff that I fell in love. But we need to give more. It's not enough, Our performance is not enough, and we know that.
There you go, Ronald Hernandez after the match with Jason, and I thought it was important to play that whole element if you can find it, find the whole thing. But that's a handful of minutes, and I thought it was important to play that because of what Ronald was discussing, so that it's in the locker room and it's there, the feelings are there, and it's stuff that we get into and we've had the discussions about competitive stress and all those kinds of things. But I thought it was
important to play that whole segment. That's about eighty percent of Ronald's press conference that he had with the Q and A at Soldier Field. But I thought it was important just to hear the frustration from players like Ronald who absolutely live and die by this badge, and to have someone like Ronald who will basically he'll give you one hundred percent every single day on the practice field.
He will play wherever you want him to play. And what I would also recommend is go back and see there was the long form feature that we did at SDH with Ronald, and I would go back and listen slash watch that to give you an idea where Ronald's coming from. This is straight up Ronald Hernandez and Ronald Hernandez once again will live and die by that badge
every single day and twice on game day. And so when he was asked to be the player to step up and speak from the player perspective postmatch, to hear that from Ronald is not a surprise at all. Class act on and off the field, lays it all out there for you at one hundred percent and represents the crest the right way. He's gonna tell you what he thinks. He is not afraid to hide what he has to say, and to be able to have him there, I thought it was I thought it was important to play the
whole thing. So, like I said, that's just part of it. We'll go through the numbers, and like I said, Scott Snyder from the Westminster School joining us at ten, Micah Aiken joining in after that, an abbey, there is a there is a thought put in the young'uns, and you are going to have to at some point because of multiple competition, schedule, compression, what have you? How different are you going to look? How different are you going to look on Wednesday? How different are you going to look
on Saturday? Those are the questions for me. Then Abe and I get to experience it together on when day in Austin watching from here. But I think there is
a I think that there is opportunity once again. I think that depending on the health of Pedromador and probably the idea of a quick turn, you probably are not unless there is a recovery pattern and we don't know the bell curve on it, It's probably going to be some combination of Ronald or Matt and then your back line, some combination of Louis, Derek, Noah and Ephra and perhaps Brooks Lennon on the right. Then your midfield once again
click Sleash, Jay and Tristan. Once again, we don't know where Tristan is in his recovery coming back from the muscle injury. It wouldn't surprise me once again if he did not start but came in and gave you thirty. That would be my that would be my thought on the midfield, just looking at it from the numbers and returning from injury, and then once again you have your
decisions up top. We've talked about Togashi, We've talked about Luke Brennan, We've talked about you know, you have, You've got obviously Miggy and Mirunchuk and Saba and all of that. But there will be times in the schedule and this is probably one of those weeks where it will look different, but how different and when that's the thing. So that's that's kind of what you're staring at here. Let's get into the numbers and lay it all out for you
for this past weekend with Landy United. We talked about some of the we talked about some of the numbers, but we do have some breaking news that we do have to get into from about eighteen minutes ago. But let me go through the numbers and we'll probably end our number one with the breaking news and its overseas and it's one of the worst kept secrets known to Mankak, but it is finally officially official. So we mentioned some of the numbers, numbers, Let's get into the lineup once again.
We'll go through the lineup numbers that are there. So Brad punched a seven point nine. We talked about we talked about what Brad has been able to do. Six saves, goals prevented one point three one run out, three saves, fifteen passes out of the box, eight for twenty on long balls clearance, won a ground duell and he was fouled ones back line Ronald Luis, Derek Williams had a
seven point two Matt Edwards and Brooks Lennon. So Derek Williams on the day since he was the highest rated defender, played the full nine XG plus x A for the x everything ap point three to eight fourteen clearances for Derek Williams in the afternoon one block, sorry, one pick, two tackles, five of seven on his duels, fouled once, fifty five of sixty nine passing at eighty percent, seven of eighteen on long balls, one shot off target, had one shot blocked and one shot hit the woodwork, but
four but you had the fourteen clearances on the day for Derek Williams. Midfield Midonchuk was your highest rated midfielder to seven point zero, Jay Fortune, Matais Klick, Miggy All in the sixty six to six eight range and Malay and Midanchuk had that seven with a yellow card twenty seven to thirty five passing against seventy seven percent. Three key passes on the day, one one crossed, two long balls,
two shots on target, one off. Only won one duel on the day, one fouled, two clearances, two blocks, one total tackle, and then you had the penalty and the penalty. They're really in the whole lot there that you couldn't do about it because of once again you're trying to chest it down and clear it and direct it, and then as your right arm is chicken winging and then you're coming across that. To me, obviously that's contact, that's
a handball, and it's unfortunate. But nevertheless, and then Latte a lot of seven up top, played the full ninety, did not have a shot on target, had one shot off target. And I know that you want more to get to yours, to get to your high signing striker, so he can have more than just the one shot off target on the day. One dribble attempt successful, ten of seventeen passing, three key passes, seven to fourteen on his duels, three of five on the ground, four of
nine in the air, fouled twice and that's it. J Fortune once again lined up on the left as a left winger, but then he would drift back defensively to be a part of things. And I think that when you see when you see Jay listed as a left winger per se, once again, that's probably whistle blows. Jay's there in the offensive attack, but then he drifts back to be a part of the midfield defensive corps. So just because you may see j in a four four two or a four to three three where he's left wing,
then that's not necessarily going to be the case. So what in the wide role of sports is what in the wide role the sports was at I was getting something in my ear and I didn't know where it was from, all right, So let me go, let me go back in because I think I lingered too long on a particular on a particular who'sy, what's it's in particular pop up window, that's what I was looking for, so and all right, so once again before it, let me let me get Jay's numbers here, let me go
back through the front line. And I'm sorry that the damn pop up window forced me to reset everything here. So, like I said, once again, Scott Snyder from Westminster in ten minutes, and then we got breaking news Scott Snyder in ten minutes from Westminster, Micah aken behind him at DEBT ten twenty and then like I said, last twenty or twenty five minutes, that's probably when we'll hear from Ronnie Diler. So all right, So the numbers four the rest of the midfield and the rest of the attack
in the lineup. So we mentioned Jay Fortune, and I think it was probably because I hovered over something. Jay on the day seventy three minutes twenty nine of thirty passing ninety seven percent, four of seven on his ground duels, fouled twice, two picks, two tackles, and one drouble passed.
Matteas Klick, who I think is rounding into form, getting close to one hundred percent healthy, played seventy three minutes twenty seven to thirty six, passing one key pass, one long ball, two for two on his ground duels, one clearance, two picks, two total tackles, and then Miggie on the day played the full ninety twenty four to thirty two, passing seventy five percent, one long ball, two shots off target, two shots blocked, two of four on the dribble, five
of nine on ground duels missed, the one in the air, two fouls, one off side, and three total tackles on the day for Miguel Almo. So I think it is one. I think it's one chance in the last two matches that Miggy has been credited with creating. So that's that's your numbers when it comes to Atlanta United and Chicago Fire. Okay, let me get into the breaking news because it broke, and like I said, it broke bottom of the hour, so right as we're getting into all of this discussion,
of course, that's when this stuff breaks. I'm not really surprised by it all. So we're is man, that was loud. Oh, I didn't realize how loud.
That was.
Shocking no one. The Brazilian Football Confederation confirmed Carlo Ancelotti as their new head coach. Ancelottio will join from May twenty six, so two weeks from today, following the end of the law Leaga season and ahead of Brazil's FIFA
World Cup qualifying campaign in June. Quote, the CBF extends at sincere gratitude to Real Madrid and mister Perez for the cordiality and sportsmanship shown and facilitating the coaches released during his contract term, allowing this new chapter to begin with mutual respect and cooperation between the teams end quote period. Diego Fernandez facilitated, according to Ben Jacobs, and led negotiations with Ancelotti in Real Madrid on behalf of the CBF.
Shabi Alonzo will replace Ancelotti on a three year deal and in time for the Club World Cup. So that's your news from all of the thing that are going down over there. So that's uh, that's that's what it's at. So Carlo Ancelotti, shocking no one, is the the new head coach for the Brazil national team. So that's uh, that's where that's where we are. Yeah once again. Yeah,
uh sorry, I'm going back and forth with guests. All right, so uh all right now, uh we've got a couple of minutes, so let me go through and say hi to everybody. And I know that you guys are well into the well into the discussions, which I always enjoy.
Morning Derek, Morning, Michael, is good to see you and Shelley yesterday as we were all getting our exercise, actually I think, uh Michael and the Boss were getting exercised by their pitbull literally Uh, like I said, Michael's about a five iron away from me here at the office HD and he and the boss they were out in the neighborhood as I was wrapping up my four miles yesterday, and uh, it was it was good to see them.
And you could tell that the that their pit bull was just kind of leading them along and Michael's just kind of hanging on for dear life at points. But no, it was good to see the two of them yesterday. So Pars, good to see you, Alex, good to see you. Good morning Abby, And oh, Vast Maverick, whoever Vast Maverick is, it's the end of your days. So let's see here. See God, this is the thing that gets to me. It's like I'm trying to slide up. Where is it?
Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? It's like I'm trying to just do the right thing and slide up here, but I can't do it, and it's annoying that I can't. And so I can do this with the It's interesting that I can do it with the arrow up and down. Vast Maverick, blah blah blah. All right, so we'll take care of a bot to end. Ah counted the suspended or the act of b it, so we didn't have to I didn't have to do anything. Thank you for everybody who jumped the gun on them.
So let's see. So morning Pars, Morning Abbey, Morning Michael, Morning Emilio. Uh, let's see morning Michael, Morning Emilio. And once again, as always, it's great to great to have everybody here that's lined up and attached to everything that you guys are not afraid to that you guys always have the discussions. Morning Katie. It's good to have a Katie Weaver in here this morning as well. So now good to have all of you in here. Good to
have all the discussions and everything. Katie says, Atlantic can't hurt me because Spurs are going to Bilbao. But yes, so Katie, are you going to Bilbao for the Europa League? You're going for the Europa League Final? Are you? Are?
You?
Are?
You got some miles maybe in some points that you can take care of. But but no, thanks to all of you folks. But yeah, Carlo Ancelotti is the new manager of the Brazilian national team. Color me shocked. Yeah, and Ricky, welcome home, Shabby yep, three year deal, so those pieces going into place. I don't know how many of you saw El Classico yesterday, but it was it was. It was drunk. There's no other way to put it.
It was absolutely crazy. And I had There's one of my bosses at one of my other gigs, he's like, should I watch El Classico? And it's a text chain with me and another one that I work with that's an arsenal guy, but he understands world sport and he'll watch things over he'll watch overseas, not just in the Premier League, and we're like, yeah, you should, just because And it was, I mean, it was the day drinking.
It was out of it was out of control. And at the half, if you had an over under of five and a half, in the first half alone, it was a plus sixteen twenty five. So you put down one hundred, you put down a hundie, you come out of that, you play the over it's at five and a half yesterday in the first half alone, first forty
five minutes. Then you ended up at a plus sixteen twenty five or sixteen seventy five one, and it was north of plus sixteen hundred, so north of plus sixteen hundred if you had over under five and a half yesterday for El Classico and you got both sides of Killian and Bape yesterday, but you got to see the Classico and Montjuiq was an incredible atmosphere, and I would recommend if you have the four letter to go back and watch it, like literally, if you have nothing going on,
you just want to kind of decompress and decompressed into the crazy for a little bit and have some fun. Ian Dark Steve McManaman calling that match at Montjuique and that crowd was nuts. The game was stupid. The crowd was nuts, and it was out of control. I mean you could uh Rafena could have had four and Bappe could have had four if it wasn't either off sides or flopping. But no, if you if you have the chance to go back and watch L Classico, go back and watch it. If you have the chance to watch
it in the future, watch it. But right now it looks like h it looks like since I think Barsonese, I think one win. There's seven points up with three to go, and then they should they should end up with the trophy, and then that's why and that's probably another reason why Real Madrid was counting Fiorentina president. Yeah, yeah, Carlo, go for it. Yeah, go for it. I mean it's gonna take a lot more, but yeah, go ahead and
see it's all good. But uh yeah, that was absolutely crazy yesterday, some amazing goals and if you haven't seen the Montiel goal that was from South America yesterday, it's probably going to win the Puscus Award a twenty three yard bicycle kick. It's out there, so all you have to do, like literally is go Puscus Montiel, m O
N t I E L Pusqus Montiel. Watch it, and then you're just gonna sit there and you're gonna be watching the whole thing, and you're probably gonna end up watching it like fifteen times before you realize that the loop is over. But no, Puscus Award probably is gonna go to Montiel for an absolutely insane bicycle kick. But yesterday El Classico for ninety minutes was just as insane, and it was more insane, but it's more like ninety
seven minutes because you had stuff happening. After ninety minutes, you had stuff happening when you thought the match was over. You thought that you had handballs that weren't called you had stuff that was called stuff that wasn't You're like, wait a minute, what's going on here? And it would have made for an entire segment with Bart. Bart unfortunately
is not with us today. He had to attend to some family of some family stuff, and all of our love is headed his direction, obviously, But but yeah, El Classico watch it yesterday should have been the PSA watch it and we'll find out how many folks actually did watch it. But yes, outside of that, the Puscus Award nominee Montiel in South America definitely worth that as well. All Right, it is our number two and it is time to kind of go Soccer's in session and talk
about the GHSA Championship. So we're kind of going, we are whiplashing from Atlanta United to Montiel and the Pusca's goal and El Classico to high school soccer because championships or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And our first coach that we're bringing in since in session is not here today, Scott Snyder out of Westminster. We get to find out what's going on with him. How is class.
No we're actually we have a it's called may Atl. It's a like a little ending sort of a one course thing, so that we're just doing planning right now.
So how is planning?
Yeah, this is better.
When you have a week like this where you're trying to prepare for chasing after a state championship. How hectic is it when you have folks like me knocking on your door going, coach, can I borrow you for an interview?
You know these? How hectic is this week? And how do you manage it to make sure that you and the coaching staff are the ones that get most of the heat, and that the players can focus and try to stay away from social media even though they probably blue won't and their classmates and that kind of stuff. How do you manage the navigate the pressure?
The big thing that I've gotten to do recently. It's a luxury, but I use my staff. I mean that's that's a big.
Part of it. Instead of I used to take on everything and you know.
All down to the final details of like where we're gonna get gas for the bus, and now I've kind of passed that stuff off and it makes it makes it doable.
And there's definitely. You just you don't sleep very much.
No, I mean seriously, you don't. I mean not, you know, because you how much? How far back do you go when you're trying to research an opponent for a situation like this, Uh that.
In today's world, you can go back pretty far if you want to, So you try to. I have coaching guilt, I'll put it that way, like if I don't do certain things and we were not to do well, I would feel it was my fault. So I definitely that pushes me to stay up another hour to watch a little bit.
More fil what have you sixteen and six Westminster going up against fourteen and oh Meyrist coming up Thursday at seven point thirty. And when you have a matchup like this and full disclosure John A John akins Son, Micah is going to be with us to discuss He's up after you. You're you're bat and lead off and Mike's
baton second. Yes, when you have all of these coaches and all this responsibility that's there, when did it take you to get into this rhythm of deferring instead of taking everything on yourself.
I wish it had been a lot to be honest with the I've finally in the recent years, I've gotten a really great staff. And I mean it used to be I'd have a one assistant and that was just the thing. And now I have Ludraft's former players that wanted to volunteer to coach, and so it's great to have them in the fold and they can help out and do things and they enjoy it.
You know, when you go to a place like Dalton, I mean when you talk about guys like Matt Chiefs and coaches like yourself that are the stalwarts here in the state of Georgia that you are. You know, when folks gravitate to talking about Georgia high school soccer, you two are toward the front of this list. For those that didn't get the chance to see what happened against Dalton where it was an early lead that you had to come back from and then you're having to go
to PKS. How crazy was that match with two heavyweights going at it?
It?
Much like you just said, it was very exciting. I guess that's a good way to say it. I mean, we went with a definite game plan and.
When we went down early, that wasn't part of it, obviously, but we stayed with the plan, and I usually go over like a scattery or now have a lot of information. I paired that down for this game, and I just zeroed in on five things that we had to stay focused on, and that kind of carried us through and then we were able to get the goals against them.
It kind of helped us in the sense that I felt that home field advantage sometimes isn't an advantage when you're kind of on the ropes and your fans start to feel a little tension.
I thought we were able to accomplish it. It was a lot of fun.
Oh, no doubt, And you know, when you get to see the talent that's on your roster and the talent that's on theirs. I think for the neutral it's one that you could sit there and you go, no, no, no, watch this one because of all the talent that's there. How difficult is it for you to schedule non region or do you purposely try and schedule outside the state in that season one the non region to get you
ready for region and playoffs? Do you schedule purposely out of state or is that just a difficulty because of who you are?
No, it's intentional originally from Tennessee, so I have a lot of coaching contacts up there, and I've made friends in lots of places. So really we play pretty much in the same two tournaments out of state that we've been doing for years, mainly because of those friendships. But then I get to meet more coaches who coach different teams, and it's it's it's just a lot of fun. I'm from East Tennessee. We go up to Gatlinburg, and Gatlinburg
is fun for the boys. Even if we don't win a game, they still have fun walking around Rednick Riviera.
So it's good. And yeah, I mean for me, it's like going back to the days where you're going to Ripley's, You're going to Lums to have yep, breakfast or lunch or what have you. And the fact that I can remember Lums. Everybody's sitting there going lums. What's lums? No, Look, look it up on the wikipedias. You'll you'll know all about that. When you go. There was a spot in the season when you were playing Georgia competition where you go it's the pace level Centennial kel Gauntlet and you
lose three of those four. What did you learn about yourself in a sixteen and six season where you lose three of four and you do it and basically a nine day period, would you.
Learn that we needed to get better, that we had deficiencies.
It's actually it was a and now looking back on it, it was a good thing because we would have gone in feeling, hey, we know what we are and we really didn't. And yeah that Pace beat us handily and then we lost the last two. We had already sinched up the region seed.
So we were good there. But yeah, it was a case to where we hopefully we're going to learn from it, and we have so.
Scott Snyder, head coach at Westminster, getting ready for the club the Class Quad A boys title game in three days at dlute seven thirty. Nothing like having to take Atlanta traffic and go, yeah, you're having to go down and then up. Yeah, that going up eighty five. That's going to be fun. My guess. As you're leaving tomorrow to try to get there in time to patch up at the Luke, I'm trying to count numbers here, four, five, nine, eleven, twelve different goal scorers for you this year, one in
double digits. What's it like to have that kind of balance.
Well, what happened is we have one player who was probably our best player in terms of attack, and he missed half the season. He's only come back since the playoffs, and that made us have to learn how to manufacture goals. And it kind of really spread it out because we were coming up with lots of different ways, a lot of stuff to be done.
And then boys grew up, which is nice. It's nice to see that evolution.
Counting the number of seniors, I've got four, I've got a handful here. I think eight seniors. I think on this roster six seven, eight are that are part of this, plus a couple of others. So you've got a lot of seniors. What's it been like to see this senior class grow to this point to where they're playing for a state title in their last matchup in the season.
This class was really married to the last senior class, and they were used to the last year's class kind of being the leaders, and so this year, in the beginning, it was one of those ones that they had kind of learn and grow on their own.
They they had always been able to.
Rely on the great leaders that we had had, and they've progressed well. But since the playoffs, I mean, it's been an evolutionary change. It's a revolutionary change. I'd to say we were not hitting on all cylinders. We do well and then we play poorly, and then we do well and play poorly. Now it's like we kind of dialed in and have got things set, and that is that came out of those lives.
That it got us better.
Was there a moment coming out of those losses where you saw that the team had their aha moment? Or was it just kind of an evolution of the learning from that time frame and then you're like, oh, okay, they finally figured out, you know, they finally learned what happened in those three losses. Was it a switch that got turned on or was it something gradual?
All right?
After we lost our last regular season game, I was kind of depressed myself. I go home and I'm trying to figure out what to do because I mean, I got on to them about their faults and that didn't seem to be working, and we were just kind of stuck, and I sat and tried to figure out In about two in the morning, I thought baseball teams always believe in curses.
So I got to figure out what the curse is and then I can get rid of it.
And I googled up and I found pretty cool stories about sports teams with curses, including they land the Hawks when they lost their Pacman jersey.
They they struggled. So I told the boys. The next day I came in, I said, guys, I know why I've been losing. And they all looked at me, like what, And I.
Said, it's our uniforms. They're cursed. I said, I've got a cross here. My wife's family had gone to Italy and they got a cross blessed by the Pope.
I've got a cross here, and I'm going to use it.
And we've got uniforms we have not yet used, and we're going to use this cross to bless them and then we will be fixed.
We haven't lost since, so I guess it worked.
So how difficult is laundry in a situation like this, because well, because I mean, I assume that you've got to keep track of every piece. You have to make sure that all the jerseys are taking care of, all
the shorts are taken care of. I imagine it's not like hockey players or something like that, where yes, we are going to put them in the washer and they're going to get washed, and it's not the same funk from you know, match one when everything turned But how difficult is it to keep track of everything and have folks sat there and misplaced things, you know, briefly and it's like, oh, I know where it is, and then
everything turnhole again? Has it? Has it been an adventure keeping all of this stuff together?
Well?
I used to be micro managed and I would take up the uniforms after every game, but that just got to be too much, and so no, we have extra. What I do now is when I get uniforms, I get them for both the varsity and JV at the same time, and I number them from two up to like seventy seven or whatever, and so I always have another one because our JV program has been done.
For about three weeks.
Okay, yeah, all right, So now we know the rest of the story. For someone who goes to Duluth to see you and Marist for the first time, they sit down there at Duluth and they watch and they watch you play, who would be those players that the first time Slash neutral viewer would be gravitating toward when it comes to your se excess.
I think our back line has changed since the regular season and that's been a big plus for us.
And along with that, we have a.
Probably our best striker, best forward has returned and he's he makes a big difference for us in that.
How big a difference is it? You said he makes a big difference, So how big a difference is it? Coke?
Well, if you look at this, he scored both goals against Dalton, although the second goal got knocked in by somebody else, and he scored scored three goals in our second round game. He scored one goal in the first round game, and then he scored I shoot the last round he scored I think one. Now, he's just he's a great kid. And that's the cool thing that I like about Westminster is that I've known him since he
was like in second grade. You know, he comes to my camps when he's little, and I've seen him up and it's just awesome.
So what was your first What was your first impression when he walked in the door.
Oh, when he was young, he was winny, he was tiny. He still gets mad because my one.
Middle school coach, he didn't get put on the top team when he's in middle school his first year out, and I always I use that. I'd go back to the middle school now and I was like, look, we have this guy, and you know he's going on to playing college. But in middle school he was on the second team. I said, being on the second team is not a knot, guys, it's it's a process.
Right now, you've only given up twenty six goals in twenty two matches, so that's one and four over twenty two, so it's like one point one point eight. Brag on your defense a little bit. What's it been like to see them do what they've been able to do this year?
Ooh, that's actually a source for me because I'd like that goal to be a lot less. Okay, there was one year he gave up five goals for the whole season and you know we lost a game four nothing.
This year, I was like, guys, that's almost like.
A season's worth.
But yeah, I really.
Along with the changing the cursed uniforms, which was it was good for us. We changed our formation and we change some of the personnel, and it's it's like most things, like when you can find the right thing when they gel, it just works. It's not like that you moved people all over the field, but just sometimes a little subtle change is like the one guy in the right place makes everything fall in.
So how much time are you going to devote a day between now and game day to what's going on? You say you don't necessarily get a whole lot of sleep, But do you talk, do you step away, do you sit there and take breaks? Or are you just kind of locked into this whole thing this entire time and then you'll worry about sleep later.
I've got to be better giving myself grace because I feel like I've got to be doing Like when I'm not doing something, I have guilt that I should be doing something. And you do need to be able to take time and sit back because you know, when you're young, you can do this.
All the time. It's like hundercent because it's just pure, you know, adrenaline.
But as I gotten older, I've got to find ways to pace myself because I do not want to be a burnout. And there's times where you're like you're making yourself do stuff and I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna step back and just watch Saturn Night Live for an hour and then come.
Back there you go. Okay, so as promised, Micah is here. He's coming from the green room and so this is where we do the hot tag. But before you go, now, Mike, Mike is going to enjoy this all right. So, uh, since coach Snyder was here first, Coach Schnyder, do you have a question for Coach Aiken leading into the matches?
Oh, that's a good question. I don't know if I'm reading for that. No, I know, I know of Mike. Uh, this is the first time I actually got to talk to him directly. But his father is the coach at Ogle with Oar.
But I think my daughter went to Oglethorpe, and I've known John for years and tried to send players his way and stuff, So I think highly of his father, and that'd be the thing that's not really question, is just a statement for I know he's probably tired of hearing about his father this.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, honestly, at this point, I'm so used to it, you know, especially since I played for him for four years at Oglethorpe too, So it's like it's just it's just intermingling at all parts, you know, and now now my brother on varsity, so my dad's at all the games watching his son play and coach. So it's like, you know, the the family dynamic is there, and it's been there for a while, so I'm just used to it at this point.
So Micah, do you have a question for coach Snyder before we let him go and actually go back to study hall and get ready for you?
Yeah, you know, you've you've obviously been in the high school scene for a long time. This is, you know, my my third year. What are some things that you know, you tell your players leading up to I mean, you guys made it to the state final last year. You wanted out last year. You know, you're you're finding yourself there again. What are some things that you kind of
tell your players to help keep them motivated. I mean, it's such a long season, you know, and they start to get tired, and I mean, I'm sure Westminster's similar when it comes to Maris with scheduling. I mean, there's so many activities going on in the spring, So how do you kind of find that balance of keeping your players focused without you know, completely taking away from some of the other things that they have going on in the spring.
Yeah, well I'm a big movie guy, and so I always like to uh and obviously they don't have the tension span to watch a movie anymore, but you can.
Pull in clips from movies and like that. We'll do pregate like, well we're gonna have practice state, but.
We'll have a meeting before and a couple of movie clips that I think are kind of like relevant to what's going on, and they enjoy those. And also, I'm smart enough now or maybe I was dumb back then or both. But you try to make it fun. I mean, it's still supposed to be fun. You know, you want to win and all those things. But when we went up to Dalton last week, that was my big thing. It's like, hey, just enjoy this moment. I mean, how
many times you're gonna be just like you guys? I got to come watch your pious game and what an awesome you like crowd and things like you feel. Really you'll never get that at a club game. And I always preach that. I mean, to me, we're like the national teams. Club is the pro teams and it's more fun for us.
What what movies are you thinking of pulling? Clips from Oh yeah.
Oh like when we went to Dalton.
We they're so trite because everybody used them, but we used Miracle, which works because Doun't wears red uniforms. They weren't really rushing, but it.
Played into it. So I'm a big Rocky guy. I mean, I grew up. I watched Rocky two before every high school game. I know every second of that scene. Oh oh but yeah. And then there's there's really cool documentaries out there too.
There's one about this Memphis football team that's on Amazon Prime.
And it is awesome and it's cool.
It's so cool.
It's like you want to go back and find out where are these kids now? And it was just a volunteer football coach that coach for year and it was real life, which makes it better.
As always you that's very cool and so Scott, thanks for coming by, especially in a massively busy week. Yeah, breaking it all down for us. And uh so, like I said, thanks for being a part of everything. Thanks for doing what you do for high school soccer and high school athletics here in the state of Georgia. We'll catch up with you soon, my friend. Thanks for dropping by.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
There we go, Scott Snyder. Now it's time to catch up with a friend of the fam in front of the network, Micah Aiken. And uh so, now that you've got your you got your question in for coach Snyder over there at Westminster, What's what's preparation been like for you getting ready for the final exam after knocking off BT one though.
Yeah, I think for us, you know, we've been watching a lot of film, just kind of trying to figure out, you know, how they play and what their system and shape are, and you know, picking up on tendencies, and then over the next couple of days, it's just really trying to recreate some of those moments. You know, they've got a kid who's really dangerous on long throw ins.
We want to be making sure we're managing that properly, and so just a lot of different kind of game situational moments, you know, because we're we've been out of that, you know, we got to run and keep our fitness up kind of stage. Now it's just maintaining that fitness and then, like we said, handling game time moments. So
we've been working on that started yesterday. I'm going to try to continue with it through today and tomorrow, and then a quick little light walk through the day before the game leading up to Thursday.
So fourteen and oh eight No in Reagion, Number five nationally in some polls, number four in the state of Georgia in some polls. How difficult was it for you to navigate the three matches in basically ten days where it's north of Coney Centennial BT. How difficult was it to navigate that part of the playoff?
I think for for our team specifically, you know, we had a lot of opportunities for breaks. I think, you know, at this stage, especially with games you know, happening so close together, it's really important to take some time off.
So after the first two of those games, and actually after the BT game as well, we gave them a day off the day after the game, you know, and just said take care of what you need to take care of, you know, because again, it's the spring season is just so hectic for a lot of these guys.
And you know, I've got ten seniors on the team who you know, have everything across the moon right now starting to come up with They got graduation and baccalaureate and everything so you know, finding time for them to take care of that stuff, I think really clears their head when we get into practice time. So you know, it's it's beneficial to give them a little bit of that balance. So I noticed for us specifically, given that time off, we really came in sharp for practices and uh,
we just were ready. You know, the boys were super excited. They were amped on practice days, and it really kind of led to the culmination of what we've been able to accomplish over those past few games.
So four goals allowed all season. Half of those were in one matchup, in a matchup that you beat Cross Keys Janie Gobrik March seven, So that's two. That's nine weeks ago. You gave up half of the goals that you've given up this season. What has it been like to see this defense be what it is to where Yank giving up nothing to nobody.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's exciting. You know, I have I have a group of solid corps of players in a back, in a back five or even sometimes the back six, who just understand roles and responsibilities, you know, and on top of that, they're they're strong, you know, they don't give up anything. Easily. So you know, they have just been extremely organized. I mean it was you know, after day one, Uh, these guys were yes, Coach understand and it was never a oh well this doesn't make
sense or this doesn't make sense. You know. They there wasn't a lot of trying to figure things out. It was just hey, we've got it covered and we're we're gonna make it happen, you know. And they all understand each other so well too. They're really good friends, and I think some of the off of the field stuff really benefits their kind of cohesion as a back line
as well. They're really good friends. They understand each other's tendencies and they know, you know, hey, if Ed gets the ball, he's gonna want it on his right foot, or even if he's on his left foot, I need to show at an angle to give him the right the right opportunity to find find my feet. So, you know, they they just understand each other so well. And it's it's honestly, very little of what we've done. We kind of gave them a blueprint and you know, the players
have taken it and just run with it. And it's been it's been super exciting to watch.
How long did it take for them to get to that where it's just second nature and I don't have to worry about it. I know that if I do this to hear that everything's going to be fine. How long did it take for them to get to it where's second nature?
I mean, honestly, it was. It was probably the first you know, two or three weeks of training. I think we you know, have the opportunities. We saw it in game. You know, we had already played enough games too to where we saw what some different formations might look like. So how we line up against certain teams kind of played a factor, and you know, it was it was clicking pretty early. I will say, you know, in that cross Keys game, there was a lot of kind of
outside variables. Girls game finished early, so now we're starting early. It's throwing our warm up routine off. You know, was our first first game playing on that turf field over at North to Cab and so the first goal we gave up, my keeper actually told me it was like Coach, I slipped. It was like that was not it was like I could have very easily gotten that ball, but I just I backpedaled and slipped on it. So you know, that could have been a very very easy recovery for
him to stop maybe one of those goals. So, you know, those two that we gave up against cross Keys is maybe not not our best moment, but you know, throughout the course of the season, and as we continued, you know, and we were able to keep our rhythm before game days. That was that was a huge component of just our success, you know, not having any kind of you know, alteration in terms of how we prap and what we do for our warm up.
When it comes to this group of yours going up against Westminster. If and I and I asked Coach Snyder this question too, I said, so, so first time viewer, someone who hasn't seen you play, somebody you know, the casual, just comes to sit down and they want to watch what's going to happen at Duluth in a couple of days time. When things are going well for you, who do their eyes gravitate toward who are we keeping an
eye on on your team? So we know that things are going well for Marist against Westminster.
Yeah, I mean, you know, for me, Edward Kennedy, my my big central player in that back three. I mean he's been phenomenal all season. One Player of the year
for the region. You know, had I want to say it was eight goals or nine goals in region play and was a big, huge part of the success in giving up so little goals throughout the season, and you know, and actually won us a couple of games on some some major headers, you know, cross Keys game it was I think I believe it was two two, and his diving header across is what made it three to two to put us in the lead. You know. So he he's just a big time player to watch and he's
been fantastic for us this season. And and he's one of those that just gets it. And then I would say a couple others that you know, you'll have to keep an eye out for our grand bird. Number twenty two freshman came in, was originally playing with JV and got an opportunity to call up and started and it's been he's been in the starting lineup since, you know. So he's been electric, very technical player, It's comfortable on
the ball, makes good game time decisions. So he'll be he'll be one to look out for if we're if we're on our a game. But I'll be honest too. You know, those are just kind of two that stick out, But really you'll know we're playing well if all eleven are just linking passes together and in the right positions, because you'll see formationally, we do a very good job of keeping our shape and trusting in each other as a team, and so I think that's been a huge,
huge part of our success as well. It's like we said, you know, when you only give up four goals all season, a part of that is just comfort and understanding of formation and shape and what roles and responsibilities are for each player. And so you know, we give them obviously the freedom to have that kind of creativity when they have the ball at their feet, you know, and the creativity to make the decisions on and off the ball.
But really just that that comfort and keeping their shape and their positioning is when is when we look super super clean.
How much film study have you done on Westminster or do I even need to ask?
We've watched a couple of their most recent games, you know, specifically playoff games, because I feel like it's you know a lot of what you see in region games is going to be different than what you might see in playoff games, you know, there's a whole slew of things that could be happening throughout region play. You know, they're still in school, so there's stuff going on. They could have been out for a certain day or different things
like that. So you know, once you get into the state playoffs is kind of where it solidifies a little bit more in terms of what your expectations of. You know who's coming on the field, you know what formation they might play. So we've definitely done our due diligence over the past several playoff games as well as one or two regular season games. But you know, I think I think we've got a solid game plan, and again,
it really is going to boil down to us. So the biggest key for me is focusing on how we play, how how we want to accomplish our goals. And you know the boys yesterday, I mean they were fired up. You know when we were in training just moving the ball really well. I mean I could add twelve thirteen players to the other team and they still would have found ways to find pockets of space and find ways
to play. So you know, they're really really dialed in on this, and I think it's you know, it's it's crude us to all the players for you know, continuing to stay locked in. So yeah, it's it's I'm excited, it's gonna be a fun game.
How do you keep them from getting too excited and too locked in and too amped up? You want them to pay sit heading into that game. But if they're already you know, playing you know, nineteen on you know, nineteen on eleven, and they're handling it. You know, you want to keep adding more players, more players, more players, how do you keep them calm and locked in understanding that. Yeah, it's cool to you know, it's it's cool to jump out of your skin a little bit, but you know,
it's a long week. You got to you still have a couple of days. How do you keep that tempered?
Yeah, I mean I think you know, for us, it's it's really in how we train. You know, we like to break sessions up and handle things in a certain way, so you know, we don't do a lot of scrimmaging, especially at this stage, just because again we want to look at some more uh, you know, minute details, So we'll scrimmage for a little bit. But I actually I feel like over the course of the season we've we've
had the opposite issue. You know, for us, where there's a lot of games we come in very calm, cool and collected and maybe you know, the nerves. The nerve side of things for them is more so a you know, I'm just going to try to relax rather than you know, get too amped up. So I think that's that's part of the reason why they're successful in A twelve thirteen fourteen v. Eleven is because they're just They're cool as a cucumber.
You know.
These guys are are very calm, cool and collected. They understand, you know, and this has been a reiteration over the course of the season from all of our coaches on staff. It's you know, mistakes are going to happen. You know, how do you respond to a mistake is what's more important. You know, you're not going to always be perfect. So if you misplace the pass, what's the next step? How do you respond to that?
How do you react?
And so I think they're comfortable in that in that realm of Okay, I can make a mistake. Mistakes are are natural parts of the game, but I just have to make sure that my response to that mistake is is going to benefit the team and it's crucial for our success leading into the final as well.
So what are you the most confident about going into this matchup against Westminster and what concerns you the most about Westminster?
I think I have confidence in our ability to keep possession through the midfield. I think we're going to have some very good movement on and off the ball to try to create some space, but also have confidence that if it doesn't work out right away and we kind of feel ourselves getting pinned back and you know, Westminster maybe takes the forefoot, I have confidence that, you know, we can absorb pressure until we figure out what we need to do and where to find the space to
break it down. That was a huge component for our win against BT, where you know, for the first fifteen to twenty minutes, we felt like we were defending for the most part of it and we were having trouble breaking out. But then as we got into the second half and things settled down a little bit, we were finding more room, we were finding more gaps and starting to create create problems for BT, and that's how we
pick up a goal. As we switched the point of the attack holding Mit gets at the top of the box and he is not afraid to have a rip and he just let it go, you know, and that was that was a huge moment for us as a team. So I would say that's where I'm confident. One thing I will kind of, you know, give credit to Westminster's I think they they find, you know, kind of a
calmness in chaos. So I think they like to throw chaotic moments at teams to try to cause some problems, and you know, they find themselves calm in those situations. So long throw ins, you know, clearances off long throw ins, corner kicks, like they they like to really throw the
gambit from what we could tell. And so we just have to make sure that even in those moments, we're taking care of ourselves and what we need to accomplish to make sure that we're not giving up, you know, anything off of a moment of a moment of or loss of focus.
So Michaeh Aikin, the head coach at maris getting ready for the matchup against Westminster at Duluth in theory seven point thirty on Thursday. If things don't happen longer before him, which would create more fun approaches and things like that. Miki, It's always great to see you, my friend. Thanks for dropping by. Thanks for the preview, especially during one of the busiest weeks of the year. Good to see it. We'll catch up soon.
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
There we go. That's Micah Aiken and before him, it was Scott Schnyder, and so we we had. We had your quad a matchup for the boys, locked in, locked out. Done. So now here's the deal once again. All all week long you may see drifting into the Morning show, into some of our off into our gap spaces. We're trying to catch up with as many coaches as we can on the GHSA side, leading it, leading into the championships. And so here's the rundown, and we'll drift back into
Atlanta United coming up in a bit. But here's the here's the rundown as it as it exists for when, what is going to be played? Where and how? So okay, so here we go. Here, here's your rundown of all the of all your matchups. Tomorrow. It is going to be Class A Division one boys and girls, and it is going to be at mckeechern at five and seven thirty, So five and seven thirty tomorrow morning, David, David, we've kind of drifted into Atlanta and I died. We had
Abe Gordon from ninety two nine in the game. We've gone over some of the numbers. We heard from Ronald Hernandez. We're going to hear from Ronnie Diley coming up in a bit and it's a bit long. We played the Ronald Hernandez sound that we didn't bleeve, so we earned our explicit rating this morning in hour number one. But we also caught up with head coaches at Westminster and marrist on the boys side. They're going to be playing each other in the Quad A final on Thursday at
Duluth at seven point thirty. So here's your rundown before we drift back into And we also talked about Carlo Ancelotti being the new manager of the Brazilian national team. So here's your rundown of all of the matchups when they are where they are, and remember no soccer is
in session. Playoff Daily Live today that kicks back up tomorrow and it is going to be Molly McCarty from Jefferson, Frank Zamora from Johnson, Gainesville, and I know we have a third at twelve fifteen that I can't remember off the top of my head. Wednesday, we catch up with Atkinson County. And don't be surprised if you end up with coaches here in the Morning Show this week, since they can if they can't, make an opportunity to be a part of things on one show or the other.
So if you end up seeing a high school high school coach in the Morning Show this week, that's why. Because it's championship week and we're trying to have coaches in wherever we can get them to break everything down in the sixteen matchups, and trying to catch up with thirty two coaches is a bear, but that's two of them. Breeman and Model at mckeecher and tomorrow at five thirty. Class A D one girls, Class A D one boys are Merchie and Thomasville. That's at seven thirty at mckeechern.
On the Wednesday, Jefferson and a Coney County Triple A girls. One of the matchups to watch regardless the classification. Triple A classification is going to be some fantastic soccer. Five o'clock at mckechern on Wednesday. It is going to be Class A girls Jefferson Naconey County. We're also trying to crab Judson hanby Cee if you can catch up with him too, Duluth at five o'clock on Wednesday, love it and GAC On the girls side, well, where've reached out
to both of those coaches. Class A boys mckechrin at seven thirty Wednesday, Johnson Gainesville and Northwest Whitfield. It'll be a good chance to catch up with coach Zamora and Isau Goodierrez. Also excuse me Duluth at seven point thirty.
It is.
Private boys State Championship AIS and Whitfield Academy. That is on Wednesday at seven point thirty at Duluth. Thursday full day, three venues going at once Walton and Buford six eight girls mckechrin five o'clock Jarrett Smith and I will have that one for you on the NFHS network. Walton and Buford two heavyweights. That one's going to be fun. Marriston BT Girls five o'clock on Thursday at Duluth, Aca Atlantic
Classical Academy and Lake of Cony Academy. That one is on Thursday at five o'clock Class AD two girls, Lake Acny Academy ranked number three, ACA ranked number five six A boys Grayson and Campbell. That one is going to be Thursday, seven thirty ish at Mckeechron Grayson and Campbell. Grayson ranked number one. Campbell is coming in as the two seat out of region number three unranked, but have
made runs deep in the past. Quad A boys once again seven point thirty at Duluth on Thursday, Marriston Westminster caught up with coaches Snyder and Aiken just now also seven thirty at Mercer, Class AD two boys Atkinson County once again. We're catching up with coach McKinnon from Atkinson County tomorrow on Wednesday on in Session Live and Laker Coney Academy going for the double once again. That one
is at seven point thirty on Thursday at Mercer. Macon five A girls five o'clock at Duluth on Friday, Northgate and Roswell Double A Girls five A at Mercer on Friday, Pike County and Savannah Arts Academy seven thirty Double A boys at Mercer, Shaw and Drew Charter five A boys. That one's seven point thirty at Duluth Spraybury and nationally ranked river Ridge. Spraybury and river Ridge once again, this
one's going to be a heavyweight battle. Got to call the Spraybury Johns Creek matchup on Friday as our last regular season broadcast for everything here on SDH Spraybury and river Ridge. That one's going to be pretty good. Five A boys, and so that is your rundown of everything
going on. So, like I said, if you're not, if you're if you're kind of drifting in and out and you end up seeing a high school coach, that's why, because we're trying to cover them both here on the morning show and on in session if they can't get away for their lunch hours. So that's where we are, all right, Time to circle back morning David. You didn't
miss much. You've got a lot of folks talking about stuff, and so here is the as promised, the conversation that was had, at least a part of it, probably half the conversation that Ronnie Dila had with the media, and it starts with Jason's first question. Once again courtesy of our friends at Atlanta United, here's Ronnie Dila after the matchup with Atlanta United and Chicago Fire. Ronnie Diala starting off, answering a Jason's first question after the matchup this weekend in Chicago.
I think it was a difficult pitch to play on because it's very sticky and a lot to win, especially first off. I think we had to defend a lot, and I think we wanted to go out with a back five to control more and I'm more control when switches come and also get players more higher pitch when we when we win it and play a little bit more longer and get more of the first pour. Second most, I think we come into some good moments, but we won't accurate enough in bid the ball and also too
soft inside our own box. So I think that's what's gonna is the message. Like through the whole game, you know, we give away too much easy like the penalty situation. I think it's six to seven night times that we can clear that ball in the box and then with that penalty to them without it's not even a close first chance, so that it does, of course in a difficult situation. But I think we were kept in and in second half we are coming more and more into it, and I think we in the end deserve to get
the goal. And then I'm very very disappointed how soft we are, and I'll we don't track runners, we don't defend the same way, and we let them get into the game one chance, okay, you can accept, But when it come too and three chances to them with the ball losses and then counter attacks and we don't do the job. That's uh, that's what we have to learn.
Uh.
If not, we we're not gonna win football games one one here. You can take that video and then uh, maybe you had a chance to win it as well. Then you put yourself in situation we are two one down, then uh, then of course it's gonna be tough to to win football games.
Felt like there were waves in the game where there were moments where from one another and there were moments where they were everything.
Is that inconsistency just kind of the nature struggling results.
At the moment.
Yeah, well totally right. That's what's so when you can come in and you can say, I felt we show that we wanted more today, like a little bit the same as it was it for thirty five minutes against Nashville. You see the spirit, you see the fight but then you see also in the next situation, we we we switched off and we we give away things that it is not possible to do. Uh, and then you end up with on the wrong side of the the goal scorer and you don't get points.
What other ways are there in your mind to try to get a few different ways?
Is there anything else to do?
Yeah, of course, you know, we have to keep keep moving forward talking about situations and they also you know, it's about accountabilability for for everybody. Everybody has a responsibility, but it has started with hard work. That just has to be a bottom and as you say, I think today you see a lot of hard work, but it's inconsistent and we need to have that consistence over time and especially inside of the two boxes. We need to
be more deadly than we are. So so I think again also we went to a back fourth to get a goal. We get the goal, but then also you see the the problems we get with switches or play and uh, when we come half and half and on track runners, then then you get get into a bad situations. So in a way, we went for it. So you know, back five, I've felt control. But of course we need to score goals as well. So it's a find that balance between things. So and on the road you need
to suffer. You need to to stay to stick together. And now, as I said, now and I see to said, we have to come you know.
You have to come together.
We have to feel the feeling that we have now and understand that the only way forward now is to to really really be humble and accountable and then uh, and understand that you need to do that as a team. Then there's nothing now to sit and be inside and think about yourself or feel sorry for yourself or whatever. It's not the time. It's the time to take responsibility. It's the time to take care of each other. It's the time to be ready and and uh and start
to go. And there should be a long time since we we do that. And I'm tired to hear about all the talent we have because uh, that's been said of a long long time, not before my time. Also, talent is not enough. We need We need unity and uh and uh and hardworking mentality that is strong enough in good times and in bad times. And into that way, it's the only way now to break that circle and start to win football games. That's that's that's how it is, and it can't be in periods. Has to be consistent
and has to be accountable. It has to be put accountability to each other on the pitch and also to the staff and to me if there's something that is not clear enough, something we need tomorrow, whatever. I think that that the door is always there and from there we have to grow because we are where we are because we deserve it.
Ronnie Diiler, head coach of at Landy United. And there's a lot in there. And like I said, this is why I like the format that we have because we can take longer than just the twenty second SoundBite that folks can take out of context and misinterpret, misidentify what
have you? Where we can go and run, you know, three minutes of Ronald Hernandez, four minutes of Ronnie dialup then so Ronnie sick of hearing things and he said, you got to backtrack, You got to be back there defensively, and you know, at the same time admitting that you know, if there's something that's not getting through in translation, then it's something that you know, obviously he and the staff
have to work for. But he's you know, you heard how frustrated he was in the post match interview setting that was there. So so there you go. Once again. This is a very it's this is the first big week of a lot of big weeks, and you're in
a week where you're coming out of Chicago. You don't really have time to And this is something that we discuss with other coaches and things in situations where if you're coming off of a loss, the fact that you have three matches in a week means that you can basically take this one, flush it, but don't forget it, because there's a difference flush it and forgetting it is one thing flushing it and remembering it and taking the
lesson and going forward to something else. So you have the opportunity here with Atlanta United to sit there and learn from what happened with Chicago, learn from what Ronnie Dallas said postmatch, and apply it to what you're seeing with Austin. And you get to do the same thing from from Austin and from Chicago and apply it forward
to Philadelphia. But, like I said, three separate approaches in three separate places where these teams are right now, where you have Chicago, who is rebuilding under Gregborholter, you have Austin who can't score except in open Cup competition against USL Championship competition where they were down to one to l Passo Locomotive, scored too quickly, turned around, came back and got the win to advance to the round of sixteen.
And everybody's like, oh, they found their they found their shooting shoes, understood that it was against a team that you should have beaten from a lower division, and you you found the minutes, you found the connections, and I think that if you were watching the match, I also think that El Paso was they were fading and it was an opportunity for Austin to take advantage of it.
But yes, Austin in MLS play has only scored one goal I think in the last four weeks, well five weeks or two and five, So they are still struggling offensively and it's an opportunity for Atlanta to take advantage of that come midweek. So you look at Austin and we mentioned their goal scoring lack of prowess, and right now Austin five six and one, they've only scored eight goals all season, tied for at last in the Western conference, tied for next to last in all of Major League Soccer.
Montreal has scored six lag and Austin have scored eight. Going into the statistics, I believe that that own goal is second on the roster right now, or it might have it might have trimmed its way back. But Brandon Vasquez has scored three of the club's eight goals. Biro Pereira,
galaher Buccari and Azuni have scored one each. So you're going up against the team and I would not anticipate that this matchup in Austin is going to be a high scoring matchup because of the two keepers that you have in Brad Gazanne and Brad Steuver, the defense in this match brought to you by the letters Brad, So anticipate a lower scoring game. So you have to be clinical and take advantage of opportunities when they're presented to you.
So you're coming out of the match in Chicago, You're going into a match that could be very defensive, very low scoring, and then you're going into a matchup against Philadelphia which is very very physical on the weekend. So this is the individual challenges that you're facing in the collective of the struggles that you're seeing with Atland United this year. So that's where you are right now. We talked about all Classico, and like I said, we'll talk
about more about Atlanta United as the week go. We're going to try and get our OPO research from some folks that we are trying to track down in Austin, and we'll try and track them down as best we can to try to have them on either Tuesday or Wednesday, and then catch up with our buddy Dave Leno on either Thursday or Friday, so we'll see what we can do there when it comes to getting ready for Philadelphia.
All right, So that's Atlanta Nighted once again. Conversations are going to be there with it about Atlanta Nighted all week long, so we can get into that, and that's that's always going to be a topic that's going to be available. Probably can get into that more tomorrow considering everything that will be available to us coming out of those conversations. So once again, and if you missed it in our number one, it is going to be me and Abe from Colony Square in the studios of ninety
two nine in the game. So ninety two nine in the game in the Audissey app. Mike and Jason will be in Austin. Maddie will be there as well for the Unified broadcast at atlutd dot com slash Live. I can't wait for Alex Everley to wear a ten gallon hat. And then so Jason and Maddy on Unified, Mike and Jason on the match itself with atlanda United me and a pre and post. So eight forty means seven thirty, so seven thirty start temperatures supposed to be well into
triple digits. One hundred and six is listed as the high temperature in Austin on Wednesday, so we'll see what happens there. And once again this falls into the whole idea about anything and everything that will be attached to this one that is a part of the greater picture. Coming out of Chicago heading into Austin, looking three days later. Friday said, yeah, three days later, you get home, you regenerate,
you walk through, you got Philly, you regenerate yesterday. Maybe you got yesterday off ight, walk through travel Austin, you come home, regenerate, walk through Philly. So that's where you are. You are with atlanda United Right, now and once again Ronnie Diaila and he ain't having it. Wasn't having it. After the matchup in Chicago, you heard that got to get back and defend, especially when you've got an equalizer
that you worked for with ten minutes to go. So I will be intrigued to see what it looks like at practice and what it looks like around the board when it comes to who's in the starting eleven, who's in the match day eighteen, who's going to get minutes, how do you manage your minutes? All of those questions here in the midwek to get you ready for the big matchup against Philly on the weekend, and I know that you you kind of have to look at things.
And I know that Abe was one who was not going to line things up and he's not looking at Philly yet, But you kind of have to, I would think, just because of your roster standpoint and managing minutes and all these kinds of things. Unless you just want to sit there and go after the Philadelphia matchup, then you don't have to worry about anything until the matchup with Cincinnati on the twenty fifth. But then you turn around and you play the Purple Team on the twenty eight,
then that wraps up that week. So basically what you have here in the month of May, you're in the middle, You're in the middle of a three match week. Then you have nothing going on until your Sunday Night soccer on the twenty fifth, and then you go Sunday Wednesday
Saturday taking on Red Bullet Red Bull Arena. So three match week, nothing in a seven day period, then three match week, three matches in eight nothing, three matches in seven So because of all of the things going on, you're going to have to You're gonna have to manage your roster, and you're going to have to figure out minutes here, minutes there, all of those things stylistically going up against different opponents, what it's going to look like.
So this is going to be one of the the added challenges for the coaching staff having to deal with once again, three matches in a week, three different styles, and then you end up with, you know, two that are fairly wide open twenty fifth and twenty eighth, Cincinnati and the Purple Team, and then you know what you're going to get from Red Bulls, whom you've you know, managed fairly well earlier this year, and that gets you
through the month of May. But like I said, five matches left in the month of May, you can make some you can make some hay here and you'll see what happens. So that will be the storyline here in the month of May. Five to go to work your way into a playoff position, playoff discussion, whatever however you want to break it down. But that's where we are. Uh let's get into gossip, Berman and Nuendo. Want to
watch where to watch it? How to watch it? Remember, no soccer is in session Playoff Daily Live today that kicks back in tomorrow. Looks like Jason Page from Walton's going to join us at nine. Looks like Judson Hanby's gonna join us from Acony County at nine twenty. Then Soccer's in Session Playoff Daily Live is going to be stacked starting at noon. Molly McCarty from Jefferson, Frank Zamore, Johnson Gainsville. They're going to be a part of the discussion.
Like I said, we're also efforting oppo research out of Austin, so we'll see what we can come up with here. But yeah, it's going to be drifting in and out of high school and Atlanta United and Austin and all of those things. Getting it through the midweek, and then on Thursday, we'll talk about Austin, talk about the championships, We'll talk about getting ready for Philly. We'll talk about
the championships, and then Philly's on. Then Philly is on Saturday night, seven to forty kick on Major lel in the MLS Season pass and with Mike and Jason at ninety two to nine in the game. So, uh, what to watch, where to watch it, how to watch it, gossip rumored, innu Windo and all all the things. Ben Jacobs has been very, very busy. One to six temperature in Austin. That's the high On Wednesday. Manchester United optimistic of signing Liam de Lap if they win Europa League.
United and Chelsea currently the two leading Premier League clubs, considering triggering the thirty million pound clause active now since Ipswich are relegated. All Hill All is still in touch with the Bruno Fernandesh camp new meeting this week, given a week to a final answer. Due to the urgency of Helal lining up signings ahead of the Club World Cup. Manchester United's position remains that Fernandesh is not for sale.
Captain has given no encouragement to date, told Hillal last year he wanted to state United until at least after the twenty six World Cup. They also have Uri Telaman's meaning all Hallal as in another midfield option on their radar and believe a fifty five to sixty million euro bid would be accepted. And so once again we mentioned about Carlo Ancelotti. Brazilian Federation has come out with a statement,
as has Analdo Rodriguez from the CBF. So you have both of those sides coming out with talk Genoa defender Cony Deventer drawing interest from Spurs west Ham Crystal Palace enter anopoly somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty five to thirty million euro and then the Martin Zuba Mendi signing that happened over the weekend as well. All right, so once again you have your gossip. That's why we call
it gossip. And also depending on what particular source you get it from, Bayern Munich do not intend to improve their contract offer the Leroy Sane despite the new agents of the twenty nine year old who's out of contract with the summer, submitting a fresh propose to the Bundesliga champ sets from Flora and Plettenberg at Sky Germany. Napoli sporting director Giovanni Mana remaining silent about a move to
sign Kevin de Bruna on a free. Jonathan David'll be a free when his deal with lel ends in the summer, and he's another target for Napoli byer le Evercusan chief Fernando Carro believes the fifty to fifty chants Florian verts staying with the club. Arsenals Jakob Kivi yours on the radar both Juve and Enter Milan as he weighs up his long term future. Real Madrid looking to agree to a deal with Liverpool worth about a million. Now, see, you go from fifty thousand, you go from fifty thousand pounds.
It's like, well, you know, we kind of like to you know, what we kind of like to do is what if we give you, like, oh, fifty thousand pounds to release him early And Liverpool's like, no, that's not going to work. So now we're up to about a million. Trent Alexander Arnold, by the way, got booed when he came on to the field for the yesterday Boode when he touched the ball. Boode when he came on. Nicely done.
Liverpool fan uh Real Madrid looking now for up to a million to UH for Trent Alexander Arnold to join them before the Club World Cup. Sean Diisch among the candidates to take over at Leicester City, with the Foxes expected to part ways with rud Van Nisselroy Douglas Louis says he misses playing for aston Villa as he struggles for first team football at Juve, who signed the twenty
seven year old last summer. Brighten among a number of clubs interested in twenty one year old defender Diego Coppola, who plays for Hellas Farona that's from Ferbrizio Romano Ac Milan are keen on fine Arts center back David Henko, but face competition from Lever Cues and a Nuve for the twenty seven year old Slovakian international. Now What to watch, where to watch it, how to watch it and all
the things? All the things. Today English Championship Promotion playoffs at three Sheffield United Bristol City FA ES two has the doubleheader of the league that we neither can, don't endorse nor promote. Fox Deportes simulcasting ESPN Plus La Liga
B Granada and Ibar to twenty. Fox Soccer Plus has a children's fan special in the Canadian Premier League with Forge and Ottawa Paramount Plus Syria Doubleheader fanetsiafe or In Tina twelve thirty Atalanta Roma two forty five and then once again on Paramount Plus Sheffield United Bristol City is
at three o'clock. So tomorrow the rundown will be as such, We're gonna have coaches and we're gonna talk about the GHSA Championships kind of like I said, all weekend Law all week long, we're gonna be kind of having them drifting in and out, and so I apologize if the show's a bit of a train wreck when it comes to the rundown. We're talking about teachers and trying to
find availabilities and shoehorning them into shows. So we'll gonna have I think we're gonna have two coaches to start off tomorrow, Jason Page Walton Walton Girls, Judson hanby A Coney County Girls in one of the marquetups of the entire week. A Coney County Jefferson Girls triple a one of the best matchups of the week. Walton Buford absolutely a. Coney County and Jefferson absolutely so, two halves of the
two of the better matchups the entire week. Coming on tomorrow, the bat lead off and they'll get us to about nine to forty five. Then we'll get into everything else.
Once again, we got to talk about what happened with Evangelinas Marinacus and what happened with Nottingham Forest and him charging onto the field even though he's no longer owner, and then we'll get into all of the other news, anything that's left over from all the discussions from Atlanta United and once again getting ready for the matchup with Austin and soccer is in session playoff Daily Live is noon tomorrow as well from noon to one, and then
we'll break all of that down to get everything started this week. So a lot of high school this week, a lot of Atlanta United this week, and we'll try and see what else is going on. There's a big day in Jacksonville tomorrow and hopefully we can catch up on the news with that and then yeah, and so maybe we can catch up with our friends from Major League Soccer on Friday as well. But yeah, that's a
long way off, but it's gonna come real quick. Once again, thanks to all of you folks for coming in as you always do to help break things down on a reaction Monday. As I always say, reaction Monday, get it all off your chest, and we'll do the same thing on Thursday. We'll do the same thing again next Monday. Like I said, six matches left for a Land United in this month, and we'll see where things stand as you get close to the halfway pole here in Major
League Soccer for twenty twenty five for Atlanta United. So for everybody here at SDH once again, thanks to Scott Snyder at Westminster, thanks to Mike aik and at Marris, thanks to A. Gordon ninety two nine in the game, and thanks to you as always for making SDHAM what it is here in the soccer universe when it comes to news, information, morning programming, and everything here at the SDH Network. So for everybody here on this end, to all of you folks out there, we love you very much.
Much of plot I'll play it safe and since it is the end of the show means we get to do this. No soccer is in session, Playoff Daily Live Today, that kicks back up tomorrow, So you back here nine oh five tomorrow morning for Tuesday thoughts where we continue to crush it when it comes to the high school Championships. Lay safe, everybody. It's the end of the show that means the