Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 137: Tutul Rahman on the USL-MLS transfer market disconnect

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

Tutul (@tutulismyname) walks us through the mechanics of why it’s difficult for an MLS team to pick up a USL prospect like Jose Gallegos or Jonathan Gomez. He also talked about why FC Dallas has gone from “play your kids” to “play your 32-year-old Liga MX veterans” in the span of 12 months, and how MLS front office desire for parity gets in the way of talent development.25 Stories that Made MLS......on Twitter: https://twitter.com/25_stories?lang=en ...on Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/25-stories-that-made-mls/id1485497308 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 Scufft podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velasquez in Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Thanks for downloading this episode of Scuffed. Our guest today is Tudel Rahman, an indispensable voice in American soccer. By day, he's a brand manager for a big company that you've probably heard of, but he's written about soccer for years and he's produced a couple of podcasts.

25 stories that made MLS is on all the platforms and he's working on something new, I believe, which we will discuss later. Anyway, few people are as sharp on the mechanics of MLS roster building as Tootel is, which is kind of the key topic today. So thank you for making time for us. How are you doing? Good, man. This is a dream cone true for me.

I dreamtog. Thank you for having. Seriously. Yeah, thank you for having me. Greg, how are you doing? I'm good. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure you find Tootle's compilation of major goal score, goal scored in major games by U.S.

men's national team players where where he really did a great job of cutting through sort of the stat padding that might go on in some of the conca calf matches against minnows and really like focused on who scores for the U.S. men's

national team in games that quote unquote matter. Yeah. Key takeaway there was is Landon Donovan was really good. That was a labor of love for sure. breaking news. Breaking news.

So last week, Matt Hartman and I discussed several USL prospects, and we posed a lot of questions about the pathway from USL to elite soccer for players like Jonathan Gomez at Lou City and Jose Gallegos at San Antonio FC. But we didn't really answer those questions, I would say. And then a day later, Tudle comes out with a thread on Twitter that answers a bunch of the questions. And I thought, hell, let's just have them on the podcast to explain what's going on. But before you get us in the weeds, maybe first you, Tudel, then you, Greg, take on the question of like, why does this question matter? Because I think some people will be like, I don't care about USL.

Why are you talking about this? Why does this question matter in your view? Yeah, it's an important question for two reasons in my point. And I take it as from like the angle from maybe the league office. One point is the improvement of that pipeline between USL and MLS probably means that USL is getting better and that gap is getting closer, and that means that it's a talent pipeline to make the league better for Major League Soccer. And that is like something that absolutely has to be done and has continued to be work on in order to reach its goals of what MLS is trying to do, which is being a league of global relevance. So that's one. Two is, and I think your podcast on the prospects,

which is kind of a new realm for USL, at least from my standpoint, is that the league is trying to turn into a selling league, which means it needs to figure out ways as much as possible to get younger players in, develop them and sell out for a revenue source. And the league is getting to the point where some of the traditional revenue sources that you get from, fundraising from expansion to, like, honestly, in-game attendance is quite good in this league. So the remaining revenue source of selling players is an untapped potential need of which

USL can play a pretty big key in that cog. So to me, those are the two reasons why it's important. What about you, Greg? I mean, I won't be able to improve much on what Tuttle just said, but I see still the lack of the of the pipeline between the two leagues almost creates this tension where USL is sort of being used as a stopgap by some players who want to go to Europe or who want to play at a higher level, but see MLS is essentially a hindrance to that. They don't want to get locked into MLS stuff.

So they go to USL with the express purpose of hiding out there until they turn 18 and they go to Europe. We saw with Ledezma, Sebastian Soto, Mendez, Yannes, and then just recently was Kobe and Brian Keo. So it would be great if they could sort of grease the wheels between those two leagues where players would be comfortable signing USL and then still signing MLS rather than just sort of waiting until they turn 18 and going to trying to go to Europe. Yeah, I guess the way I look at it is if we have a bunch of USL clubs that are a legitimate

place for a good prospect to go and then be sold. to Europe or to an MLS team, that just dramatically expands the universe of good development spots in our country. So, I mean, what are there? Like 48 U.S.L championship clubs, don't quote me on that number, but it's a lot. And if they're all like a legit place to develop and then be sold, then you would think, you know, five years, 10 years down the road, the men's national team is going to be better.

And that's really what I'm interested in. I mean, I want MLS to succeed. I want USL to succeed because I love soccer and I love this country with some caveats. But I think like that's how I think about it. Yeah, you sort of need it, right, from a development funnel of a country the size. You need USL to work to cover the country for sure.

We got to uncover as many Alfonso Davies as possible. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No to the USL alum Alfonso Davies. Wait, did he ever play in the USL? Yeah. Oh, he played? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, White Cops too. Okay. So, Tudel, why is it unlikely right now that a player like Jose Gallegos, who's performing at a pretty high level for San Antonio? Why is it unlikely that he will get picked up by an MLS team? Yeah, there's a couple like roster, there's a couple of rules that make it difficult. And I think at a very high level, if you think about the roster creation, there's sort of

tiers of where you put players, right? So you have designated players, which they need to be like some of the top talents in the league. Then you have what they call like TAM players where you're putting a lot of your resources against it. And they need to be well above average players. and then you have kind of building the rest of the roster underneath that. And the tricky thing with a player like Gallegos is that he's very clearly a top-end prospect.

I mean, you saw how good he was versus FC Dallas, so against MLF's competition. His age and his skill set makes him really desirable, I think, from a scouting standpoint. And so it raises the question as like, why not just pay a transfer fee, which, you know, I know you guys talked about it, but let's assume it's so on between $500,000 or million dollars

to get Gallagos under your wing. And then one of the key issues with it, the way it's set up, is that any transfer fee when you take a player in, the cost of the transfer plus the salary over the time of the salary, divided by the years is basically the roster hit. So let's imagine you want to sign Gagos for three years, $300,000 a year, and it's a million dollar or a 1.5 million dollar transfer fee.

The cap hit that you have on Gallegos then is the transfer fee divided by three, so 500,000 plus the salary that you're giving him, so 300,000. So that means this cap hit is 800 grand. 800 grand means you have to then start using your resources that you have either as a designated player or what we call a gam or allocation player. And traditionally in those spots right now, in order to be competitive in the league, needs to be someone who is at a all-star or well above average. And I think we can look at Gallegos is saying he's a great prospect.

I'm not sure you can say with certainty that if you put him into an MLS side right now, that he's better than an average starter in MLS today, right? And so that's kind of the calculus of why it's kind of difficult to do that, or the first kind of barrier to prevent you from doing that because majority of those allocation resources and definitely designated player spots usually go into more quote unquote certain bets. And that's the main barrier. I think that barrier is a little bit kind of a mental barrier as well. Because if you look at the decision making on how those resources are used, they don't hit all the time. And if you think about using allocation dollars, like if you wanted to get the number one draft pick for a college draft or super draft, it's going to cost you a few hundred thousand in allocation.

You know, Portland paid $300,000 for Williamson. Like the New York rebels just used a designated player spot on a 20-year-old from England who's like only has League One experience. Like there's no way you could say he's a surefire at win. So I think a lot of it is mental, so getting over the hurdle of like, yes, it's a risk, but it's not any different than a risk than we normally take. But from a fan standpoint, it's important to consider, like, it's not as easy as, like, in the European leagues where you're like, this is just a million dollar investment. It's a million dollar investment plus resources and a roster space that's usually allocated

towards true difference makers in order to be competitive in this league. And that is kind of a gamble. to take. Yeah. So, Tudu, would it be fair to kind of say that when you're going to get into allocation money players and obviously designated players, those guys essentially have to be win now type players. You're not paying that money to sit on them and see if they hit in a year or two? Well, traditionally, yes. Like, if you look at like all the best teams, I mean, majority of their allocation players and designated players are winning now. Like LASC, Atlanta back in the day, they're target like Toronto FC

like all their players that were either on designated players or target allocation money or now general allocation money they're better than average players now today FC Dallas has started to change that way so like Pomacol's contract

and Ferreira's contract or allocation money contracts I would argue Pomacal has demonstrated he's already today better than an average starter in his position Ferreira's probably average and you're you're making somewhat of a bet on it. So it wasn't there on coming off a zero base kind of knowledge there.

There was data points that showcase that it's a smart play. But it is a kind of a new play. They're generally focused on win now concepts. And it's interesting because like the win now concept is unique here in that it's a high parity league and every team in general is in a win now state. It might not be win this year, but within two years. years or three years the expectation is you should be able to win and that's not necessarily true in Europe either where you have clear hierarchies of teams right or you play in a league like if you're

iax or bifika where you can make bets like this because honestly you're so much better than your competitive set it doesn't really matter if you miss once or twice you can use your league to develop your players exactly are you win the league three-fourths the way through i know iax didn't do that last year but traditionally there Yeah. Comfortable. Yeah, the parity in those leagues are so off. You know, like Iax's second team would be competitive in the Air Divisi.

Benfica's second team would be competitive in the league. You know, like so if they miss on one or two prospects, it's not that big of a deal. And that leeway doesn't exist in major league soccer. And that expectation also that, you know, every team should be finding a way to be competitive kind of is another hurdle. as well. Is there a possibility that that cap hit dynamic where you, where the transfer fee is split in, you know, sort of amortized or I don't know, maybe that's not the right term, but, you know, divided by the years of the contract.

Is that, is there a chance that that will go away someday or is that like so essential to the the way MLS operates that it's just going to. Yeah. Amortized is definitely the right word to use. Okay. That was nice. Good accounting term. I think the reason why I exist today is, again, to promote parity.

I think what you see, though, from the league is that if they'd necessarily see this as a barrier to getting very obvious prospects that they should be having in the system, and not just once or twice. So, like, if Gallegos and Gomez is a trend, like, you're starting to lose a lot of prospects, the league has shown that it will make a rule to then. and sent teams to go after these players, right? So I know a Total Soccer showed they made a term kind of ingest, like a domestic allocation fund.

There's no reason why the league couldn't do that and say this is a fund directly to go after USL prospects and to go after it. I think the hesitation from the league of just taking away these barriers and those restrictions is that it becomes kind of free play and then you would then lose the parity in the league, where some of the teams that are willing to invest a lot on this would just swallow up all the assets.

Like, a Lennelina United would just take all the guy who goeses of the world and pay for all, and then all of a sudden you have certain teams that just can't compete. And I think that is like that is the risk on it. That's the hesitation of why these haven't been pulled away. But can I see it one day? Yeah, absolutely, especially if it's like identified as a key hurdle that needs to be overcome and the way to solve it is through a new mechanism. Yeah.

I mean, can I stay on Gallegos for a second and even go back one layer before USL? Because, you know, when we were talking about Gallagos, he did that, he did FC Dallas and that preseason friendly back in February. He was unattached at that point. He was unsigned. He was not, he didn't have a contract. Tudel, is there anything that was, that sort of disincentivizes MLS from trying to swoop in right then and there?

like the day after that game to try to get Gallegos on a on a contract where they only they wouldn't have to pay a transfer fee and they essentially just have to build in wages that are a little bit better than what you'd be getting for from san antonio yeah there's there's actually two things that kind of make it more complicated than it should be um one is um the the mechanisms to bring players into the league it can't it's there's three main ways one is a homegrown contract Two is through the draft. And three is through the Waver Wire. These are for amateur players.

So unattached players that haven't played professionally before. I believe he was a high school. I believe he was a high school soccer player at that point. Right. So the way he would come into the league is major league soccer would have to sign him to a contract because he wasn't part of the academy system. My understanding, any academy system. So he can't be signed on the homegrown.

So he has to be signed by Major League Soccer, is probably a generation of Iditas, and then part of the draft. And then that means Gallegos gives up where he goes and lands, if that makes sense, right? So if he knows he wants to stay home, which it certainly seems like he did, then that is one barrier why not to sign that contract. Like there's been a few exceptions throughout history where MLS has bent the rules for, but traditionally these are the three ways in. So that's one barrier.

The second barrier, I think, is growing, is in illicit. We'll see this in Gomez, which is the worry that I sign a homegrown contract, I don't get paid that much, and I'm locked up for three or four years, and there's not a really strong incentive to develop me or grow me as a person. And that's also a very real one. So step one and step back is like, why do homegrown contracts have a certain range of how much they pay people? It's because homegrowns in the MLS cap structure allows a certain level above the minimums. salary to be kind of off the salary budget. So they're on the supplementary roster. And hence, their budget actually doesn't hit the salary cap at all.

So Tyler Adams, when he was part of the 2018 team, he's like the probably, you can argue, top three important player on the team, he was not counted against the salary budget, which made Red Bull allowed to, like, basically buy other players, make the team stronger, right? but that limit is I think there's a limit to that it's like a 100,000 or 150,000 a salary. So if Gallegos is demanding like say a few hundred thousand dollars to say, hey, commit to me to showcase that you want to develop me, then then the teams lose that financial benefit of signing young players, which is then they count against the cap.

Secondly, like, yes, I mean, they signed for multiple years. If they're a low salary budget that doesn't count it against the cap, there's not a really strong incentive for a team to then try to make this work. Like you do with other players that you've already invested money against and saying like, all right, they're against the cap. We have to try to make this work. And so I think there's kind of two elements in that. And there's ways, there's financial ways to kind of show incentive for me to develop you,

for me to sell you later that's been kind of tried out by FC Dallas. But those are the two kind of barriers of why I think if you're a young prospect now, USL doesn't have those barriers. You can just sign to a USL team that MLS does. And that means Gallegos could, or any player, could sign for any USL team they want, right? I mean, Gallagos could have been like, hey, I'm actually going to go play for Omaha or I'm going to go play for Madison. I am not a USL's expert, but I believe that's the case. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, those two things are legitimate barriers that need to be kind of addressed, especially, as get into prospects that are like literally you're like hey normally without any salary rules I would invest in a few hundred thousand dollars in salary and I would set up the contract in a way that it will incent me to sell on in the future but the mechanisms that were in place for reasons years ago kind of prevent that from happening now. The like the solid brass tax obstacles to Dallas buying or signing Gallego seems so strong like seems so legitimate that I wonder you know you you said in your thread on

Twitter and you said just a couple minutes ago that you also think there's a mental bias does there even have to be a mental bias for this to not happen for this sort of thing to not happen like Gallegos getting picked up by Dallas or I don't know yeah I think I mean I think the argument of why it's partly mental and on a Gallegos thing is there are clubs that have invested in in young talent unproven talent spending this level of resources. Like I use Red Bulls as an example. They just signed Drew Yearwood to a young DP contract.

The year before they signed Mateus Jorgensen, who's been playing in USL, and his transfer fee was in the seven figures range as well. So there's a okayness in certain clubs to pay that fee for talent abroad, but a hesitation to pay that fee for talent domestically. And I think I'll give an example that was six years ago, different times, but when Miguel Abara broke through in the U.S.

Minnesota team, he was playing at NASL. And it was obvious that he was good enough to play in Major League Soccer, right? But the NASL team, I think it was Minnesota. What was local hero for balance of that? You know, demanded a solid size, you know, transfer fee, which is representative to his talent, which Major League Soccer teams balked at. And that's why you went to Club Leon.

You know, it was a million dollar transfer fee. Again, a million dollar transfer fees happened all the time. Look at FC Dallas has started lineup. It's filled with players that have a million dollar transfer fees that are league average players. And so that part to me is mental to me. It's like disassociating yourself from like this bias that, I mean, a lot of us have that form players are better and just looking at the player themselves and saying, if Gallegos is playing in Argentina or in USL, he's a special player.

He's probably worth investing against. That part is mental, regardless of the salary cap structure. Okay. And so I do think there's a small element there of which screams for a team to then break through and see that as a competitive advantage. Okay. So someone has to be less skeptical of USL performance indicating that they're going to translate into that MLS. Yeah, especially with this new.

I mean, your show on the top nine was excellent. I think there's a, Gallegos and Gomez are special talents, right? And it's sort of a new, new frontier. And so the first team that I think recognizes it and doesn't go, you know what, it kind of sucks, our rules suck. He's probably going to end up in Europe, you know.

And instead says, hey, the rest of the teams are kind of stuck in a little bit in the past. This is my opportunity to swoop in. You know, like I'm Colorado. I can swoop in and get one of the most exciting talents in American soccer and get them into my team. But it requires one of the GMs to think that way and to break through. And I know we usually like to throw out a lot of caveats about young talent,

about how there are no guarantees, but I will just say Jose Gallegos will be the next Arion, Robin. He's pretty good. He is destined for multiple champions. Does Ari and Robin have multiple champions? league trok is I don't know. No, I mean, that's always the underlying risk here is that for as much as we've been using Gallegos as the example, there's still are no guarantees that he does, I mean,

and we feel like he's a special talent, he's exciting to watch. And I think his aesthetic when he plays plays a big part into how excited you can get about that kind of a player. But yeah, it's still very possible that he would sign and sort of, you know, fall out, I mean, not not, not, not breakthrough. I would say as a, as a community, you know, I think we, we need to see Gallegos at a higher level, you know, that at a minimum, it would be very interesting to see him at a higher level, you know. Right.

We all need that experiment to happen. MLSGMs are just saying, we don't want to foot the bill for your experiment. And we're saying, please foot the bill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm assuming he's going to make the U20. kind of teams and once he's on that stage and you're competing against European clubs.

You kind of lose that advantage that MLS clubs have right now, which is he's right here. He's here for the taking, you know. But yeah, it will require someone to be like, I'm willing to take the bet and put the bill on it. But I don't know. I feel like this is going to be a growing trend. Like Gallego, I don't think it will be a one-off. I think more and more prospects are seeing USL as a legitimate route. You see, you see USL clubs talking about this.

professional pathway, I feel like more every month. You know, it seems like Orange County talks about it. San Antonio is talking about, you know, they had the like locker room video after Leo Torres's professional, like USL debut. He's a 16 year old who came up through their academy. They're super proud of that. So yeah, I agree. I think it's going to, it's kind of a, the winds of change are blowing. I know this isn't your, you know, necessarily what you tweeted about or what you wanted to talk about, but what do you think is the likelihood a European club would pay a million dollars for someone proven on the level that Gallegos has proven, which is admittedly not that much, not that much proof?

I think realistically, my gut would say it would happen once he showcases at the international youth level. I think USL is just like understandably unproven internationally. There isn't many examples of someone making that jump from USL to European level. If there was someone really into the league, I could see someone in actually the Nordic leagues being like this might be an opportunity to go into. But I think most realistically is he shows up at the youth international level. He shows really, really well. And that's when the offers will come in.

Okay. Yeah, makes sense. Tutle, I don't want to necessarily fan a bunch of conspiracy flames here. Is there any reason that MLS would not want to funnel money into USL? Is there any like branding or marketing where they would see that as bad for their long-term sort of success? I don't think so. I know I've seen some of those things. I think the barriers are literally the salary rules and the mentality aspect.

I don't think there's a grand conspiracy from a league standpoint to make sure USL stays down. You don't, Garber sell out you. There's enough reasons of why this is happening that I don't think you need to dip into that pull. Well, you guys, either have you got anything else on this subject? We got a couple other things I want to hit. I want to go back real quick to sort of that structuring contracts with the incentive to sell as far as MLS teams when they sign their guys or when they re-up their guys. And I know people talk a lot about the Reggie Cannon contract and I'm sure it's been sort of laid out.

But just in case some folks listening here aren't familiar with that Tudle, would you be able to run through how Reggie Cannon's contract is set up by FC Dallas? He re-signed in what? This year, I think. This year. Yeah. So how do they do it where he doesn't, he wouldn't feel like he's locked into Dallas, unable to sort of make that next step up? Yeah, I think the easiest way to understand it is like,

what makes Reggie Cannon super valuable in a salary cap structure? And then how do you then structure the salary to make him ironically less valuable in the future? And so like the team would want to actually move the contract off. And so what makes Roger Canon super valuable is that he was signed as a homegrown, which means his contract is low. It's low enough that it actually doesn't hit the budget originally. So he's basically a free player on your budget, and he performs at a well above average MLS starter, if not top, I would say 20% in the league. So in terms of competitive advantage, Canon is huge. As a tradable asset in the league, it's a huge, huge asset to have.

as long as his salary is low, his value is high, right? If he is a designated player, so he's making a million dollars, the same performance, his value contract is low because you normally don't spend that kind of level of money and that asset towards the right back, right? And so the way they structured it, at least to my understanding, is that they were like, hey, we want to showcase to you, Reggie Cannon that, like, like we're committed to you in terms of years, but we're going to structure in a way that like your value,

your contract value this year is still super high. So my contract hit, how much you're hitting my salary budget this year is still lower than what you should be getting paid. And hence your value in terms of my roster construction is very high. But the next year, you're going to have a huge increase in salary, right? And a year after that, it might get to,

and I don't have the direct numbers, but imagine it gets to a number where I need to start paying either allocation money, or to put a designated player slot on him. That makes his salary less valuable to MLS teams, and you know that year is coming. So, like, imagine it's two years down the road. So that means I can tell Reggie Cannon, it's like,

hey, I'm more likely to keep you now, but I know there's going to be a time where, like, your contract is actually not going to be super valuable to me. And that means I'm more likely to try to cash in by this year or next year to sell you. in the off chance that like canning gets hurt or his performance tips he's covered without being self right he's going to get this pay out and it's on it's on fc dallas's books and they're the ones who are carrying that risk fc dallas's benefit is that for this year they can construct the roster they want to based on the salary budget and they know in the future they can cash in and

sell the contract in the future so that's basically you see that often in the NBA as well okay We're going to come back to FC Dallas for sure. But before we do that, can you tell us about the project you're working on? Also tell us about 25 stories that made MLS a little bit. Because, I mean, that's been out for a while. Yeah, so me and my brother work on a podcast. It's called 25 stories that made MLS. Originally, it was built for the 25th anniversary this year.

And it's more of a business-oriented podcast. So it's less about like the teams and like, you know, this was a great year by this player. It was more like, hey, if you look at the league now, like, what are the things, where are the building blacks that made the league the way it is? From a how did Toronto FC become a team to like, why do we have these weird allocation rules? Like all these things when you look at a macro level over a 25 year span kind of makes sense. And for me, when I started putting together, again, it's more in a business lens, but you see the growth of the league because I think when you're focused on this year it's very easy to get frustrated

in terms of being like wise aren't these things happening but when you look at a 25 year review you see the bigger picture of how things were set up and how much progress was made so I thought it was good for especially I live in Atlanta now so a lot of fans here have joined the league like three years ago with the team so for them to be able to take in the stories of why things are the way they are so that was season one season two then we're focused on kind of two parts. One is the Hall of Fame project, which is now forget the business side.

Let's talk about the 25 best MLS careers ever. And so starting from Landon Donovan. Our most recent one is Chad Marshall. And then we're doing a similar project on 25 stories that made women soccer here. So like how did that get started? And to me that's super interesting because it has almost the opposite issue as MLS,

which is it kind of needs to grow the global game, but we have the best players, right? So those are sort of the projects. They're born from this place of understanding the history of it. And I think they're interesting of understanding and appreciating the world of why it is. And then the Hall of Fame project is more about appreciating some of the players that I think if you haven't, if you joined the league in the last few years, you probably don't know about or appreciate as much as I do. And you're a Red Bulls fan, right? I mean, or at least you came up that way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, like, lived right next to the stadium. Okay. Yeah, man, you're busy. How do you got any like efficiency productivity tips for us while we're at it? I mean, I feel like, you know, I enjoy this stuff. And so it's pretty easy to spend time on things that I enjoy. And to me, there's value.

I'm sure you guys feel the same way of like creating things and putting it out there. It's better than, you know, my other inkling was just to sit and play video games sometimes, which is then it's hard to justify why you put so many hours into it. Is there, are there, is there an interview component to any of this, any of this work? Are you doing, are you interviewing any like the, the, the, the players? Ah, yeah. Both on the business side and on the, on the field. So on the business side, it was interesting.

We ended up interviewing a few people through, like, informal ways. And, and we were starting to talk about it. It would be cool to get access. But I think the amount of work and stuff that we wanted to play. put out, we just didn't have time to like put in the work of like, you know, the hours of getting the interviews in and putting it together to make one episode, right? Because we were originally on a fast track of trying to do 25 episodes in like 10 weeks. And so like it wasn't possible then. I think now it would be interesting and, you know, we'll see how it moves on in the future of like uping kind of interviews and the production quality.

But currently it's more informal than anything else. Yeah. Yeah, booking interviews is a lot of work. It is. Where we don't do it more often. Greg, any questions? Any questions from you? Give us more on your New York Red Bull obsession.

Yeah, I mean, they're my hometown team. I mean, I followed them since the Metro Stars. And, like, I think when rebels first took over and then you had, like, honestly, Rebel Arena. And again, I lived in Harrison. So it was incredible to see this European-style stadium in a town that is, I'm not kidding, is like one square mile. Like it was, and it was like right next to where I lived.

And then all of a sudden, like, Tieri-Anri is playing in your town. And you're like, he's taking the same metro as you are. And it's like, it was kind of mind-numbing. I had season tickets like on the pretty close to the sidelines. And I really love the club in terms of, obviously, the location, but then eventually they turned into this academy system. And you can see sort of what MLS could be through what they're trying to achieve, right, which is more globally connected, really investing in youth. I mean, from a youth standpoint, like the amount of resources they put into academy development is really, really big. and the more FC Dallas's and Red Bulls and Philadelphia Unions that we have, I think, the stronger

our U.S. program could be, right? It's frustrating because they don't win as many titles as I would like them to do. But the supporter shields winning years were really great. And so, yeah, that's kind of where the passion lies in. And now that I, when I moved to Atlanta, obviously there's a national rivalry there, so I've enjoyed having quite a bit of banter with some local folks here on between the two teams. Bradley Wright, Phillips, how underrated is he? Like, super underrated. I mean, when you look at his numbers from, like, not a one year, but from a three-year

or a five-year window, it's pretty unprecedented. His performance. And it's unfortunate. I think he now gets the chance to do it with LAAFC, but I think, I mean, he showed in MLS's back that he still has it. and how important a clinical striker and someone who's willing to put in the work in the press and hold up play and connect attackers

can be on a team. It doesn't really get the appreciation that he deserves because in the beginning he was like obviously coming from League One and TRI Enri was here and Rafa Marquez was here and to me he's in the same boat as like Wondolowski as being underappreciated. Okay, cool.

So I'm looking forward to season four of the 25 most underappreciated. 100%. That's a good idea. BWP is just so fun to watch, I think. Like he's a good passer. He scores in all sorts of different ways. Yeah. His movement is really good.

Yeah. Yeah. He's a solid player. You know, before we go to the, to like, the trashing FC Dallas segment, just kidding, that's not what we're going to do. but before we get to like a sort of a discussion of what happened with fc dallas and play your kids i do want to go back to the u s l thing and ask you tutel like what's what is likely to be what is likely to happen like with guy goes and gomez is there is there hope is it hopeless for mLS to get yeah yeah i think iago's if i had to bet is going to

Europe because I mean I'm like you guys I'm high on the player and I think once you put him in the youth international platform like European teams are going to come after him. Gomez I think is the more interesting one because I think you guys rightfully said like international rules means he's he's here for until he's 18 right? A year and a couple weeks away yeah yeah and so um there is I think especially if if he continues to progress where he's obviously he's obviously good enough for MLS and he's not able to make the jump in Europe

because of rules and if you combine that with Gallegos being sold for a significant fee I think he's more likely that someone wakes up and is like we need to sign this sign this kid to a two or three year contract and invest on him and then cash in on it. It's almost like we like if I know if you look at the history of Major League Soccer

it requires like a very very clear case on why you need to make this change. And then Gallegos going to Europe and having a significant fee attached to it, when you're like, why isn't MLS tapping into this? It's almost required before you get that action. I mean, I hope that, like, again, if I was a GM and I had a few hundred thousand dollars in allocation money, like, I would be going after this right now. But I think it's much more likely that it happens after one player makes the USL to Europe

jump for a fee. Okay. All right. Well, so what happened to FC Dallas and Lucci Gonzalez and play your kids? There's been some discussion of this from third degree net, Buzz, Buzz Carrey. He's talked about it. What's going on there? Yeah, I think, I mean, Buzz did a great job of outlining it, which is if you look at the investment of the players that they've invested in to come in,

they've invested it in older players and that almost limits the ability then to play the kids, which is a complete 180 of where FC Dallas was last year, right, where we were like, oh, my God. Like every single game was basically a window to the future of the U.S. soccer program. But I'd also like to point out, like the year before that, it was much like this year, right? It was like they had the same talent pool and all of a sudden they were. weren't getting playing time. So I think there's kind of three things that are driving it. One is there is a fundamental thing about a league with parity that other leagues don't have

to deal with. And I talked about it a little earlier, but if FC Dallas wants to win trophies, there is a natural tension of filling a team with as many above average players in the MLS starter world sense as possible. And if you looked at like Ed Wins-Sereo, I think can play at the MLS level today. I think he showed it a few times last year. But I don't think he's better than an average starter today, right? He did hit a banger last night or two nights ago.

He did. He did. But, you know, in like our perfect world where we want to see development, you give Seria the chance to grow into it. In a world where everyone has basically the same level of resources, is if you upgrade that spot to someone theoretically better than average, you go to a different level of a team, right? And that expectation exists for every single team to a certain degree. Like every team is expected to compete in a high parity league.

And FC Dallas, like, they see a window where they're like, I have some of these players that are going to come up. I have resources from making some sales. Like the Chris Richards sales has given me a lot of allocation money to play with, as did the past sales that they've done before that, the guazzo cell. And so they're trying to reinvest into the team to win now, and that's going to be common in a parody league, where it's not as common for other teams where there's a clear hierarchy, right, where you're like, I'm either going to win everything regardless if I sell

players or not, or like, I'm a Leon, and I'm never going to win League One against PSG. but my role now is to try to be top four and I'm going to invest in younger players, right? And so there's like a general thing about American soccer and Perry that's always going to drive this tension between youth development and winning now. And that's not going to go away. It isn't.

And for the ones who say like, hey, you can do both investing your team and invest in the academy, there hasn't been one example of it. Like, L-AFC wins because they play players who succeed now. And for the young players that are succeeding now, they paid millions and millions and millions of dollars for those players, right? Atlanta doesn't play kids. I mean, Bello just broke through a little bit, right? But, like, there's a national tension there.

And so I think it's most realistic, even for the clubs who are, who are academy focused and invested that there's going to come in waves. Like, there's going to be a year where you're like, I'm not going to make, I'm not going to be able to go after a trophy this year so I can play the kids to now I think I can go after a trophy and hence I need to bring in other talent. RSL, I mean, their last lineup did not feature a single person under the age of 23.

and like a few years ago they were playing a lot of kids so I think I think there's natural waves that come with it it's unfortunate but I think it's a semblance of the parity system man I'd never really thought about it like that that's super helpful the do you go ahead do you think anything in Dallas would change minds if if they you know they take these more expensive players and actually managed to do worse this year than they did last year playing all there US Olympic team. Yeah, yeah. I think a failure there would definitely change kind of the approach on it. But like I think the general structure, the salary cap structure and being competitive would then say, all right, what's the new approach? And I think it would be, I think the way that I would rethink about it is instead of having

kind of a million dollar transfer fee for like five or six different slots is like if you have an academy system is like, you might be okay with Edwin Serio who's like an MLS level player, he might be slightly below average today versus other starters. But I'm going to go really big with our three designated

players, like really big. Like, not like horror big. I'm going like, let's go find some of the best players in South America pay $10 million. And that's how I'm going to invest on it and then pair that with the academy system. But the fact of the matter is we haven't

see one team fully breakthrough with the strategy that works here. Philadelphia Union, for example, I think everyone now sees them is like super excited because Brandon Harrison and Mark McKenzie. The fact of the matter is if they sell Mark McKenzie this year, they're not winning a trophy. Like McKenzie already is like a critical piece in their defense. Like there's not a natural backup to him where it's like, oh, okay, you can slot this person in and they're not going to lose a step. Brandon Harrison, to a lesser degree, same thing, right?

And so if they do sell them, they are signaling, it's like, hey, we're giving up our chance of winning a trophy this year, of which they are pretty close of having a puncher chance of winning a trophy. They were pretty good in the MLS's back. So that conflict is really real. And I think we have to take a step back and say it's easy to look at FC Dallas and be like, man, it's really disappointing. Because it is. As a U.S. soccer fan, it is disappointing to see. But, like, that tension is really real. And if you're an FC Dallas fan, like, there is not a clear strategy of both playing your kids and winning trophies.

It just hasn't happened yet, like, in a big way. The problem with FC Dallas, though, is like they had their ups and downs last year, right? Last season, 2019. But they did end up. They were unlucky to lose to Seattle in the first round of the playoffs. And Seattle was, of course, the eventual champion. And MLS is back and so far, since MLS is back, with a much older. and more, you know, like $1 million transfer fee from South America,

heavy roster, they look like total crap, you know? Like they can't. And I know, you know, you can't be like a prisoner of the moment or whatever, but it doesn't seem like they're going to be winning any trophies this year either, I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, no. It's certainly not working now. I mean, I guess you could make an argument that like, hey, new players will car a little bit of time.

And I guess the calculus was like, hey, we have a really exciting young talent, but maybe we need more talent to get us over the hurdle, and they made that bet. My point isn't to defend what FC Dallas is doing. I think, obviously, they put me to sleep three times and one half based on their attack today. So I'm not enjoying it either,

but I do understand from a business constraint standpoint of why they made that decision, you know what I mean, to see if it works. And if it doesn't work, the hope is then, like Philly looks at it and doesn't replicate it and then goes a different strategy. But I think we have to also take a step back and say like there hasn't been a team that has won trophy's built off just kids yet. And it's because of that pair.

Go ahead, Greg. Sorry. Well, I was going to say something else that's working against it and is the playoff format where, you know, we were talking last year about after, after Palmacall's U-20 World Cup. Like this could be, his value could be sort of peaking. here. I wonder, you know, we wonder if Dallas will offload him in the summer window where European teams are off. But because everyone is sort of in the playoffs, you still have a shot at MLS Cup, whereas if there were no playoffs and you were just trying to win supporter shield,

you want to know you're not in attention to support of Shield. So that would actually be a prime time for MLS to just sell guys, sell off their assets every summer and take another run at it next year. but with the playoffs, it's like, no, no, no, anybody can win once we get to the playoffs. So let's hold on to them, see if we can't make this run. And so we lose sort of that window because of that tension of, let's see if we can put a playoff run together. Yeah, yeah. And the, yeah, there's only a few teams that you know that you're out to playoff contention in a regular year early on. This year is like, I think, yeah, you're right.

It's like two thirds of the league is going into the playoffs. So that's definitely another barrier in place. The other part of it is like there's a replacement cost with it, right? So like, and this is where you can see the Red Bulls really struggle. It's like you sell Tyler Adams, which is for Tyler Adams is 100% the right move to do. For the Rebel Global Org was the right thing to do. But he was a top three defense admitted at that point in the league without hitting your salary budget. And replacing that is so hard.

Like it's so hard. Like, it's, you could be like, hey, let's go buy a player, but then you're investing a designated player spot that was free for you before, right? That means one less DP spot for an attacker. And so that thing of like selling Pomacall, right, is like replacing Pomacall is as expensive as what the money is from selling Pomacol is. And that, that's why the incentive is like kind of not fully there. There's a push, I think if you listen to allocation disorder of like, you know, allowing teams to take all their money that they get from a sale and totally reinvested into their team.

And I think that is a legitimate push on promoting sales more. Because if you can invest $5 million into allocation versus one, that would make a huge difference in teams being like, all right, yeah, it's worth me developing and selling players. And it just be a race for that first team to sell. I mean, you sell Miguel on my own for what do you go? for 24 million. Yeah, and all of a sudden, the next day Atlanta is untouchable. It would take no one,

no one would be able to play with them. Yeah. Until they make their $20 million sale. Exactly, exactly. And I think that's the league's point on why they haven't done that. But I think there's a medium, right? Right now it's a million. You could say it should be unlimited,

but like a $3 or $4 million changes the calculus of roster building overnight. Hmm. Interesting. Everyone's going to have to be listening to this. this episode with their slide rule out. It's true. I think it's a really good point about how parody, the desire for parody creates this system

where you don't have clubs that are good, but never have a chance of winning the league, like a Leal or a Leone. And then this thing about the playoffs, there's just too much room for hope every July. Late July, early August, everybody still has room for hope. We need to choke the hope out of that.

Yeah. Like just crush everyone's dreams within a month or two and just assume that it's going to be LASC. Do it like old style baseball pennant, you know? Just a semifinals and a final. That'll never happen. Yeah. That's it. Yeah, that and like the other part of it is like in not the top five leagues, but your next tier down.

It tends to be your top clubs that actually are the strongest in development, like a Benfica. or a sporting Lisbon. But there you have almost the opposite problem where you're so good, you're so much better at your competition that you know that you can develop a Poxone-Pomacall, sell him, and you don't need to immediately replace them and still win the league.

Right? So it's this medium that we're in those two places where not any team, there's not many teams that feel like they're completely out of it, so they're incentive to sell and restart. And there's not many teams that are so much better that they're like, I can sell this player and still win the league.

It's that medium place that we are, which makes sports exciting to be honest sometimes, that actually prevents developing and selling the players as well. Okay. In-steps USL. That's what we're open. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not exactly the most hopeful take, but it hopefully is enlightening in terms of why things are the way they are. Very enlightening. and I guess either of you have any closing thoughts. We've gone about 52 minutes. I think we can wrap it up unless. Toodle, anything?

I'm good. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for making time. Where can people find you? Yeah, you find me on Twitter at Toodle is my name. And then 25 stories, the podcast, the Twitter handles at 25 underscore stories, and that's available wherever podcasts are. And Toot is T-U-T-U-L.

Yes. Yeah. For all of you in Rio Linda. Greg, anything else? No, let's watch some of these USL guys dominate the world at the U-20 World Cup next summer, and everything changes at that point. We can only hope. Yeah, Gallegos, a three-go-to-assist group stage.

He's going to Leo. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks, everybody for listening. We'll see you.