SoccerWise - Soccerwise Introduction

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

00:00 Introducing Soccerwise02:14 Jordan on NWSL Game at Wrigley Field06:37 Tom on Transfer Room in Cancun10:55 David on TST 2024 in Raleigh NC17:31 Schedule and Plan For Soccerwise Soccerwise Live 2pm ET Every Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday on Youtube/Twitch/Twitter

Welcome everybody to SoccerWise, the number one show talking soccer in North America. Welcome to our intro episode. I'm David Goss with Jordan Angeli and Tom Bogert. If you are out there in the world looking for a place to talk MLS, NWSL, U.S. Women's National Team, U.S. M&T, U.S. Open Cup, youth soccer, anything at all. If you want to talk anything soccer wise, then this is the place for you. Welcome everybody to our intro episode. I am so excited for everything we've got coming up, everything that we're about to launch and build. And we hope to build something that everyone in our soccer community can be proud of. Coming up in this quick episode, we're going to talk about what we're going to do.

We're going to talk about our schedule. We're going to talk about what we expect from soccer-wise. And most importantly, we're all going to get to hang out and talk soccer for the first time. As I mentioned, David here with Jordan and Tom. You guys, we've all had eventful weeks. This is why I'm so excited about this show. We are all in the soccer sphere doing our own things jordan you were in chicago tom you were in what's it called transfer room in cancun i meant the cancun part i don't need the name of it i was then did you

forget what cancun i just wanted you to get like name drop a little and be like oh you know just like one of my it's just one of the places i hang out jersey shore cancun monaco whatever it is uh when i have time and i was in raleigh north carolina which i think is probably the most exciting yeah you definitely win that one definitely although your weather was not ideal at some of the time so maybe i did win out um in the end but we all had awesome weeks that's why i'm so excited about this show, what we're building, all of us living in the soccer space, constantly doing all these things. And now we get a platform of our own to talk about it, break everything down and connect with fans

across the world and across the U.S. and Canada, because I always have to keep my Canadian passport when possible. Tom's got his Mexican passport that he's working through the mustache as well, and so much more. Jordan, how was Chicago? What was Wrigley like? Oh my gosh, guys, it was honestly incredible. I feel like I'm still pinching myself that it actually happened. My mom's family is from Illinois, so I think that for me, it was a little extra special. My grandpa was a big Cubs fan and to stand by the ivy and be on the field felt like I can't believe this is really happening the game was the game you would expect right it was on a baseball field but the coolest thing about it was through rain and

shine right we got a little bit of all the elements in this game. There was over 35,000 people that showed up in the city of Chicago. And if you guys have been following, I know you've been following NWSL, you know that Chicago doesn't have the best numbers when it comes to who comes to the games in Bridgeview. But I think this is a really big telling point for the Red Stars to say, hey, if we can get something in the heart of the city, because Wrigley Man is in the heart of the city, we can do something really special. And not to say you're going to get 35,000 people every single game, but can you get 12? Can you get 15? I think the Red Stars can do that. And they've proven this year that they are not just changing off the field they're changing on the field so the game was interesting it had some fun goals some fun celebrations

but my favorite point can i tell you guys my favorite thing do you guys remember the movie rookie of the year yeah 100 yes absolutely okay so you know the scene when they get to go out on the field after and it's just the kids like the lights are off and they're playing like a fake baseball game on the field when we were done with our broadcast and the lights were out and we're just standing there taking it all in I'm like we need to go out to the field and I'm just running around the field like arms wide open looking up at the stands that is Wrigley Field. You know, you can see where they call the game. You can see the dugouts, all of the, where people usually are filled and there's not a soul in sight. And I'm like, how is this real life? Um, yeah, it was just a surreal moment

and cool to see that many people show up for a baseball game, but I mean, a soccer game out of baseball field. But even cooler to just experience it. So yeah, NWSL is doing some big things and it's fun to be a part of it. NWSL attendance record, it broke Seattle by a little over a thousand, which is tight. I think the stadium's capacity is 40,000 and it was 35. So it's about as much as, and I don't even know if the capacity was available for yeah it wasn't there were some things i think for sight lines like we're a little bit taken taken out of um the ability to being sold but yeah pretty good very good pretty special in terms of your nwsl experiences because you've also been to the debut of kc stadium this year yeah so like

where does all of these rank all time this the thing about being in nwsl i'm not often at the fields so whenever i'm there it's always going to bump the experience up a lot more uh i've had the pleasure of doing a couple of finals the last two finals i've been a part of, I have been to CPKC stadium and seen that place rocking where they are yelling, we want another one, just like the other one. We want, I don't know, fifth goal, sixth goal, seventh goal at Kansas city games this year. That is really cool because it's so special that the stadium is just theirs but it's this is hard to talk this was this was really a cool moment to be a part of history and um a big moment for the league for ion for nwsl for the red stars and for bay because they had a gigantic win yeah they were able to hold on finally uh and get

the result the two won win uh you were not the only one connected to this by the way I feel like half the players who played were like oh I had family who played in MLB I had friends who have grown up here it was wild the amount of connections that came out yeah how about Penelope Hawking's dad hit a homer there and she scored a goal for the Red Stars I'm sure she was hoping it was a game-winning goal or at least a gay tying goal but nonetheless pretty cool still exciting yeah pretty cool connection there at time is still exciting. We'll take what we can get. Yeah, pretty cool connection there. At this point. So, Tom, you were in one of your villas in Cancun last week.

What were you doing? Can I just cede my time? How do I go after that? Are you kidding me? Yeah, that's fair. Do you want me to go after it so you sound better? I was supposed to say. I wanted to start on a high.

Yeah, I was in Cancun mexico for transfer room it's this kind of platform that clubs the clubs use the way that it's a good way to describe it as like speed dating for transfers really like it's kind of you know globalization has helped the global game with how connected everybody can be with scouting and connections and making deals and transfer room is kind of i guess the next uh evolution of that where now you can just do it online like like literally teams can go on transfer room and be like we want to center forward for four million who do you got right or like we want to get rid of this player at the end of our roster any any offers like it's crazy that that's like a

thing in real life it's like football manager fifa it's weird uh so that's where i was i was hosting some stuff doing some uh doing some content that i felt uncomfortable with because it's not in my it's not in my nature i felt cringeworthy every time we got i got it the good friends of mine were sure to make fun of me but uh i felt uh felt felt all right about it yeah and just getting to be around a lot of soccer people there was a moment where i'm sitting there and it's not just mls clubs it's global clubs and particularly because this one being in cancun there was a lot of central and south american clubs and obviously mexican clubs i'm looking at a guy wearing a cancun fc shirt

from the side profile it's like is that carlos vela it's like am i watching this did he retire and become like director of scouting from yeah and I was like I'm staring at this poor guy because I was like this is a huge story that nobody else has he didn't tell anybody and then I'm like this can't be right cuz I thought he would just live in America forever like no matter if he plays or not and I'm like Google Carlos Vela brother Alejandro Vela I got to meet Alejandro Vela this weekend, that last week. So that was fun.

No, just getting to be around a lot of MLS guys. And then my fiance flew down and we spent a few days just using the word Cerveza and quesadilla a lot. It was, it was beautiful. That sounds pretty awesome. Yeah. Let's let me ask you a soccer question first, before we get more Cerveza's in to the conversation.

When you're now at this thing and people are non-mls what's their conversations with you about the way they see the league with the way they interact with the league yeah it's it depends on which side of the totem pole you are there were some colombian clubs that i was speaking with who were saying that like like yeah the the money that's in league mx and mls right now it's great, and this, like, it helps kind of connect you. And, like, yeah, like, now we have another market to sell to, another market where it makes sense for players to go to. And, oh, by the way, we're going to make a little bit of money on some of these sales.

Or if you're on the other end, if you're a European club or a bigger European club, I should say, you're either looking for the next high talents coming out of the league or you're sending, you know, yourared on shakiri to mls if you're lucky enough it is funny listening like there's and i don't blame anybody for not really getting it the way that we get it right if you're not around mls you don't totally get it but like the amount of times that i get feedback from mls guys who are having the like the best part of that was you have 15 minute little interviews or whatever so you just connect with clubs 15

minute face to face and it's like hey are you interested in our right back who's gonna be a six million dollar transfer and makes two million a year yeah and it's just like i can't i don't know how many times i can say that don't need a dp right back exactly and like oh by the way he's not playing for you guys so you don't want to get like right so it's funny the way that goes like that but yeah like those are some of the conversations and more so like just being around like all of those folks. And again, a lot of the people that I bother on phone calls and texts to just bother them in person

is always nice. So 15 minutes a team, it is speed dating. Yeah, that's wildly fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you sign any players while you were down there no i did i hosted a panel with uh the pumas sporting director eduardo soracho very very bright guy and it's very um he was good at his presentation i was i was like man like good thing you're not in content i don't think i'd be able to do it as well as you did

you're very personable so yeah some some people have it all some people have it all uh it's awesome when you get into a soccer setting where all some people have it all uh it's awesome when you get into a soccer setting where someone's like gives you answers where it's not like oh the game is beautiful and we can do everything which i love but then you sometimes you get with people that like put things down and it's like oh this is the reason for what i always watch and think about that i have no idea um and anything about that i was in Raleigh North Carolina at TSD a seven on seven tournament where none of that matters it is like pure chaos is that your second year second year right the second year and it's my second year calling it so I am I went last year and it was wild I can only imagine what the second year where everybody now knows actually what it is

like tell us about how last year you went you were with the u.s women's team but not playing you were i was an observer i was an observer would you have gotten a cut of the million dollars that if you had gone this year that they now want no i had i got asked i got asked to coach other teams oh laurie lindsey was like trying to get me to get on a team. And I was like, Lori, I'm not playing. And she's like, do you want to coach? And I'm like, I'm just not home a lot. And so I decided I wasn't going to go to this tournament. And if I was going to go, I probably would have just gone to like hang out with my friends and not be on one of the teams. But it looked, last year was awesome. I loved it. I had so much fun. And this year looked like it looked last year was awesome i loved it i had so much fun and this year looked like it

was last year on like yeah level two it took a step up they built a new stadium so instead of just the one stadium there was like a mini stadium as well which i think one of the mls retired players called was calling rucker park and like because you had a hill on one side and just like a crowd completely around you and then they added two more fields so it was like bigger and obviously so there was a women's tournament for the first time which was eight teams and then it went from 32 to 48 on the men's side so you had 56 clubs uh across it group stage and then knockouts and all that stuff um it has very much like NBA summer league, original vibes of like people would always say, Oh, it's so cool.

Cause LeBron sitting in a, in a gym with you. And this was like Nani's standing next to a field that has no seats, watching a seven on seven game with you and personalities like that. And Mia Hems hanging out and like all these things, but it's, it's very open. It's not like restricted and so you i think for a lot of people you feel like you're around at all and for me it's like you get to see a lot of people that you only see at some of these tentpole events but you get to do it and not in a hotel ballroom which is like the scenario uh or with fake heinekens around and

stuff like that um shout out to heineken obviously if if they want to send me some but it's so fun it's so wild and then every game ends on the goal so when you call the games you're guaranteed to walk off every game and like as someone who broadcasts soccer and Jordan I think you can attest this but you can choose not to if you want pretty much every game

not every game but most games between the 22nd and 35th minute and the 60 and 75th minute is kind of dead so when you pull those times out of the game and you just inject the straight 40 minutes of action vibes sub sub sub sub sub goal goal goal goal goal and then into a walk-off situation yeah it's just no offsides no throw-ins and something else oh you can sub on the fly yeah yeah how many games did you end up calling uh so the first day i did 108 and then the next morning i had three more so i think i did i think in a span of like 28 hours i did 11 and then i

ended up doing 14 in total but they're again they're short machine best goal it's game to game to game um well so one guy for a local team threw it in to win it yeah because the other team had pushed everyone calling that that was so great so cory rockwell was the referee on that cory rockwell is an mls ref he's super active on twitter so i saw i didn't actually know who was reffing the game which i should have looked at my notes and he walked out and i was like okay cool i know who that is and it went in and he sort of turns to start walking off towards me and i kind of was like and he gave me a weird look and i was like does that count yeah because when have you when would i like a goalkeeper threw it in yes yeah when would i ever have the conversation, hey, can a goalkeeper,

because no goalkeeper can physically throw a ball the full length of a field. Maybe in Chicago when the wind blows like that one game in MLS. That is actually true. We could get Brady to see if he could try. The other thing is the scenario in which a goalie comes up, so there's no goalie in goal you're pretty much never going to throw it because you're always going to try and kill time because that scenario is always you're winning and they're chasing so it kind of would never come up and he was like nope

it's totally legal you just there was a rule you couldn't kick a goal kick over the take a goal kick over midfield i wonder if cory prepped for that or just knew that either way what what a professional he said that he had asked in advance so who thinks they asked about that well done cory well yeah they're they're living their own life um but it was awesome it was such a good time i'm putting into the ethos now soccer wise tst team year. Or we just go and interview all the people. Yes. We can do shows and we can do content. But I'm just going to like,

maybe as a goal for me to get into better shape, I'm going to pretend that that's what I'm working towards. And also, it's a really tight game with like a lot of tight challenges. I just would like to see Tom handle that as he kicks somebody as, as it goes down. Uh, Christian Polanco played in it this year.

And so he gave me hope that maybe I could play in a situation like that. Cause otherwise these guys, I mean, can play. Yes. And then you go into the women's tournament. It's like, okay,

world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup,

world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup,

world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's cup, world's tournament. It's like, okay, World Cup, World Cup winner, World Cup winner, World Cup winner. It's incredible. I don't know how anyone steps on any of these fields that hasn't played at that level. But what's fun about the sevens is, like, there are experts. So the team that won it was like arena soccer league experts

on the men's side. And they get into a setting where they're playing against Nani. It's like, he's actually on their turf. Which is not how you would ever process the sport or the game any other time. So Jordan, you could coach if you want. Yeah, I'll be on the sideline. I'll provide orange slices and Capri Suns. Nice.

You can just tell us what to do as we go along. Can you do that for these podcasts too? It's a little harder, Tom. It's a little harder because you are the other side of the country for me. In advance so that they are delivered at halftime of each podcast at the exact moment. Speaking of, let's get into schedule. Let's get into what we're doing. I think for myself, building this and building what we hope SoccerWise will be as, you know, a network of shows and all of this is covering this sport, these leagues specifically in this region,

not like a gimmick and not to pull in fans for a thing that you think could sell. Like, I think that all of this should be covered at a high level. I think it's lacking. And so the idea is we're going to try and give you as much content as we can. So there will be a Monday show every Monday morning that comes out as a podcast as early as I can do it. That show will be built out of a mailbag that everyone will get access through via Patreon. So if you want to be the one who creates that rundown and your questions and the topics you want to talk about are in there, you can subscribe.

We'll put the link into the Patreon and you can go there and do that. And then every Tuesday and Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern time, we will go live on YouTube and Twitch. That will later come out as a podcast. And me and Tom will be talking MLS mainly and then other stuff. Tom, you always have something to talk about because you always have 97 phone calls. I'm actually really excited about the live element. Oh, yeah. Good point.

I want you to mute the mic and walk away on a phone call yeah um i'm not thrilled like i that's so stressful for me like even hell right now uh while we're squirming there's a couple like i have two people that i have had to decline calls for as i'll call you back soon and my own men's league game it goes like that but but yeah to to on this man like like you said gaza i co-sign everything that you said and it's just just want to do good shows with good people and talk about this sport as you know the sickos out there the fans out there the people that like it's not a gimmick it's not a bit like this is a serious league and we're gonna have fun the iu serious in that like yeah don't have to apologize for really caring we're not just gonna do hey what did messi do this week and then we'll move on right

like i just want to do good shows with good people and there's nobody better than david gastoriangeli out there like so it's as simple as that for me um you guys didn't have to explain anything and the the fine folks behind the scenes who i don't know if they want to be named or not so i won't name them but you guys didn't need to say didn't need to say anything it's just hey do you want to do this yeah i'm in any thoughts i don't care i trust you i'll go to war with you guys that's all that matters yeah i agree with you i'm excited to sort of build a community for people like us who are thinking is anyone else watching this does anyone else care to be to have a space where it's like oh yeah yeah we're watching the insane ccl game ccc game that you're watching on a tuesday night by yourself we're watching nwsl midweek we're watching mls next pro finals or u.s olympic u23 friendlies

whatever it is uh as we go along so monday and thursday live 2 p.m. Eastern time and Wednesday, 2 p.m. Eastern time, live Twitch and YouTube. Jordan, we will be together. We will be talking NWSL. I'm ecstatic because I've not gotten to cover this league as my job ever. And so I've been waiting for an opportunity. This is my first chance on my own platform to choose what I get to talk about. And you were willing to talk about it with me.

And I'm really excited for this. Yeah. And you've been chomping at the bit right to get into NWSL I feel like for the last few years you'll text me about things and you know that I know that you follow the league and it will be really fun to talk about this league in a way that I think gets slightly like scratched on the surface, but we want to dig in a little bit more about how Houston's playing under Fran Alonzo and why it works and, and what's going on in angel city and why they're not scoring as many goals as you would expect them to score things like that, that I think it's hard for even me as an analyst on a lot of games to be

able to find times in the game to talk about what's actually happening in the game because there's a lot of time that it's hard to be able to dig into those things as the game is happening but post game or previewing games we can really say hey these are the things that you want to look out for. And there's a lot of advancement in NWSL and a lot of teams trying to play different styles. So I'm looking forward to talking about that a little bit more with you, because I feel like we see the game in similar ways, but also in very different ways, which I think is helpful to have people with different opinions about how the game should be played or is being played and what sticks out

to us so I think that'll be one of the fun things is to hear what you have to say on some of these these teams as well yeah we've hosted shows together for years we both like digging in the same way but then we get I think to different answers yeah when we get there and I think a lot of it is I can already hear it yeah I don't agree with that i don't know but i'm super polite about it my parents taught me to be polite about the yeah which i like i like having disagreements and opening ideas up to see see the game in a different way so everyone should play three in the back all wingbacks should live so high up the field they should always be pressing out of every initial pass but we'll get there um as we go along we'll also have some additional

content um so if you go into the patreon there's different tiers uh we're going to work on all of this all of this is kind of building the plane in the air so feel free to tweet at us hit us dm email anything with what you want to see what you wish you could hear um the way you'd like these leagues to be covered, conversations you think that aren't being had, we'll work on specials and added things on top of that as we go along. So don't feel like this is one way because this only works if everyone's in. And when I say everyone, I don't mean the three of us.

I mean this whole soccer community. I think we've all had our moments where we can't believe it. Jordan's with 35,000 fans in Chicago. Tom puts out a tweet against some of the biggest names in Twitter, and he gets all the support of U.S. fans being like, that's my boy, that's my guy, that's why he's right. And I just had a really interesting experience leaving Extra Time and just having like an outpouring of people talking to me

and bigging me up and being at tst and seeing people in person and i think i'm going to go to the gotham game next week and you get to see people in person and people are so friendly and so nice and you realize how many there are of all of us but for a lot of us we're physically disconnected so we get a chance to do this digitally uh and make it happen in that way so anything that i left out that you guys want to mention? We feel good. Yeah. Just very excited, ready to really get after it because there's just so much to talk about.

There's not enough time in the day. I think to talk about all of these things. And again, as you said, kind of off the top, like there's, I think there's a lot of space and a lot of hunger for something like this. And again,

I hope that hope that we're right. That's our bet. Yeah. We're going to have to find someone when the transfer window opens for NWSL to be our insider like Tom Bogart. Because he, there's too many leagues for him to be able to cover at once. So, but it's nice going into the summer

knowing that you have some good insight here. I'm going to start doing shows from the beach for my own sanity teach your dog to tweet and then your dog can cover an extra league for you you just need more hands that's the only issue with what's going on but as tom said we're excited to get started which is tomorrow um or whenever you're listening to this thursday, June 13th, around 2 p.m. Eastern time, we will go live on YouTube and Twitch to start talking a little bit about MLS. We've got coaching vacancies.

We've got DP moves happening. We've got rumors. We've got everything going on, plus we've got a weekend preview. We mentioned some NWSL in there as well, and then we'll be fully live starting next week. So this is Soccer Wise. Thank you for joining us for this first episode please come back tell everyone you know and this is the start of something we hope will be a long beautiful thing and thank you for joining us Thank you.