SoccerWise - MLS Soccerwise | Pochettino's New Deal + Lewandowski Shines for Chicago

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Mauricio Pochettino is staying with the USMNT through 2030. David Gass, Tom Bogert, and Matt Doyle react to U.S. Soccer's decision, what Pochettino's new contract means for the future of the national team, and whether he'll see out the full deal.Plus, Robert Lewandowski continues to make his mark with the Chicago Fire, Evander stars for FC Cincinnati, and the crew reacts to the biggest storylines from another wild MLS weekend before looking ahead to Leagues Cup.0:00 Intro4:36 Pochettino Stays with USMNT Through 203019:37 Evander Takes Over for FC Cincinnati23:34 D.C. United Stuns Nashville29:48 Robert Lewandowski Leads Chicago Fire37:35 Philadelphia Union's Incredible Comeback41:02 Columbus, Inter Miami & Max Arfsten's Move48:24 Portland Timbers Stay Hot, Seattle Slides1:01:46 Vancouver Ownership & MLS Commissioner Update1:09:33 Ice Cream Shop | Transfer News1:26:17 Leagues Cup Preview👍 Like • Subscribe • Listen • Follow🎧 Listen to Soccerwise wherever you get your podcasts: https://soccerwise.captivate.fm/listen 🎥 Watch full video episodes on YouTube: @SoccerwiseHQ🌐 Visit KickbackSoccer.com for more podcasts, news, and coverage from Kickback Soccer Media.📰 Subscribe to The Kickback newsletter for the latest soccer news and analysis: the-kickback.ghost.io📲 Follow Soccerwise on Instagram and Bluesky:Instagram: @soccerwisehqBluesky: @soccerwisehq.bsky.social

Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to Soccerwise on a Monday. Not right at 10 o'clock. We are on Doyle time right now, which is Spanish time, so we're about four hours late to everything. We will be starting our afternoon show around 10 p.m. Eastern time tonight, just to keep in line, Doyle, with your North Spanish styles. Your last show before a little vacation, headed off to, is it Basque country or do I just assume all the northern Spain is Basque?

So I am headed off to Basque country for the first part of it, but not all of northern Spain is Basque Country. Right next to Basque Country to the West is Cantabria, and next to that is Asturias, and next to that is Galicia. And so I will be going to Basque Country for four or five days and then to Asturius for the rest of the time to watch the solar eclipse on August 12th. There's like a massive solar eclipse.

And I stupidly didn't get the, the glasses for the last one. There was one like four or five years ago in the U.S. You and Trump just staring up into this guy. Exactly. That's the exact joke I was trying to set up. And you got there first. I mean, that's the host job right there.

Listen, he named four things I've never heard of before. So I'm going to assume you are offending me. And I'm going to take them as disrespect. And they keep us moving forward on that one. But we've got a lot to talk about in the show. We have, of course, a huge weekend of MLS action to hit. We have Marisao Pochitino officially returning as U.S. Men's National Team Coach.

We have the conclave occurring to name the next MLS Commissioner. So we are waiting for some just salads, white smoke, to come up from a Midtown office for us to officially know who will be the next MLS Commissioner. And, of course, we've got the ice cream shop. Tom, you were working this weekend. It was not a weekend off for you. Never is. But I feel worse for poor Paul Tenorio, who's getting hit with flight delays as he tries to go

cover the new commissioner decision, the vote, and everything they're in because he's a capital J. So it's a big deal because Paul's going to be in the market. Exactly. And the poor guy, his flight got canceled and then he got a later flight. And I think he's currently at a layover in Pittsburgh. Definitely not listening, but Paul, we wish you the best. And I'm not going to complain about working on my phone for a bit from home this weekend

while he's walking around the Pittsburgh airport waiting to get to New York. Well, speaking of feeling bad for people, Leaks Cup is on the Hurstead. horizon starting on Wednesday. That's not where I was going to go. I'm going to victim blame on this. I just want to set that up before you start talking. I'm victim blame to you. What I will tell everyone is, as I've mentioned, I'm very excited for Leakes Cup because there's

weekday games at a stadium that I live very close to. So I'm going to be attending, which is when I purchased tickets to go see into Miami on Wednesday. It turns out that they're playing on two different Wednesdays. So I am going to see Leone next week at New Stadium. I will not right now be at San Luis, Inter Miami. I mean this Wednesday, which is what I thought I would be doing. But we will talk all about Leaks Cup coming up in just a moment.

For anyone trying to set schedules, it's like five games a day for nine days in a row. No big like MLS match day weekend around it. So literally from Wednesday through the following Thursday, I think, every single day there's four to six games of Leaks Cup action between like 7.30 and 1030.30. Kind World Cup style knockout group stage. No? No, I would. That's exactly what I would say. That's crazy that you thought of what I was thinking.

I didn't even put that in the notes. Oh, look at that. Me and Doyle on a wavelength. I do appreciate that the year of an actual World Cup, they renamed or they call the group stage phase one, because you wouldn't want anyone to confuse it with the thing they just enjoyed and know a lot about. You would want to make sure to keep those things separate at all possible.

possible times. So we will preview Leaks Cup coming up. As always, don't forget to apply to tactics free zone or subscribe. Apply? So there you can't apply. No, I'm taking applications now. It's closed. You're going to need a writer the next two weeks. Come on. No, no, we're going dark the next

two weeks. There's no substitution. You're not going to do a threat of pictures of you eating tinned fish. Oh, I might do that actually. That's a good idea. Look at your content genius, David. I am a bit of, I'm a bit of a content creator. Is how I like to sort of phrase myself.

Okay, let's get into the first news. By the way, if you're listening to Serious Radio, welcome. When we go long, you'll have to go find the rest of the show somewhere else, but we will get there when we get there. Let's start with the opening news today, Tom, which is that Maricio Pocetino officially is going

to remain the U.S. men's national team head coach through 2030. We kind of got the reports last week that it was trending this way, and now, as of Monday morning, fresh way to start a week. There's a full-time head coach. Yeah. So after the reports were coming out over the last week or so, that was kind of the big breakthrough. And now it is official.

And everybody can kind of move on with the planning and the knowledge that Marisha Pochitino signed a four-year deal. Of course, there are a couple ways to look at this. One, if we want to go to the positive route, there were positive foundational things that Pochitino did at the World Cup and in the pre-World Cup camp. It is not a coincidence to me that they looked at the best when he had the most time with him, given his standing as a long-time club head coach and somebody who wants to work with a group of players and do so every day. So there's that and hopefully they can build on it.

But I think it'd be disingenuous not to start with, it's a four-year contract. And none of us, I think, at least, I don't want to speak for you, I don't think any of us question whether or not he's a good coach. What the whole discussion and argument was, is he going to be here in nine months, in 12 months, in 18 months? and if he's not, and if you don't think he's going to be, then why sign the four-year deal?

So I think that all of that's going to remain while holding space for, he's a good coach, and I think this is good. There are two cynical sides of this, and I think it's a good continuation of a marriage because both sides are probably feeling the same. One, there are no European jobs open right now. There is not as if he had offers from three other clubs

and he picked the United States. The United States is a good job. I believe him when he say he's committed when he's here. but that commitment will get tested if or when a European club job is offered him. The other side of that, though, is if you're U.S. soccer, if you didn't believe or you're worried that he's not going to be here in four years, well, who are you going to go higher right now? You would have an interim in September. And so it's almost a continuation of a marriage of convenience for both sides.

And I don't even say that negatively because I want to be a little critical of, well, if you don't think he's going to be here, or your doubts that he's going to be here in four years, then why continue the contract? But in the same breath, I don't have another option that is obvious and makes sense that it's definitely an upgrade on Risa Bochitino. So I'm kind of struggling on the fence there,

and one more note to give, there's a buyout in this contract, sources tell me. And when I pressed a senior U.S. soccer official on, okay, is this a buyout that's meant to deter other clubs from coming, like it's stupidly high? or is it kind of fair value or is it or is it just something that that you can say that you have a buying good money? The way it's described to me, and I don't have the monetary figure, but the way it's

described to me is it's fair, but on the higher side in that if Real Madrid fires Marino in in November, they'll be able to pay it. But it will be a significant sum of money to U.S. soccer to reinvest in the federation and to go get another head coach. So it's something that it's baked into the deal, those doubts over whether or not he'll be here in four years. Doyle? Yeah, I'm fine with this. I have my doubts because we have such a long, and we talk about it in every show now. We have the second cycle precedent for U.S. coaches.

It has not been good, literally for a single one. And this is technically Pocitino's second cycle. But for all the reasons Tom listed, it does make sense. And I'll add on top of that. I don't just think he's a good coach. I think he's a very good coach. I think he is one of the few coaches who actually moves the needle in terms of just aesthetic sensibility with how we play. And with that comes hopefully a leap up a tier into the ranks of the true elite.

I don't think that's going to happen over the next four years. But I think it does. And to be clear, I also felt the same way about Greg Burrhalter. Greg Burrhalter improved us just as much as we hope Maricio Pochitino can. So when you say that improvement from Poch, you think that he can get the U.S. to play the way they did against Australia and Paraguay against teams in the top 25, top 30 of the world? Yeah. Because that's the next step, right? Yeah, I don't think that we're going to be doing that against Brazil in the Copa America semifinals.

but I do think that I have some pretty, I have a pretty solid belief that the version of the U.S. that we saw against Paraguay, Australia, and then honestly, even against Turkey, where the U.S. played well, they just had individual errors that led to the Turkish goals.

And then even Bosnia and Herzegovina, like that, I think, is the real version of the U.S. Not always going to look like the Paraguay game where everything fell into place perfectly, but like that level, intentionality and the way that they were working together both on and off the ball. And we saw that under Burrhalter at times. And I think we saw more of it over the course of those first four games until it disappeared entirely in the fifth. I am willing to write off that fifth game because of

Trump's interference and everything that dude touches turns to shit. And so like I'm not surprised at all how it ended. And I'm willing to ride with that with Pochitino. I think it can work. He is a very good coach up until, and this is true of all coaches, up until the players stop buying it. And that's where the buyout aspect of it comes. Because if the players sense that he is not committed, that the Tottenham job is open and he wants to go back to London, or that, go ahead, Tom. No, no, no, continue. When you're done, your point.

Or that, you know, he wants to go to Marseille or A.C. Milan. that is when the vibes and the culture gets undermined. And that is when team stop performing effectively. It's mentality, it's buy-in. It is all the things that we can't sit here and quantify. And every coach loses that at some point. And my concern, obviously, is that at some point over the next two years, definitely over the next four,

Pachino is going to have that job. It's going to be reported. the players are going to know, the players are going to stop being thrilled, and that will be reflected on the field. And then one last point on it, it was important to get this done now, because the window next month, we're six weeks away from the window, it's four games.

Like, that is a huge window. It's a huge chance to sort of lay the foundation for what this next two-year run-up directly into the Copa America, which is an important tournament for us. it is a huge chance and we could not afford to just have an interim we could not afford to just have the roll the ball out like we needed our coach

to be there and to be getting this damn thing underway so one more point on the long-term view poeutrino spoke with a small group of reporters this morning and henry bushnell was one of them there and pochstino was that directly basically will you be here in four years and i thought it was an interesting answer i thought it was an honest answer and and i appreciate it

He didn't say 100% yes. It was, we signed a contract with the intention of being here. Like there was no point in signing a contract without, and I'm paraphrasing it, without having that idea because that's not nice for anybody. It's all bad. But he goes, quote, the problem is four years is a long time. You never know what can happen in soccer. Today, people really love you.

But in the future, maybe that changes that feeling. He continues on. That's why for us, every time we sign a contract, it is to go to the last day of the contract. but things change in soccer. So basically, I believe him when he, Jesus Perez and that staff are committed in this moment. And I guess I appreciate that he's not

treating us like we're dumb and saying, no, I'll definitely be here in four years because if an offer comes in nine months that he wants, he's not going to be held to that. So in some aspects, I appreciate the honesty, but he didn't say, yeah, no, yes, I'll be here in four years. We talked about this a bit last week when the reports came out,

but here's a little bit of the details we've sort of gotten. What Tom mentioned with the buyout, it seems very important because it does seem to set the stage for the U.S. maybe if this were to happen to be able to fund their own run at the next coach and not have to go to donors and try and help get that done. We should. We should make that point, right? This is Ken Griffin, is that his name? A billionaire. Yeah, a billionaire superfan is paying for Pachitino's con. Potch is making a ton of money on this one. It is coming straight from a billionaire.

it is not coming from USSF. And there is another donor. So it was Ken Griffin and Scott Goodwin initially. The other name of our, there is another name that that is part of the donors here. This is perfection. I got the rundown here. I'm scrolling through it and you guys just ripping from the back pocket.

I love it. So it was a $6 million salary per year when Pachitino took over and there was a raise on that for this new deal. So we know that it is still heavily funded by donations. We know that is somewhere north of $6 million per year. And then, Doyle, there is language around the release that while his focus will be the men's senior national team, there is going to be work throughout the youth teams and the federation to help grow the game and build up the federation. Yeah, I mean, maybe he'll start his own training center like Yergan did and start bilking all of the national team programs,

charging them double to create that nest egg. I'm fine with this. I don't know what it means in practice. But if it does mean he and Steve Chorundalo and who's the U-20s coach now, is a Gonzales Cigaris, and anyway, if it means that he's going to be having powwows with the youth national team coaching tree and talking about. and talking about player integration and uniformity of style and flexibility of style and all that thing. I think that's great.

I don't think it's game-changing. It wouldn't be a make or break aspect of the job for me. But I think more communication with a guy who's accomplished a lot and he has. I think that can only help. And like the style of play, Maricio Pocitino wants to play and at times has played with the U.S., that's a style of play I like. So if he gets Steve Taranolo to understand that we should have midfielders out there, guys who can actually pass the ball. I knew this was going. Maybe that makes Steve Taranolo a better head coach.

So I don't think this is a problem at all. Rob Valentino is the U20 head coach right now for the U.S. Gonzalez Sigaris is in a rotation with U-17s because there's a yearly World Cup now. So I believe someone's 17, someone's 16s, they stay with the group over the course of a two-year side. the next one moves down and takes over. Jeremy Hall, I believe, is with the U-18s and a part of this program as well. But a number of coaches being involved,

which I think I talked about a little bit last week, I think could be really interesting for U.S. soccer is can you bring in just more smart soccer people and can you have them develop around a Mauricio Pocitino and learn the crafts and the skills around coaching, which is what happened with Luis Della Fuente and Lionel Scaloni with their programs and obviously ended up in a World Cup final. All right.

Let me ask you guys this. What how many jobs are out there? Vacation Doyle. Oh, how many jobs are out there that you, that you think, come open in November, Potch would leave the U.S. for? Like 50.

I would assume that the, what do we call them, the 15 clubs, the 20 clubs, I assume most of them he would leave for. So it's the five jobs in Syria. It's Byron. It's, I mean, if Athletical Majority ever became open. I know he has his allegiances with Espaniel and all that,

but it's what, the three or four clubs in Spain. And I think the question would be, obviously, his connection to Tottenham would be like, is Aston Villa or Newcastle won that he would move for? I think that's sort of the end of the line in terms of those 15 to 20 jobs. I think any Premier League club in London? Okay.

Oh, you think even like a Crystal Palace or a Fulham? Honestly. Yeah, because that's like home for him. Yeah. The one I find interesting is, do you think Italy reached out? I know they were in their own chaos. I know they ended up with Mancini. So I guess my point is, is he not on that level for everyone?

Or is it that was pep or an Italian? So I think it was never pep. I think the pep screen, like reading the tea leaves, the guy who is the president of the Italian FAA, and he's a new. he's new in that position he sort of arranged it so that it would be a cluster F because he wanted Mancini

from the beginning because they're buddies and so he knew Pep would say no then they immediately went to Pierlo and he was like yeah go to Pierlo because it was going to be a disaster because of the gambling stuff with Russia once Pierlo

pulled himself out then Maldini and Leonardo had to pull themselves out and that left all the power with him to then appoint Mancini. Tom, on the weekend that pussy dies, the girl's going to bring this an anti-Italian redneck to the job. Oh. It's an American. Yeah, sometimes, you know,

we'll rightly criticize or make jokes about the, like what's going on in U.S. soccer or anything that can be silly or funny. My God, Italian football is down bad. The other one that's interesting is, I mean, Scolone's only ever done one job, right? You assume he stays. I think Messi will stay through Copa America.

Like, I think Messi's going to play until he can't play anymore. But that would have been the other obvious one. I think Pochitino came out of this World Cup in as well as standing as any Argentine coach on the planet outside of Simeone, but has national team experience now. But I assume in the negotiation process, he put out feelers, and that job's not going to open up. Okay, let's talk MLS. Let's dig into it. Let's go into the best things we saw this weekend. as we do every single weekend, Tom, why don't you get us started?

Yeah, the best thing I saw was Evander. Man, sometimes he can be frustrating because he can be a Maverick Mercurial. But there are what, like five to seven, like an incredibly high number of days where it's just, oh, Evander's taking over today and nothing else matters right now. They beat San Jose 4-2. He has a goal and three assists, two primary. The goal was from about 37 yards out, and that was the best thing that I saw. And the best thing that I heard was after the game,

Evander was talking about it and immediately said, I apologize for taking that shot because Pat Noonan, while Evander was at the All-Star game, this wasn't a meeting behind Evander's back. He just happened to not be there, was saying,

we need to stop taking dumb shots from distance that lead to bad turnovers. We need to be smarter in our decision-making. And Evander said that he apologized for taking the shot, but maybe that didn't apply to him because he wasn't at the meeting. Man, when he's on,

he is a top three most fun and best- player in the league. And this weekend was just yet another reminder of like when he's on nothing else matters and it's just such a joy. Yeah. It seemed like San Jose were enjoying watching him as well. They might have wanted to try marking him.

The buildup to the Tom Barlow goal, you could see there's a level of confusion in San Jose's defensive shape that just like that was not there the first few months of the season. But man, am I worried about the goalkeeper? Because, because Tom is as perfectly as Evander struck that ball,

Angus Gunn did not even jump until it was past him. And it's not like Evander's, like, struck it as hard as a ball has ever been. Stop. What are we doing here? Tom, he didn't even jump. This guy didn't even jump. You're such a dork.

We're talking about one of the best goals of the year, and you're like, well, actually, the goal he could have gotten there a little bit quicker. Come on. Don't. Doyle is applying for a job at ESPNFC. So he's got to get the anti-gokeeper rhetoric. You're overall point, Oyo, about being unconvincent about the goalkeeper, that's fine.

Can't give up poor goals. Right. That shot should have been, that shot should have been saved. God, you're no fun. One more fun point of this. The same way that Carlos Hill, Erlino Messi, or name any number 10 in his league, gets an assist for a beautiful, int perfect throughball that cuts out defenders or sets up a tap-in. Obino Woboto gets.

an assist for rolling the ball six yards to Evander, who took four touches and then put it in the top corner for 37 yards out. And that makes me happy. Honestly, because I saw complaints about this in one of our posts or something, of all the bad things MLS does, cooking their own stats to make people look better is like not the worst thing that they do. Normally it makes the league look worse what they do. So you might as well have players with assists. It doesn't cost anyone anything else. Well, Bodo would get an assist for that anywhere on the planet. Yeah, fair. I mean, Biscuette's got a famous assist on a Messi goal like that against Real Madrid. Yeah.

Where like it's 60 yards from goal and Bousquet is facing his own goal and he's like lays the ball off to Messi. He then just dribbles all. And I think it's like finishes sliding past Sergio Ramos. Like and of course past Gaseas. And it's like the best assist of Sergio Biscuit's career. That, uh, you remember the Orlando Ford, Romero, Romero Enrique? His dad was the person who laid a five yard pass to deal. Diego Maradona before he drew 10 English players and scored.

And he joked for the rest of his life that, you know, he set up that goal and, you know, Maradona needed him. What a great bit to do a, you know, that guy did a million appearances and opened up with the same joke every time. And in the 80s, you could just do that. It's like, me and Wilt had 102 points in Hershey, Pennsylvania one time. It's like that bit. That's a great bit to have in the back pocket.

And it's a dad joke because your kid plays. Okay. For me, I thought, you know, obviously the opening, what, three hours of, of Saturday evening were like electric, multiple two to three goal performances, two-twos, three-twos, everything. The one that stood out to me is the DC United home comeback against Nashville. And I was texting with Douglas, who was in the building, as well as Valer, who was there covering it for Nashville at 615 soccer.

And it was El Salvadoran Heritage Night, which is like always going to be a winner for DC United. But like it felt like a playoff atmosphere. and I didn't think they were great in this game. I thought Nashville controlled a lot of this game, which to do on the road kind of shows where the quality level is. But when DC are direct, they're dangerous, and they have found a way to get both the forwards around the box consistently and create chances and have chances for them.

And Louis Mouton, the assist on the second goal is something we will literally never see again. If you haven't seen it yet, he gets knocked over on the top of the box and falling down, laying on the ground, he flicks his feet up, literally like a scorpion kick, but he's laying on the ground and plays the ball directly to Taiberivo for the equalizing goal after coming from behind 2-0 against Nashville.

And the building went nuts. Like there was beer flying everywhere, people were screaming. There was a goal called off that would have cut it to 2-1. The building went electric, and I think that really spurred the team on to get all the way. So, listen, if you're going to pack the building for a team like D.C. that has struggled for years now, give people a product that they want to be around, give people an experience that they want to be a part of.

And we know D.C. can be the best atmosphere in Major League Soccer because it was for the first 10 to 15 years in the history of this league. And so to see it sort of come together where they've been better this year. And for the atmosphere to be back again was really, really cool to see. I think he meant that assist.

What do you guys say? I mean, what else was he trying to get? I know Doyle's answer. now he feels bad that I made fun of him for being no fun before, but that's okay. I'll hear this. No, clearly he meant it. Clearly he meant it. Dr. Suggott saw it all happening in his mind's eye when he made that signing for $7 million back in January.

Listen, it takes a special talent to do something like that. Talent costs money. Come on, Doyle. You know that. That's what chat TV tells us. Where are you guys on this on this DC United team? I to me the example from this weekend is there's grit there's a little bit of like togetherness with this and in the middle of a playoff race there are teams that will give up on the wrong night and will fall apart and it doesn't feel like DC's one of them so like to our conversation from last week there's probably enough in this for them to continue to be in a playoff race until at least the final day yeah that sounds about right I do I'm not sure I buy the the chance creation though obviously they just didn't have any issues with that in this one.

But that to me comes back to, you know, Nashville still looking very flat coming out of the World Cup break, especially in Central Midfield. They haven't been able to sort of dictate games the way they were able to the first half of the year. Okay. I had two more things to throw out there from this weekend. One is, if you like, comebacks, go watch the highlights of the Tampa Louisville game. Louisville went up three zero in Tampa. Tampa won 5-4 in like one of the craziest games you will ever see. All of those goals came in the second half.

It went four to two even and Tampa still came back. And Vermont Green, baby, back-to-back national championships. This is what we do. Get stuffed Flint, Michigan. You just got flinted. You got lit on fire. You got flinted. Get out of here.

So congratulations to everyone in Vermont on another championship. Don't call it a dynasty, baby, because they're back-to-back. So watch out next year once again. Okay, Doyle, let's go to you. The best thing I saw was actually an unsavable shot. It was that Brian Vera screamer versus the revs. I can't remember the last time I saw a ball struck that perfectly. Any one of his, he's got like three of these.

He does. He has three true thunder bastards. This one was a level above. This one was like, it was in the net before anybody realized what was happening. And I'm not like, I'm not a piss missile guy. I like the 27-past buildup to the Robert Levindosky goal. Like, to me, that is the, you know, the platonic ideal of a goal in soccer. But sometimes it's just nice to watch someone step up and rip it as hard as he can.

And that was the only way Montreal were going to score it. Like, they had nothing. This was probably New England's best performance of the year, like collectively. And that just changed the game. So it was, it was. it was a sick moment like that is a that is a goal i will continue you know what it reminded me of was the jimmy triori one for Seattle oh 13 years ago in never walk a guy off champions league against tegris i think it was so this one like this is that level of a goal i'll still be

talking about it 13 years from now tom wasn't the goalkeeper's fault this time so the selective case for Doyle. If this was a Scottish goalkeeper and San Jose and an American goalkeeper, it might be a different story. Okay. One thing to note from the game, there was some like fight after the door to German goal.

Sounds like fans were sort of coming after him throughout the game. And then he went and celebrated directly in front of them, caused the fight. I think Sebastian Bresa trying to break it up. It sounds like the chance were because he is Israeli. It came on the same day in which a kosher restaurant was burned down by an arson in Montreal.

So I don't have anything grand statement to make. But as someone who's Jewish, I'll tell you, not always the best time to be Jewish in the world right now, specifically. So if you know anyone Jewish, just be there for them if you can. And I don't know, the world's broken. So we can all be broken together, which is fun, all as a group. OK, let's dig into the top headlines of the weekend

that we didn't hit. Let's start with Robert Lewandowski. Tom, he's in Chicago, baby. The Polish legend has arrived. and arrived pretty impressively in this one. So we talked about a Sincis San Jose game. We talked about a DC United tie, a USL game, Vermont Green,

a centerback scoring for Montreal and a two-two-tie tie with the New England, all before Lohendowski's first two goals for Chicago. That's what we do. So I love this show. And I love the goals themselves. The first one, individualistic, in a lot of ways, I think he created the space

for that goal himself, and he made a really nice finish. That was a great reminder of all of our conversation about the system, the structure, listen, if you have, you know, whoever the 2026 Brian White is, if you traded for that person in a Greg Burhalter system, they would score goals. This was like, oh, yeah, that's Robert Lewandowski, and this is what's going to happen when you put a legend in this position.

Obviously, Hugo Kuyper's is very, very good, too. That was a Robert Levendosky goal. And then his second goal, that was a Chicago fire Greg Berthorter goal, a 27-past buildup, as Doyle hinted at before, that ends with Louis finishing it. And if the team can do both of these, there are still questions to be made about the midfield now, obviously Imbo Kazi's injured.

So the team has a few more questions than they did a month ago. But as I think we all said, we were never worried that whether or not Lohendalski was going to score goals or not in this team and going to fit in this team. And this was just a nice reminder before, you know, in two weeks from now, it's like, whoa, Lomendalski. He's got one goal and six appearances.

Like, are we sure this was right? Like, no, obviously this was a good signing. The one thing that stood out to me, because, you know, as I've said over and over, the Inter-M Miami game looked like a guy who was like, are you fucking kidding me with this? We're going to play in this heat right now. My first game back. And then he came off the bench against NYCFC.

This was the first real spell we got to see him play soccer. And Doyle, what stood out to me is how fluid the front line can be because he does want to go out wide and get the ball. He does want to drop deep. I mean, there was a moment of playing. play in this game where Zincernago came to the left wing, Levantowski came to left wing, Bomba came to the left wing, and they interchange and change the shape, and it creates space for someone else to make a run, and it feels like that's where the advancement can come.

In possession, it feels like Levinowski can unlock a couple more pieces for them in the fluidity of the front four. Maybe. I'm not convinced yet. I didn't actually think they were that good in this game, and I thought that the level fluidity actually left them exposed at times. Now, they did do a really good job in those moments of tracking defensively and they actually didn't let Charlotte get anything on the break and if you don't let Charlotte get anything on the break they're not going to beat you so that that was job pretty well done but I actually thought that they were better earlier in the season when they were a little more structured and I do think part of that is it's almost like a

4-4-2 now and when Greg Berhalter started toying with that back in April I assumed it was because he wanted to sort of lay the groundwork and figure out if Levindovsky and Kuyper's could play together. And we obviously did not get to see that. Now that Kipers is gone and they have that open D.P. slot and they are going to fill it. They, like, I think that they are going to head back to either a 433 or a 4231. I hope so. And I think that will actually kind of limit Levindovsky. roaming a little bit and allow him to to I don't want to say just be the nine but like more

primarily being in and around the box than we saw from him on Saturday night because you don't want him burning that energy pulling wide you actually want Jonathan Bamba or Philip Zincernagel playing one v one or playing with an overlapping fullback and I Burrhalter seems as well were always been good at that and I guess I'll tee you up here Tom the porting out of out of Italy and I can confirm I've heard it here as well Kevin DeBroyne is back on the menu man I'll reserve the right to add I don't I want to be careful but I don't have anything confirmed there so whether it's him I hope that is a DP 10

because to your point Doyle you talked about Lovodzke and I think that's all correct I'll pivot that part of the conversation to I don't want Jonathan Bomba and Philip Zincrenoggle playing like wide midfielders rather than wingerer's you know what I mean, as silly or as like splitting hairs as that might sound, like this, if you're going to play with two out and out strikers or if it's going to be Lewandowski and somebody like, somebody like Robin Lowe does it was this weekend? And why is it not Hugo Kuyper's, right? And so I just think it'd be really silly for that to be the case. And it wouldn't fit. Well, Hugo Kipers isn't on Chicago fire. So that's what I'm saying. So why, why would that happen if it, if you

were going to, I was shocked to see them in this structure after selling Kipers. It just doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. So I hope that it's a 433 or 423, whatever you want to call it, more freedom for Bomba and Zincernoggle going forward and then putting a 10 or an 1⁄2 for somebody like that in the midfield. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean... The point, though, with having Ludd up top playing kind of as a second forward is at least at times he's going to drop back into the midfield and give you control there. I didn't think it happened enough, which is why I think inevitably this has to end up just being a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-33.

But the reality, which we've talked about over and over, is Levantowski's going to be the best chance creator on the team when he drops in because he's Robert Lewandowski. Like, that's the reality of having this player on your team. So you're going to try and get him touches on the ball and you're going to try and get him involved and you see how it helps. Like the goal he scores, the second goal he scores, he creates the chance. He starts the movement at midfield, right? He finds underlapping runs, then he makes the run up the middle of the field. like he has to be a part of everything that happens. Otherwise, you're overspending for Hugo Kuyper's again.

And a guy who's just at the point of everything you create. Obviously, that would shift if Kevin DeBrena joined the team. That's like kind of one of those things that's going to change. And if it's not DeBriana, then they're going to go out and get another DP attacker, right? Right, right. And DeBriana is going to leave Napoli. Like that seems written in stone. No.

And yeah, to get to your point. and somebody if it's that profile. And money won't be an issue for this team. And I'm very excited, very curious to see what the changes are because, listen, so it hurts with Embo Kazi out. But this is a team that I think that they're clearly behind Miami and Nashville. But with the right signing, and that's doing a lot of heavy lifting there. But like with the right signing, this is one, this is the third best team in the east of the bullet, I think.

So I'm really excited and curious to see what this team does because there are other teams. And we'll talk about it later. you know, Kansas City, L.A. Galaxy, they're both getting closer on signing DPs. And, like, that's, that could be, like, Chicago are one of the best teams in a league right now. It could be one of the best teams in the league. They were so close. Like, this D.P. spot is so very consequential to what happens this season, the trophy races for this season, that I'm very, very excited to see what happens.

The reports around Kevin DeBrina are Besheektis, I believe, or Galatasarai. And then San Diego also got mentioned. This is a report out of Italy. They don't have a D. They don't have a D. spot. So they don't have a DP spot. They also have been connected to Brunna in the past, which I assume is where it came from. Don't worry, Tom. The other one's Inter Miami. So they've got open DP spots as well. I don't know, maybe

LA, New York, one of the big ones. Maybe he'll play in Madison Square Garden, you know, one of the big Italian clubs that get mentioned every single time. Let's dig into some of the big comebacks that we had over the course of the weekend. Let's start with Philly. A, come from behind against 10-man Atlanta. They win it. on a 96 minute equalizer, a 97th minute winner. Miguel Homeroon scores the ugliest goal on the planet after Atlanta goes down a man to make it 1-0. It ends up being 2-0 for Atlanta before Philly makes it all the way back.

Tom and Ryan Richter now, three wins in three matches as head coach. I'll start on the other side first. Last week, I made the joke that in our Discord, all I had to say to Atlanta fans was, I'm so sorry, I don't know what to say. And every time you think you find rock bottom, it's like the ANS post-a-Coglu quote. Every time I think it's light at the end of the tunnel,

it's just the headlight for another train. Atlanta goes down a man, and then they go up 2-0. They go down a man in the 26-minute. In the 70th minute, they're up 2-0. In the 95th minute, they're up 2-1. And they walk away with zero points to a team that has been neck-and-neck at the bottom of the Uson Conn from the most season.

there's a humanitarian side of this that I feel bad to the thing. That is like where my brain and my heart is going first. But on the positive side of things, and because it's difficult to like break down, like analyze, at Doyle would say the tactics free zone of the 96 and 97 minute winners, one of which by the equalizer's new PR again. Boom, the American number nine.

Al-Doh, very nice finish, by the way. His first M. Wells goal for the club record signing for the union. He knew nothing about it. Yeah. It's still a good finish. Listen, man. But so for Philly, and you want to be careful not to be like, yeah, they won because they were up a man. Like, it was just such a weird performance, a weird game overall.

That's three wins for this team. What we know is the vibes are much better. The ideas are much clearer and obviously much more buy-in from all these players. Cabin Sullivan's a full-time starter, and he's taking the leap as you wrote, what, two weeks ago, Doyle. Quinn Sullivan, when he's able to start, will be the other attacking midfielder. And all of a sudden, a starting 11 of Andre Blake, Frankie Westfield, Pierre, and then another centerback, maybe it's Harial, Kai Wagner, and then the 4-2-2-2 of Lukich and Donny Jean-Jacques as the holding midfielers, the Sullivan brothers as the attacking midfielers, and then Alaskin Damiani as the forwards, all of a sudden this all makes complete and total sense. And for me, the Philadelphia Union are a for real team chasing the playoff line, which a month ago would have been the dumbest thing anybody ever said. Bro, forget the playoffs.

Leagues Cup. Philadelphia Union are a Leagues Cup super star team. Kevin Sullivan with the Leaks Cup championship. That's how you submit your legacy, Tom. That's what you do. If he wins that, he could go play for Lama on loan for Manchester City because he will have accomplished everything he can do in North America with the Philadelphia Union if they win Leagues Cup.

Okay, so where we sit right now, 2026 MLS coach of the year, Jack Cassidy versus Ryan Richter, right? Two best coaches we have ever seen in the game. The Ron Cuo Chois up there too now. Wild dramatic comeback. Neil Pierre, as you mentioned, another goal for him, but I think the biggest part, getting the starts,

a difference maker for them at the centerback position. We talked about McCona officially being sold last weekend. Casamiro, big home debut, scores his first goal for Inter Miami. Unfortunately, accounts for the Columbus crew on an own goal. in what ended up being a two-two game and Suarez scored, I don't know,

even a weekend with Brian Vera's goal. Maybe the best goal of the weekend. An unbelievable finish, Doyle. Come on. No, Brian Varas was the best goal of the weekend. So just stop with that nonsense. But that was great. That was Luis Suarez having an all-time great soccer IQ

and understanding a turnover there. Great work, by the way, from Yanuk Bright to force that turnover. leads to a chance. And he's always had the skill to take chances that other guys wouldn't even see and turn them into goals. He's got, what, 10 goals in 11 games now since really getting back into the location? He has seven goals in the last four games. It was a hat trick against Philly in the final game before the World Cup.

It was two goals against Chicago coming out of it, a goal against Montreal, and now a goal and an assist against Columbus. And the funny thing is, I didn't think that this was a particularly, well-played games. A game, like three of the four goals were kind of hilarious, including the Bryce Mendez one. This was one of like three weather-delayed games this game as well. But it was, it was super intense. It felt like a playoff game. And, you know, Philly have come up since Ryan Richter took over and obviously they are at the very least going to be dangerous spoilers during this playoff race. I think Columbus is going to get into the playoffs. They have rediscovered a ton of who they used to be under Laurent Cartois.

Obviously, they don't have a Cucho. They don't, I think, even have a Diego Rossi. Could, could Bryce Mendes be that, though? But I is. So, sorry. No, I just like he's the Carolina Panthers quarterback. Sorry, I made that up as a joke. I have no idea.

That's not me. I'll figure it out when I'm in Bilbao. Yeah, Doyle's name. I don't think he's as mobile as either Cucho or Diego Rossi were and that mobility was one of the defining characteristics of this team when they were, in my opinion, the best MLS team I have ever seen. So I don't think that he necessarily gives them that, but obviously he gives them final third quality anyway, and they hadn't had a lot of that this year. So the culture feels like it's back in place. And that's the biggest thing. And with that

has come a return to the three, four, two, one, a return to trying to get. get 60% possession against everybody and a return to getting results, even in games where they were probably second best, which was the case in this one. But they, like, it's like what we were talking about with Pachitino. It's like, yeah, the players are bought in. So you're going to get that extra little effort. And that was not happening at all under Henrik Rietstrom.

And the crew were smart to cut bait when they did. we went the other direction on this last week we thought max arfston was going to stay he did not so we have not done a show since then i just realized that uh so tom max arston no longer going to play for the crew of this season he is part of i don't know the nickname we landed on i heard mls borough which was not the worst thing in the world but it didn't feel great about it middle's crew columbus burrow because remember all three of those guys that they signed of columbus crew ties because sebastian burralter was in the academy when uh gregg was the head coach of this season team. So yeah, I'm sure by the time, nothing's been announced at 11 a.m. on Monday, but I'm dead certain

for the majority of people who aren't listening live, this will have gone official. sources telling me that it's a fee up to 7.5 million. I don't know what the guaranteed fixed fee is, but I had heard the crew wanted something like this, like when I heard the asking price, and that's kind of why negotiations were going back and forth for a little bit. And the club felt that they were in a position to ask for this because he signed a contract, I believe last year, or somewhere around that line. So they had the long-term security, and they wanted like they were obviously they let him go. They're like,

we were not going to sell him for nothing or sell him for cheap, but we do want to help him get to Europe. We know that's where he wants to go. And Burl ends up coming up, and I think it's a win-win for all parties. And he joins Aidan Morris. He joins Sebastian Burralter at Middlesbrough,

who lost in the playoff final to the promotion playoff final, I believe. They were definitely in the promotion playoffs. This is a team that will be viewed as, so obviously the three teams that get relegated from Premier League are always like basically the top three

in terms of odds or expectations. to go back up. Burrow, I think, of the teams that remained in the championship are viewed as the one with the best chance to get promoted. Like, this isn't a mid-table team. This is a team that if they're not top six,

it's a huge disappointment. And honestly, fifth or six is a disappointment. So this is a team that is on the fringes of the Premier League, and they have turned to Major League Soccer for some of their key signings, and Arfston will join, Arfston and Burlter join Aidan Morse.

I'm never going to tell anyone to Will, watch English soccer. But if you, if you feel the need to watch an English team, Middlerboro is not a bad choice. Like they play, they play actual soccer. They want to keep the ball.

They, they try, you know, they try to end up around 60% possession and they use it to a purpose. We saw that actually this weekend. They played Espaniel in a, in a friendly.

Oh, one of your own, Doyle. Yeah, right. And Seth Burhalter was awesome in that game. like orchestrating everything through the midfield. They scored one goal. It was like a 15-pass buildup and like six of them were Seb Burrhalter. It was, they're going to be a fun team to watch. Max Arson was one of my favorite players in this league to watch.

It wasn't a win, win, win, win, because my party was involved. And I will say, like, this is, this is MLS playing, paying the perception tax. The perception is that MLS is a worse league than it is. So a player like Max Arfston ends up going to Middlesborough for $7.5 million. If it was the other way around, this would have been a $20 million championship player coming to MLS. Like, MLS will pay $20 plus million for a Josh Sargent or in a manual Lotte Lottet. But championship teams only have to pay $7.5 million for Max Arfton. I'm the biggest Max Arvston fan, but comparing a fullback to a center forward is a little bit tough.

And lock in boys. Their competitive debut, Middowsboro versus Rexum, the league cup. Oh, wow. Let's go. The soul of Doyle leaving his body through his ears. The FX TV show is going to be electric for that one. By the way, Spassion and Burrhalter. Come on.

First team contract with the crew, nine appearances. Let's go, Tom. Wake up. Wake up. Did he not? Yeah, because he went to Austin. He went to Austin FC on loan as a first team. And then he came back.

Okay. If you're listening via Serious Radio, we're going to depart from you now. So thank you for being here. Make sure to search soccer-wise on the on-demand player or anywhere you get your podcast to listen to the full episode. We've still got the ice cream shop to open up as well as a Leaks Cup to preview. Let's finish out the games from the weekend with Jack Cassidy, Coach of the Year, Doyle, as the timbers, I don't know, end the Seattle Sounders for all time. the six straight loss for Seattle. And Brian Schmitzer would like you to report that he's not mad.

He would like you to know he's not mad and don't report that he's mad because he specifically said he wasn't mad coming out of that game. And the timbers do it once again, the second win over the Sounders in two weeks as they sort of bounce back under their interim coach. Yeah, the timbers are playing good ball. They've shifted their formation. They're playing a 433 now.

And it was Diego Chara playing as like the back point. The fact that he can still do that. play as a solo demit in MLS at age 40. The guy is unreal. But what is really unlocked is Kamal Miller, the version of him that we saw four years ago in Montreal, that was so good. Like, we're finally getting to see this Kamal Miller again

because they're sort of, Jack Hasid, he's done a nice job of, like, staggering the heights of the central midfield, which gives multiple progressive passing options and suddenly they're just putting the ball on Kamal Miller's foot and he is getting the ball to Christopher Veldah, he's getting the ball to David DeCosta, who suddenly looks like a good player,

which there were a lot of questions about that three months ago. And the left back is getting the ball in spots to support the attack rather than having to make the attack with everything scrambled, which means that they have a better rest defense than they did under Phil Neville. So all this stuff that I think a lot of people had identified it as, really big problems have, I don't want to say it's all been solved, right? There's still stuff that is going to go wrong. And I'm, you know, this is this team is not a contender, but they're playing much better,

more, I don't know, coherent soccer than they have in half a decade. And it's been fun to watch. And I didn't, I thought they would get better when they made the coaching change. I didn't think it would be as pronounced as it's been through four games. They had 14 points under Phil Neville in, what was it, four, six, 14 games. They've got 10 points in four games since Neville has left. So it's gotten a lot better, really fast. And now their new head coach is going to take over after all of this,

which is an interesting way to sort of bring him in. On the flip side for Seattle, they get the Paul Ariola injury, five minutes into this game. Kosor Wienzi comes on. He scores right after that. to give them a one zero lead trying to finally break this five game losing streak and they end up still losing tom um there's a lot of angst there's a lot of conversation around this from seattle fans i know a lot of it centers around transfer policy stuff and how slow they've been and the other issue is how many holes they have

and a lot of that is injury based what do you make of sort of what's going on in seattle yeah there's pressure on bryd's semester because that's what we do and that's what fans do because it's easier to change the coach anything else but like make no mistake about it it's not it's not on him um of course everybody can do a little better he's not he's not void of criticism this isn't a free pass and like he's an angel but like they don't spend money man they just don't what do you expect um kim kee he was brought back that was a huge story has he played like four games since since he was signed what like 18 months i mean i think he's on a supplemental deal he's like my point is yeah you talk about the like the injuries, yeah, that happens.

And now Andrade's been out for a while and re-injured. Like, that sucks. A Christian rolled on. Like, I understand that a lot of teams would struggle without some of these players. But, like, Doyle, we were giving them so much credit for their pipeline and their depth and the things that they've done. It's almost like load them into we just really don't need to spend any money whatsoever at all. And I think that they've left Schmetzer and this team out to dry with, again, it's a salary cap. So there's only so much you can do.

You can't have extra starters at every position, but you could spend a little bit, you could spend a couple dollars in discretionary spend, and they just don't. And they've been like this for a while. It's been papered over by good coaching and good signings, I think, by the front office. Pedro de la Vega, they spent real money on.

He's been injured, and that was, even without the injuries, that wasn't a slam dunk. Like, he showed for four to six weeks, like a very good player. Other than that, he hasn't been. When was the last time that they spent discretionary money on anybody. It was,

yeah, it was Pedro de la Vega. But like, even so before that, what was the other one? Yeah, uh, Leo Chu,

I think. It's crazy, man. Like, Garth Lagerway was still at the club. Garth Lagerwey's three new clubs or something since then. And it's in the 2026 major league soccer, you cannot compete this way. Yeah,

I don't know if I agree with that. Because they, they did win a title last year and they were fine. They were, they were more than, they were a top three team in the Western conference. until they just got hit by the mother load of injuries, right? Both Roldons, Yai Marguz-Gomez Andrade,

obviously Delavega still hurt, Jordan Morris got hurt. Like Peckovich was playing good ball, and then he got hurt as well towards ACL. So I don't know if I agree with you that you can't compete playing with this kind of roster build in MLS. What I will say now is that with all the injuries, that they've had and De La Vega's lack of durability, they do need to go out and spend now. I think they need to go out and spend a U2.

They have two open U22 spots. Use one of them to spend on a winger who can actually beat players off the dribble because what we see time and again now with the Sounders is their midfield does a good job of opening up these situations where wide players are in 1 v1 situations, and they do not have.

Having had to sell, Georgia Manungu, and with De La Vega, none of their other wingers beat guys off the journal. They need a winger who does that, and then tilts the defense, the central defense, pulls them out of the middle a little bit, which if you think back to when the Sounders were the best team in MLS last year for three months,

it was because De La Vega and Menungu were doing that time and time again. And then suddenly the likes of El Sazai Diversario or Danny Mosovsky look like gold machines because they're not dealing with a compact defense in the back line year. They're actually creating dynamic superiority. They haven't been able to do that this year.

They're too predictable. The game is happening in front of the defense too much. And it's something that they should address in the transfer window. They do have the room to do that with a U-22 slot. And I think the frustration from the, fans. Like, I get, like, a lot of it is focused on the DPs because Jordan Morris can't stay healthy and Albert Rusnak has clearly lost a step. Like, I get that frustration is there,

and I think it's totally justified. But there's a way to do this and still squeeze that last bit of juice out of the DPs who are on the roster. Jordan Morris, one goal this season, seven goals last year had been double digits the three years in a row. Before that, and outside of the two years he's been hurt in the last decade, he's been double-digit goal score. So that loss has been huge, as you mentioned. Rusnak struggling as well. The problem is if you're going to be greater than the sum of your parts

and every piece goes together, when one falls apart, a lot of it chips away. So it's hard. No, no, we saw that. We've seen this with one falling apart and they're still really good. Seven fell apart, right? It's like how many teams. But there's not a single player on this team.

How many teams in this league could be missing seven or eight starters and go on the road and get a result? So then why are they missing seven to eight starters? Then that's the next thing. Well, I'm not a doctor, but it seems like their training staff is maybe not one of the league's best. I don't know, though. Okay. That would be the next question, I think, for this team, because it feels like this has been a number of years where they've had this. And it's one of the reasons that I think they feel like one of the deeper teams, because a lot of

lot of these guys like, you know, Tino Lopez play. So they get MLS minutes. So you feel like they have a deeper group. The flip side of that is they have to play a lot of guys. It feels like consistently. Part of that is they challenge across a lot of competitions. So they play a lot of games every year compared to other MLS teams. And then part of that might be top in spending on the first roster or on the first team roster. So what do you what do you want them to do? I would like them to sign Hugo Kuypers. Why not just go do that? So buy out one of

De La Vega, Morris, or Rusnack? Yeah. Oh, I mean, in my ideal world, Morris should never hit anything. Homegrown in Major League Soccer should never hit any of these categories, and that's insane. Okay, so I'm not talking about your ideal world. I'm talking about fixing the Seattle Sounders right now.

Yeah. If you had bought out DeL Vega, you could play half-ass soccer and pound crosses in, and Kuypers would get you enough goals to get results. Kuyper's got 11 goals two years. ago. Okay, great. Who's going to be the double digit goal score on this team? Who's going to be their leading goal score? I mean, it, that is unclear at this point. So do you think, does that, does that get you just, just adding another center forward to this group? Does that get you what you

want? So, like, you, you could tell me the same level of player on the wing is fine. So you want them at this point. I would say there are. Adrian Hanauer comes to you and says, what should we do? Your answer is buy out the final two years of Pedro de la Vegas contract and add a DP winger. Yeah. How many players in Major League Soccer

do you think are match winners by themselves consistently? I don't know. I'm not prepared to answer the question. Okay, but it's somewhere between 15 to 25, right? Okay. Is one of those on Seattle and has one of those been on Seattle since Nico Ledero took a step back?

So I think what we saw last year is that when De La Vega is healthy. He is a match winner by himself. Okay. I just don't rate him that highly. I said consistently because the thing to do it consistently is the hard part, right? Like I'm not saying there are a hundred players in Major League Soccer who on their day can do it. Will they do it 12 to 15 times a year or in a playoff series? And that's the other piece for Seattle, right?

Is the struggles in the playoffs are when teams hunker down and don't really care what it looks like. they have trouble breaking through and finding chances. That's what Acucho does for you. That's what Navander does for you. Seattle has not had that player since Nico took a step back physically. And that would be the ad. That would be the next step. That would be the thing to do.

Okay. So do you think that fixes the sounders then? Well, but first of all, how broken do you think the sounders? Because I feel like I'm crazy, I guess, because everybody is acting like this is now, you know, sporting Kansas City level bad. And I'm like, no, they're just all hurt. They get like both roll downs are going to be healthy by the middle of the month. And I think De La Vega is supposed to be too.

I know Yymar just got another injury, which is bad news for them. But I like Stuart Hawkins, you know, like, I just think, I think this team's going to be fine. Like they're not going to contend. They won't contend unless Adrian Hanauer goes out and gets another high level contributor with the U-22. slot. I agree with you on that, but I don't think that this is a, oh, God, we need to panic and rip it all down because the system no longer works and the roster building philosophy no longer works. That's insane. No, I would agree with you. What I would say with you, what I would say is there is a lot of built-in advantages with Seattle, the environment, the culture, all of

these things. They are not maximizing it for trophies because it's fine. Even if it was all healthy, it would still be fine. It's not great. They are not in a conversation for the top three or four teams in MLS history. And you could argue with the foundational pieces that they have and the spine and the building blocks that they have, that if they had a piece like I just discussed, then we would be talking about Nonse's Columbus team, where it's four finals in three years and one of the great teams we've ever watched play. And Seattle has not done that. And my point was, and I'm glad that you kind of pushed back on it, Doyle, but my general point was to put this on Schmetser, if there are consequences for him, I think that is absolutely ludicrous. Is that even a thing?

Is that a thing or is that like, like, who's talking about? We are getting messages. It's in the Discord. We're getting messages on blue sky and. I've heard, I've heard real pressure. I've heard pressure. And I think that's, I think that's insane. Okay, let me keep us in Cascady here for a second, which is reports coming out this weekend, really positive, that there's a potential local buyer in Vancouver for the Vancouver Whitecaps.

It is headed by the former owner of the Vancouver Canucks, the NHL team, and would be, I think, a really good final solution for this Vancouver team. Obviously, having a local owner would be really good. Yeah, I know. I kind of walked myself into that one. I didn't know how to get out of it, and I didn't know where to go with it. So there we go. That's where we ended up. But it would be best case scenario for the Whitecaps if they could find someone

locally based because I think we saw with the crew. Any other like fake scenario of, oh, owner from outside the market who's super passionate about the market normally ends up with a team that gets moved. And then we do the Save the Crew fight and end up with a second team coming in in a different place. So this would be the ideal scenario. And then the last piece of news before we get to the ice cream shop, we have the meeting in New York City that Paul has made.

making his way to, to select the next commissioner of Major League Soccer, one that would replace Don Garber at the end of the year is what we heard. And there will be obviously some time for the handover to happen. What I have heard, the odds on favorite to be picked, is LAFC owner Larry Berg, who has been the owner of the team for almost a decade now, has been around Major League Soccer and fairly familiar. Tom, can you give us a little background on who he is and sort of what the feeling is of what he bring. Yeah, Larry Berg is someone that has a lot of respect from the owners in the room. And he's, I believe, a co-chair on the sporting committee, which is basically the group

that pushes and leads and makes decisions on sporting changes. And through Paul Tenorio's reporting and myself, he's somebody who is viewed as an ambitious owner and one that is helping trying to push the league forward. He would be in that group, you know, the Jorge Mas and, and, you know, insert any of the other bigger spending or forward-looking owners rather than the ones who I think are a little bit more slow playing the roster role changes and the spending changes. So he's got that for him. He's got the respect of the people within the league at the highest, highest levels.

And I'd be really excited to see what he'll do if he is indeed named commissioner on our voted commissioner on Monday or whenever we hear about it. For me, the biggest issues are the roster. Roster rule changes that need to happen in the media rights deal. The Apple TV deals up in the summer of 2029. The more immediate one for me is the roster rule stuff because that also informs the media rights deal. And two, I'll just be honest, I'm not smart enough in the business sense to lay out what

the future or the landscape of what the media rights will be in three years from now. And I'm much more comfortable and I feel a little bit smarter on the roster rule sides of things. So that's kind of where I'd like to focus. And that's something that whoever the commissioner is, I think is going to be Larry Berg, but whoever the commissioners, they have to push this through by the start of the calendar for change. Like next summer, it has to be. And, you know, a real league would have a runway for these teams to operate and know they would probably know right now

that the rules are changing in a year. But all of that is said, that is the number one thing for me on the horizon for Larry Berg or Nathanson, whoever becomes a commissioner. It is worthwhile to point out of. David Nathanson is a minority owner of the Seattle Sounders. The assumption is that either person, if selected, would have to relinquish their share of the team they own so that they're a neutral party as the commissioner. But it is worth mentioning that they both kind of have a tie-in to one team. So if that's a worry, unfortunately, you can't avoid it with the two options and two selections.

But it feels like Larry Berg is someone who's just been around for a while. And so in entering this conversation of the things that Tom mentioned need to be done, he is at least, well versed on what has happened and sort of what the players are like at least internally in Major League Soccer. Yeah, he he has the lay of the land in the way that, you know, Don Garber didn't 30 years ago. And Don Garber was obviously the right choice for a million different reasons over the past 30 years almost. And hopefully what Larry Berg can do is push the league forward in the way that Tom described and then figure out the money pipeline, right? MLS does not have a money hose in the way that the four major American sports or the Premier League have

a money hose. Most of that is media rights. And that is a big thing. But the other thing that we're seeing in professional sports now is private equity money. And Larry Berg's background is with Apollo global management. It's a private equity firm. They just offered the Bundesliga, and I'm not sure if this deal went through, but they just offered the Bundesliga a billion dollars, essentially a loan, balanced against future domestic broadcast earnings. The idea is to make the Bundesliga

a more competitive league instead of just the Bayern Munich invitation every single year. So that gives you, like, Larry Berg is not with Apollo. It's been about like half a decade, but like he's still, like those are his, ties. He's not a Fox sports guy. He's not an ESPN guy. It's like he is a venture capital. Well, he's more of a private equity money type of guy. And MLS needs money. So that is like, I'm reading

the T-Leaves here. As for the media rights deal, obviously that is still going to be a big part of it. I don't think the Apple deal has worked. It doesn't mean it can't get better over the next three years. Obviously, this year's a massive improvement, just getting rid of season pass. But the lack of shoulder programming, the lack of coverage, MLS is like an afterthought, even with its own broadcast partner. They can't make that mistake again. Like they need to have someone who's committed. It seems like if I were a betting man right now, I would say Fox, especially because Fox is still around and MLS just strengthened ties with Fox by putting 10 more leagues, leagues cup games on Big Fox. Like that seems like a statement of intent.

But also, Fox just bought Roku. And between Tooby, which Fox owns and the Roku channel, those two combined end up being the second biggest streaming service in the world behind Netflix. Well, YouTube as well if you want to got YouTube as a streaming service. Fox is going to need inventory. Fox is already to a degree synonymous with MLS. So just like sort of piecing it together and like following the trail, I would imagine that there are already talks between, Fox and MLS about a future together

in which they're joined even tighter than they are now. And that future could look a lot like the present where the majority of MLS games are on the streaming service. The difference being that Fox's streaming service is

free to all when you buy a Roku and will have the backing of the corporate overlords there behind it because they'll have invested for linear programming as well. All I heard was when Doyle mentioned Leaks Cup. He's desperate to talk

about it. He even shoehorned it into this conversation. So I'll keep us moving. I will say this. I found out this weekend, Roku has League MX games as well as part of the free Roku didn't even know that. Didn't even know that. So a chance to tap in there and could be a good connection between

the two leagues. Let's stock transfers which we still haven't gotten to. And then we will do a deep and lengthy conversation around leagues Cup. Tom, I had a starting with Lucas Harrington, which you know, you've been on reporting since, what, before the World Cup, he even started some big names, clubs connected to him, some big-time bids, and what you ended up breaking this weekend is one of the biggest transfers in MLS history. Yeah, whole city have reached a verbal agreement with the Colorado Rapids to acquire Australia

International Centerback Lucas Harrington. I'm told the fee is up to $23 million. It is a 17 million guaranteed fee plus 6 million in add-ons, and the Rapids retain a sell-on clause 15% of any profit above what they end up paying to Hull City or what whole city ends up paying to them. This is a gigantic deal. This is obviously a Rapids Club record. If the add-ons hit, it would be the second biggest in league history behind John Duran, and John Duran got inflated with a sell-on clause, which is why all teams with their young players put on a sell-on clause.

Even if Hull City gets relegated, if Lucas Herrington plays well, they will sell him for a profit in a year. And then the Rapids would get more money. That's, again, a few ifs, and let's not talk about the future where he gets relegate or whatever. This is a really, really interesting deal. There are still final details to get through

on a little bit of the player's side, a little bit to club sides. But the basic verbal agreement is there. Hull City came in hard for Lucas Harrington. This deal comes about after, I think, in July. See, the June or July was the Barcelona bid. The Barcelona bid was $7 million. And the Rapids, first of all, would prefer to have kept him for other six months, but they knew that this is nowhere near his value, whether it's this summer or in the future.

And they didn't entertain that Barcelona offer. There were some annoyances there for people around. And the Rapids were right. And they get this deal. And they have the verbal agreement, at least. And as long as things don't fall apart at the final stage, this is an unbelievable deal. And it's unfortunate, I think, for us that Lucas Harrington is only here for six months. it is part of the continuous like sign cheap young Australian players and then sell them sometimes

before they even play for you like Riley agree right and sometimes after they play for you for a little bit like Lucas Harrington two two things on that the rapids so they they agreed the deal in May of 25 Harrington was still 17 they would have made a profit they could have made a profit on selling him that winter before he joined the rapids before he ever came here. And again, they knew that they had something special and they wanted him to, they didn't sign them just to try to flip them like a stock. They wanted to come here. Another aspect of this, they bought him from the Brisbane Roar. The Brisbane War had a 20% sell-on clause. The Australian clubs are in a bad way financially. The league fumbled money and the media rights and on all of that

stuff. And so earlier this year, the Rapids went to Brisbane and said, we'll buy out that 20% clause. We'll give you money right now. the Rapids will pay a total of around, I think, a million, I believe is the final fee, including buying back that sell-on clause. That sell-on clause in this deal alone would have been worth $3.5 million. The Rapids bought it back for less than a million.

Really smart, really well done. The question in the chat, which I think is fair and the exciting part about this should be, it's great work from the Rapids. Now, as a team that has said, we are not one of the higher spenders in the league. I think the question is, do they reuse some of this? Can this now become the money you go out to sign someone big?

Do you distribute it out amongst a few different prospects going forward? Like, the whole point of this should be now you grow as a club, because this is the type of number that can help you grow overall. Maybe you do this again. Maybe you get a couple shots at this. Or maybe you bring in a player at a big number. Yeah, I mean, you know, they sold Georgie Mihailovich for a few years ago. And it's not like they sat on that.

They went out and they bought Paxton Aronson. They spent, what, $3 million on Loik Williams, who might be a better soccer player than Lucas Harrington right now. Obviously, Lucas Harrington has a pretty high upside, which is why somebody just spent $20 million on it. But they, you know, they spent $3 million on Hamza Ojeteren, the D-Mid. They spent money on guys from within the league, like Georgie Menungo, Dante Seeley. Like, this is not a team that hasn't spent. They've actually kind of spent a lot. The pieces aren't working together.

They, they, you know, I like Matt Wells' game model. But if you, if you're game models about keeping the ball and using the ball, you probably want to put more guys who can actually pass the ball on the field. So there's just a misalignment between the coach's priorities. is. Honestly, the misalignment comes down to the coach himself. Like, he's not getting development out of the young attacking players in the way that he got development out of Lucas Harrington. And until they solve that, it almost doesn't matter how much they spend to bring in another young center back to replace Lucas Arrington. But, like, this is going to go, like, I don't want to say all, but a lot of, a lot.

I did the numbers. Like, Colorado were $12 or $13 million in the red over the last five years in terms of transfer spent before this move. Now, obviously, this gets them in the black. They're doing great now. But, like, this is not a team that wasn't spending. This was a team that was not competing, in my opinion, for the last few years because of coaching issues. Since the World Cup return, they've won two. Two of the three games lost to St. Louis.

both the wins have been stoppage time winners at home. So the late goal against San Diego on a set piece, and then the penalty kick this weekend that Hoff and Navajo put away in like the 96th or 97th minute against Austin. So they've taken somewhat advantage, as I've said, of the altitude being able to grind teams down late, but they have not created a ton of opportunities and they have not scored a ton of goals.

Tom, let's move to the news you just broke. Andre, Luis, it seems like the agreement in, at least verbally to join SKC. Yeah, Sporting Kansas City has reached a verbal agreement with Olympiacos over a deal to sign Brazilian winger Andre Louise for $18 million plus add-ons. Source of stress there are still steps to go, but sporting Kansas City are proceeding ahead with this deal with the hopes of completing it. I will say that this has felt close for a month because it has been close for a month, which is why I'm just being careful and cautious over getting a verbal agreement to paper and signed. sometimes it's trickier than other times, and this may be one of those times.

But this is a lot of money for a player who joined Olympiacos in January. He absolutely lit up the Portuguese League with Rio Ave FC. He had 15 goal contributions in about 1,500 minutes or something within that range. He went to Olympiacos at the end of the winter transfer window. It hasn't been quite the same. He's only been limited to like 7 or 800 minutes, but he only has one goal contribution. Basically, this deal is for what he's done in Portugal.

and it's a bit of a high fee or higher fee than maybe you'd expect. There were other clubs trying to sign this player, so that's kind of why it got up to where it is. But sporting Kansas City owner Peter Malook said, you know, promises made or promises kept. And he promised to spend more and you can't knock it here. Is any of the timing of this affected by Sala, who now it sounds like is going to Turkey to a different club, potentially,

or this is all its own deal on its own? The latter. I don't so obviously solid would also be a DP but like um they've as paul and I reported like long shot was the word that we got when they like they were seriously chasing mo Salah but they weren't they weren't given any assurances that that this is close or definite right it was what we had heard was Salah would prefer to stay in Europe if if the right offers come and it looks like that's what's going to happen I don't know that for sure but as you said that is the reporting and it's not as if Kansas City wrote him on their whiteboard and was like, damn it, now what do we do? Right? Like they were doing both of these deals as well as FC Toulouse winger, Jan Goboho and Ivorian International.

That's another guy. So they've had several targets knowing that, one, they definitely couldn't sign all three. I mean, maybe they could sign two. That's if Manuosi departs. But they were working on several deals at once, knowing that like they didn't want to be like, well, Sala said no on August 25th,

and now what? SKC continue to lose while they get the steals done at 2-0 loss to Houston to go along as back-to-back losses for them coming out of this World Cup break. Let's talk about some of the other things that went official or seem to be close, Tom official over the weekend. Edwin Surio leaving the LA Galaxy for Club America. This was a little bit of a curveball. Yeah, Surio was held out of the team's game this weekend,

and it coincided with Will Coons, the general manager, was speaking to local media. about it and he kind of said listen he's close to leaving um and it came out first in mexico my sources confirmed that it's the club america that's a huge move for edwin serio that's really awesome is a kid who wasn't playing a ton of dallas and then he goes to the galaxy and and he gets put in a system and a team that really worked for him and fit with him with ricky pooch out of him and he was a key piece of them winning ms cup in 24 so this is really really cool for the player he goes to a huge club club club and the galaxy i believe will end up signing another

defensive midfielder this summer, that'd be my assumption. But more in the interim, Will Coons syndicated, they're getting close on a new DP. And my source is confirmed that, like, they believe that this week they're going to have a deal done to sign a new designated player. I don't have a name yet. I don't have a profile yet. Hopefully, I'll get that in the coming days. But if not, rest assured, the Galaxy fans, a new DP's on the way.

Do you think it's Morgan Rogers? They're going to put Chelsea for Morgan Rogers and get in the conversation. This is one of those things where you're like, I don't know. It just kind of blows my mind that Edwin Serio is going to play for Club America. Why? He couldn't get on the field for Dallas. Yeah. Dallas grew that.

Dallas grew that up, right? Yeah. I mean, we saw, like, Edwin Surio was really good in the U-20 World Cup. Got, seven years ago now. He was playing, he was playing. Crazy, dude. Yeah, he was playing up a level. He was, I think, an 18-year-old playing with the U-20s back in 2019.

He was really good. Dallas screwed up by not. making like betting on his development um to put it into context i don't think serrio playing for club america is as crazy as daniel aguirre being a starting centerback for um for chivas you know and and like danny lava who you know was never going to be a huge part of the sounders is now a starter for nacaa like this is a this is a pipeline that Liga and Mackey's teams have identified and they're doing well,

even the big ones like Club America that could go out and spend $20 million on a team team. And the thing I will throw in there on the Lava thing, I mean, the odds are Serio probably is playing for a different League of MX team over the next 18 months. He probably won't play a ton for Global America, like let's just, or see if Montreal,

like Frankie Amaya, let's be real about that. And the question in the chat of, is this a depth play? Yes, it is. But I do think the thing we learn from the Lava move and some of these others is they're different styles of play. So they fit different players. And Serio is really good on the ball and he can control the pace of the game on the ball.

He can get overrun when he asks to cover a ton of ground, especially when he's by himself, which is what we've seen for the LA Galaxy. I think League MX style will fit him pretty well. So I think he has the potential. Lava has started like 30 of the last 32 games for Nekaksa. And he was struggling to get on the field for the Sounders. part of that is he does not close a ton of ground. He doesn't cover a ton of ground.

He is not an elite athlete, but he's really clean on the ball, and he can keep the game moving. I think Surreal can be something similar. You mentioned Agare and some of the other players that have done well. On the flip side, Kate Cowell struggled in League MX, and he's been pretty good for the New York Red Bulls. That's a guy who's a different style of player that maybe fits a little bit more. Let's finish with Atlanta United.

Latte Loth is headed to Europe on a year-long loan. to Union Berlin, which will open up a DP spot for Atlanta United. Yeah, and the deal includes a purchase option, but a change of scenery for a mineral Latsailat. He joined on $22 million. The transfer fee was the league record until Sun Hung Min broke it. Hasn't worked out. Latsailaf himself, obviously hasn't been great, but the structure around him, very, very bad. So maybe there's another world in which this would have worked out better at a different team or a different year for Atlanta, but it makes sense for all parties for him.

to go get a fresh start somewhere else. And I think somebody said it in the Discord, soccer-wise Discord of be the most Atlantic United thing if he goes to the Bundes League. Yeah, it's like 15 goals or something, right? Atlanta will welcome that. They're rooting for him with a financial interest because there's a purchase option on this deal.

And even if the purchase option isn't triggered, if he goes to Union Berlin and plays well or plays well enough, they will have to eat less money than they would have right now. So that's why I like the loan. I think it's interesting because championship clubs were in for him and it ended up going to Union Berlin. And I think it's the same way I thought his style would fit MLS because of the transitional nature, his physical talents.

I would say the same thing about Germany. Nice. There's probably that's possible. Tom, Bundesliga fantasy team, first pick. I don't know, man. Never take the L'LF. So Lotté Lath, his contract ends in 28. I assume that's in December of 2020,

but I have no idea. And he's on $3.7 million is what we have in our debt charts. To open up the DP spot, it means Berlin are taking enough of a chunk of his salary. I feel like that this rule changes all the time.

I think to fans who gives a shit, I know that it opens up a DP spot. I don't know the machinations within there and maybe in six months, that don't change again. So all I know is they have a DP spot open. And as I've reported that they've swung for like Darwin Nunez or Brile and Bolo,

they're linked with Roleman Lukaku, who would be the third of my, if we had to power rank those targets, a third with a bullet. But that makes sense in the profile that they will spend big again, and if they can convince a big player to come, they will sign them.

So their financial ambition can never be questioned. So Atlanta United, I'm firmly expecting them to add a DP-9 and spend a good amount of money on it. I would go Lukaku and Nunez Brelandbola. So I'm going to disagree with him on that one. I mean, he's old, and he struggles to stay healthy.

He's the best soccer player on that list by a mile. And I love Lukaku. He's like a great personality. He speaks like a thousand languages. He's like, I don't know. He pours in goals and everywhere he scores goals, it drives fans absolutely insane that hate him. And I love that for him.

So yeah, I'm a Lukaku fan. And I would say Mbolo is the least interesting of all of them from like a style point of view. Like he seems like the guy who's just going to hang on the back shoulder and try and put in goals, which I don't know at Atlanta if that's going to be successful because that's kind of what we just came out of. What?

Pete, are you kidding me? You don't watch the last month of him at the World Cup. You're playing to his feet. He's like, going to be one of the best players in the league. Jared, but the team is still around him. It's still going to be the team around him. Tom, we could put Mbapapé on this team, and they'd struggle to make the playoffs.

This team is so bad. You started the show by literally putting out a trigger warning slash humanitarian crisis on a planet. My point is. You talk about the, and this is so, it's funny, because I bet it's like preliminary, like, this is all inconsequential, mate. But like, we all started this. Lukak has never even heard of the city of Atlanta.

Injury issues. And so why not? I would at least go for the 27 or 29 year old center forward that, like, maybe. The one who hasn't played in a year? You played the World Cup, mate. On a team that couldn't score a call. Yeah. Yeah, benched up at one start.

Yeah. Yeah. None of these are perfect ideal finishes, and there's a lot more work to do for Lairn than just this center forward position. They will not get a chance to do so in the Leagues Cup, baby. Leagues Cup kicks off. We're going to do a solid 45 minutes now of Leagues Cup preview. But I will say this. Speaking of Watermorey.

I love League MX, obviously. I love a lot of the soccer culture around Mexico. I think based off our conversation around Surio and Lava and K-Cal, like, these leagues are more intertwined than they've ever been. So I think for a lot of people, it's enjoyable to watch a lot of the players you enjoy, whether it's Hugo Kuypers or its players going in the other direction coming from League MX to Major League Soccer, playing against each other. And at this point, there's like a decent chunk of rivalry or connection between a lot of these clubs. So I think that part makes it fairly enjoyable. So League's Cup this year is 36 teams, every team in League MX, and then the 18 qualifying teams in Major League Soccer based off the standings from last year. but you can only play an X amount of cup competition.

So if you're playing in too many, you have Conquitaph Champions League, you have U.S. Open Cup, you have Canadian Championship. You can get knocked out of it. So the 18 qualifying MLS teams, all of them are playing for three spots in CCL in the end. So the winner, second place team, and then the winner of the third place match. The winner of the tournament goes straight into the round of 16 next year in the competition. The way it's broken up, same as last year. So you have phase one from August 4th to 3rd.

in which you'll have 54 matches between MLS and League MX sides and then an open standings inside of your own league against teams you never play. So for MLS teams, your stacking points against League MX teams to try and be top four against the other MLS teams. Same for the league MX sides. And then we go straight into the quarterfinals, so the top four teams from each side qualify. Those will occur at the end of August. So there's a layoff from August 13th to August 25th. Quarter finals, semi-finals are midweek games. So Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, and then the final is Sunday, September 6th. So for any of the teams qualifying going forward, you are playing midweek games in between your MLS games, which is a factor in teams attempting

to make the playoffs, teams pushing for supporter shield and everything else, and we'll stretch out some of the teams in this. But if you make it to a final, you guarantee your spot in CCL next season. change this year. Of the 54 Phase 1 games, four of them are going to be played in Mexico. Lock in, baby. We've got a sea

change. Toluca will host two. America and Tigris will each host one only in the group stage or phase one thing. So if these teams qualify for the next round, they cannot host again. They would go to whatever MLS team. If they play in a semifinal, two league MX size,

I have zero idea where that game would be played. I have no idea what the plan is around that. But if you go to the Leaks Cup website, it doesn't tell you either. So we've got that going for us. And as always, there's no tie. So if any game ends in a tie, you have a shootout. Doyle, give me your 14 teams that are favorites to win Leaks Cup in 2026 in power-ranking order. It is going to be interesting to see which MLS teams take this seriously, right?

Yeah. It feels like Vancouver might be one because they, as great as they were last year, I think that's one of the best teams I've ever seen in the MLS. Tom just died. All right. Tom just pulled a weavy. He couldn't contain himself on League's Cup conversation. This guy has thoughts on Connor wrote.

No, Ollie LaRaz. Like, they're a team that needs to win a trophy besides the Canadian championship. So I could see them really going for it. That's one. You know that with Messi around Miami is always going to compete like hell. Another one is Chicago. Yeah. You know, Chicago.

are trying really hard to recapture interest in the city and Chicago has a huge Mexican population. If they end up playing against a Club America or a Cruz Azul or Achieve Us, they'll put 40,000 people into Soldier Field. When that game, build some momentum, you're about to tell me that they're playing in Bridgeview, aren't you? No, I'm telling you they're playing Cruz Azul

in the third game of the phase one. It is in Bridgeview. So all of those things just happened. Unbelievable, of course. What we've seen in the past is a lot of these teams in the group stage don't really give a shit. But once you get to the knockout rounds, there is a huge purse for the players at the end of this thing. And that money talks, and those knockout round games end up being real. Like, those are good, fun games.

We'll get an idea once we get to that point, like who's really going for it. But for a lot of these teams, like the Sounders, for example, like, do not play the starters. It should be Tacoma playing in these games. Like, do not risk more injuries. Get your guys healthy. And you have MLS picking back up in two weeks. To me, the obvious team, as I joked about earlier, is Philly. Like, what else are you playing for this season?

You're in this thing. You might as well try and win it. If you end up in a situation. Aren't you only like five points back now? For sure. but if you end up for a play in game, if you end up in a situation in a quarterfinal or semifinal, Philly feels like

one of the few teams in this where you push your starters and your focus to the midweek game rather than the weekend game. Everyone else in here is like sitting on a playoff spot fully right now. And the ones outside are Columbus,

Orlando, Minnesota, Portland. I don't know. I think those are too close to say you completely like focus on this thing. But I will say, I think Orlando is one where it's like, you got Greasman in the building, go and win a thing, like clinch your spot to Concorda Calf next year. That feels like won as well.

Yeah, I think all of the teams, but again, with the super exception of like the sounders, but like the baseline is you play your starters in game one. If you lose, they don't see the field in the next two games. But if you win, you keep going. And it's a little bit of an inverse of the Open Cup where if you start in round three, it's a completely rotated team. And then it's like a half rotated team in round four. And then it's like if you get to like round of 16 or a quarterfinals,

wherever they ended up there with the math, then it's like, all right, like now we're all in. And for the league's cup, it's like, because if you lose the first game, it's very difficult to finish or have a control your destiny to finish in advance. So where it ended up last year, Seattle had nine points out of three,

Miami had eight, and then Galaxy Orlando were part of a large set of teams tied on seven. Yes. So, yeah, like, you have to win two. You need to pick up results in all three. I don't know, there's the PK shootout thing. So now you're getting two points in some games and one point in a loss and all that type of stuff. But, yeah, to Tom's point, like, it's real, of the 18 teams in, four get out.

And you don't play each other. So you can't pick up points against each other. So, like, you kind of have to be fairly perfect to get out where probably hurts my Orlando thing that they start with Monterey. That's probably one to point out. And then, as I said, Monterrey might score. seven goals in that game. That would be amazing. I would be here for that.

Toluca are playing at home. So they host the Sounders in the first game. I believe they host Dallas in the final game next week. So it's going to be tough for those two teams to steal points. And then I think San Diego play at Club America. And I don't remember who goes to Tigris. But you assume all those teams are probably out in trying to get through because you're not getting three points down in Mexico.

And that was it. Electric. I am genuinely excited about it because there'll be soccer on every day for like nine days, so it'll be similar to, what was that big tournament this summer, Doyle, that was played in the United States.

Did the Yeager Miteser Cup happen in the summer? Yeah, the Pricks. The Pricks Stiers. I think it was the USL Cup. The USL Cup, sponsored by Prings Steyer, so you're welcome Prinks for a couple of them on that one.

Okay. Thank you to all of you for listening. Big shout out to everyone in the chat. It was awesome to have you all live. Doyle have fun on vacation. We love having you here. We're more excited for you to be out and about. Tom, I don't know.

You'll just be back with me and we'll be complaining about stuff or sad about stuff or happy about stuff or whatever. We will have our NWSL coverage coming out on Tuesday alongside Jordan Angelie, a wild weekend, Utah, just smoking Portland to close out. The weekend, we will talk about that. We will have our new U.S. soccer show on Wednesday with some of our rotating co-host that will be around

and then we'll be back to talk a league Scott baby on Thursday once again. All right. So thank you to all of you and we'll talk to you again very, very soon.