Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #719: What makes Gozo special, MB4's youth movement, WC post-postmortem

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

Charles Boehm joins Belz to talk through a few MLS things and think retrospectively about the World Cup. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus 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: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedCheck out our store, where you can get Scuffed hats and sweatshirts and other stuff: scuffedpodcast.com/storeAlso, 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.scuffedpodcast.com/store  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuff podcast. We talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody, joining me from the top of a parking garage in Bethesda, Maryland. None other than Charlie Baum. I haven't talked since the World Cup. How you doing, Charlie? I'm well. It's always a pleasure to chop it up with you bells.

And I'm on this parking garage for soccer reasons, actually. It's my kids last week of summer, a 12-year-old daughter, and I wrangled her into a soccer camp for the last week. And so we've been schlepping across town these five days to get her in there. Yeah. Every minute counts, right? Every touch counts. She wore her Washington Spirit, Trinity Rodman, authentic jersey that she got for making

on a roll last school year and wore that to camp today. So dad's, dad's feeling pumped. I had some resistance initially. She was pushing back hard. I think she wanted to lay around and watch YouTube all week. But I got her in the camp and she's having a good time. So hopefully this flows into a good fall season. Hmm.

Awesome. I'm glad she, I'm glad you got her to do it. I do feel like, you know, I've been thinking about this lately. It's like YouTube and the sort of dumb games on tablets and, or it's not just tablets on computers. It's like the dumb stuff that is the most poisonous. Because like... Very addictive. Yeah.

Designed to addict. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. Don't get me started. Yeah, let's not. Nobody wants to hear it. Be addicted to scuff podcast, please.

Please. Apply all your compulsory behavior. Yeah, that's the thing. We all have compulsory behavior, right? But somehow when there's like a fountain of coins coming out of a, I don't know, bunny or something. And it's just the, it's just the worst. Yes, our modern predicament that we created for ourselves. Xavier Gozo.

The transfer is, I mean, as all of you know, official, he is sitting on a couch in a lovely appointed room with Chris Richards right now, shaking hands. He got some training footage. I saw some training footage on the Crystal Palace socials. Nice. So they're pumped. It has been noted. I think Tom, Tom Boger talked about this little in his reporting. Really interesting kind of the way it worked out.

He's in the Premier League, but he's in the right-sized club where he's not just some guy on a spreadsheet. He's not going to, it doesn't look like at least initially he won't be in a lone army type situation. I don't know what his real prospects for minutes are, but it certainly looks like they're going to give him a shout because this is not like an everyday kind of transfer deal for this club. so I'm hoping that this works out to be the right size and the right environment, much as it was for Chris Richards. Yeah. I am curious to see how it goes. What do you think would be a successful season for him there?

I think it's, you know, we've got to remember the kids still a teenager. It's a, you know, born and raised in Utah. It's a long way, culturally, lifestyle-wise. I think if you get any kind of minutes, And that includes even if he goes out on loan, whether it's for maybe a chunk of the season or what have you. I think you want to just be on the field. You want to be making a positive impression on the manager and settling in and comfortable. I have a distinct sense.

I don't think we have reporting on this yet, but I have a distinct feeling that he will be in the first camp, the September, October camp for the USM&T, which will be another thing that will hopefully help to help him settle and build momentum and keep the possible. positive vibes. But it's already an amazing story. I mean, I'm, I feel fortunate here because, you know, he had given a few flashes. He scored a banger last year that kind of went viral for RSL. You know, they were getting their butts kicked by Sunhung Min in LFC, but he scores this overhead kick that kind of put him on the map a bit.

But still, it wasn't clear that he was going to have this kind of breakthrough year. And then I did a preseason trip to do some interviews for the, you know, for the like around the Coachella preseason tournament in California in February, and RSL was one of the teams that visited. And they were kind of like, hey, you know, we got a couple of these young guys that we, that were high on. And I think you should, you know, you should interview him. And so he was one of them, him, and has Arkani as well.

Got a few minutes with Diego Luna. And it's so cool when you, when somebody sort of gives you that heads up, and then everything just goes so swimmingly, because it just kind of felt like I got in a chat with him a little bit on his way up the ladder. And Salm had a chat had also did in a quick interview with him at the MLS All-Star game last month. And it's just a great story.

Obviously, there's things have been going so well for him. You almost expect that there'll be some bumps. There will. Some cul-de-sacs. But what a story so far. It seems like a really good kid and is well-equipped, I think, in terms of the thing that he hear most about him from scouts, coaches, et cetera, is like he's been this plus.

plus plus physically gifted kid for a couple years now. That's what's enabled him to be so ahead of the curve, ahead of his age group for multiple kind of rungs on the ladder. But now, like, playing at the pro level, you can see him adding those different facets to his game. He's improving so dramatically. He's putting it all together in a way that's just super cool. Yeah.

What do you think, you know, I guess what do you think makes, besides the physical tools, what do you think it makes him special or made him special at RSL and created this situation, you know? Yeah, well, I guess I'm going to flog a piece I did about this that ran on MLSalk.com when the transfer finally went official, which took about a week, took about a week longer to go official than a lot of us thought it would. but I got to talk to Kurt Schmidt, who is their sporting director, R.S.L. son of the late great Sigi Schmidt. And then I'd also gotten to chat with Tony Beltron, who's there. I think he's their assistant sporting director in preseason.

And it's interesting as they had, so we think of Rsel as this academy-driven development-oriented club. And it is, right? They have for more than a decade now seen player development and academies, development specifically within that as the key to competing above their weight, right? They are very conscious. They're in the smallest metropolitan area in MLS. They have to compete with teams and markets like Seattle and L.A. and the Texas clubs, et cetera. So they've always thought this is the way, right? And they've scouted all over the west. They get kids from all over. They're very aggressive and proactive in terms of like there's talent ID. They've spent nine figures

on a really incredible, you know, sort of physical infrastructure of having a training facility, the little stadium to go with it for their second team rail monarchs, residential component like dorms on site, education, spent big money. But it turned out even with all that spending, much of which was their previous owner, Deloy Hanson, the system was in trouble, right? They had a, there was a, I guess I'd say, a multiple-layered controversial. that eventually led to Del Loi Hanson being kind of directed or railroaded into selling the club because he had a racism scandal that blew up in the tail phase of the pandemic, right? And they had about a year or two where they were in transition.

They were the ownership. They were being sold, but it wasn't completed, and they weren't getting any money, really. They had to make it work in kind of a money ball way and try and compete. and the academy structure really, really suffered, right? So Tony Beltron described me in February how there were corners cut, and they didn't have the right scouting infrastructure in place. And so when the new ownership finally came in and was ready to spend properly, they went out and got John Spencer to be their head of identification.

He's now their head of academy. Insider, youth soccer, insider people may recognize him. He coached Servite High School and was like this kind of talent spotter and high school soccer coach who helped the Roaldon Brothers breakthrough. Interesting. He helped Chris Pontchius breakthrough and a number of other players, mostly in SoCal. And so they brought him in and they're like, we really need identify players better. We need to rebuild the pathway sort of.

And the 2007 age group, a birth year group was the first one to really come through that system. And Xavier Gozo was the crown jewel, was the most highly rated prospect of that birth year. and he also happens to be the first true Utah native kid, truly local kid, as opposed to someone like Luna, right, who's recruited from elsewhere, to come all the way through every wrong in the ladder. And he was a case study,

and they thought he might be the special one, and so far he has been. They don't want him to be the only one, but it's just very interesting because they want to, they don't want to just develop academy kids. They want to get castoffs and USL guys and, you know, late bloomers and stuff.

They generally want to be a developmental club in all phases. But he's, he's kind of, Gozo is, is the case study. He is the one that I think gives them proof of concept that they're backed. And so I'm looking closely at Hezarkani. Aidan Hezarkani is another really interesting kid who's, I think just a year younger than Gozo. Playmaker 10 type kid.

He's from a Persian-American background, came up through SoCal, actually, is a SoCal kid who wasn't on the list for any of the California clubs. And so they recruited him to RSL. So he's another one I'm watching. And if they can really keep it cranking, we've already seen like that, that can have a direct impact on the national team and the player pool for the senior team and the Y&Ts.

Yeah, it's interesting because I think of the 2000, the 2000 birth year with RSL, which is Richie Ledesma and Sebastian Soto. and they were both from out of state, you know, Ledesma came from Arizona, Soto came from SoCal as well. And they, you know, they got a lot of sort of momentum in the RSL Academy, and they both left before they were signed. I mean, I guess it depends on how you want to say that. I think they maybe should have, could have been signed.

I don't know that they're really that sad about it now, given how those two players' careers have gone. But anyway, it's interesting that there was, that seven years later they felt like they had to reboot everything. Because they were cranking out some talent back then. Yeah, it seemed crazy to me, the idea that you could have this incredible physical system built. But if you don't have the right people making the right choices, the right sets of eyes, the right places, it may not matter. Right. So they definitely had a bearing period and lessons in there probably for a lot of different clubs across the U.S.

Yeah, lessons for, I mean, you need human attention on things, you know. That's a kind of critical. Yeah, the machine doesn't always run itself. Right. I had to look up the lyric while we were talking, but I just want to say when it back to Gozo at Crystal Palace, it reminds me of, you know, there will, we were talking about there will be probably bumps along the way. It reminds me of the Casey Musgrave song, Wonder Woman. You know, she goes, I'm familiar with her, but not that song. She goes, I like where this is going.

You like it too. We rarely never, ever don't see eye to eye. We're going to. That's, yeah, that's the, that's kind of how it's going to go between new signings and big clubs where the pressure is high. A lot of excitement at first, and then there will be, there will be bumps on the road. I just thought I was struck in your article by Schmid's quote saying one of the things that is kind of impossible for us to do is to instill in these kids the desire to improve and the responsibility in their own development. So from right away, Gozo showed that. A very unique individual.

There's not more like him just lying around waiting to be scooped up. Attitude and effort, baby. Yeah, and Paul Tenore over at the Athletic had a good piece where he delved into that a little bit, like how. the wise and hows of those are's big leap over the past year or so. The work he put in on the training ground and that intrinsic motivation that he started to show, they and Schmidt talked about, you know, their big focus throughout his rise through the system was, you have to keep pushing him, right? We have to keep in challenge, have to keep in challenge.

And that's sort of a basic idea for youth development people. Like, obviously, right? if they're good, you have to play them up. You have to move kids up until they're in an environment that challenges them without overwhelming them. But I think it's easy to say, but the devils and the details when it comes to the execution. And Schmidt also kind of talked about how that, he was just always on everybody's lips. Like, all right, his gozo playing, what's going on, where, you know, they're, they're intentional about him. And you would hope that on some level every kid gets that.

But clearly, you know, there's test cases. and Crown Jewel's sort of prospects that they really want to make sure pop through. I just want to also point out, so I think we'll get into this on the cultural side a bit. He is, so his dad's Ivorian. We'll see if there's dual national panic that unfolds here. I thought it was notable in the MLS All-Star jerseys,

like the players' countries of origin, they have their little flag on their shirts. And he had the American flag and the Ivorian Cote d'Ivois. flag, which is interesting. We haven't heard. I have no reason to believe that he's going to fly the coop, but there have been reports that Cote d'i foie have reached out that they want to, they want to try and lure him away or make a pitch. But he's played for the youth national team multiple levels. He was one of the standouts. I think he was the youngest of second youngest kid on the new 20 squad for the last World Cup and was an impactful player there. So I don't think it's a

problem, but that that's part of his upbringing his middle name or one of his two middle names is DDA, as in DDA Dragba. dad immigrated to Utah. He's a member of the Church of Latter-Dy Saints. Oh, I see. Met his American wife. I think it was, I thought, I'd been told it was a Utah jazz game.

I saw another one that said it was a college basketball game. But anyway, very much an immigrant story. His big brother played under Kyle Beckerman at, I think it was Utah Valley University, a local D-1 college program. So we have another little brother effect here, I think with a ball as life household. And then the little brother,

always tagging along and trying to catch up to big bro. So, you know, we see that archetype, I think, a lot around national team guys. Are they whispering about him on the streets of Abidjan, you know? I don't know. I kind of doubt it. You know, too, and we'll talk about the Red Bulls kids in a minute, I imagine. But it's striking how many of the kids, the top, top blue chippers coming through are have some sort of immigrant background or dual or multinational eligibility situation and how many how

almost universal it is that these kids on some level will keep their options open and they're I think it's I think it's inevitable to say at this point that they're getting this advice and it's probably savvy career advice right Julian Hall in particular sticks out for me his mother immigrated from Poland. Dad's American. He wears his mother's family name on his jersey as a tribute to her and her role. The president of the

Polish Federation flew to New Jersey to meet with her and give her a customized Polish national team jersey to make this pitch. And I was pretty appalled actually because he posted about it on Twitter. Again,

picture, you know, J.T. Batson or Cindy Parlo Cohn, right, flying across the ocean to take a photo with a jersey, right, for a dual national you're trying to recruit. It's kind of amazing. And then the replies on Twitter, of course, which is, unfortunately, apart for the course these days, there's just, like, incredible racism in Polish, like, in the replies to this guy. Because Julian is a mixed race, and that clearly bothers some segment of that fan base. So I'm reading that going, how on earth is. Is this kid going to deal, you know, want to deal with even a smattering of that kind of thing, right? But he has kept his options open. And it's just smart. I think it's just smart for your long-term prospects. These kids all want to be welcomed and valued by a national team. And so they have to be careful, I think, and something interesting. Maybe this is just the modern era that we're in.

Yeah, much to my, well, not much to my, but to my moderate chagrin, I am turning into Brian Shoretta on this topic. Like, I'm like, whatever, bro. You know, I mean, if you want to go, like, play friendlies in Krakow, then go ahead, you know. It does seem pretty far-fetched, given all the things you just described. And, like, just, I mean, he's a totally American kid. It's, I mean, he obviously loves his mom, which is great. And he's keeping his options open because that's the savvy thing to do. But I'm not buying it.

It's part of the one of the story, I think, sort of sub-sub-plots of this year's World Cup, too. It's like, and I think you have to take it as a laurel for the general progress of soccer in this country. is that a longer and longer list of national teams around the world are mindful of their diaspora and trying to keep tabs on their network of hyphenated American kids, right? So C.J. Dos Santos, who is currently the starting goalkeeper for San Diego FC. He was in the youth national team, U.S. youth national team picture at multiple levels. And I think went to a couple World Cups, but kind of fell down the pecking order on the U.S. side. It wasn't a regular starter for a few years at club level.

And Cap Verde comes calling. And he had Cap Verde Heritage. And they fast-tracked him into their program just in time to be one of their, you know, I think the backup. I don't remember if he was the two or the three goalkeeper for their plucky Cinderella World Cup squad. But like, that's so cool, man. And the fact that he was well into his 20s and had that choice and it gets to have that adventure, man. I think that's great.

Totally. Yeah. Okay, the other big piece from the desk of Bome Global Incorporated this past, you know, week is the interview with Michael Bradley and a piece about the youth movement at Red Bull. What struck you the most from your reporting on that? Yeah, I got 30 or 40 minutes. One of you won with Michael Bradley last week. Great conversation.

So interesting to watch his evolution. He's a first year head coach, right? But I think we all know he's ahead of the curve for your, not your typical first year, first team head coach. He just arrived at Red Bull, New York, just less than a year ago now. He joined their two teams, the MLS Next Pro teams coaching staff, and took over that job last summer, and then proceeds to lead them on this incredible run to the MLS Next Pro championship.

and when their first team had a down year led to coaching change. Julian de Guzman, former Canadian international, who's their sporting director, saw enough just in six months that he felt like Michael Bradley is the guy for us, even though he's still very young, still knew that he just saw something in him and he didn't want to lose this guy because you could tell he was going places, right? And I see that too. I mean, we all know about his dad.

He's part of what storytelling Isaiah was. really enjoyed doing with the piece that came out yesterday was like when I first started in this work decades ago now people like Brian Strauss who had been around longer than me had these great stories from when Michael Bradley was a kid he would tag along to his dad's you know job right so when it was the holidays and summer and stuff a you know single digit age Michael Bradley would be at DC United and we're talking Dynasty area DC United right John Harks Marco Etcher Jesse Marsh, Chris Armis, you know, just Stack Squad. And young Michael Bradley became known among journalists.

He was the kid, you know, the smart aleck kid, assistant coach's son tagging along, wanting to always juggle. He'd even, like, he, he, he, he'd, he'd, he'd, he'd, he'd, Brian Strauss had great stories of juggling with him on the sidelines, you know, in the late 90s. And then that's continued this at Chicago Fire. What's Brian up is Brian, what's Brian doing right now? Is he writing anything?

he has done some uh i haven't i haven't hung out with him in a little while yet but he was doing some some kind of contract writing work uh for a couple different places um still still living in north virginia uh i think um you know i had some friends a mutual friends in the business who were who were kind of pressing him to try and go see if there was maybe uh uh as a federation kind of scales up down in in georgia um and staffs up there you know We're pushing him to try and go look for a full-time gig down there, but I don't think he went after that. I think he seems very happy in his northern Virginia homeland.

Great guy. And also, like, as well, he's one of my core memories from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and covering it. And he was sort of like, it was his fourth World Cup, something like that he'd covered. And he was like, what else is? there I've done it I never thought I get this far it's amazing and that was sort of like he was he I think he's got he got over maybe some of the stuff that that is still fresh and new when you're when you're you haven't been in the

business as long I don't think he feels compelled to go go sprint after the brass ring maybe the way that that you're quote-unquote supposed to in the business but yeah still great guy I hope we get to read his words I love reading and reading him about soccer. I mean, I still use like a 12-year-old article as a reference in the Bradley piece because he told the story so well. And I asked Michael about, you know, that unique soccer education he got. And again, it taps back into that, right? We see it with the coach's kid or the ball is life household with if you come up in certain environments. And I think so many of our top national team players, Christian Polisick is Exhibit A, are in this very specific

environment at home. And I think a lot of what I think about is, is how do you brought that, right? How do you make that more accessible? How do you make it so that someone who isn't part of a multi-generational soccer family tradition? How can they get access to it? And Bradley talked about how that's what they want to do at Red Bull, New York. They truly want to be, and they've got a huge, obviously, northern New Jersey and the tri-state area in general is a massive population area. It's a massive talent pool for youth soccer. They just opened earlier this year, a hundred something million dollar new training facility that gets the first team, second team, and all the academy teams under the on the same facility. And they've built literally right down to the physical

design, they've built everything so that there's this sense of pathway. And Michael spoke on this in detail that he considers himself to be just sort of like, he's at the first, as a first team head coach. He's at the top of the of that sort of ladder, but he wants to know what everybody's doing, what what all the teams look like. And so they make it so that the, you know, the UA teens are watching out the window of the dining hall as they eat lunch and they can watch the first team train or they're one field over from the new 16s. Right down to 10 year old kids, they want everybody in the system to feel like there's a pathway here for you and, and you can see it. It's tangible and that you're part of something bigger. And they, he wants them to have

pride in not just the club, but how they play and to have kind of a little bit of a sense of DNA. If you watch this Red Bulls team, they're starting three teenagers in their usual 11. You've got Julian Hall, Audrey Mehmeti, Matthew Dos Santos. They are fielding. I think it's eight of the 10 youngest starting 11s in MLS this year. I've been Red Bulls 11s. And they want to continue that, right? They truly want to be a development. center club and there's some frustration among the fan base that they feel like maybe that's at the cost of going out and trying to win things and you you have that in any club but particularly in New York right that's one of the few original MLS teams that still hasn't won a league championship

um i think some members of fan base chafe at this approach because they feel like we're a farm team right for Leipzig or uh the rest of the global network but i mean i'm i'm drinking the Kool-Aid to some extent right now because they seem to have been pretty intentional with what they're doing. They seem to want to grow players. And with Michael Bradley, you know, again, as young as he is in terms of head coaching, there's a lot in that brain, right? And I think I think we're going to see him as one of our long-term. He's going to be one of the great U.S. soccer coaches, I would have to predict. You would think, yeah. I do want to say quickly back about his time as a kid in the

his dad's locker rooms. I understand from his dad that his, this is what he said this to me in a message at one point. My rule for him was simple. If you act like a spoiled little shit, these guys will have no time for you. But if you help out and know how to act, they'll include you.

And I think that was, that was the message from the beginning. And, uh, yeah, there was something else I wanted to say about Bradley. Another fun example just to fill in while you're running the memory banks. I got to write about Mamedian Hall earlier this year as well. Mamedi and Hall have this.

They just feel to me, and D'Azantos is, I don't mean to exclude him from this. He's a top kid and he's pushed ahead of the curve. And I think he's going to be an extremely good left-backed specialist. But Hall and Mimdi have this understanding with one another. And they're just so far ahead of their age in terms of like their technique and the ability to execute. And Medi in particular, I mean, you've heard the Sergei Bousquet's comparisons, which is crazy, right, to saddle any person, any player on earth of that, let alone an American teenager. But there was a moment from their game against Nashville and Wednesday that was so impressive from him to set up Paul with a one-v-one of the keeper in like just in a flash, right? I use it as a lead for the, for the Bradley piece because.

It's a nice lead. Kudos. Thank you. Thank you. Mamedi does things that, that, that, U.S. rear central midfielders just generally don't, don't do. You just don't see a lot of it. And a lot of it comes back to his, I believe his family are, mom and dad are both Albanian immigrants. And there's great stories that were, that circulates you can read about.

they his dad when he met his his his wife his future wife and mother of his children he said i want to raise a pro soccer player right so dad had the vision always and uh he would use the ring camera and like the family the house security cameras to like record them playing these backyard games and they're they're just doing small stuff they're just always kicking around they're just every day they're taking the ball they're going out in the backyard and they're playing a game they're doing one-v-one they're farting around in some way that's fun but competitive. And they've got the ring cam footage. And it's amazing.

And again, it's another data point for these environments that some kids are getting. Some families are able to create. And I think one of my big takeaways from the World Cup, too, is like, let's, you know, what does it take? How can you systemize this to the greatest extent possible? Because it is organic, too. And there's, you can't, you can't mass produce stuff like that. But I think that's going to be one of our sort of meta challenges as a soccer nation is like get more kids exposed to more of these things because there's just such a, I just keep finding these kind of anecdotes around so many of the top players.

Yeah, that's really cool. And obviously, yeah, soccer starts at home as they say. The thing, one thing that impresses me about the Red Bull project is that impressed me like months ago is that you would hear a teenager like Audrey Mametti echoing the language that Bradley was using. And I'm thinking specific. We talked about this on this podcast, but he was talking about you need to be alive in training every day, every moment, alive. And I remember hearing Bradley say that, and Mimetti saying that. And I feel like that's a really good sign of the coach connecting with the players, you know, because people aren't going to echo what you're saying if they're not listening to you.

Or if they think you're like a jerk or whatever. It's, I mean, maybe they will, I guess, if they're really savvy and good at flattering their coach. But I just think that it's a signal that perhaps the communication and the, environment are healthy. And Mehmedi and Bradley had worked together in the title run in the second team level last year. But a detail that it escaped me until I talked to Bradley himself was, Hall wasn't really part of that. Hall had already been with the first team for a while.

I think he's one of the youngest ever signings. You know, he signed his homegrown deal a few years ago now. And he was with the first team. So he would only kind of make cameos or dip in with two team. and they Michael didn't give me a ton of details but apparently

Hall was pretty close to moving abroad right they were having conversations about if this is his time to go to go across the Atlantic last winter and Bradley specifically put in a word from his own side that he wanted to work

with this kid that he liked what he saw but he hadn't worked with him first thing yet and he wanted to do so if at all possible so he acknowledged that when a big big bid comes in And it's often, you know, if the transfer deal is big enough, it gets taken out of the first team coach's hands. You really wanted to work with Hall. And he's gotten his wish.

And I think you see that. I think that probably reinforces that observation that you share there that these guys, obviously they know what Michael did as a player. And they're clearly getting something out of the day-to-day environment. And it's no surprise to anyone right who knew Michael as a player that he's, He's a process guy. He's a daily grind type of guy. And when he was hired, Duguzman told the story about coming into the training facility. You know, he'd see Michael come in early in the morning.

And then one day he was leaving at like, you know, set up seven o'clock or something. And he was the offseason. And he saw someone out on the training pitch doing, doing like, you know, I don't know what it was, shuttles or some kind of running workout. And he's like, oh, it's great to see. One of the players in here during the off season. And then he walks, he gets closer and realizes it's Michael Bradley, you know, getting the, getting the cardio in at like 7 o'clock on a weeknight or whatever. So he's got the grind mentality. And I think the big question now, and he's been open about it.

I mean, they, they doubled the expected goals of Nashville on Wednesday night. Nashville is the runaway leader in MLS, the overall table right now. They're on course to win supporter shield. They are a wagon. and they were comprehensively outplayed by by RBNY the other night and still still managed to win the game you were the Red Bulls like you know had a couple great chances could only put one shot on target Paul was a little bit wasteful and they end up losing on an injury time set piece header right and that's just that's a kind of

of game that's infuriating it's a great example of what what you have to weather with young players right they have nights like that where just don't quite put it all together. And right now they're down in the bottom reaches of the playoff places. So I think they'll be in the playoff mix. Not guaranteed to get in. But the question for this team and for Michael Bradley is, you know, and it applies to RSL and to a bunch of the other in Philly as well.

And in MLS is like the conventional wisdom is still that you can develop players, you can be competitive while developing young players? But are you going to, you know, can you go and win things? Are you going to beat a team like Inter Miami and a must win knockout? situation, that hasn't happened very often, right? And so, and again, you'll definitely, you can definitely hear from, from Red Bull fans who, who think this is all, um, at the expense of, of winning things at a first scene level. So, um, we love farm teams. We love farm teams at the Scott's podcast. Um, yeah. How about, how about Kevin Sullivan? What's your, you know, we don't

have to talk about him forever, but what's your, uh, what are you, how, what are you thinking about him. What do you, what do you see in with him? Yeah, it's a great. It's, it's, it's, there's a, he might be on the similar sort of trajectory to, to, to, to or gozos at now, but maybe he's a, a few months or a year or so behind because he made, he's made, he's made a leap this year. I mean, Kevin and there's, and it's a great example of sort of the complexity theory that are around player development, right? Kevin, they made a point to bring him into the first team quickly. They made a point to give him his MLS debut early enough that it broke Freddie Adieu's record for youngest MLS player in history.

But the thing is, it was all kind of meaningless because he had no impact as a player last year. Right. It felt like a little bit of sort of like a, you know, maybe a little bit of a PR element to that. And then that was two years ago, if I remember. incorrectly. And then last year, he was around the first team, but he was clearly not there, right? He was not an impact player. He was getting the little brother. He didn't, whether it was the physical abilities weren't quite there. He just wasn't adding it all up. He wasn't an MLS starting to your

or rotation to your player. Well, it's changed dramatically, right? And some of that, I think, is that the union went from supporter shield winners to dead last, just abject start to the season. We're awful, so bad that they fired their coach of the year winner, Bradley Carnell, before the World Cup break. Things were going that badly. And that has turned out to have set up an environment that's really been conducive to Cabin's growth

because Ryan Richter, the interim coach, knows him really well. He's been around the club for ages. coach, been a youth coach at multiple levels, I think knows Kavana as well as anyone could possibly know him who would be in that first team head coaching job. And he's given him, he's given him the runway, and it's matched with what Kavin himself has done, the steps he's taken.

Again, the guys over there over there the athletic do great work, right? Tom Bogart wrote about this recently. Talking to John Shear, who's another long-time Philly Academy kind of presence, is now their sporting director. And he talked about how when the rest of the team was, You know, there's mandatory days off built into the CBA that were happening during the beginning of the first phase of the World Cup pause. MLS took about seven weeks off, right? And John Shear describes how Kavana was like, didn't want the time off.

He said, can I please train? Can I work out with the two team? He even took part in a scrimmage that Union II had against, I think it was Cote d'Ivoise national team was based in the area and was bawling out in that and was sort of turning heads. And so then when the league resumes last month, he's just, he just hits the ground running. And he is now probably their best attacker. He's right up there. Eloski has been a great contributor for them as well. It's not just cabin.

But he's made the jump in a powerful way, considering he's still just 16. And then another fantastic point we got on Wednesday was they play Inter Miami, who has been a bokey team for Philly since the messier. era began. It ends up being a two-two draw, but in the, in the latter stages, the game, Quinn Sullivan, who's back, his cabin's big row is back from an ACL injury, and they're both out on the pitch. There's a kerfuffle. I think it was Ian Frey of Interim Miami tries to do the Alan Iverson style step over, over the prone body of Quinn Sullivan if you had gone down in the box, trying to get a late penalty kick. A wrestling, Quinn responds with this wrestling moves.

incredible. If you're listening to this podcast, there's a very good chance of seeing the video. If not, go look at it. It pops off quickly. Kevin Sullivan at 5'0, 8, 18, just races in, comes in hot, and gets in the face of a Yonic Bright in Miami, immediately defends his brother, immediately ready to square up, despite it being like two on five, basically. Yeah, fearless, fearless.

Fearless, like just down, down for whatever. Eventually gets red-carded. He and Keen and Bright get red-carded. Quinn Sullivan, somehow despite being the one that pops it all off with a WWE move, only gets yellow-carded. But it was incredible content, and it was also, I thought, another great sign of the growth of this kid. And just the way he's wired to, right? And I'm a big Quinn-Solven Liker also.

I think he's much older. He's 22. he's not going to probably get to the same ceiling. His ceiling is lower than his younger brothers, but he's still a really top player, and you can just see the Philly in them, and it was, I think, everything that's happened for the last few months around Philly Union

has, I think, been a vindication of the identity that they've cultivated for many years, their attempts to sort of reflect the character of their city and their region, their, their, their, their, the centrality of, of player development in everything. I mean, they are, they're still, you know, outside the playoff spots, but I don't think that's going to be the case for a long.

There's something like 4-0-1 or 4-1 or something since the, since play resumed, like this is a team completely reborn under Richter, and Kavana's been a huge part of it. And I think every USM&T watcher should be really, really excited about where this kid is at, right? He's a playmaker, you know? He has, as Michael Irvin says, he doesn't feel the, temperature in the room. He's a thermometer. Yeah. Yeah. No, and he's, he's, there's little subtleties to how he's finding space. You know, this is, he's figuring out where to be impactful. He's

sniffing out what the game is, is presenting in real time. And obviously, you know, he wants to get on that left foot, ideally in the half spaces where he can, you know, combine or, or pull out, pull off a shot, but he can also drift out wide and go 1 v1 and get the end line. He's just like the skill set. Again, you know, you see it at youth level and it's never a guarantee that it's going to translate completely and that they're going to stay on course. And it's just, it's there right now. I mean, he's in less than a year, he's gone from like, okay, this kid might be good

someday to this is a difference maker in major league soccer. And I think that points to, you know, whenever, whatever awaits him when he becomes fully the property of Manchester City in a year or two here. Who knows what the aforementioned speed bumps will be or his journey, but he's back on course and then some. And he's now a leading storyline, I think, on a league-wide basis. You want to see children jump started by the World Cup, you know, inspired by it and going out and practicing.

and it sounds like Kavan is one of those children this year. Yes. I totally, I mean, we talk about him every week, but it does seem like he's the most important player for Philly right now. He's only 16. He's so, so relentless. He's everywhere on the field, doing everything. It's like he will find the game.

He will find work. And, man, that is such a valuable thing. Okay. Last question for you. Last sort of topic. What do you think about? What's your post-mortem on the World Cup now, a month and a half later? Yeah.

The U.S. I'm specific. Yeah. Not just the USA's performance, but like what did you think of the tournament and all that? Well, obviously, not to gas everybody up here to excess, but like I had a great adventure. I was not exclusively, but mostly covering the U.S., so I was out on the West Coast for about a month. And I'm super fortunate to be able to cover four,

I think I covered four games in L.A., covered the U.S. knockout games, the game in Seattle. Then I caught one more game. Before I flew home after the Belgium game, the last game in Canada was the following day in Vancouver, Colombia, Switzerland. and I managed to get credentialed for that. So I, although the trains were all sold out and buses because of the Colombian traveling fans.

But I just rented a car for the day and drove up. So I added a fourth city to my, to my World Cup itinerary. And I'm really glad I did because one, I had never been to Vancouver before. But my experience, from a U.S.-centric perspective, so on the, on the, on the sort of more granular level, like, we are who we thought we are, right? And I had it been uneasy in the lead-up to that Belgium game, even setting aside for this conversation, all the BS around the red card, the balligan situation,

Trump's involvement. I had never saw the U.S. as a favorite in that match, the way that a lot of people, and I think a lot of the betting houses had convinced themselves. In sane, how badly the betting houses. performed on that. Well, they were, I mean, I guess we can say in retrospect, they were pandering to a large, excited

American audience that was ready to lay money on that game. But having been in Atlanta for the March window, watching the Portugal and Belgium games firsthand, I didn't see anything that had happened, even with the Paraguay and the Argentina

or the, sorry, the Australia game, nothing that had happened involving either Belgium or the USM&T had given me the slightest inclination to believe that the fundamental gaps that that friendly in the spring showed had changed. Yeah, the home field advantage is huge. Obviously, that things clicked in a important way for the U.S., but Belgium is still Belgium, and then they got a huge boost, I think huge psychological boost from their profound sense of unfairness

about Balligan's red card being dismissed. And so we, I hate to sound like an old fart, you know, but like I've watched enough World Cups now. I've witnessed enough of these round of 16 exits for it to feel like a time is a flat circle sense, which is, of course, really disappointing if you're a U.S. fan hoping for something to be different this year, which you had reason to feel that way, right? because a home sole World Cup is something special. But we, to pan out and look at the bigger picture,

I always come back to culture. And a big takeaway I had from my time in Cascadia that's catching a couple of games in Seattle, being around Seattle for more than a week altogether, and going to watch parties, watching other games. I mean, one of my most powerful non-stadium memories of the World Cup was my soundered heart editor Jeremiah O'Shen and I and a couple other people watched the Mexico versus England knockout game at the Azteca.

We watched it on a massive screen in this beautiful amphitheater at the foot of the Space Deal in Seattle, right? And it was hundreds of people for Mexico, right? Which you might expect that in a place that is perceived to be more traditionally Latino or Mexican-American, but there's a huge character that, in Seattle as well. And it's like every game was an event. I know that we get tired of the

Cascadia effect, right? Everybody's tired of hearing about how great soccer is in Cascadia, Portland, and Seattle, whatnot. But then my time in Vancouver just reinforced this. Like, it really felt different. As big a deal as the games in L.A. were as pumped as the Bay Area got for that U.S. Bosnia game.

Like, to me, the cultural architecture that we should all be seeking to grow and nurture in the rest of the country is strongest in the Pacific Northwest, where there's just its culture, its history, it's the centrality of the sport in the day-to-day life is just that a little bit amplified compared to so many other places. And it's like it's it all sort of coagulates national team, your local club, if you support a club abroad, your kids, games, whatever. It's just like, I hope that we can draw the game and emulate that because, like, that's special.

And that's what's going to get our kids, more of our kids, into these environments that we were talking about earlier with in the context of those, these blue-chip phenops. Hmm, yeah. I don't want to give the Pacific Northwest too much credit, though. I mean, you can. I'm just going to sit that out, you know. Jeff, all the rich, all the rich white people, all the rich white people who work at Amazon, you know, good for you.

That's fair. But I do, I do part of why I referred to the Mexico watch was, was that it was, it clearly transcended the bourgeois white collar environment that is, you know, that we associate with the sounder and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. I'm mostly just razzing. It's irresistible, right? Because we don't want to gas them up any more than they already gas themselves up. But like, it's not an accident. They're floating from all of their self-gassing up.

But let me ask you something. I want to ask you, in the wake of this tournament in this summer, you know, and part of what, part of the storylines around those two U.S. games at Lumen Field was like, why is this only the seventh and then eighth competitive match the USM&T has played in this city? So is it time to schedule more games up there? Do we need to be, granted, competitive home games that have true jeopardy

are going to be few and far between. But to me, they deserve more games. What do you think? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the, I think like, I mean, it seems like Nashville gets, a game every six months, you know? And I just don't know that, you know, based on the crowds I've seen at those games,

I don't think that city deserves it. So, yeah, I think definitely, as long as the travel time is like, like works for the sports scientists and everything, you know, to go over to the West Coast for most of our players coming from Europe, I'm all for it. More games, more games on the West Coast, specifically the Pacific Northwest. Because I'm still, you know, it's great that. like Hollywood came out for the two World Cup group stage games in California, but the performance of that city, Los Angeles, when we played in Nations League, you know,

18 months ago, is, you know, a borderline fireable offense. So I think, I think let's make it specific to the Pacific Northwest. Let's spread it out in general to more different places. I mean, like the north, you know, the northeast, the Midwest, I think, has not, you know, like the upper Midwest hasn't gotten many games lately. I guess Minneapolis has, but what about... Let's get the game when it's not 5 degrees Fahrenheit, right, at kickoff. That would be, I think that would be a gesture of respect to Minnesota, but...

That game was incredible, and I won't hear anything else about it. I still find it absurd, but, no, I do, like, one of my little, one of my little agenda things is, I hope we get to a point soon. Because what was frustrating to me about the playing, playing that World Cup qualifier in February, I think it was right, in Minnesota was, it's like I just kept thinking, this is small team behavior, right?

And this is like, at some point we have to grow out of this. And my hope for these future cycles, mindful that the World Cup expansion has sort of changed the map fundamentally. And we're all going to have to rewire our brains as to what qualifying is going to look and feel like. But like, My hope as someone and someone who lives in a highly diverse East Coast City that is actively avoided, has been actively avoided by USSF for qualifying matches for decades now, is I hope someone who makes these decisions at some point will be ready to buckle up and just go into these places that we supposedly have to be clever and avoid. right and like go make the pitch i think the next phase if you really again talking about like getting

getting over this hump that's this round of 16 hump that's so infuriating like go go to new york go to dc boston chicc whatever play poland in chicago play mexico and l a way like go insert yourself in those difficult environments and make a case to these populations that love soccer that have been actively avoided by the federation for so many years now for for defensible strategic reasons but like if we want to start a new era man let's go be a national team for everyone and try to win over the hyphenated communities maybe who have reasons to support the okay but how does the pacific northwest fit into that you can't have it both ways you know i mean like like uh it's a seattle is like one of the least i mean everywhere in america's diverse there's latinos everywhere

Like there's Latinos in small towns all over the country. And there are a lot of black people in some of these cities that we're saying are not diverse. So like, but Seattle, come on, brother. That's not a, that's like one of the least diverse cities in America. Let's walk and chew gum at the same time, though. Let's do both. Okay. All right.

Well, I mean, you see what I'm saying, though. You make a very valid point. But I think there's going to be a lot of a lot of games. And if FIFA really has fallen in love with the American sports market and we'll be hosting another World Cup sooner than any of us at any business to expect just a few months ago, if that's really going to happen. If Conry Ball again finds the U.S. dollar irresistible and we have another Cop America on home soil, right? Like, it's, it's interesting because for so much of my adult life, we've been talking about, like, we have to go to Europe. We have to go play in hostile environments. But, like, it's just interesting to me.

Like, the World Cup was like, this was our, this was our Homestown World Cup. And yet it's almost like we're, we've drawn the gravity of the U.S. gravity is drawing FIFA towards us rather than the other way around. So I don't even know what, how do you prepare yourself to be successful at, at, at, at, at, Spain, Morocco, 2030. Like, of course you need to play elite teams, right? And it's better, it's harder to play elite teams on the road than it is at home. But, like, we're going to be, we're increasingly a center, a nerve center of global soccer for better and for worse, right? And so I'm really intrigued to see, like, the psychological component of that, how we, how we handle this.

Like can flight, maybe a flight time to the West Coast matters less now than it did 10, 15, 20 years ago. Maybe, you're probably right. Approach, you know, friendly windows differently in terms of where our players are and where they're going. I don't know. And then the physical headquarters now being in one place in Georgia, maybe that's probably another factor to mix in here. Thank you so much, Charlie. Have a great weekend, everybody. Thanks for listening.

We'll see you. You know,