SoccerWise - MLS Edition: ATL Dumps Miami w/Sam Jones(MLS) + Drama In Cincy & Playoff Coverage

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

With Tom away for the day David brings in the reinforcements from a victorious Atlanta to cohost the show. Sam Jones of mlssoccer.com & "Five Stripe Final" takes explains what is going on in Atlanta, and can it continue. Then they run through the rest of the weekends elimination games, what it means for the winner, and even bigger what it means for the losing sides. They also parse through Lucho Acosta's postgame comments in Cincy.Soccerwise Live 2pm ET Every Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday on Youtube/Twitch/Twitter

What's up everybody and welcome back to soccer wise big week of major league soccer we are here to break it all down as well as to maybe start to look forward a little bit as we go along. Of course, USMNT this week coming up on Thursday and Monday. We'll have some coverage for you of that. So no MLS playoffs coming immediately, which meant that Tom Bogert had to go and take the biggest vacation ever, wherever he chose to go, as luxurious as you could possibly imagine. I won't give you exact details. I'll let him describe it and decided to abandon me. So I had to go and lean on someone big and someone to come in and help me talk all MLS, but especially Atlanta.

And I thought first of Sam Jones that you know him as J. Sam Jones on Twitter, of course, MLSsoccer.com as well, the daily newsletter, the daily kickoff, and Atlanta United coverage at five-stripe final. Sam, how are you feeling? Gus, it's an honor to be on my favorite New York Knicks podcast, Soccer Wise. Truly. It's a bad day to be New York Knicks podcast. I already listened to my Knicks podcast of the day, and the conversation was how much we suck. So I don't want to get too deep in there, but I appreciate you respecting what we do here

and for honoring our culture. I feel like if you're in the presence of the Godfather, right? Like you gotta, you gotta make these offers. You have to. You've already done enough, which is you are one of the few people and many of them are in our discord. So if you're not a Patreon subscriber, become one and join there. Who is insane enough to watch 29 soccer games a weekend and decide to then break it down, talk about it, and share the love? So you've already done enough. That's the sacrifice. The sacrifice is time. I do it for you guys, honestly.

For you specifically. And it is appreciated. And that's why I had to have you on to come talk about it. We've got a lot of playoff games to talk about, four in particular. It was one of those weekends where we actually could watch all the games, which is also always fun and a fascinating thing to do. I will do NWSL show this week on Thursday with Jordan Angeli. She is at a conference.

So we won't have the show tomorrow. It is obviously a huge week at NWSL. I did a recap of that yet on yesterday's weekend recap show to start things so if you want to hear a little bit about those four quarterfinal games you can go listen to that we will have your preview of the semifinals coming up and then tom will be back i believe with me on friday this week for us to talk national team there as well as what's going on in the MLS world and continue to cover the playoffs and whatever news he decides to break as well between now and then one being that Sam will be

on this show and he'll be the one to say reports are that Sam is going to be on SoccerWise going forward Sam I originally reached out to you to talkanta though like what's the vibes right now atlanta knocks off inter miami it is the biggest upset in mls history and the every conversation i've had about it has been from neutral parties like i can't believe this happened i can't believe this is here you cover this team week in and week out you live in the city what's the reaction from inside experiencing this let's make a point of clarification right off the top. Are we really talking about an upset here? Are we? Yeah.

Are we? Yes, we are. My favorite part about this whole thing is Brad Guzon is the man of the series. Unbelievable. The goal in game two, and you could argue the first goal in game three, are two of the worst goalkeeping mistakes that's how like kind of underneath it all absurd this series was it was absurd but there were there were warning signs man there really were i'm not making this up i i know people are gonna say oh the atlanta kid is here now he's gonna be a homer about it fine whatever but there were warning

signs for all of this for miami for for atlanta even to some extent too you start looking at the underlying numbers and you start looking around and you're going okay well miami is you know on 74 points but when you start digging into it and you look at something like american soccer analysis has their expected points model right based on the chances you create and allow uh miami ended up with like 44 expected points on this season that's a 30 point gap it's insane right so you look at atlanta's expected points total and they're above miami and they're above miami and goals added differentially have all these underlying numbers and i don't know that there were there were at least signs

to where i could buy that this could happen now did i believe it was going to happen sincerely at any point probably not probably not until the final whistle but you know what they they came out with a game plan and as far as the reaction in atlanta it's got people invested again it's been dead for months to be totally honest you fire gonzalo pineda you um maybe spark some joy by getting rid of college book in Agra, but you have this kind of empty life in purgatory for the most part for Atlanta fans. And now to have this little flurry at the end of the season, it doesn't make up for everything that's happened since 2019. Yeah, but it does. It does feel special.

Let's do the full five years in between like the 70,000 at game two beating Miami beating messy this week is this the peak moment since that U.S. Open Cup back in 2019 like is this what would be the resurgence moment absolutely a thousand percent and it's momentum as you head into an offseason where you're gonna add two DPsPs. You could add a couple of use 22s. You have a ton of flexibility. You have Garth Lagerwey running the show. You probably have Chris Henderson coming in. You have a new coach potentially coming in. We'll talk about that, I guess, in a little bit. But there's all these changes happening, all this momentum building. And now you have proof of concept with the core that you weren't really sure about a few weeks ago you didn't know if they had like a level of fight to them and now you know now you know they kind of have a backbone to them that wasn't the case just even a month and a half ago so you have that and you can build on it and make something happen to where you're not pulling off upsets you are the favorite i

think next year if things go right it's all there and people are paying attention again did the game two crowd feel like atlanta fans knowing messy was in town or did it feel like inter miami or messy fans mainly it was pretty red and black it really was i mean um you had your share yeah there's argentina jerseys there's pink right but at the same time that was a pro atlanta crowd from the jump they did actually they did a ticket promotion essentially where if you were a season ticket holder you basically got two free tickets to the game to just hand out to people i know people who were just in atlanta that day saw some friends and said hey we have two extra tickets and all of a sudden they're at the game

for the biggest moment atlanta United's past where other teams are moving it to other stadiums so that they can price everyone out and get as many people to see messy. Exactly. So it was a show of good faith from the front office. And obviously it pays off with the silver goal and people are engaged again and they get another payoff in this big one. Yeah. You talked about the core. I think it's an interesting conversation because one, we don't know who the coach will be. And two, some of the members of that core are probably looking at AARP cards coming up over the next few weeks or retiring has already been announced. And there's, you know, a few interesting pieces in all of that.

The big one is marancha right 13 million dollars that's the huge signing he floated in and out of this series but when he floated in you saw where the money was spent what do you make of what he is now after these three huge games he's such a different 10 than almada and especially in this the way atlanta tries to use them and how often they use them you look at american soccer analysis has this stat called touch percentage right it's basically think of usage rate in the nba right how often are you getting on the ball in the middle and final third is basically what we're looking at someone like ricky pooch gonna be like 17 18 top of the

league and almada was usually floating right in that area mar Moran chalks down like around 11%, right? And that's a pretty huge jump in between those levels of usage. So he's not on the ball as much. He's floating a little more often. But when he does get on the ball, you're totally right. He makes things happen. He's going to make the right decision more often than not. If he doesn't lose the ball, something good is probably going to come out of that.

And I think that also just encourages the rest of the team to be more active, to be more engaged. There were so many times it felt like, okay, Tiago is going to solve it. We'll just stand here. So he hasn't been perfect. He hasn't dominated the way you may expect a $15 million player to dominate. But he basically allows the team to be a team and the way that Tiago didn't. And part of that is just attitude.

Garth Lagerwey was on the radio here talking to local media today, talking about the attitudes of some of the players they've let go, not being conducive to making a run like this. And, you know, I think Tiago is probably a better player than alexi marian chuck i don't think they make this run if he's there wow um i hadn't thought about it that way it makes a ton of sense you also saw it in the game right the air it has elevated in these big moments saba i think and we talked about it we had lucia gonzalez on last week to do a breakdown Luchi was like put Sabah up top play through Sabah like you saw the sparks that we've seen felt like a fairly consistent series for him though which has been the question marks and then the central midfield

three I think that's what's really to me elevated throughout this series Dak's a huge part of that coming back into the team fortune at times as well And then Schlieus having the goal and the huge moment and all of that. Yeah, no, huge. And I mean, I'll start with Dax. We just felt so bad for him all year. We really did, man. He came in and obviously this is like, okay, this is a last dance. This is him coming in and saying, okay, I want to be on a winning team in a way that i maybe couldn't with nashville you know and he didn't get it at least it seemed like he

wasn't going to get it right and now he's playing this huge role in the biggest upset in mls history which we'll call it right um so to have that to have him be this steadying force in midfield but also man the balls he was playing in the transition moments to find people in space to find channels to hit the ball uh first time and not wait for miami to get organized that was huge atlanta has been so scared to attack back lines when they're disorganized for some reason it's been such a theme for them the last few years they have opportunities to hit at people who are out of shape and don't do it but in this series against miami they did it and part of that was dax just knowing when and how to pull the strengths he uh he is a winter park native which is technically like in orlando so he is going home

one more time whether it is the last game of his career or it is just the next step in what is the greatest run in MLS history. Let me ask you this. You wrote a piece, I think, in your newsletter right before the playoffs started about if your team was eliminated, who to root for and all of that. Give people a pitch if they're not an Atlanta fan, because Atlanta, I think, has had, obviously, they're one of the bigger teams in the league. And now they're the little engine that could with the $13 million piece up top.

What's the pitch to people if they're not an Atlanta fan to enjoy this? Or what do you think is most enjoyable about this run so far? I think that it is a group of people who are kind of overcoming that that stigma like that they are the big club because these are not like the big players these are not the people who were expected to bring this team back where it was and a lot of folks including me dismissed them outright so if you're kind of into to overcoming like your parents

expectations for you this is probably that. And so I think that's relatable in some sense. In the other sense, like, I don't know, man, this is this is like Darth Vader getting his powers back. I don't know if you all really want to jump on this. It is. I think it's going to be funny in a year or two when it's, you know, when it feels like if Garth gets this on the tracks and continues forward, where you'll look back and be like, oh, right, they were scrappy that year. But then after that, they've returned to being the Yankees or whatever you want to call them. The biggest storyline I think that a lot of people are leaning into

and enjoying is Rob Valentino. For the second time, interim manager. I've never actually been around him because I've never covered a game that he's worked or, you know, been head coach of. Talk to people a little bit about who he is and like how this has come about and and why it works so well every time he takes over. Rob is a wonderfully earnest person. And in sports, you don't necessarily find that from place to place. He will be open with you.

He'll be immediately genuine with you. And that is both with the media and with the players. He does a lot of work with the younger players is where he kind of made his name for himself in the organization. And, you know, he connects well with people. And I think it's just because he's a real person and he's never trying to be anything but himself in that matter. From a soccer perspective,

he really did come in and flip atlanta's tactics into this more kind of garth lagerwey envisioned pragmatic setup where i mean if you look at the possession numbers anything like that atlanta suddenly started relinquishing possession after gonzalo panetta heads out like that they're playing against the ball more often they're willing to sit back so they can get more space and transition. And it worked mostly pretty well, but it hasn't quite clicked exactly the way we wanted to until it happened these last few weeks, you know? And part of that, of course, I think is just the way Miami sets up and the way Miami struggles to defend

those kinds of transition moments. But I think it works because when he takes it over, it's simple. It's straightforward and you don't have to complicate things. You can just sit back, mighty things up and hit with speed. And Elena typically has a lot of that. It is one of those where you keep hearing the interviews with him of like, well, it wasn't me. I'm not special. Like I just said, why the fuck not? Like, let's go for it. And I think to some people it's like, Oh,

is he playing a character? And like, it has to be explained to you, your point, which is that's who he is. He's earnest. That's what he genuinely is like in the team as well as in front of the media. Yeah. It's totally real. All of it. It's one of those things where it makes it even tougher to tell him no in this particular scenario, because there are a lot of people in the building in Atlanta that would love if Rob Valentino stuck around and took over this team is that going to happen I don't

know I really don't I've been wrestling with it all week and you know I try to put myself in Garth's shoes when these things come out and Garth is so analytics oriented so data minded that you have to think that he probably won't buy into small sample size too much like atlanta's been fine this year but they've really come on in this particular like four or five game stretch how much is garth gonna value that over someone like potentially a jim curtin who's got you know seven eight years of proof of concept and my gut is that he would lean towards the someone like curtain right who has shown this over and over again but man if rob wins one more game you can tell him no it's gonna be tough i

mean that's i i went through the list last yesterday he was hired garth laguerre was hired for rsl after jason christ was made coach he took over seattle when ziggy schmidt was already coach he let ziggy schmidt go he He elevated Brian Schmetzer as interim. Brian Schmetzer won MLS Cup as interim manager. You can't fire someone who just won MLS Cup. He became the manager. He left to join Atlanta with Gonzalo Pineda already in place. And, like, I have to stress how rare that part is.

Normally, when things go wrong, a teardown starts from not normally but at some point a teardown starts from a sporting director down then you bring in the next sporting director to hire the manager that has not been the case for Garth he takes over under Gonzalo Pineda already there lets him go after they struggle and now Rob Valentino is his interim I don't know that an Eastern Conference Finals is enough. MLS Cup feels like a no-brainer at this point. If he wins MLS Cup, he's the manager next year. Yeah, 100%.

But I'm right there with you. I don't know if it's enough in the end, especially because I think Garth kind of relished the idea of being able to go out and apply some of those data principles to hiring a coach. He wasn't excited to let gonzalo panetta go but he was excited to begin a coaching search and conduct that and you know for him to miss out on that potentially because they got hot at the right time might be a little bit of a bummer for him i'm sure he'll take the trade but still i do wonder how much he's going to value

this this short burst of success compared to a coach like someone like Jim Curtin. If you ask me, though, like if it's he's going to value that over like the two years that Patrick Vieira had at NYCFC, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Right. Yeah. The only difference with Vieira is you saw a soccer model that Vieira believed in, built, executed. Yeah.

Rob Valentino right now, is it, oh, he's putting the pieces together as best he can, but this isn't who he is. Is this his soccer identity? And I think obviously Garth will know best because he's in rooms with him consistently, working with him now, not just as an interim, but talking to him as an assistant.

But that's, I think, the one thing from Vieira that you have, plus gravitas. Like, I get Maranuk has already been signed, but I think this is a team, and you'd know better than me, that wants to continue to push, like, Messi's an out-of-the-world signing. But whenever anyone else, who else in MLS, can make a move like that, I think LAFC and Atlanta are the two, and it's harder a little bit with Rob Valentino as your head coach

totally it's a tougher sell it really is and I'm sure that'll be taken into consideration I don't know where they're going to lean on that but it's a major part of it you're totally right let's go into the game for a couple moments first off obviously the early goal for Miami then two goals in four minutes within six minutes of that from Atlanta. And I think if that doesn't happen or if Diego Gomez's equalizer stands, I don't know that this is the result. I think Atlanta needed to play from the lead for a little bit. But that's obviously a huge moment in this match of like you saw all the elements of what you talked about. A group that has belief and a spine and all of that where you go down 1-0 on the road and we're thinking it's over.

And Atlanta had that little bit more over the course of this series consistently to continue to fight back, even when they got punched. Elliott McKinley at ASA calculated just game states for every team. This year, how long they've spent in each game state. Atlanta United almost never led a game. Just, it was so rare for them to be out in front. The only team that spent less time in the lead was Chicago,

Chicago. I mean, it was awful that they could not get out in front. They could not score the first goal. I mean, even just a few weeks ago before decision day, they could not score inside the first 30 minutes they could score four times i think all year inside of the first 30 minutes

um that has changed over the last yeah orlando montreal i mean suddenly they figured out how to do it it's it's fascinating but in this game in particular they you're totally right they needed a lead and you know they hadn't been successful coming from behind uh most of the time they do it in a flurry here and all it took was jamal tra just running into some channels you know and just easy passes it was very simple you know against a very good team it was still very simple we have seen players of a similar profile to tra beR.A. be fine in MLS and you never know like okay is this a legitimate player you build around or is this a piece who rotates in and out of the team he had been a piece and this series I think consistently not just the two goals he played in a way that like oh this is

a true center forward that affects space and that you can have belief that if we can get half chances he'll put one away he thrives in this kind of setting i mean you go back to the game in may that elaine united won against inner miami and he had a basically a consistent role i think just man marking someone like buscats he was just dropping back he was causing havoc and then of course getting forward in transition we didn't quite see some of that same defensive effort in this one he was still putting in the work but it wasn wasn't quite as an assigned role. But, man, you're exactly right. When he gets forward, when he has those opportunities,

he's got the physical skill set to make the most of it and continued to do that throughout this entire series. So he's got an option for next year. I don't know if Atlanta brings him back. He's on technically a TAM deal. It's like $595K plus a little bit extra. But it could happen he's kind of convinced a lot of folks in atlanta that he's uh in this for the long haul he's got an option so we'll see it'll be interesting because he was one that a month ago you were like

nope okay the ross is gonna flip these are the pieces that are flipping and he was one that you'd assume as well as a lot of this back line yeah so we knew grigerson was in but a lot of the other pieces have not really performed up to their contract until this series and you look at derrick williams being the best center back on the planet for like a solid week you look at louisa brahm i think re-emerging in this one um and hernandez as well those were all pieces where if you had told me none of them came back or none of them were a part of this roster next year, I wouldn't have been surprised up until about five days ago.

Yeah, the fact that Abram and Hernandez were involved in this particular thing is maybe the biggest reason to call it an upset. They've been pretty awful, to be totally honest, and just always had a tendency to play scared and on the back foot. I'm not sure if there's something about Miami in particular that got them engaged enough and, you know, I don't know, fired up enough to step into these challenges a little more often, to be a little braver going to these challenges.

But Atlanta completely shut down zone 14 in a lot of cases, right? That area around the top of the box near the D, right? They really focused on shutting it down. And abram hernandez played a big part of that the other person who there were some questions about whether or not to bring him back or not was brad kazan you know he's got an option for next year and you know he's had last year was atrocious i think he'd put his hand up and say look i wasn't making the saves i needed to you can go something as rudimentary as a safe percentage or you can go post shot xg and see that he was pretty much the worst goalkeeper in the league last year this year he's been much much better one of the best seasons in atlanta and the last few weeks have made it

pretty much a given that atlanta brings him back it's only up to him at this point which if you're him like i don't know Are you going out with this? I would hate it, you know? Yeah. It is an ending on a high, but at 40 years old, clearly he's not like worried about the timing or any of that. He's clearly fine about it. I made the joke in a group chat of mine with the video where he brought

Arthur Blank into the locker room and was celebrating. He secured a five-year DP deal because if the owner likes you, you're good. And clearly him and Arthur Blank are homies right now. Arthur Blank right now just having his supporter section error where he's just at all the games celebrating all of a sudden. I've like never seen him put on camera before. And now all of a sudden he's on camera every single goal and having the best time ever. So that's a change.

Maybe that's the cultural change that the club needed going forward. Guzan's been incredible, amazing. Miami scores the second goal in this one. And for the second time in this game, you're thinking, okay, here it comes. Let's talk third goal here. Saba gets moved up top, which is what Lucia talked about. And you saw why. He's able to stretch the field.

He actually did it from a deeper position in this, where the ball gets moved out to the left. He makes the run through the lines, and that's like everything Atlanta's looking for with him in those positions because Miami's a team that really struggles to defend in space, and they struggle to defend backtracking. Both Avila's and Martinez and Busquets, when he's in those positions, wasn't on the field

Atlanta works it around a little bit Avila's goes down holding his hamstring then he turns it into a face thing and he's rolling around Atlanta plays through it through it and scores the goal because everyone on inter Miami stopped playing it is I can't remember an exact situation like this in a really long time what did you make of just like the whole sequence and how it played out well i mean first things first right you do have the the transition moment that atlanta hits and you're spot on with that but i think when you see you see avalance go down and at first there's like some genuine concern right are we watching someone like die on the pitch what's happening right now um but then he kind of realized he was maybe playing it up a little bit and Pedro Amador kind of realized the same thing too you see this moment

where he steps to the ball and kind of looks up and says oh that's weird and then goes back down and plays the ball in and that's that Bartek is uh Bartek Sleash is on the other end of it um but I mean it's fair like I don't know if anyone maybe Tata would complain about it but besides that I haven't heard anyone else be like yeah no you gotta kick the ball out there uh you have the ball in the final third in the playoff game you're gonna keep playing and when the person on the ball is Pedro Amador you feel really good about it because suddenly he's the best left back in the world yeah that part is like the least surprising part of all of this for me by the way because like when he came in you saw he wants the ball he can play like he's one of those players he

obviously came through Portugal where you're like okay this is you Ziggy Schmidt used to say that you could smell the soccer player like he wants a soccer ball at his feet if he's walking through a hallway he's definitely just megging people for fun like it's not you know it's the physicality and all that stuff that you worry about but like with those moments you're like 100 this guy's putting it on a platter but it was like the mental recognition to say like i'm gonna play through this you do see in weird moments i think teams choose to put the ball out and i i shouldn't say teams i think individuals say like oh this is what's happening there are these cultural moments and i think all of us have been around the game

long enough you know i struggle with it playing where people are like oh come on and you're like so do i have to do that every time no like there's all these unwritten rules that people love to sit in the middle on. And sometimes they work out for you and sometimes they don't. It felt like Avila just thought he'd get the game to stop. Yeah. And that he couldn't play anymore. And he felt the game would stop if he did it.

And that's not the way it should work. Because if that's the case, that's what you're doing every time. If you're about to get subbed out in the last 15 minutes and anything dangerous is happening or over the course of the game, it's why the rules have been shifted and readjusted. I think there was a segment of inter-Miami players who were upset for a while. I didn't hear a ton of it post-game. So it felt like most of them recognized by the time they got there that they had made the mistake and that they should not have stopped playing um it is just like the bizarre cherry on top of nothing about these three games says atlanta didn't deserve to win it or shouldn't have won it you argued that maybe we should have known they were going to win it before but it is the weirdest way to finish it

out and just make it as chaotic as humanly possible and it's one of those things that like atlanta wouldn't have taken advantage of early in the year yeah they just they would have been on the other end of it just shutting down for no reason and suddenly okay well someone's laying on the ground the other team has scored and they're losing and they're not going to come back from it that was very early atlanta united from inner miami and it felt good to kind of see it come full circle in that respect yeah um i think that felt like that moment of like because i think also everyone went back to the clip of messy clipping it over a player for rsl in the first game of the season yeah and being like oh this

is what inter miami did to people and now it happened to them and i think there was a little scheidenfreier for a lot of people on that one as well as the whole inter miami experience i think they set the record they set the points you talked about the underlying numbers it's been a bizarre season to watch they've got the name our rumors connected to it to make it quite simple they are an easy team for mls fans that are not inter miami fans to root against and you ended up getting getting that moment in the end of this one. And Atlanta gets the win. And now they will move on to play Orlando in the next round. It could have been Orlando or Charlotte.

Is there a difference? Is there not a difference? Is there a preferred, you think, opponent from that, that there would have been whether it's for fans or the team based off either city or club? If we're going from an on-field perspective i think everyone's happy to see a team they beat on decision day come back again um if we're doing off-field i still think it's orlando i think people will fight me on that a little bit no one can seem to really decide exactly how they feel about orlando but for me, I started following the team in the early days of Flame Wars

being ignited on Twitter between the two sides. And I still remember some people saying some things about me that I don't really appreciate. So to have those things kind of pop back up, they stick with me. They stick with me. And I think there's still, whether they want to admit it or not, there's a lot of animosity between these two groups in a way that hasn't really manifested between Atlanta and Charlotte. Largely because Atlanta views Charlotte from both a soccer and citywide perspective as like a little brother.

Yeah. You know, so you kind of shrug them off. Orlando, you go get into a fistfight with them. So I think there's a big difference for that. And I think people are going to be more engaged just because it is Orlando. The first years of this rivalry were like laughs from Atlanta because Orlando had been in the league earlier, could not elevate to the level and Atlanta immediately jumped up and including

like the Joseph Martinez video is like Joseph's missing and they're still beating Orlando that was the gap it has now flipped where Atlanta was tripping over themselves pretty consistently and Orlando has been one of the better more consistent teams over the last four years the Open Cup they've hosted multiple home playoff games because they've been a home seed second seed last year obviously the game against nycfc three years ago with the schlegel pk shootout and all of that um and then of course this year as well so the tables have turned now this is a huge opportunity for orlando they can host all the way

through mls cup they could only host minnesota if got there. But as a four seed, you don't think you're hosting any more games after the first round. So like now Atlanta is sitting there in the way of what is the best opportunity Orlando has ever had to go to MLS Cup. Yeah, absolutely. All the big bads just died off screen for you. And that's amazing if you're Orlando. It's also just coming right at the right time I mean they I mean only Miami in the east was hotter than them over the last if you want to go 17 games you can look at it they were about 2.06 points per game from the midway point of the season only Miami and Seattle were better from that point this is a really good team it's a really hot team and everything is in front of them now if they can get past the team that beat them to one on decision day that really curious to see if they approach it

differently i know they won't because it's it's oscar prea that's just kind of how it goes but i am curious to see if they adjust in any particular way to an atlanta side that is now essentially operating out of back five yeah you know um they're going to be tweaks that they're going to have to make to adjust to that. I don't know who's going to come out clean on the other side. That, I think, is very interesting in that in the back five, with the wingbacks and the width that you get, it changes a little bit who has to defend and who has to work.

Obviously, Pereja has a ton of trust in Ivan Angulo, but in theory, F Facundo Torres is going to be in a space that Pedro Almodor is going to step into and if Atlanta is able to put attacking pieces in the channel to suck Dagger Dan in like you could get Facundo Torres to have to defend a lot and we have seen for LAFC over the last two weeks that that's not normally the case of what you want. There's some really interesting tactical battles there. My big question, as you said, of will anything change for Orlando coming out of that decision day, and I think out of the Charlotte series

because you win the series, you score two goals in – or sorry, three goals in the run of play, two goals in the first game, and the last is a penalty kick in the 99th minute, not because you were dangerous, because of a mental mistake from Deani to keep you alive to go to a shootout. I do wonder if you look at things and say, yeah, we got through, but we're not where we want to be. And to me, the change would be the center forward.

Ramiro Enrique was the difference. He was the reason they unlocked a lot of it. And I don't know that it's worked. It worked against Charlotte. And Charlotte basically played with three center backs, with Tim Rehm as a left back. And I think Enrique, all his skill set is about movement and mobility. And you lose a lot of the need for that if you need someone who's going to battle more and occupy and win 50 50 scenarios and all that against multiple center backs and now you're kind of going into a similar test against atlanta and so that would be the one change the problem is i don't know if duncan mcguire is going to be available because duncan mcguire went down on the penalty kick and came out of the game, I assumed it was a dislocated shoulder.

They didn't show them pop it in. And I have not seen any reports about it since then. So if he's not available, I don't think the change gets made. That would be the only big one. Otherwise, as you said, it's Orlando. They have a high floor and sometimes a low ceiling and Oscar Preja's belief in what they do and being home now into single elimination,

I think they're going to try and grind through Atlanta and just survive. I think that's their whole MO for all of this. I just don't know if that's going to allow them to go as far as they want, just to grind through everything like that. But in a weird way, it presents a tougher challenge for Atlanta, I think, in some ways, than near Miami, they're not going to have that same level of space to run behind. There's not,

they're not going to be able to hit and transition in the same ways. They're going to have to find goals from different places than that. And that is something they've, they've genuinely struggled with at times this year. So in that case, I think it's advantage Orlando. I think that this is a tougher matchup, as you said, and then single elimination on the road. You're not going to get a chance to get familiar and get comfortable. But as you said, which they had to, which was the real question mark.

It was like, were they good enough in the attack to do that? Now you shift to Orlando, which is, are they dangerous enough to create chances against arguably the best box in the league when you go the two center mids in Cartagena and Araujo back to Jansen and Schlegel? Yeah, no, extremely tough challenge. I don't know. That's not a great matchup for Atlanta's midfield, to be totally honest. There are issues there. They played pretty well, like you mentioned, in the Miami series.

But still, Jay Fortune picked up a knock. He wasn't able to go the 90 against inner Miami. We'll see if he's able to start ahead of Tristan Mianba, who was straight up not good in that Miami game. It's going to be ugly. I'm going to be honest. I think either way, it's going to be ugly, whether that's Orlando or Atlanta coming out on top.

Someone's going to just have to win a rock fight. Going into the Miami series, I had said, Dax is definitely going to start because they're going to flood central midfield and try and force Miami to the wings. It is not the same matchup here i cannot imagine dax comes out of the team because of what they've done and where he stands and all of that but that all goes to the awkward nature or the tougher nature of this matchup which is the things atlanta was forced to do versus miami fit into what they probably should have done. And Orlando's not the same. And so now you have these questions of, well, is our strength strong enough to lean on them?

Or should we adjust and try and just win this game? And this is kind of like a first with this Rob Valentino error of, okay, what's your tactical adjustments? How are you going to pull the strings? How are you going to affect the game? Not just, okay, you're rolling out what everyone would roll out. Can you inspire them to get over the line and accomplish it? And this is a huge one.

Orlando getting the chance to host. It's going to be a ridiculous crowd. It's going to be a ton of fun. And now they've got about a week and a half to prepare for it because of the international week, which is absolutely brutal. Charlotte season is finished. A lot of reaction from Charlotte fans about Patrick Oshimong's goal called off. I think the penalty kick is self-explanatory,

and I don't think there's much disagreement on it. It's down to the Oshimong goal in the first half. I said it on yesterday's show. It's the greatest finish in the history of MOS playoffs because Oshimong is an Oshigod God and we don't have an angle there is just no angle of it to call it off I called it cheap yesterday for people we had a lot of questions flood you know into the discord like why is there no better angle it's just you have to pay money to set up more cameras and that's the option that the league and the broadcast chooses to make or

not make in that scenario and that's the danger when you have those few opportunities that occur between the midfield line and inside the 18 where the better cameras are. And Ajamang not able to stay on maybe? We still don't know. I don't think you can take the view we have and feel conclusive about it. That's not the issue with the process. The issue is the angles are not very good. And it's the end of Charlotte season, but it was a step forward. It was a good season. We'll do some more recap stuff about some of these teams that were eliminated.

Although Cincinnati, we can't avoid because they decided to be super extra coming off the field in their game after losing to NYCFC in the ninth round of penalty kicks in a 0-0 game at home. I wrote this because I had to see it written down. Justin Hack shushing a bunch of people in Cincinnati during a penalty kick shootout was not something that I thought I'd ever see in my life, let alone this season. But NYCFC survived through their stretch of play in this game. I thought Cincinnati were very good. I thought they were very dangerous. And unfortunately, it came down to lack of finishing. And I understand why Kubo was on the field because no one else played better. Right.

But he was nonexistent in the final third over the course of especially this game. And you saw what happens when you play with one hand behind your back against a solid opponent in a big playoff game it's so funny to think back a few months ago when we were all panicking about the center backs in particular for fc cincinnati and that isn't what killed him in the end it's the fact that aaron bupenza got rocked up by a professional boxer and downtown cincinnati one night it's the fact that kelvin kelsey didn't work out it's the fact that nico Giacchini just hasn't done the damn thing. So I don't know. It's,

it's weird to think that we're, we flipped which side of the field we're worried about, but that was the bottom line for them. They didn't have the forwards. They just didn't. And that's all it came down to. And you saw another game where Assad looked good and clearly replaced Bari all in the production.

You got there enough that or Gano could play higher up the field. I thought Orojano looked good once again, looked dangerous. There was a few decision makings in the final third between all those players, shot pass type stuff that wasn't perfect. But Yedlin got in a ton of dangerous areas, had the one chance off the deflected shot that he put wide, had the pullback towards Santos that I think he probably looking back wouldn't have put in the air. Probably hopes it's on the ground.

It makes it easier for Santos to get on the end of it. But that's another dangerous moment for this team. They had a few really good looks in and around the box that they could not put away. And in the end, NYCFC are able to hang on and get them to a penalty kick shootout and one of the most absurd penalty kick shootouts I thought Tyler Terrence nailed it where he's literally said what in the world is happening right now I've never seen back-to-back players both kick it over the crossbar on continuous shots especially into the sudden death part where it's like oh just put it on frame like you've got if you're andres

pereira at that point you had nothing to lose and rather than hit it as hard as you possibly can just put it on frame and see what happens teenage hadabi looked uncomfortable it was one of the weirdest shootouts i've ever seen it's like someone walked up behind all of them before that period and said hey we changed the rules like you're aiming at the wrong thing now right um it was a reverse shootout for what five straight attempts just a nightmare for everyone until nycfc finally got it together and freeze and solitano i think this might be one of those games you look back when you see the highlights in a couple years and you're like whoa they like these could be two national team goalkeepers and we're going going to be like, oh, whoa, those were the two.

And while they made some incredible saves, especially I thought freeze, because I didn't think those were easy saves. Or I didn't think all of them were bad shots. Even the Hedebe one, which was like a bizarre run up and everything, it's still to the side. It's not straight down the middle. It's not poorly hit. But I think we'll look back and be like, oh, wow, those two names

going up against each other was an awesome moment in the past. So NYCFC move on. We'll talk about them in a second. But Cincinnati made themselves the center of the conversation. So yesterday, I read this quote from Lucho Acosta, who said, today, I played for the fans to remember me as my last at the club. I want them to remember me like this. I gave my life for this club. I gave everything. They were amazing years. I'm not saying I'm leaving, but today I'm taking a little break

and think well about what's going to happen. A lot of things the club did hurt me. They hurt a lot. To go from having an incredible year winning the Supporters' Shield and then leave a lot of players aside. I've been thinking about this for a while, speaking with people close to me, with my family, and yes, it's something I feel today after losing,

but I've been thinking about it. I don't know. It's like he wrote a ransom letter but forgot to include what he was asking for. Like, I have your dog but also i don't know what i'm meant to ask for in this i'm so confused it is like i'm leaving but i'm not i'm mad but i'm not it's about personal stuff or it's about soccer all of those as you said are unclear i will it broken up with?

Which is also a huge potential based on what we've seen from some DP signings and MLS and actions over the last few years. He, on the field, looked super frustrated. There are a lot of times in this game where he was unhappy with the decision the next player made and made it vocal where he is normally more encouraging especially at times where there have been a large stretches of both this season and last where like the other attacking pieces were unavailable and there was a ton of pressure on his shoulders and he never played in a way where you're like oh he knows he has to do it and everyone and he's better than everyone. And in this one, the way he interacted with Saad and Orojano

and Santos when he came on, like, it was very, very weird, especially in some parts where it's like, I don't know what he wanted. Like, I don't know what he expected some of these players to do in these moments. So you could kind of sense that. And if you're saying at the end of all of this like okay they lost brandon vasquez you know they lost brenner um they've lost miazga to injury obviously not purposeful they let barry all move because he wanted to and he felt they didn't replace them

okay you can understand that's not normally a thing you've in, so I'm leaving. It's normally like we need to, like what Kai Wagner has done. We need to get better. This front office or this coaching staff needs to make us better. And that's where the leaving part feels very odd, especially because he signed a new contract like literally one year ago. And this was his quote on that day, which was, this club is very special. It's my family.

Set it close to every time I go out on the field, I give my life for this city, for these fans, for these colors, for this club. That is what makes it so special for me because they are my family. I hope to win many things with this team, with this city, and give back the joy that the fans give us all the time, every weekend, every day, and return that love with a title. Families fight. I guess that could be your line at the end of all of this if he ends up coming back. But it is an about face, and this was, I think, for me, a complete curveball that if you ask what the offseason will be about,

my top 200 things I would not say Lucho Acosta potentially moving. Yeah, it's weird to fight with your family too when your family's willing to go out potentially spend 15 million dollars on a striker which is the rumor right now or the report i guess from tom yes yes you did it i didn't do it don't tell him i did that um but we'll find out if he listens oh i just don't what was cincinnati supposed to do besides what they did i i don't really understand that there were so many circumstances that fell out of their control and lucho to his credit met that throughout the entire year there were moments i mean for a large majority of the

year he was outpacing himself from last year like per 90 numbers whatever you want to look at he was better then he had the injuries to his feet and things got a little weird but it never felt like it never felt like since he was not trying to capitalize on the window right there's a short window you have lucho acosta they they never felt like they weren't trying to capitalize on it so why now yep and to i'm sure what tom would say if he was here is they were at the line with Bertarame for another record signing in the summer. And it didn't go through at the last second. And at some point, you have to pick a player and go down that road. And if it doesn't work out.

And then even then, they pivoted. Now, Joe Acchini on loan? No, it's not perfect. But there are clubs that just wouldn't have pivoted. Or there are clubs who would not have spent the money on not the perfect thing, even for a little bit, to get more players through the door. I agree in like a lot of what Cincinnati happened to them was outside of their power. And they tried and genuinely tried to deal with it as best as possible. Oseum when Miazga got hurt. Teenage Hedebe on a Tam deal as well to add to the center back core.

But there is limits to the salary cap and the structure, and there's also some limits to Cincinnati. Like you're not getting Gareth Bale to come and play off the bench because he likes to live in Cincinnati. So that wasn't an option for this club, and I think they got as close as they could without all of that. You mentioned the rumors for Kevin Denke from Circle Bruges, 23-year-old, center forward, originally from Togo, Togolese International.

27 goals last year in the Belgian League to win the Golden Boot. That is the exact same number as Kuyper scored the year before, before he came to Chicago. Well, uh-oh. And I think at a minimum, though, I think Cincinnati would have taken Hugo Kuypers scored the year before, before he came to Chicago. Well, uh-oh. And I think at a minimum, though, I think Cincinnati would have taken Hugo Kuypers. If they had him, they're probably still in the postseason. Yeah, I think that's probably right. We could probably play a game where we pick, like, the absolute worst striker they could have gotten. Who's the line.

Right, who they could have advanced with, and maybe it's Kuypers. That sounds about right. Maybe, like, I don't know, Kasper Sibilka or something. I think I'm just running through Chicago guys but um I don't know why that all came to mind but yeah no um look if it hits it's huge I I'm so baffled again this goes back to me just being confused as to what Acosta wants because Cincinnati have spent well above their market yeah over and over again what do you want They spent and they were bad and then they got good and they still kind of spend. So like you said,

it feels like it's all going in the right direction. It would be fascinating to see what happens here. We've gotten a lot of questions about in MLS stuff. The problem for a piece like this is they spent money in the open market that they would want returned. You can't come up with enough allocation money to flip that. The advantage of allocation money is you get it exactly what it is, where some sales they get broken into some allocation and some not. But that wouldn't be the case with this one for Lucho Acosta.

And so the value for them would be to sell him overseas, whether it's to Mexico or the Middle East or maybe to Europe. I assume it wouldn't be back to South America at this point. He probably has earned himself out of those teams being able to afford him short of a couple of teams in Brazil. So it would be fascinating to see what happens. Like if he decides that whatever has been big enough that he wants to leave the U.s now where he's about to become a citizen and potentially an international which would shift that as well because if he leaves the league and isn't living i don't know that he's i'm not an expert on the path for citizenship which is i think supposed to come through in like march or april and that was in theory for the 2026 world cup So a ton of stuff going on here. We'll continue to cover it here at SoccerWise.

Let's go to NYCFC, though. They got through. They have been into the conference semifinals, I believe now, seven times, all time since they've joined the league, which is now almost a full decade. It shows the consistency of their performances. That is not the end-all, be-all, and some of those were buys into that round and then losing into that round but this felt very 2021 of like they upset the revs there and all of a sudden the bracket sort of fell for them and they made a run to the final and they won the whole thing as they coalesced i did not think this series we saw the

best of nycfc i thought game two, they were phenomenal. And I thought game three, they reverted back to game one as well. They were not super brave in possession. They did not really try and take the game at any point to Cincinnati. But that's not what the playoffs is always about. And that's kind of the part you always wait for with NYCFC is like, can they grit themselves through because they're kind of built on beautiful football? And it felt like

this young group found a way to do it in a pretty big moment they found a way to do on the road which i think is most important thing because they've been such a drastically different team on the road what four wins on the road all season compared to what do we consider road in this whole scenario that's a good rebel arena which i i don't know. I think part of that is that that's the home field advantage, right? It is playing on these smaller pitches and sometimes Red Bull Arena. So I don't know. It's good to see them from an NYCFC perspective to be able to go somewhere that is not where baseball is played and do enough.

Do enough. Because now you get the home game and and now you get a chance to to keep pushing and um maybe you get another home game and at that point you're suddenly in mls cup where you know what anything can happen right yeah so i don't the 2021 comps are are tough for me that team had really good underlying numbers throughout the entire year atati um i don't think i have to explain that to you, but I'm not sure. They also had experience different. They had Cheneau and Collins.

They had Sean Johnson. This team doesn't have that. But I think for this team, similar to the combo with Atlanta, there are a lot of pieces that should be there for a little while that this is built around. And this is the type of series where they have now earned that where you're going forward you can always look back and say a tiago martinez a matt freeze um even keaton parks who's been there for a while but has always been hurt you can kind of go back

and say like well i know that they can step up in this moment i know they can handle the pressure because you've seen it before and i think that's what this series was for them totally they were pretty typically uh one of the youngest teams in the league throughout the entire year i think maybe only red bulls was younger on an average starting lineup basis um so you just have a really young group trying to find their way and they did it they got it done they figured out things at striker with al Alonzo Martinez, and that might be enough in this. It really might. They are going to host the Hudson River Derby. They're going to do so at Citi Field.

Hudson River Blue on Twitter gave an update, which was that they learned the capacity at Citi Field is capped at 22,250 because the stadium is being shut down for the winter. NYCFC executives convinced the New York Mets to pause that process and allow one last game. That's why the attendance is limited. We had heard the issue was that there was a circus in town. That's not like a euphemism or a metaphor.

Like the circus was apparently at Citi Field, and people were worried about that. But it turns out C city field is an open air stadium in new york so at some point they have to shut it down for the winter clearly they are already there in that process and so it'll be a smaller capacity it'll be interesting to see how much red how much blue in all of that um but it'll be this is like if you're saying there's a bunch of upsets what type of matchups are you going to get? Getting a Hudson River Derby on two upsets in the next round is like as ideal, I think, as anyone from a neutral point of view could be.

And they are still two clubs with completely differing identities. They are still two clubs who hate each other. NYCFC got their red wedding like revenge with the 5-0 win in the regular season at Red Bull Arena. If they win this one, it solidifies that as like, OK, they have shifted this rivalry. If they don't, I think some of the remember memory of that one kind of goes by the wayside because you turned around and won in the postseason. If you're Red Bulls and like that's all you care about.

This is what I call a yeah but game pretty much any argument you're gonna have if you're an nycfc fan or if you're a red bulls fan whoever wins this you can just say yeah but remember that yeah right and that's huge for any kind of rivalry like um the ultimate example of this was unc beating duke in the final four a few years ago uh versus esky's last game like that that's the ultimate yeah but you're never gonna win argument after that right uh i was surprised it wasn't something about old miss and georgia we're not talking about that okay yeah we're not celebrating with family friends on the field or whatever i read about i do not watch college football i just read the article

because i was like what could the explanation possibly be and it was a pretty good explanation maybe don't celebrate with the other team after you lose. That's a pretty good rule for everybody, I think. I don't know. We're all people of the world. Why not all be happy? We're all winners all the time if we choose to be, if you want to. Paul Harvey, who writes at Hudson River Derby,

had an interesting tweet, I thought, which was that NYCFC has made the Eastern Conference semi seven out of ten possible seasons, has the third highest historical points per game of all MLS clubs. Despite that, it doesn't feel like they get the same attention or coverage similar to worse teams get from the league office. I have gotten, because I covered Red Bulls two games, I get angst from NYCFC fans all the time.

And I think I feel it from a lot of NYCFC fans I meet. And I think that's completely fair. And I think what Paul put in here makes a ton of sense. The reality is they play at Yankee Stadium. It's a bad product. If you promote the product, promoting MLS games or soccer, the dream is that people then tune in and consume the product if the product's not very good then you don't really want to promote it and i think it is completely fair to feel like nycfc even though they are a big city and a big market don't get the same type of like energy or coverage or all of that also part of that is cfg they have chosen to make this team a feeder team and not at it and say like oh this is a project that fascinates me and i want to tune in for it and as great as the soccer has been and as great as some

of the results have been a lot of the stuff around it is not the shiny pearl that is lafc in their jumping stadium with world cup winners on the field and future superstars. And it's not Atlanta with future World Cup players on the field and superstars in front of 50,000 people, even when it's turf and in a football stadium. It at least has sight lines that you can watch the game from on TV and feel like you can see what's going on. I will be fascinated to see what this reality is when the new building opens. Because you put a soccer-specific stadium in the five boroughs, that changes a lot of it.

And I think even with how CFG chooses to function the club and all of that, that will change a lot of the perceptions of this team. And I think it feels like there's a level of fatigue, I think, from the bigger sphere of excitement when NYCFC started. And I think there, it feels like there's a level of fatigue. I think from the bigger sphere of like excitement when NYCFC started. And then as the stadium plans failed, it was like, this is not the project that anyone wants it to be. But I think as a fan, it's a super fair complaint as well. And this is your chance. Go and go to MLS Cup once more, make everyone talk about you. In 2021, everyone had to talk about them and everyone had to promote them and they had their parade and all of that because they won

and that's what you get to do um last piece coming out of this one cincinnati um heartbreaking news that their um young center midfielder marco angulo passed away after a car accident down in his native ecuador where he was down there on loan um so thoughts go out to his family to the FC Cincinnati family and the club and everyone else that's just brutal to hear for a young player to be cut down so young and we had the similar story with Philadelphia so it hurts anytime you see someone with so much of their life left to live going forward not able to. So all our best to them and just more tough stuff for Cincinnati over the course of this week. Let's finish out with the last game of the weekend that we haven't hit. LAFC, once again, they get Vancouver. It is tough for

Vancouver. It is the same matchup over and over again. There is no expectations to win. This is the closest they've been and yet they bump up against the same line. over and over again. There is no expectations to win. This is the closest they've been. And yet they bump up against the same line. Let me ask you this. Me and Tom have debated this. The way they went about this series. Does it feel like they took a step or is it just eliminated in the first round by LAFC again? I think it's just eliminated by LAFC.

I mean, yeah, but you played probably what three of your four best games ever in your club history. But yeah, look what it got you. I don't know that there are levels to this and Vancouver has never gotten to that level and it's still going to take time for them to get there. I don't know how, I don't know if Stuart Armstrong is,

is the thing that gets them there yet. I don't know if the rest of this group is the thing that gets them there yet they still have work to do and until they do we're just going to keep having the same narrative about them regardless of you know what they do in a wildcard game regardless of what they do in game two of a series it's just going to be stuck there they're just stuck I think that's fair I don't feel it because I'm a loser and like I take moral victories because my teams don't win things and so I get it um but I think that's a completely fair take and I think I felt that over the course of the second half of this game which was like I don't think this team doesn't believe they're good enough but almost acceptance of like yeah we're down one zero to LAFC on the road that's

that's where we stand that's where we live um and not like oh 100, we're down one zero to LAFC on the road. That's, that's where we stand. That's where we live. And not like, Oh, a hundred percent. We're going to come back. Like Atlanta, like we talked about of like, no, we're going to come back. We're going to win this game. We should win this game. And that's that next step. I think Stuart Armstrong is an interesting piece. I think there's a lot of interesting pieces. Is there the one that gets them over the edge i'm not sure yet and so that's where i think you're hoping that they've had some development from guys they've signed that

have taken a year or two can you get that from an ocampo or a pedro vite or one of them to be that extra piece that's kind of what they've missed is that like true breakout attacking talent uh alongside ryan gall to just make his life easier and make the team more dangerous. For LAFC, it was like a fascinating weekend. They went from could be out against Vancouver to if we just win two more games, we host MLS Cup, which was not on my bingo card going into all of this. And they look like the same team as last year to me like right now they reverted into that over the course of this series but if they don't play columbus last year they probably win mls cup and that's probably enough at this point yeah all of the monsters at the end of the tunnel are gone

you just you just have to beat the galaxy at this point because let's be real about what's about to happen with seattle probably the same thing that's happened what like eight of the last 11 12 times or something at this point uh seattle can't seem to get the better of them so i mean you you have as clear a path as you possibly could have hoped for and it feels like they're starting to figure some things out i'm really curious to see if the ato west sub the shift with the three-man midfield continues to stick. I'm really interested to see if Mateusz Bogusz is the starter from here on out, which seems like where we're heading. I'm curious, Goss, are you on the train that says Giroud is not going to work out? No, because I'm also the person who's obsessed with it takes time.

And even if you're Giroud, that doesn't mean it doesn't take time i wonder if he i wonder if bogus starts at center forward in the next game and that this was this a reaction to this is the third matchup so it hasn't worked twice we have to change or is it okay bogus is the starter because now you go into a different matchup that's not playing it you know at times in a back three like all the things you saw against Vancouver I think respect to Steve Tarantolo saying this clearly isn't working and I'm not scared to bench my star in my big signing but that I don't to me that didn't totally signal that he is now benched. It was just for the one game. I think you see it in how quickly he came into this one for them as well,

where Seattle, two great center backs, and it's a huge battle, but it probably fits a little cleaner tactically to keep Giroud on the field. And my expectation would be that he actually starts that game. Yeah, I could totally see that. And then maybe a shift again if they get to the Galaxy. I could see that in a more open game again if they get to the galaxy i can see that in a more open game you shift to belgush and have a little more a little more speed a little more understanding of uh space and time with with buonga in particular i could see it and we have

seen steve turon the low adjust to opponents to get results rather than have the columbus style of like this is who we are we don't care who. And like, we're going to dictate the whole game, especially against the galaxy, which I would not be shocked to see in that one as well. Right. Let me ask you this. Can any of the Eastern conference teams be either of um honestly at this moment and this is probably rev or being affected by what just happened i would say orlando and atlanta would be my two picks to beat the la teams over atlanta made it we did it turn the new york that's it yeah well for atlanta you're saying okay can you go beat the best team in the league they just beat the best team in the league? They just beat the best team in the league, and they did it twice. Now, I get the Red Bulls did as well, and I don't want to take away from that.

I would say the Red Bulls stuff felt really clean matchup specific, and Atlanta's stuff felt a bit more repeatable against the top teams. For example, I don't know that LAFC can be beaten in the same way that Columbus can if you're the Red Bulls. The Galaxy is interesting because the Galaxy are as close to Columbus as we have in Major League Soccer, and that's like a really clean matchup. I would be surprised if the Galaxy are in MLS Cup. So I don't know that that's the matchup these teams are heading for.

As we get there that would be my guess do you have do you think anyone can my gut is no yeah straight up and Atlanta is interesting because you're right I think it does set up well particularly if they do come up against the galaxy I think the their ability to kind of sit deeper now and um play against the ball and into space probably sets up pretty well but I don't know if Atlanta's going to get there. It's just too many road games over and over and over again. The likelihood of theirs is obviously the least because they'd have to keep winning on the road.

In Orlando, they are a good team. I am not convinced you can scoot on your butt to an MLS Cup the way they're probably going to try to. I would agree with you, except I think we've kind of seen it over the last four or five years. Completely fair, yeah. Which is when those great teams get eliminated,

that's the moment for the teams that are not going to beat themselves. And Orlando's like approaching space where if they don't beat themselves, they're probably headed to MLS Cup. They have the self-destruct button in them. So, you know, it was built into the Death Star, and it lives in there if you're able to hit it.

But I wouldn't be shocked if they get there at this point. The whole thing is fascinating. We will break it all down here on SoccerWise over the next week or so, going into the games. We've got your all down here on SoccerWise over the next week or so going into the games. We've got your USMNT coverage as well. One last thing before we get out of here is the Canadian Soccer Association findings on the drone spying scandal with the women's team. They released their investigation. I have not looked through it myself. So this is all coming from the people I've seen covering it.

The belief is that there is still a lot more to come out and that it is going to come out. I think I saw, I wish I could remember his name now. There is one very famous Canadian writer who covers scandals like this and has covered it with the CSA for years now. Because remember, there was a lack of of payments there is the Canadian soccer business issue there's a ton of stuff that's been happening the team went on strike heading into the World Cup the women's team has done that as well and he said none of his sources said that they were questioned so like there are still people to talk to in all of this. It's said though. In the findings.

That it basically said that it was not Bev Priestman. Who started this practice. Bev Priestman has taken over. From John Herdman. John Herdman was not. Able to be reached I think. For the investigation. He is of course currently the head coach of Toronto FC.

There was a lot of interesting stuff. They didn't know where he was? I think he had his away message on. And he was like. He is, of course, currently the head coach of Toronto FC. There was a lot of interesting stuff. They didn't know where he was? I think he had his away message on, and he was like, I'll hit you back when I get back from vacation. Hold on one second. Yeah. So there's a lot more to come out of this.

There's a lot more to come out of it from the CSA point of view, which is just another scandal inside of a group that has shown that it is probably not large enough or professional enough to manage two teams that play at the level they play at, both on the men's and women's side to be an Olympic gold medalist in a World Cup qualifying team and now already clinched the World Cup spot and be a Copa America semifinalist. Like they need a truly robust professional organization to manage all of that and grow the game. So that's one of the issues in all of this. One issue is what happens with the results. Obviously, the big one is the gold medal in 2021 and whether they'll be stripped of it, which would be, I think, heartbreaking. What was in the findings was none of the drone footage was ever shown to the players.

So the players weren't fully aware. It was something I think the coaches were doing to sort of get their ideas about what they wanted to explain. And I think that will probably be a buffer between stripping the full team of the medals and punishing the people involved. And I think there will be knock-on effect to TFC because if there's a CSA punishment,

I don't know if that's restricted only to international competition or if it could be something that affects the fact that he coaches a professional soccer team that plays under the umbrella of CSA and U.S. soccer. But I will say the timing of Jim Curtin's available and John Herdman is now in this weird spot and the club's been on shaky ground for years might be a little too convenient as well in the end. So just something to think about on the back end here of this one. Don't know anything. Haven't spoken to anyone. I'm just a guy talking in a room with a microphone. Sam, you are that as well. And I appreciate you taking the time to do it with me. Thank you so much for joining. Um, remind people again where they can follow you and what they

should know about. Yeah. I'm on blue sky now. People are on blue sky apparently. So I'm doing that. I'm at, I think my handles like at revenue minus cost or something like I'm in like in the millions of starter packs that are out there. Um, you can also, uh, follow my stuff. I write a daily newsletter, a daily column basically for MLS. It's called the daily kickoff. You can also follow my stuff. I write a daily newsletter, a daily column, basically, for MLS. It's called The Daily Kickoff. You can subscribe to it, and when that doesn't work, because apparently it never works, you can just read it every day on the website. It exists there. If you're an Atlanta fan or just want to learn more about Laney United, we have a podcast and a website called 5stripefinal.com, where we talk about things like Laney United, and sometimes we

talk about college football, which in this case, for case for john herdman if we've learned anything from college football it just don't cooperate declare yourself a sovereign citizen they can't catch you they can't touch you never let them win and i think then the last piece is to call someone else a cheater in about a year or so in a press conference right yes flip it always flip it. Always flip it. It's never about you. Which in fairness, I think there is part of one of the stories is that US Soccer said, Doth protests a little bit too much that when he was coaching the men's Canada team,

he had them climb up into the bleachers to prove that something was a bird and not a camera spying on them. Why would you think it would be a camera? I don't know. It's been fun. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening.

We have a ton more coverage coming for you, a little bit of a different schedule, but we will have your massive NWSL recap and preview. It was an incredible weekend. A 99th minute winner, an extra time game, a brace from Barbara Banda, who's back. Temwa Shawinga scores again. I cannot wait to watch this semifinal coming up.

And of course, the U.S. Men's National Team facing off against Jamaica in the Nations League, Canada facing off against Suriname. So we will have all that coverage for you as well. Once again, thank you to Sam for being here. Thank you to all of you. And we'll talk to you again very, very soon.