Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Gio to Forest, transfer window wrap-up, Lindsey outrages America

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Greg categorizes all the USMNT transfers from the now-closed window, special focus on Gio to Forest and Johnny to Betis, then we go down the list and briefly discuss the Horan comments to Meg Linehan at the Athletic.Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon! Patrons get a private feed for the Monday Review, which is, among other things, a run-down of club action for national team players every week with Watke and Vince. We have recently added patron-only content that’s available every Friday. Patrons also 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/scuffed Our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAoundrEkZUgZ13IE5XIqrg 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 scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody, this is Bells. The transfer window just wrapped up, so we're going to talk about that. Also, Lindsay Horan has set the nation aflame with her comments to Meg Linnehan for the athletic, so we need to briefly discuss that too. Greg, how are you? I'm good. I'm good.

I mean, I'm suffering, I think, the same crisis of confidence that anyone who is in the media discussing soccer is experiencing. after those for hand comments because it's like, that me? Is she talking about me? She's talking about us? We'll get into it. We'll get into it. But, um, let's not listening to the scuff podcast.

No, I don't believe she is. I don't believe she is. She may not know that we exist. But, uh, let's, let's talk about the transfer window because it just closed last night. Um, you have in classic Velasquez fashion, created some categories for the, all the transfers that happened in the,

player pool and I cannot wait to talk about those. So why don't you kick us off? There was a danger that this was going to be super underwhelming. And I feel like a lot of people might still say that it wasn't, I mean, it's not as exciting as some of the other windows we've had where we send multiple players to AC Milan or Juventus. But I think it was salvaged by a couple of marquee moves. And so the two marquee moves in my opinion is going to be obviously Giorina to Nottingham

Forest. So that just broke. It's official. They play Sunday, I believe. So again, all eyes now on Nottingham in the whatever part of England, Nottingham is in. I should know. It's appeared in some stories. It's right in the middle, right? King Richard is there. I don't know. I'm excited to, I'm going to go back and watch Kevin Costner movies to get ready for this. I would recommend the Disney version, honestly. Of course. 100%. But yeah, this is great news, right? He got to move because it was sort of just becoming clear where he stood at Dortmund. It wasn't necessarily clear why he stood where he did.

Tons of speculation. You could make, you know, various kind of cases about whether it's his soccer, whether it's his sort of off the ball soccer, whether it's on the ball. He's just not as good as the guys who were playing ahead of him. But it was, it's just going to be nice to not have to do that anymore. and to hopefully watch him thrive. And if not, then make more like excuses for the circumstances that he's in. Right.

Which are some baked in ones ready to go if things don't go well. Right. And when certainly we've, you know, floated some of those even in the last couple weeks. But the thing is, it's a, it's a little bit of a confusing, it's a complicated situation because he doesn't, there's no option to buy. Right. Right. for Nottingham. And so it's just a straight up six-month loan.

He got his contract extended with Dortmund as part of the announcement, or that was announced with the transfer. So you could read all that. I mean, I think it's totally fair to read all that as like kind of a vote of confidence in Geo. Like he just needs to get through this little period or like, you know, tweak a few things. And we want him, Dortmund doesn't want to get rid of him. actually some Nottingham fans were a little disappointed that it was a loan with no option to buy.

But then I saw one Nottingham fan. I've been, you know, watching a lot of Nottingham Forest YouTube in the last 48 hours. And like one of them said, well, that makes me one and more because it shows that they actually believe in him as a player. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways to read it. And then there's, of course, the Jane Sancho situation in Dorman. They're bringing him back after a sort of checkered tenure at. at Manchester United, and, you know, are they going to, are they going to buy him or not? You know, so there's like kind of multiple balls in the air for Dortmund.

I think for Nottingham, they just need some quality in the attack, right? They need points, yeah, they just need goals and they need points because they can't rely on, on their goalkeeping, keeping the ball out of the net, so they have to score some goals. Yeah. Why is that? What happened to Matt Turner? I don't know. We'll get to him later.

So yeah, so the built-in excuse, if Raina isn't thriving, or, I mean, really it's going to be if he isn't playing it. For some reason, he isn't playing very much. It's going to be, well, it's a loan. There's no purchase option. So they, Forrest aren't invested in. They're only invested insofar as he can help them in the immediate term stay up. And then if he's not playing, it's like, well, yeah, because they don't have the, they never have the ball. And Geo Raina is a ball dominant type of player.

so they're going to be better off with. You see these excuses? You see how it's going to flow? Oh, yeah. So easy. It's the beauty of the sport. There's so many different ways to spin everything. I'm thrilled.

I mean, thrilled is probably a little strong. I'm being a little facetious, but I am really excited to see him play for nodding. I think my optimistic cup runneth over, as it often does in situations like this. I can't wait for him to drag them to the middle of the table and become a global superstar by May.

Yeah. And so again, that's the hope, right, that he, that he shines and shine, I mean, as much as you can in the relegation sort of scrap. And he does well enough to totally price himself out of Nottingham Forest actually buying him permanently, even if they really appreciate what he does. Right. So that's geo. It's a done deal. Didn't seem like it was, you know, necessarily guaranteed earlier in the week. but it happened.

And they play 9 a.m. Eastern time, 8 a.m. Central at Vitality Stadium where Bormouth plays. So Nottingham visiting Bormouth. I think the game's on Peacock, right? Yes, I think so. And just a heads up on that as well. So they've got that game Sunday. And if that comes a little too soon for Gio to make a big play there, they have an F.A. cup match midweek.

So he might, I mean, I assume. that you can register him for that. I don't know exactly how the rules were. But yeah, so the hope is they got a couple of games right away. I think we should get to see Gio on the field in Nottingham or Nottingham relatively soon. Yeah. Well, in the Forrest YouTube channels I was watching, they think he's got to start the rest of the season.

They're really tired of Callum Hudson-Adoi, I guess. But, you know, we'll see. That's just people like us talking about the team. they love. So the other one, what's the other marquee one? The other marquee move, no, the other marquee move right now is Johnny Patisse. And so that's, that's kind of, I mean, we knew he was going there, or it was heavily rumored. I think it was even announced before January 1. So he got there right away. He's been playing a couple of games now. Looks the part that's in really well. And this is just, again, just huge to cover some of the gaps that we've had in our pool in midfield.

So building up that depth, whether Johnny's going to vault into the 11 seems unlikely. But even to be able to really stake a claim to the 23, will be really nice for us as a program because this is what we've been trying to, this is what we have needed for a while now. A legitimate backup six, you know. I mean, that's the role he's playing for Batiste. That's the role we need him to play in Tyler Adams' absence, which is he is currently absent,

has been for about a year. So, yeah, it's great news. And, yeah, he's been pretty good. Like, good in duels, pretty ball secure, doing all the things he needs to do, I think. Hitting progressive passes. That's like the big one that it's like, oh, he's even hitting a couple of these.

He's not Fabregos back there, but he's connecting through the lines. So it's not, he's not a total backwards passer. So, which he kind of looked like he was a little bit in some of the International footage, you know? Oh, for sure. Yeah,

it was like, for a while there was like parody almost, like how you could watch 70, he touched the ball constantly, right? He was getting like 95 touches a game and you might have one time where you like knocked a ball forward. Yeah,

really rigorous risk management from him in those days. But yeah, you're right. He's passing it. He's passing it forward now. Okay, what's the second category? So the second category, we just put of some intrigue. And, and, you know, there might not be anything to any of these as far as the national team goes.

But it makes me curious. I love these little, these little sort of obscure peripheral transfers because, again, we're sickos, and we like the down roster stuff and even the off roster stuff to just sort of help establish baselines, right? So the big one with a bunch of drama for the actual process of the transfer was Duncan McGuire to Blackburn. Yeah. Where it's been reported that they're interested, maybe a couple other teams around that England interested in him in the champo. And he hops on a flight. He's just like, whatever, I'm going to go over there. People interested, I'm just going to be close to the action.

Blackburn was the team that was, you know, he was going to go do a medical. And while he's on the flight, it comes out that Blackburn deal has fallen through while he's midair. but he's still around to make some stuff happen right i mean it seems like a seems like a it seems like a it seems like a ballsy move to just get on a flight like that i respect right and i don't i don't even know what the f a rules are i mean can you turn that flight or can you just be like hey deal fell through turn the flight around like i feel like you need a better reason than that but i don't know i don't know in any event he he lands he's hanging out now and uh we'll have to check the treaties He's now hanging out.

I don't even know where London. Let's just say London. Yeah, hopefully London. And again, now we're hoping like, okay, well, maybe Sheffield Wednesday can make a play for it an hour. And then within a few hours, it's like, nope, Blackburn's back on. And there he goes. He's there on loan. He's announced.

Nice. It's awesome. No, an expensive option to buy for Blackburn, seven and a half million, something like that. Seven million with a couple million add on. So you'd have to really blow up for them to do that. Yeah. So this is the Darrell D.K. Path, Orlando to Champo and, you know, NCAA to Orlando to Champo.

So kind of cool. Where did McGuire go to college? Do you have that? He's a Creighton. I think he's a Creighton kid, isn't he? Oh, that's right. Yeah. He's a local.

He's local for me. Yeah. I consider a local. D.K. was Virginia. So is creating part of the ACC now? I'm not tracking all the I'm not tracking all the conference realignments. I think if the big ease still exists, I think that's what they are. Okay.

Okay, what's the next transfer of some intrigue? So Horvath, right? Horvath to Coventry City on a permanent deal. Hey, this is Bell's coming in from the future. Greg corrects this at the end of the segment, but it's Cardiff, not Coventry City that Horvath is moving to. the Coventry City slip up happens a couple more times. Don't worry about it.

And this one was interesting because, you know, he found himself not even registered for Forrest, and then we're watching Forrest goalkeepers be horror shows. And it's like, I wonder if at some point they're like, maybe we just have Horvath be at least try him. He's at least not going to be hopefully like a howl or a game goalkeeper. But no, they're comfortable letting him go. So he's off to Coventry in the show.

championship where he is done fairly well for Luton Town I mean he's not he wasn't exceptional but he racked up a lot of clean sheets which people love people love to talk about clean sheets so he racked up a ton of those part of that was just because Luton were an incredibly

stingy defense overall his advanced numbers for the season which again there's some noise in single season even over a whole season for keepers were pretty average He wasn't going to, he wasn't going crazy with saves, but he also wasn't going crazy with howlers. We should do an episode sometime. I don't know exactly how to frame it, but just about like the insanity of being a goalkeeper, you know?

Like, how do they even assess that? How do they say, oh, Horvath, we don't even want to see him right now. Turner and the Greek guy are just so much better than him. Right, right. Like where, how does that happen? But it happens all the time, right? People make those judgments all the time.

Yeah. And the thing is, again, it's so hard for keepers to like lose that rating, I feel like once they've established themselves in a coach's eyes, that it takes like a bunch of howlers to do it. We saw it with Stefan and now we're kind of seeing, we were seeing Turner and the Greek going howler for, howler and you know they were kind of flip-flopping and now it seems like the coach is like

well out of the two turner and then obviously you know we'll get to it but they just brought in another keeper but they were desperate and they couldn't actually get a good one so they just threw a few million to get a keeper who might be about the same as the two they're flipping between but all that guy has to do is not have a bunch of howlers right he'll keep the job yep yeah he doesn't have to again he doesn't have to play out of his mind he just needs to not be a circus he's coming into a good situation for him, I think. So let's hope Horvath strolls right into Coventry in place because he's been our, he's sort of been our default number two, even though he hasn't been, you know, registered

to play club soccer in six months. Oh, I'm sorry, because I said Coventry, but what obviously we've been meaning is Cardiff. Okay. All right. What's the next? So Duncan, McGuire to Blackburn, Ethan Horvath to Cardiff. What's the next one? So the next one is, I feel like the one who, the curious one that's close.

closest to actually making the full team roster, and that's Miles Robinson still, uh, and his move to Cincinnati, which I'm curious about, and I'm, I'm mostly curious about the effect of it. Will, will Greg Burholt or actually like say, this move lacks ambition. Like a lot of people are obviously critical of the ambition shown here because they judge the talent pool, uh, with ambition as some kind of a key component. Um, and so the, curious whether or not, Greg says, nope, if you're just going to sort of stay at the level you're at and not push, then I'm going to try out some guys who have shown a little more ambition.

I mean, he may, right? And he may try out other guys for reasons that have nothing to do with ambition. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because again, at least, same with the keepers. It's so hard to actually like separate and distinguish the hat of centerbacks that we're kind of trying to pick from. It is a little bit of, it is a little bit similar.

When you get to 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 on the depth chart. Right. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I don't know that it's not like, it's not going to be wildly revelatory to see him play his first game with Cincinnati the way it is to see Raina with Forest. But, yeah, we'll see. Yeah, and well, it'll be fun to see Miles next to Miazga and kind of watch those two. meazga is more of like or has a better base of ball distribution in my opinion so it's going to be interesting to see that sort of a side by side comparison

who's moving the ball around for him whether he defers to miyaska or whether they both have licensed to sort of spray it around yeah yeah miazga's still he's still allowed to play soccer after what he did last fall yeah i don't know what is i think his suspension just ran through the cup right they were just like well he will not if they make it to the final. He's not going to get to play in. What a wild man. He is. All right. We've got the next one is one of the baby Aronson, so Paxton made his move.

Brenda didn't get his, but Paxton Erison, who had not been playing of late for Frankfurt, got a move to the bottom of the table in the Airdivisi. So he's going to Vitesse. The Ricardo Pepey Pathway. Yeah, the Ricardo Pepey Pathway, also a former stop of that same Matt Miazga. Although when Miazgo was playing for him, they were in Europa League. Oh, yeah. They've kind of dropped off a bit.

I don't know. Did how'd you write play there too? Or did he play the VVV Venlo? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The quadruple V.E. So, so Paxton of a test, it's an interesting one. Like if I'm thinking of a team that desperately has to, you know, call their way out of relegation, like Paxton Aronson doesn't seem like a guy who's going to be that player.

But every little bit could help. Maybe he helps him a little bit. He has some quality. He can do some stuff in the final third. I mean, he even showed it a little bit with Frankfurt. Just, you know, didn't seize his big opportunities the way he probably should have. Or could have. I should.

Maybe he doesn't have anything to do with it. All right. What's the last one of some intrigue? Last one, just because we're adding to our numbers in Italy, and that's Nico Giochini to Como in the second division. So another team that's fighting for promotion, they're right in the hunt. So we have a bunch of guys just clogging up the second through seventh spots in the second division in Italy.

Yeah. Always enjoy Joe Keeney. You know, he had some great moments for St. Louis in the last season. Como up north of Milan. So very close to this. Swiss border. Oh, that's Lake Como. Como of Lake Como. A beautiful place. One of the most beautiful places in the world, I think.

All right. I mean, that's a big sell. Way to go. I mean, Google some pictures of it. It's like, it's unbelievable. It's like the Alps plunging into a blue lake. I love it. And then, so the other fun thing for that, at least, is I believe Como streams all their games for free. Like, they have, they set up

their own stream so you can watch it. So we'll be able to watch Niko. play. So again, just cheering for the kid. He was a fun dual net that we brought over in, what, late 2020? Yeah, he has a handful of caps. Does he hit 10 yet? Something like that. Probably, probably, yeah, that gold cup run in 2021. Yeah, love Nico. Yep, me too. Okay, next category. That's a short one. Vamos. So this is, we sent Brandon Vosquez and Kate Cowell to league at Emekes. So Fasquez to Monterey

another incredibly scenic soccer background and then Kate Cal to Chivas, Guadalajara Fasas has started out on fire. Probably unsustainably but I don't know. It's too early to know how his numbers are going to shake out. I don't think he's

going to keep scoring on like 80% of his shots attempted. But who cares? He's a gorgeous human being and he's scoring a bunch of goals so he's got Monterey, I'm sure. are in love with him already. They're thrilled, yeah. Those 20 yard headers,

he may not, do you think you've got another one of those? That was an amazing goal. That was absurd. Yeah. So yeah, so that's cool. Callal has not had the same start that Vasquez has,

but it's early for both of them. Okay. Yeah. All right, I love this next category. Okay, the next transfer category is the mountain retreat, And that is Zach Steffen,

Georgie Mahalovich and Sam Binds all heading to like a corporate leadership ski lodge weekend and also playing soccer for the Colorado Rapids. So three guys who I guess showed the ambition went over there to different levels of play

and for whatever reason decided that their best move would be to return to the states. Yep. hopefully they all get their ski passes. Well, maybe they don't allow that for a professional athlete. I don't know. What do I know?

It'll be cool. Stefan, like, I feel like could just work his way in. You know, he's got the familiarity with Burrhalter. There's no one else really beating the door down for the other goalkeeping slots, goalkeeper slots. So if he just looks decent, that could be enough for making it into camp. Yeah.

I'm curious. Cupboards a little bear, isn't it? Yeah, again, there's nobody demanding anything, right? Gagga's a child, and he's not, he's not like, again, he's not just showing up and schmikling his way through Belgium. Yeah, I'm mixing Denmark and Belgium up there. I feel like they're not really different countries. Well.

And then, so, I wouldn't be surprised if Stefan, I don't know, what do you think of Stefan's relationship with Burlter at this point? I, I don't know. I don't know. And I have to just reiterate, I don't understand goalkeeping, you know? Like, I just don't. You make one tiny little lapse in concentration and you've ruined your career, you know? And I don't know, Stefan can do some good things.

I mean, he was, your question was, what do I think of his relationship with Burrother? Probably a little bit fraught at this point. Yeah. So that's what I'm curious about, whether it would be like a, I mean, do you bring him in because you're familiar or do you not bring him in because it's like, this would be kind of tense. There'd be a little tension here to just have him around in camp as,

as not the starter. I don't know. He, I think he was in one camp, uh, with one of our, with one of our, uh, Interims, wasn't he? I'll have to double-check that. We'll fact-check that afterwards, but I thought he was called out for one. We'll send out a teletype.

Yes. In any event, those guys all, it's interesting that they all somehow made their way back to Colorado. It is. A lovely place, Denver. Okay, that's the mountain retreat. What's the last category here? So then we just had some, we have some guys who are staying put that we were kind of tracking to see. maybe they might make sense for a move.

And first on the list is Hesus Ferreira because of how sensational it was that he stayed put. S.C. Dallas and Hesus had apparently agreed to a $13 million move to Moscow. Yeah.

And the State Department, I guess, stepped in and said, you can't do that. It wasn't State Department. It was MLS. Was it for, like, diplomatic reasons, though? No idea. I don't. I don't know.

I don't think I saw an MLS full explanation. Yeah. Russia bad. No go. I mean, it's injured. Like, I don't know what all of the considerations that I have to be for something like that. 13 million.

It's a pretty good transfer fee. Yeah. Yeah. If it was 13 million from Cardiff City, uh, it's a no brainer. He's gone. Yeah,

he's out. Yeah. We're doing it. So surely their, the Russian angle was relevant here. It has to be relevant that it's Russia. Yeah. Interesting.

We don't need to get too much into it, but yeah, very interesting. So interesting. And Haseus allegedly, the report is that he was ready to go. So it's not, he isn't just trying to stay in Dallas, which again matters to some folks. And yeah, it's also like 13 million isn't going to come from Carter. So it's like, okay, 13 million, if they're willing to pay this, why, why aren't there other teams that would make it move for 10 or 11? that Dallas would probably agree to. And I feel like it very much is Moscow,

that team probably exists sort of outside the normal market of the various soccer pyramids because, you know, Ferrer is an interesting one because of his salary, right? Duncan goes for a loan fee and a purchase price of $7 million. He's only like a month younger than Hesus, and their production is about the same.

Hesu's has a much longer resume of professional goal scoring, So, I mean, Hesu's, the salary has to be a huge detriment because Duncan's sitting at $67,000 a year. Right. And Hayses are like almost 2 million. Yeah, it's crazy that they're so, so much disparity there. Come on, Greg, though. You don't have a little bit of a feeling like that if a player goes to Europe, that's like a good sign. little bit? Oh, I totally think it's a good sign. I absolutely do. I think it's a great sign if

I think it's a great sign like that somebody vetted that or some club vetted it to the point where they're going to drop, you know, 10 to 12 million on a player. I think that's a very good sign. I think a player is probably more likely to improve. Again, it's always going to be case by case. Just going to Europe to the championship, to Belgium. I don't think that necessarily says that this player is better than the player who stayed in MLS. Yeah, I think, again, what it goes back to you for me is, if you don't try to move to those leagues,

you do run a risk of getting passed by the volume of players who do go to tougher environments and then have the resulting improvement. But that improvement still has to happen. Yeah, that improvement still has to happen. It doesn't happen overnight. where just by going and showing the ambition, you get ambition points in my mind.

Like it still comes down to first as performance for the national team. So I don't care about penalizing Miles Robinson because he's not ambitious. I care about if Austin trustee by playing in the Premier League gets a lot better than he was before, then he's going to pass Miles Robinson, who was ahead of him a year and a half ago. Yeah, which he may do, but he may not as well. Right, exactly. ambition points how do I get those what do I where do I who do I talk to uh I feel like I think I think

uh we got a ton of them when you when you when you uh like absolutely put Ernie Stewart through the ringer for not appearing on the show I feel like people are like oh he's going after the top brass there we go that's how I got him yeah yeah I got to get I got to do that again next time I get denied for an interview just do a mock interview with the person yeah tons of in-abs interviews. Greg Burrhalter. Come on the podcast. Come on. All right. Who else? I'm waiting for Lindsay Rand's camp to call us back. Yeah, I would love to have her on the podcast. I've won it ever since, I don't know, ever since the World Cup, basically. So yeah, so that's Hayesu's. We got Matt Turner staying put. Again, I feel like he probably has lost the trust of his management of the front office of Nottingham Forrest. And so I was kind of hoping he moved because, again, they got a new guy coming in, and that new guy is going to have to be really bad, I think, to open the door back up return.

Yeah. I mean, you're right. Like, yeah, if there is the very real chance that this new guy does screw up really badly and Matt gets another chance and he does all right. But, yeah, Nuno's not pleased. I don't think with Matt. So yeah, I was hoping that... Nottingham fans aren't either. I was hoping that Turner would sneak out on the last day the way Horvath did

and they'd keep the Greek and the new signing. Or even again, like even I kind of wish that Horvath would be the guy to stay. And they say, well, he's probably a champo level, but at least he's not constant howler champo level. So he'll be the backup. And then if the new guy struggles, you've got somebody on the bench, you can throw in who doesn't have a forest history of just clown shoes stuff.

Yeah. But not to be. So we'll just have to monitor the new guy. Who is it? Sal Wins. Sells, I think, is his last name, isn't it? Yeah, you're probably closer. I don't know.

Brenda's staying put. Brenda's not leaving his loan with Union Berlin. And so, you know, there's some hope that he'd go back to Leeds, I guess, because he's not playing that much. Is there even any hope? Does anyone really worry that he's not playing that much? I don't have a lot of hope that he is a much better player than what we've seen. And I kind of have been saying that for years. Oh, man, you took so much heat for calling him a butter knife.

It was mostly good-natured heat. It was like the warm heat of friendship. It was. So that timeline was incredible because he called him a butter knife. Like a day later, he dribbled five guys and hit the post. That's right. And people came calling for you. But he has not actually scored a goal since you said that he was a butter.

For club. Well, because he kind of is. So there. I'm not too worried about it because Brenda seems like the type of player who is going to be the same player, even if he's not playing. So he's going to come in and he's going to be a little terrier at nipping at your heels. nonstop. So if we need that kind of a player in March, we have him if we want.

Yeah. And he could score some goals here. I mean, but the national team he does. Yeah, he scores from the national team. Yeah. Cameron Carter Vickers signed an extension.

There was, again, some hope that maybe he'd like played his way from the Celtic show window onto, you know, a mid-table or bottom-end sort of primary league team. It doesn't seem like that's going to be the case. It looks like he's just, going to keep enjoying himself dominating the league and getting his six Champions League matches per year. Yeah, exactly six, no more, no less. He also keeps getting hurt, right?

Yeah, for our purposes, it's a little bit troubling. Yeah, it looked like three more weeks out is what I saw somebody randomly say in the Discord. So I'm assuming they saw that somewhere, which would mean that's pretty tight for the Nation's League. Start pushing to the Nation's league perimeter. Last one on the stay-in-put category? I mean, Taylor Booth, we went into the season with some, I feel like, some high hopes, again, that Booth would do what Malik has actually done. Like, we'd have a couple of those guys, like between Booth, Paredes, Paxton, that maybe

some of these scrawny kids would, like, really look like great attackers. And Booth kind of looked like he was falling out of favor. he's not really producing. There's not a lot of statistical output for him. And his team is pretty bad. So I was kind of hoping that maybe he'd move and redeem himself. He's not moving, but he is playing more. He's kind of worked his way back into the lineup.

Yeah, that's good. Keep going, Taylor. Keep going. That about wraps up transfers, right? Yeah. Mostly just can't wait to, can't wait for Sunday morning, you know? Yeah. It's right now and it's Matisse.

Gio is the, I still think he's the most pleasant player in the pool to watch. And, you know, I always never miss his, at least his involvement. You know, and that's never going to change. Well, maybe not never, but it's not going to change for a while. Before we get into Haran's comments to Linahan, a few quick notes, check out the YouTube channel. I'll put the link in the show notes. We're trying to get that, you know, get some momentum behind that.

And then check out the Patreon. The link is in the show notes. And any other announcements, Greg? I don't think so. We got the women's gold cup roster being announced next week. That's not a scuffed announcement. No, yeah, yeah. And funnel that through us.

It's a less self-centered announcement. Yeah. So the Gold Cup roster for women comes out next week. And Lindsay Horan, I guess, had an interview with Linnehan. Probably seems back in December before she went back to France. And it caused a lot of consternation on the internet. Number one, she doesn't like hijinks during lineup photos. So that's Emily Sonnet, you know.

They're like, but the thing is those two on the field are like, they're just, yeah, they're just magnets. They're constantly like celebrating together. And I think that goes back to their days as club teammates. They were always like, they're silly. They're a couple of silly kids. Yeah. But Iran doesn't like it. Can't do it when you're losing.

Yeah, you can't do it when you're not winning World Cup. You only do it when you are winning world. When you're the best. And Heran thinks, so she's, I'm not going to read the exact quote, but basically she thinks American fans are not as intelligent about the game as European fans. I think she compared American fans to French fans and the way she talks about the game with fans here versus there. And that caused a lot of people to be upset. I think it's basically true.

I mean, no, Woso doesn't have the audience in France that it has in the U.S., in the USA. But like your average soccer fan, I think, well, I don't even know about your average soccer fan. For me, it's so like what you're doing now, it's so vague as to be almost like entirely like meaningless. Like could she be talking about like people like you and me? Absolutely. And be fair to be like, these guys just don't know what they're talking about. They get on microphones and they just say nonsense. Because she essentially did name Julie Fowdy, who is like.

Right. That's the broadcaster at the highest level. And then, you know, also sort of targeting the people who are listening to Julie Fowdy and then just adopting whatever Fowdy says in the moment as their, as sort of their soccer take, their understanding. Including Lindsay Horan's mother. Her own mother. Her own mother.

Yeah. So, yeah, that stuff is what's, I think, getting all the attention. But I want to read a quote that I think that was really exciting for me to read from the article, which was really well done by Meg Linahan, by the way. Even in these past few games, here's the quote, even in these past few games, you see little glimpses of that, but it's the final product, continuing to do that throughout the game, getting everyone on the same page, not just four or five players, Horan says, if you can develop that more and it's inherent in every single player on the team, you're looking to play the combinations. All of these things,

no idea what this team can do. And I feel like that's, she just plagiarized something you said during the World Cup probably. We've been saying that, we've been saying that since the summer of 21, right? Since there, like, that has, that's absolutely been what we have been, I don't,

not demanding, but like, we think that it's there. We totally think it's there. Pleading for. And, and Horan is definitely a player who has that in her. Like, again,

when she first came onto the scene for the U.S. in, like, 2016, it's, it's so obvious when you see that kind of mentality, right? Like, players with that mindset because it wasn't it certainly wasn't an 11 person thing in 2016 for the us women's national team but heran had that idea of like just has the chess pieces where they're

moving and what what sort of the next combination touch could be uh it's clear that she's had that so uh i think we do have more players who have that than we have been able to than we have demonstrated in this last cycle so i am 100% with her right this is where we are fully on board with Lindsay Horan, and we're hoping that her leadership under MAAs will push the entire team in that direction. Yeah. And it does seem like she has a lot of respect for the way Jaden Shaw plays the game. And I can't wait to see more of them together.

And it's also like that quote. And then she goes on to say, let's focus on the football sort of after bringing up the hijinks around lineup photos. So that's what she was talking about, I think. That's what she was saying that in reference to. But like this is like, this is the core of what we need to do better. We need to combine better. We need everybody to be like thinking the game and soccering through it to use of

Velazquezism. And it seems like Coran wants that too. And I love to, I love that. And totally agree. like if we're doing that, if we have a coherent game where we incorporate some of that combination, but even even the thing, the knock on effects of any kind of coherent approach,

the talent that we have available to us puts us again right there at the top in contention for every trophy. So. She made, well go ahead, finish what you were going to say. I mean,

no, so this is what we're after. So when she says enough of all that other, stuff, all that other S word. I'm reading that as enough of all of the crossing. That's what I think she was actually saying, no more crossing. Focus on the football.

And for me focusing on the football, crossing is like a bygone thing that isn't even football anymore. So she's, that's what she's talking about. She's done with all the crossing. I love that interpretation. No more just driving the ball in the box at your first opportunity. Yeah.

That's what she's saying. And she'll, She'll confirm that in the interview that we have with her. Yep. Lindsay, get in touch, please. There was, oh yeah, there was, also she followed that up, the quote I read by talking about how when you layer on, and she sounded a little bit like Natalia Estrine when she said this, when you layer on the, you know, our athleticism and our mentality and our, you know,

our ability to gut it out when things aren't going our way, then, you know, we're basically, I'm paraphrasing, but basically we're unstoppable. You know, and I just, yeah, I'm into that. So we're totally fine taking the fact that she thinks we're dumb with the fact, because I don't care if she thinks I'm done. It's fine. And I could be dumb. That's great.

I'm pretty dumb. If she's going to get everyone on board with combining me, and not like there are players who wouldn't do it. I mean, we're talking about her combining. It's not a one person. There are players out there who already want to combine. right like jaden shaw's trying to combine me official wants to combine uh so it's not going to be like this reluctant group that she has to convince to do it all by herself uh i'm not trying to give her

all the credit for that the fact that this is where she wants to this to see it go uh yeah that that's good that's what we're all won and some people would say well if that's what she wanted why couldn't she make it happen at the World Cup? And I think there's, you know, a decent defense could be mounted for her, even if she knew at that point exactly how to articulate what she wanted and knew that she wanted it in the way that she wants it now. She still would have had quite a few obstacles, notably Vlako and Donovsky. And, you know, some of the players on the team, honestly.

Yeah. And again, this is where an interview could be so interesting with her because, again, while it's easy to say, why didn't we just fix it the World Cup, the question for me is like, why didn't we start trying to push it this direction two years before the World Cup? Yeah. Yeah. All right. I got to go. You got to go. Thanks, everybody for listening.

We'll see you.