SoccerWise - Mailbag Edition: Ref Questions, Playoff Eligibility & More

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Before one of the biggest weekends of the soccer calendar in North America David digs into the mailbag. He runs down the answers for all of you on referee's holding stoppage time, how teams will play the new MLS postseason format, Dru Yearwood's future, and more!Soccerwise Live 2pm ET Every Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday on Youtube/Twitch/Twitter

Hey everybody, welcome back to SoccerWise. David Goss here for your mailbag episode on this Friday. Hope everyone's having a great start to the weekend and is ready for what is going to be a fantastic weekend of soccer here in North America. The MLS playoffs kick off with two games on Friday night. What? Eight games over the course of the weekend. And the NWSL final weekend of the regular season kicks off on Friday night with Christine Sinclair's final home game as a Portland Thorn. It's going to be an awesome weekend of soccer.

So much to watch in the standings in NWSL and the fact that it's spread out across the three days with the potential that if Bay FC or Portland slip up, the final game of the regular season on Sunday will be Louisville at San Diego going for a shot at their first playoff spot ever. It's just going to be really, really cool. So if you are not already a member of our Patreon and therefore our Discord, you should be because it's going to be the spot to hang out and talk about all of this all weekend. So go search our Patreon, subscribe. It gets you access to the Discord. You can hang out and talk. You can also add your questions into the mailbag, the ones that I'm going to answer here today

and do every single week. It also gets you access to our depth charts, which we are completing now the latest MLS update, which will give you the latest contract information now that the MLS PA has released the salaries once again, as well as all the lengths of contracts and styles of TAM and DP and all of that, that will be most up to date. And we're close as well on the NWSL side, we're going to be listing everyone who's eligible for free agency in this first ever free agency under the new CBA in NWSL. So make sure that you subscribe, you can get over there, you can get all that access there.

And we'll continue to put together some special stuff for our subscribers as we go along. We will be back next week, of course, Monday with my weekend recap on everything we saw on MLS and NWSL will be with Tom on Tuesday to break down all of what's going on in the MLS playoffs, as well as Jordan Angeli, of course, helping preview the NWSL first round of the postseason, which will be coming up just a week later. On the MLS side, it will only be if teams push to a third game. So someone who didn't win their first game will have to win for next week to have any postseason games.

If not, it is a long layoff until November 23rd with an international break in between on the MLS side of things. Great momentum to the NWSL postseason though. We're going to have the top four teams who we already know who they are, but not the order hosting next weekend in the quarterfinals. Then we move to the semifinals. If Orlando wins, they will be a host of a semifinal game guaranteed. We don't know who the other team would be, and we don't know who will go through. And then, of course, the NWSL Championship in Kansas City coming up this month. We are into November. So that's coming up at the end of this month at CPKC Stadium, which is just going to be electric.

11,000 people that it holds, soccer-specific, on the banks of the river in downtown Kansas City. First year as a stadium. It has changed, I think, the perception of what should and could be built in women's soccer and in soccer in North America and around the world. And I cannot wait to get out there for that one. It is going to be a lot of fun. Normally on these Fridays, we tag an interview in alongside the mailbag, wild and crazy week with the playoff schedule and everything else going on. So we did not do an interview this week, but we've already lined up our interview for next week. I'm very excited. I want to make sure it goes through. We're going to record it early in the week. So I will preview it as we get in there.

And we're talking to a couple other guests about maybe joining us for our coverage of the post seasons in these two leagues to just add their voices and add their ideas as well as we go along. All right, let's get into the mailbag. Let us start with Burke here. And of course, we love to talk about time here on this show. So the question is, how do refs keep track of how much time to add through the game? Is the center ref tracking it or someone else? Do they just use a timer or are they mentally tracking it? Now, if you've never noticed this, you will probably after I say it. But when you look at referees, they're wearing multiple watches. So a referee always has at least two watches.

And the second watch they are using as a timer to track stoppage time as they go along. Now, the referee does have at their discretion how much time there should be added. I was given an example by someone in the refereeing world who said, if there should be 10 minutes in a 5-0 game, maybe you don't give the full 10 minutes because you are allowed to use common sense to not make it too contentious on the field. But you track your time on your watch on your second watch based off situations. You also have a few clocks in the VAR room if you need help with that or you want to ask for help. But most referees do that. And then the second watch can also act as a backup in case something happens to your initial watch. So now when you watch a game, you'll see it. A lot of referees wear

actually sweatbands underneath their wrists, and you'll see the two watches stacked next to each other for some and on the opposite hands for others. And that's where they're tracking. Now, one of the things that's so fun about what I've been able to do, and you don't notice it as much on TV, but the four referees are constantly talking. I cannot add in here how often the VAR is in that conversation now, but when I've been at games, especially in some of the smaller settings, GA Cup, one of them, you don't realize how involved the fourth official is in the match consistently. The fourth official, obviously you see them talking to the coaches. They're relaying that information to the center referee when there's moments of stoppage saying so-and-so is talking about this, so-and-so wants to know this, so-and-so wants to urge this.

They're also watching the game and making calls. We saw it a bit with the Tavon Gray elbow with Lucho Acosta, but the fourth official actually has a pretty clean angle on a lot of plays that the other three officials don't have. And so the fourth official there is constantly saying, especially on set pieces is where I've heard it a lot. Talking, saying, look at the jostling at the front, you know, at the near post between these two, look at the bickering at the back post between these two, like watch out for it. You might want to talk to them, all that type of stuff. And I never realized that before.

And then of course the center referee communicating stoppage time to them, communicating all the cards, which are written down by the fourth official as well, so that you have the cards and substitutions as that second log, just as a backup, just in case, especially with the fourth official not constantly running around,

better opportunity to write things down and all of that. So there's a lot of fascinating stuff with referees. We actually are working on a potentially a referee conversation interview on this show. So if you have more questions about that or ideas, shoot them to us and we'll be happy to run all of that down for you. Let's move on to UpTheLoons, who says, as the sample size for three-game series grows, do you think we'll see a trend where if the first leg takes a bad turn early,

teams pull as many starters as they can and focus on game two and three? Obviously, Houston got to PKs and at that point, anything can happen. But how many times out of 10 does that happen? Or even just if you're down three at half, I wonder if we'll get to a point where the analytics say it's not worth the risk of pushing to win there. And even if you do eke it out, you've put so much into it that you're now more likely to lose the series. It's a great question. And as you said, we don't really have a ton of sample size of how these three-game series will be treated.

A reminder from last year, only three series of the eight moved to a final third game and none of the teams that lost in the first game of the series went on to win the series so right now the eight teams that took victories in that first game they are heavy favorites to move on now we didn't we only i believe saw one team of lower qual or one lower seed get the upset last year. That was SKC against St. Louis. We have two on deck right now in the Red Bulls and Minnesota. And so it will be interesting to see if one of those two teams doesn't win at home here, if they can go and get the victory in the third game to alternate victories on the road,

which would be very odd in Major League Soccer. I understand the question here completely, right? You look at it and we see it in basketball and we see it in baseball. When you're in a multi-game postseason, okay, pull your starters. We'll move on to the next game. The only thing is in soccer, there's less scoring and there are more opportunities to get back in the game. The closest example we have so far this year of this is the Colorado Rapids game. Now, obviously, they were not down in the first half. Most of the goals came in the second half, but the fourth goal

was scored by Jovolych in the 75th minute, and up until that point, the Rapids had treated it like they were in this game, and they were going to continue to push. After they gave up the second and third goals, they brought Yappie andvin harris into the game as like for like changes for lewis and cabral which were which would be the changes in abstract that you would expect them to make trying to score and get back into a game and then around the 78th 79th minute was when they i think went to protect some of their starters. They took off Hoffa Navarro and brought off Ali Larraz there, which I think was also a red card consideration sitting on a yellow card. But that's the type of sub you're making no matter what, because you're always worried about someone in a dangerous position like a center mid or center

back picking up a second yellow card. So you're always monitoring that. i think the last part of the question here if you've put too much into it that when you win you're more likely to lose the series i don't think that will ever be a conversation right you have to win two of three games one victory will always be worth anything i think there is no like pyrrhic victory in this setup that isn't worth it because the one victory is so big in trying to move on. The question about protecting players though as the game goes along that you already feel like you're eliminated from with other opportunities to go and win, I think that's a valid question and probably something we could see. The odds that a team are down 3-0 in the first half of the first game and yet still

genuinely have a chance to win the whole thing, I think that's pretty low. And so I think in that scenario, you're probably looking at a team that's gonna get eliminated anyway because they don't really have a chance. I think you'd see this more maybe in the second leg

where team that has the higher seed, one game one, they go on the road, it's against them with the crowd against them and they say, you know what? We think we can finish this off at home more and you protect maybe your one or two playmakers or you protect someone who's on maybe a little bit of an injury but I think that would all be more minor than looking at it and saying oh wow this team didn't play any starters for 90 minutes and didn't care about this game or this team made five subs in the 35th minute. I'd be surprised if we really saw that short of a huge blowout.

And then you are probably looking at a team that doesn't have a chance there. But this is part of the conversation for home and away aggregates, right? Playing for the scoreline late in the game because it sets you up for the next game. That is the value of turning it from 90 minutes to 180 minute game. I will say I'm still not a bigger fan of that because I think you change the gameplay in the second game of, oh, we're already down 3-1. We have to score an away goal.

All of those types of things, which I think you lose some of the beauty of the 90 minute flow of a game of, okay, we come out first 10 minutes. We find like all the things that we love about the sport and we see often. the beauty of the 90-minute flow of a game of, okay, we come out first 10 minutes, we find, like all the things that we love about the sport and we see often, I think you shift a lot of that there. Question here from Jspithotfire, is Drew Yearwood done in MLS? He has produced nothing for two separate teams on a fairly expensive contract, saw he was out of contract in Nashville, so I got a little curious. This is a random question. And this is why I love

doing SoccerWise because these are the things that I think about on random days where I'll be just thinking or watching highlights or reading articles. And you'll be like, huh, what happened to so-and-so or what's the deal with so-and-so? I was going through the rosters to help clean things up for our depth charts. And I'm looking Joaquin Torres on loan. So then I go watch highlights of him on loan in Chile, which I hadn't thought about Joaquin Torres, who now plays with Philadelphia and was with Montreal before in about a year of my life. So I love this question. And I can understand where the question comes from, because there is clearly talent with Drew Yearwood. He was brought into the Red Bulls at a time when they were leaning into signing players out of the lower divisions in England because their new chief soccer officer was from England.

It is an odd decision to make in Major League Soccer because England is one of the countries where wages are higher than in Major League Soccer consistently and higher than most of the world. So it's not really considered a place to find sort of undervalued talent and bring it in, which was why it was always odd to see some of these moves that the Red Bulls made in that time period. They have now moved back away from that, and there isn't really a team that has gone back towards that in Major League Soccer. For the most part, there are some. You see like a Nathan Byrne come. That's a fully established player.

The point of the U22 initiative, for example, is to try and find players who you can get value and then sell on. It's hard to bring a player from England and then sell them back to England or any other country. One, if they're British, they don't have an EU passport. So you kind of limit the teams that are going to buy from them. And two, once again, starting salary as well as potential transfer fee that you use to bring them in. It's going to be hard to recoup and make money going forward.

But Drew Yearwood has a ton of talent. Made sense for the Red Bulls in a specific system where they felt like he could be a good pressing center mid to bring him in. He struggled. And Nashville took a flyer on him, which him which again makes sense because you don't have to go out and find the transfer and do the scouting outside of Major League Soccer you thought you saw some aspects that could fit into your midfield and of course for Nashville they have tried to get younger and more energetic in central midfield because Dax and Annabelle Godoy was a great starting point but there was a need after that to fill in the gaps around them to be

able to cover ground as well as to prepare for the future. We saw the contract with Sean Davis leaning towards that as well. And then we saw them bring in Drew Yearwood, but Yearwood's minutes went off a cliff once BJ Callahan took over this team, had played a ton early in the season this year his most in major league soccer alongside 2022 with the Red Bulls but a lot of that was in their losing streaks early on in the season and then was not a part of the rotation in the second half of the year he has struggled to make a difference in major league soccer and now he is out of contract when you look at his stats he doesn't really do anything elite in MLS. There's a few things against the ball, you know, interceptions, blocks, tackles

that are okay, but none of it is elite. And the problem with his situation now for major league soccer is everyone I talked to who has worked with him was like, there's a ton of talent. He has to figure out how to put it together. I think there's a little bit of frustration from people that have worked with him that he hasn't taken those steps. The issue in MLS now is he's 24 years old and he has graduated out of the U22 eligibility in his contract. So any amount of money he makes now hits the cap fully against the salary cap. We're at the U22 initiative level. It was just at 150,000 a year that it hit the cap, no matter how much you paid him inside of that and how much the transfer fee was and all of that. So now Drew Yearwood is a tough player in MLS to take a flyer

on and teams are really going to have to either want him or he's going to have to take a huge pay cut to go somewhere. So I'd be surprised if we saw him in the MLS again. But it's a great question, and I appreciate you putting it in here. Let's go to Paul in Ohio who says, Do coaching staffs educate their players on the tendencies of center officials each game? I know in the NFL they will check and see the tendencies of each ref and crew. I talked to a couple coaches about this. All of them said yes. All of them said they either have analysis on them

or they have memories of what they know about those referees or they will go back and watch games to be able to talk to the players about their tendencies. And all the coaches said, we need it for us. We need to know what that referee is like when we communicate with them on game day. So the coaches I talked to said, I need to know

what sets off a referee, what a referee is known for looking for, so that I know when I'm talking to them during the match, one, that I don't set them off, and two, that I'm talking into the things that they are known for, for covering and being specific about and all of that. But absolutely, there is planning going on around the referees for the players and the coaches. And I think you hear it in the postgame interviews, right? You hear quite often in Major League Soccer players saying, well, we know this ref does this, we know this ref does that and all things like that. So it is not shocking to hear that. But thank you for the question. It was a good one for me to go out and confirm. Final one here, Nick, who asked,

can players who are sent out on loan to a USL team, for example, utilize those players in the MLS playoffs once their USL team season is over? This sparked a good conversation as a few of these did in the mailbag, which I really enjoyed and appreciated. Coming off the referee one, the previous question, obviously some memes were thrown in there.

So shout out to everyone for getting a little bit of their angst out on that one. But I believe someone in the chat here, Whiskey and Modelo, helped answer this question and was correct. You cannot utilize those players because of the roster freeze date. So MLS has the transfer window and then after the transfer window closes, they have the roster freeze date, which Thomas talked about a couple times. We saw Reggie Cannon come in after the transfer window before the roster freeze date because after the transfer window closes, there are a few players eligible like free agents or players inside of MLS who can be moved upon the roster freeze date, which I believe was September 15th this year, any player who wasn't on the roster before that date is not eligible for the postseason, no matter where they come from. So any player who was loaned out to USL will not be on the roster on that date because they're on the USL team's roster. for example, a Ben Bender with the Tampa Bay Rowdies. If Charlotte made it to MLS Cup, he would be unavailable because his certificate of playing at the time of the roster freeze date

was with the Tampa Bay Rowdies and not with Charlotte, even though you retain the rights or potentially sometimes you're paying part of their contract and all of that. And actually, if you go through and look at the updated rosters in Major League Soccer that they released, which have been much better over the last year that they have finally added, it will say alongside of a player unavailable on loan alongside their roster designation. So even

if they are a designated player, a fully rostered player, a supplemental player, all of that, it'll say the unavailable either for loan or for season ending injury. And then those players would not be available to come back into the team in the postseason. Now, I could see a world in which that gets shifted or changed because I think that MLS teams should be pushed or incentivized to try and grow out their clubs, to try and set themselves up to invest more at the two level, to invest in more good players who then sometimes are out on loan at times, to be able to grow their depth and all of that.

And I could see a world in which you fight to find a way to say, we already did this with this player. Why don't we get the opportunity to utilize it in this highest leverage moments? Obviously, all of these situations are less ideal. Back to the crew thing with the goalkeeper earlier in the year. It's like we are talking about being down to your fourth or fifth option at a position. But it would be cool for a team like the Vancouver Whitecaps to say JC Nagando has been arguably the best central midfielder in USL this year with Phoenix Rising. Phoenix Rising. Phoenix Rising gets knocked out of the postseason. They're in the playoffs. We want to give this player a chance. We think they can be a part of our team and we have already invested in this

player and have helped guide their career along. You are always going to get the debates in that of, well, what if teams try and, you know, fight and use loopholes to stretch the rules a little bit, right? Inter-Miami has 18 players that they have unavailable. What if they just, a team that wants to spend is stacking players in this space to then decide they want to bring them in. I find all of those red herring debates, no one's spending millions of dollars to send a player on loan to then potentially bring them back for one or two games in the postseason.

I think in the debate that we had on the Columbus debate, when I said like everyone kind of looked bad, you have to create a way for these teams to have the incentive to build these structures and build this depth. It's a conversation that you're having with the MLS players union, as well as with the clubs, as well as with the league, because it's sort of where you get in a lot of these conversations is the MLS Players Union are trying to protect the spots for their players and not have the rosters expanded even more where their players are losing playing time or opportunity or money or any of that.

So it's a bigger conversation to have. But I think it would be an interesting one to see if maybe it was adjusted going forward. Okay, so that's all for us here today. Enjoy the weekend. I think it's going to be really, really great. We've gotten a lot of great feedback on our coverage this week. Some of it being great, some of it not.

And I appreciate all of that. I think there's some really interesting matchups coming up. And I think the intensity will take another hit up because it's backs against the walls for especially the teams that lost on the road. You're in front of your home crowd. You do not want the other team to celebrate a victory. You do not want your fans to end their season at home with a bad taste in their mouth. And Major League Soccer is one of the most home heavy leagues in the world. And I think after last year where everyone sort of found their feet, I think a lot of people are going to understand what's at stake this weekend and I my guess would

be we will see more than three three series go to that final third game so last year was three out of eight my guess is we're going to see more than that um and I wouldn't be surprised if it was over half and you have about five games coming up next weekend for us to prep for. All right. Thank you all for listening. Thank you to everyone who joined us this week. And we are looking forward

once again to next week and all of our coverage here. We'll talk to you again very, very soon. you