Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 118: Brian McBride, a January news glut, and the “need-a-move” crew

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

We run down the big news of the past couple weeks, including Brian McBride’s hiring as USMNT general manager and Josh Sargent’s great weekend, and work through a list of American players who need or could use a move right now. 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.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velasquez in Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Hello everyone and thanks for downloading another episode of scuffed. Greg, how are you? I'm good, Pels. I feel like the national team is getting back into full swing. Plenty of news in the last week or so. And then the Bundesliga kicks off again this weekend, so we're out of that sort of dead zone of the winter. Yeah, it's back on. And I feel like there's a lot of exciting things happening with the player pool, too. which we will try to get into. We're going to run through some news because there's been a lot of it in the past couple weeks. And then Greg on the second half of the episode has created a set of categories,

as is his special skill for what we're calling the need-a-move crew. We are two weeks into the transfer window. And I think only one player has officially moved. And even that is a pre-contract for a move in the summer. Yeah. So it's been slow, but we could really use a couple of things. a couple of guys could really use it to pick up. Yep, yep.

So, yeah, we need that mid-season rundown. But first, let's go with the big news of the day. Well, it's not the news of the day. It's the news the last four days. Brian McBride is the new general manager of the U.S. men's national team. And he had a conference call with reporters earlier today. Greg, what do you give me your high-level thoughts. I feel like what most people's high-level thoughts are

is that we just have no idea what that will be. It's a lot like when Ernie was hired to be the GM. And it was like, oh, I guess we have no idea if he'll do a good job or not. It's just going to be a wait-and-see thing. But even then, Ernie actually had some experience working in the front office with Philadelphia. McBride hasn't really had any of that experience. He's been a tremendous player for the U.S. national team. He's been a ESPN analyst, we'd say, right?

Yeah, and I would say an ESPN analyst that I often found myself nodding along with. with when he spoke. Yeah, I shared a lot of, I shared a lot of opinions that Mr. McBride esposed. Which means he's going to be a great general manager. Today's call, which I'm sure we'll get into in a little more detail, did shed some light on why he would fit this role well. Some of the things they talked about was like, oh, sure, we're, it kind of felt like, uh, uh, Ernie Stewart recognizing there are a lot of things that he's not going to doing that

need to be done. And so they brought along legend hero Brian McBride to be able to do them. Yeah, I guess my first thought with McBride is not any of the sort of nuts and bolts of the job and whether he has the experience for them. It's just that he's a likable guy.

He's a likable player. He's a likable analyst. I'm favorably disposed toward Mr. McBride. Yes, it's unclear what the job is. Somewhat unclear. I think more clear after this call today. But, you know, so getting into that a little bit, Stuart talked about the interpersonal skills of McBride,

how he's essentially a likable guy who gets along well with people. And he mentioned three or four times, maybe even five times, that this job is heavily going to involve travel to visit clubs, both domestically and internationally, to build relationships and sort of work with them on the players in the national team pool who are at those clubs. So that, I mean, I guess really high level, that is kind of job number one, according to Ernie Stewart today. And that's one of those things where when you hear that that's something that he needs, that he's going to be doing, that's where you start to say, all right, yes, I see that Brian McBride, excellent candidate for that kind of a job.

Yeah. He mentioned, Stewart mentioned that he, you know, having been a high level player himself in Europe, he can walk into a head office in England or Germany and command some level of respect. You know, he was scored 40 goals at Fulham. He's a legit European striker, European club striker. Let's see. A couple other bullet points from the call. Yes, the men's and women's GM jobs will be slightly different. Stewart said McBride will not be doing the hiring and firing for the youth national team coaches.

So I missed the part of the call where Stewart was talking about the GM jobs being different between the men and the women. Did he kind of get into the whys of that, the why they would be different? Yes. He said that I don't know, I don't know whether this is legit or not, but it sort of made sense on the call. The women's GM job is almost entirely domestically focused, according to Stewart, because the U.S. has the best women's league in the world. Is that true? Well, so I don't even want to necessarily, I think it is, yes.

I think at the moment it is. but and I don't know if he got into this detail, but essentially our entire player pool plays domestically. So even if it's not the best league in the world, that's where all of our players are. So in that sense, like it does make sense. It's not necessarily like, I don't know,

it's not like a poor showing from the US to have these jobs be different on paper, despite, you know, ostensibly trying to have a streamlined process on both the men's and women's side, because again, the men's side has different demands with the player pool being spread out all throughout Europe, Mexico, the U.S.

Yeah, and that was his point. He said, McBride is going to have to travel a lot, lot, lot more than Mark Graff. So there's just more on his plate. And he didn't say it outright, but I guess the implication was therefore he's not going to be quite as responsible for the youth national teams

on the men's side as Mark Graff is for the youth national teams on the women's side. Okay. And that's where we think the big difference is going to be is in the involvement in the youth national teams.

I believe so. Yeah. I mean, I don't claim to have encyclopedic knowledge of the call. My brain goes in and out as I'm typing.

But I think so. I think that's a big one. All right. Another thing that people noticed and that Stewart said is that they're going to hire a director of methodology. I still don't know.

think that's good. I mean, I know we're chuckling and it's like, all right, like, are we just making these things up as we go? But a lot of times it's stuff that we've kind of been clamoring for and it might sound and look a little silly when it's all laid out. But we keep talking about how we want this integrated process. And so maybe maybe the funny part is that we just, we just keep hiring people to hire those people. Yeah. Rather than actually hiring those people. But that's, you know, we want that. We want everything to sort of have some kind of a, you know, a theme that runs from the top to the bottom, a philosophy, something consistent. So hopefully this is just the U.S. soccer moving at a glacial pace, but moving in that direction.

Yeah, I guess I don't want to nitpick. Lord knows I've done enough of that on this podcast, but shouldn't Stewart be the director of methodology? Or couldn't McBride be the director of methodology? I don't know. I mean, yes and no. It seems like you're just going to have a bunch of people arguing in a room. Yeah, but you have that, but it's, it's, Stuart's going to pick the person to do it, you know what I mean? Stewart's going to pick McBride, who will then, you know, pick the director of methodology.

I don't think McRide picks him, but that's sort of what is. Stewart sort of got the highest level vision of what needs to take place, and then he's going to hire someone who's just going to focus on the methodology, and then Stewart's going to hire somebody who's going to focus on what McBride's doing, and Stewart hires Greg Burrhalter, So, I mean, in that sense, you do need, you need, that's what the org chart will look like. And I don't, I don't mind sort of having all those functions separated out for one person, if that makes sense. Yeah, I guess the part where you said, I don't mind makes sense, but I don't know that the rest. You think it's too many? You think it's like just you end up with a ton of cooks who aren't really going to mesh together?

I don't know. I'm no management guru. The big thing, the big thing that I took away was McBride talking about the dual national issue. He said that is definitely part of the job description and it's a high necessity, quote, high necessity and quote, to work to build relationships with players when they're young and their parents to give them a sense of what the program is all about and let them know that they're part of the program. and boy, if that wasn't music to my ears. Yes, this is sort of a hill we've been dying on for some time. Like, we've been hammering on this because it's been, in our minds, such an obvious gap for the last, God knows how many years at least.

And, you know, we got a lot of pushback on this, which always kind of surprised me. And, like, again, for me, it's so obvious to start building these relationships, like, thoroughly and, you know, maintaining them consistently. I barely even like would believe that people who are arguing against us really even believed their own arguments or if it was just like a self-reflexive tendency to defend US soccer because it's just such a no lose situation To invest in these relationships. It's not and I'm not asking for hard cells and like high pressure You know time share pitches, but just continue to build and maintain relationships with all of our players

Dual Nationals included. Yeah Yep Couldn't have said it better myself Any other thoughts from the from the Stuart McBride conference call or McBride as the general manager? Just the high level one that this is kind of what we, you know, I was kind of waiting to see if this would happen of, of Ernie sort of having this plan and starting to really see the dominoes fall at kind of an accelerated pace. And that does seem like what's happening. Yeah. And then even we're all about high level, high level takes today.

But another high level take is he's a populist pick, right? I don't know that that's intentional or anything, but McBride is a player who was very, very popular with the fan base. He comes off as a very easygoing, good-natured guy, more so than, say, Ernie Stewart or Greg Burhalter, right? And so I think in that way, it seems like a good idea to hire him. We'll see how he does in the job. But he's not just a cheerleader either when things aren't going.

well or when he just doesn't think that things are going as well as I could, you know, from his ESPN pulpit, he's been openly critical of some of the decisions and things. So that kind of for me goes a long way that we're not just sort of hiring cheerleaders. He also put, you know, this is a little bit more self-serving, but he also put a lineup on ESPN right after the Gold Cup that he said was, you know, what he thought of as the best possible U.S. men's national team lineup. And it didn't include DEST, it didn't include. It didn't include Desk because Dest wasn't really in the picture yet at that point, at least not in everybody's picture.

But it did have Tim Wea, Tyler Adams, Weston McKinney, and was it Paxson-Pomacall in the midfield? Yeah, in the 11, yeah. And then, of course, Wea on the wing, Pulisic on the other wing, Altador up top. And, you know, when somebody who thought that way six months ago is now in charge of the men's national team, I think that's good. I think that's good. I'm not going to complain about that sort of philosophy. All right. Next little bit of news is it's been a while since this happened,

so it's old news to most of you. January camp is no longer in Qatar because the U.S. killed Iran's top general in Baghdad with the drone strike and missiles have been launched at U.S. targets by Iran in response. You can read all about it on any news outlet that you want. Qatar happens to be just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. U.S. soccer, which had planned to have their training camp at in Doha, in Qatar, decided not to hold the camp there and moved it to Florida. So they've been there two weeks now, a week and a half.

That's the news there. It's probably worth noting as a podcast when something like this happens. Right, right. Bit sobering, isn't it, for the whole, I mean, we're talking about high-level big-picture things. That's a bit bigger picture. Yes. Yeah. Dest, Serginio Dest, by the way, left Iax's first team training camp in Qatar because he didn't feel comfortable there.

So he's rejoined the team in Amsterdam. But it affected people's lives even in this little world that revolves around a game. We've already, so on January camp, we've already discussed the roster. FC Dallas Central midfielder Brandon Savania has been added. that happened in the last couple days. And I think, you know, you should mention, you should listen to Total Soccer shows, a podcast where they go through the roster

because it's pretty good. And I guess... Yeah, it's a real deep dive into a lot of the new faces. Yeah, it's excellent. It's excellent. As usual, when they cover the men's national team. Any new insights on January camp, Greg? Really happy to have Servania there.

I feel like our Olympic hopes might end up revolving around our ability to quash counter attacks against teams that are sitting deep against us. So I think Servania's got an ability to do that. Maybe he might be ahead of a couple of the other central midfielders in camp that might be available for qualifying. So happy to have Servania at this January camp because it might be a precursor to him being in the March qualifying picture.

Yeah. Yeah, I like to see that. You love to see it, as they say. The U.S. Next item is the U.S. Drew Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico in their group for Olympic qualifying in late March in Guadalajara. Soccer America called it the group of death. This is, if you'll remember, a U-23 tournament competition. It very much remains to be seen who will be available for that tournament from a U.S. perspective.

I mean, Stewart and McBride kind of totally punted on that question. The number of moving parts on this is mind-boggling. But anyway, the top two from the group go on to semifinals matches, and those are the Olympic play-in games. Two teams from the region automatically qualify. I think a third has a chance to, right? Oh, I did not know that. I didn't think.

Am I making that up? I could be making that up. We'll have to double check. We'll have our fact team check it. I'm not sure. I didn't catch that when I was looking through the format. Definitely to top two teams go, and I'm probably wrong about what I just said. So a lot of work to be done to qualify for the Olympics,

and it's hard to know who will be on that team. I think we could take more of a stab at it in three weeks. What do you think? Right, right. Remember, club teams are not obligated to release their players for any of the Olympics, whether it's qualifying or the Olympics in Tokyo this summer. So Brian McBride has his work cut out for him immediately.

Yeah. Yeah, he seemed like he felt that way, too, when he was asked about it. A good weekend for Joshua Sargent. I think this deserves its own item, and I will explain why if you would allow me, Greg. I will. Okay. He scored two goals in his first friendly back from a month-long injury. This was a friendly against Hanover.

The first goal was some good, subtle movement at the top of the box, a loose touch that popped way up, and then a quality finish on the volley. The second was a beauty of a snapheader over a tentative Hanover centerback. I did not look up who it was. Just a little, so that's two goals, and then he came off at halftime. Verde Bremen starts the second half of their Bundesliga season on this weekend. So just a little context here. Verde Bremen lost all four of their games after Sergeant went down with a hamstring injury, and they were bad, bad losses.

Not only did they lose to Byron, which is expected, but they lost a Coln, Potterbourne, and Mines. All teams they are now battling in the relegation zone. So it seems like they need reinforcements. They needed that winter break to come. Things were falling apart. And for Sergeant to come back from injury, scored two goals in a friendly a week before they kick off the second half this season, I think it's really, really good news.

Yeah, I was, I mean, I was really excited just to see that he was in the starting lineup, meaning that he was healthy and back to being able to run. And then when he did his work very efficiently in 45 minutes and they got him off, It was like, all right, that's great. Let's now get to the, get back to the opening weekend of this next part of the season. Yeah. And, you know, the knock on sergeant is his, is the hunger and restlessness of his movement in the box and around the box. And I think both goals demonstrated some liveliness on that front.

So that's good, too. All right, Dwayne Holmes. Dwayne Holmes scored a banger over the weekend. Any thoughts? Well, you put him next to Wayne Rooney and suddenly he's an offensive extraordinary. So he had the banger in that goal and the really well-taken volley. You've probably all seen the highlight video of it now. But in his first game with Rooney, he was playing in sort of various roles in midfield.

He kind of floats around as the game progresses and they make changes. But he had a, he had like what should have been a clear assist in that game. So he seems to maybe have been, Rooney might be providing sort of an offensive spark to Holmes and not in a way at homes with a little more quality around him might might sort of tick up on the statistics side. Yeah. Which we don't care about. I don't care about it.

I don't care about it. But it does make arguing for him easier, you know, if he gets five goals and five assists this second half of this season. Next item, Anthony Hudson hired as coach of the U20 men's national team. One of those dominoes. Yeah, that's one of those Ernie Stewart dominoes falling. Weird timing. Can I just interject quickly?

say weird timing that he's hired right before we hired the guy who's supposed to be at least very involved in the hiring of the youth national team coaches? I guess, but there's also the, there's also the factor that they needed to get people in that, someone in that job. These youth national team jobs have been vacant for so long. The U20 team has World Cup qualifying coming up in less than six months. So I guess. It's been vacant since the U20 World Cup in June, and then we couldn't wait three more weeks to get two, one more week to get McBride actually in the office.

Right. Yeah, I hear you. There was definitely pressure to get that job filled, though. So don't love the Anthony Hudson hire. I don't know that anybody did actually love it. But it's been a while since the news came out, so it's been hard for me to stay upset. But I would say it's very much the opposite of a Brian McBride hire. Like there's no, you gain no goodwill announcing Anthony Hudson.

Yeah. Well, he was a colossal failure at the Colorado Rapids. I think he had the worst record in the league when he was fired earlier this past year. And, you know, kind of famously threw his players under the bus, said he had a bottom level group, I think. and so I don't know that doesn't seem like a great fit for a U-20 team but the athletic reported that he wasn't the first choice

and MLS teams aren't letting USSF interview their assistant coaches which is kind of ridiculous but apparently it's the case so maybe nobody wants to do maybe nobody wants to be the U20 men's national team coach and I mean Brian Clybin would have answered his phone

Yeah, he would have. I don't think he got a call. I would assume he did not get a call. So, yeah, U20s are having a camp actually next door to the men's national team. McBride mentioned that there's a little bit of synergy there right now, which is kind of cool. And I don't know that there's that much else to say about it. It's mostly a 2001 group. A lot of the high-level players in that age group are not available right now.

That'd be like Gio Raina, Ullianes, who else, Julian O'Rahou, quite a few European players who would not have been released or who weren't released. Matthew Hoppe at Shalka, Charlie Kelman in England. So I'll quit rambling through non-alphabetic list of the names. We are all really excited to hear your U-20 deep dive ahead of their qualifying. in June. Yeah, I do I do want to do a U-20 roster deep dive. Maybe I'll get

a special guess for that in the next couple of weeks. All right, let's take a little break and get to some trademarked Velasquez categories. Okay, we're going to run down the player pool for whom movement, a new club, or a breakthrough at their club would be beneficial. Call it a transfer

episode if you want. Greg, how are you breaking this up? Take it Well, let's start with the done deals, all right? The done deals. So we're just going to list through all the guys who we think at some point need to be thinking about a change in change in scenery. And we're going to start with the guy who's already signed his name, we believe, and that's Emmanuel Sabi, moving from Hobro H.K, Hobro I-K, Hobro I-K, Hobro-I-K, Hobro-I-K, I believe, yeah. In the Danish Superliga to a team that is slightly better than Hobro-I-K in the Danish Superliga, and that is, Can you say it for me, Bells?

I'm going to say Odens Bold Club. Odens Bold Club, I think commonly referred to as OB. So, Emmanuel Sopi, moving to OB. There are only three spots separating them on the Danish Super League table, but they're clearly in different tiers. I think OB is closer to like a Europa League place than they are to Hobro. Okay. In the sort of bottom half of.

Too bad it's not commonly referred to as ODB, you know, live and uncut. Um, so that's not, he's the only guy. That's not, who signed. That doesn't seem like that big of a deal, does it? Not, no, not necessarily yet. A lot of these deals sort of happen very late in the window. You know, as room for negotiations, it sort of disappears. But, uh, Sabi's move is for the end of the season.

So it's not even a, uh, he's not moving in January. The Danish Super League, I believe, is 20 is like three, force the way through. It's not halfway through because they have a different year than everyone else. Yeah, totally imbalanced schedule. So they wrap up. They've got like five things. Don Garber would be pleased. And then, yeah, he'll be backing up and heading to OB. And Emmanuel Sabi reminder is Olympic eligible. I'm not sure how their season revolves around the March qualifying window. So I don't know if Savi would be available for Olympics or not or if he'd be in the discussion. I think they're just getting started for their little like their little spring mini, mini season, yeah.

Okay, so sobby to OB. Perhaps he'll get more chances to score goals at a better club. I think you made that point to me privately. Yeah, that's the hope where those statistics start to tick up and he becomes harder to ignore. Okay, next category. Next category are the rescue missions. And these are guys who are in pretty rough club situation. at the moment. We're going to start with

Bobby Wood and Sebastian Soto. Yeah. Bobby Wood, did he play in that Hamburg friendly the other day where they got... I don't think so, but somebody can jump in and correct us if we're wrong on that. They got warned by Shalka. He's not playing, he's not playing

in any real sense for Hamburg in through the first half of the season. He needs to go. People are probably kind of familiar with us at this point, Bobby Wood is getting paid significant money, way more money than he is worth. And so it's very hard for Hamburg to unload him because no one wants to take on those wages. Right. And Bobby Wood understands we does not want to take a cut in pay.

Right. Quite a situation. And he's getting he's getting a little bit older. Is he 28 now? 28, 29? Yeah, I think he's, I think he's like a year younger than Josie. Okay. All right.

Sebastian Soto, harsh words from his coach on Saturday. after the friendly with Verda Bremen said, you know, basically if he doesn't have, if he doesn't pick it up and work harder, he doesn't have a chance, which I know I'd be interested in your take on this, but my thought is maybe that's a good sign that the coach would say something like that about him.

You know, if he didn't have any hope in him, why would he say something like that unless he's just being like deliberately mean? The thing is at this point, I'm not ruling out deliberately mean because it feels. like there's a element of like spite to Soto's situation at Hanover. It's sort of another contract situation where Soto during the summer after it's very successful U-20 World Cup, I think was angling

for a move and negotiations between Soto and Hanover for sort of resigning with Hanover fell through. And so Soto's now going to leave on a free this summer. All indications are. And so Hanover are not pleased with, you know, Soto's part in that, in that sort of drama. Yeah. Well, we'll just have to hope for the best for him. Right. Well, really, I'm really hoping that both those guys somehow do find an escape route in January and land in new clubs. Wood seems really unlikely.

Soto, I feel like, has a way out. Yeah. Okay. Do you know how long Wood's contract is for? I thought it was, I don't. Now I got a check. I keep thinking he still got like another year and a half on it. which basically sends him into like earlier retirement if he just rides it out.

Yeah. Doesn't play for three years and then tries to move to a new club. Just kind of a bummer situation all the way around, really. CCV rescue mission. He's already been called back, so Tottenham have already recalled him from Stoke City. CCV was actually getting pretty regular minutes for Stoke until a new manager came on board at Stoke City because they were doing so poorly despite CCV's time there. And at that point, he stopped starting after a game or two.

I don't think he's played since the new manager came in. But he's not even in the 18. He hadn't been in the 18 for the last several games. Spurs called him back as soon as the January window opened up. And I'm sure he's going to be shopped around for another loan, hopefully in the championship somewhere. Mopping floors at Whitehart Lane, right at the moment. Ethan Horvath. So we all know what happened with Horvath.

he was on a huge upswing after he re-established himself at Club Bruges, had a great Champions League run in the group stage with a couple of notable shutouts and was a very solid goalkeeper for Bruges through the through last season. And then Simone Miniole falls into Bruges' lap and immediately takes over the number one job and Horvath has played sparingly this year. Yeah. I think he's played like one or two cup games and that and then like some club friendlies and that's it. Minula is gobbling up every minute. So this one seems like it seems like Horvath should be a marketable goalkeeper and there would be there would be some market for him and he could move this this window or at least go on loan somewhere. But hasn't happened yet. I thought the same thing in August and I was hoping that the window was just too tight and they couldn't get a deal done by the time Miniola came in because it's,

does. It seems like Horvath is too good for for club Bruges not to try to trade for for more resources because obviously there would be clubs that would take him. And there's no reason to sit on a backup goalkeeper if you could trade sell them on and use that money to

improve your squad elsewhere. Yeah. So you have Tyler, you have Tyler Boyd on this list. Why does he need a move? He doesn't play. He doesn't play for Besheekdas. He hasn't been playing lately? He essentially fell out of favor really early on when Bishikas was in their horrible run and then not just

because they rotated, but I don't know exactly what turned things around, but Bashikthus has been on a tear the past month and a half and Tyler Boyd has had no real part of it. So he needs to move because in my mind he's clearly no longer first or barely even second choice. He's got to find a place where he can play. Okay. I think he has, so I'm looking at it. Hobro I-K is looking for a winner. Yeah, Boyd has since, like in the league, from October, November, December, Tyler Boyd has

21 minutes. He's played 21 combined minutes. Wow. I didn't realize it was that bad, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, and Bashita has been again on a winning tear. So they've moved from like almost dead last in the table after the first month and a half to I think they're like third in the table now.

So, yeah, Boyd is, if you've just kind of been like, oh, but we have Tyler Boyd to Bishiked us and you haven't been following it that closely, Tyler Boyd is well out of favor for his club at the moment. Okay. He needs a rescue. He needs to find a new home. Jonathan Amon is still hurt as far

as we know, right? And the Danish Super League doesn't pick back up again until March. And so I guess we'll find out if he can get healthy by then and if he plays. I'm not so sure he needs a move as much as he just needs to be healthy.

Right. I think that's probably what it is. And so I put him on the rescue mission because at this point, it's like with all those Arsenal players. I don't trust Northland's medical staff anymore. Yeah. Well, staying in Scandinavia, Roman Gaul, Roman Gaul. Do we need to talk about him? I think he's kind of similar with Boyd. He wasn't playing consistently with Moamo. So he had the one game that kind of got everyone's attention where he scored like two goals and had an assist But that didn't lead to More starts more minutes more production So he needs to find someplace where he's either a better fit I don't know if he needs again. I don't know if this is just

Gull sort of reaching maxing out where he can play But if it is then I'm gonna go with that If it is then yeah then I mean goals he's kind of not that he's particularly high up on our on our savior committee list as it is. But, yeah, he's got to find somewhere where he can play regularly. And it doesn't appear that Malmo was that place. Yeah. And then Jonathan Klinsman, he's in Switzerland, has had some rough moments in the fall, didn't he?

And isn't playing at the moment? Yeah, he hasn't not been the number one at any point. And this is for St. Gallen FC, I believe, in Switzerland. So yeah, it's time for it's kind of like the same thing. Clint's been his either sort of reached his peak and it's not a very high peak or he needs to play somewhere where he's going to be the number one and can show that he's being overlooked. Yeah, you have Fabian Johnson and Timmy Chandler on here with asterisks. And I don't know what your asterisks mean. They're kind of a different situation, right?

So this is clearly they're clearly not Roman Gaul situations because they've been been very consistent players in the Bundesliga for years. They're getting on in years. Fabian now 32 and has been injured for a lot of this year. And now that he's back to healthy, he's at a club that is second in the Bundesliga. So there are no hurry to get him back in the lineup. Things have been going well for them without Fabian. So if he's now surplus to Gladbach's plans, I'm just really curious what he still has left in him. So I'd love to see him move to a new team.

I think I'd seen that he was linked. I mean, people get linked to clubs constantly through January, but I think I'd seen that he was linked to Hamburg, huh, which would be a move to the two Bundesliga, and he'd be joining up with Bobby Wood, but it would be a short-lived stay in the two-bootness League because Hamburg, I think, are pretty clear favorites to automatically be promoted back into the Bundesliga.

Nice. Okay. And then Timmy Chandler, he just signed a new contract, didn't he? So he signed it back in September, I think. Okay. with he's with eintrack frankfort and uh but he hasn't he hasn't been playing so he signed that contract and then continued to not play i think he had one start through the first uh two and a half months of the season and then he started their last three games for frankfort going into the winter break um but i'm always kind of suspicious of those end of the break end of the sort of first half

of the season minutes because teams are just like it's just attrition and teams are just trying to fill spots with anything they can yeah yeah and for Frankfurt are the exact opposite of Gladback, whereas Gladback are like at the top of the table. Frankfurt are in free fall. They have one point out of their last seven games in the Bundesliga. So Chandler is, like I wonder if he's in their plans or I wonder if they feel like they need to do an overhaul to make sure they stay out of the relegation scrap. So we'll just have to see. But I would kind of like to see Chandler move to a place that he could play more because he is what, 29?

Yeah, he's not that old. came off a really bad injury from last year. Right. Missed all of last season, and that's why it's harder to sort of say that he's still the player that he is. A lot of times I'm usually the guy saying Bobby Wood, you know, didn't magically get worse than he was.

He's basically the same guy just in a bad situation. Chandler missed a full season with injury and hasn't really worked his way back in this season. We don't know where he is. There's also the point that Chandler and Fabian, to some extent as well, are wide players where, you know, age isn't rewarded quite as much as it is at, say, striker or center mid.

I mean, you got to have those legs to play fullback or wingback in the Bundesliga. Yeah. And that's what Chandler's been is sort of a right wingback when he has been playing. And that the other part of working against him there is that that happens to be one of our deepest positions at the moment. Right. Or steadiest positions. Okay, let's move on to the next category. What is it?

These are guys we want to see upgraded. So these are upgrade hopefuls. These are very catchy categories. I can't believe you are mocking my categories. I love it. I love the categories. So I've got, there are two in here that interest me, and let me take those, and then I'll let you take the rest. Have that at it.

Okay. Nico Guacchini is the one that I'm most excited about. He plays for Cayenne in the French second division. He's a striker. he's 19 years old and he has locked down a starting job for them and helped pull them out of the relegation zone he has i think five goals in all competition since he broke in in october and he's kind of a bobby wood type striker physical uh hard worker very very lively in his movement and maybe even livelier than bobby wood in his movement but not uh not glorious on the technical side and um we'll see we'll see

see what happens. Hopefully he can he can move up to League of Un and go from there. If he does it won't be by promotion. Kyan's not getting promoted. No. Oh somebody somebody corrected us on how to pronounce this. Khan, Kahn? I think it's Khan.

He said it was Kyan. Like Kian Pepper. Oh shoot. So maybe I was saying, all right, in any event, they're not getting promoted. They're mid-table. They're not going anywhere. So it's going to have to be somebody picking him out and saying, oh, here's the young striker who looks pretty capable. Let's give him a run at, you know, a higher level of competition.

Right. I think if a first division side were to buy him, it would be as a project, you know, unless in the second half of the season, he, you know, he really explodes and scores a bunch of goals, scores goals in bunches, which he has not been doing. He's got a respectable hit rate, but he would have to really take it up a notch to be like, oh, yeah, if some club in the first division is going to buy him to be their starting striker. Right, right. Okay, who's your other one that you want to see, get that upgrade? Charlie Kelman at South End United, I just wanted to mention that I haven't, you know, he's U-20 eligible, so that's good.

And hopefully he's being looked at by Anthony Hudson. Haven't seen a lot of Kelman, but my take on him is he's physical, but technically kind of run to run of the mill. You know, hard worker, physical, not a, not a magician on the ball. All right. All right, Bell. And where do you think his path to a higher level would be? I don't know, the championship probably. All right. All right.

So somebody from the championship takes a chance on it. And remember, Dwayne Holmes was playing in League One, what, just a couple years ago? Yeah, yeah, for quite a while too, right? Scunthorpe, maybe. Yeah, Scunthorpe United. I think he appeared in the Sunderland until I die documentary. Did he? He was being scouted.

He was being, Sunderland were scouting somebody else, and Dwayne Holmes was playing in the game. They were scouting. I don't think he was mentioned at all, but I saw his jersey. Interesting. Fun fact, everyone. Thumbs up or thumbs down on the Sunderland documentary? I thought.

I really enjoyed it. The first season, I haven't seen, I don't know if the second season's out, but I enjoyed the first season of getting sort of that peak behind the curtain of a completely dysfunctional club. Yeah. I watched the first two episodes, but my wife didn't like it enough for us to continue, and I'm not allowed to watch TV by myself. Who's got the time?

Let's stay in League One. Matthew Olas Sunday So here's the difference between we got Ola Sunday and at Sunderland we have Lyndon Gouche so those two guys And I think Ola Sunday is kind of on a different track Because he was kind of in that limbo at Manchester United Where he's never really going to break through

And so he fell to Rotherham I believe Yeah something like that So this is sort of his first year So if he's going to be discovered this would be the time to do it No one else really has that much data on him Whereas with Lyndon Gooch, he's been at Sunderland playing since Sunderland until we die. So he's been out there.

People have been watching him. He hasn't been picked up yet by anybody. It doesn't seem likely that he's going to suddenly get, you know, discovered. Whereas Olosunday, if he turns a couple of heads in his first season as really playing as a professional, he might have a couple of suitors. Yeah. That's the hope. That makes sense. And I've always liked what I've seen.

all the Sunday, which hasn't been a lot. I know. I need to actually dig through his rather own minutes to take a look at him. Who else he got? I'll do that. I'll do that. Velasquez's favorite Shaq Moore is on the list. I want him to give me skinny on Shaq.

So I feel like he's kind of the same thing. He's been kind of tossed around most, like a lot of out of contract obligations where he was on loans for clubs that were like going into default. And he's landed at C. De Tenerife, who is second division in Spain. He's kind of been in and out of their lineup. He's started out completely out of their lineup, but worked his way in for a bit and now seems to be a rotation guy. We'll get to see him on ESPN Plus in the Copa del Rey because they just advanced into the next round.

Nice. I believe he converted a penalty in the shootout. But anyway, again, we saw him with the national team, and he didn't look out of place with the national team over four or five caps, six caps. So he's 22. So again, just one of those things where if he finds the right landing spot and suddenly he's playing a thousand minutes, he could be in the same sort of tier as Anthony Robinson. It just occurred to me. If I remember correctly, Moore was the guy who played the ball that was mishandled by the

French defender before Julian Green scored that legendary goal in the friendly against France in the lead up to the 2018 World Cup. I don't know. There you have. There you have it. So, but no, he did. He acquitted himself well. He did.

He played well in that game. Yeah. Andrean, go ahead. No, just, so just putting that out there that it's just, I'm not really like, I don't have super high hopes for him, but it's just one of those guys that I want to keep monitoring and see if, if he does kind of just land in the right spot and suddenly hits for 15, 1600 minutes over the next season. Yeah. Okay. And then the last name on the list is, I'm. Andrea Novakovich. Have you been following him closely?

No, not really. I think he's just on here out of habit because he's been moving around. But no, he's in the Italian second division. And if it's going to happen, it's got to happen for him soon, I feel like. He needs to play his way up. But he's not really playing his way up. I think, again, I think he's just sort of on here to be comprehensive. Okay. In the spirit of comprehensiveness, there's one more category before we get to the really fun one. So these are the look-aheads where they're fine now. They're playing regularly, but they've got to start thinking about what their next move is going to be this summer.

And that's Matt Miazka at Redding, on loan from Chelsea still. Anthony Robinson, who was bought by Wiggin, but Wiggin are in danger of going down to League 1. And I got to assume Anthony Robinson believes that he's not going to be a League 1 player. Eric Palmer Brown, who's playing regularly in the Austrian Bundesliga. He's still on the books at Man City, but seems unlikely that he'll be pulling any Man City first team minutes next year. And then Chris Durkin, who has worked his way into the lineup in St. Truden in the Belgian division. And he's on loan from D.C. United.

So there's talk that St. Truden would be interested in potentially extending that loan purchasing him outright. Right. For a couple million dollars, which would be like a record transfer fee for them. I saw something to the effect that there's a possibility of that. Miazka is an interesting case for me because it's like, do you think maybe he tops out as a championship centerback? I mean, the smart money would say that at this point, right?

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Unless he finds himself on a team that gets itself promoted. but yeah it doesn't seem like anyone's gonna like be like he's gonna he's gonna help us stay up in the Premier League right no one no one said that for the time being and they've had they've had time to take a look at him that friend that French adventure was uh was was was more damaging than probably I realized at the time just because it just because it killed that chance yeah and we'll have to see too because uh he the last Redding game, he wasn't in their 11. He was on the bench. So he's healthy. We'll have to see if

that was still lingering, like he's still kind of returning from injury or if he's sort of fallen out of their 11. Okay. Well, it's a tough world out there, man. I'll tell you what. Let's go to the most interesting category, for me at least. These are the, well, you go ahead. So instead of the need-to-move crew, this is the breakthrough crew. And these are the guys. guys who have not gotten into the first team yet, or if they did, it was not in a league game, and we're hoping to see them sort of take on a bigger role in the second half of the season. Yeah, I mean, there's a good weekend on this front. Rana scored a goal for, Gio, Rayna scored a goal for Dortmund and a first team friendly.

Richie Ledesma, Nick Titagwe, and Chris Richards all got first team friendly minutes, didn't look out of place. Nick to Taguai, guys. Yeah, Tidegui, I think is what it is. Tidegis. Yes, yeah, that was clarified. The addition of him just increases the odds of a new first team debut even more. But it's also just a great story.

He's back. You know, he's back in the picture. And I watched his footage from the friendly against Hamburg. And there was one other one, one other friendly I watched the footage from. And he looks lively. He looks pretty good, you know. I didn't see him score any goals or even come close, but he looks technical, quick, strong, fast. Bells, I put him on here, but I can't even let myself get excited about a Nick Tidequie first team debut.

I just have to, I just have to, it's like he can't talk about a no hitter. Okay. Just don't want to jinx it, huh? He played center mid for like one of the games for significant minutes, and then he played right back or right back in another one of the games and looked, you know, typically Vognerian and committed. And if you haven't heard us talk about Nick Tadigwe very much, it's because he has been he's been injured for 17 years. For a lifetime.

He was U20 eligible. He could have been on TAB's team, but he felt like an old, he felt like an old man, even last summer, because he'd just been hurt for so long. But there, if, again, if you're not familiar with him or his name, there has been, been a ton of sort of excitement around his ability and his potential. He's, well, a couple of things. He's close buddies with Christian Pulisic and West of McKenny. I mean, they're like a trio.

They go on vacation together. Another thing is, uh, Tab Ramos is really high on Thai degree. Like, I, I remember hearing that Tab thought he was the, you know, the most, uh, the most dynamic player in the entire U20 pool last, last cycle. And that's a pool that included Dest, Ladesma. Mendez, um, Soto.

Tim Weyer, Ullianas. Yeah. And he, and Ramos, I bet if you check me up on it, call TAB Ramos up. He'll tell you.

Tidegui was the most dangerous player in that. They'll say out, outside of Zela Lem, the one guy that I want to have. In Houston, yeah. So, so I think,

yeah, fair not to want to jinx it, but that's really cool that he's back in the picture and, and definitely did not look out of place. for Shalka and those friendlies. All right, let's talk about your guy La Desma. Waki has some footage on Twitter. Looked pretty good in two appearances.

Played on the left wing on Saturday. Missed a big chance one-on-one with the keeper, which was kind of sad. And went to his right almost every time, which is, I think, a little bit of a – going to be a little bit of an issue, especially when he gets scouted by opponents. But he looked good.

He made a few things happen. Almost got an assist. Mostly looked polished on the ball, which is kind of who he is, you know. And he's not with the, he's not with young PSV today, which may have to do more with travel schedule than anything else, but not with the second division team. So hopefully he's with the squad on Saturday.

Cautiously optimistic. Yeah. The first team squad, that is. I think Giovanni Raina is even, well, why don't you take him? So Gio Raina at this point has been, I'm sure you've all seen this announcement. announcement, Gio Raina has been moved to the first team for Dortmund until further notice, I believe was the wording. I don't even know what that means.

What does that actually mean? Because he still will play unantine matches. Well, so in my mind, like, you think about how these teams operate and, you know, like, you know, maybe every Monday or whatever, they have a meeting. They're like, who from this team do you want to train with your team, with the first team? You know, like, they're trying to figure out where everyone's going to train. I see. And so for me, that just means that Gio doesn't have to check his skills. schedule every week. He's training, he's showing up to first team training, which is a big deal.

Like, that means he's a first team player. He's, he's clearly not necessarily nailed on for 60 minutes a week with the first team. So he'll be playing and getting minutes and match fitness and sharpness with the Unit teens still. Okay. For now. I mean, who knows? If he does get in and has a great showing, that, that schedule might accelerate. I don't, I mean, not that I know what the schedule is, but, But that's how I interpret it. Yeah, no, that makes sense, and it's helpful for me. So he scored a nice goal over the weekend, and he looks, again, does not look out of place. Do you have any other insight on how he looked in Sanjeev's footage on Twitter?

Was it, oh, I apologize. This was Sanjeeves. Sorry, Sanjeev. I kept thinking this was Watkins, but this one was, I'm having a hard time keeping track of who's doing all this great video work. It's basically one of those two. I know. their treasures. No, I didn't watch Gios as closely as I watched Ledesmas.

I was more interested in Ledesmas. I'm a bad fan. I watched it. He looked fine. He looked okay. Quite a few giveaways, but he's kind of a man in a boy's. What is he? He's a boy in a man's body.

He's a boy in a man's body. And then the fourth one, I think, that is kind of knocking on the door here or potentially knocking on the door is Chris Richards. And I did watch the footage of that 5-2 friendly loss to Nernberg. Richards played right back in the second half when Byron gave up four goals. And you might say, well, that does not look good for Mr. Richards. But it wasn't, none of the goals was really his fault. There was one where he was a little bit not alert on a deflection. And his man got, got to it first and then played it across for a tap-in. But it was already four-two at that point. I'm not going to mark him down too hard for that.

Also, you know, people might say, well, why is he playing right back? Well, he's learned, I think he's learning some stuff at right back. He's learning, he's learning how to operate in a little bit tighter space than he has as a centerback, particularly when he's in the attack. So he was pushing forward. He was playing classic fullback, pushing forward, whipping in crosses, combining. So I think that's a good experience for him. He also has to do a lot of one-v-one defend.

on the edge. And I think those are good reps to get. So it doesn't bother me at all that he's playing right back. Remember, Sergio Ramos played right back for Real Madrid for a couple of years before he moved over to centerback. It's nothing to be sad about. But still, Richard's playing actual minutes in the Bundesliga for Bayern Munich seems like it's, I don't know. Is it going to happen? I don't know.

I feel like so much will depend on when the Bundesliga race. is sort of over the mathematics of who can get who can still fight for champions league spots and who's just treading water and at this point Byron is you know what six points back or something like that they're they're gonna fight all the way to the end yeah it's not gonna be there's not gonna be like some six week dead rubber part of the season in Germany I don't think all right a few more names here Ullianez, he's with Burrhalter now, which gives me the warm and cuddlies. I don't think we'll get much new information on him unless he plays against Costa Rica.

Wolfsburg will have played three Bundesliga matches by then. So my hopes that he will make a first team debut this spring are dimming a little bit. No, he's one who almost certainly needs the dead rubbers to come into effect. Yeah. But again, that's okay. And for people who are like, oh, maybe he should have stayed with Wolfsburg. my my sort of read on it is that means wolseberg weren't terribly interested in having him around for the winter break yeah yeah that I mean hopefully more just like it's okay we don't need him then we're not interested in having him around right right yeah

well so the young young iax young PSV young USA derby just ended a few minutes ago and it ended zero zero so no Big news to report, except that Joshua Pinnadeth got a red card in the 90th minute. So he came off the bench, got a red card. There was a lot of American action in that game. And two of the names we're going to mention right here. Chris Gloucester started his first game since October. Alex Mendes started his first game since November. And Dest was in the lineup for Young Iax.

Richard Ledman, as I mentioned, was not involved. So I don't know that there's that much more to say about Gloucester and Mendez But we'll just keep our eye on them You know Yep, they're just tracking them We're catching their minutes after the fact So I'm excited to watch because it could Mendez according to Google was lined up as a right winger

So it's possible to have some cool Mendez versus Gloucester Battles To check up on the videos Yeah, the video will become available probably tomorrow sometime And then Owen Oda Soie, Owen Oda Soie, the centerback slash defensive midfielder for Wolverhampton Wolves made his Europa League debut debut in the fall. He's U-20 eligible.

What do you say? I'm not holding my breath on Oda Soe and I'm not really holding my breath on fellow Premier League debaetante in waiting, Indiana, Vasilev. Do I have that right? Good enough for me. All right. Yeah, it doesn't seem like either club is necessarily trying to, has like a plan where they're integrating them in. It seems like in Vasilev's case,

it's an injury crisis combined with fixture congestion that sort of put him in the running for some minutes in a cup game. And it just doesn't necessarily feel like they're like, okay, here's how we're slowly working him into the first team. Right. And Odissau even more so. I mean, he's been on the bench a few times, but his minutes came in a Europa League dead rubber last group stage.

when Wolfs had already clinched a spot in the next round. So again, not really holding my breath. And what have you seen from these guys? Because I haven't watched too much of the video either for him. I'm a huge fan of Otisoe's game. I mean, to me, he's an automatic starter at centerback for the U-20s if he accepts the call-up. He's got, he's like 6-3. He's dominant in the air.

He's really clever with the ball at his feet because he came up as a defensive midfielder. Right. That's what I was going to ask him. So you think you think, you 20s, he's? think he'll be a centerback if he's if he's with us yeah centerback is such a huge question mark and that's what that's the position he's been playing for the u23s um is centerback i think that's look i don't have special information but it's seen it stands to reason that is his long-term position given his size and he's not he's not uh eniesta or buskets you know he's not like he's not the kind

of player we're like oh he has to be in the midfield he's that uh good on the ball he's he's good on the ball for a centerback, but probably not that, not like better than average as a midfielder in that regard. And he also, he's very athletic and he also reads the game pretty well, it looks like to me. You know, he cuts stuff out, gets to the, gets to passes. Really like, really, really, really like what I see from him as a potential centerback, American centerback. Vasilev has not been that impressive to me in what I've seen. I haven't seen a lot. It's not, it's not possible to see a lot of his moments, but, you know, his appearances in cup matches for Astinville, he hasn't, he's barely touched the ball. And that's because they're, they're either losing or they're, he's

coming very late and there wasn't much opportunity. Right. Feels very much like a body, right? Yeah, he feels like a body. He's like, like, I think like Jordan Morris, uh, but left footed and, um, not as fast. All right. Uh, we've got, we've got one of the guy on here and actually I'm going to add one bells to the uh on the fly but let's let's talk about cobi Hernandez foster all we know is rumored to be in Europe locking down a spot with a club and that is the rumor for why he was not included in the u20 roster which we haven't really discussed okay so uh as far as breakthroughs go we're really just hoping that he again he just signs somewhere and sort of gets out of this club limbo yeah just give us another lottery ticket

Kobe, you know? Left back lottery tickets are worth double. The last one I'm going to add on the fly is Beauforte Sosato. Oh, yeah. Well, he already got his move. So you're putting him in the done deals category? Well, I'm saying that if you're wondering if you would be able to break through after he moved to Mexico, the answer is so far, yes.

Yes. Just scored an absolute cracker in the first 20 minutes of his first League of Amacki's game. with Puma. So good start for Bofo down there. Bofo Olympic eligible. Looked really good for the U-23s in the Canary Islands. He was one of the few who kind of distinguished himself, in my opinion. Against Brazil, if you remember. So no small task. Nope, nope. And the goal he scored for Pumas was just vintage Bofo, cut in on the right from the left on his right and curled it around the keeper. Hit it hard. Hit it hard. Hit it hard.

Anything else we should talk about before we get out of here? No, those are good for our crews. Just a reminder that the U.S. women are also in camp right now. They've got Olympic qualifying coming up. First game, I believe, is like end of January, January, January 28th. So new first competitive games under a new coach. So that will be exciting to track as well. Nice, yeah.

If anybody wants to be interviewed by Scuff Podcast, please check with the NYCFC communication staff. and then get back to me once you have gotten back to them. And we'll see ya.