Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #404: Monday Review mid-Gold Cup, transfer rumors, etc.

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Greg, Vince, Watke and Belz talk through the positives from Chicago, the latest transfer rumors, Berhalter's quotes on rebuilding the relationship with Gio. Patrons get the full recap of the game against Jamaica, which is the second half of the episode. Patreon link below.Please vote for Scuffed to win World Soccer Talk's best podcast award: https://worldsoccertalk.com/best-podcast-2023-world-soccer-talk-awards/----Scuffed is an ad-free podcast. Support that and get exclusive episodes once a week, plus access to the Discord and live call-in shows, by signing up for our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the USSF approved territories of Georgia and Kentucky, and also from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, this is the Monday Review. Hey, everybody, it's a special edition of the Monday Review. In two respects, we're going to recap Saturday's draw with Jamaica at the Gold Cup, and we've got Greg Velasquez with us. Greg, welcome. Hey, good to be on the Monday Review. It's a special time for all of us.

Vince, Waki, how are you guys doing? Great, great. I couldn't be better, you know what I'm saying? Well, actually, actually, I could be better if I was in Chicago, if I was in Chicago, which is my holy land, my place of centering, possibly, I mean, well, not possibly, but definitely the greatest city I've ever been to myself. I'm still kind of upset that I missed the opportunity to go to Chicago and watch a team of people in a U.S. Miss National Team shirt play a soccer game. Look like there were some, I agree with you about Chicago, look like there were some seats available at the stadium.

Not to be too negative, but there were some openings there. I thought, you know, I thought the Capos. It was pretty good. It was pretty good. Like all things considering, I mean, they get 35,000 or whatever. But, but, you know, when you're in, when these NFL stadiums, unless you're Mexico, it's going to be tough. Yeah.

I'm excited to be here because I get to, experience going through a game timeline. Normally I just listen but I get to do it as a person actually experience that. It's exciting.

How long do you think we can stretch this timeline out for? I don't know what the record is. I think we could take it hours if we want it. Really. Let's, I mean, maybe we shouldn't, but I think we could.

Let's maybe we should. Yeah, I mean, let's just see how it goes. Right? If we take the spirit of the Fox Sports broadcast, which I've seen multiple people lamenting the fact that, you know, they didn't let the people know that this was a C team. And so we can just take the lead from Fox and, you know,

and take the timeline as seriously as possible. There should always be an inverse relationship between the importance of the match and the length of the timeline. Like I feel like for a game like this that has very little relevance for the overall cycle with this roster they have here, that the timeline should just, I mean, it should be... Two and a half hours minimum.

We got to hit every single, every single on ball action. And then one of us should jump in with what was happening off of the ball just to paint the picture a little bit clearer. Yes. Yeah, but before, before we do that, why don't we do some broad strokes

thoughts about the game? Just overall thoughts. Yeah, you said... Go ahead. No, sorry. Go ahead. Well, even though, even though it's a game that doesn't matter so much for the cycle,

there was plenty to learn here, I thought. What did you guys think? Maybe Vince. Yeah, I mean, if we're talking about plenty to learn, I agree with you, Bells. It was nice to get me some more data on Alonignor, because, you know, we've seen them in these Cupcake matches for the most part. And the fact that I talked about this on a Monday review before,

but the fact that he got called into the Nations League camp, you know what I'm saying? It's like, okay, this is a guy that is getting called up to first team camps. And I'm not sure it's good. So I want to see more and see if he is good. Well, we will get into the returns later on, I guess. But see him. You know, we had the big dual national quote-unquote controversy with Ada Morris.

We got to see him. you know what I'm saying to be able to see Alex And Dejas was good too So you know There's things to take them Oh and also Matt Miazga stamping ground

So yeah go ahead walking That's a big one Getting him to start to stamp down a little bit of ground I would say maybe not as effectively as could have But that's another issue Actually it's kind of related to one issue Or a good thing We got another

Teaching moment Reinforcing the importance of set pieces Yep. Lest there be any doubt. And, you know, B.J. Not having that football coach, you know what I'm saying, a guy that's big on, you know, as a football coach, restarts are the thing, you know,

because, I mean, the whole game of football is a restart, right? So we saw, you know, it come to fruition against Canada where we actually scored a set piece goal miraculously. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you have to throw that all up to BJ. You have to give that all to BJ. And we saw a set piece goal giving up in this match, which you have to give that all to Greg.

Yeah, you got to put that. Yeah, put that blame all, Greg. Yeah, BJ was disgusted when he turned away from that goal. He was so hot. Yeah. Come on, Greg. He couldn't wait to get the defense on the sideline so he could chew him out. What about you, Greg? Greg Velasquez, high-level thoughts?

I mean, it's a mediocre group overall. Like, our group is mediocre for this. And so we're not going to see, we're not going to see a lot of magic moments. We put together a couple here and there. But this is going to be the nature of this tournament. It's going to be, there was a lot of competence, to be honest. So that felt okay to me. We saw, like, baseline levels of competence from players.

But we're going to be missing the magic. Because if these guys were magicians, they wouldn't be, on this roster, right? They'd be high up. So it's almost like you're just, you're hopeful that you see a couple of bright spots. But I'm certainly not expecting it. So anything we do get will be kind of a nice little surprise,

nice little bonus. But I do think there should be, again, like, we shouldn't fall apart. And we didn't fall apart in this game, which was just promising because Jamaica had some, had some decent players on the field. I wanted to bring this up in Canada recap and just missed it. But it's also, there's a lot about sort of taking it a layer removed.

the psychology of like watching a soccer game and you know we talked about in Canada we weren't perfect we were a little sloppy but that doesn't register as much when you're one zero up in a game watching your favorite team when you're one zero down in a game watching your favorite team every every mistake every bit of sloppiness is just that much more frustrating and it's a low percentage game to begin with made lower when you reduce the quality of the players on the field

so the psychology of a game like this it can be like you you see the tone of like comments in the live match discussions. And, you know, people are really getting pretty worked up about what is sort of just like normal bad soccer. And it's just something I keep in mind as I'm watching games like, man, when we're losing these mistakes, this ineffectiveness, we're just ineffective. We're not even calamitous. It's so demoralizing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. My big frustration was that we just weren't. weren't we didn't have much of an impulse to take risks going forward, particularly when there was like a little moment of transition so many times. Zendayaas would turn and play it backwards or Sonora would do it sometimes. Aid Morris and James Sands very, very reluctant to play a penetrating ball forward. When Sonora or Zendaz did, it was off. Cut out.

Yeah, it wasn't free flowing. We weren't flowing freely. Like there's no doubt about that. When we attacked, it would be slow. like plotting ponderous and and I think a lot of this is I don't necessarily think this is again BJ Ball versus Greg Burholder back in charge I think part of this again is the players aren't as good they don't make the reads as quickly and none of them have played together before uh you know the amount of minutes for any of these guys to have played together is really low in the front five

and six front six plus we kept running into big brother damien low who uh he was a rock he was Yeah, backup centerback for the Philadelphia Union. Standing between Brandon Craig and starting minutes, or even any minutes in Philadelphia, looked like a world-class centerback in portions of that game, I thought. Let's get some positives, Waki. All right. Well, Matt Turner, obviously.

Happy birthday to him. Yes. 29th birthday, right? He's getting up there, huh? Jalen Neal. set her back of the future. He was great. Yeah.

We had improvement late, right? Or at least there was a goal. That's improvement. BG.C. Calhahn gets to experience some head coaching adversity. You love to see it. That's good for growth. It also probably him and Greg will be able to communicate. That'll be able to connect over that.

Does BJ go to any conferences? Do you think BJ has that on his studio? list at all to go to a conference and to be able to share this. He's an attendee. I bet he goes and attends, but he kind of sits medium back in the crowd. Would be my guess. He's trying to cater to a different group. You know what I'm saying?

You got Greg trying to make some type of weird ascension from soccer coach to some type of venture capitalist. With BJ, you know, he's the every man. He's every man. Manual pipe fitters convention. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in the networking hour, he's actually in there talking the guys about, like, his irrigation set up in his yard. Like, this is the way you do it. This is how you set up your sprinkle heads.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can catch BJ at like a barbecue competition or something. Yeah. You know, just those types of place. What else? Another positive, the group is now acclimated to the Gold Cup, probably. They had a settling in game. Let's call it that.

Now they're ready to go. They're ready for St. Kitts and Nevis. We're going to improve so much between now and Wednesday, and I think it will be reflected in the freedom of the flow and in the scoreline. Yeah, and the fact that they get to get away from Chicago, you know what I'm saying? I wouldn't put it against them for them to be a little distracted. You know what I'm saying? But now going to St. Louis, we can go out and lock in.

Got the foolishness out. Is it just the aura of Chicago that distracts them? Are they actually out in Chicago experience in the city? What are they doing here? I would hope they're out in Chicago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would hope that they're out because I would not pass up that opportunity to be out. There is probably an aura effect, too.

You can feel it when you're in a place like that. You can really feel a buzz when you go in. And that would have drawn them out probably. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so what do they call that? Lake effect? Yeah, that's what they call it. Lake effects snow and all.

St. Louis. I love being here. I love being here on the Monday review because where Bells is usually like seriously trying to get things back on the focus, I'm absolutely pushing things further off course every chance I get. I'm for it. I'm for it. I'm happy. I was going to say St. Louis does not have the same aura. Chicago has or the same energy.

I want to add one positive defensively. we were pretty solid. I thought outside of Aden's mistakes. Yep. Against a good, you know, a pretty good attacking trio. I don't know that they showed their best. Bailey, Antonio, and Damari Gray, but they're good players.

And we, especially our fullbacks, mostly held up against in those 1v1 battles. So that's nice. Yes. Yes. I just thought another positive. When the crowd started doing a little bit, the guys didn't grow,

Morose out there. It would have been very as he gets sad. They just kept playing. Oh, man, I must have missed that. They booed? It wasn't an intense full. It was characterized on the broadcast as a smattering of booze. It was audible on the broadcast.

Yeah, I thought. It was after a Jalen Neal, a misplaced Jail and Neal pass. But I don't think it was so much frustration with him as it was, just frustration with the way we were attacking. And, you know, the boys. I think the boys heard it, and they're like, okay, we should do better here. Try to get a goal. Eventually we did. It probably lined up with what Bell saw with us being so reluctant and so sort of timid to flow forward.

And so once they were booing, it's like, oh, we got to start flowing a little bit more freely. And then we saw them do that. Healthy reminder that fans, you know, they want to see you attack. So it's basically, Greg, what you're saying is as we got further and further away from the tyranny of Greg Berthalter, you know. So we remembered who we are. We remembered who we are, you know, as we got into those waning minutes of the match. Oh, it was just more like, yeah, at that point, we're leaning more into BJ's in-game management. Right, exactly.

So I have a little bit of miscellaneous news here we should talk about. First of all, let's listen to this clip of Greg Burrhalter talking about Gio Raina on the Jim Rome show. So, Greg, have you spoken to Giorana yet? You know, I have not. The focus was letting him compete in the Nation's League, and you saw he did a great job, especially in the final. He played a great game. Unfortunately, I had to go off at halftime with an injury,

but wanted to give him that time, that space, to really focus on competing. Now I think it's about for him mentally getting away and checking out for a bit, but I'll certainly connect with him before this next – next camp. And there's work to do there. And, you know, I'm willing to do the work to make sure the relationship and the understanding is in a place that, you know, I'm committed. The staff is committed to coaching him with as much enthusiasm and love as any other player. You really nailed that messaging down. You stick into it. That's good.

Well, Waki, are you excited about the messaging discipline that we're going to see in this cycle from top to bottom in the Federation? I am. We're sharing a lot of it so far. Do you just like admire it? Do you just like, do you just watch it and just go, my God, my God, the discipline? Yeah. You know what?

I admire also. He's gotten so much better at it over the course of, because I went through and watched all of his press conferences, which it takes longer. It takes a long time. What? Yeah, I did that. When you asked me how my weekend, Matt, that's why I said it. That's why I said it was so good. he was not very good at first.

And now he's pretty, he's actually pretty good at press conferences. He's not, he doesn't step in it. So I've loved to see what he can do over these next three years. We also, another thing we found out in this interview is he's kind of friends with Jim Rome. Maybe we already knew that, but he mentioned his wife by name. What? Yeah, he goes on his show a lot, seems like. Okay, they hang out.

All right. Jim room. I think that's why Jim Rome likes soccer. I don't know if he likes soccer, but he talks about it. You know, I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal. Berhalter reconciling with Gio. But the way he talks about it makes it sound like it's, you know, at least going to be something of a challenge.

I don't know. I don't, I don't, I don't, so I don't know. It doesn't sound like a challenge to me. It just, I mean, there's just stuff to be, you know, it's stuff to be worked out, you know. there's some feelings. Feelings on both sides. You know, there might have to be some uncomfortable truth said in the meeting between the two.

You know, but, yeah. I guess I, so I guess it would be more worrying if Greg wasn't, like, wasn't acknowledging these things. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I think it's like the anticipation of their first meeting for them will be more uncomfortable than anything that happens within like 10 minutes of that meeting. because they're just going to have to walk up to each other. Like, hey, remember all that stuff that has happened? And then once they actually like shake hands and he leaves the locker room, Greg's office.

Like, that'll be it. It'll be we're back into just soccer mode and, you know, all of Burrhalter's various game models. That will include Giorina pretty prominently. Yeah, and they can probably ignore this part. But it's also true. We kind of got from the interview that, not surprisingly, he hasn't resolved anything with the parent Rainis. And that just kind of looms over it in a weird way. But there probably can't do anything because we don't need to talk about that anymore.

But it's kind of a big deal. It sounds kind of unresolvable. Some things can't be resolved, you know? Yeah. There's just no way to go about it. But so I don't know though, I got faith. I got faith. So like I feel like at the end of this cycle,

it's basically going to be like the, you know, the material that movies are made out of. It's going to be a story of friendship and forgiveness and the mistakes that we all make as humans. As we see Greg and Claudio embrace on the field after we hoist the 2026 World Cup, you know what I'm saying? It's going to be, it's going to be a sight to see. It's going to be a sight to see. Just wait, though.

Just wait. It's going to take a while. We're going to get little crumbs here and there, potentially of, you know, where, like at some point, we're going to have a meeting mediated by Airborne 69. Like, like all,

so all type of stuff's going to happen to get us to the point of reconciliation and in 2026, but it's coming, though. It's coming. Is Burrhalter going to be riding on Gio's shoulders? at the end of the broke up. He's going to be foisted into the air by all the reign of family. Hip, hip, hooray.

Speaking of airborne. I've been tweeting a lot of remarkable stuff lately, hasn't he? He tweeted out the business card of a medium. I saw that. Yep. Yep. Did he add any context to it or was it just a business card? Well, there's some speculation, but.

Didn't want to lose the contact info so you take a picture of it. Yeah, it's an, it's an acquaintance of his of some kind. He said, get in touch with your loved, exclamation point. And there's a screenshot of a, it looks like maybe a Facebook post from a while back. Book your next mediumship session with me, Tunisia Powell. And it's got all her information, her email address and her phone number. Interesting fella, more remarkable fella. Yeah.

So this was kind of a, uh, This is kind of a side piece to the main Airborne 69 tweet, which was him. I think he tweeted out Lake Life or something like that, something like that. Him on, it looks to me like a jet ski. Yep. Most importantly, he had a Bud Light Platinum in his hand. He had a Bud Light Platinum in his hand. And that was a blast from the past for me.

I haven't seen a Bud Light Platinum in like 10 years, 10 years. And the fact that just seeing that, seeing that bottle took me. back to like my college days when I was drinking and I was drinking platinum's heavy it's just airborne man Airborne he says he knows what you need even before you do even before you do

which which makes me think that I should hit up this medium too man yeah because platinum platinum on a jet ski I wouldn't have thought of it now that it's got that image in my head nothing sounds better

nothing sounds better that's a thing man so airborne clearly is a man that knows how to live life. I wonder what lake he's out on there. You got to figure it out. Yeah. No clue, though.

No clue on that one. All right. Last bit of miscellaneous news for me is Friendlies against Uzbekistan and Oman are scheduled now for September as first reported by Mikele Gianone on the Teudea-Ni broadcast. We should say they have not been officially He said, I think he specifically said they haven't officially announced this, but this is what I'm hearing.

So it's true. Right. Right. September 9th in St. Louis against Uzbekistan and September 12th in Minnesota, St. Paul, that is, against Oman. That kind of leads us into a segment I want to try out called What Are We Ignoring This Week? And we'll just kind of This week's what are we ignoring Is the Univision alternate broadcast conspiracy?

Okay Consider it ignored I guess how Orgism we will then not talk about it So no need We're free to not discuss it That's pretty cool feature of this segment We have to not

discuss otherwise we would be a bit of a bit of a paradox with a bit of a box a bit of a lie is what it would be can we talk about Uzbekistan and omand though yes do we have do we have general feelings about um these these playing these teams there weren't a ton of options I'm assuming right we're running into we're running into all of the other federations playing real matches on account of everyone adopting like nations league formats for their uh for their calendars adding those to their calendars And so now it's increasingly difficult to schedule games against, you know, top, top 50 national teams. Yeah. It looks like I saw USMNT Stan did some, a little research on this.

It looks like some teams that are playing friendlies in September are Norway, Wales, South Korea, Japan, Germany, who we of course are playing a month later in Connecticut, Hungary, Czech Republic, France, Scotland. in England. All those teams are playing friendlies in September. So like could we have done better with our scheduling? Perhaps, you know? So are like, so are we saying that because those teams are playing friendlies, that they would have been available to play us? Right.

Yeah. Yeah. If we had been, if we had on the ball. I'm not, I'm just saying that's the other way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just making sure I'm following it all the way. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, this is something that we'll just never know.

Well, and so I think a lot of those teams are playing one friendly, and then their other match date on that window is like either Nation's League or Euro qualifier, I can remember. Yes. So the idea would be we would certainly have had to fly over to Europe, which I don't think any sicko fans would object to. Like, we'd love to have us be playing those games in Europe, save the guys to flight over since 80% of the roster is going to be based in Europe anyway. Then it just becomes, is the Federation going to be comfortable with that on account of. the cash grab angle. Like you got to grab cash.

Yep. I'm pro grabbing of cash. You got to grab it. You got to grab it. And, oh, so one thing about these friendlies is just the realization for me that, that, you know, like the outside of the Gold Cup, the West Coast is never, they're just not getting games, dog. It's not happening.

And, you know, the reason that's been cited multiple times is the fact that, you know, longer travel from Europe to the West Coast to which like I guess we're now to petition Mr. Batson to put some games in Asia I don't know but yeah I guess they'll get some Copa America

right on the West Coast and yeah yeah I have to have to be happy with that lots of Mexico games over there I do think it's going to be fun learning about Uzbekistan. It's an unusual country. You've already been learning about.

I've done some preliminary research. It's a strange country. We'll get into that in the lead-up of the game. Okay. Can you give us a little teaser? Well, it was a former Soviet place, so it has some of that going on. It's in Central Asia.

That's just an interesting place in general. A bit of a brutal dictatorship. Oh, okay. But, yeah, I don't have a ton of specifics right now. They have one player that's pretty good. He was away from Roma on loan this year, but he's going to move somewhere. He might move to Lille. His name is Eldor Schumer Rodoff.

So that's the main guy we're going to be scouting. Okay. So it's going to be all eyes on our roster announcement come September to make sure he's going. If they leave their key players home We know what that's like When you have to watch your team without the key players They got to bring their key players Yeah

If they're a team that leaves their key players They're going to be in some trouble In Minnesota I would think So Hopefully bats and Cohen have communicated that Like you're coming You better be bringing your key player Yeah you better bring out of

Yep We need them there in sickness and in health ways. But also, there was some talk about this on the Discord. It seems that Uzbekistan is like, close to Ghana in terms of Elo rating.

I don't know what their, like, actual ranking is, but they're in, like, this same general neighborhood, like two or three spots below or above each other. And I'm, so I don't know about y'all, but I'm pretty excited about playing Ghana. So I'm going to be excited about playing Uzbekistan too. I don't know. think about Omond, though.

They're a bit worse. Yeah. They're not, they're not, they're on, they're getting better. So it was Mexican to beat Cameroon recently. They lost to Costa Rica two to one. They tied Russia. Beat Bolivia, tied Venezuela. They're, they're the best team in Central Asia.

So it's a decent thing. It's good to measure ourselves against, uh, against them. I'll take it. I'll take it. I mean, yeah, if they can be Cameroon, then I love it. You like it, I love it. Interesting. One thing that's interesting about Uzbekistan is Samarkand, the capital. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly, is, you know, it's an ancient city.

It's been there forever. It's part of the Silk Road. Mmm. Spices. Yep, right. I think, I think, Genghis Khan. conquered it. A lot of history to go through.

That's going to be a long podcast. Yeah. When we go through the full Uzbekistan history. Um, all right. Let's do some, uh, you know, if you're ready, Waki, how about some transfer rumors? I'm absolutely ready. Okay. Crystal Palace, I said I was ready, but I was still actually looking about my Uzbekistan.

Um, notice. Uzbek research. But now I am ready. Crystal Palace, A.C. Milan, and Inter all admire Balagan. And Arsenal's loaded a $35 million kind of price range for him. Hmm. Okay. Love to see it. Yeah.

They should admire him. Anybody having a feeling about where he should go? Well, definitely somewhere that admires him. That's what I was going to say. Who, who, who, who, who chose the language here, Waki? Like where we see in the admiration? So how this segment, how I feel I found it works is I just copy a tweet. And since there's no accountability in this segment, I don't even put a source.

So I have no idea. Just those words appeared on the internet. And now they've become a part of the segment. It's just a rumor. I was wondering if like a separate person from Palace and Milan and Inter all used the word admire or if there was if like if somebody else aggregated those three places and decided that they must all admire him. You know, I like to think they all reached out and said they admire him. After they wrote his name on their mirror in their in their dorm room. Yes.

Yes. All right. I buy it. All right. Next one. Juventus, and I kind of combined, there's a bunch of different phrases used here. But they're either eyeing or close to signing Tim Wea or it's possibly imminent or it can be somewhere in the middle of all those things. A lot of Tim Wea smoke.

Let's say that. Yeah, it seems like a lot of people are talking about him going to Juventus. and the idea being what that he he becomes what Quadrato has been for Juventus that's been said that's been said certainly Quadrado's contract ends in four days end of the month Hey man I love it 35 years old right?

Yeah Okay Yep he's he's old he's still got a little bit of wiggle As uh you know Whenever he does end up scoring a goal for Juventus you can see them uh you know dance dance and whatnot but but yeah man i mean if i i i says i would love this move for tim i would love it i would absolutely love it good why why would you absolutely love it i mean it just seems to me to be a glove and hand fit yeah like you know uh yes you're

playing right wing back um you well well okay so so so people don't like the idea of Tim playing right wing back, I guess. But at this point, when you're not really, when you score zero goals in a season and you're looking to move clubs, you are probably going to have to, you know, move back a line theoretically. I don't think this is really him moving back in line. But, you know, Uvei dominates games. He's going to be up in the attack.

And, you know, for anybody that's, I mean, watched Uve and Quadrado play over the past few years, He gets to do a lot of cool stuff in the attack. And I just think, like, Tim's level of class and everything, I think it's just going to fit. I think it's just going to fit with YuVa and it's going to look good. He's going to hit the ground running. And the fact that, you know, Tim's, he's a good defender. He's a good defender. He's always been one that, like, wins his duels as an attacker.

He's good in the air and all those different types of things. So I just, it just seems to me like this is going to work out great. And coming off a season where once again, he scored zero goals, this seems like a best case scenario type move. Yeah, I agree with all that. So Fab has just tweeted, Juventus are now finalizing details of the agreement for Timothy Waya deal with the Timothy Waye deal. Personal terms agreement already sealed.

Love it. Just tweeted this just now? Fab was one of the guys. you don't like to say who the source was, since it is all totally unsubstantiated. But Fab was one of the ones who'd been adding a lot of smoke to this particular fire. Yeah. Fab, Fab smoke counts for more. Yeah, this is three minutes ago.

Exactly. Fair to say it's more than a rumor, then, I think. But that means we should move on to the next one. Bion has made Christian Pulisic a priority target. Also interested in Pulisic are Napoli, Uve, and A.C. Milan. I'll believe it. when I see it.

Which, which of those teams, if they sign him, which of those teams would have you be like celebrating? Because I feel like we all want them out of Chelsea just for, just for something new, right?

We're ready to move on. Yes. Yes. So, Adam, would you celebrate any of those teams? Would you be like, oh, no, that one doesn't make sense.

Any of these sides? I don't know. So, so I see some people disrespecting Leon a little bit just because it's in the French league. And I just want to say, I mean, we're talking about what they

made the championship league semifinals what, two, three years ago, two years, three years, I don't know.

Anyway, we're talking about a recent Champions League semifinalists. Talking about one of the, one of the biggest clubs in France.

And, uh, yeah, like, like I think Christian could do. And, and the big thing, the big thing here is,

uh, when Christian inevitably, uh, picks up, you know, hamstring strain or something. Uh, this is a type of club,

uh, that, that, that, they cannot afford many Christian Policics, you know what I'm saying? They just don't have 40 million attackers stacked up

on the bench. And once Christian returns to health, we should see him return to the lineup. You know what I'm saying? We don't got to deal with a whole bunch of, he got to get these spot minutes, 10, 15 minute appearances, whatever, whatever. Hey, if Leon

spends a decent bit on Puli and brings him in, this is a person that's going to play and going to play a lot and we should see a lot of numbers too. And they've been down. They've been a little bit down the last two seasons in the league. So this would also be potentially them saying, we got to fix this.

We've got to find a way to springboard ourselves back up. And Pulisic is the talent to do that for us. That'd be the hope if he goes Leon. It could all just be totally thin air stuff. But to answer my own question, there isn't any of those teams. I'd be like, oh, no. I think they'd all be a fun little experiment.

Yeah. I think Leon would be cool. It's a lovely city and sort of a center of French cuisine. I don't know how much, you know, Pulisic will leverage that. I know how much, not at all. Given his culinary. All of these teams will be, cities will be wasted on him. I saw somewhere that he likes, he loves living in London and he wants to stay there.

I should say their food will be wasted on him. No, no, I mean, if he goes to the place that invented pizza, Naples. That's true. That's good point. You know, maybe get him a little pie here and there. Not too much. He probably doesn't even like that kind of pizza. He probably wants it all burned up.

Let's see. Let's blow through the last three real quick here. All right. I'll just hit him in a row. Brighton are leading the race for Tyler Adams. Roma has made contact with Juventus about Weston McKinney. Fulham approach leads about Brendan Aronson. And my favorite...

How are you allowed to do this? We're getting cheated at all kinds of musical cues. And some of... I mean, the Western one's kind of, you know, that probably needs to be discussed. Just up from the Moranio angle, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. When we talk about mentality, I mean, there's no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no greater tosome, potentially. than Weston McKinney and Jose Marino. Yeah. Is Juventus like off the table now for him, like playing there? Seems to be the case. Seems to be the case.

So I know I've seen that, um... Oh, oh yeah, yeah. They said that like every one of their midfielders that were out on loan this past, uh, half the season are free to leave, free to go. They don't want them. Yeah. They're also asking for $35 million. apparently, which maybe they were just the right amount.

I don't know. It'll work out. Yeah. That's how I feel. There's one more, there's one more rumor. Well, Greg, you have anything you want to say about these three before we move on? No, they all seem like good fits. Okay.

That's great. All the rumors so far have been like they make sense and they would be wonderful. Not putting my hopes into any of them. This last one, I'm not sure it makes sense. Manchester United is eyeing Taylor Booth to bolster their midfield. I think it not. I mean, eyeing him could make sense, but the bolstering in their midfield. I don't know.

I don't know what's not about their midfield in Italy, but it is not the surest bet to bolster. I assume is it? Not much of a bolsterer, really, when it comes down to it. I'm not going to let far-fetched rumors damage my enthusiasm for our players. Yeah, that's true. That's right. I'm excited about Taylor Booth. I'm not going to let these overreaches change my excitement about him.

This is a case reading this headline. Clearly, the writer just needed to mention that he was a midfielder and then added to bolster their midfield. Well, that's the rumors. That's a wrap on the rumors. I want to, before we get to the lineups and the timeline from the Jamaica game, we'll take a little break. but before that, just want to remind you that voting for the talk, the, what is it, World Soccer Talk, Best Soccer Podcast closes on Friday. And we'd like to repeat as champions after a big win last year. Please help us by voting for scuffed.

I'll put the link in the show notes. Let's take a little break and come back and talk about the Jamaica match. Recap it for patrons. If you are a patron, the full episode will be in your private feed. If you are not, you can join us. The link to the Patreon is in the show notes. In any case, thanks for listening. We'll see you.

Thank you.