Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 93: Earnie Stewart’s new job, Kremlinology, and 4 young players Berhalter should call up soon

Episode Date: August 14, 2019

Earnie Stewart has a new job, Kate Markgraf has a new job, and we've got clips from the conference call with them and Carlos Cordeiro as they discussed their new roles. Greg and Belz get into that and what it means, and then we talk about Weah, Dest, Sargent and Pomykal, and a few other notable performances from the weekend. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velasquez in Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Hey, everyone. Let's start with Monday's big news from the Kremlin in Chicago. Ernie Stewart, who up until this week was the general manager of the U.S. national team, has been promoted to sporting director for all of U.S. soccer, overseeing both the women's and men's national teams, the youth national teams, and the scouting and high performance departments. Kate Mark Graff, it was a lot of women's. announced will be general manager of the entire women's program, including the women's youth national teams. And Stewart will have to be replaced by a new men's general manager who will answer to Stewart, as will Mark Graff. That's a huge mouthful. Greg, how you doing? Bells, I'm good. Bels, did you take Western Siv in high school? Not in high school that I'd remember, but I did take a lot of Western Siv type classes in college. And yes, I recognize the Kremlin is nothing like soccer house, except for in one respect.

Do you see any similarities? Not architecturally, for sure. Just the general intrigue and potentially a number of backstabbings. Yeah, I think the reason the Kremlin comes to mind is the idea of having to think through what people are saying that they're not saying and read between the lines and, you know, discern answers to questions that were not answered, I guess. All right. All right.

Well, yes, I'm doing great. The shake up in Chicago is something that is going to be really interesting to kind of monitor over the next month leading up to, I think, the next big soccer house board meeting right after the Mexico friendly in September. More importantly or as importantly or more immediately, European season sort of fully off and running. Yeah, we will get to worry not. This will not be a full politics episode. We will get into some actual gameplay and roster. stuff, which is obviously more interesting. But let's start with, there was a conference call yesterday, yesterday afternoon with Carlos

Cordero, the president of U.S. soccer, and Stuart and Mark Graff on the line. Let's just start with what Cordero said in his opening statement. One of the many changes that we've been bringing into U.S. soccer over the past year and a half since I became president is really making sure that soccer operations are run by soccer experts. And that is really what today is all about. And so we're really thrilled to announce major changes to our sporting performance department,

which Neil just referenced. First, we're announcing today, of course, that after serving as our men's national team general manager now for a little bit more than a year, Ernie joined us last August. He will be moving into a new position and that of Sporting Director for U.S. soccer. Let me just say that Ernie has been doing a fantastic job as GM on the men's side.

He led to search that led to Greg Bertholder some months ago, being named as head coach of the men's team. And as Ernie grew into that role, it became more and more evident to all of us, that our national programs, women and men, would truly benefit from having a single sporting director, someone to bring even greater coordination across really all performance areas. So there you have it. Cordero also touted the streamlining that this will bring to soccer house. He explained that Stewart will oversee the scouting and high performance departments, as I mentioned earlier. He used the word synergies. If you must, Carlos, if you must. And then he introduced Stewart. And then Stewart introduced Mark Graff, the ESPN analyst, former women's national team player and winner of a World Cup and two Olympic gold medals.

So here's what she said. This new position is exciting for the development, evolution, and U.S. women's soccer, from the full USWNT through all the way through the youth teams. All of my life experiences both on and off the field have led me to this opportunity and I cannot wait to get started. I'm excited to work on our next challenge on the women's side, which is to qualify for the 2020 Olympics and to set our youth teams up for success in this summer. As I sit alongside Ernie and advised by some of the best soccer minds in the country, I'm excited

to help build a platform for continued success for many years to come. Very quick, sweet to the point. Greg, what do you make of that? I think it's a very good, I think it's a step in the right direction for sure. She seems very qualified. I'll kind of say the same thing I said about Ernie Stewart being hired as a GM way back when. It's really hard to know if a GM is going to hit, if they're going to be the right person.

So I think, I think the important part here at least, is that I think her duties have been a little bit more clearly outlined than Ernie's were when Ernie was first hired as a GM, where with Ernie was just like, oh, so we hired a guy just to hire the next senior team coach, and then what? By giving Markraft sort of the full senior team to youth team sort of responsibility, you get the sense that there is that sort of ongoing job that she's going to have to do. So she doesn't just hire the next women's coach and then sit around. She will hire the youth coaches and then she will coordinate between all of those

staffs to make sure things are aligned. Yeah. Which seems like a good idea and one that we've sort of been lobbying for on the men's side for a while, more unity. Or at least I have. I can't remember 100% if you have been lobbying for it. I don't want to put words in your mouth. No, I've done some lobbying.

And on the women's side especially, they've kind of had a, a flip of the men's side where their senior team has been incredibly successful, obviously, consecutive World Cup champions. But their youth teams have really struggled, whereas on the men's side, the youth teams have been much more successful than they had been historically, and their senior team has been a shambles. Yeah, it is sort of the mirror opposite right now. It should also be noted that Mark Graf was asked by Grant Wall if she thinks the next women's

national team coach should be a woman, and she said yes, she'd prefer that, but the best candidate will get the job. There's not going to be a female requirement, but it is her preference. I don't know. Do you have a take on that? No, I don't. There's a, when you look at short lists that have been kind of floated for the position, there aren't that many women sort of in the running, it seems like. It seems like it's Laura Harvey as the clear sort of front runner if you're trying to find

a woman to take charge. But after that, the pool is thin. And, you know, we could do a whole show on the reasons why the pool might be that thin. Could you do two minutes on why the pool is thin? Let's see. Institutional disadvantages. Systemic institutional disadvantages that women face in the game of soccer. We're talking, like, sexism on a capital S.

Yeah, I mean, you see the pictures of coach licensing, licensing courses in U.S. soccer and it looked they look like fraternity pictures. Yeah. Yeah. As do so many professional pictures in the world. But yeah, for sure. Okay. As is often the case with these press conferences, the most interesting stuff came from

the Q&A session. And here's, I pulled two questions and answers because I thought they were particularly relevant And to this show, one was from Mike Wattala at Soccer America. He asked Stewart about the 10 youth national team coaching vacancies and why they're not filled. Based on your 2019 media guide, I'm counting about 10 head coaching vacancies at the youth national team level. So my question is why have those positions not been filled and when do you expect them to be filled? I'm assuming is that to Ernie? Who's that to you, Mike?

Carlos. Ernie, whoever's in charge of that? Well, I'll answer that question, so I'll be in charge with that as it stands right now. So as the men's national team GM formerly now, I was involved in at least the conversations that we were having. You can understand that in the last couple of weeks

that that has been put on hold with what we were trying to accomplish on this side. And now we will, go full steam ahead when it comes to actually speaking one, two candidates and appointing candidates for the youth national team head coaching jobs. And actually, that is underway as we speak right now. That has been underway under Asher Mendelsohn and Niko Romine. And we are hopeful that within a couple of months that we will have those positions filled.

Okay. Bears mentioning that the coaching vacancies that are being referred to here are a real problem and have been for a while. U-17 coaching job was empty for more than a year before Rafa Wiki took over. And I think if you watched the U-17s prior to Wickey's hiring, you can see that that team's play suffered. The U-15s, U-16s, and U-18s on the boys' side, I'm talking about the boy's side right now. They've all seen a rotating cast of interim coaches for a while now. I would say I was hoping to get a sense that Ernie was familiar with the problem,

sort of intimately familiar with it, and I didn't really get that from that answer. Did you? You know, I have a sort of a different take on it, and that's that I think Ernie is sort of handcuffed a little bit and can't really discuss it too much because I think if he were to get too far ahead of himself, an obvious question that would come up would be, is this in the purview of, say, a Tab Ramos, who's nominally the youth technical director on staff. and my feeling is that Tab is on the outs with U.S. soccer. So, you know, he's still in the room, but Ernie has to sort of talk around it because he can't put, he can't put himself in a position where he has to say, oh, no, it definitely won't be Tad Ramos. Ramos is going to be out once all this goes down. Yeah, I mean, we should be clear.

We don't know that. No, no, this is me speculating, but it seems like, it seems like the reason that we have all of these vacancies is that U.S. soccer, on the women's side, this has kind of been happening as well. They're letting coaches sort of just fade out, not replacing them until they can sort of get their full structure in place that they want at the top. And then the people at the top will implement that structure with more control. So if Ramos isn't the guy, then you can't start hiring people because Ramos would have a say in who you're hiring or you'd have some input or he might be the guy nominally who would be hiring them. And if he's not who you want doing it, then you've got to

wait till he's gone. Yeah. Well, we'll get to you and you're always rose-colored glasses in a moment. But sort of relevant to that discussion is earlier on the call, the athletics, Paul Tenorio, you know, one of the top U.S. men's national team reporters in the country, asked Stuart, what will become of Nico Romaine and Tab Ramos. So just as a refresher, Romaine has been the chief sport development officer for the Fed reporting directly to CEO Dan Flynn. Ramos isn't on this sort of official org chart that's out there, but his title includes, quote, youth technical director, a job that, as you alluded to, he doesn't seem to be allowed to do right now. And then a third name worth mentioning is Asher Mendelssohn, former Columbus crew executive. He is the, quote,

chief soccer officer. So we have a chief sport development officer and a chief soccer officer. Both Mendelssohn and Romaine report directly to Flynn, the CEO of U.S. soccer, under the current org chart. And here's a question that Tenorio asked Stewart and Stewart's answer. The Bernie's promotion, the sporting director changed the roles of Tab Ramos and Nico Romaine. And I know prior to this move, Miko Romaine was reporting. directly to the CEO, do he now report to Ernie? Hello, Paul. Yes, that would be the case, but I'd go back a little bit in the sense that now that

the sporting director role has come about, that we are actually going to look at the sports performance organization and see what's best for the sports performance organization going forward. So obviously we've had some conversations about that, but going forward, I will be presenting to the board what that organizational structure will look like. and then obviously I think it speaks for itself that will speak with individuals first before we discuss that with the outside world. But that's something that's in progress right now,

and hopefully we can give some clarity very soon. Yeah, so Tenorio didn't ask about Mendelssohn, but you could easily include him in any question about Romaine because what do you do with two guys who supposedly report to the CEO when you're promoting Stewart to a position where he is reporting directly to the CEO and is taking over responsibility for everything those two guys do. What did that answer sound like to you? Going back to your Kremlin reference about reading between lines, it sure sounds like

like Ernie's just waiting to give some guys the acts and he can't really go into detail about what division is, what the structure is going to be, essentially until he's had time to talk to these guys individually and say, you're not going to be a part of it. That's me really reading between the lines and sort of adding my own intuition and feeling on it. But, I mean, that's what it sounds like. He says like there's talking about like victims of an accident and we can't announce anything until we've had a time to speak to their families. It does sound a little bit like that. Yeah.

And it kind of makes you wonder like, why didn't you sort that out before you had a big press conference? But maybe that's unreasonable. That's one of my big questions is why do this now? if you're going to have the board meeting in September. And again, maybe I'm way off, and that's why you have it now. But, yeah, it seems like you'd want to have all of this lined up to be able to announce it. But yeah, going back to even what Carlos Cordero said, it's a streamlining. They're talking about streamlining, and there's nothing streamlined about the organization right now.

And you have three different soccer guys reporting up to the CEO, that's not very streamlined. cut all of them out and it just goes one GM to Ernie to the CEO. Now we're getting somewhere. Yeah, I agree with that. And it's not just three, it's four. The current org chart has, you know, Romaine, the chief sport development officer, Mendelsohn, the chief soccer officer, the general manager of the men's national team, who is, you know, until yesterday was Stewart.

And then the to be determined women's national team general manager, which until yesterday was nobody. you know so that there were going to be four people directly responsible for soccer reporting directly to the CEO and that's you know come on you don't need to take a management class to see that that doesn't make any sense so i mean we should get into some big picture thoughts i guess what do you what do you take away from all this sounds like it sounds like you're sort of taking a positive spin from it well i mean i'm going to interpret it as charitably as i possibly can so that the cautiously optimistic reading of it is that this is a good thing. You know, if you've, if you're like us and you've been angling for some kind of

integration from the youth teams all the way through the senior team, this is, this is one of the steps that would have needed to have been taken. Now, whether they have the right people doing it, whether they'll execute it properly, once they take these steps, who knows, and with U.S. soccer, it's really hard to give them the benefit of the doubt at the moment. But I think this is definitely consistent with what I think would have needed to happen to make. to take that step. Yeah. Well, yeah, I do, I do, I see that.

So, so why, why is it taking so long? Do you have a defense for that? I think it's taking so long, partly because they couldn't upset the apple cart ahead of some on-field stuff. And Cordero alluded to this, and I happened to agree with him here. You had, on the men's side, you had the U-20 World Cup going on with Tab Ramos in charge. If you don't think Tab Ramos is your guy, that's fine. A lot of people will disagree with that and say he's earned more.

or whatever. But, you know, those decisions have to be made at some level for every position. And if Tab's not your guy, I don't think it would have been wise to be like, all right, he's not our guy. Let's get rid of him now three weeks before the U20 World Cup. I think that would have been foolish. So even if he's not your guy, we're at the point in the cycle where he's going to finish, he's going to finish that cycle out.

Yeah. So you couldn't move before then. And obviously the same thing with the women's senior team. You're not going to move and make all these major changes a month. month out from the World Cup. So you have to let those things play out on the field. And now what I would expect is after the September board meeting, where Ernie gets to sort of present his structure to the board for approval, I would expect now very rapid

developments. Yeah. Okay. And if we see that, if we see that, then I'm like, okay, there is now a plan. Those, all those youth national team coach vacancies were there. because they didn't want to just fill them to fill them and then immediately upset everything again with this new master plan. Yeah.

I guess I don't have too much to add to that. I think it's a pretty solid sort of positive rationale and kind of, you know, we'll see. I guess it's predicated on quick action after September 7th. And the only other thing I would ask besides for speed from the Fed is, is that they do mirror the women's side general manager with a men's side general manager who is in charge of the youth national teams as well as the men's national team, which has not been made explicit, but is strongly implied by Mark Graf's job description.

Yeah, I'd be shocked if they didn't go that route. I mean, you're streamlining it, so you're going to have these symmetries built in. And again, a lot of it will depend on who ends up in that position. and the execution within. But I think the idea is you're going to try to eliminate these sort of backroom politics to be like, okay, it's just this guy and this guy reports here. Whereas now, you know, when you have a mess like a spider web of oversight, then everything is nobody's job and everything is everybody's job.

And I feel like we could finally get some clear roles and responsibilities laid out. And then then there's somebody we can scapegoat when things go wrong. Yes, right, that's exactly. And you need that. Quite honestly, like, you have to have that because, you know, you're saying scapegoating, but it's an accountability thing. So the other thing that I think we have to have is, is transparency, all right? So Ernie's going to have his vision.

U.S. soccer's going to have their vision. Like, it needs to be laid out clearly. There's no reason to withhold this kind of stuff from the public at large. You should want to tell everyone about it. you should want to be as clear as possible about what Kate Markrath is doing day to day. What does Ernie Stewart do day to day? What does the new men's GM do on Tuesdays at 2 p.m.? Like, what's he doing?

What's he doing to help the program? What are we doing to get the program to be, as Ernie said, the number one men's program in the world? That's his goal. Yeah. Well, you know, if he tells too much, then the Germans and the French and the Brazilians will steal our secrets and surpass us. Yeah, no. I should. Yeah, go ahead. We've discussed the transparency issue offline, and I think you're, I think you're

kind of a hopeful young man about the level of transparency that could occur. But I think in general, how can you disagree? I think the more they tell us what they're doing, the better. I did get the sense, and Grant Wall alluded to this in his piece for Sports Illustrated, that Mark Graff was easily the most fluent and, um, loquacious of the three in her, uh, in her comments. I don't know if that came through in the clips that I selected, but Stuart and Cordero may be very, very intelligent, but they're not, um, they're not great communicators. At least Mark Graff is. And maybe they'll, they'll,

they'll hire a general manager on the men's side who, who, who mirrors that. Let's hope so because they are very much ambassadors, you know, for, for the entire, to the entire country. Like, they are the, they are the, you know, the mouthpiece and the, uh, essentially the head of communications for an entire country soccer. Yeah. I would say I will say Burrhalter's actually, I think Burrhalter's a pretty good communicator when he talks, you know? Yeah, he's not too bad.

Get him on the show, Bills. All right, yeah, I'll get right on it. Okay, anything else on this? No, I don't think so. I mean, we're now, I think, again, back in a little bit of a holding pattern until September. But if we're right and we have any reason to be hopeful, we should start seeing some major changes even by the end of the year.

Okay, sounds good. Before we move on to the second section, I just want to thank everyone for the ratings and reviews. I think we got about 40 new ones on Apple Podcasts after asking for them last week. Many thanks. Please consider writing one or rating the podcast if you haven't done so. It helps more people find us.

We'll be back in a moment to recap a weekend of heavy action in Europe and in the U.S. All right, we're back. Let's talk about the headliners, those who played over the weekend who were not involved in the Gold Cup. I need to be called up for the friendlies in September. Give me your first name, Greg. It's not going to be who you expect, Bells. My first name, given that description, is Tim Wea. Okay.

Tell me more. I mean, he started. They're in the league. It's none of this DFB-Pocal nonsense, no Super Cup nonsense. Like, they're in league play, and he started. I don't know if he's going to be a locked on starter for them, but it's a big vote of confidence that he got the first start in the first game. Yeah, no doubt. I'm kind of looking up.

All right. So Sergino Dest is not starting in Champions League today. Nope. He's on the bench. I'd seen Daniel had given us the update. Okay. Yeah, I mean, so on way, it's true he did start. He played, I thought he had one moment of.

quality in that game. It was not a game that was super easy on the eyes. Would you agree? Yeah, no, it wasn't in Wayo wasn't anything particularly special in the game. Except for that one moment. I mean, he picked up the ball in midfield, dribbled down the right channel and then played a delightful ball in behind for, was it for Bomba? I can't remember.

I'm not sure. I was on BN where it wasn't the best of high definition. So it was like watching in the early 2000s, but it was a great ball. found the second runner which shows some real again some real intelligence as well as displayed basically every time he stepped on the field and and again for me more importantly is is just the playing time when you're when you're talking like champions league level teams the playing time for me right now is what matters the most you don't have to be dropping uh nonstop highlights yeah well yeah so that are we are we going back to like basically our original podcast the first one we

ever did where we were talking about West McKinney and Jonathan Gonzalez being vetted by their clubs in a way that Bruce Arena could never hope to do and should have been called up for that reason. Essentially, yes, and it's going to apply to another guy that I think you're going to put on this list. Yeah, well, I can't tell what you're thinking at the moment, but I... I'm being intentionally cryptic. Okay.

So, yeah, so Way is number one on the list for you. Number one on the list for me is Serginio Dest. He's now started and gone 90 in the Super Cup, which I know is a glorified exhibition game, but it's a trophy, and there's something to it. He made his erred a Vizzi debut last week, and he's on the bench for a Champions League match today, a Champions League qualifier for Iax. You were ready to call him up right after the U-20 World Cup for the Gold Cup. I would not have hated that.

But I really think now it's time for Burrhalter to turn on the charm, bring him in, play him in September, and set the table for a cap-tying appearance in Concaf Caffnations League in October. Well, here we go. This is where I dissent. Really? I am very high on Sergenio Dest. I did want him called up for the Gold Cup. I think he would have improved our roster there, and it would have had the added bonus of cap-tying him for us for life. September friendlies do not do that, and I feel like at this point, since he's already,

in rotation with IACs, we should let him ride that out for as long as possible. So I think we should actually leave him with his club through September in IAC's glut of fixtures with these Champions League qualifiers and their league games. I think we should leave him there and play through September and call him up in October. I think we should definitely reach out and explain that to him. Crucial point. But I think we should let him stay with IACS rather than come play in very much worthless friendlies. I don't want to say worthless, but very much.

much inconsequential as far as results go. Yeah, not nearly as important for him as a young soccer player as getting time with that. I guess that's true. I guess that's fine as long, it's fine not to call him up in September as long as there is a very serious conversation with Dest from Burrhalter. Playing in, yeah, and kind of playing into that as DeAndre Edlin being injured. So I don't know.

I mean, maybe that makes it even hard. to leave Dest out in September. But, I mean, that's just sort of what I'm thinking is his priority right now. I think makes more sense to just stay at Iax and override this early season opportunity of playing time out. Okay. All right. The third of these four is that I have listed here, you may have others, is Josh Sargent.

I'd say he had an even quieter performance than Wea in the DFB Polkall, a blowout over Atlas Delmanhorst, which I think is a local Bremen club. It was a win against a very low block opponent, and Sergeant did start, but he had almost no significant involvement in the game. Wouldn't you say that's true? Yeah, that's what I'd say too, and it is the same as last year. He wasn't playing as the nine. He's playing as like an inside winger on the right side,

in Verda's sort of system. Which I don't think suits him particularly well. It might help him round out his game, but it doesn't put him in the best position to sort of show off everything he already has. Yeah, that's true. And, you know, I mean, if you want to quibble, I think, and I do, because I have a podcast that we talk about soccer, the quibble would be his movement just didn't look like it was very inventive or full of conviction.

and even as an inverted inside winger, he still has opportunities to move off the ball and create space for his teammates or find pockets of space for himself. I didn't feel like he was doing that. The big caveat, doing that very well, I guess. The big caveat, of course, is that Delman Horse was, they had 10 guys behind the ball the whole game almost,

even when they were down 3-0. So I don't know, I don't know. It's just a note of caution on Sergeant. though I want him in the in the roster for you know every camp where it makes sense for him to be are you going to give him the same treatment as desk here where he like he needs to stay with vera bremen in september you know I'd actually be fine with that too for sergeant even though I'm you know I've been one of the uh louder uh angrier sergeant proponents uh again totally fine here I think it makes sense to to give him more more time at uh verter because uh his competition for for one of those

came on in that game and looked pretty good. Nicholas Fulcruig, their new signing, new signing. Yeah, I think he's a signing from Hanover, actually. Yeah, new signing and sort of coming off of an injury. So Sergeant is going to have to fend that off or overtake Ful Krug, if Ful Krug is already ahead of him. So we'll get more in on that sort of this weekend when we see lineups. But no, I wouldn't hate, again, these September friendlies are very inconsequential.

Like we, in my mind, we already dropped the ball with Sergeant and Desk because we left them home for the four-week camp we could have had in June for the Gold Cup, the actual meaningful games. We didn't bring them on. I'm less concerned with pulling them from their clubs for these friendlies in September. Yeah, I'm going to disagree with you there. I mean, I do acknowledge that these are less consequential. They're not that consequential in the grand scheme of things, but we're still, we've got to remember some we talk about in this podcast, we're talking. 12 months away from World Cup qualifying starting. We need as much time in camp for these guys as they can get,

especially for players who have had almost no time under Burrhalter. Sargent has had a little bit in camp. Dest has had none. No time with Burhalter. World Cup qualifying starts in 12 months. You're wrong, Greg. Prove that you're not. Man, you're not going to see me complaining if Sergeant or Dest are on the September

call-up roster. Okay. All right. Yeah, I was going to say, like, you said you were one of the loudest proponents of sergeant being with the national team. I was going to say you were like Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I've got a documented history. Okay. The fourth name here is domestic-based player.

Pax and Pomechall had a good game over the weekend. It's worth noting. Big win for Dallas against Minnesota United. He had – Pomacall had two MLS assists. That's a hockey assist. That's a pass before the assist. And then he had one conventional assist.

I'm not sure what his ex-G chain is because my guy who gets me those has been kind of busy lately. But it had to be very high, very high. So, Dummy, can you please get me those? Yeah, man. You reach out, nothing but crickets from Dummy. He's got to get back to us. Yeah. Let us hear something.

All right. Yes, Pommacall, no-brainer. right? He's been the all-everything midfielder for Dallas, and he's looked good in any statistical breakdown you give of midfielders relative to his MLS counterparts. Right. So those are the four horsemen I've got. You got any other must call-ups before we run through sort of a grab bag here? I don't think so. No other sort of on-the-fence types. Everyone else, I think, is pretty set in stone. Yeah, okay. In my mind.

Yeah, mine too. We don't need to go over that. We'll do a roster episode before the roster comes out, or at least talk about it in a little bit more detail. You know, I got a shout out you, Greg, for the Euro troop weekend review. It was a thing of beauty this week. And I think it's going to be, it's quite a job putting that all together. And I appreciate it. And I know a lot of other people do too. So thank you. Yeah, absolutely. We got so many guys to keep track of now. And there are a lot of people who do a good job tracking all these guys. and it's just, I feel like it's just good. I always like to just see them all in sort of one place. And it's definitely not exhaustive. If you don't know what we're talking about, it's just a list of a bunch of Americans who are playing in Europe. The list is not exhaustive.

It's just sort of a subjective breakdown of guys we think are still pretty relevant to the U.S. player pool at the moment. And for this cycle, I guess I should say. Right. If you want to see the full list, go to our Twitter account or the Patreon. I posted it on there. Patreon. I don't know how to pronounce it.

Patreon, Patreon. But it's on there. But a few highlights to pull from it. Number one, Christian Pulisic lost at Old Trafford 4-0. Did not start the game. You got any quick takes on that? I am not, I don't really care that he didn't start, and I don't really care that they got smoked 4-0. It's an American playing for Chelsea.

Like, I'm totally fine with this. I'm going to give it a month before I start to pull any panic cords on pool sick. Yeah, I'm not worried either. He's fine. It's fine. Wes McKinney played 40 minutes, no, 35 minutes in a blowout win for Shalka in the DFP Pocall. Again, I think I'll just take this one.

I don't think there's really anything to be taken from it. He got on the field. That's good. We'll see what happens with the Shalka lineup this weekend in the Bundesliga opener. Not for nothing, but McKinney came onto the field in the second half when the score was 1-0, and then Shulka promptly dropped like five more in the next 30 minutes. Okay, do you have a sense that he did anything to make that happen? I have no idea. It's just a fact about the chronology of the game.

I wasn't able to watch it. It wasn't broadcast anywhere that I could find, and I didn't try to find it on any stream. so just going through the timeline. Yeah, right. No, facts are facts. John Brooks played also in the DFPKal. Ended up being a 5-3 win for Wolfsburg over Hallisher. I'm sure that's not how you pronounce it.

A lower division club in Germany. Gave up a lot of goals. I didn't watch that game, did you? I actually did have that one on, and Brooks basically had nothing to do. it was Wolfsburg completely dominated and somehow it still went to extra time at 3-3 and then Wolfsburg promptly scored twice but it wasn't like I mean Brooks didn't make any real mistakes it was just Hollisher just hitting a couple of bangers to really somehow miraculously

stay in that game yeah well good for them good for them the magic of the cup as they say uh Adams homes and Yedlin are injured I think that's all we need to say about them they remain injured. Richie Ledesma made his Airstivizzi debut on Monday yesterday and has another match on Friday. You watch that game, I watch that game. Do you have any takes you want to offer on it? No.

Shortly after he came on, PSV went down a man, Young PSV went down a man. And that really, the first half looked really clean and fluid from PSP. and then in the second half after the red card, they really struggled. They struggled to connect. There was just, you know, there were just fewer options to play to.

So it very much changed what he could have done. So it was a suboptimal situation. The guy who he subbed in for at half, is that how he pronounced it, Bells? Can I get a definitive pronunciation guy? Good enough for me. Yeah. He's on the PSV grown-up first team roster quite a bit.

So we're kind of expecting him to be gone this week for Europa duty plus league duty over the weekend. So the thought is Thursday and Sunday, right? And the Young PSV game is on Friday. Right. So it seems like they'll have less flexibility to rely on any of those first team guys because they don't know if they'll need them for these other games. So the hope is that Ledezma starts for Young BSV Friday and gets to play with 11 men for a full game. Yeah. I think that would make a difference.

Yeah, not his best game, but like you said, it was a 10-man young PSV, and there was not a lot of attacking fluidity. Gloucester also, you know, maybe that fixture congestion bodes well for him making a young PSV debut on Friday. So, you know, tune your televisions to the young PSV station on Friday afternoon. You know, well, actually, one more thing on Ladezma, because they were playing down a man, Ladezma came on as the clear number 10, like they were playing a clear number 10 in their formation. Because of the red card, Ladezma dropped into like a holding midrull and had to spend a ton of energy and effort being part of a defensive block at time. So it was, I mean, in a way, it was kind of good just to see him putting that work in and not, I mean, it's not like he was some traffic cone that got carved up time and again. Like he, he for the most part, held his own and they didn't concede other than the free kick right after the red card.

They didn't concede when they were at 10. Yeah, and he didn't have anything to do with that red card or the attack that led to it. No, not in my mind. Okay. All right, cool. Go on, Richie. Go on, Chris. Also, even in a lower level, but very exciting.

Ullianez got a brace and an assist against St. Pauley, I guess it was, for the Wolfsburg. Yeah, St. Paul's U-19s, right? Right, for the Wolfsburg U-19s. and all of both goals and the assist were lovely. He hit that from like 25 yards, curled it around the outstretched arms of the keeper. So I'm excited about, I'm excited about Uli. Hopefully he comes out and scores 30 goals this fall

for the Wolfsburg Un19s and makes his debut by Christmas. We could see it, man. Buddhist League of 19s is going to be the most exciting league for Americans to follow this fall. It's funny because the highlights come out on Mondays at 11 a.m. central time. pretty much like clockwork.

It's very German. And you can just go through and you heard that only scored two goals, but you never know if they were just like a tap in after a scramble or what. But it's like Christmas morning when you get to see that it was a 25-yard banger. Yeah, and staying in the Unite teens, we got to see Giorina in his U19 debut with Dortmund scored a goal in the first 60 seconds.

Unbelievable. What a charmed life. Scored a goal in 60 seconds and then like two minutes later had an assist. Picked up another assist later in the later in the match. I wonder like if these two guys just run away and there's no telling if they're going to maintain this this level of production. The sample size is small. But you know, we have we have a couple of I mean we have some precedents to go by. We have Sebastian Soto who scored a bunch of goals in the United.

So, Soto was scoring for the 19s last year. year, right? That's right, yeah. Yeah, so we sort of have his goal scoring record, and you wonder what it'll look like if we have a couple of guys who just blow that out of the water. Yeah, I think it was, like, don't quote me on this, but I think it was like 18 goals for Soto over the course of the season, and maybe 12 in the first half of the season, and that got him some looks with the first team in the spring.

I would be surprised if Ullianez scores less than 12 goals, you know, same with Raina. Well, we'll get to see him every Monday at noon. Yep, right. All right. Last thing we should talk about, and it's less of a positive note, but it turns out Jonathan Eamon is injured at FC Nordgelen. His coach said that was the case, and it's not because he's being sold, and it's not because he's in a fight with the manager.

He's just injured. And that makes me... I'm not laughing because he's injured. That's obviously disappointing. It's frustrating. Yeah, no, you're laughing because of the fight with the manager thing, right? Yeah. Yeah.

but we had him in our top 40 last couple weeks ago was that last week boy it seems like a longer ago than that and i think it's probably time to to take him out of the top 40 not because he doesn't have a future but he's been he's been injured for i think almost 40% of the matches that he could have played for uh fc norgelin since he broke in the first team last uh late in 2017 so it's just been a lot of injuries and a lot of little ones you know, never like a really big one, just one thing after another. So just should mention that. He's probably going to fall out of the top 40.

Yeah, I think he'll sit on the scuff shelf next to Nick Tai Tegu, and we'll just keep hoping against hope that advances in medical science put those guys back on the field. Right. Good players, exciting players, got to stay healthy. Anything else we should talk about, Greg? I don't think so, but. This is going to be our shortest podcast in months.

I'm sure everyone will appreciate it. All right. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you.