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Nico Moreno joining us for the handoff. As we've been discussing what's been going on with Cono ball qualifying? All right, so Nino, sir, I will let you have the question for the handoff and what is on your mind with Nico Moreno. Could be Conno Ball, could be Major League Soccer, could be messy and friends, what's on your mind as we hand off to Nico Moreno in the final half hour?
Nico, your your team, your your Colombia and you beloved Colombia national team is one of the best teams in coming orl right now what what what are the chances coming into Montevideo to to play the mighty celestic?
You know why, I think they're good.
U Uruguay is definitely a top team and they have a lot of talent and they are very well managed. But Colombia coming from when they need it against Chile, that for zero win was important against the Chile team that obviously is just the shell of what it used to be years ago, uh and in no where, no shapeway or form. Am I saying that is a parameter
for for Colombia. But they needed that boost because they did have a rather unpleasant reality check against Bolivia UH and they lost that game, and I feel like they needed to regain that confidence. So because of their inertia, there are a couple of new faces there for Colombia, but I feel like the starting eleven is going to be pretty much the same as it has been. I think that had to do anything great form. I think that is in great form.
Uh. Therefore, I think Colombia will get a result.
And I'm not saying they're gonna go out there and just dominate a very good Uruo White team. There's probably some revenge feelings from that Uru White team. After what happened in Copo America, some of those protagonists won't be part of this one, which is always nice. But I think Colombia will get a good result in Monteville.
Give me numbers, Give me a prediction, brother, I want to hear some numbers.
I want one one to you.
Give me give me a number, brother, that's tough. I'll go ahead and say that Colombia gets it done. Uh, two to one out of the way.
So so then this means that you are taking that plus fifty in the juice boxes outright?
What the numbers are?
Yeah, plus two fifty in the juice boxes for the Columbia win ninety minute draw plus two hundred Uruguay home favored at a plus one thirty one.
Yeah. Yeah, I definitely put some money out there. Yeah why not? Why not? I feel like, again, what do I have a hard time against Equador?
And you know, Ecuador also a very good defensive team. Uh in overall they have a lot of quality midfielders. I think Columbia can match that same intensity and I think that they can make it difficult for auduway.
So yeah, man, I'm definitely confident on that.
Yeah, all right.
So Colombia also follows it up at a minus one sixty one as they take on Ecuador and host Ecuador on Tuesday. Uh, Nino, my friend is always great to see you, Great to hear your voice and find out what's going on, especially when you peel back the curtain and we get to do some solid journalism. Be safe, my friend in calling the Uruguayan matches this weekend on Goal TV. Be coming back and we'll talk about this next week and we will talk about whatever else is on your mind.
Be safe, my friend. Good to see it.
Well, Thank you guys, appreciate it.
Nino toatis as always, I love it.
I love it when we can sit there and bring Atlanta, Peru and Seattle together.
To me, that's.
Literally it's like, oh wow, it's like Okay's dial up South America and we have.
I love it. It's fantastic.
I know that we got to talk about MLS postseason because the main topic this week here, By the way, what cup of coffee are you on?
Number two?
Halfway through number two has been a pretty moving type of morning. There is no soccer bar today, so I get a little bit of time off after your show. So I'm nice, chill, collected. So yeah, good Thursday.
Okay, so Messy and Friends are no more the the the Gulf Stream Galacticos are out the door, and it's been the big topic obviously here on SDH most of the week, where Enter Miami got reinforced for being top heavy. You know, it's like you want you want to you want to be a team that launches all the threes and has all the offense. You know, when you're you're stepping back behind the twenty foot line, you're launching threes,
that's great. But if you're not, you know, if you're not hitting your threes and the other team is being solid and hitting buckets and playing solid defense, in a
best of three series, you get found out. And the Gulf Stream Galacticos got found out when you've got to line up, but then you got injuries and you got to figure out how you're gonna do things, playing dudes out of position, making sure that Okay, I've got eleven guys that can actually be out there, and they've got to do things that they may not be accustomed to doing. What did you think about the the intern Miami Atlanta United match Day number three?
I thought it was a fantastic match. I thought that Tato Martino and in Miami sinned on over confidence and lack of adjustments to what they had done, if not wrong, the cracks in their game plan and game module going against this same Atlanta team. I thought that.
Both at then I did a good job at minimizing and limiting Messy and Messi also did not have the best series. I thought he had one very good game that Gussan ended up stopping him everywhere. In the first one, I thought he was very poor and looked at a sink and was imprecise. In the second one, and then in the third one. It was a little bit between those two games, but at the end of the day, Atlanta wanted it more. Atlanta and Rob Valentino, credit to him, knew exactly how to expose.
That in the Miami back line.
You signed every single time that Atlanta would get on the ball and would either force a turnover or there was a mispass on Atlanta's side. On in the Miami side, they were immediately looking forward, looking to the long ball. Whether it was marn Chuk or Theoret or Saba, there was always someone running into space getting ready to go behind that back line, and Tata Martino was never able to figure out the solution, which was a liability on defense.
All serious, Loan, you had a guy like Julian Gresseol that could have played that position. You could have done a variety of things to make sure that you were more poised and ready to stop counter moments, and he didn't. I thought that Busquetes was a huge miss and they needed to in some way replace what he did in distribution in game management, and I don't think that there was enough put on there by Tata Martine to figure that out.
Dere Londo had a very average series.
So all in all, I just give one hue hundred and ten percent of the credit to Robylan, you know, to Atlanta.
And the way they approached the game.
Every single time that I saw in Miami lose a significant game this year, there's a level of and and don't get caught up on the word I'm talking about within the game of this respect towards Messi Suarez and all those guys, meaning not that you're going to be disrespectful to them.
It's just that you're not allowing him to get away with it. Everything.
Oh I'm not gonna shove Messy. I'm not gonna, you know, force him out. I'm not gonna pull his jersey. I'm not gonna get in his head. And I thought Dax McCarty, Uh Madumba and the rest of that midfield, they did that very well. Usan wasn't just great by stopping everything that went his way, but his attitude, the way he came up and approached He's getting in in Uh's face. Well, let me rephrase that. Suarez is getting in his face and he's laughing. He's, you know, this big, huge broad guy.
Just man, I don't care what you're talking about. Get off my face. That type of mentality and character really affects that in a Miami team that a lot of times wants to win just because they are who they are. I am Messi, I am Jordi Alba, I am Busquets, I am Luis Suarez. Monterey did not care at all. They dominated that that series in Leak's Cup. In this one, I thought Atlanta was very very about It's about us. It's not about you guys. I don't care who you are.
Tax McCarty and Leton know Messi. We're going at it the entire series. I think that's important and I think that they deserve that win, and credit to absolutely everybody in Atlanta were making it happen.
I was happy. I was excited.
I told you here, I put on that Atlanta United jersey. I thought it in Miami was gonna win, as I think most people did.
But I was very happy, very excited in the manner that they handled that win.
And I think that this is key and it doesn't happen a lot of the time when people are going up against Messi and friends. They get bogged down and looking at the name on the back of the jersey instead of focusing on the crest that's on the front
of the jersey. And what you saw defensively from Atlanta United was they packed the middle and they also made sure that the cutback cross was not going to be part of that playbook that you always see where you see the deep run and then the cutback and then Messi gets the slam dunk or somebody gets the slam dunk, because the penalty spot isn't occupied with anything but space. And you saw it defensively, the back line step up to the penalty spot to take away that cutback cross.
You saw the folks in the middle of the field sit there, and it's like, all right, if you're gonna beat us, you're gonna beat us out here, You're not gonna beat us in here. And we're gonna take everything from say the six to the top of the arc, and we're gonna lock that down. And good luck on you if you want to come into that space and try to challenge us there. And I think that I think that Atlanta United looked at that playbook and they
locked it down. There were times in substitution patterns where it took a little bit of time to remind and adjust. It's like, oh, yeah, I've got to do this, And then when everybody came back in under the same umbrella, everything was cool.
Yeah.
And look, credit to again, Rob, but credit to the players. I mean Saba play in a position that Heat had ever played, the sacrifice, the back and forth, everything he did on that right side.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
But Ronald Hernandez and Louisa Brown were not necessarily starters this season, and they played great.
They played like protagonists. They did not miss a beat.
They were great in the three man back line, and on the other side, Amador such.
A good player defensively but also offensively, mainly offensively.
Forresis in the four last games, he was unbelievable. This goes back to the guy I always give credit to and is. These are the type of Garth Lagerway's signings, right Sava Sandy, who was also important in this series.
Amador. These are guys that are in that age group that is not the.
Young guy, not the guy that we're gonna maybe worry about selling later or whatever. Was the prior thought process and getting players like Amada and getting players that you might be able to resell. So these these players that are coming ready to get off the plane and make a difference. That's the guard logger with type of players that made a.
Difference in these games.
So credit to him as well, because it was that defensive composure and that collective play that ultimately hit into Miami on top of the head and they were unable to get it right because even in the moment when it would break down and Messi would put a beautiful ball into Jordie Alva and Jordia Alba hit it right in the middle. And Guzan was the big monster with the huge pause getting those balls away from his goal.
The team would never lose composure, The team would never lose that that character, that intensity, and they did it throughout the whole game. Whether in Miami would punch you right back because they did that. Atlanta United always had that resiliency to stay in the game. And they earned it. They earned it, and that's what really broke down a lot of those big time players. They're not huston you pushing back and forth in MLS. They think you're gonna settle down, You're gonna just be done.
All right.
That was a fantastic play. Uh messy, just court on us again. We're we're gonna be fine. No, no, no, Atlanta United never lost a beat.
And by that win, the one, the two, and the three in the East are out the door. So the East has embraced the chaos. The West is more chalky. It's I think one two four in Minnesota when you look at the East. Now, you've got Hudson River coming up in a week and a half, and we'll talk about it again as we get closer. But from thirty thousand feet you've got a rivalry in one, you've got a rivalry in another, and then coming out the other side,
you've got LAFC taking care of business. Vancouver is always going to be a pain in the butt, but unfortunately match number three was on the road.
Lag put up big numbers and they were waiting.
Everybody else was waiting for LAFC and Vancouver to figure it out.
The West has just been kind of chilling, man.
Yeah, the West has been a little bit more predictable, if you will, in a certain sense. With the exception of those who thought that RSL were going to come out of that matchup against Minnesota, I here told you guys that I really believe that Minnesota was in great form, that they were compact him, they were going to make it difficult. So, yeah, the West has been a little bit more predictable in certain sense. I think you get some really good matchups. They still consider LAFC and Seattle game.
So I think that three out of the four matchups that we have for the semi finals, if you will, of each conference, you do get some pretty good rivalry games. Right, So, speaking of the West, per se Seattle makes that will make the trip to l a f C. L AFC has bid them four times this season. L a C
has outscored Seattle nine goals to one. They completely shut down this Sounders thing that has had issues scoring goals all season, but specifically against l a f C. Jordan Morris has been put on a box, put on a jail cell in between those three monsters in the back, Murdo, Chau and Aaron Long.
How do they try to figure that out? I asked Jordan.
He said, I gotta start generating more space for those around me.
I think Jordan is very.
He understands and he's very aware of how inefficient he's been against LAFC.
So I do expect Seattle to.
Use a little bit of that blueprint that Vancouver left you. They were using the inside channels. They were playing from the outside in FAFA Picoke, cutting from the outside in the way that you were connecting with Brian White the moments you were finding him. I feel a lot of it was centralizing your gains and not necessarily you do get him wide right, but you come back inside against this LAFC team, and I think that Seattle could do that if their players play.
The their max potential. I want to see Pedro de la Vega.
I would like to see him on the left wing, so he can come inside and use that right foot to maybe get.
You some balls in. Be a little bit more dangerous, be.
A little bit more comfortable on the left side, and maybe you leave Paul Rothrock on the right side to give you two things. Right, is that ability to maybe get behind on that end, but specifically that back and forth against Dinny Buwanga against Hall. Instead, LAFC likes to attack on the left side. So I think if Seattle can make some adjustments, they can give LAFC some issues.
But at the end of the day, I really don't think that Seattle matches up well and I think that they will play their hearts out, but they won't get the results. I just think the LAFC has a little bit too much talent. I feel like Steve Cherundolo got a whole series of games against Vancouver to mess up his lineup in game two and in Game three, and then he finally adjusted back to that four to three to three and put it Ilia Sanchez in.
So I think that he made the mistakes he was going to make in the.
Previous series and now he's going to come in completely clicked in and ready to give Seattle a tough matchup in Antenna, they'll win it at home.
What I want to do now is I want to ask you about Garth Loggerway, the executive, because of what has been going on.
Here with Atlanta United, and.
There's been some discussions about this particular Atlanta United side and what they have gone through this season and the head coaching situation and the parallels where Brian Schmetzer was named to replace Siggy Schmidt when you had the run that Seattle was on, and there are some parallels here.
But I also wanted.
To see if you could let us in on the individual that you know as Garth Loggerway. And there was an interview that Garth did on local radio on the flagship station for Atlanta United, and he was asked about everything that had gone on this year, and here's what he said. And I wanted to get your feedback on the Garth loger Way that you know and the Garth Locker way that we're.
Seeing here in Atlanta United. So here's the quote.
Look, we were not going to win anything with that group, with the personalities in that locker room and the mentality that we had, we were not going to win any titles. And we knew it, and so we wanted to maximize the resources that we could take out of that group, and that's when we moved on from some players.
At the end of the day, we got in.
We have a chance, and now we're taking advantage of it with a group that believes in itself and is much better put together. And that's a real credit to Rob Valentino and his staff and the players. Paragraph We had some folks who weren't committed to being in Atlanta long term. It's as simple as that, and they were looking for their next move and there's nothing wrong with that. That's part of pro sports. There's no emotion behind that.
But they didn't want to be here long term. So we needed to get guys here who were committed.
And so, okay, that.
Is the guard loggoay that I knew the guard laggerway, and I did speak to him briefly. Obviously he had a lot more things to do, but I just spoke to him briefly, and as always, he gave nothing but all of the credit to the group around him and the coaching staff and the players and the team and how they bought in into what the organization had played
out and put out and what Rob had done. But with that quote, it basically highlights what I think is, in my opinion, the best attribute that Guard Laggerway has as a JAM CEO front office manager.
I mean, the.
Understand people and understand that beyond your talent, that intangibles are so important, and tangibles is a word that gets It's very underrated. Sometimes it uses a cliche, but if you find a way to really understand what it means, it provides you with a whole different perspective. And that's what when you heard me talk about all the fat that god Lacker was shedding as soon as he got.
The Atlanta United, that's what that was.
Getting rid of people that don't believe getting people, getting rid of people that are not going to be committed to the overall sense of unity and the united objective
of getting together. And it might sound, I don't know, too romantic, and you know that that's not what Sucker is about, but it's a reality and between not just getting rid of people that maybe we're not going to be part of that project, but with his experience and understanding of what certain players can provide you, I think that Guard Laggerway, in a sense understand people better than.
Most and.
When you combine that with a huge and high soccer IQ, you get a guy that's going to provide you with a foundation to a great club. And that's what that quote tells me, that that's the Guard logger Way that I know. And regardless of all his accolades as a manager, the person who is Guard Laggerway is what really to me makes him the best asset for any club in MLS.
Then it was a discussion about back in twenty sixteen, Seattle was in ninth place, they part ways with Siggi Schmidt. Brian Schmittzer, who is the interim back in twenty sixteen, leads them to a run to MLS Cup. Named manager during the Western Conference semifinals. Garth once again was asked about this on ninety two nine in the game and he mentioned it, I've been in this position before, so Rob is very much a candidate. He and I just
chatted about this yesterday, basically two days ago. He's certainly a very strong candidate based on what he's been But right now we have a process and we're going to keep going with that process. Unfortunately, not just with the head coach, but with the GM, and we're going to put together the best team. We really want to get a GM and a coach who will work well together, and we're going to land on those and those decisions get pushed out so long as we keep winning, and
that increases everybody's chances of sticking around. Rob's done an awesome job at creating a sense of belief and we're really proud of what he's done.
End quote.
That was the same interview from ninety two nine in the game two days ago.
So, yeah, this is great because Hey, did I or did I not bring the exact sa A scenario to you before this series?
I literally said it.
If Rob Valentina does pull this miracle, does Atlanta United keep him? Because that is the position where Garth has been in the past, and.
I think he is he wants this team to succeed. That you could see it.
But he's probably telling himself, man, he's going to be difficult to figure out with all these great candidates that are out there out there, including Jim and all the other places where I'm sure that they're looking at Awbroad He's probably thinking, man, if Rob does get us to a final, if he does, you know, you know, how do I go to a coach that just took this Atlanta team to a final that I'm going to be replacing him with someone else.
I mean, that's a difficult decision.
What I will say is that if I know something about Garth Lagaways, that he's not afraid of being the villain quote unquote, right, I mean of.
Just being the guy that if let's say he does end up.
Finding a better candidate, a better duo of GM and coaching staff in general, and he has to go to Rob Valentino and say, look, this is what's best for the club, He's gonna do it. And he did that in Seattle with a lot of players that maybe at the time were upset that they were being let.
Go or that things didn't go their way.
But ultimately, after I talked to them years later, he's like, man, I got nothing but respect for that Lagrary. So if he has to make that tough decision, he's gonna make it. He's not gonna think twice about him. He's gonna trust his gut, he's gonna trust his IQ what's best for the club, and he has to be the villain, and you know, maybe take a lot of heat from fans that maybe would like to keep a guy like Rob Valentino players general narrative of man.
How do you do that to a coach and just took it to a final.
He'll do it, but he'll think about it because once again, he's been in that position before. He made the right choice with Bryant's matter at the time, and I think it all goes back to him reading the situation and saying what's best for the club. So ultimately he's going to have the benefit of everybody in that organization. And that's exactly why I've been telling you guys that this team is in good hands as long as gard Laggerway is involved.
Was it really a miracle that Atlanta United beat inter Miami considering the issues that Messi and friends were having on the field.
I think it is simply because of the way he played out. I mean, everything was in Miami's and.
Maybe miracles the wrong word, but it was surprising because everything kind of went their way.
You go back home, you kind.
Of gave some time for at Tata Martinez to figure out what he needed to do better against Atlanta United.
There was no way that if you would.
Have asked anyone that Messi was going to be a non factor essentially in three consecutive games, and in the same team that they were going to be like, man, you're crazy. And although he was good in that third game because he put some balls in, he got the score, he wasn't able to get that team over that hump.
So because of the talent and everything that basically gave in a dantageous situation to in Miami, to me, it was surprising an Atlanta team that was going on a lot of vibes and a lot of character, and they probably gave you their best soccer of the entire season in their last four games, including the decision day and the way they came into this playoff run. So maybe miracle might be the wrong world. At the time, he
seemed pretty good. Maybe now just say surprising. But again, once you're going again the best team of the season, the Shield, the team that broke the record of coins all time for MLS, I think that it was very surprising.
Again at the time, you de seml like a miracle.
All right, So what's going on with you? Now that you get to enjoy your morning a little bit? What else is going on with the folks? You need to know about.
Well, I'm hoping to just do a I haven't done an open mic in a long time. I like to hear from the fans, so I'm trying to set up with a couple of local analysts to do a.
Open mic on X.
I'm gonna do just an open space where people can ask their questions. Obviously, I'll have a rundown that I'll go over and talk about Seattle, mainly what's coming up against LAFC. We'll probably get into the overall playoff picture, and then at the end I'll open it up for.
Folks to ask whatever questions they want.
Love to talk to people, especially with where we are right now in the season, So now that I don't have anything going on uh in soccer bar, I'll probably be able to set that up today, and whether it's later on today in the afternoon or tomorrow afternoon, I will have an open mic on El Rollo and W right there and then we'll collect that audio. We'll put it in our YouTube channel at Postal Sports, so folks
can listen to that a little bit later. But it's interesting because we will be talking a little bit about that other match in the West that I think is going very interesting. I did some nevermind that's gonna sound weird, I was asking I was asking some questions just recently on another show, and one of those questions was, is the winner out of the LAFC Sounders matchup gonna end up winning the MLS Cup?
And I said no, mainly because I do feel like.
LA Galaxies run a form and the group of talent that they have to me are still the contender to come out of the West right now. So it's going to be interesting how that West that LA Galaxy Minnesota game plays out. Because Minnesota has been really good. I think that they could make Ricky struggle to get every single pass that he needs to get out. They're gonna be able to close down or try to minimize how good LA Galaxy are on the flanks, So it's gonna
be a really good matchup. I still got LA Galaxy going through, but I think that was gonna be a good matchup.
So we'll probably get into that.
A little bit since we're on the West coast, So go ahead and check that out. I will put a tweet out of when I'm going to be doing that open mic. But if you got to have any questions about Atlanta or the East Coast. You got to certainly get on there as.
Well, no doubt about it. As always, my friend, great to see you on Thursdays. Enjoy your second cup of coffee. We'll keep an eye out at l Rollo and W on the two hundred and eighty character app for your open space, and we will catch up with you again next week as we get ready for stuff.
That's the official term. Thanks for dropping by my Thank you.
My friend. Have a good one.