Expectations for Inter Miami, Seattle Sounders & LAFC at the Club World Cup! | MLS Update

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And welcome to the Total Soccer Show, your first episode of the week. I think so, Joe Lowry. Is that how we're doing this? Now that we did the Friday show, you and Graham talking about USA Turkey. It was a lovely time for the two of you to spend some time together. But now it's time.

to talk Major League Soccer. Are you ready, Mr. Club World Cup Lowry? I'm ready. First show of the week. We are sprinting into the summer of soccer as the Gold Cup gets nearer and nearer. The Club World Cup gets nearer and nearer. Oh, and there were MLS games this past weekend. Let's do this thing.

Yeah, we're going to talk Club World Cup. We're going to talk about one MLS team in particular, maybe do some Lister question answering. To do so, it's myself, it's Joe, and it's New England superfan himself, Jeff Reuter. Hello, Jeff. It's funny because I have a tattoo that's vaguely related to the Rebs, so I guess you could argue that. I didn't know that they let you get Caleb Porter's face tattooed on you. Yeah, just his coaching dossier, which is just tackle harder and win a game.

Is that why it's adjacent? Because it started out as Portland, and then you've just had to keep making amendments as we've gone? And then I shaded it yellow when he was with Columbus, which I think somehow people have already kind of forgotten. Stop teasing us, Jeff. What's the tattoo? Yeah, right.

Dogzo. It's Dogzo. So the original of this was Pablo Mara and I in like the dregs of 2020 coverage before MLS is back. We're looking over some trademarks that U.S. soccer entities have lodged. And so these are like viable. active trademarks. And there was one for the term Boston Revolution, which I guess the revs were almost named.

And they needed to do a placeholder photo. And so they had this really goofy cartoon dog that has sunglasses on and is prancing away like devil may care. It's like that life is good. t-shirt campaign that was everywhere in the 90s and 2000s with like the the stick figure smiles with the big the big smiles not just like pencil stack sketches it's that art style and it has never been used by the club no one that we could contact who worked for the club in 90

and 95 knew anything about this dog and so naturally the two of us and meg linehan and since then at least half a dozen other people across the united states and canada have decided to get dogs on their bodies so go revs i guess Did we know that the dog was named Dogso? Or was that a creative soccer name for a creative soccer? Yeah, this was a stray. This was an unnamed stray dog. Gotcha. And Boston Revolution may have been its formal name, but it wasn't really zippy.

And it wasn't really responding to Boston Revolution at this point. So we decided to just name him Doxo. Why can't... why can't i find this dog all i can find is the boston terrier revolution that's the only thing that shows up because it goes by dog so taylor that's why it doesn't respond and i was told that that doesn't exist and now i believe our headline

involves the term beats cleats and eats which is also a trademark mls is sitting on wow why yeah why that music soccer food festival that they're gonna put on in 2027 obviously My friend, I believe you'll find that Celebrating All-Star Week has a Celebrating All-Star Week live from Beats, Cleats, and Eats. So there you go. They used it. There we go.

They rolled with it. All right. We broke news. I broke news in 2020. That's amazing. I had no idea. Just that and COVID protocols. Anyway. Did you get the tattoo during COVID? I got it, I think, October of 21. So I waited until there was limited beds or space from each other. As listeners can tell, we do not have a full draft to do this week or awards to hand out.

We're riffing. I'm trying to decide if I would be more surprised that Pablo did the tattoo himself for you or less surprised that he didn't do it. I don't know which one. I don't know which one because I could see both scenarios happening. I think the air of mystery of me not confirming it today is really important here, and I'm going to respect that.

It's even stranger because Joe also has a Bruce Arena back piece that he never shows up. Yeah, here, let me turn around. Yeah, it's inspired by Zlatan's lion, but instead of a lion's head, it's just Bruce Arena. Saying, not my fault, and it's dated to 2017.

believe anyway uh let's not talk about new england anymore or any of their coaches let's talk about club world cup because it's right around the corner we're going to be doing some previewing of the club world cup on the feed later in the week for now joe we've got Three teams from Major League Soccer competing, and they're all going to win the whole thing, right?

Yeah, no. I did a piece for Backheeled earlier this week based off of some comments that Don Garber made last winter at his State of the League address in Carson, California. And he said, quote, I saw something in the news today about transfer market values of each Club World Cup club. No, he didn't. Yes, he did. He said this word for word. And clearly, MLS teams are at the lower quadrant of transfer market values. So here's the context here.

state of the league address was like a day maybe two days after the club world cup draw and he this is absolutely real don garber sees a graphic of all this and talks about it in his state of the league address and references how

Yeah, these teams probably aren't going to do great. That's the implied bit. The implied bit from all of this is, yeah, as far as this newly expanded 32-team Club World Cup is concerned, keep your expectations low. Now, Garber goes on to say, in classic Don Garber fashion, That's something over time that I hope to be able to see continue to grow as our teams are investing more in players and hopefully generating more revenue to justify that expense. That's exactly the messaging that we expect.

from MLS and its owners at this point, from a majority of owners at this point. It's what we know. So as far as MLS teams' hopes in this competition go... They're not high right now. I went through and looked at a bunch of different numbers in that piece for Backhill. I think it's interesting. I don't know. People can go read it if they want to. None of it is particularly surprising, but I pulled those transfer market values. I want you to guess, Taylor, of the 32 teams in this tournament.

Which MLS club has the highest transfer market value, which maybe I'll start with a quick explainer of what these are. It's a crowdsourced monetary value that are assigned to every player that can then be combined. to form a team's overall squad value. These are not based on anything other than people writing numbers down. At the same time, these figures are used by some data analysts, I know for absolute fact.

as a way to sort of come up with a proxy for squad value and like how good teams are. So anyway, with that explanation out of the way. Taylor, which MLS team do you think is highest of the three competing in terms of transfer market squad value? That's the first question. The second question is, where do they rank out of 32 in this list?

I would assume in order it is Miami, LAFC, Seattle. And I would assume that Miami are like near the middle, but like bottom middle. And then I would say the other two are closer to the bottom.

Yeah, that's not bad. So Miami are top. Then it was Seattle, then LAFC. But you do find a little bit of flipping between all these teams when you look at Optus club rankings, which are an ELO-based system. Opta had to take some guesses in this, but they're pretty darn similar. So in the transfer market ratings, it is Miami at 20th, Seattle at 23rd,

LAFC at 24th. So you are basically bang on there, Taylor, in terms of your expectation of where these teams fall. Good job, Taylor. The Opta rankings have... have LAFC at 20th, Miami at 23rd, and Seattle at 24th. So, I mean, 20, 23rd, 24th, right in that range, and slight variation depending on where the teams actually fall. But the takeaway here is...

There's a lot of better teams in this competition than the MLS teams, like some teams from Asia and RIP Auckland City ahead of time. These MLS teams are... up against it in terms of them and comparing to the absolute giants of the competition there should be no expectation that an MLS team is going to progress far in this tournament there should only be hope

that they're going to get out of the group. I'm not expecting any of these teams to get out of the group. I think it is possible, certainly. It is not the most likely outcome that you would get any one of these teams to progress into the next round. Like Don Garber said, these teams just do not have as much value. do not have as much talent and good players as a lot of other teams competing in this tournament, it's going to be a lot of uphill sledding.

Having not really looked at all the different groups until this conversation, I've mostly looked at the MLS group so far. Why are Salzburg here? Nobody knows. Okay, cool. Just wanted to make sure that was clear. All right. On a real note, though, we will talk about all of this on shows coming up this week with great concise explanations.

If you can't tell, Taylor and I have not done our prep yet. The Salzburg one is somehow the strangest one, and that includes like Vidal Casablanca and Esperance de Tunis, which I'm assuming are further down the list in some of the MLS clubs. So if the goal isn't to win the whole thing, if the goal isn't to get out of the group, is there a goal for these MLS teams? Jeff, you are welcome to share your thoughts as well on that one. What do you think is a realistic goal for these teams?

I think the realistic goal is to not embarrass themselves. But even in Seattle's case, maybe we'll talk about them more specifically in just a second. Man, they were dealt a tough hand for a number of different reasons, even beyond just the group that they're in. But I think the goal was to show decently well in front of fans in your home country. I don't really think there is a huge immediate goal beyond that. You can look at some specific instances of players.

And think about how this could be a better shop window for MLS teams with a bunch of soccer personnel in and around these games watching these matches. who are not maybe tuning in or at least not present at some of these more regular season MLS games. But I think the goal is to not embarrass themselves. I think the goal is to sort of see maybe if a team can go and... and get a draw against a big club, or see how you stack up against teams that you just don't play. But I don't...

I don't think there should be any expectations for these teams that go out there and dazzle. Jeff, to me, that is just not realistic here. I don't think so. I think when you describe 20th through 24th in terms of a couple of different metrics, that sounds a lot like a...

plucky underdog us men's national team entering a 32 team world cup right where you look and expectations can be hey if we can give some teams a good game if we catch um for example let's use the seattle sounder seattle got placed in essentially the group of death. I would argue when you look at it, you've got Paris Saint-Germain.

reigning champions of Europe. You've got Atletico Madrid. You've got Botafogo, who are the reigning Copa Libertadores champion. And then you as well, the Seattle Sounders. Yeah, I would say the only reason why it's not a group of death is because Seattle is in it, which it sounds critical. It's not meant to be critical. It's more so a statement fact that those other three are just so very strong.

I'm just imagining like remember those 2014 pregame things that ESPN had where Kiefer Sutherland, a Canadian, was narrating over a Jack White guitar riff. There is one point where they call it the group of death, but it's because we're in it. I love the idea of him. They call it the group of death, but it's not.

Because we're in it. It's just like, that is Canadian, actually. That would be the way too soon for their time Canada one. Anyway, love you, Canada. It's a tough group. And I think you look at that and you say, for Seattle, they're openers against Botafogo. You need all three points of that game. And I think they can get it, actually. Botafogo has been... I did our...

cites the athletics group guide for B and C. And so I had to really look at all of these teams. And Botafogo, since Libertadores, have lost over half of their starting lineup. They had a couple of really crucial veterans, including their captain.

and the only player of their last 20 years to get 100 games with them. It's a lot of squad rotation in Brazil. And he was out of contract and he left. Another star defender left. Their leading scorers, their first three or four leading scorers all left. Tiago Almada as well. they've just had a serious exodus of talent where if you're Seattle, you look and say, that's our win. And I think either way, by the way, you would say, is it between Botafogo?

Atletico Madrid and PSG, which ones are most likely Avenue for three points. Right. So like, you know, this isn't rocket science here, but at the same point, if you start off with three points and you can pick off one against the European giants, or if those two European teams. You're just getting into like group permutations and calculus at this point. And that is usually a sign that you're an underdog.

if you're kind of like running these, and again, this is very like us miss national team in like 20, 2010 and 2014, where you're just kind of looking and you're saying, okay, if we get this result and we take these points off of this team, it'll be a little easier. So, you know, think that there's some competitiveness i think that the biggest thing would be actually just to remain competitive i think that that will be

The proof of concept MLS wants is if they aren't the league whose teams are getting blown out 8-0, 9-0 and getting those international headlines. They had a little bit of that that they had to deal with in 2024 when Inter Miami was on.

preseason tour of saudi arabia and elsewhere and they were just getting played off the park there but they're in mid-season form now so they're hoping that teams will be in a little bit better stead and maybe better prepared than some of these teams that are coming right at the end of their seasons and are kind of desperate for

offseason regeneration all right let's do this let's take a break we'll come back we'll talk about each individual team each individual group see what our expectations are there we'll get to that in the next segment back soon We know daily sun care protection is crucial, but it's often hard to find one that sits well under makeup.

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Welcome back, everybody. Joe Lowry coming to you for Group A of the Club World Cup. We've got Palmeiras, Porto, Al-Ali, and Inter Miami. Inter Miami starting off on June 14th at home to Al-Ali. Then they've got Porto, then Palmeiras. How are you feeling about Inter-Miami coming into this competition? Yeah, Miami are, I think, in a better place in a lot of respects than they've been for a little bit now. Their last MLS game was that 5-1 win over Columbus.

That was also when they lost Oscar Ustari in goal. He came off in that game with an injury. I do not know the severity of that injury. Their goalkeeping situation, not great. Their attacking play, though, has been a little bit sharper, and they've been more aggressive running in behind back lines. I think I talked about that.

on a recent episode. Miami are in decent form. Messi and Argentina have a game tonight as we're recording. You would assume he'll be back in a few days of rest sort of before this game coming up to kick off the tournament on Saturday. That is Miami against Al-Ali. This is, of all the MLS teams, to me, this is the most get-out-able of the groups. Not that I'm expecting that to happen, but you look at these teams, there is no...

True European giant. Not to say that Porto aren't wildly better than Miami. Of course they are. But they are not athletic. They are not PSG. Miami have the best player in this group, which is something that no other MLS team in this competition can say. And they'll still keep the ball.

at times. I think that's an interesting thing about Miami compared to LAFC and Seattle. All three of these teams that MLS play are very ball-oriented teams, which is not to say that LAFC do that all that well at times, and same with Seattle.

but they are top five, top eight teams in MLS in terms of possession share, Miami will continue to keep the ball because they cannot do it another way. You will not get Messi and Suarez to defend. You might get them to defend a little bit more in the Club World Cup. You're not going to get them to defend enough that it's really going to be all that influential in these games. So I don't think they're going to deviate tactically like some of these other teams are in matches this summer.

I don't know if that's exactly a help because then you leave yourself open to get gashed in transition by Samuel Omorodian, who is just an absolute baller for Porto and is going to make Tomas Aviles hurt in this tournament.

But it does give Miami some continuity that other MLS teams will not have in this tournament. They have the best odds, according to the bookmakers, of actually going and progressing to the round of 16 here of the MLS teams, which, again, feels right when you look at the teams that they're up against.

they're going to concede chances, like a lot of chances in this tournament. They already concede a lot of chances in MLS play, and you're not going up against a striker who's playing for the Spanish national team in MLS play? The question for them...

And the only way that there are only two ways, I think, really, that they get out of the group. But the question for them, the main one is, can they get enough in the attack to compensate for the fact that they're shipping more chances? Or can they get a miracle in goal, which would help all three of these MLS teams? Yeah, Inter-Miami feel like the ones that could get out of the group and could also lose a game 6-0.

Potentially you're six to one or six to two. They do have the messy aspect of things. And that's not just that he is a difference maker in his own right. He is also such.

a high-profile player, I do wonder if maybe Ali players could be a little bit excited to play Messi and be worrying about who gets his jersey at halftime instead of maybe worrying about the game itself. That is... being discourteous to the Egyptian champions, who themselves are an incredibly good team, who scored a ton of goals this season, finished second in the regular season, but then in their version of the playoffs ended up winning, and have...

Plenty of talent that can cause problems that I think could be a really difficult team that could just kind of grind their way through this group. But I think having those next level difference makers for Inter Miami is where a lot of those odds are coming from. I'm not breaking any news.

on that one, I think. But this one is the one that I think is interesting because it could be Miami losing all three games by a considerable margin and it could be Miami finding a way to get a win and get a draw and make it to the next round. Jeff, where are you on Miami's chances?

Yeah, I like you shouting out the shock and awe factor playing against Messi because we saw that pretty much every week in MLS and the League's Cup from when he arrived until I would say like the middle of 2024. It took kind of a year where even...

Opponents who were playing him for the first time weren't like, ooh, can you believe Luis Suarez is up against me on a quarter kick? And then you immediately concede. This happened in the season opener against RSL last year. I vividly remember this one. And if you look at Palmeiras, that entire squad, every player on that squad.

You've got a handful of Argentines, including a crucial center back and a defensive midfielder. You've also got Facundo Torres, Joe's old friend, who might want to show that he's better than Lionel Messi so that he can win flowers from Joe Lowry. I think that there's a couple of teams where you would look at and say, like, okay, there's...

you know, there's a chance that they could slip up. Maybe their squad balance will be a little off if their mentality is off, right? So it'll be interesting there. Porto, like you said, not one of the giants. I looked into why Salzburg is there because I felt like I should probably know that. And basically Europe got 12 spots.

um the last four champions league winners got in madrid won twice okay so then the last nine spots are the highest uh like four year uefa coefficient and apparently salzburg has been The ninth best team in Europe over the last four years. And you look and Juventus is one of them. And all Juventus has really done is made the round of 16 twice. So I think we don't...

I think we take for granted just how much rotation there actually is once you get to like the round of 16 of a Champions League. I digress. I think that you look at this tournament and the issues that have... made Miami so fallible in MLS are issues that are never going to be remedied in a knockout tournament format either. You can't change the fact that Jordy Alba probably has to play and is...

maybe one of the biggest defensive liabilities in Major League Soccer in any position. That's a designated player, right? Correct. Still a designated player until 2027. New terms for designated player contract. I will never understand that one. You also have Oscar Ustari flailing a goal. Bless his heart. He's trying his best. They need reinforcement there in a big way. I just think that some of these issues that Miami is...

run into are just kind of uncarable as the squad is currently constructed. So I think that they actually, the other thing to keep in mind is because Messi is there, like Palmeiras and Ali are not going to treat those games lightly.

Like, it's not going to be a case where you're rotating out so that you can have your A team for Porto. You might actually sacrifice points against Porto because you want to beat Messi, which would arguably be, if you can't win the tournament, maybe the next best thing, Saudi Arabia, 2022. Right. So I think that they're going to be up against it. I think it's going to be really tough. But I will say, if you believe in referee match fixing conspiracies.

I would imagine FIFA does not want to see Lionel Messi get grouped in this tournament. And so I think that you'll see, you'll hear a lot of complaints, I am sure, about the standard of officiating in Group A. I have no doubts. If he takes a free kick and doesn't score it, how many times will they call encroachment? Mulligans. There's a mulligan rule now. Close enough.

Go for myth. Right. Dead balls only. Right. Yeah. And you go to a Topgolf basically and you launch them onto different platforms and then you get points. Perfect. Right. So suddenly he'll get a 500 goal free kick. And then how can you possibly come back? I mean, the thing is, you say this in jest, but given the explanation of how Saul's brother here, it feels like a way that they might do, like...

tiebreaker coefficient tabulating to eventually get Miami through. Joe, you mentioned the injury to Ustari. If he can't go, is Calendar back? Or he had sports tornado surgery in May, so is he still injured? I think he's out until the end of June. Yeah, I think your options if we start – well, let's just say you start at Kengo because it doesn't change this conversation at all. Your three options can go are Rocco, Rios, Novo.

Phoenix Rising legend. I will not hear any disrespect from Atlanta United fans on the Argentine GOAT. So I'm going to just pause that right there. Oscar Ustari and William Yarbrough when Jeff's talking about reinforcements. Oh, they got the reinforcement already, baby. William Yarbrough is in town. Yeah, it's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. Yeah, that William Yarborough, the one who is 56, but also 20.

Seven? I don't actually know how old he is, but he's not as old as I always feel like he should be. I think the framing of all of these MLS teams in the Club World Cup... There you go. We've already established that they are unlikely to advance in the group. I think the way that I'm viewing this tournament is just... as chaos. Like, how can I be entertained by the chaos? And Miami are going to be a must watch.

Taylor, you summed it up with saying they could go out there and score six goals or they could go out there and concede six goals. They'll be the Inter-Miami of MLS in this competition. Anything is on the table. Okay, not anything. A lot of things are on the table for Miami in this tournament. The other two teams are interesting in other ways. But when you're looking at the team that has the most potential to captivate and shock and awe of the MLS bunch...

Which is all I'm about. We should not be expecting MLS teams to succeed in this tournament if we're viewing success as winning games. It's like watching CF Montreal play in Major League Soccer. They're playing by different rules than the teams that are really trying to win stuff. So when you look at Miami, it's really not about, oh, could they make it out of the group? I mean, it's fun. It's fun to talk about this stuff. And same with Seattle and LAFC. But really, it's about...

Can we have fun while we watch this tournament? And for some people, that answer is going to be no. I think for me, when I watch these MLS teams play, yeah, the answer is going to be yeah. Was it two or three different shots at CF Montreal? I don't know. I really was just trying to do one. But I mean, if we want to keep more on the pile, that's fine. Given the state of their defense, I'm assuming they've conceded two shots. There it is. Well done. Well done, Jeff.

got the group of death plus the Seattle Sounders. Group B, PSG, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, and Seattle. Seattle with their first game against Botafogo on June 15th. Then it's Atleti. Then it's PSG. All of those are at home. So that's good. I take what you all have said and agree with it loudly that it's Seattle. With injuries, then getting the toughest competition they probably could have gotten. And on top of it just being like renowned competition.

It's an Atleti team that no matter what are going to be stuck in and really difficult to beat. And then it's a PSG team that, as we've talked about many times, I don't know if they can like take a day off. I don't know if they can coast. I guess we'll see how much if Lucho is up. on a cherry picker screaming at them in training, we know they are coming out at an 11 out of 10. If he's only screaming at them from ground level, it's just like a 9 out of 10. All the same.

I think it's two very strong opponents in very different ways. And then you've got Botafogo thrown in who are themselves no slouch. So I do think this is probably...

The toughest ask of any MLS team. Do we see any way? I mean, it's basically what PSG and Atleti are here for the for the vibes and for the summer summer rays and maybe not taking it seriously and maybe. or dysfunctional, it feels like it requires a lot of external factors for Seattle to get something out of it, which again is not meant to be a shot at Seattle, more so just a statement of how difficult this group is.

Yeah, and I would assume that if one of the Europeans is going to be a little bit unaware, it might be PSG just because they just won the Champions League. So maybe there's less pressure to do well in this competition, right? So I don't think that that levels the playing field per se. but maybe it makes it a little bit less of a mountain to climb. Botafogo, again, they have three players who are in active negotiations with Nottingham Forest.

Like just one club to one club, three different players. So I think that there's going to be a lot of heads turned and still trying to learn each other's names. And again, they've lost their captain from last year's Libertadores run.

So I think if Seattle wants to, and I'm sure that they might, well, I don't know if they want to, they've been protesting at the loudest of the three clubs. So maybe they don't want to advance in this competition either, or they're, you know, proactively painting that visage so that if they get grouped, it'll be. Yeah, stick it to the man, which is really punk rock of them, and I endorse that wholeheartedly. All that being said, you need to win against Botafogo.

Like that is your clearest roadmap in is you beat Botafogo and then you either need one point or there's a lot of draws in this group and you're in the clear. And can they do that? Sure, they might. But at the same point, we've seen the sounder side go. two, three games in a row where they look like, yes, this is a Brian Schmetzer Seattle Sounders that looks like they can contend on all fronts and be very tough to break down. And then they'll put in one or two games.

like the one they had over the weekend against Vancouver, where Vancouver is coming into the game, and they are openly admitting we might struggle to find 11 healthy players whose bowels will allow them to play a game of soccer and then go score one goal.

Seattle completely melts down, gets two red cards in like five minutes, and then you lost 3-0 against the weakest version of your top competition at the top of the Western Conference, right? So I think that there are still some kind of squad issues there. who I think has been kind of handled with kids' gloves here, he is defensively about as suspect as Jordi Alba at this stage of his career.

And I don't say that lightly. I think I don't know if there is a defender who is more consistent for a why did you do that sort of clearance, header towards goal, missed pass, whatever, than Nuhutolo at this stage of his career.

continues to be unimpeachable in that lineup either as a left-sided center back where he has some more mobility and he can progress a field or as the left back in the back four where he is even more of a defensive liability in my opinion so if he starts every game that'll also be kind of difficult I think that opponent will find him very fun to exploit. I think it'll be very, very tough. Very tough.

Yeah, this is Mo Salah erasure of Nuhu shutting down Mo Salah in Africa not too long ago. I mean, it was probably like four years ago now. I'm less concerned about Nuhu specifically in the Seattle team and more just concerned that there's just no way for them to compete in this group. You even...

That's before you even get to the fact that Jordan Morris is expected to miss the Club World Cup with injury. Yaimar, Kim Kihee have been out injured. Jackson Reagan's only just back from injury. Their center back core right now is just a husk. Honestly, they might lose to PSG by seven goals. It is going to be... Yeah, there's no way they advance in this group. It's that simple. That said, complaining about...

The machine itself, while being part of the machine itself, does feel kind of grunge, and that feels very Seattle to me. So punk rock or grunge, either way, it all kind of blends in. Yeah. Yeah. So there we go. So it feels appropriate that they're here. And then if they do lose all three, I do like the idea of it being a protest performance, especially if they just down tools and do their own. Right. Yeah. They'll just play the man who.

stole the world, and it'll take 20 years for people to realize what a good pick that was. I couldn't think of the right song, and you did it really quickly. Nicely done, Jeff. I got you. Well done, sir. Joe, any grunge references for you?

Yeah, grunge. Woo! Let's go to Group D then. We've got Flamenco, Esperance de Tunis, the Tunisian champions who are... here because they had one of the best coefficient rankings in africa i think is the answer See? We're getting more specific as we go. Someone's been doing their research. Yeah. I did a lot of reading on Esperance de Tunis in Tunisian football. It was interesting. Flamenco, Esperance de Tunis, Chelsea, and LAFC.

This is one that does feel... I think initially, I was just cynically like, no, all three MLS teams are getting grouped. There's no chance they're all going to get blown out. And I do think there is more of an argument for...

Miami potentially, and for LAFC getting out. Because this group... No disrespect to Esperance, to Tunis, but I think that they are a beatable team in this one. At the very least, I think LAFC could finish ahead of them. And then you've got Flamengo and Chelsea. Chelsea can be dysfunctional. We don't know how excited they're going to be.

to be to be here oh that was tricky to say and that is an ever-present aspect of this competition is is this going to be Manchester United going to Malaysia and really not wanting to be there and really wanted to be on holiday and kind of showing up but not really showing up Or is this going to be players trying to prove a point that they should be in the starting 11? Is this managers wanting to justify that they are the right people to be in charge? So it could be...

a very strong Chelsea team who come out and destroy everybody. It could be a lethargic Chelsea team who don't really want to be here and are wide open and treated as kind of glorified preseason. And I think LAFC with the way... They prefer to play or have come to play under Steve Chirondolo.

kind of suits them a little bit. I'm less familiar with Flamenco, though they are top of Brazilian Serie A through 11 games. Seven wins, three draws, only the one loss. The more troubling number for me would be 24 goals, four and four. With some known names in there, a lot of veterans, like 28, 29, 30-year-olds in that team, it's an experienced Flamenco team that I think could spring some surprises themselves. So I think that ends up being a trickier game than I expected it to be.

Right up until you started hyping up Flamengo, Taylor, you laid out the bowl case for LAFC in this group, which is that Chelsea don't really care. Although with the amount of money that's on offer, FIFA have made it so hard for teams not to care. And even if Chelsea don't care... Even if their first 20 players don't share it, there's only 20 that could come in and play. But you've laid out the case there, which is Chelsea have to not care and have to put out a rotated team.

And LAFC have to lean all the way into the approach that Steve Trondola has preferred since he's been in charge there of playing on the break. Like this roster with Denny Bawanga in it can be very effective at playing on the break. He is, I was thinking about this yesterday. Think of any player in CONCACAF, Denny Buonga is probably the scariest one to see sprinting at you at full tilt in transition. He is scary. And we've seen when he was in Ligue 1.

I think he can score against any team in the world. Like Denny Bong, I think is a legit Champions League level attacker, not for a Chelsea, but I think he is, he is probably still underrated in how good he is. And I think he will get some in this competition. He got LAC here. I think he will show up in the group stage. But man, you look at, forget Chelsea, who we know even if they play players 20 through 31, like they're still going to be scary good. Flamengo?

have 15 designated players in that roster. Like Flamengo are so good. And we can run through some of these names later in the week. I don't need to do it now. Come back for our Clubber Cup previews coming up this week if you care about that sort of thing.

The Flamengo are awesome. And LAFC are just so clearly the third best team in this group. That's the case for all these teams. You're either third or fourth best in the group. You have to beat one of the Giants. You have to get something out of one of the Giants and hope for things to fall your way. I'll put it that way. To get out.

It's possible. Sure it is. Yeah, it is possible. But man, going up and beating Flamengo would be an incredible accomplishment. Like maybe best ever win for an MLS team level accomplishment. That's what we're talking about here. I think spot on framing, Joe.

I think that you could really make a credible case that if they could pull that off against Flamengo, Chelsea obviously would be maybe even bigger, but I think Flamengo would justifiably so. Wesley might be a name familiar to some Premier League clubs. He's Flamengo's right back. He's a very...

very attacking minded right back. Right. Well, that also leaves a lot of space exploited where if the defense isn't doing the switch offs, Denny Bawanga is going to feast in that matchup. And so there actually is like a really compelling tactical advantage there that does play to Bawanga skill.

set and strengths and how the team likes to feed him so there is reason for hope there um yeah i mean you guys have have really uh nailed it like i think overall it's it's been a um You know, it's a draw that generally... Could have been a lot worse for them when you look at the balance of some other groups, including ones we've talked about here. But yeah, I think that LAFC is going to be a bit of a wild card. Similar to Miami, if they feel obligated to play Olivier Giroud 70 minutes a game...

because he is one of their biggest stars. I think that they will suffer for that. I think that they have struggled a lot whenever Giroud has started. He has looked really good coming off the bench lately, and I understand wanting to play him against especially Chelsea to try to maximize the draw for the LA.

side of things um but again just because he's one of your most famous players doesn't mean your team plays terribly well when he's on the field and so it will be very interesting to see how steve shirundalo kind of weighs those aims and objectives Toronto is leaving at the end of the season, correct? Either way, yes. Is there any chance that that decision is impacted by how this team does at the Club World Cup? In terms of does he leave ASAP? Like if they win the Club World Cup, I'd quit too.

If that's what you're getting at. Is there a reality in which they get crushed and he's just like, nope, this isn't it. What I keep going back to is I think of their schedule. And I know this is kind of... like an esoteric question but i'm asking anyway because i'm curious like so their schedule is chelsea

Up first, then flamenco, then Esperanza de Tunis. And I could see a scenario in which, let's say, they do meet a kind of lethargic, we're here, but we just did 14 different interviews and three PR shoots and we're tired, Chelsea. and they're not really into it, and that finish is 0-0 or 1-1. And then LAFC lose to Flamenco. So they've got the one point from the first two games, but they've got Esperance to Tunis. If you win that game, maybe goal difference goes in your favor. You can get through.

And in a game where they have to really go for it and make something happen and be the progressive attacking team. they kind of maybe don't get it going? Like, is there a world in which maybe this is the crystallizing moment of this isn't the guy who's going to make us reach a new level, score goals? Or do you feel like they've already kind of... understand who they are, understand who he is, and are just going to see it out no matter what. I mean, I think it's a, I can see it.

Right. Like I can see where the optics of it are. Let's move on to the next phase of our project sooner, if you already know. Right. So like, I think that side of it makes sense. I don't see a version of this where he decides I'm going to ask for another year. Yeah. At the end of this. Right. So like, I think you are really. only speaking in that hypothetical yeah that's probably true could it

potentially, but the thing is, they've turned it on a bit as of late in MLS competition. They've looked a little bit better since his announcement of it. I'm pulling up their match log right now. It's no New England Revs. Actually, maybe it is. One, two, three, four, five. five, six, seven, eight, nine. LAFC is unbeaten in nine.

I repeat. That's the best thing you could have said. Since April 13th. Now, do we need to fact check this for U.S. Open Cup games? Because Joe and I both did some U.S. Open Cup searching for the New England Revolution, Jeff, and that seems to have been left off of your...

Yes, it was. It was left off of it. This was league only. Yes. It was a snappier quote, and I was intoxicated by the moment, and I was not thinking of logic. I was not thinking of the Open Cup, and that is a failure in my part. Nor should you in that case.

did not need to be checked in that instance. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a 0% chance that Steve Srundel gets fired after this tournament or leaves. For an MLS team to make a decision like that after a Club World Cup competition, it would be... absurd like I might point and laugh should that happen and I would not be the only one LAFC are not that reactionary to do something like that I don't I don't think there's any you couldn't see Miami do that if Miami lost every game like 5-0

I can see Miami do it. That's the exception to the rule. But, I mean, Seattle and LAFC, to look at those three teams, they're way too savvy. Like, these teams know what they're up against. It is, in some way, and I know we've just spent 40 minutes doing this.

In some way, thinking about this tournament through an MLS lens is maybe the least interesting way to think about it because the expectation is just so clear of where these teams fall. All of them are in that bottom third sort of teams in this competition where if they get out of the group...

Hey, it's a rousing success. We didn't see that coming. If they get grouped, it's zero surprise at all. It is just so black and white that it almost lacks some intrigue, which is, again, why I keep going back to it in my head. I'm just going to see how much fun I can have, how entertained I can be watching these teams play. And I can tell you, I'd definitely be entertained.

There we go. And I just enjoy living in a world in which Steve Turandolo continues to be connected to American soccer. So long may that be the case for at least another few months at minimum. We're going to take one more break. We'll come back. We'll talk less about the Club World Cup, more about this can't be right.

DC United? We're going to talk about DC United. Are we sure we want to do this, gentlemen? Oh, yeah. One of those felt more confident than the other one. We'll see. We'll see where we go. Back soon. I'm always up before the birds and the kids. Good thing Costa Express is always up too. Early starts are easier with great coffee. And if I grab one for Bob, I might even get some decent company.

Large cappuccino for the bloke who's half asleep. Oh, you legend. Now that's a proper coffee. Should kick in Justin Sanford to remember which end of the screwdriver to use. Costa Express. Quality coffee. Every time. On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages, whether it's a voice call, message or sending a password. To WhatsApp, it's all just this.

So whether you're trading those late night voice calls that could basically become a podcast or sharing the streaming password to the family chat, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp. Message privately. Hi there. I'm off this week. Apparently we're more productive at work after a good holiday. So, I'm counting this Caribbean rum distillery tour as professional development. Yours, Colin.

Take your holiday as seriously as British Airways holidays take your holiday. Atoll protected. Welcome back to the Total Soccer Show. I feel like this season...

At various points, I have made a lot of jokes about DC United. Do we want to talk about DC United? Are they going to win the Supporters' Shield? Are they going to win MLS Cup? Are they going to win everything?

And it's been greeted with a lot of tongue-in-cheek silence, which I do appreciate, which allows me to just wallow in my misery. That misery was compounded this weekend with another home loss, another sizable home loss at that, Joe, which... led you to add them to the running order and i i don't know what to make of it are we sure we want to do this joe larry i mean yeah i think when teams are are abysmal it warrants talking about them because

NMLS, it feels like this is a league with very little consequences. If you don't really care to be competitive, you can do that without any real repercussions. I suppose this is our small way of hitting back at some of that. That feels so harsh to say about a team that hasn't made the playoff in five seasons and has gone...

I think, 11 of the last 17 seasons without playoffs, which is kind of insane when you think about how many teams make the playoffs. Joe, how dare you say that they don't have aspirations to be great? Well, and the thing that's frustrating about all this is we were talking about this a little bit in our break.

When we think about teams being bad, and D.C. are bad, they lost 7-1 against the Chicago Fire over the weekend. They were one of the few MLS games that happened this week during the international break. At home. Yeah, at home. Thank you, Jeff. It is absurd that MLS plays these games during the break.

It's a joke. It is such a joke that these games happen. Both teams, though, missing players to international duty. This was not so one-sided. Both teams missing their star strikers for this game due to injury. This is a pretty level playing field. Both teams are dealt a pretty similar...

hand in terms of this specific game you look at dc they're struggling when we talk about teams that are struggling in soccer and in sports in general the first place we go is money because we know that if you get money you can buy better players and having better players means that you can win more games

Well, at MLS, there is no correlation, zero, between spending and success. Toronto FC can go and spend all the money they want. It has not helped them become a successful team in Major League Soccer in recent years. There is no correlation. The Philadelphia Union barely spent anything on their first team roster.

They spend a bunch on the academy, so they are spending stuff, but they don't spend on the first team and they are, they're maybe going to win the shield this year. So I just want to be clear about that. It is not that DC have to spend more money to be competitive. That's not how this works.

Now, there is blame on ownership for their problems, but when a team is not doing anything remarkably well, and when they're getting blown out, they lost 6-1 to San Jose earlier this year on the anniversary of the very first game in MLS history between DC United and San Jose.

And then they come in and lose 7-1 just a little bit later. Yeah, it's embarrassing. And I think it bears some discussion here of like, where does the blame fall? And I think there are plenty of answers to that question. It's...

Such a big question with so many answers that it could probably be its own whole episode. It could probably be its own whole miniseries if we wanted to go that route. Because we're talking about a club that for the first few years of the league were dominant and had... Bruce Arena as he was becoming like that Bruce Arena, but they had some of the most beloved figures.

Maybe not in MLS history, but not far removed from it. Certainly in D.C. history, Marco Echeverri reigns supreme in how much supporters love him. Eddie Pope is on that list as well. John Harkes, Raul Diaz-Arce, Jaime Moreno, all like. key parts of that team and key names in the league. And then it just kind of continues to fall down from there. And that goes back to...

Ben Olsen being the coach and then the kind of series of coaches they go through to get to this point. But it is the change in ownership. It's with the departure from RFK Stadium, moving to Audi Field. There just been so many moments where it felt like things could be righted. The ship could be turned around. And yet here we are in kind of the same situation, which is why that question of what's gone wrong and how do you fix it to me is so murky. And with that.

of preamble out of the way jeff i turn it to you to fix the whole solution yeah and it's it's it's simple as that so i'm glad that we're here no look i mean i was I was looking at their last seven years of underlying numbers since 2019, I went back to. And that was the last full season of Ben Olsen. He left at the end of 2020, right? And they played 23 games that year.

They have had a positive goal differential just once over the last five seasons since departing him, and that was a plus two in 2021, a year in which they famously walloped Chris Armis' Toronto FC 7-1.

which, you know, history repeating itself here. If you remove that one result, it's a negative four goal differential. So I know that you can only play the schedule you have, but there has never been a time where DC United has been... average value in terms of just score lines when you look at expected goal difference you'll see a similar trend there um i think that i i like how taylor frames it as like a lot of missed opportunities

where there were waves, especially, I would say, I think that the biggest one I can remember is when Wayne Rooney arrived right around the time that Audi was opening. And so there was this whole big like, okay, now DC is here, right? And then it just... fell apart, right? I mean...

Sure, no one predicted 2020 in the world, clearly, or else we would have been maybe better prepared for it. But at the same point, it put an end to what could have been a promising era. So I can understand if there is some... it's easy to sort of excuse why that momentum kind of sputtered out. But overall, we talk so often about these like legacy MLS clubs that had struggled.

in the back half of the 2010s to keep pace with the new kids, right? And how you had a stretch where it was the Timbers and the Sounders and Atlanta and Toronto, I guess, because they basically were an expansion club for a second time in like 2013. once they learned how to build a coherent squad from the top down.

There were just a lot of clubs coming in, LAFC, that were doing things better than the legacy clubs. And it was a big hand-wringing moment towards 2019 or so of, okay, how do we get these clubs that helped found the league?

The Galaxy were very far adrift at this point. The Columbus crew were almost relocated to Austin. It was really... nationwide and what you've seen is a lot of clubs that have figured out okay what we need to do is we need to advance our model we need to invest more like we're a new club we need to bring in more uh

we need to bring in more revenue. We need to bring in more ownership, Mike, but we also need to bring in more analysts and we need to bring in more support staff and we need to have a better facility and all these sorts of things. And they've been going about upgrading it. And so you can see that happened with Columbus winning two MLS cups, the galaxy.

this year, obviously, but are able to retool to win MLS Cup in 2024. You see the Chicago Fire pushing to build a stadium in Chicago to get out of that venue. You see even the New York Red Bulls kind of decoupling a little. bit from the Red Bull model and doing things a little more their own way. Again, your mileage may vary, but they did make it down the last cup last year. So all of this to say is there are

A variety of ways that these clubs that have been around for 30 years or so in Major League Soccer can evolve and can keep up with the expansion groups. And DC United has just pretty willingly chosen to ignore almost all.

of those avenues. And that is ultimately where it's like, it's self-fulfilling. I don't know if changing coaches is going to fix any. I don't think it will. Actually, I'll go on a limb. It won't. They've tried changing the coach to change the coach. It has not fixed things in the past. This is about the squad build.

It's about the culture. It's about the support structure. It's about how Audi Field already feels. You know, it's kind of like PayPal Park over in San Jose where the owners are kind of begrudgingly like, you know, we didn't we didn't build this to be modern enough. We didn't have the foresight. It's like, yeah, but you're still stuck in it.

And there maybe could be things you could do to renovate it and to improve it. And you just choose not to do these things, right? And so I don't think any club wants to be compared to John Fisher's San Jose Earthquakes in terms of top-down operation.

They've kind of earned it at this point on track record. Yeah, and I think if you have a negligent owner, you have a negligent owner. If you have an owner who's kind of absentee and doesn't care, that is infuriating. You at least can then understand how things aren't going well. And if you have an owner who's involved or has a vision for how they want the club to operate, all the better. It's that begrudging aspect that I think.

is really so difficult to overcome for a club, for a fan base, for whatever. And that is, I think, Audi Field is a prime example of some of that sort of begrudging nature of the ownership that it takes forever to get. The site approved to get the site acquired in the first place. They were looking at so many different areas, including staying at RFK and trying to make that work. But they get the site. They build the stadium. And for that moment, as you talked about, Jeff, it felt like.

Okay, here we go. They built a cool stadium. It's got the kind of vertical aspect that you feel like you're right on top of the action. And then you start to see the other new stadiums that are coming online and coming to existence. And Audi Field just looks a little like they did kind of the minimum a little bit.

It's not helped by the fact that like initially they didn't plan for where the cameras would be. So now you have the cameras pointing at the side that has the luxury boxes. So you don't have fans in any shot of the stands, really. You have a bunch of people kind of.

half paying attention to the games and in the beginning they also had that directly into the setting sun so that you get massive lens flare they don't have any sort of overhead covering and then they have to end up kind of bringing that in after people are complaining about the lenses and after

People are complaining about the fact that in a D.C. summer, you want some protection from the sun and you're not getting it. So they do it, begrudgingly. Bruce Arena, I think, a few seasons later, when New England is playing at Audi Field, points out, like, there's no...

banners like we won a bunch of stuff we have a bunch of legends in this league why is there no reference to to the teams that came before and i think begrudgingly you get that a year later where they start adding that but it just feels like there is no

identity and no real culture. It is just like, we gave you the thing you wanted. Isn't that enough? We gave you the Argentine manager who was going to weigh people in preseason. Isn't that, is that not what you all wanted? All right, we'll try something else. And I think that is just so. So much leads to what has become so frustrating about DC United as an organization. And there's little stuff along the way, too, now that I'm ranting about my fandom, like that they are the...

I think they are the last or second to last team to make their academy free, to basically fully subsidize players in the academy. And then very recently, they removed a ton of that. And basically, I think... kind of without much notice at all, announced that the scholarship programs that went with that academy, they informed the schooling that they provide to families will not be free anymore and, in fact, will cost thousands of dollars a year, potentially up to $10,000.

And that basically just kind of at the drop of a hat, they decided, never mind, we're not funding this. Go find your own educational programs and make it work. Families who were already bending over backwards to try to make this work so that their kids could play soccer at a high level.

It just speaks to a disconnect and a lack of kind of vision for what this team is meant to be. To Joe's initial point, if you're not going to spend money, like there's no guarantee that spending a ton of money is going to bring you a really successful team.

But with how much talent is in the DMV area, if you wanted to be the team that brings through local players and identifies... underutilized talents like uh andy nahar is a prime example of that just kind of found scouted playing local i think like amateur uh soccer and they're like that guy seems quite good like that's a sign of how many talented players there are you could be that team who just brings through academy

players and they tried to be that but then they sold all of those academy players and didn't really replace them and so it just feels like a team that kind of wanders from identity to identity hoping that they'll connect in some way and at first it's Wayne Rooney as a player and then it's well maybe

it's Wayne Rooney as a manager. And it feels like just kind of grasping at whatever straws they can grasp at, even if those obviously aren't going to... provide stability of late it's been christian benteke's aerial ability that is the the straw that they're grasping at and when they don't have him there's not a ton of answers so jeff couldn't solve it joe with all that said do you want to try to solve it

Yeah, this has been fun listening into the therapy session. I think when I look at this DC United team, and everything you guys said is true, like a really nice job setting a lot of foundation here for why DC have struggled for so long. If you want to rebuild... club culture, there's one really great way to do that. And it's by winning soccer games.

Having been around doing work for Phoenix Rising the last couple of seasons, it is still a bit wild to me how much things change for everyone, for fans, for players, for coaches, for owners, for front office people. It doesn't matter who you are.

How the environment changes when you win and how the environment changes from that to something far more sour when you lose. So if you're looking for a way, I'm not saying this is the only thing that DC United could do, but I think the best way to do it is to start winning soccer games again.

And I think when you look at this year's DC United team, and you got to it there at the end, Taylor, Christian Mateke is a very good player, and he's worth building a game model around. I really do believe that. When he's out injured and he's missed the last five games for DC in the regular season,

They're not a good team. They've got one win in five games. Even with Christian Mateke, they're like a wildcard team sort of as their ceiling. I think we know the issues for Decent Edit and what's plagued them historically. I think what's interesting to me about this year's group is...

Well, why can they not get out of the muck? Because it's not as if DC and A to have just tried to do the same thing over and over again and expected a different result, although to an extent they have. But they just hired new front office leadership and new coaching leadership ahead of last season.

We're 18 months into this new tenure. It's closer to 20, whatever. We're less than two years into a new tenure for a new voice in the front office. This was supposed to be different. And Allie McKay in the front office coming over from Nashville.

I think has really struggled to go out there and identify talent that can make a difference. Now, before I even get to McKay, when you look at the ownership group here, there's blame for them too. And again, I don't think it's just that they need to dump a whole bunch of cash on the fire, although that is entertaining.

Think about the Paul Pogba thing, right? Where they were really interested in bringing Paul Pogba to this team. That was ownership driving that. That wasn't the front office driving that. But that interest in Paul Pogba from owners, not from the people you've hired to make personnel decisions, from owners.

was why they kept all three DP spots open this season. Instead of starting the year with that 2DP but 4U22 model and having the extra $2 million in discretionary allocation money to add to the roster, basically $2 million more of salary cap space.

That's why they did that. And MLS allows you to start the year two and four and you just get a million dollars in allocation money. Then you can switch it in the summer and go three and three. A bunch of teams do that. That is that is allowed. You're allowed to do that.

DC United decide, no, we're going to start the year 3-3 and not get any extra allocation money. Because we want a chance at Paul Pogba. So that Paul Pogba can be our third DP in extra Christian Menteke, Mateusz Klick, LOL. And Paul Pogba, that can be our trio.

And instead, they have only one DP that plays for their team because Mateusz Klick plays for Atlanta United, lest we forget. And they're not going to sign Paul Pogba. At least it certainly doesn't seem that way. And even if they are, you're darn close to the summer window when you could have just signed him in the summer and you could have had the extra million dollars in allocation money.

That is the ownership driving all of that. So Alan McKay is making some of these moves. But Joe, if Click plays for Atlanta, surely that's a DP spot that's now open for DC. Whatever do you mean? To be fair, he has made Atlanta worse, so... Sabotage. Maybe that's a smart move. Yeah, designated saboteur. I love it. Yeah, that's smart. The DS, I like it.

That's the ownership bit and all this. Then you think about the front office. Now, Alan McKay brought in to be the chief soccer officer of this team. I already talked about it already. You don't have to spend money to be good. No correlation there. You have to be smart.

To succeed in Major League Soccer, you have to make smart player moves or at least be lucky, right? I mean, maybe it's lucky more often than it's being smart. DC haven't been either one of those. And DC's roster build since McKay came in ahead of last season has not been good. And I'll use just one example of this.

DC United last year were the third worst goalkeeping group in MLS in terms of goals a lot above expected. So DC, do the smart thing. They clean house. Like their goalkeepers last year, Alex Bono, Tyler Miller, not the cream of the crop in Major League Soccer. Smart move to clean house.

Unfortunately for them, and goalkeeping stats are noisy, so maybe this isn't the best example, but I think it's a helpful one. So they got, and they signed Jordan Farr from USL. He's their third goalkeeper, hasn't played this year. They signed Luis Peraza, MLS veteran. He's played this year. And they signed Kim Jun Hong, who was the first U22 initiative goalkeeper in MLS history. There's like a decent outlay in terms of his salary budget costs there. And...

Kim Joon-hung plays the first seven games of the season, gets benched, and Luis Peraza plays, and he's not any better. DC United's goalkeeping has been the seventh worst in MLS this year. They made all of those moves, and they barely got better. It hasn't been...

The roster turnover hasn't been a success. There have been some good things that have been done. I think about Herrera coming in from Montreal. Stroud in that trade. I like those moves. Kojima coming in. We talked about that one earlier on this year. The Fidel Barajas loan. Maybe this is a case of them not getting enough time.

I don't really think so. You've had three transfer windows and the squad is not really very good. And you can turn an MLS team around in large part in three windows. We've seen evidence of that before. it is possible to get better in that time, and we just haven't seen it. So when I look at this year's DC United team, ownership continuing to medal is a legit problem for them, and the front office has not made good choices, or at least the results of their choices haven't been good.

If I'm looking for reasons as to why DC is struggling, it's the fact that they're not winning. And I think I've laid out the reasons why they're not winning. It is difficult to see how this turns around. Because the owners are going to continue to meddle, you'd have to imagine. And that makes these things difficult. But they need better decisions coming from the front office to actually change anything here.

Yeah, it's like this is maybe I'm showing my 90s cred here. Like it's like a sitcom not working and Tom Arnold is the lead. And they're like, that was the problem. We're going to get rid of Tom Arnold. We brought in Jim Belushi and that's going to solve this. It just feels like you're. kind of swapping one thing for another. And the goalkeeper situation is a great example of that, Joe, where like, you're right, goalkeeping was an issue. So they bring in three new goalkeepers.

Do any of them inspire confidence? Do any of them make you feel like that's the guy that is going to be their goalkeeper for five seasons? Kim Jong-un is maybe meant to be that, but he is the one about whom I know the least. He's still very young for a goalkeeper. 22 years old, but it only played in Korea prior to that transfer. And so that feels like a roll of the dice less so than a slam dunk. And if you are truly identifying.

This position has been a problem. We need to fix it. We're going to find a solution. That's the Belushi thing of this is it feels like they've gone out and been like, we're going to identify. We've identified the solution. And the solution is to bring in more of the same, including journeymen who.

Probably aren't going to make that big of a difference and unproven youngsters who we're not really sure are going to be here long term. It just kind of feels like replacing one thing with the same thing, but calling it different and expecting different results. I think that the one thing that they didn't really account for, though, is that Miller, and to a lesser extent, but still somewhat Bono, are solid at long distribution. And Miller is one of the best in recent MLS memory at it.

And they let him go. And you look at, like, their aerial... Their aerial dual win rate has dropped from 61% in 2023 to 57 last year to 51 this year. So they're winning fewer aerials. You look at their field tilt, and that's also dropping year to year to year. And it just seems like they kind of...

of changed the game model where it's like we built this whole thing around a really good aerial threat at striker and then we took away our way to give service to said player and we expected things to go well because granted i don't think bentaka gets enough credit for how good he is when he's running onto a ball in transition beyond a defensive line that is still also very much one of his strong points is like getting reading movement.

breaking beyond onto a long ball, running onto it, and then finishing with his feet. He's very good at that still. And what you also are seeing now is that those long balls actually really help them advance upfield quickly. Their direct speed, which again is like meters advanced towards goal per second of possession, was very consistent in 23 and 24, 1.6. meters per second, which is solid. That's like a really steady clip. It's dropped to 1.1.

So they're like also advancing far slower because they don't have that route, which was also helping them rack up aerial dual wins with Benteke against a shorter midfielder, as well as that field tilt where they're getting the ball into the final third and keeping it there a little bit better.

So it's just like some of these trade-offs too, where it's like, yes, I see what you're saying in terms of shot stopping, where it seems like they just kind of replaced. But honestly, it's, they didn't even really, it's like you had to get rid of Tom Arnold, but like.

You also don't really want to play to that one special little quirk that he had that made him kind of decent. So you leaned into Brad Garrett and then the whole show just gets kind of sleepy, right? Like... that was the better actor to go with this is working for 10 people right now and i'm really really glad but like that's the reality of it is you've kind of taken away that one trick that opponents hated and now opponents like

Like Joe said at the top of this, like usually when a team is as bad as DC United, we talk about them. The reason we haven't talked about DC United that much this year is because the Galaxy have been a very unique and interesting version of a tire fire. Whereas this looks much more. just like a forgettable frankly a team that ownership itself has forgotten and that

you know, they're operating and they're trying to money ball their way through this by just, you know, exploiting markets and saying Luis Barraza was a good backup for Sean Johnson. He was beaten for the position by Matt freeze. Maybe he'll do something for us. And just like, It seems like they're out of ideas and they're grasping at straws, and that's not whatsoever an encouraging position to be in as a club.

And I think MLS, one of the things I enjoy the most about it is how it is a league that some of those maybes and conditionals can end up being. like iconic decisions where this guy is a backup. We're going to see what happens. And suddenly he's starting for the national team or like, or like, you know, has been here for 10 years. And I think those rules of the dice can be.

so fun and engaging and interesting when the whole strategy feels like rolls of the dice and maybe and if and conditionals then it will end up working it starts to feel less like a strategy and more like lurching from one idea to the next. And so in that way, maybe it's not a full-on...

like tire fire, but it's, it's like a low grade tire fire where you have like one tire that's been on fire for 10 years now and it's never going to go out. That's about how things feel. That's an optimistic note to end this one on. Yeah.

There you go. I mean, really, I joked in the beginning about, like, what's the solution? It doesn't really seem like there is a solution. I don't think they're going to get a new owner anytime soon. I don't think changing the front office, changing the coach is really going to help. I don't think, I guess, changing the personnel and bringing in a bunch more talent would probably.

Probably help, but it still speaks to sort of emergency decision making. Jeff is shaking his head, so it sounds like Jeff agrees. Yeah, the biggest thing that they could do is improve the squad. Yep. And it's so obvious, but it's just like, that's the level we're at. We're not to a point where we can have those discussions of our players being used properly. Are we wasting this player on the bench? You look at that roster.

And compared even to where it was two years ago, it's a bottom third MLS squad. And that is the fault of the constructors and the investors at that point. I don't know how you watch Paul Pogba. And you haven't been able to watch him for some time. But like, how do you watch him and think that's the guy that's going to pull this team together and not at all be.

A dissatisfied player who doesn't want to be here at all when we're just lumping it over his head to our forward. Joe, it totally, you nailed it with it's the ownership wanting that one for obvious reasons versus it being an actual on. field decision that makes this team better so it feels like maybe this is the last time we need to talk about dc united for a while but it felt cathartic to at least get some of the frustration out there so i appreciate you all giving me that opportunity

Yeah, I think you lose by – I think you ship seven goals, you get shamed. I think that's how it goes. So until DC United lose by another massive scoreline and concede seven goals, then we'll talk about them again. Should we introduce the TSS shame segment where we just mentioned teams that –

should be shamed for their respective losses that weekend. All right, cool. Sounds good. We'll just touch base on the shame cycle. Good, good, good. Well, we did have some Lister questions, but we've gone long as we are wont to do. So maybe we'll save those.

for next week. But Joe, we did have a quick one. Who wins a game between MLS All-Stars and the Saudi Pro League All-Stars? Saudi? Find out next week. Okay. Joe's teasing it. I'm happy to answer right now with Saudi Arabia and say we answered at least one Lister question. But let's do that in more detail next week. For now, Jeff Reuter, thank you for bringing all the knowledge and insight and letting me vent.

Of course. And Joe Lowry, the same to you, but with glasses. Aw, thanks, Taylor. Listeners, thank you all so much. DC supporters, I feel you. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you. I'm always up before the birds and the kids. Good thing Costa Express is always up too. Early starts are easier with great coffee. And if I grab one for Bob, I might even get some decent company.

Large cappuccino for the bloke who's half asleep. Oh, you legend. Now that's a proper coffee. Should kick in Justin Sanford to remember which end of the screwdriver to use. Costa Express. Quality coffee. Every time.

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