3rd Degree the Podcast #235

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is how we do it. [00:00:04] Speaker B: Yeah. NUM 30 degree. Ther degree never pocket. Third degree the third degree. Never get third degree. Never get the third degree. The third degree nap podcast. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Third degree. [00:00:29] Speaker C: The podcast is brought to you by Soccer 90 Dot Shop. Their worldwide selection of soccer gear. European stuff, national Team stuff, FC Dallas stuff. Jersey, scarfs, teeth. They got everything, man. Listeners of Third Degree, get 20% off at Soccer 90 Dot with the code third degree at checkout that's 20% with the code third degree, soccer 90 Dot. Some exclusions apply. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Well, hello there, FCD Dallas curious fan. Welcome to episode two three 5235 of Third Degree, the podcast. Hi, it's me, Peter. And here to talk all about the adventures in Dallas Burn FC playoffs is myself, our favorite Englishman, Dan Crook. Howdy, Dan. [00:01:15] Speaker D: How's it going? Are we all wearing our Ranger inspired powder blue third Degree gear today? [00:01:24] Speaker A: I am not, but now that you mentioned it, maybe I should have bought one in the first place. Fair enough. [00:01:30] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:01:31] Speaker A: And your hero. My hero, everybody's hero. Editor, founder of third degree, Net. And the original and the next door neighbor to your World Series champion, Texas Rangers, the Good Buzz Carrick. Come in, Buzz. I did, didn't I? [00:01:48] Speaker D: Is Cobra on your. [00:01:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Peter, in my casual baseball fandom, that's not my sport. But I did grow up within shouting distance of the ballpark over here and back on the old Arlington Stadium and even used to go sit in the bleachers for $2 after school and run over there and sit out there in the sun and grew up in the market of this team that has never done anything ever. And I will admit as not being a baseball guy, I'm just a casual Ranger fan, but it's still something I've been involved with my whole life, with family and all that kind of stuff, being big fans over the years. So super cool that the Rangers won and I enjoyed it. And I'm not going to go get a tattoo or anything, but I did enjoy the win. [00:02:36] Speaker A: I've lived here my entire life. They're my hometown team. I know nothing very little about baseball, and I have no claim whatsoever as a fan of the club. But, man, I got to tell you, I am so deeply happy for those friends of mine that are big Ranger fans and have I know guys professionally and people personally that have invested a lot of time and money into that team over the however many years, and they deserve everything they got in the last 24 hours. And I'm happy for everybody. So it's pretty great. [00:03:08] Speaker C: My favorite thing about the Rangers, other than Nolan and the Robin Matura thing and Pudge is probably my favorite player. But the powder blue jerseys, both the old version and the new modern version are amazing. And that got us the totally awesome FC Dallas version of the Kit that they have. So that's probably my favorite thing other than the one or two great moments. [00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's crazy what happens when the owner of the club decides to spend a whole lot of money and go nutso on buying the best players possible and best manager. Funny how that works. [00:03:37] Speaker C: Yeah. And they got the city to spend crazy money to put a roof on it so they could get pitching. I know that. [00:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a weird parallel to our anti parallel to you don't say. Yeah, it's funny. Isn't it kind of weird how all that has worked out for the Texas Raiders? What could we possibly learn as we move into Seattle to Dallas Nil on Monday night? And before we get into the game itself, I want to just go ahead and get out of the way the whole thing about Velocico because that's obviously something a big talking point out of this game. But as we record this on Thursday, we waited specifically to record Thursday late because we wanted to make sure that a, you got to go to a training session and B, we wanted to make sure we got as much information about the Velosco situation as possible, which we got today. And by the time everybody hears this, they know it's not good news. [00:04:33] Speaker C: Yeah. On Wednesday when I talked to Coach after training, he told me that they were not very optimistic, but he didn't have the MRI results because the MRI was that morning and he said, we'll know more tomorrow and we'll tell you on the press conference. And then so the Zoom press conference on Thursday, they announced Coach did the official ACL tear, and with a nine to ten months prognosis out, which is pretty standard, that's nothing unusual about that timeline. That's very normal. And of course that's a real bummer. So there's lots of things to talk about with this. I in particular immediately asked Coach about know how's he doing as a know as a young kid living here by himself, and he said that Alan obviously was really discouraged after the MRI, but know, a day later was vowing to fight in return and all that stuff. And they said they're going to work out a program with him. They can't have the surgery yet because without knowing any specifics, they said things have to happen. What they mean is the swelling has to come down, the information has to come down. Everybody knows that about this kind of injury. They flew back from Seattle, I'm sure that was a factor. So that'll all happen. And they said they're going to work up a program with him for rehab. And a part of that program is that they'll work him here, of course, but they'll actually let him go home to Argentina for a know and have somebody they'll work out something with somebody down there or send somebody down there, and they'll give him a chance in this horrible time for him to go home and spend some time with his family. But also when he is here, which will be a lot of the time, too, of course, they'll keep him heavily involved with the team and involved in all this stuff so he doesn't get stuck here by himself going through this horrible rehab at 20 years old by himself. You can just imagine where a young kid like that who we've already seen before have slight off field loneliness sort of issues pop up. Well, that obviously for me was a big concern. So I think they'll have a good plan in place for that and that's reassuring, I think. [00:06:30] Speaker A: Who's going to take care of his puppy? [00:06:32] Speaker C: Well, I hope he does take him. [00:06:35] Speaker A: To Argentina with him. [00:06:36] Speaker C: No, I'm sure they'll get a sitter or something. They got a whole department on player wellness now, remember, that's the thing they added about a year ago. So hopefully they'll have somebody say, maybe I'll offer to puppy set. I love dogs, I'll take them. [00:06:50] Speaker A: So I want to talk about there's been so much discussion and specifically in your discord Buzz, which by the way, if you're listening to this and you're not a Patreon and you don't do the discord you should, it's totally worth your time. It's a fantastic community of people, a lot of which are very angry at the Sounders for this injury. And Dan, you've seen it, you've watched it. Do you hold the Sounders Roldon or RushNick or anybody else accountable for this? [00:07:24] Speaker D: I mean, if it is that play as well in the second minute where he's just sliding for a ball that's just part and parcel of the game. [00:07:33] Speaker A: It was interesting because it was Garrett Melter of the club who tweeted out after the announcement of the injury, the video evidence and making the claim that the injury didn't happen in a twelveTH minute in the rodon collision. But actually happened in the second minute of the game when Velasco has the ball in Seattle's half of the field and tries to turn back against a group of Seattle players. And the ball kind of squirts away from him, and he goes to slide tackle for it, and you can kind of see his left leg get bent up underneath him. I was it's, I'll tell you mean, I didn't notice anything about Alan. I don't recall in watching the game in real time ever thinking up until the Role Dawn incident that anything bad had happened to Alan. Do you recall that in any way, Buzz? [00:08:31] Speaker C: No, I do not. But I guarantee you that Melser, as an employee of the team, would not have tweeted that without 100% permission and knowledge from the medical staff and the coach. And what he tweeted matches what Coach had told me about because I asked Coach about the incident and he described it to me as Alan's leg getting a little caught in that turf and then getting caught a little behind him. And then so and so's foot is planted and it kind of catches on his leg too, and he gets stepped on. So he describes the moment where Rusnak is there, which is the play that happens in the second minute and not the thing with Roldan later. So it's very clear that they knew this was the case by the time I talked to him on Wednesday. That know whether they thought that at the end of the night, in the heat of the moment, and certainly I didn't think anything of it until the Rolldan collision happened and then he was walking around a minute after that. So it seems very likely to me that this is the right scenario, that something happened. The initial injury happened in the first second minute. If you know anything about this kind of injury, you can walk around on this injury until there's lateral pressure that will pop it. Obviously, you'd be like, oh, something's seriously wrong. And it may not have been until that later collision that he realized that something was seriously wrong. [00:09:42] Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you what I did this afternoon is I went back and I watched the first 15 minutes of the game and all I did was watch Velocico for 15 minutes. And what's interesting is that after the incident in the second minute, something that went completely unnoticed by me, and I'm assuming most everybody else is that obviously Allen goes down, the ball ends up back in Dallas's end of the field. And when by the time the ball recirculates and the camera kind of resettles towards middle of the field, velasco is clearly standing essentially midfield, kind of goofing with his knee a little bit, and he's limping. And for the next minute or so, he kind of trots around the field with a little bit of a hitch in his giddy up. And he would stop and fiddle with his sock and goof with his knee. And that goes on until about 320. And at 320, if you look carefully, you can see Nico come to the sideline onto camera and kind of put his hands up and call to Alan and say, what's your situation? Alan turns around and gives him the thumbs up and Alan continues to play for another minute. He's clearly testing the leg. He blocks a shot with his right leg at the top of the Dallas box. In the 8th minute. He chases, actually sprints all the way down to the end line, comes to a sudden complete stop. He cuts back on his left leg with no apparent issue in the 10th minute or 11th minute. He also, if you remember the run that Tafarai makes and the shot Tafari attempts. Allen is the player who receives the ball that bounces off that shot. I don't know if everybody remembers this. And in that sequence, he collects the ball with his right foot and then Cryeff turns and plays it with his left foot and plays it as if nothing is really wrong. But this entire time, if you watch him really carefully, you can tell that something's not quite right. Like he's not running as smoothly as he normally does. Knowing what we know now. Right. I think that's pretty obvious. And then the incident happens at the 1146 minutes where he collides with Roldon. After Roldon is clipped by Areola, Roldon gets his foot caught. He trips over him. After Roldon clips him, his foot I'm sorry, Areola clips Roldan his foot hits the ground and he falls into Allen. And then I think everybody else knows the rest of it know, I think. [00:12:18] Speaker C: That we've seen a lot of different versions of this injury. And the severity of the tear can vary quite a bit greatly. You can have it be torn and ruptured completely where the knee just almost comes apart. Like, I dare say, Tarek Scott had happened in his horrific double one. Or you can have just this tiny little tear and you really can't even feel know, it hurts. And you're like, oh, man, did I do something? Is it meniscus? Is it a strain? And then maybe you cut a couple times and it feels all right. Maybe you get hit later and maybe it feels a little worse. And at some point the pain starts to pick up or you start to lose. What you feel like is structural integrity down the side of your knee or whatever. And various indicators are telling you, I better stop running. So to me, the fact that he was ran around on it ran is a relative term for another 15 minutes or so is probably a really good indicator that it maybe is per, not particularly severe. Not being a doctor, I'm going to say that. But it's still bad enough that he's going to need to have surgery. So, again, it's not great. But there's a difference in these kinds of injuries where you have complete separations and ruptures versus tears. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Yeah. In fact, what's interesting is immediately after the rolled on incident, he does go to the sideline. He does something with the trainer. We don't see it on camera, but it's less than 15 seconds later that he's back on the field. He makes another run. He plays the ball again with his left foot in the 14th minute. Doesn't appear to have anything until he gets the ball at the top of the Dallas box and tries to beat the two midfielder or the two Seattle defenders. And it appears that he goes knee to knee with RushNick at that point. And that's when he kind of hops on it and goes to midfield and then goes to the ground and begins to cry. [00:14:01] Speaker C: Well, if he goes knee to knee on a guy you can imagine perhaps that putting some pressure on the tendon in a way that you maybe hadn't experienced to that point. And that point, maybe he really feels it and like, oh crap, now I'm in trouble. It may have been something he was just trying to get through until all of a sudden it's like, no, this is not happening. And the body starts to shut down on you. And then you really get an emotional reaction when something really that awful feeling can happen to you, when parts of your leg are giving away in directions you weren't expecting them to. Not to make a lot of it. [00:14:32] Speaker A: But, yeah, I think unfortunately, I don't know when the worst part of it happened. I don't know if it was on the initial incident, I don't know if it was in the rolled on collision, I don't know if he did in fact go knee to knee, but somewhere in there something got so bad, it got to the point where he just finally had to let it go. And that's really unfortunate and sad for Alan. So it's a long road, but I have to say, Buzz, even with all of that in mind, there was very little indication, even up to that point in my mind, that Dallas had much of a chance based on the very hopeful way they were playing. There was no purpose to the game for Dallas, it appeared it was very kind of like, hey, we're just going to try to do what we got to do to survive this as best we can. [00:15:22] Speaker C: I think for the first little bit, they were pretty active through 30 minutes, really. For example, if you look at Jesus's shots and touches through 30 minutes, he has five touches in the box and three opportunities, two of which were absolutely golden opportunities. He's got an Xg of 0.6 at that point, which is, if that's your stat, it's not mine, but a lot of people really like it. It is indicative of the fact that he got a couple of good opportunities in that moment. But this is something Coach talks about a lot. Like when you're on the road and you do create these early opportunities, you really have to get them because this is a team that always is going to produce a low volume of opportunity. So you have to take advantage of these when they come. And this is what we talk about all the time of the big player rising to the occasion. And we said all along that this team was going to go as far as someone, Jesus or Allen might do something special. And Jesus had at least two golden moments that he could have done something in that 1st 30 minutes. And when those things didn't happen, it almost felt like there was a little bit of a deflation after that. Jesus in particular wanted nothing to do with the penalty box after know and really, I think that and combined with the, you know, those two things probably deflated everybody across the board. And it would have been really remarkable, actually, in my opinion, to see much of an emotional reaction when you've had these early chances and blown it and you've lost one of your key talismans, and now you're like, how are we going to even create anything? So the things did not go the way they want. And you can look at all kinds of stats that can indicate that it really was a poor selection across the board. I really struggled even to come up with anybody I thought was a decent enough performance to make them mad of the match. It just, overall, was a really bad game when it could have been so much better early on and then just deflated and was bad. [00:17:14] Speaker A: Dan the loss of Velosco in my mind and observation was that even though they weren't super dangerous in the time that Velasco was on the field, there were at least moments where they felt like they could get control of the game for spells because of Alan. And once he went off the field, that all just flat flew out the window. [00:17:37] Speaker D: Yeah, it seemed to take the idea out of the you know, the best chances came from Paxton pressing out of the midfield, but actually moving the ball forward. You kind of rely on having someone like Alan who know identify movements and pick out passes. After that, it was really encosing. It was the creative spark, almost. And even late on, it was him just lashing the ball from far out because nobody else opened up for him. [00:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a frustrating game to watch. I mean, obviously playing in Seattle has never been a big deal, a good place for Dallas. The commentators, certainly I did not watch the Apple TV one. I watched the Fox FS one duo who I've never heard of before. [00:18:33] Speaker C: Oh, they were terrible. [00:18:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And they couldn't stop talking about Dallas's track record in Seattle. If they told you once, they told us eleventeen times, I mean, fair play, dallas just doesn't perform well in Seattle. It's funny. After the game buzz, you and I traded a message about how it was maybe Elara's worst performance for Dallas. And I spent a significant amount of the game wondering what he must be thinking playing on that surface, and if that in any way, shape or form played a part in his, you know. [00:19:15] Speaker C: We should put a tag on that, of course, that everything is relative, that he still was very good. It just probably was the least good of his performances, which is remarkable that by most measures his stats are pretty sweet in that game. Even though I think there's a point at which if there's nobody in front of you, it's really hard to make any line breaking passes that are going to free somebody up. And that was what I sort of watched for a great deal of the game. He still had a remarkable number of recoveries and intercepts, you could actually look at him and Jao Paulo on the other side. Jao Paulo is so gifted and so good and that's exactly what Yarmindi could be for this team and what we're hoping he is for this team. So there's a great analogy there between those two guys. So Mindy was fine. He would by anybody else's measure, he had a great game. It's just that we've come to expect so much more. And I think the combination of Alan's occupation of the hole on the left side that he's supposed to be in and Jesus is vanishing from the front third of the field, and even Ariola perhaps becoming a little static. And OBrion on the other side just doing what Obion does there really wish wasn't a lot of opportunities to play for progressive passes into good positions. And it's just stagnant. [00:20:35] Speaker A: Yeah, Dan brought it up. The only two real I guess there was three dangerous chances. The Tafari Fun run and shot was one. The second one. And the other two, obviously, are Jesus's opportunities, both of which were created by Paxton pressing and getting the ball turned over in Seattle's. End of the you know, I have no other way of saying it. As harsh as it is, jesus just simply choked both of those opportunities. And you can't make as much money as he did and know that so much is reliant on you that you may be willing to forgive missing one of two. But to miss both of those opportunities is a real problem for this team. [00:21:20] Speaker C: Yeah, well, that comes back to the idea that a special player in order for this team to do something this is not the budget of these gigantic teams with lots of money, so you're going to need a guy to do something special. And he had the opportunities early to do something special and he didn't do it. But I think that when Jesus has these games where he goes and vanishes from the front third, I think he means well by it. I think he's trying to drive the team and get the ball and get actions going. But the problem is that it's really bad for this team when he does that. Coach in passing mentioned a stat to me and I went and looked it up and it boggles my mind. He specifically said, look up when Jesus has 40 pass attempts. So I did and it's remarkable on the surface it sounds great. Yeah, listen, when Jesus has 40 pass. [00:22:12] Speaker A: I can see where this is going. [00:22:13] Speaker C: Yeah. When he has 40 pass attempts, which by the way, is a symptom of him being in midfield, he has something like 60 shot creating actions. There's been ten games this year where he's had 40 pass attempts and in those ten games he created 60 shot creating actions, phenomenal play creating and get things happening. Here's the problem in those ten games, FC Dallas is zero four and six, four losses and six draws for six points. And Jesus's Xg, again, if you're in that your stat combined, then all those games is 2.5. And he has one goal in all the games under 40 passes, which is all the rest of the games. Jesus, when he has less than 40 attempts, they're nine three and six for 33 points. So this is a perfect hallmark of like, yes, he's a very, very good player. You could probably actually play him in almost any spot on the field, and he might be the best player on the team in that spot. When he goes back and plays central midfield or right back or whatever the gamble against Colorado where he had all those amazing crosses into the box to nobody, or goes back and tries to link play and play progressive dribbles and all that stuff, it's all really, really good, but there's nobody else that can score. So when he does it, the team is ruined. It's just awful. And I know that Coach talks to him about this. I've talked to him on multiple occasions where he said, we've talked about it, we talk about it, we talk about it. I don't know how you get him to not do it, but it's a significant problem that this is happening, and it basically happens when he thinks he's not. He lacks patience. I think you have to learn that other guys are going to get the ball to you and you got to be there ready for it when it comes, even if it takes to the 90th minute it's going to come. This team scores a lot of goals late, right? They like a third of all their goals came in the last 15 minutes. So a young guy lacks patience, they get down, he gets mad, he's trying to come back and make it happen. You're killing the team, man. Just do your job. [00:24:14] Speaker A: The title of that book is when your nine plays as an eight. [00:24:18] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. That is what it's yeah, right. [00:24:22] Speaker A: Dan, were you frustrated with Jesus like everybody else? [00:24:26] Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. I don't know how anyone couldn't be. [00:24:30] Speaker A: The Jesus situation causes me all sorts of confusion because when he does this, he doesn't perform well, which reduces his value on the market, which changes the questions we ask about what happens if Dallas sells him. How do you fix the problem if he's here, which is, do you let him play in the midfield and you find a proper number nine? And I don't know, man, the whole thing, to me, and maybe this isn't the time to have this conversation, but it's these types of performances and that type of statistical evidence that just creates all sorts of confusion about how you feel about the guy. [00:25:07] Speaker C: Well, what you do with him long term is the discussion we'll have at a fridge a point. But the overall point is that there's a reason why between the age of 20, when basically you're at your most raw, athletic and maybe purest touch, potentially moment to the age of like 26 to 28, when you 26 to 29, when you peek out as a professional, your career reaches its zenith. The difference in those two things, because you don't develop all that much skill after the age of like 1819 years old. What you develop is your brain, your soccer brain. And in this particular case, and something we've talked about a lot with Paxton as well, is that both of those guys needed to develop wisdom and patience. Their whole careers with FC Dallas in the Academy, they were the man, they were the only ones. They were carrying their teams. They're way better than all the guys around them unquestionably. And there's a point at which you become a full time pro. You have to recognize that everybody else around you now can play in Jesus'case. Yes, he's still the best player on the team, but you have to let people do their jobs. And so there's just a certain amount of wisdom and patience that the kid needs to develop, and you can talk to him about it and talk to him about it and talk to him about it, and at some point he'll either figure it out or he won't. And that'll be the difference between him being a really valuable international player, going over to Europe and doing these great things, or being stuck here for the next 15 years is whether he progresses his mind for the game or not. And that's the difference, and that's what you have to wait for and hope for. [00:26:37] Speaker A: Well, it's painful to watch and it's frustrating. And one of the sad part side products of this is watching people online and in your discord turn against him. The mood about Jesus and all of these open spaces, which historically has been pretty welcoming and warming and loving, is very much not in his favor at this particular moment. I think, in part buzz through your education of people. People take note of when he disappears out of the game as he did after missing those two opportunities, just kind of goofing off all over the field and performing the way he did. Look, he's going to have to pull off miracles on Saturday night to, I think, reclaim any kind of the fandom that he's lost over the course of the second half of this season. [00:27:27] Speaker C: He doesn't help it himself because of his body language. He's very expressive in his language. You can see what he's thinking, what he's feeling any moment, all the time, just looking at him walk around or the way he gestures to teammates. He's not a guy that plays his cards tied to his vest and isn't demonstrative. He's the opposite of that. And so people see his reactions and sometimes they put two and two together in their head that he's doing these things because. He's mad or upset and I actually think it's not the case. I think it's because he lacks a little faith that his teammates are going to give him the ball, which is ridiculous when you have Iron Amendi back there or Paxton back there, or guys like Ariola on the wing who can feed you the ball or maybe Oberon's, not so much. But when Bernie's out there or in the times of the year when Legit's been know there's plenty of guys on this team that can line break and can get you the ball. And you just have to learn to wait for. And the way he holds himself and carries himself in the way that it now is noticeable. I mean, people all the it's I'm sure we've had a little bit of impact in it, but there's people all the time that I know a lot about soccer. That message me all the time about it, about what is he doing? And it's incredibly frustrating for everybody else, and I'm sure it's frustrating for him and his coaches, too, that it continues to happen. You're right. The next game is going to be especially with Alan out now. He's going to have to do something special if they're going to get advanced. He'll need some help, too, and he'll have to let people help him. That's the thing. It can be really hard to let people help you and he needs to. [00:28:57] Speaker A: Let people help him the thing. Yeah, I don't know, man. [00:29:04] Speaker C: It's frustrating. [00:29:05] Speaker A: It is frustrating to watch. And I think his body language stuff, I don't think he's actually mad at anybody. I think he's frustrated because he's so good. Your point that he could play any position on the field and be the best player at that position is probably right. And I think that just means that he gets frustrated with the situation and so he tries to go and fix it himself represented and shows itself in him in Dallas's final third when he's not up in the box. And that whole stat stuff that you read out and I'm sure if you're Nico Estevez, you are so frustrated because Jesus is the golden child in this club, both kind of literally and figuratively, and Nico can't seem to do anything to fix it because this has been an issue for not a short period of time. [00:29:57] Speaker C: It's tough because you can't blast him, you can't rip him, you can't really bench know he's way too valuable. You need him, too. When we've talked to Death, the idea that no one else at this team can score for at a good efficiency, he's your only good scoring option. You just have to try and keep coaching him and keep hoping he'll get it, because even when he isn't doing this, which is the other 80, 85% of the time, he's phenomenal. It's only this 15% and it magnifies, of course, because it's in losses and it's in bad losses. That we really, really see it. So it's a compounding problem for everybody involved because we all start talking about it and mentioning it and blowing out of proportion, probably when it's bad, which is like when you get smoked in the first game of the playoffs. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know, dan, you have anything you want to throw in here? You've been awfully quiet. [00:30:48] Speaker D: No, it's just incredibly frustrating way to start the playoffs, and yeah, it's just incredibly frustrating. And on the broadcast, Dunny kept saying he hasn't scored since September, and to miss those two absolute golden opportunities in the first half hour and then kind of run away from the play was just a really disappointing thing to see. [00:31:19] Speaker A: Well, I suppose he's got an opportunity to make up for it. Like we said here on Saturday night. Let's move on to some other players and topics to talk. Uh, so is the penalty kick Mr. Roll don being slick, smart and sly, or is it Mr. Farfan just not playing that situation well? [00:31:44] Speaker C: No, Roldan baited him. Yeah, that's roldan is incredibly savvy at that kind of play. He does that the versions of that all the time all over the field. In fact, in one of the replays of that play, it's very clearly that he baits him. And when Roldan lands on the ground and sits up with his arms raised to the ref, the usual, like, where's my PK? The minute the ref points, you can see this little cheeky smile crack, roll down his face, and then he goes, oh, wait, I got to act like I'm still mad. He was playing him the whole time. This is exactly the kind of thing this guy is really, really good at. There's a reason why he's still a pro at his age and still producing at a really high level in his age, and it's because of his mental understanding of the game and his gamesmanship. You don't have to like it, but I think you got to on some level, I think you have to respect it, because he definitely earns that PK 100% on his own by baiting Farfan, in my opinion. [00:32:41] Speaker D: Yeah, he draws him in 100%. It takes Far fan making a clumsy play. He tried to have a dig at him. Roldan evaded it, took a couple of steps into the box. Farfan again tries to come across at him, take a dig, and Roldan's not pulling his leg out this time. It was a little disappointing after the know, Nico was adamant in his press conference, it came up with no one actually mentioning it, that that shouldn't have been a penalty kick. And he said that there was a new rule introduced and there was a whole meeting with the coaches and referees. I guess it turned out later on, Christina uncle actually clarified it was a directive of players that are like, they put their leg in a place to create contact, which I don't think he necessarily did. He put his leg in a natural place to cut inside and just made know close enough that Marco couldn't really do much. It was either let him by or foul him. But it was a bit disappointing just for him to be that adamant that it was a disgrace the penalty was given. It was a foul. [00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Was anybody else aware of this rule change? [00:33:57] Speaker C: So not sure what rule he's talking about. [00:33:59] Speaker D: When he said rule, he made it sound like it was a new rule, like a whole new rule that was brought in past week. I knew there was a directive to say, like, hey, guys, let's say Marcos foot's planted and Roldan kicks into him to take the contact. I knew there was a directive to say, that's not a foul, that's a player making contact, but that's also not what happened. [00:34:25] Speaker C: I could see why him thinking maybe something about initiation of contact was the don't. I'm with you, Dan. I don't see anything there in that moment that makes you think, like, Roldan's initiating any kind of mean if foul's a foul, it definitely is a foul. I mean, Roldan definitely baits him and definitely tricks him, but there's no fake initiation of contact or anything like that. I can't see that being the case. [00:34:47] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:34:48] Speaker A: Well, that obviously set off the penalty kick. I thought Pause was going to get it. By the way, if there's a highlight of the game, it's that sweet goalkeeping kit, red glove combination Pause was wearing. Have we seen that yet this year? Is that the first time he's worn that? [00:35:05] Speaker C: I don't remember it. The FC Dallas keeper doesn't often wear solid black. [00:35:10] Speaker D: They usually yeah, he normally wears the green one. [00:35:15] Speaker A: It was fantastic. I've never seen a keeper wear an all black kit with the stop sign red gloves like that before and I thought that was a fantastic look and I hope he works at the rest of the playoffs because it was great and I actually thought he got really close to saving that particular PK. That who took it? Rusnick took it. I forgot. [00:35:39] Speaker D: Yeah, he pushed onto the post, didn't. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Don'T? I don't know if he pushed did he get a touch on it and push it onto the I saw it come off the post, but I didn't. [00:35:50] Speaker C: Know if he touched it. [00:35:51] Speaker D: Definitely he got something on it. It's whether he actively pushed it onto the post or whether it just kind of happened to deflect off him somehow. [00:35:59] Speaker A: Okay, well, Buzz, what else about that particular moment? Would you like to get anything about the penalty kick or the Far fan incident? [00:36:08] Speaker C: I don't have anything about the penalty kick, but I think you were talking about Pause. I think there was a really good Pause save from the first half that was particularly good from a long range where he basically dives back to the other direction. I just thought that was a really good save. In particular, just underlining again, that how good I mean, at that point, it would have been before that Seattle had scored at all. So it would have been one goal before they got their other goals. But it would have been a disaster if they scored when they did. And he again once again kept Dallas in a clean seat situation when they easily could have not have been. [00:36:46] Speaker A: Let me see. I'm looking at my notes here from the game. We talked about Tafare's run and shot, which was a lot of fun. It's interesting how many shots Seattle took that Dallas blocked. I mean, the score I'm not sure that the score is indicative of how much Seattle dominated and how many shots Seattle attempted in the course of the game. [00:37:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm not either. There's a weird stat that I thought was indicative of how dominant Seattle was, and that was the long passes out of the back by Paz. Now, usually long passes don't have a very good completion rate. I'm talking about like goal kicks or punts or whatever. When you're kind of booting it long. They usually Dallas when pause does that, they only win about 35% of those. Well, this game, it dropped down to like 18%, which I thought was just a really good indicator of how physically dominant and how much control that Seattle had of the midfield. And they don't play like a low block, but they do play like a clogged up sort of a mid block. And they really just stifled Dallas across that board through there. And I thought that's just a weird way that that stat to me indicated what the problem was that the Dallas really couldn't get through that central section to an advanced position, probably again, leading to contribution to why Jesus kept coming back like he was. So that was really the only thing other than I thought Nikosi probably was one of Dallas's best players, even though he should have done better on the Morris goal. But other than that, I thought he was one of Dallas's best players because at least he was acting like he wanted to fight and compete when some of the other guys, I think, probably didn't weren't acting like that. [00:38:26] Speaker D: So something about Tomasi, I found it really know. He picks up in the second half, he starts really trying to make attacking runs. And there's this moment where he breaks out of defense, runs like halfway into the Seattle half, kind of runs straight into traffic, turns around and has this absolute look of disgust on his face because Jesus Ferreira is walking still, like where should should be out of possession in that kind of right back position. [00:39:03] Speaker C: Yeah, he was behind him. I remember that moment. [00:39:05] Speaker D: Yeah, he was that far and just did not make an effort to come up to play or anything. [00:39:16] Speaker A: The other part that we should get into, buzz is the interesting case of Mr. Liam Frazier oh yeah, right we. [00:39:24] Speaker C: Should talk about him. [00:39:24] Speaker A: You brought him up in your three I was to be frankly honest, I was a bit shocked that you brought him up in the way that you did. [00:39:34] Speaker C: He was in my top three players for Dallas in the game. I thought he was fantastic. Look part of it is know he's forced to sub on Cold basically without really any warm up or very little warm up into a game he wasn't expecting to play on the road against Seattle. I'm going in for Alan are they expecting me to play like that? I think the kid's mentally tough. I think it was a nice showing for him. So in the time he was in there, which is not the whole game he had four progressive passes which led FC Dallas which I'll tell you something about how they were playing 77% passing, he had two key passes again that was top on the team. His personal Xg was like 0.5 which is I think better than Jesus's and he had three blocks defensively speaking. So no, he's not nearly as good as Yara Mendy but I just thought that was one of the better Liam Fraser games we've had that I've seen. And he did it in what is a really mentally tough situation coming in cold in the first half and after not expecting to play until late probably, or even at all. I just thought it was a really nice performance on his part. [00:40:40] Speaker D: And he took out by throwdowns. [00:40:43] Speaker C: Yeah, he was hitting people too. [00:40:45] Speaker A: I'll give him I don't I don't know what it is and maybe this is all me, I'm willing to admit that but my comment was he's the most invisible player I can ever think of in FC Dallas history. I don't remember anything about his game Saturday night and I don't even mean that in a bad or a good way. Like I don't remember him doing anything noticeably awful or anything noticeably good. It's a weird effect. Maybe he's just invisible to me in. [00:41:14] Speaker D: His role in the midfield sometimes that's a good thing sure. In that role if you notice a player it's because you're noticing doing the wrong things rather than just facilitating plays, keeping players alive, making basic stops and just doing the right fundamental things. [00:41:30] Speaker A: Well yeah, I would agree with that and I also recognize the fact that he came into the game unexpectedly in Cold but we've seen enough like I've watched him play enough games for Dallas now. He's consistently a guy that I go to the end of the game and I think each individual player and I think to myself, oh, I remember them doing this good or bad or this good or bad. And every time I get to Fraser, I go, man, I don't remember anything that dude did tonight. And I can't explain it. [00:42:00] Speaker C: Yeah, that's funny. Maybe it's look, everybody sees the game differently. That's fine. It's like I've gotten to the point now. The first couple of games he came in, I thought he was absolute trash, and I've completely changed my opinion of him. Now, at the end of the season, I think he's a phenomenal roster piece. I think he's mentally tough. I don't think he's even remotely close to some of the players on this team in terms of ability, but I don't think it lets him faze him. I think the kid shows up every day and works. He puts in a solid as they would say, it puts in a solid shift. He's adequate in most of his stat categories, and he is willing to get a little tough when he needs to. So for his price point and for the circumstances of this game, I actually thought that even if you throw those two things out, I still had him just 100% on the game as one of the top three guys go ahead. [00:42:49] Speaker D: One of the notes I had doing the write up for the blog was, he's fighting getting towards the end of the game, and most of the teams just quit, and they're already thinking about the next game. There pretty much the only ones that were kind of just going for it. [00:43:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it was frustrating to watch because the overall kind of vibe of the game and I think this is maybe more indicative of the playoff format than anything else. John Tolkien talked about this today from New York red Bull. I don't know if you guys have seen that video clip of him that's going around. Have you guys seen this? [00:43:34] Speaker C: No. [00:43:35] Speaker A: He basically was just laughing about this ridiculous playoff format that MLS has set up to codify Apple. And he said, look, once you're down to nothing, you might as well just you're just looking forward toward the next game because goals don't mean anything. And he's right. Especially if you go down to nothing and you don't have one of your best attacking players in the game, you can kind of understand why everybody shuts down, because it's like, hey, man, it doesn't make any difference if we lose two nothing or 200 to nothing. What we have to do is at least win PKS on Saturday night in Frisco. [00:44:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Did you watch the St. Louis Kansas City game, though? [00:44:23] Speaker A: No, I didn't. [00:44:24] Speaker C: Oh, man. I bet you St. Louis doesn't think that way. [00:44:27] Speaker A: Well, I think yes, but they got wrecked. Did they let themselves I know that St. Louis lost to Kansas City, but my question is, did they get wrecked because St. Louis said, well, hey, look, we're already behind by so much. That doesn't make any difference. Like, why risk injury or tire ourselves out when all we have to do is win the next game or win it on PKS? [00:44:56] Speaker C: Well, in that particular game's case, St. Louis, because they were at home, they pressed really hard to try and get back in it. So they brought on defensive guys and they attacked and attacked and attacked and. [00:45:06] Speaker A: Attacked and got caught, pushed up. [00:45:08] Speaker C: At that point, Kansas City was up three one. Inside 40 minutes of the start of the game, kansas City came out blazing and just wrecked them. But then St. Louis kept trying to get back in it and they made all these subs and they kept attacking. And St. Louis, Kansas City got another one on them. So they're probably moralized by the sense of like, yes, it got to be four one, and we tried our damnedest to break them down and we couldn't even do anything to them at all. And that was at home, and now we got to go to their place. So yes and no. I totally agree with you. The format is kind of wanky. And you're right that once you go down a couple of goals, why bother? But depending on who you are and how the game goes, I think we could really do real bad damage to yourself. It'll be interesting to see how St. Louis responds, to see if my theory is correct, that they're basically done at this point, as Dan predicted would happen. By the way. Credit to Dan. [00:45:53] Speaker A: That's right. Credit to Dan. But when it relates to Dallas and their kind of, like, overall vibe as the game went on, what I can't figure out is, is this a group of guys that have just essentially given up because they're all bummed out, or are they like, hey, we kind of need to save ourselves for the next game in Dallas? That's what I can't 100% sort out in my head at this point. [00:46:15] Speaker C: Well, I think some of it was the missed opportunities earlier, and once they didn't get them and they lost Allen and it took the heat out of them, and that probably you're right. Deflated them and then why bother at that point? There's another game that will be an interesting question. Is New York at home throttled Charlotte, or was that the playing game? [00:46:36] Speaker A: That was the playing game. [00:46:36] Speaker C: That was the playing game. [00:46:37] Speaker A: Never mind. [00:46:37] Speaker C: Yeah, forget that bad example. Then New York got throttled by Cincinnati. I guess it'll see, interesting how New York responds to that throttling with Cincinnati, because that was three nothing. That might be an example of a game that once Cincinnati was up a couple of goals, the other team quit. I guess we're going to find out. This is the first time we've seen this format. Every game is a win format. We've seen three legs before, but not like this. It'll be interesting to see what happens in game two. Well, Fields have been really aggressively good across the board in this tournament so far. [00:47:05] Speaker A: But this is the most ridiculous aspect of this, and the thing that everybody's talked about since they announced it is that Dallas loses two nothing in game one. All they have to do now is win the next two games on penalty kicks and they're through without ever actually winning a well, I mean, that's kind. [00:47:25] Speaker C: Of the nature of this format is they're claiming you're winning the game with the kicks. [00:47:30] Speaker A: Yeah, but you and I both know that's, idiot. [00:47:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I know what you. [00:47:37] Speaker D: Can you good. [00:47:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I was just making a big deal about Peter's. Idiot. [00:47:46] Speaker D: Mean, you could really have the same thing happen with the two legged playoffs. Was it one season Seattle made it to MLS Cup and didn't actually score a goal throughout the playoffs they scored one goal or something stupid. They kept winning penalty shootouts. [00:48:01] Speaker A: Yes. Of course, MLS has historically goofed this up in a variety of colors. Yeah. This is just a new iteration of just another stupid playoff format. And I'm not sure this one I mean, this isn't even the stupidest, but this one doesn't make a lot of sense. We'll see. I guess by the time we get to the start of next week, we'll have a better idea of what the actual results of this are. [00:48:34] Speaker D: But I was going to say it's going to be really interesting, those third set of games to see how many teams actually tried to play for penalties. [00:48:41] Speaker A: Well, yeah, assuming let's see how many third games we get. [00:48:47] Speaker C: What movie is it where they have the line about stop trying to make fetch happens? [00:48:52] Speaker A: Mean girls. [00:48:53] Speaker C: Mean girls. [00:48:53] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:48:54] Speaker C: So Kicks from the Spot is my fetch. Stop trying to make Kicks from the Spot happen. [00:48:58] Speaker D: Just apparently they're releasing the musical as a movie now. Kicks from the Spot is going to happen. [00:49:05] Speaker C: Fetch. [00:49:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty maddening. Now, one of the other things that I wanted to bring up, and I have in my notes is the oddity of the substitutions. And it was the substitution of Dante Seeley late in the game instead of Kamungo, who was on the bench and ended up getting subbed in later in the game. I still haven't figured out why he put Sealy on and not Kamungo. [00:49:34] Speaker D: That's an easy one. They rated Kamungo and Legit for only. [00:49:38] Speaker A: 25 minutes, but they put Sealy on at like 30 minutes. Yeah, I mean, it was relatively close. [00:49:48] Speaker C: Well, they did a shift formation change. Seeley was really brought on more to play to go to three at the back with, you know, for whatever reason, he thinks Seeley can be a wingback. I think that's a terrible idea. I think See is a horrible you know, that's Junk is in for farfan and then Junk is sliding over into as like the third center back and Suley is the wing. Know, I'm sure the idea is that you have an extra winger, know, tuamasi is on one side and Suley's on the other giving you two. Because Tuamasi can be a winger. Remember, he was you're trying the idea is that you're going to overload offensively. I don't think it worked, but I'm sure that was part of the idea of going see lee first is because of that idea that coach seems to have, that seeley is a wingback or can be a wingback. [00:50:35] Speaker A: Well, I think it's pretty clear to all of us now why dante seeley is back in frisco and not playing in the second division in holland anymore, because the level of give up in that kid is shocking. [00:50:51] Speaker C: Well, the worst part is that you can tell he knows that it's a problem because there's lots of times where he does the give up, and then he goes, oh, crap. And he recognizes he did it, and then he runs, and it's like, dude, the worst one for me is when he comes in for 20 to 30 minutes and he only runs at, like, 80% on several occasions. It's like, dude, you're playing for 25 to 30 minutes. You can run 100% every single run you make. You don't need to make these jogging sort of runs. That really annoys me and frustrates me. The kid has a lot of a talent, but he needs to figure out the intensity that the moment requires and the focus the moment requires. He's just coming in and playing, and if you just come in and play at an MLS level or higher, you're not going to get very far. You got to come in and compete. It's different. [00:51:39] Speaker A: Well, it was disappointing, and then bernie came on, and I'm still not sure bernie's not actually hurt more than they're willing to admit, because there was even a moment a couple minutes after he came on where he kind of was looking wonky at his ankle again. [00:51:52] Speaker C: Yeah, the turf was rough. They knew it was going to be rough. They were just know that's a prayer and hail mary at that point, just trying, hoping for anything obviously didn't work, but there's not anything in that other than hopefully he's better for this next one. [00:52:07] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's a strange deal. Let's see. Oh, we did have now, to be fair, we should talk about this because it relates to something we mentioned last week, which is, oh, man, if we ever had a guy on the team that we wanted to have a one on one with the other, with the keeper, it would want to be bernie. And of course, we ended up with one of those in this game, and he took it pretty and and I don't know if it was the moment. I don't know if it was the turf. I don't know if it's his ankle, but that certainly wasn't the bernie Kamunga we had seen most of the season. [00:52:38] Speaker C: All the above. He doesn't get them all, but he's pretty good strike rate at that moment. You're right. I was happy to see him get the opportunity. Obviously, it didn't happen, but when it happened, I thought, is there anybody else on the team. I would have rather been in that shoes and I was. No. [00:52:53] Speaker A: Well, certainly not jesus. [00:52:55] Speaker C: Yeah. Or OBrion. Or Areola doesn't have the pace to catch. [00:52:59] Speaker A: Just all right, so buzz 08:00 Saturday night and frisco. It's game two again. Dallas. You would love to see Dallas win the game, but technically all they have to do is get it to PKS and win in PKS to make it a game three. What's your vibe on how they're going to try to accomplish this? What did you see at training, et cetera, et cetera? [00:53:24] Speaker C: Well, the number one most important thing is to understand that Martin pause will indeed be in the all black again. [00:53:33] Speaker A: Good. This is positive. You know this for sure. You've confirmed this. [00:53:38] Speaker C: I have the official Major League Soccer kit diagram for the game and pauses in all black. [00:53:43] Speaker A: I am fistfight. Do they have the red gloves in there, too? [00:53:46] Speaker C: No, they don't draw the gloves, but they have Dallas in the red and blue. [00:53:49] Speaker A: Would you get your red crayon and draw the gloves on there for me and then take a picture of it and post it on social media? [00:53:55] Speaker D: Does that mean Seattle is in the green and blue? [00:53:58] Speaker C: It does. It's a colorblind game. Yeah, it'll be awesome. Yeah. [00:54:02] Speaker A: Sweet. [00:54:04] Speaker C: Seattle is in Rave green, the ref is in blue, and FCD Dallas is in red and navy. So the colorblinds are going to love this one. Be awesome. Okay, important thing, number two, fakundo's back in town training, got his green card, presumably, so that's good. I guess the reality is that Fakundo is coming off of an injury and was out of town, so I don't put a high chances of him playing. The trick is, of course, how do you play Alan Velasco and how do you get Jesus to stay up front? And the way I think about it is I think back to the RSL game up there. The three one went up there when PAX and Palmer basically played the Allen Ten role and I don't remember who was behind it, but it was probably Fraser and Yaramendi. And given how physical St. Louis is, st. Louis, Seattle is, I'm kind of leaning my instincts are leaning into, like, a Fraser Yaramindi double pivot with Paxton. Given the more free role, the velasco role, and that's your best bet, because you have to replace know, line breaking, passing, penetrating dribbles. You have to replace that aspect, and you have to try and keep Jesus up in the box. So Ariola probably is a given at this point. Legit is too early to be able to start, but he can compete. Know, maybe he can give you half a game, perhaps, if you need him to. Bernie's, an interesting question because basically you're stuck at this point because ANSA is not in the mix. It doesn't appear to be. [00:55:38] Speaker A: When he subbed into the game, I thought I was like I had totally. Forgotten about that cat. Yeah, hell man, I forgot he was even on the team. [00:55:45] Speaker C: Yeah. So it's probably going to have to be OBrion or Kamungo, unless if Kamungo is healthy enough to go a whole know but you saw him on the turf, so what do you think? It's probably going to have to be OBrion again. So you really don't have a lot of to, you don't have Legit, you don't have Bernie doesn't look like probably to start. So it's going to have to be OBrion and Ariola. Jesus up top, Paxton is the more free player. Fraser, I'm pretty sure at this point in Iramani combo and that makes the backline easy. Farfan, Nikosi, Ibiaga and Tuamasi with paws really is all you can do. If you're curious about Martinez, he got rolled in practice on Thursday before the game by O'Brien. So he got his ankle rolled and then they went up and they took him with him. They took Martinez with them. And then Martinez, when they trained on before the game, they trained up there in Seattle. And Martinez wasn't comfortable recovered enough. So that's why he didn't make the bench. And that's why Corsa was on the bench. [00:56:54] Speaker A: Ah, okay. [00:56:55] Speaker C: So will Martinez be healthy enough to make the cause? I mean, if they took him along thinking that he might be a game day decision, they probably is pretty close. It's probably not super bad, but I don't know if that really gets you anything because he's not going to start, it's going to be Nicosi and Ibiaga. But it does answer the question of where the hell was Martinez, why was he not on the bench? [00:57:14] Speaker A: Well it was weird because somebody had mentioned that he had posted some video on his Instagram account. It was like a weird time to be posting a highlight reel of your season. [00:57:26] Speaker C: Well, a player that not to get into offseason stuff. But if there is a player that's more of a veteran player, they'll tell them ahead of time whether they'll be involved or not. Mainly to give those guys a chance to find a landing spot and a playing spot so they don't get blindsided. Because this winter will be midseason in Europe. They sort of give them every chance they can to find whatever if they're going home, that kind of thing. So the conjecture with him sharing that video was potentially that they may have told him that he's not going to be here next year, but that wouldn't affect him, he's not ziegler, it's not going to make him miss more games. So it was just this injury in practice that caused him to miss that game and I'm sure he'll be available for this game and Fakuno will be available for this game, which means probably Seek, you won't be on the bench probably because Fakuno probably will be. So really, honestly there's not a lot of choices to be made. Frankly with the injuries they have. They're kind of stuck with the eleven that they're going to play, in my opinion. [00:58:29] Speaker A: So how do they take this eleven and turn this into some sort of positive result? [00:58:35] Speaker C: Well, you have to hope. That's why I mentioned that RSL game when Paxton played this role and Dallas dominated. I don't know if you guys remember that game. It was at the start of the run of when they had the seven games in 22 games. Seven days. Games in 22 days. Excuse me. They played up there and played really well, passed and pressed really well and had made a bunch of good runs into the box and they got at RSL and RSL tried to play. That's the thing, right? So the problem for you is that Seattle is not necessarily a team that's going to open it up. They're going to play a mid block. So you're going to have the sort of problem so what you have to choose try and match their effort and intensity. You got to have to be able to have reason why I think that leans into Frazier is because he showed intensity last game. You got to hope Nakosi is going to bring some intensity. You can hope the home field advantage is going to give you intensity. You can feed off your crowd. Hopefully Jesus will stay up front and be patient enough for them to get some opportunities. And really, that's it. You don't really have there's no magic bullet at this point. There's no guy on the bench that's going to be all of a sudden be healthy. Like even if Legit gets healthy, it's not like he's going to come in and just tear them apart, right? He's solid, but he's not that know. Alan's done, so it's not going to be him. You really just are hoping that you can compete and give yourself an opportunity and Jesus can get know or take it to PKS, I guess. I suppose. Hopefully not. That'd be boring as hell. But at a minimum, you got to match their intensity. You got to make your home field be tough for them to play in, make it hurt for them, and then try and go back up there and steal it if you can. They've only won there once in their entire history. So going back up there is going to be a crapshoot at best anyway. So you got to dominate here at home for sure now. [01:00:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we obviously would talk about that on the next episode if in fact they get the result this weekend. But this all very much has the feel of the previous 27 years of always next year. [01:00:30] Speaker C: Well, the problem is that, as you say, why don't people teams just play a block against Dallas? Well, this is a team that does that. Yeah, they didn't draw a team that wants to play. They would have been better off if they had gotten Salt Lake or LAFC. Teams that want to open it up and play or even the Galaxy if they'd have made know sporting likes to play too. They don't want to, you know, here's a team that does. So you're in trouble. Like you say, it always causes Dallas problems. So this is about the worst matchup available in the playoffs, frankly. [01:00:59] Speaker A: Yeah. I think the frustrating part, though, Buzz, is that these are two similarly similar teams. We talked about this last week. Their structure and their purpose is not dissimilar from each other. They're both low creation, chance teams and low scoring teams in general. Seattle's had their issues with injuries of key players, but there does appear to be not just a different tactic when they do have the ball and pushing forward and trying to create opportunities and their ability to actually create super dangerous opportunities. It's just a different level of player and a different level. The two teams look very similar from the first two thirds of the field and in my mind look very different in the attacking third of the field. Does that make sense? [01:01:50] Speaker C: Yeah. No. Seattle is a better version of FC Dallas. There's a reason why they're in second. You know, they have a couple of key players that are better than some of the guys Dallas has and then Seattle also has way, way more experience and they know how to do this and they know how to better break down a block. So when Dallas went up there and blocked, they knew how to get around know, they went around the outside and crossed it in. That's one of the ways you beat a block. Dallas doesn't have that play because they don't have Jordan Morris. They got Jesus. They got a guy who's five eight instead of a guy at six two. [01:02:20] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that cross Nuhu put in was farting perfect, by the way. That was amazing cross. [01:02:25] Speaker C: Both centerbacks could have done better on it, but it was an amazing cross. You're right. They have these big physical guys like NewHoo. They got creative nifty guys. They have multiple ways to break down a block. Dallas doesn't have know, they're better offensively than Dallas is. They're more experienced than Dallas is. Their defenses are pretty much the same. I would stack up Dallas'defense pretty close to theirs. Pause in particular I think is probably better than Frey at this. You know, that doesn't mean that they're not better in a lot of other phases. And that's the thing. There's a reason why it's a two seed versus a seven seed. Is that what they are, seven? You know, it's not a whole lot of points, but it's three or four wins. That's a know, it's a big difference. And Seattle's been there many, many times and won it many, many times and this team has not. And they're going to need one of their kids to do great things. The Paxton and Jesus are going to have to carry this team through this round if they're going to do it is where we're. [01:03:21] Speaker A: Not much. They're not loaded with attacking talent and goal scorers. They haven't been all season. And it would surprise everybody to find somebody suddenly banging in goals after nobody's done it all particular season. [01:03:36] Speaker C: I mean, the season's balls happen. You're not looking at him. Yara. Minnie can make some great splitting passes to set you up, but he's doing it from deep. It's going to be jesus has got to get in the box and get opportunities. Paxton's going to have to crash underneath in what? It was Allen's role, which Paxton can't do if he's know. Is Bernie capable of starting or can OBrion do one of his obrions like he did in the game that they won against Know, where he almost tried to blow it, and then know? What else do we have at this point? [01:04:06] Speaker A: I don't know. I'm just trying to run off the Texas ranger vibe, kind of back into the playoffs and surprise everybody with a run. Do the unexpected. It is a bummer that all day, everywhere you turned, what you heard was now all four professional sports teams have won their championships in the Dallas Fort Worth area. [01:04:29] Speaker C: It is annoying, but it's a battle we've been fighting for. Problem who's it that told a story about going to dinner with nine of their best sports buddies to watch the. [01:04:42] Speaker A: Rangers and somebody in your discord. Yeah. [01:04:44] Speaker C: Didn't even know there was a pro soccer team in town. And I'm like, that's a typical. [01:04:47] Speaker A: And they were eating at the restaurant across the street from Toyota stadium stadium. [01:04:55] Speaker C: Listen, we're at a point here and I know it's tough where the team's running out of bullets. You know, we've kind of we've talked about this team all year. They're not there yet and they're kind of running out between injuries and youth and they're running into a team that plays away they can't handle. They're just kind of out of ammunition at this point. [01:05:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:13] Speaker C: You got to hope for something special if you want to get out of this round. I hate to be a gloomer, but this is not an emotional reaction. I'm analyzing the team as I'm sure you guys both do, and you probably recognize, just like I do, that they really are running out of potential to do something. Well, bernie's not healthy. Jesus is doing whatever he's doing. Alan's out. They're kind of running out of guns. [01:05:38] Speaker A: Buzz we've been watching this team now for almost 30 years. What we are witnessing this season is just a slightly different variation of what we have witnessed for the last almost 30 years. This isn't a surprise. Right. It is what it is and you have to just make a decision if you're comfortable with that being enough for you to find enjoyment out of the club over the course of a season. [01:06:03] Speaker C: Yeah. And this is what the hunt set up, which was make the playoffs, and then hope something happens, hope you get hot, hope somebody carries you through it. And this is it. That's what they did. [01:06:11] Speaker A: Hope somebody hope your $8 million Argentinian wonder kid doesn't blow out his knee in the playoffs. [01:06:18] Speaker C: Yeah. And Jesus, your golden child for your academy comes through for you. Since you sold the other one for 20 million, the one you got left comes through for you. That's where you're at. Excited about Irimandi for next year, though. That'd be fun. [01:06:31] Speaker A: You think he sticks around? [01:06:33] Speaker C: Oh, my God. He better. [01:06:34] Speaker A: Well, there's a difference between hoping and knowing. If anybody has said anything to you kind of indicating that he'll be back. [01:06:42] Speaker C: Next year, the team has an option. [01:06:45] Speaker A: So it's not necessarily up to him. [01:06:47] Speaker C: No, it's not up to him. [01:06:48] Speaker A: He doesn't have the option. Retire. [01:06:50] Speaker C: You just quit and walk away. [01:06:51] Speaker A: Right. [01:06:53] Speaker C: He's under contract, though, so it's like somewhere else. I guess. [01:06:56] Speaker A: My point is also, as a part of the almost 30 years of watching this team, we've seen our fair share of foreign players show up here, goof off for a few months and decide it's not for them and get their way in, going back home. [01:07:09] Speaker C: Yeah. The worst one is Josh Keller. You remember who the burn used a really high pick on in the compression draft. He was going to be there six, and he showed up here for two weeks and said, nope, screw that, I'm retiring. Quit after they'd wasted that, like, second overall pick on him or whatever it was. [01:07:27] Speaker A: I think that's an entry in the list. [01:07:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I believe it is in the list. [01:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I believe it is in the list. Hey, what was the thing you sent me the other day that you thought needed to be added to the list? [01:07:35] Speaker C: The ziegler thing. The ziegler quitting. [01:07:39] Speaker A: Oh, Rito. When he posted that he had been exposed to COVID, and we later found. [01:07:44] Speaker C: Out that he did that to say because they weren't offering him an extension. And it was his attempt to say, oh, you're not going to offer me extension? See how you guys like to play with Brasson starting. And so he's like, I got exposed to COVID, I'm out. And they were like, what? [01:08:00] Speaker A: I got to post. Yeah, that's a good one. [01:08:03] Speaker C: That's the one that we missed it from 20. Was that 2020? [01:08:05] Speaker A: I think it was, yeah, it was probably the end of the 2020 season. Sure. [01:08:08] Speaker C: He was at the end of his contract, and then he never played again. Basically, they subbed him, like, one time after that, I think, late in the game, but that was it. He never started. And they just went with Russell the rest of the way. [01:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we promoted that a few weeks ago, and somebody read it for the first time and they sent me a text. No, they sent me a text and they're like, this is satire. You made all this up, right? I'm like, no, every single entry in the list is 100% true and accurate. [01:08:37] Speaker C: Well, it reads like it's one of those things, like, you couldn't make this up. It's so bizarro. [01:08:42] Speaker A: It's like something you'd read in The Onion. [01:08:44] Speaker C: Yeah, after year, except it's 30 years of it now of bizarro stuff. [01:08:52] Speaker A: All right, well, I don't know what else to do, man. I feel like we're at that point where we all kind of know where it's headed, and I don't want to be too much of a bummer about it, but I also don't want to be unrealistic. Everybody's hopes up. [01:09:05] Speaker C: Well, we're in the keeper realistic business, not the get everybody's hopes up business. Obviously, I'm hoping something happens. I mean, Jesus is a tremendous player. It's always possible he could just do this thing and carry this team all the way, but the stats and what we're seeing are telling us that's very unlikely. [01:09:23] Speaker A: Well, I do feel like coming out of this, the two talking points is how has Jesus'poor second half of the season affected whatever plan this club had for Jesus, whether they were planning on selling him or keeping him and how that plays out. And the other part of it is the Velosco injury, because his injury and the timing of the injury doesn't clearly allow Dallas to put him know, recoup his DP spot and his salary situation. But now they got a plan on not having him for the first half of next season. And how are they going to do that? [01:10:01] Speaker C: Yeah, that's all offseason talk. [01:10:02] Speaker A: We'll say, I know. I'm just saying we can all be bummed out and just assume the worst about how this season ends, but there are some significant fallout talking points that happened on Monday night that we'll see how they affect into Saturday that I think we're going to spend a lot of time talking about on the offseason. [01:10:21] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. [01:10:24] Speaker A: All right. What do you think, Dan? [01:10:27] Speaker D: I don't bloody. [01:10:32] Speaker A: Always looking. I always turned to you for vintage European insight. [01:10:38] Speaker D: That was it. [01:10:39] Speaker A: Oh, you don't? Oh, okay. Well, fair enough. Okay. Well, thank you, Dan. It's good to hear from you. How was the Freddy movie? We heard that you went to see that. Yeah. [01:10:52] Speaker D: Five nights at Freddie. It was a lot of fun. [01:10:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Good horror. Are you a big horror fan? [01:10:57] Speaker D: No, not really. I find they have crap storylines, this one. The storyline was, like, silly, but it was fun. [01:11:03] Speaker A: Okay. All right. Have you ever been to a Chuck E. Cheese? [01:11:07] Speaker D: I used to live near one, but no. [01:11:09] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Do they have Chuck E. Cheeses in England? [01:11:12] Speaker D: No. [01:11:13] Speaker A: Okay. Buzz. You're a big Chuck E. Cheese fan, aren't you? [01:11:16] Speaker C: Oh, when I was a kid, I used to love Chuck E. Cheese. I never understood why my parents didn't like it until I got older. [01:11:23] Speaker A: Now you'd never go back inside now. It's awful. [01:11:26] Speaker C: I would never go there. I don't have kids. Never going back there again. [01:11:31] Speaker A: Clearly, Chuck E. Cheese has never been and will never be a sponsor of Third Degree, the podcast. [01:11:36] Speaker C: We're not their target audience, I don't think. [01:11:37] Speaker A: All right. Have you seen a good movie lately, Buzz? [01:11:42] Speaker C: Yes. It was on the TV, though. I watched okay. It's not a movie. It was a show called Bodies. [01:11:51] Speaker A: Yes. I just finished episode five or six. [01:11:56] Speaker C: There's a little bitty bit in the middle where it got a tiny bit where it slowed down just a little bit for me, where I was like, okay, this is feeling a little bit filtered. But other than that, it's like was it six or seven episodes, Joe? Eight. [01:12:07] Speaker A: It's eight episodes, yeah. [01:12:08] Speaker C: I mean, to make that story into eight episodes was amazing. And the fact that it only dragged for me, like, once or twice, even past the point where I totally figured out what was coming, they still figured out how to make it relevant and interesting. [01:12:18] Speaker A: Had you read the comic? [01:12:20] Speaker C: No. [01:12:20] Speaker A: Okay. [01:12:21] Speaker C: But I really enjoyed all the layering of it, and even past the first couple of layers, they figured out how to make a couple more layers. So time travel detective stuff. I quite enjoyed that show. [01:12:32] Speaker A: So you're the one person I know who is more into Sci-Fi than anybody else. Have you picked up on Scavenger's reign yet? [01:12:42] Speaker C: No, but you've been telling me about it. I just haven't gotten to it. I added it to my list once you told me about it. [01:12:47] Speaker A: It's insane. [01:12:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:12:49] Speaker A: You will spend most of every episode going, wait a second. What just happened? But it's really real. I'm fascinated by it. A couple more episodes fell this week, and it's animated, and I love animation, and it's beautifully animated, and it's unlike anything I've ever seen before. [01:13:04] Speaker C: Well, the best anime I've seen lately is Arcane, which is a couple of years old now, or a year old now, but is absolutely mind bendingly good. That's the game based on League of Legends, which is crazy. But the thing I'm finding about science fiction lately is that a lot of it's just turning into horror movies. I don't know why, but right now, like, ten out of eleven movies coming out are horror movies. Maybe it's something about our times. And I'm not a horror guy, so I'm struggling looking for good science fiction movies that aren't just horror movies. Alien is a good movie because it's a groundbreaking, amazing science fiction film, but it's basically a straight up horror movie. I don't need 100 versions of Alien at that point. I'm out. I've really enjoyed foundation on Apple. That's been really great. So I'm hunting and pecking, looking for my good Sci-Fi shows and detective shows. It's the only genre I like, which is why I like Bodies, because it was a combination of Sci-Fi and detective. So that was fun. [01:14:00] Speaker A: I'm trying to figure out if I should recommend one of the greatest slash medical fi movies of all time to you. [01:14:06] Speaker C: What's that? [01:14:07] Speaker A: It's a movie called Human Centipede. [01:14:10] Speaker C: I'm aware. Not watching that. Not watching that. [01:14:17] Speaker A: I made Dan laugh. I'm so proud of myself. [01:14:22] Speaker C: Well, straight up, if you haven't seen Arcane, I recommend that. [01:14:25] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Scavenger's reign is not anime. It's animated. I didn't know if you thought I said it was anime. It's anime. [01:14:33] Speaker C: Tomato, potato. I'm not one that makes a distinction between animated and anime. Anime is animated. So whichever you would like arcane, either way, it's a spectacular piece of storytelling and it happens to be animated. [01:14:44] Speaker A: All right. Very good. Well, there's enough movie talk to end the episode. Dan, thank you very much, my friend. [01:14:52] Speaker D: Thank you. [01:14:53] Speaker A: And Buzz, I guess I haven't figured out if I'm going to the game or not Saturday night. [01:15:00] Speaker C: You were going to try to sit with us. Is that not happening? [01:15:03] Speaker A: Well, I haven't decided. Yeah, I was trying to source a ticket purchase tickets from friends of mine that have season tickets. And so there's a weird situation where several of my friends that have season tickets did not buy playoff tickets. [01:15:19] Speaker C: Wow, that's weird. [01:15:20] Speaker A: Well, because a few of them were traveling and didn't think they'd go to the games, and a few of them just said, yeah, season didn't really endear us to spending more money on the team. So if I'm going to buy a ticket, I'm probably just going to have to buy it straight from the club. But I haven't decided if I wanted to go yet or not. [01:15:43] Speaker C: Well, thanks for hosting and hopefully you'll come hang out with us. [01:15:45] Speaker A: It'd be fun to see. Well, maybe we can go grab a bite to eat or something. [01:15:50] Speaker C: For sure. [01:15:50] Speaker A: Good. [01:15:51] Speaker C: Third Degree, the podcast has been brought to you by Soccer 90. Com shop. Their wide open selection of Scallops national team gear, european club gear, jersey, scars, whatever you need t shirts. They got it all. Soccer balls, man. I think they even got some cleats over there. Soccer 90. Com. If you're a listener of this podcast, use the code third degree at checkout for 20% off. That's 20% off soccer 90 dot code third degree. Some exclusions may apply. [01:16:16] Speaker A: All right, well, thank you, guys. It's good talking to you. We will hope for the best on Saturday night 08:00 at Toyota Stadium, game two of this round of MLS funny playoffs. And thank you. FC Dallas. Curious fans. We hope you enjoy the game Saturday night and we will be back next week to talk to you on another episode of third degree. [01:16:38] Speaker C: The podcast. [01:16:39] Speaker D: No Thomas Roberts or Alan Velasco. [01:16:43] Speaker B: Third degree. The third degree. Never podcast. Third degree. The third degree. Never get third degree. Never care back. Close.