Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 153: Sell sell sell! MLS's pleasant evolution

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

We talk about the reported Bryan Reynolds to Roma deal, him as a player, what it means for the national team, and a BUNCH of other stuff as we took on a baker's dozen or so questions from Twitter. Fun episode. 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 and Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. The big news of the week, as far as I'm concerned, isn't Weston McKinney's permanent deal with Juventus or Timi Weez Bangor or O&O to Soe's Premier League coming out party? No. It's the reports that Brian Reynolds may be purchased by Roma, the big Italian club for just under $10 million. This is a right back who played 110 first team minutes a season ago. and didn't really even break into the first team at Dallas until September. And now his sale can fund the entire FC Dallas Academy for, I don't know, two years, three years. I'm not sure what those numbers are. Get third degree on the show and have him take us through that. Yeah, we do need to do that. That's long overdue.

This follows, so, you know, there's no deal that's done. So this is still in rumor territory, which I know makes you very uncomfortable, Greg. Well, I'll tell you this. Like, when there's a report of an actual deal on the table with, like, the details, that means something to me. It's the nonsense that, you know, so-and-so is actively monitoring or closely monitoring or aware of the existence of such and such a player. That's where I'm like, okay. Yeah. So this deal, if it does in fact happen, would follow the sale of Brennan Aronson to R.B. Salzburg.

Reggie Cannon and Chris Richards from FC Dallas to Boa Vista and Byron Munich, respectively, for lesser sums, but with big, you know, with sell-on fees, sell-on clauses. And of course, we have the success of Adams, McKenny and Pulisic, among others, which went to Europe for free. Well, Adams didn't go for free, but. Let's throw Alfonso Davies name in that mix, too, because this feels very much of like a hunt for the next Alfonso Davies situation when we're talking about Ryan Reynolds. A famous movie starring Sean Connery, the late Sean Connery. Yeah. So there's a lot to talk about here, I think, or at least enough to fill 10 minutes or so. Greg, you were one of the early adopters when it came to Reynolds in a first choice, USMNT-23.

What do you like about him? That's probably a bit of a stretch. But yeah, before this rumor even came out, I've kind of had him as like the fourth fullback and the ongoing sort of pick a fourth. fullback out of a hat experiment for the U.S. men's national team. And what I like about him is, and the reason I kind of have him at the top of that list of of a bunch of different guys, is the same reason I think we both valued Serginio Dest so heavily, even when he was still at Young Iax. And it's because Brian Reynolds and Serginio Desk perform are completely different types of

fullbacks than what we are accustomed to for the U.S. men's national team. And that's that they are game-changing attacking players. And we haven't really had that before. You know, even back in January of 2019, before Dest had, you know, jump from young IACs to IACs, we were talking about how we were both high on Reggie Cannon at this point too. But we were talking about how Reggie Cannon was basically of a kind

with what came before him. He's a reliable defender and he can occasionally give you something in the attack. That's not too different than, you know, what we had from D'Andre Edlin. It was not too different from what we had from like, Steve Trundolo for all those years. It's a high level, but then Dest comes along, and Dest isn't a player that you are going to hope occasionally does something on offense. Like, you're going to make him a featured part of your offense.

He's going to be, you know, one of our primary attacking threats. And it feels like that's the kind of fullback that Brian Reynolds is going to be. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I'm going to defend Cannon a little bit here. I think he's like slightly more than occasionally, but not on the level of, of what we think Reynolds is likely to be and what Dest already kind of clearly is. I think Canon's more,

I think Cannons does more in the attack than Yedlin, for instance, you know, offers more. You don't think so? So far, no, I don't. And I'm going to be like a little bearish, I guess, at the moment on Canon, or at least relative to what his sort of current standing is among the fan base.

I love Canon. I think he's a fantastic piece to have available. but but you think back i think back to like 2019 it still seems like the the where people are putting him uh is is above what he's actually done on the field almost like this is the sort of we are projecting a little bit or maybe not maybe maybe i'm just underestimating him uh but i don't think he's really done anything to stand out he hasn't made a lot of mistakes defensively but i feel like for the u.s in 2019 that's that's basically the story of our defenders it's hard to think of like big high profile mistakes that anybody in our back

line made. The highest profile mistake is probably Serginio Desk getting done by Tecotito and us getting scored on. And I don't know that he's done a ton in the attack especially against like the better teams. The better teams we played against. Like to be honest, if you stack up

contributions from 2019, like Nick Lima probably has done just about as much as Reggie Cannon for that season. So it does, it does seem strange that Canon sort of reputation amongst the U.S. fan base has sort of snowballed the way it has. He played really well in the Gold Cup in 2019. This was not supposed to be a Reggie Cannon segment, but he did play well in the Gold Cup. Remember, he wasn't supposed to even be there, and then he kind of worked his way into the starting lineup by the time we got to the final.

He was one of the few players who looked decent in that final, which does kind of square with what you're saying. You're not saying he's been terrible. or anything. Yeah, and I'd also say, like, I'd be interested to have you pick out the clips in that final against Mexico that you think really were like Reggie Cannon is, is helping us here. Like, I'm just... That's not going to happen. Anyone who wants to do that, feel free.

Like, there wasn't a ton in that game that anybody did to really help us. So, I don't know. And that's where I think, like, the fact that he wasn't bad, sort of people latched onto that and sort of keep, just sort of kept elevating him and then sort of built on that and built on that until we've put him on a decently high pedestal when we're talking about our starting fullback situation at the moment, and we'll get into that later. But so anyway, I guess the reason that this all goes back to is I do think Reynolds is a completely different player, different type of player, and it seems like that that's probably

partly baked into why he's, you know, about to be sold for $10 million to a European club. And just to talk a little bit more about what kind of player he is, because I do acknowledge that his attacking upside, maybe even what he already does in the attack is better than what Cannon offers. He's just, he's what, like 6-3, he's pretty tall. So he's very long, which is an advantage, which is definitely an advantage for a soccer player. And he's fast and he's strong and he's technical. Like he dribbles by people. and then he's able to combine and get into that little pep guardiola area and you know either play the ball across or like pull it back and you know he did that a lot for Dallas this this year

could have had more assist than he did I'm not sure what his XA was but um a lot of good stuff I bet Roma could tell you that way yeah probably they probably got people on Y Scout right now but he has on a deluxe version he does so he does all those things he said And I think he also has that sort of early ball that he can whip in from the sideline when that's on. So if you do spring him early, he can hit the good cross, the good kind of cross, you know, where you can play it in behind the defense, you know, curl it behind that back line. It's that your man on the far side can run onto it. Like this is, this will be a, again, just a different caliber of attacker that we can put in our back line.

And it's one of the reasons that, you know, I've always been reluctant to say like cannons the guy, Canon's a guy. Like, Cannon's a good piece, but I don't think Cannon has been somebody who's ever been like, there's just no way we'll have somebody pass him. Oh, yeah, no. He's very much felt like the new floor level of like, okay, it's good that we have these kinds of players

that establish a good floor for us, so we're not going to be hung out to dry if Sir Gino Dest is injured. Again, not that we don't know that DeAndre Edlin can't do those things as well. But again, this is all going back to say, Brian Reynolds, different kind of player, very interested to see if FC Dallas take this payday. Yeah. And I think like the bigger, the even bigger thing is that it does feel like Major League Soccer is taking that step to becoming a selling league.

And that requires a lot of things that requires the owners here to be interested in that sort of business. and for clubs in Europe to rate young MLS talent, enough to pay, you know, $5 million or $10 million for them. And now we have a couple examples in just the last couple months of players, you know, players that have been good, but not like, you know,

Brian Reynolds hasn't been like the best right back in MLS, has he? He's been good. Anton Tinnerholme is the best right back in MLS, right? So, but I mean, that's, you're right. He hasn't been. Like, there are better right backs, but what these clubs are going to do is, and this works.

essentially what we're doing now is MLS is entering the same sort of standing as some of these other selling leagues where teams will go into a Dutch academy and pluck a guy with that level of promise for A and I million. They'll do that with players from Brazil. So to see us now entering into that realm where we don't have to necessarily jump from MLS to a Dutch academy so that they'll pluck us out from there, they'll say, no, we can we can, uh, we're willing to take the risk on the MLS player straight out of MLS based on very little in senior match evidence. And we'll trust that his numbers here, the numbers we're getting on him are in the I-test

checks out and we'll plop down $9 million. Yeah. Two months is what we have from Brian Reynolds, essentially. It's a huge deal. And it'll be a big deal if FC Dallas agree to it because unlike when they sell Reggie Cannon and have Reynolds waiting in the wings, I don't think that the, their next man up is going to be at that level. When Reynolds stepped in for Canon, there wasn't really a drop off at all. You could argue that, again, he offers something even better.

From what I've read, and I think I saw third degree talking about it, they don't necessarily have that waiting right now. So this will hurt them in the short term. They won't be able to replace Brian Reynolds' production on the field for this season, you know, presumably. Yeah. I mean, they could always, did he mention that they could put Pauling head back at right back, take him out of this withdrawn striker experiment that he's in. I know, he's been playing like left wing and stuff. I mean, they can sign somebody, they can find somebody to play right back. But that's just it.

I mean, to an extent, the way MLS rules work, you can't sell a guy for that much and then just like put all that money back into the team. You have to, you have to kind of, you know, work within those confines. But Reynolds is a homegrown though, isn't he? Yeah, they'll keep it all. Yeah. But they, but, you know, to put it. it back into a player.

They just have to spend it on diamonds, diamonds and Rolls Royces. Yeah, you're going to, you can put it back in your academy so you can do all these things, but that's a long-term solution, you know, like you got a, it's, it's going to be, there's definitely a competitive risk that FC Dallas take in selling this player off. Yeah. If they do so. And I'm, I'm, I'm expecting that they will. I don't think you turn down that kind of money, uh, and hope that I don't, I certainly

don't think you do it in the hopes that his, his value will appreciate over the next year. Yeah. They're not going to sell them for 20 million next year. I wouldn't think. I mean, we've still got to be realistic about MLS. Yeah, but it's great. It's great news. It's great news for the national team when this starts to become a little bit more of a regular occurrence.

And I know that's not, I'm not saying anything new there. Everybody knows that kind of. But it's worth putting a flag in the ground on that here. We do have a bunch of questions. We ask questions on Twitter. and I'm going to sprinkle a couple in and then we're going to do a bunch right at the end. But here's one from Joseph McGregor,

great friend of the pod, asks, not sure this is the garden you'd want to weed, but the, I don't want to weed any gardens, Joseph, but the Reynolds news caught almost all national pundits including the professional ones off guard. Why is that? And I would say it's just because he's so new,

you know? With Alfonso Davies, he had like, even though he's very young, he had, it seemed like, two years to sort of think about where's this, where's this player going to end up? And with Brian Reynolds, I, you know, he was a striker a year ago. He came off the bench and played on the left wing for Dallas in 2019. He sort of only in the last 18 months or so really settled into this right back position. Only, like I said earlier, has played first team minutes regularly for the last two and a half months. So that's my answer for why it caught everybody off guard.

Yeah, I'd agree. I'd say this is basically unprecedented. You know, Davies did have the whole season. We all knew he was going to go eventually. Aronson had a whole season, and then he went for, you know, five or six million to have a guy who plays six games or whatever it is, and then go for nine million. We haven't had that.

Altador way back when when he was the, you know, setting, like shattering the record to go from MLS. to Europe for like 10 million to Vaya Rael. You know, he'd had his whole season where he'd sort of showed off. He had the U20 World Cup where he looked amazing. I'm not sure exactly about my chronology, but I think the U20 World Cup was before he went over to Vaya Rial. So yeah, so this is just uncharted territory.

But now that it's charted, I don't think it will be the only time that this happens. I feel like we will start to see this. It's not going to be five guys a transfer window. But the next time it happens, we'll be like, oh, yeah, I guess that's just what what happens here now. Yeah. Now that the territory is charted, the Puritans are going to arrive and then the Quakers and then the Cavaliers. And so, yeah, let's go. Let's move.

You ready to move on from Reynolds in colonial history? Tim, Tim Wea, Tim Wea banger. We've got to mention this. You know, he scored a goal a couple, like a week or so ago, 10 days, two weeks ago. Like a left-footed strike off a corner kick first time. Very nice. But this was a legit banger. This one gets off your feet.

Yeah. And you could see it, see what it meant to him. It got him off his feet too. With his team up 1-0, comes in for a cameo versus Dijon. And it was Dijon throw in in their half, and they kind of threw it back towards Zone 14. Wayo was there to to sort of harass the centerback and the centerback took

shanked his first time effort at the ball and it kind of looped into the air right in front of the right at the top of the box waya ran onto it took a touch that spun it up in front of him and he just freaking tomahawked it over the goalkeeper it was such a tight arc

because of the top spin it almost looked like a right angle I mean that's an exaggeration but it was it really was it was a top spin hit. Big moment for him. You went over and slid into the sideline and then put his face in the grass to sort of, I look like he was almost praying. So even better than the goal a week or so ago. And I know you love to see it. You've been, you've been taking some grief. You've been taking some

grief on Twitter for putting him as a lock on the weekend playbill. He's been, I've had him as a lock since he got back from health. I started to be like, oh man, am I going to, am I going to look bad for this? And we still don't know. We still don't know where he rates in Burhol. Walter's mind. We still don't really know where he's, how he's going to factor in with Leal, but you do things like this, you're going to keep getting some more chances. Obviously, things at Leal very uncertain at the moment, given their financial development. But yes, I have been, I've been very high on Wea, and it hasn't necessarily just been his potential. It's been from the actual minutes he's played for the senior national team,

even during the Dave Serrican era, I think he just looks like exactly the kind of player that we want to be playing. If he gets even better, I'm here for that too. Yeah. I'll bask. I was hoping for a little bit more vindication from you there, but okay. And again, like I've always been saying, the competition for that fourth winger spot is pretty, has been at least, not the strongest. I mean, he's knocking out Tyler Boyd and Jonathan Lewis from the Gold Cup.

Yeah. And now it's maybe like Ullianez, who's not playing a ton here in Vien, right? I mean, that's his other competition. As Tyler Boyd still even in the picture? Who knows? Allegedly. I do think he'll be back for Besheeked us in January. That's what I'd heard last.

Okay. Well, we'll get into this. We'll get into sort of a very, very, very, very small 2020 year in review later. But I think one thing about Burrhalter is he does, he does manage to keep a lot of he has a lot of information at the same time. He's been calling up a lot of different players. It would not be surprised me if they're closely tracking Tyler Boyd, and we see him, you know, sometime.

The next thing is O&O to Soe came on at halftime for Wolves in what was at that point, a zero-zero game with Chelsea, and then played the second half in a 2-1 win for Wolverhampton. It was also, we won't, talk about it too much, but also Poolasik's first start in a little while, and he played really well on the left wing in the first half before getting moved over to the right wing, right? Yeah, it didn't look quite as effective on the right side. Right. So what did you think of Otisoe?

I think it's a huge deal that he got in this game. I know the fixtures are getting congested and will remain that way for a while, but it's a big moment for him to be sort of thrust into this situation and so an amazing moment for him I'm sure in his career he gets credited with an assist which is you know assists are noisy and that's one of the noisier assists you can you can clinch but he uh but I'll say this the assist he had or you know the actual action he had on the play does seem like something that he may be valuable and that was just sort of a poor clearance on a set piece and he sort of keeps it alive,

it looks like he's the kind of player who can scrap in those situations and keep plays alive. Like he's a big guy. Yeah, he's also, you know, he's athletic for his size too. So he's kind of hard, he's hard to dribble around. He's hard to, he's hard to defeat in a 50-50 duel. He's hard to pass around. You know, he just sticks one of those long legs out. and intercepts the ball,

which I mean, he was, I'm not sure he was playing exactly as a six in this game. Would you say he was? It was like a, I thought he was basically part of like a double pivot. So there were two sort of holding midfielders and he was one of the two. Yeah. The thing I'm going to be watching really closely if he gets more minutes for wolves,

and I kind of assume he will, is, is how sort of fluid he plays off of the ball, fluidly, fluidly he plays off of the ball. It kind of stood. out to me that he's he he sort of stands very straight up a lot of the times his body language essentially like uh i'd say it's like checking out but uh oh now we're going to criticize people's body language yeah i know i was i was thinking about how i'm turning the tables here but you watch you watch

the intermids play off the ball and they are very like fluid like there's just this constant you know micro adjusting of their position relative to the ball and the players moving around them uh and what really stood out to me the most immediately about Otisotsoi is he will very often even like one pass away which center mids almost always are just sort of stands straight up and it's like completely like not in an athletic stance at all uh while things are happening around him uh and and i thought there were a couple of times where it kind of like bit him positionally it didn't bite him in the sense that like Chelsea were able to capitalize on it but there were a bunch of situations where I was just like, oh man, Otis O'O, he needs to have, like, moved four yards back or have, you know, he needs to break hard to this to where Drew has set up shop in the box.

And so that's what I'm going to be watching for is how, how sort of more naturally he can start to flow with the game as a central midfielder. And my understanding is central midfielder has not always been his primary position. He's sort of fluctuated between center back and center mid. So that might sort of go into why that's the case. But, yeah, I mean, we're definitely. into nitpicking territory here. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to disagree with any of that. I do, like, with him about him being a centerback.

I always fantasized about him as a centerback for the men's national team someday because I saw that we have this, you know, this right centerback morass where we don't have anybody really distinguishing themselves. And I don't know that that's like the door is closed on him being a centerback at this point. I guess the door is never really closed. but I'd still like kind of like to see it. And, you know, being versatile, being able to play as a midfielder and a centerback, there's nothing wrong with that. No, no, no, no.

It's, but all I care about right now is like, will he get another shot? Will he get another runout? And I'm expecting him to and I'm going to be excited to watch it when it happens. He's U20 eligible, by the way. He's a U20 and a U20, and he was in this last camp. He played like only 10 minutes for the U.S. against, I think it was against Wales, but. Okay, more questions. Chats ball asks, what does Gianluca Busio actually do?

He's an accountant. No, I think he's, I think he's intriguing because of his youth. I think, well, okay, I think the question is like, what, why is there this constant, seems like, rumor mill about European interest in Busio? For a while, it was Syria-a clubs. Now there's this rumor about Barsa. And this falls very much in the category of, like, I think the reports are that Barsa is closely monitoring Gianluca Buccio. I think this was the new one where Barcelona are alert to Gianluca Buccio,

where I don't know if the translation issue from the source material, but I just, I like laugh at all the different ways that these rumors can basically say, this club is aware that this player exists. Yeah. So it's like what, so the question I think is, the spirit of the question is, why is there this Disconnect, right? Alleged interest in him.

It kind of goes to, for me, it goes to like this disconnect between where a lot of U.S. fans national team fans sort of see Gianluca Bousio and where sort of this transfer rumor mill sees Gianluca Buccio. Yeah, there's that too, for sure. And I guess, I mean, my best stab at it is I think he's intriguing because of his youth, he's still quite young. I think he's just 18, just turned 18. his steady improvement over the past couple years.

I think he has gotten better. And his sort of technical soundness and his ability to strike a ball. I mean, he can punish the ball inside of 30 yards. And he's been robbed of a couple of what would be very much highlight real goals in the last couple years. But, you know, I'll never be the sporting director of a Syria club or Barcelona. So I can't precisely speak for why they're interested in him if they are in fact interested in him. or, you know. Well, I'll take a little stab at it too in that I think he's an exceptional pressing attacking

player. And I think that there are going to be a lot of teams that, you know, that's sort of a new mold of attacking players. Can you help create opportunities to score with your ability to press? And I think for Busio, that's definitely something he can do. I know a lot of people are starting to change their minds about him on the U.S. men's national team supporter side when he started to play a little bit as a six. for Kansas City and kind of showcased his ability to ping the ball around from deep.

But he also has sort of been at times playing as part of a pressing front three with Kansas City defensively. And I think that's where I'm really curious about him because if he can do that in this sort of new look national team that Burrhalter is sort of establishing, he becomes much more valuable. If he's an excellent pressing midfielder or if he's versatile enough that he could be in the front three. whether he's in the front three or sort of the midfield three, there's a spot form in this sort of new pool of plug-and-play players.

Right. So I'm much more interested in him now that we're pressing, and he's a terrific pressing player at the age of 18. Like for me, he sort of shoots way up on our little domestic national team depth chart. That, you know, this discussion reminds me of something I meant to say earlier, which is, you know, the Reynolds' rumor. to Roma and the or the report, the alleged report of him going to Roma. And then like this continuing, the continuing Busio simmering rumors.

It's just, it's just a, it goes back to your initial analogy when we first started this podcast, which was we just need a lot of lottery tickets. And you almost get like a better kind of lottery ticket when somebody gets bought by a club in Europe. I don't know, it's still just a lottery ticket, but it's like a, I know, in a like a smaller pool of numbers. The jackpot's gone up is what's happening. And everybody, it's a power ball. Like all these, I honestly would say that's the case.

All these European teams now know, like, you can hit the jackpot with an MLS Academy player. And that's, that's, again, the Alfonso Davies situation, Weston McKinney. Like, these are now pretty sizable Champions League jackpots. Yeah, totally. Okay, TJ Football. TJFTBL asks, is it worth it to play desk at left back, even if it limits him as a player? He answers his own question, in my opinion, no. Well, T.J., I disagree.

I think it's fine to put Desdett left back. We talked about Cannon and Reynolds earlier. And I think, I mean, this sort of brings up the whole Anthony Robinson, the Anthony Robinson debate, which I hesitate to get into. But I think until Robinson actually looks good for the national team, and he has not, I'm not trying to be mean. I don't hate him. I'm rooting for him,

but he has not looked good for the national team. Outside of that Mexico game, where we beat him 1-0 under Saracan, right? He came in and he caused some serious problems in that game for Mexico. I just think until he can be sort of more relied upon, and maybe that'll happen. Maybe that'll happen in March. Then I think it's better to have Cannon or Reynolds

at right back and des at left back. All right. So I'll push back again halfway. here. I feel like this is a good spot where we've started to not disagree on a lot of things, but on the Robinson front, I'm going to disagree again. I feel like Robinson was good in a lot of games in 2018. His qualities, especially in the attack, kind of get overshadowed by his defensive moments where he got sort of pants by some very good players for Brazil or Columbia. But I guess what I would say is at this point for me, Anthony Robinson is basically in the exact same boat as

Josh Sargent, where I think both of those players are like one good U.S. men's national team showing away from being locked in now as the starter. So if Anthony Robinson has one game in March, if he gets called up to the national team and he looks solid, like that's it. Like, okay, he's settled in. He hasn't had a lot of easy transition moments for the national team. And I don't mean within the game, I mean actually transitioning into the team. he was called in once in 2019 ahead of the Gold Cup. I remember it was before the Jamaica game where we just looked terrible, like nine guys on that field looked terrible.

After the game, I know Georgie Mihailovich had made the comment of like they only trained on that system. They used a new system like a 352, three centerbacks with Robinson and Ariola as like wingbacks. This is my long Anthony Robinson apology, by the way. And like Mahilovich was like, yeah, we trained on this for one day. it wasn't, it didn't look that good. We need to, there's a lot we can approve on. But it was the same situation for whales.

Now we're playing a decent whale side and they had two days of training with all these new players. And Robinson basically just didn't look super comfortable. I even think his whales performance is probably like held too strongly against him. He had a couple of nervous moments at the beginning of the game.

And then after that was basically just fine. He didn't do anything particularly great or that stood out. But after those first two nervous, nervous moments, he was totally like, totally fine. I mean, that's, that's exactly just fine. I got to go back and watch the clips from that because I thought it was more than just two nervous moments. I thought it was more like five or six. No, man, it's just, that's just his body language. Like, everything feels nervous, but then he just hits a totally routine pass to a

center midfielder or to John Brooks. He gave the ball away a couple of times early, but then I'll also tell you to watch Reggie Cannon's very first touch against Panama and, and see if that does anything for you, it's like a long ball that goes, that's crossfield pass to Cannon's feet that he like settles directly to a Panama player running the other way. Okay. All right. But no, I guess what I'm saying here is Josh Sargent also hasn't had a great game for Greg Burhalter.

So it's true. It's true. I really think that they're in almost the exact same boats. They're both now regular starters on teams at a top level. And I feel like there's every reason to believe that the moment they settle in, they're it's their spot for the national team. Well, Robinson in particular,

because there are so few other left back options, Sergeant, his grasp might be a little bit more tenuous because of the number of players who are chasing it. Okay. Well, you're keeping, you know,

the three or four Anthony Robinson burner accounts that hate my effing guts on the line. So for that, I appreciate it. Well, let me say one more thing. I know I've already gone on way too long on this one, but if you are going to move Sergenio Dest over to the left,

it would be for a Brian Reynolds type. I mean, we went over this already, but if Reynolds hits, like, gets close to that sort of ceiling, that's who you move Serginio Dest over for. I don't think you move him over for Reggie Cannon, short of just like rotation and normal stuff to keep players fresh over, you know, playing three games in a window.

If you're going for, like, best 11 full strength, you've got a World Cup knockout game. Like, that's where you're only moving Dest if you've got another Serginio Dest in your pocket. If you have two Sergenio desks, you're going to play them both, and you're going to bench Anthony Robinson. Okay. So all Reynolds has to do is hit Sergenio Desk levels.

Well, I mean, it doesn't seem that out of the question at this point. Dave Stern, aka Relaxatorium, aka the former commissioner of Major League Baseball, asks, what players that nobody is talking about at all will pick up 15 to 30 caps? Bonus points if they're already over 23 rather than an under-the-radar prospect. Or is the talent pool getting so deep that we're not going to be seeing as many of these types of surprise guys? I mean, it's kind of an impossible question. I think, except for the last part, I do think the talent pool is getting so deep that we're not going to be seeing as many as many of these types of surprise guys. As in the over 23 out of nowhere 15 to 30 caps kind of guys.

Yeah, and part of that also is just how deep people are tracking players now. I mean, it depends on what you mean by nobody's talking about because, you know, we've got people who are talking about the 2006s and know that pool pretty well. So, yeah, it is going to be difficult for anybody to sort of just sneak in. Yeah. And if they are going to, then, yeah, then there's definitely no way we will talk about them because that kind of definitionally defeats the question. I mean, nobody was talking about Brian Reynolds a year ago.

I mean, we were, he came up in our sort of private conversations occasionally, but usually as like, oh, this doesn't look that good, you know. And because he was playing, he was playing as a winger mostly. But people are going to sneak up on us. We just don't know who they are. Were you going to say something there? Well, I was going to say that Reynolds, yeah, Reynolds would come up when we were saying, okay, so if FC Dallas sell Reggie Cannon, what are they, what are they,

who are they putting back in that spot? Yeah. We definitely weren't talking about him as in he's on his way, to Roma for 10. Right. Riegel Soccer asks, what can MLS do to increase their viewership? While MLS Cup had a strong viewing,

the regular season numbers were pretty mediocre at best. How can MLS get to that next level of viewership? I don't have a good answer to this, but I'm going to say, just keep on keeping on. The race goes not to the swift, but to the relentless. That's not the axiom,

but something like that. I think they could be a little bit more, strategic in their ways of sort of opening these gates to more, to a broader audience. And I think one of the places you'll see them heavily criticized are by, like, media groups that are doing their damnedest to relentlessly cover them. And MLS doesn't always make it easy to do that. So if anyone out there follows the outfield, they're like a NYCFC outfit, they do great work, they're constantly frustrated by their lack of access to players on the team or information about salary caps and all the stuff that could bring an audience more.

I mean, think about the audience that NBA has that is constantly analyzing roster decisions and all this stuff. There's this whole market for that. And MLS does its best to not allow this to happen and sort of protect itself. I don't know. And that makes it difficult to, that makes it difficult, it reduces a number of angles in the ways that you can cover it. So if you sort of, if MLS wanted to open more of those things up, you know, there is, there is that approach that could help them grow this base. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, I was, I've just moved from Minnesota to Georgia and like every Minnesota United game I went to was like very well attended. I don't know that they were all sellouts, but, you know, that, that team has a strong base. of like fans and people love going to see them watch them play even when they weren't very good you know now they're like they're a little bit better but um yeah I don't know man I don't know how you get like I don't know how you get 55 year old sports editors at daily newspapers to get interested in soccer I think they just have to sort of phase out you know it's going to be generational to some extent but I'm not discounting what you're saying I think you know we had our

own run-in with NYCFC, but I think, you know, it's, it's to some extent, just a generational thing. And soccer is, soccer is inevitable. It is. It is becoming more and more so. Inevitable, but more so. Ed Ritter asks, opinions on Tyler's lack of playing time since he came back from injury, is a Noglesman concerned he is fragile?

I don't know, maybe. It doesn't bother me that much personally. Like he's playing for a really good team. He's a rotational player for a really good team. Yeah, rotational starter. And even when he doesn't start, I think he's appeared in damn near every game of the season. Yeah.

Like league, Champions League. So, no, I am not bothered in the least. In fact, it might even be good to like keep some minds. I was off of him. Yeah, like the takeaway from last season after the return from the COVID pause was, for me, was Christian Pulisick not missing a single minute of Chelsea's like 15 games in four weeks and just being like, this is insanity, like stop starting him. You know, every time American starts for their big club, everything on Twitter is just

like, Poolstick starting, Pulick in the lineup, Pulisick in the 11. And eventually it's like, stop doing this, like stop putting him in the 11. to be a human being and recover from this. So, yes, I'm totally fine with Adams being a averaging 60 to 80 minutes a week. That's perfect for me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm good with it too. And, you know, I think it's true.

He's not like, he's not a, he doesn't have the attacking genius of some of the other options. Genius is a strong word, but attacking quality of some of the other options in that midfield. so he's, you know, but that we don't, I don't think we need that from him for the national team. I think we need him to be exactly who he is, and that'll be fine. But real quick, just to. Bima Jenkins. Hold on, just to really specifically answer the question about Nagelsman being concerned that he's fragile, though. I don't think that's the case.

I think, I think Adams is behind, like you're saying. I think he's just very much behind a couple other players. Yeah. Yes, I think that's right. Bima Jenkins asks for a U.S. men's national team player of the year. Surprise, Greg. I guess my player of the year is a high press.

Mine is Weston McKinney. All right. With a lot of votes in my mind going to Sebastian Leggett. I love it. I love it. Take that, haters. Charlie Kennan asks for a ranking of waffles, French toast, and pancakes. Come on.

It's French toast and then everything else. Yeah, they're all good. They're all good. I'm a pancakes guy. I'm a pancakes guy. Like you make them yourself or you go to a restaurant and you get pancakes? I make them myself. I put, you know how you take an old banana, put it in the freezer and save it to make banana bread?

Yes, actually. You actually do that? You do? Yeah. So you can take your old banana and just drop it in your pancake batter. And I do that. Two of those, extra eggs. So it's not just like a fluffy carbohydrate bomb, the pancake.

You got bananas and eggs in there. Sure, this is healthy. It's good. It's real good. I mean, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's healthy. But Ty, final third asks if you were just alerted that the world is ending tomorrow, what would be your biggest life regret? No regrets.

No, I'm kidding. I hate when people say no regrets. I can't even, it's hard for me to even begin. There's so many regrets. I can't even list all my regrets from this week. Like this morning was particularly full of regret. No, lots of regrets. Lots of regrets.

Not hitchhiking across the world when I was 22. Not paying my taxes in 2012. Not being able to watch the U.S. play Mexico in a gold cup knockout game. This version of the U.S. That's what's going through my mind. Not seeing Kenny Seth lace him up again for the stars and stripes.

Yeah. Not rating Paxon Pommackal and then perhaps rating him too highly. It's like double regret. Matt Verretta asks, Curious have you watched enough of McKenny at Jouve to discuss what he's doing better, different from his time at Shalka? I'm interested if you have an answer here, but I'd say he looks like the same player to me,

just maybe a little cleaner, a little more confident and surrounded by quality. Yeah, the confident one I think is very closely tied to the surrounded by quality. I feel like it's probably a lot easier to be confident when you know you're good. And you know now when you do something that's, whether it's great or it's just like making the normal play, the guy next to you's not going to screw it up. And Shalko was not that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think he's that different.

That's my answer. JDB asks, if you were the manager, what is your money on the table line up for a game against Mexico one week from today based on current form and hamstring health? Wants us to consider this as a regular feature. All right. And I think the big question here is where do you deploy Sebastian Leggett? I mean, I'm very tempted to put Leggett in this 11, but I'm not going to do it. So you want me to go first?

You go. Stefan. Cannon. Reginald Cannon, Matt Miasga, John Brooks, Serginio Dest, left back, of course, Tyler Adams, Wesse McKinney, Eunice Moussa, and then a front three of from left to right, Christian Pulisic, Josh Sargent, and Giovanni Rayna. I think that team could play with Mexico. You're not going to do that.

I'm not doing it. Okay. There's just too much uncertainty for me to jump into this game. Yeah. You know, just to protect, let me, I'm starting to get afraid already, just to protect myself here. I see the argument for Robinson at left back if he, like, has one good game. I see the argument against Sergeant at Stryker. I do think Legette has, you know, offer some things in the middle of the field that are useful and he could, I wouldn't hate it if it was him over Moussa.

Yeah. And then I don't know, I'm not so sure about Miazga either. I'm not even sure about Stefan, but. Mengie, a friend of mine in the Twin Cities, asked for us to discuss the rebirth of Haji Wright. He is, Mingy says he is developing again at age 22. Mengy and I ran into each other at Joy of the People, Ted Creighton's, uh, Ted Creighton's nonprofit where they have free play. He said, Wright is developing again at age 22. He was an early developer and took a dip,

got injured, he has what it takes physically, he just needs to continue to play and move up to one of the top five leagues. Thank you. Greg So, you know, to put team badges on that on that roller coaster ride, Haji Wright's been on, he was at,

he was at Shalka where he had, eventually was like earning first team starts for Shulka, and by earning, I mean, Shalka was having an injury crisis. And this was, this was before they were the total fire that they are now. And then he, then he went to the Aredivisier,

where he's playing for Venlo, and went in the entire season, basically as their starting striker, and managed to not score a single goal in the Dutch League, which is famous for the number of goals that get scored. And that was just last year. And now he has moved to Denmark, where he is scoring for fun.

It's about every game he scored earlier this week. I think we're going to have to table this, though. I mean, I have not watched a lot of Haji writes clips, and we promise we will look in, like, address. his position in the player pool over the next two months. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Because he's in Denmark, it's not impossible that he could get maybe like a release for the January camp.

Not that I'm necessarily expecting that, even if he were released, that Berhalter would have him on his list. He obviously was not in the November camp despite being an Olympic eligible striker who was scoring goals regularly. So that could mean that he is behind some of these other options. But it is kind of curious. It's kind of like you wonder what goes into right, getting very little attention, and like eight other young strikers, always sort of being mentioned in the same breath, you know? Yeah.

I mean, I thought he looked pretty bad at Shalka, even though he was getting minutes. He looked pretty bad at when he was on loan at Sandhausen, I think. But, you know, you can't let, you just can't let like a past opinion of a player. especially one who was a teenager at the time determine how you think about somebody for the rest of their career and I have been guilty of that to some extent probably am guilty of it in this case

but I'll do the homework here I'll do the homework on Wright and watch his video compare him to some of the other younger, young options that were that we're now sort of seriously I guess considering in the Soto Giochini

tier and we'll see how Wright stacks up okay last question Paul Delaney, Patrick Delaney, I'm sorry, not Paul. Patrick Delaney asked for a 2020 year in review. All things considered how was 2020 from a U.S. men's national team, U.S. youth national team perspective.

I'm going to say from a youth national team perspective, it was a lost year. We didn't see really anything. How about from a U.S. men's national team perspective? I think what's crazy about 2020 compared to 2019, like I have basically zero complaints about how the U.S. men's national team, uh, ran in all, on all facets for 2020. Uh, the style of play, the player selection, uh, the call-ups, um, the, the obvious, uh, attention that they've been paying to dual

nationals, um, whether that's the number of call-ups they have or, or what felt at times like camps entirely manufactured to get some dual nationals into the door, um, to, you know, the dual, like you hear now, you know, it's so, it's so far removed from, um, when they go from camp to camp with no interaction in between, and now you hear it's just like constant continuous communication between, whether it's Burrhalter or Christ or whoever it is, just everything sort of firing on all cylinders. And we'll have to see in 2021 what Burhalter's real sort of picture of the player pool looks like,

because right now we've just seen sort of piecemeal rosters. But it does certainly feel like there was just a hard, reset from 2019 and and we are just a I mean effectively a brand new program yeah and I would credit 100% our dogged investigative reporting I'm just kidding I'm totally kidding about that that is a joke literally a joke yeah I feel I feel the same way I don't I don't really have anything to be I don't have anything to complain about it's exciting to see I mean one thing that really sticks out in my mind is Richie Ledesma talking to Luis Etche Guevare from the, I'm probably saying that wrong, the reporter for Sports Illustrated. He has a video show. And Ledezmo was talking to him,

and they were talking about the national team in Ledesma was like, yeah, it's a family. It feels like a family. We're all like, we're all really, like, seem like everybody at the camp was really mature about what we're trying to do, but we also, you know, there's a closeness there. And I was like, damn, that is really different from what I think Richie would have said a year ago, you know, about the program. And that's a big deal. He's a dual national. It was, you know, within the realm of possibility that he could have chosen to represent Mexico, you know, regardless of whether he ends up being like a first team regular for any national team. I think that's a, you know, that's a, a that's just a huge change and it seems to be sort of the message we get out of national team camps

in general um and then you know all the player pool developments this it's been an unprecedented year on that front which isn't really it's not because of anything u.s soccer is like it's not anything usssf is doing in the near term it's just awesome it's been yeah it's been uh incredibly fun and so it really turns into this like uh incredible excitement for what 2021 has in store uh yeah the culture of the team just seems fantastic uh it's nice to see that because you know we'd also heard a lot about how if you start calling in a bunch of young players who are unproven that's gonna you know you can't it'll destroy the locker room culture um and it doesn't seem like that's really happening it just it very much seems like a uh what what burhalter is now

established as looks to be a very close-knit team culture, even though it's spread out over, you know, several dozen players. It also, you know, one of the thing, not to be negative, but it's also kind of nice to look back on 2020 and see it as the year for like a changing of the guard in a certain way. Like we don't expect we'll see Michael Bradley again. As soon as those words escape my lips, I'm like, hmm. A lot of games. a lot of games in 2021.

So, yeah, maybe I've talked about this on here before I always forget, but come September, I think there's going to be a bit of like call up whiplash where, you know, everyone's getting called up now for anything. We'll invent camps and call up 20 new players.

Come September and World Cup qualifying, like those days are going to be long gone. We might have slightly bigger rosters than we're accustomed to, but it's like we're going from all these competitions and all these different rosters, we've got a field to that's it there's no more youth tournaments there's no more Olympics like it's the grown-ups it's the senior team and the only focus is world cup qualification no friendlies no nothing every every window is going to be a very like high

focus this is this is the only objective now is to get points out of these games all right good podcast in my opinion thanks Greg thanks everybody for listening we'll see you